Accomplished philosophical accounts of sport's sociopolitical purpose have aimed at a critical analysis of the political dimensions of sport. Such accounts have tended either to condemn or to promote variously existing or hoped-for political ideologies with respect to sport; most significantly, ideologies of a capitalist, neo-Marxist, or“mainstream”socialist (Marxist) sort. Only the Marxist accounts, however, have succeeded in recognizing both the inherently playful (the essentially free) nature of sport and its sociopolitical status (its detemkate content). Neo-Marxist accounts have failed in the former respect, capitalist accounts in the latter. It is the purpose of this essay to give a synthetic interpretation of the philosophical groundwork of these judgments about modem socialist sport in terms of Hegel's ontological contributions to Marxist thought, in terms of what Marx made of these contributions in respect to humanity's social and political life, and in terms of the implications of Marxist thought for modem sporting activity.