The antidote to the nationalist poison being dispensed through this World Cup is not contempt for the genuine popular enthusiasm behind football. It is political class consciousness: the recognition that workers everywhere hold the levers of a globalized economy and are exploited by the same international financial oligarchy that has turned this tournament into an instrument to divide them. That oligarchy must be expropriated, its control over sport, culture, media and every social institution broken, and replaced by the democratic control of working people internationally.
