No Contest: The Case Against Competition

Why We Lose in Our Race to Win
Author: Alfie Kohn
Genre: nonfiction
Publication info: Houghton Mifflin, 1986
Pages: 257 (including notes, bibliography, and index)

I have a problem with some nonfiction books. They tend to change the way I look at everything. Sometimes I call it corruption, but really most of the time I feel like they give me a more educated outlook and a broader perspective.

No Contest is an example of this. (That's partly the reason why I've taken so long to write this review, even though I finished the book a couple weeks ago. I had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to say about it.) A friend at work recommended it to me, I read it, and it permanently altered the way I view many aspects of life. So I guess the book did its job.

The premise of the book is neatly summed up in the tagline on the cover: "Why we lose in our race to win." In short, competition, which is a pervasive and supposedly vital part of our society, is actually inherently destructive and unnecessary. Sounds pretty crazy, doesn't it? Most of us, especially in America, take competition for granted or at least assume that it is a fundamental part of civilization. We need it in our economy, in our recreation, in our education. But do we?

In the first part of the book, Alfie Kohn systematically debunks four major myths surrounding competition: that it is an inevitable part of human nature, that it leads us to be more productive, that it makes things more enjoyable, and that it builds character. He does a pretty good job of it, citing results of actual experiments. Of course, things like this dealing with human behavior is difficult to prove, but his arguments are pretty dang convincing. I especially liked the chapter on sports and games. Once he described a few examples of cooperative games, I became convinced that cooperation is the way to go---it's much more fun!

The part I didn't like so much was his discussion on how to create a more cooperative society. I guess I can't expect one man to have all the answers, but I didn't like how he suddenly turns ironic in a section called "How to Prevent Social Change." As he says, "It is much easier to describe how change can be blocked than how it can be furthered" (189). But why not just be straightforward and tell us what you think we should do? If I were to give the steps he lists but without the ironic tone, they might run something like this:

1. Expand your vision.
2. Be firm.
3. Think about others.
4. Be optimistic.
5. Don't rationalize.

To get details on these steps (or their opposites, rather), you'll just have to read the book, but I hope you get the idea. We can create a cooperative society, but the changes have to come from the inside out. That's one thing I'd like to make clear. I'm sure many people would be afraid of the idea of a cooperative society because, on the surface, it sounds an awful lot like socialism. Capitalism, the competition-based market, is considered to be one of America's greatest strengths, and to turn that over to utter equality would be economic heresy. But I'm not talking about government control here. To have the government step in and force everyone to work together on the same level simply does not work, as we have seen many times. The kind of change we need works on an internal, individual basis. Each person should work to remove competitive tendencies from his or her mind and heart, to stop trying to one-up the other person, to lose the notion that our success depends on someone else's failure. Once people start getting into this mindset, then we'll be getting somewhere. We should cooperate with others not because the government or someone else forces us to but because we desire it.

I have many thoughts on this issue, and I hope the few I have described here make sense. Mostly I just think everyone should read this book. I don't take it as absolute truth---there are things I don't necessarily agree with---but the basic principles are good. As my friend told me, competition is not an eternal principle. Competing with others will not bring us the kind of success that really matters. Cooperation, on the other hand, will.