The story of pro wrestling is the story of American capitalism | Hacker News Reader

The story of pro wrestling is the story of American capitalism

jacobinmag.com

89 pointssmacktoward30 comments

Open articleView on HN

The story of the WWE and some of the larger-than-life people that made it famous is simply fascinating.

In particular, the story of Andre the Giant is one of my favorites:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1930105-remembering-andre...

There is this interesting movie from Québec filmmaker Pierre Falardeau about wrestling in french-canadian society

http://www.vitheque.com/Fichetitre/tabid/190/language/fr-CA/...

For a U.S. perspective, there's also Beyond the Mat, a very good documentary on American pro wrestling and the physical and mental toll it takes on the wrestlers themselves: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Mat

Did anyone notice that the photo that accompanies the piece is by Stanley Kubrick from a publicly available Library of Congress photo.

That's a nice touch.

Jacobin is a fantastic magazine with great long form articles. Very happy to see this re-posted here.

The quote about "The Wrestler" is really powerful:

> Both Randy and Cassidy live on the fringes of society: they are employed in sectors which are regularly mocked and derided, and their personal lives, much like their physical bodies, are ravaged by scars … They have no means of income, no means of survival, nothing to sell but their bodies and the labour these bodies can produce. And so they sell them, for decades, and when their bodies are exhausted they are left in poverty.

Makes me think about all the times I've heard people say that we should legalize prostitution, or selling organs, or getting money for adoptions, etc.

That's not an accurate description of the movie. In the movie, it is made clear that Randy is purposefully limiting work at his day job to make time for his unprofitable, dangerous, declining wrestling career. The stripper (Pam) is leaving that business because she's getting older, and can't attract clients. In terms of money, they'd both be better off without their exciting "show biz" work.

But how far do you stretch this? The same argument could be made for many types of manual labor and blue-collar work. I would argue even prostitution and selling organs are far apart on the spectrum.

You can stretch this quite far, but that's besides the point. Just because it's hard to draw a line doesn't mean that we can't recognize particularly debasing forms of "voluntary" labor.

The evidence so far suggests that no, we can't recognise particularly debasing forms of "voluntary" labour. For example, prostitution gets almost all the criticism, despite being one of the few jobs that lets workers can seize control of their own working conditions and avoid the kind of capitalist abuses this article talks about. Imagine what it would take for someone to gain control of almost all prostitution in the United States, as the WWE did with pro wrestling.

(In fact, I can even remember someone arguing in a previous HN discussion that because minimum-wage work was so bad, anyone who chose prostitution as an alternative to it was coerced and therefore we should outlaw prostitution - rather than the abusive minimum-wage work.)

> despite being one of the few jobs that lets workers can seize control of their own working conditions and avoid the kind of capitalist abuses this article talks about.

The vast majority of prostitutes can no more choose their own working conditions than any other working stiff. Pushed out onto the streets by poverty, prey to sociopathic men, the average prostitute is mired in a dangerous, destructive, difficult-to-escape lifestyle that destroys her health and vitality.

The recent move towards Internet-enabled prostitution that empowers the working girl is very much an aberration. For an introduction to this topic, pick up Iceberg Slim's Pimp.

http://www.amazon.com/Pimp-Story-Life-Iceberg-Slim-ebook/dp/...

So sex work is more debasing than cleaning toilets for a wage that wouldn't feed a 5 year old? I think we should draw a line at making arguments with scare quotes.

Like reality TV shows amen brother

Agreed. Thankfully since prostitution is illegal, nobody does it nor suffers from its ills.

>nothing to sell but their bodies and the labour these bodies can produce.

Makes me think about all of the times I've worked in a factory, a restaurant, or on a construction site.

Legalize and regulate, like cigarettes, alcohol, and cars.

The article talked about lax regulation in wrestling, which seems to have contributed to the industry's condition.

If you work for decent money for decades and you retire into poverty, you have no-one to blame but yourself.

and your parents/education for not teaching you money management skills.

I think about WWE every day. The concept of getting over feels incredibly pertinent to launching a product.

So, does this mean American capitalism eventually gets beaten by a panda?

China does seem destined to return to its historical position as the most productive, largest market on the planet.

Well, not in the immediate future it isn't. Demographically, speaking, it's heavy on the olds, and is scrambling madly to get itself ahead of steep labor decline.

Most productive? Per head Europe (especially) England had been more productive than China for some historical time.

This is post-industrialization where England tore ahead of the pack pretty quickly and managed to push a relatively tiny country not just ahead of their European competitors, but also ahead of giants like India and China.

As China industrializes, and they'll have to, they'll push ahead of everyone. Their domestic market is too huge.

The higher productivity started before the industrial revolution.

I don't know that it is destined, it is quite fragile in some ways. I would say that it is fairly likely, though you never can tell.

It partly depends on how hot the whole Russian thing gets and on what Turkey does, as well as the US managing the very delicate business of keeping Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel simultaneously happy, so as to keep the Suez open.