From the FIFA World Cup to the Olympic Games: under capitalism, today’s mega-sporting events have become vehicles for the profits of giant multinationals. Ray Physick analyses the situation of sport under capitalism and looks back at history at the alternatives provided by the international labour movement.

The shocking revelations that certain officials from Qatar had allegedly bribed their way to a successful FIFA vote to stage the 2022 World Cup, football’s highest competition, will not come as a surprise to anyone. With the World Cup 2014 beginning this week in Brazil, Steve Jones examines the corrupt, big-business-dominated world of football under capitalism.

Twenty-five years ago, on 4^th June 1989, the Tian’anmen square movement was brutally smashed by the rifles and tanks of the Chinese troops. It was a heroic movement of the Chinese people in a struggle against the bureaucracy. Class struggle is again on the rise in China today; but unlike the movement of 1989, the workers and students in China today are a qualitatively and quantitatively more powerful and revolutionary force.