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Accumulation by Dispossession: A Marxist History of the Formation of the English Premier League

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  • Anirban Karak

Abstract

The decade of the 1980s witnessed massive changes in the internal structure and functioning of English football. 1 Several rules, instituted during the infancy of the professional game to limit profit-making, were overturned with remarkable rapidity within the space of a few years, culminating in the formation of the English Premier League (EPL) in 1992. In this paper, I engage with two questions. One, why and how was the century-old structure of English football so rapidly transformed and what were the consequences? Two, what sort of Marxian theoretical framework can we use to understand the historical trajectory of English football? With respect to the former, I follow David Harvey’s analysis of neoliberal strategies used to restore upper-class dominance to argue that the formation of the EPL can be interpreted as another instance of accumulation by dispossession, one among myriad attempts to solve the profitability crisis of the 1970s by creating an avenue for financial speculation in football clubs. Together with the deregulation of television, it converted football from a domain formerly regarded as “off-limits to the calculus of profitability†into a “business proper.†In terms of a theoretical framework, I propose that it is useful to think of football as serving global capitalism in a dual manner: as an avenue for accumulation (the accumulation function) and as a tool for legitimizing capitalist rule by producing alienated consciousness in society (the legitimation function).

Suggested Citation

  • Anirban Karak, 2017. "Accumulation by Dispossession: A Marxist History of the Formation of the English Premier League," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 49(4), pages 615-632, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:49:y:2017:i:4:p:615-632
    DOI: 10.1177/0486613416635039
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Dobson,Stephen & Goddard,John, 2011. "The Economics of Football," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521517140, September.
    2. Li, Minqi, 2015. "China and the Twenty-first-Century Crisis," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780745335377, December.
    3. World Bank, 2014. "World Development Indicators 2014," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 18237.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Marxism; competitive sport; profitability crises;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B51 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Socialist; Marxian; Sraffian
    • Z00 - Other Special Topics - - General - - - General

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