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58-549: The notion of a separate working class national athletic federation emerged first in Germany during the decade of the 1890s, when a Workers Gymnastics Association was established by activists in the socialist movement in opposition to the nationalist German Gymnastics Society (Turnen). Other "proletarian" sports organizations emerged soon thereafter in that country, including the Solidarity Worker Cycling Club,

116-449: A "slum of hope" from the 1920s and 1930s, members of this class are given hardly any chances of attaining membership of the formal economic structures. Diane Reay stresses the challenges that working-class students can face during the transition to and within higher education, and research intensive universities in particular. One factor can be the university community being perceived as a predominately middle-class social space, creating

174-556: A Red Sport International and elected a governing Executive Committee, consisting of representatives from Soviet Russia, Germany, Czechoslovakia , France, Sweden, Italy, and Alsace-Lorraine . Podvoisky was elected President of the new organization. The establishment of an international sports organization in Soviet Russia in 1921 was not without its utopian elements, since no official Soviet sport organizations existed in famine stricken post-civil war Soviet Russia at that time. Germany, on

232-517: A joint "Workers' Olympiad" — a proposal which was narrowly defeated, despite indications that a majority of individual members of the socialist organization favored joint participation. In October 1924 the Red Sport International held its 3rd Congress in Moscow. At this time the organization decided to enlarge its governing Executive Committee to include four members of the executive committee of

290-470: A key change in these Soviet-style societies has been a new type of proletarianization , often effected by the administratively achieved forced displacement of peasants and rural workers. Since then, four major industrial states have turned towards semi-market-based governance ( China , Laos , Vietnam , Cuba ), and one state has turned inwards into an increasing cycle of poverty and brutalization ( North Korea ). Other states of this sort have collapsed (such as

348-550: A leading historian on the topic, "it is safe to assume that this group represented a minority of the whole membership of each section." The Czechoslovakian federation, thought to include the largest Communist Party contingent from outside the USSR, is believed to have included something in the range of 20 to 30% who were members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia . The fact that members of other parties or no parties participated in

406-401: A self-identification with the working class group. This subjective approach allows individuals, rather than researchers, to define their own "subjective" and "perceived" social class. Karl Marx defined the working class or proletariat as those individuals who sell their labour power for wages and who do not own the means of production . He argued that they were responsible for creating

464-744: A sense of otherness due to class differences in social norms and knowledge of navigating academia. Working classes in different countries 4th World Congress of the Comintern The 4th World Congress of the Communist International was an assembly of delegates to the Communist International held in Petrograd and Moscow , Soviet Russia , between November 5 and December 5, 1922. A total of 343 voting delegates from 58 countries were in attendance. The 4th World Congress

522-599: A significant shortcoming. The RSI was a large and growing organization in this interval, with some 2 million affiliated members in the Soviet Union, joined by others sections in Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Norway, Italy, Finland, Switzerland, the United States, Estonia , Bulgaria, and Uruguay . As the size of the organization grew, so, too, did pressure to bring the organization's ideological character under tighter centralized Communist Party control. Nikolai Podvoisky

580-712: A view to increasing participation among Western European workers' sports organizations. The maneuver proved successful in helping to build the organization, triggering a split of the French Workers Sports Federation later that year and the affiliation of 80% of its membership with the Red Sport International. The RSI's increased place in the public eye motivated the governing body of the rival international socialist sports authority, meeting in Zurich in August 1923, to discuss issuing an invitation to Sportintern to help organize

638-697: Is best remembered for having amplified the tactic of the United Front into a fundamental part of international Communist policy. The gathering also elected a new set of leaders to the Comintern's governing body, the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI). The 4th World Congress of the Comintern was convened on November 5, 1922 — just days after Benito Mussolini's March on Rome that effectively seized power for his National Fascist Party . The revolutionary upsurge which had swept Europe during

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696-590: The October Revolution of 1917 . An honorary 13 member Presidium of the Congress — chosen in advance by ECCI in consultation with important national parties — was unanimously elected as the first order of business. The World Congress, as the highest decision-making authority of the Communist International, was marked by the bitter factional battles of various member parties, with each group seeking final decision in favor of its policies and positions. Chief among these

754-526: The Soviet Union ). Since 1960, large-scale proletarianization and enclosure of commons has occurred in the third world , generating new working classes. Additionally, countries such as India have been slowly undergoing social change, expanding the size of the urban working class. The informal working class is a sociological term coined by Mike Davis for a class of over a billion predominantly young urban people who are in no way formally connected to

812-534: The Spanish Civil War . This forced postponement of the event, which was rescheduled for the next summer in Antwerp , Belgium. The 3rd Workers' Olympiad proved to be less successful than previous endeavors, but it still managed to attract 27,000 participating athletes, and put 50,000 people in the stadium for the final day of competition. An estimated 200,000 people turned out for the traditional closing parade through

870-408: The global economy and who try to survive primarily in slums . According to Davis, this class no longer corresponds to the socio-theoretical concepts of a class, from Marx, Max Weber or the theory of modernization . Thereafter, this class developed worldwide from the 1960s, especially in the southern hemisphere. In contrast to previous notions of a class of the lumpen proletariat or the notions of

928-454: The wealth of a society, asserting that the working class physically build bridges, craft furniture, grow food, and nurse children, but do not own land or factories . A sub-section of the proletariat, the lumpenproletariat ( rag-proletariat ), are the extremely poor and unemployed, such as day labourers and homeless people. Marx considered them to be devoid of class consciousness. In Marxist terms wage labourers and those dependent on

986-403: The welfare state are working class, and those who live on accumulated capital are not, and this broad dichotomy defines the class struggle . In The Communist Manifesto , Marx and Friedrich Engels argue that it is the destiny of the working class to displace the capitalist system, with the dictatorship of the proletariat (as opposed to the " dictatorship of the bourgeoisie ") abolishing

1044-530: The American delegation. Huiswoud's protest was to no avail as the new Executive was proposed as a single slate of pre-determined names, all amendments were rejected, and the list of candidates was approved en bloc. Paying considerable attention to the growth of the fascist danger (in connection with the establishment of the fascist dictatorship in Italy), the Congress emphasized that the main means of combating fascism

1102-465: The Comintern Congress and the group constituted itself a founding conference for an international sports organization. It is worthy of emphasis that the Comintern did not itself directly found the Red Sport International, the group being established through independent initiative and the Comintern being preoccupied with other affairs. The group issued a public manifesto declaring the establishment of

1160-448: The Communist International of Youth — an organization which saw the national affiliates of Sportintern as comprised overwhelmingly of young workers and sought to insert its influence in the organization. As the membership of Sportintern was formally "open to all proletarian elements which recognize the class struggle" it was not an explicitly communist organization, a situation which the KIM saw as

1218-540: The Communist movement. Owing to the failure of revolution in Finland, Germany, Hungary, and elsewhere, the stature of the Communist Party of Russia was enhanced relative to other Communist Parties of the world, and tendencies towards centralization and Russian dominance were thereby accelerated. The 4th World Congress was attended by 343 voting delegates from 58 different countries. An additional 65 delegates were present with

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1276-534: The English Working Class , E. P. Thompson argues that the English working class was present at its own creation, and seeks to describe the transformation of pre-modern labouring classes into a modern, politically self-conscious, working class. Starting around 1917, a number of countries became ruled ostensibly in the interests of the working class (see Soviet working class ). Some historians have noted that

1334-726: The Friends of Nature Rambling Association, the Worker Swimming Association, the Free Sailing Association, and the Worker Track and Field Athletics Association , among others. By the time of World War I , the German proletarian sports movement included more than 350,000 participants. Following the bloodbath of World War I, the German workers' sports movement began to reemerge, with a new competitive orientation beginning to take

1392-878: The IOC. Four such events (called Spartakiads in honor of the heroic slave leader, Spartacus ) were sponsored by the RSI. Two of these were held in 1928, and one each in 1931 and 1937. While a major national workers' sport festival had already been held in Czechoslovakia in 1921, it was the socialist organization in 1925 that conducted the first pair of Workers' Olympics events — Summer Games in Frankfurt attracting 150,000 spectators and competitors from 19 country, and Winter Games in Schreiberhau (today's Szklarska Poręba , Poland), attended by athletes from 12 countries. No national flags or anthems graced

1450-440: The Moscow dominated leadership of the organization has led one scholar to conclude that the RSI was a "split organization, living in two universes," bureaucratic in political discourse but remaining well within the less intense social democratic workers' sports tradition at the individual club level. In this view politics was merely a piece of a broader participatory sports movement. The international workers' sports organizations of

1508-455: The RSI likewise gradually lost its ability to function independently as an international entity. In the words of French sports historian André Gounot: "...The RSI's dependence on the Comintern was accompanied, almost inevitably, by the Soviet section's dominance within the RSI. The interests of the Soviet Union and Soviet sport were decisive factors in the RSI's decisions and actions — even if, as

1566-571: The Sportintern and the national sports organizations affiliated to it as a useful "proletarian class instrument." It did not, however, delve into the contentious issue of in what manner and to what extent these two international bodies should be related. The governing Executive Committee of Sportintern met in Moscow in February 1923 and decided to establish a satellite bureau of the organization in Berlin, with

1624-463: The aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917 the international socialist movement divided into two antagonistic camps, socialist and communist — a division exacerbated with the establishment of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919. Parallel political organizations sprung up in every country and a state of bitter enmity prevailed. The idea of a rival Red Sport International (RSI)

1682-572: The best instruments, methods, and weapons for their class organization and struggle." At the same time the international communist movement moved to further politicize the RSI, efforts were made to make political hay over the refusal of the Socialist Workers' Sport International to conduct joint activities, such as its decision to bar the Red Sport International from participation at the July 1925 "Workers' Olympiad" held in Frankfurt under its auspices. It

1740-620: The city. With the Soviet Union becoming immersed in the first months of 1937 in a massive and xenophobic secret police campaign against perceived underground espionage networks remembered as the Great Terror , the Red Sport International was summarily dissolved by the Comintern in April of that year. Working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary -based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of

1798-446: The closing or opening ceremonies, replaced instead by universal use of the red flag and singing of " The Internationale ." "Soviet and other communist athletes were excluded from these games, however, and there was therefore little actual unity of the workers' sports movement for all the universalist pageantry employed. From the middle 1930s the political line of the world communist movement changed. The so-called Popular Front against

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1856-525: The fissure between the two camps of the European workers' sport movement wider than ever. Membership of the various national sections of the Red Sport International was by no means monolithic. According to the RSI's own study of the issue, members of the organizations were predominantly male, but hailed from a variety of communist, socialist, syndicalist , and anarchist tendencies, including many of whom who were members of no party. Although many of these were of

1914-484: The fledgling Sportintern in November 1922 when, in conjunction with the 4th World Congress , the governing Executive Committee of the Communist International decided to name a representative to the "independent" proletarian sport organization. The Communist International of Youth (KIM) did not take action until the meeting of its governing Bureau in Moscow in July 1923, when it issued a general recommendation of support for

1972-743: The labour of others. The term, which is primarily used to evoke images of laborers suffering "class disadvantage in spite of their individual effort", can also have racial connotations, applying diverse themes of poverty and implications about whether one is deserving of aid. In other contexts the term working class refers to a section of society dependent on physical labour , especially when compensated with an hourly wage (for certain types of science, as well as journalistic or political analysis). Working-class occupations can be categorized into four groups: unskilled labourers, artisans, outworkers , and factory workers. Common alternative definitions of Working Class include definition by income level, whereby

2030-507: The late 18th century, under the influence of the Enlightenment , European society was in a state of change, and this change could not be reconciled with the idea of a changeless God-created social order. Wealthy members of these societies created ideologies which blamed many of the problems of working-class people on their morals and ethics (i.e. excessive consumption of alcohol, perceived laziness and inability to save money). In The Making of

2088-403: The national sections of the Red Sport International is testimony to the limited impact that RSI programmatic rhetoric had upon grassroots participants. It was rather the fun and excitement of training and competition that bound together local groups and their national units more than ideological proclivities. The difference in perception of the organization between its rank-and-file participants and

2146-525: The needs of the Red Army for healthy and fit youth in its ranks. An international sports organization was also seen as a potential ideological counterweight to the Olympic games of the " bourgeois " International Olympic Committee as well as the activities of the rival International Association for Sports and Physical Culture of the socialists. Podvoisky gathered interested delegates who were already in Moscow for

2204-552: The other hand, had a well-developed workers' sport movement at this time. Consequently, Sportintern from its outset maintained a strong German flavor and it was there in the city of Berlin that the 2nd Conference of the organization was held in July 1922. The only national "proletarian" sports organization to join the German group at that early date was the Czechoslovak Federation of Workers' Gymnastic Leagues , said to represent 100,000 athletes. The Comintern moved closer to

2262-456: The participation of less privileged national and social groups, without distinction to race or creed, in the view of the radical sports organizations. Therefore, the Red Sport International and its socialist rival, the organization emerging as the Socialist Workers' Sport International, conducted a series of their own workers' sports festivals in distinction to and competition with the Olympiads of

2320-475: The place of individualistic club activities. The international social democratic movement also experienced a rebirth after its connections had been severed by war. In 1920 the social democrats established an International Association for Sports and Physical Culture, echoing its efforts in the pre-war period. This organization was rechristened as the Socialist Workers' Sport International (SWSI) in 1925. In

2378-405: The radicals as a manifestation of national chauvinism . Rather than the accentuation of national rivalry and patriotic feeling, international competition should focus on the actual athletic effort in a setting designed to build the ethic of internationalism , both the socialists and communists agreed. The IOC games also were based upon rigid entrance standards, while the international festivals of

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2436-510: The right to speak but not to vote, and another 6 were admitted as guests. The gathering was the last congress of the Comintern attended by Soviet leader V.I. Lenin , who was too ill to attend any regular sessions and only appeared to deliver a single speech. The Congress opened at 9 pm in the People's House in Petrograd, called to order by Clara Zetkin of Germany, who noted the fifth anniversary of

2494-471: The same social unit , a third estate of people who were neither aristocrats nor church officials. Similar hierarchies existed outside Europe in other pre-industrial societies . The social position of these labouring classes was viewed as ordained by natural law and common religious belief. This social position was contested, particularly by peasants, for example during the German Peasants' War . In

2552-461: The social relationships underpinning the class system before then developing into a communist society in which "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." In feudal Europe, the working class as such did not exist in large numbers. Instead, most people were part of the labouring class, a group made up of different professions, trades and occupations. A lawyer, craftsman and peasant were all considered to be part of

2610-530: The socialist and communist movements did not necessarily object to some of the most noble goals of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), but they did each share fundamental reservations about the modern Olympic games that were the inspiration of Baron Pierre de Coubertin , a hereditary French nobleman. First and foremost, the Olympics of the IOC stressed competition between nations — regarded by

2668-570: The threat of fascism rendered cooperation with socialists and others through unified workers' athletic festivals not only a possibility but the tactical order of the day. Plans were laid for a so-called 3rd Workers' Olympiad to be held in Barcelona , Catalonia , Spain in June 1936, under joint auspices of the RSI and the SWSI. The time and place proved inauspicious, however, coinciding with outbreak of hostilities in

2726-434: The worker athletic movement instead attempted to build mass participation through pageantry, artistic and cultural activities, and unifying political presentations. Moreover, the sort of athletes dominating the IOC games were objectionable to the radicals on the basis of social class , dominated as they were by the privileged children of the rural aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. Such international competitions should be open to

2784-512: The working class is contrasted with a middle class on the basis of access to economic resources, education , cultural interests, and other goods and services, and the "white working class" has been "loosely defined" by the New York Times as comprising white people without college degrees. Researchers in Australia have suggested that working class status should be defined subjectively as

2842-444: The working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour . Most common definitions of "working class" in use in the United States limit its membership to workers who hold blue-collar and pink-collar jobs, or whose income is insufficiently high to place them in the middle class , or both. However, socialists define "working class" to include all workers who fall into this category; thus, this definition can include almost all of

2900-465: The working class, also included were white collar employees, students, and government workers. Membership records of the French section, for example, indicate that approximately 80% of participants were from the working class, with the remaining 20% members of other social groups. No details exist for the exact Communist Party membership of any national section of the RSI, although in the considered opinion of

2958-528: The working population of industrialized economies . As with many terms describing social class , working class is defined and used in different ways. One definition used by many socialists is that the working class includes all those who have nothing to sell but their labour, a group otherwise referred to as the proletariat . In this sense, the working class includes white and blue-collar workers, manual and menial workers of all types, excluding individuals who derive their livelihood from business ownership or

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3016-409: The years immediately following the termination of World War I was clearly in full retreat and the international Communist movement saw itself in need for accommodation to this changed political environment. With the prospects for immediate revolution in the industrialized countries of Western Europe fading, the defense of the regime in Soviet Russia had rapidly come to be seen as the chief priority of

3074-454: Was frequently the case, they were incompatible with those of European worker sport." The last International Congress of the Red Sport International came in 1928 and was marked by no serious discussion of contemporary sporting issues. Instead the 1928 gathering consisted of a mechanical attempt to apply the Comintern's ultra-radical Third Period slogan of "Class versus Class" and its corollary theory of social fascism to world sport — splitting

3132-399: Was himself a voice for such an insertion of such ideological hegemony, declaring in a lengthy speech to the 5th Enlarged Plenum of the Comintern , held in the spring of 1925, that Sportintern should henceforth adopt as its motto: "Convert sport and gymnastics into a weapon of the class revolutionary struggle, concentrate the attention of workers and peasants on sport and gymnastics as one of

3190-466: Was in this period, 1924 to 1925, that the Red Sport International effectively became an auxiliary of the Communist International. This control was effected by the subordinate youth section of the Comintern, the Communist International of Youth, although the Comintern reserved for itself ultimate authority to decide issues of great importance. As the Comintern was itself in the process of being absorbed as an instrument of Soviet foreign policy in this interval,

3248-400: Was the battle among the delegates of the Communist Party of America , split into two hostile factional groups. The battle spilled into the nominations for the American seat on the governing Executive Committee of the Communist International , with American Otto Huiswoud protesting the nomination of C.E. Ruthenberg for this position, arguing that he had himself been selected for the spot by

3306-413: Was the inspiration of Nikolai Podvoisky , who at the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern in the summer of 1920 discussed with a number of delegates from around the world the idea of establishing an organization to coordinate the physical training of youth. Podvoisky, a military specialist in charge of Soviet Russia's military training organization, believed systematic physical training to be beneficial for

3364-464: Was the tactics of the united workers' front. To rally the broad masses of working people, who were not yet ready to fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat, but were already capable of fighting for economic and political rights against the bourgeoisie, the slogan of a “workers' government” was put forward (later the slogan of a workers' and peasants' government). While the tactic of the United Front

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