The Rules of the Game

In his Sport und Arbeit, Bero Rigauer argues that in modern sport there is ‘a tendency to strive competitively for some kind of socially recognised excellence’, what he calls ‘the achievement principle’. For Rigauer, modern sport is not something to pass the time away from work but is itself a form of work, ‘disguised, demoralised work’, and ‘a unique adaptation to modern life’. Success in sport confers social status, and if it is to be conferred on the basis of achievement then ‘we need rationalised standards against which achievements can be objectively measured’. Two key corollaries spring from this; the first is that we begin to train deliberately, systematically and scientifically to prepare ourselves to reach the required level of achievement, obsessively keeping and quantifying records as we go; and the second is that these standards ultimately have to be governed by some form of administrative organisation and leadership, equally obsessed with quantifying results and record keeping to which all participants defer. Thus sport, as competitive human endeavour, is conducted according to sets of rules encompassing ‘discipline, authority, competition, accomplishment, skill, purposeful rationality, organisation and bureaucracy’. While Rigauer’s critique is written from a Marxist perspective and is aimed at the economic order in capitalist societies, these are not the only societies who are committed to the achievement principle. In sport, the achievement principle is a world-wide phenomenon irrespective of political ideology, indeed, it could be argued, the principle is strongest in totalitarian regimes. While the principle is a modern concept, it can be applied to pre-industrial societies. It can be applied to other fields of human enterprise, and to sports where animals are involved. It can be applied to cockfighting.