Much has been written about the hundreds of billions in profits made from commercialism, real estate deals and security costs created by the Sochi Olympics. However, its real function is to convince the suffering working class that they are all winners under capitalism. The games are designed to foster a fierce nationalist corporate spirit and hero worship that propels workers to identify with their bosses’ profit agendas and wars against competitor countries, much as the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Germany preceded World War II.
Olympics and Oil Wars Destroy Workers’ Lives
The background to the Sochi Olympics is the oil war between Russia, the number one producer, and the U.S., number three. The U.S. combined with number six, Canada, leads oil production. The nearly completed Keystone oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast is mainly for export to energy-poor countries like China and India, to make them dependent on the U.S. instead of Russia. The U.S. is supporting the struggle against Russia in the Ukraine, whose oil and gas pipelines supply much of Europe. Russia’s continuing imperialist war for Chechnya’s oil resources, that killed over 160,000 rebels, is costing the Russians billions in security because Sochi is near Chechnya.
There are also high-security costs for the U.S. because of its Mideast oil wars and Special Forces killer operations in over 120 countries, along with missile drone attacks. U.S. ships were anchored off Sochi for evacuation purposes, and their athletes were ordered not to wear any nationalist uniforms for fear of retaliation from millions of victims of U.S. imperialism.
Impoverished Russians have been taxed $51 billion for the Sochi facilities which displaced thousands of workers from public housing, private homes and farms. Other Olympics have also given corporate real estate developers the power to evict millions worldwide in many countries like Brazil and China while encouraging other capitalists like the U.S., which recently displaced thousands of workers in Brooklyn, NY for the Barclays Center and a high-priced apartment complex. In Russia 25 workers were killed building the Sochi complex because of speed-up and unsafe conditions. Many thousands of workers have not even been paid because the project is $40 billion over budget.
Hunger Olympics
Many criticize the Olympic athletes’ recruiting process which makes them virtual slaves to corporate and military sponsors for funding and training, linking that process to a Hunger Games scenario. Child athletes are separated from their families and schools for years and become the property of corporate sponsors like Verizon, who control their lives, and require constant endorsements of their sponsors. Olympic designers demand increasingly dangerous conditions be built into the events to produce new records and thrills, resulting in deaths and injuries among the athletes.
All Workers Win with Communism
Capitalism produces mass poverty, unemployment, homelessness, and imperialist wars, along with an unequal economy that allows the world’s richest 85 people to have more wealth than half the world’s population (3.5 billion). Communism is the only system where no workers are losers and everyone is special. With communism, cooperation replaces competition, devotion to serving others replaces serving oneself and pursuit of socially useful goals replaces profits and dangerous entertainment for a handful of lucrative careers. PLP fights for communism, a social system that needs everyone to rise to the heights of their ability and to produce and share equally according to need. Join us.