Pip: When a popular history book gets glowing reviews for being "fresh" and "vivid," it's worth asking what, exactly, is being freshened — and what's being quietly buried underneath the polish.
Mara: That's exactly the question freerein61 puts to Jonathan Healey's The Blazing World in the site's recent work. Let's start with what that book does to the English Revolution — and why the method matters.
Jonathan Healey and the Liberal Falsification of the English Revolution
Mara: The central charge here is that Healey's book isn't just historically incomplete — it's ideologically motivated. The question the post puts is: can you write about a revolution while systematically avoiding the analysis that explains why it happened?
Pip: The post is direct about what Healey's framework actually produces. The framing is precise: "Healey presents a revolution lacking a revolutionary class. He outlines the clash between Crown and Parliament, religious fervour, popular movements, and the eventual constitutional agreement — yet the driving force behind these events remains unclear."
Mara: So the upshot is that describing upheaval without identifying its structural cause leaves you with vivid drama and no explanation. You get the what but never the why.
Pip: And the post traces this back to a longer historiographical argument. The Marxist tradition, running through Christopher Hill's identification of the 1640s as a bourgeois revolution, held that a rising capitalist class overthrew feudal-absolutist rule — not by accident, but because feudal institutions were blocking the development of capitalist social relations that had been building for over a century.
Mara: The revisionist school — Conrad Russell, John Morrill — pushed back hard from the 1970s onward, arguing there was no rising bourgeoisie and therefore no bourgeois revolution. Healey's post-revisionist position tries to split the difference: he calls the period revolutionary, restores the Levellers and Diggers to the story, acknowledges the drama and scale — but without class analysis as the organizing frame.
Pip: Which, the post argues, is the worst of both worlds. You get the colour without the explanation. The Levellers and Diggers become, in the post's words, "colourful footnotes" rather than expressions of developing political consciousness among small producers and labourers.
Mara: The critique of Cromwell follows the same logic. Rather than reading his decisions through the lens of class interest — he represented the agrarian bourgeoisie pressing against feudal absolutism — Healey attributes his choices to psychology: doubt, fear, religious anxiety. The post calls this "a fictitious figure: a person without class, a leader without a social foundation, a historical actor devoid of history."
Pip: The post is careful to acknowledge what Healey does well. The book is readable, the social history is vivid, and calling the period revolutionary at all is a partial break from revisionist orthodoxy. Credit where it's due — it's just that stopping halfway is its own kind of distortion.
Mara: The structural argument underneath all of this is that revisionism and neoliberalism run parallel: both treat history as accidental, politics as incremental, and revolution as unjustified. Healey's book, on this reading, isn't neutral popular history — it's a contribution to a wider effort to drain revolutionary history of the class content that would make it legible to the present.
Pip: So the real stakes aren't academic. If revolution can only ever look like confusion and miscommunication, it becomes very hard to recognize the structural conditions that produce one — including now.
Mara: The post ends by pointing back to Hill, and beyond Hill to Marx, Engels, and Trotsky, who read the execution of Charles I not as a constitutional accident but as, in the post's words, "a world-historical act of class struggle."
Pip: History written to reassure is still a political act — just a quieter one.
Mara: And the post makes the case that recovering the class analysis isn't antiquarianism — it's the precondition for understanding how structural change actually happens. Worth watching what the site takes up next.
Jonathan Healey’s The Blazing World is more than just a flawed book; it functions as an ideological effort to undermine historical understanding, oversimplify class conflict into basic stories, and portray revolution solely as chaos. It reflects a declining liberal order that fears revolution because of its fear of the working class.
Healey has become one of Britain’s most admired popular historians, recognised for his “fresh” and “vivid” portrayal of the seventeenth century. However, the positive reception of his work is deliberate. His narrative serves an important ideological purpose for today’s ruling elite: it dismisses the English Revolution’s revolutionary essence. It presents it as a period marked by chaos, chance, and constitutional happenstance. This isn’t just poor history; it constitutes political falsehood.
Healey’s main argument that the English Revolution wasn’t truly a revolution but a “crisis of governance” caused by miscommunication, local grievances, and the emotional atmosphere of the time — represents the latest effort in a long-standing attempt to minimise the global significance of the English Revolution. This approach continues the revisionist trend begun in the late twentieth century, which aims to dismiss the Marxist view of the Revolution as the first major bourgeois revolution. Healey’s perspective reflects a society that has lost faith in its future and, as a result, struggles to recognise the revolutionary events that shaped its history.
Healey’s opposition to revolution is based on structural reasons rather than personal bias. He functions within an academic and political sphere that views revolution as dangerous, irrational, and destabilising. Consequently, the English Revolution is seen not as a crucial turning point in capitalism’s development but as a tragic mistake. This ideological fear is rooted in forty years of political backlash—such as the decline of the post-war welfare state, the rise of neoliberalism, the discrediting of social democracy, and the deepening crisis of global capitalism.
In this context, the concept of revolution—even one that’s been around for three and a half centuries—becomes unacceptable. Healey’s book isn’t just a historical account; it’s a political statement aimed at reassuring modern readers that neither logical nor structural factors drive revolutions. Instead, they occur when people are confused, scared, or overwhelmed.
Another weakness—rooted in the ongoing focus on national history in British historiography—is Healey’s neglect to place the English Revolution within the wider international crisis of the seventeenth century. This revolution was not an isolated event but part of what Marxist scholars refer to as the “general crisis of the seventeenth century,” a series of revolutionary upheavals spanning from the Dutch revolt and the Fronde in France to the Thirty Years’ War in Germany.
Although these conflicts appeared in different national contexts, they all revealed the same fundamental contradiction: the progress of capitalist productive forces versus the persistence of feudal-absolutist political systems. The English Revolution was the most successful, largely because England’s capitalist class was more developed than in continental countries and because it successfully dismantled the absolutist state. The central message of The Blazing World is that history lacks a clear direction, class struggle is meaningless, and revolution is a mistake.
The Historiographical Context
To properly evaluate Healey’s book, it is essential to understand the intellectual context it engages with. A significant contribution by the Marxist historian Christopher Hill, discussed in Ann Talbot’s detailed 2003 obituary on the WSWS, was to identify the upheavals of the 1640s as a bourgeois revolution: the overthrow of feudal-absolutist rule by a burgeoning capitalist class, paving the way for England’s later capitalist growth. Despite his political limitations as a former Stalinist who never fully embraced Trotskyism, Hill showed that the execution of Charles I, the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords, and the creation of the Commonwealth were not mere mistakes or temporary anomalies, but a big social change where one class replaced another in state power.
Starting in the 1970s, a revisionist school led by figures like Conrad Russell and John Morrill systematically challenged this framework. They argued that since there was no rising bourgeoisie, a bourgeois revolution did not occur. According to them, the Civil War was a temporary collapse of the Tudor-Stuart state, driven by war financing, religious rigidity, and Charles I’s personal failings — a “war of religion,” not a class struggle, nor a revolution. This revisionism was politically motivated. It coincided with a rightward shift among British intellectuals after setbacks in the 1970s-80s and the fall of the USSR. It aimed to erase the revolutionary aspects of English history, paralleling the ruling class’s efforts to forget the revolutionary elements of the twentieth century.
Healey is part of a “post-revisionist” generation that aims to go beyond sterile denial while avoiding the Marxist categories discredited by revisionists. His book offers a popular synthesis, attempting to strike a balance: he describes the period as revolutionary, emphasises the role of ordinary people and radical movements, and captures the drama and scale of the events — all without presenting a clear class analysis.
Having said that, Healey’s book has notable strengths. It vividly narrates the era’s social history for general readers. The Levellers, Diggers, Ranters, and Quakers—the remarkable surge of radical ideas and working-class activism that Hill helped restore—are thoroughly discussed. Healey emphasises that the 1640s and 1650s were more than elite disputes; they marked a time when ordinary men and women began to think and act in radically new ways, challenging not just the monarchy but the entire social hierarchy. The title, borrowed from Margaret Cavendish’s 1666 utopian book The Blazing World, highlights Healey’s focus on the creative and intellectual fervour during the political upheaval.
He also cautiously challenges the revisionist denial, asserting that a truly revolutionary event took place—one that turned the world upside down—and that the century saw a fundamental shift in the English state and society. This serves as a helpful correction for readers who have been influenced by the revisionist view that the Civil War was merely an unfortunate accident.
The core issue is that Healey seeks the revolution’s benefits without understanding the class analysis behind it. He enumerates the observable events—such as the breakdown of censorship, the rise of radical groups, the king’s trial and execution, the founding of the Commonwealth, and the 1688 Glorious Revolution—yet fails to identify the fundamental problem the revolution addressed. Healey does not label the English Revolution as a bourgeois revolution nor systematically examine the class forces that propelled it.
This isn’t just a minor omission; it’s the key difference between merely describing events and truly explaining them. A revolution isn’t just a time of upheaval and change; it is a distinct historical event where contradictions between the development of productive forces and existing relations of production — specifically, a rising class clashing with an outdated ruling class — lead to political and military conflict. The English Revolution reflected this conflict: a rising capitalist class, allied with parts of the gentry focused on commercial agriculture and trade, versus a feudal-absolutist monarchy that aimed to rule without Parliament, impose arbitrary taxes, and sustain monopolies that hinder capitalist progress.
The Marxist perspective, based on Marx’s writings on primitive accumulation and the English Revolution, argues that the monarchy had to be overthrown because it hindered the development of capitalist social relations that had been unfolding within feudal society for over a century. Cromwell’s New Model Army was more than just a military force; as Trotsky noted, it was the organised political tool of the revolutionary bourgeoisie—regularly purging Parliament to align with its class interests and ruthlessly suppressing the Levellers and Diggers when they threatened to extend the revolution beyond the limits necessary for capitalism to thrive.
Healey, in contrast, presents a revolution lacking a revolutionary class. He outlines the clash between Crown and Parliament, religious fervour, popular movements, and the eventual constitutional agreement—yet the driving force behind these events remains unclear. Why did these conflicts emerge at specific times, in particular forms, and lead to certain outcomes? Revisionists, at least, offered a straightforward (though incorrect) explanation: it was all due to random chance. Healey’s post-revisionist view offers a vivid picture of revolutionary upheaval but fails to clarify what was being changed, by whom, or for what purpose.
This argument is absurd. The English Revolution resulted from deep-rooted structural conflicts: the growth of agrarian capitalism, the expansion of merchant capital, the transformation of the gentry into a capitalist class, the crisis of feudal institutions, and the emergence of new political ideas among small producers, artisans, and labourers. Healey cannot accept this, as doing so would mean acknowledging that the Revolution was a class struggle between the rising bourgeoisie and the declining feudal system, rather than merely a chaotic crisis. Instead, he reduces class to vague notions like “ordinary people,” “local grievances,” and “messy complexity.” This isn’t analysis; it’s avoiding the real issues.
The Levellers, Diggers, and Fifth Monarchists—the most progressive democratic movements of their time—are now seen merely as colourful footnotes. Their agendas, which reflected the developing political awareness of the rising working class and petty producers, are dismissed as curiosities rather than viewed as vital expressions of historical development. Healey’s account is thus not just incomplete but also ideologically distorted.
Cromwell Without History
Healey’s depiction of Cromwell highlights his method by portraying Cromwell as a conflicted character troubled by doubt, fear, and religious concern. Rather than examining his political decisions through the lens of class struggle, Healey attributes them to psychological factors. This aligns with the liberal tendency to reduce historical figures to individuals, stripping away class context and explaining behaviour in terms of personal traits. Nonetheless, Cromwell was more than an individual; he represented a segment of the bourgeois class—the agrarian bourgeoisie—aiming to overthrow feudal absolutism. To fully grasp his actions, it is essential to consider this wider class framework. Consequently, Healey’s Cromwell is a fictitious figure: a person without class, a leader without a social foundation, a historical actor devoid of history.
The Revisionist Tradition and Its Political Purpose
Healey is part of a tradition of revisionists such as Conrad Russell, John Morrill, and Mark Kishlansky, all of whom aim to challenge the Marxist view of the English Revolution. His approach is especially influential because it is more accessible, making revisionist ideas more widely understood. The political goal of revisionism is evident.
To deny the origin of revolutions from structural contradictions, the role of class struggle in history, the agency of the working class, or the revolutionary rupture through which capitalism emerged is to reject fundamental Marxist ideas. Revisionism parallels neoliberalism by viewing history as accidental, politics as gradual, and revolution as unjustified. Healey’s book thus goes beyond historical debate; it participates in a wider ideological campaign aimed at diminishing awareness of historical forces.
The Marxist perspective remains clear in opposition to Healey’s liberal distortion. The English Revolution was: a bourgeois revolution paving the way for capitalist growth; a class struggle between the emerging bourgeoisie and the feudal aristocracy; a phase of radical popular action in which subordinate classes articulated independent political agendas; and a pivotal event that significantly influenced the evolution of modern capitalism. This revolution was neither accidental nor chaotic, nor driven by fear or confusion. Instead, it was the inevitable result of deep structural contradictions within English society.
Healey and the Politics of Historical Amnesia
The Blazing World is a readable, engaging, and in important respects welcome contribution to the popular historiography of seventeenth-century England. Its willingness to call the period revolutionary is a partial break from the revisionist orthodoxy that has impoverished historical understanding for decades. But it is a break that stops halfway. Healey has restored the drama without restoring the analysis. He has given us a revolution without a revolutionary class, upheaval without explanation, transformation without a motor force.
The result is a book that can satisfy neither the serious student of history nor the politically conscious worker seeking to understand the dynamics of social revolution. The former will find too much description and too little explanation; the latter will find a revolution stripped of the very class content that makes it relevant to the struggles of the present. For a genuinely scientific understanding of the English Revolution — its class character, its driving forces, its achievements and its limits — one must return to the Marxist tradition that Healey’s post-revisionist framework cannot accommodate: the work of Hill at his best, and beyond Hill to the classical analyses of Marx, Engels, and Trotsky, who grasped that the execution of a king by his subjects was not a misunderstanding but a world-historical act of class struggle.
Pip: A memoir that inadvertently confesses more than it intends to — that is the kind of primary source historians dream about, and freerein61 has found one in Stuart Hall's autobiography.
Mara: This episode follows that argument through: how Hall's intellectual path, from the 1956 crisis to Cultural Studies to New Labour, reads as a case study in petty-bourgeois politics and its long retreat from Marxism.
Pip: Let's start with the memoir itself and what it gives away.
Stuart Hall: The Memoir as Political Evidence
Mara: The post opens with a pointed claim about Hall's autobiography, Familiar Stranger — that its real value is not what Hall argues explicitly, but what the text inadvertently reveals about his class position and political trajectory.
Pip: And the label Hall chose for himself becomes the first piece of evidence. The post argues that "familiar stranger" conceals the crucial detail that he was "a non-native petty bourgeois — someone who encountered racism as an obstacle to upward mobility within established power structures."
Mara: So the upshot is that Hall's self-presentation as an outsider obscures a more specific story: his goal was inclusion in British social democracy, not its overthrow. The memoir is read here as a document of that aspiration, not a challenge to it.
Pip: The post then tracks how 1956 shaped everything. Khrushchev's secret speech and the Hungarian uprising shattered Communist Parties across Europe — the CPGB lost nearly a third of its members. For Trotskyists, that moment was a clarification. For Hall, arriving at Oxford just before the crisis, it became a reason to reject Leninism altogether.
Mara: His mentor at that stage was Jock Haston, a former Trotskyist who had moved to the Labour Party and described it as "one of the most democratic workers' organisations in existence." The post treats Haston's trajectory as a template Hall absorbed completely.
Pip: Hall then co-founded Universities and Left Review, which merged into New Left Review — an environment that explicitly rejected the revolutionary party on the grounds that Leninism leads inevitably to Stalinism. The post calls that reversal of historical causation the ideological core of the British New Left.
Mara: From there, the argument moves through Hall's leadership of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham, where he reportedly described the project as "politics by other means." The post reads Cultural Studies as a framework designed to replace class with race, gender, and subculture as relatively autonomous sites of struggle — and sees that move as preparation for identity politics, not a supplement to Marxism.
Pip: And then Marxism Today, where Hall's 1979 essay "The Great Moving Right Show" is reframed not as a prescient critique of Thatcherism but as an accommodation to it — the theoretical groundwork Blair later used to float New Labour.
Mara: The post's verdict is unsparing: Hall supplied the justification for Labour's rightward turn, and his mild later misgivings about Blair don't alter that record. "History will judge him more harshly: as someone who helped disarm the working class at the very moment it needed revolutionary leadership."
Pip: A memoir, then, as exhibit A — which is a more useful afterlife than most autobiographies get.
Mara: The through-line here is what happens when intellectual frameworks drift away from class as the primary axis — and who benefits from that drift.
Pip: Next time, we'll see where that argument leads. Stay with us.
Stuart Hall’s autobiography, Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands (2017), examines his identity as a colonial outsider navigating between Britain and Jamaica. Its most significant contribution is not in its explicit claims but in what it inadvertently uncovers. Hall describes himself as a “familiar stranger,” which conceals the crucial detail that he was “a non-native petty bourgeois—someone who encountered racism as an obstacle to upward mobility within established power structures. His goal was not revolutionary change but to reform British social democracy to better include people like him.
The memoir serves as an important resource for understanding the petty-bourgeois opposition to Marxism in Britain post-1956. Hall’s path—from the New Left to Cultural Studies, then to Marxism Today and New Labour—demonstrates a deliberate intellectual development. It reflects the ideological stance of a social class whose interests contrast sharply with those of the working class. This review seeks to place Hall within this wider historical context.
1956 and the Crisis of Stalinism
The year 1956 marked a major crisis for Stalinism, highlighted by the Moscow Trials. Khrushchev’s “secret speech” and the Hungarian workers’ uprising shattered the illusions held by Communist Parties across Europe. In Britain, the CPGB lost nearly one-third of its members. For revolutionary Marxists—especially Trotskyists of the International Committee of the Fourth International—1956 confirmed Stalinism’s counter-revolutionary character. They opened an opportunity to attract confused CP members to a truly internationalist outlook.
Hall arrived at Oxford in 1951, coinciding with the onset of this crisis. His memoir describes his political awakening, which focused on opposing authoritarianism and dogmatism. However, it is important to clarify that his real political shift was marked by his rejection of Leninism, which was based on a pseudo-leftist critique of the vanguard party.
Hall did not align with the Trotskyists, who sought to clarify Stalinism and uphold the continuity of Marxism. Instead, he became a founding editor of Universities and Left Review, which later merged with E.P. Thompson’s New Reasoner to create the New Left Review. This environment openly rejected the Leninist idea of the revolutionary party, criticising it for Stalinism’s atrocities.
The Role of Jock Haston
During this period, Hall’s mentor was Jock Haston, a former Trotskyist who abandoned the Fourth International and pledged his allegiance to the Labour Party, which he regarded as “one of the most democratic workers’ organisations in existence.” Haston’s shift—from revolutionary Marxism to Labourism— symbolised the petty-bourgeois response to 1956: a withdrawal from the working class and an attempt to find a “third way” between Stalinism and Trotskyism that, in fact, represented a step back into social democracy. Hall absorbed this outlook completely.
The British New Left didn’t revive Marxism; they outright rejected it. Their core belief was that Leninism inevitably led to Stalinism, so they argued the revolutionary party should be abandoned. This perspective falsely reverses historical facts — Stalinism was a betrayal of Leninism, not its successor. Yet, the petty-bourgeois intellectuals of the New Left equated Leninism with words like “authoritarianism,” “dogmatism,” and “sectarianism.” Hall’s memoir can’t challenge this ideological stance because it was the foundation of his entire political perspective.
The New Left emerged from a specific social layer: middle-class intellectuals disillusioned with Stalinism but hostile to the working class as a revolutionary force. They sought a politics that would preserve their moral radicalism while avoiding the discipline and programmatic clarity required by Marxism.Hall’s own background—“middle-class Jamaican upbringing,” Rhodes Scholarship, Oxford intellectual circles—placed him squarely within this layer. His political development was not a break with his class position but its ideological expression.
Cultural Studies
Hall’s key institutional contribution was leading the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham from 1972. While Cultural Studies is frequently seen as an innovative academic field, Hall reportedly referred to it as “politics by other means” Cultural Studies was effectively an intellectual framework created to supplant class as the primary focus of social analysis.
Cultural Studies emphasized race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and “subcultures” as separate areas of struggle that are “relatively autonomous.” This focus complicated viewing capitalist exploitation as a unified system. As a result, the working class was replaced by shifting identity-based ‘agencies’ as the main revolutionary subjects. This shift was not a supplement to Marxism but a rejection of it. Cultural Studies laid the ideological groundwork for current identity politics that now dominate the pseudo-left.
The emergence of Cultural Studies coincided with the decline of the traditional labour movement and the increasing involvement of petty-bourgeois intellectuals within the growing university sector. Hall’s theoretical innovations were not politically neutral; instead, they reflected the aims of a social class eager to gain influence in both the state and academia, rather than promote revolutionary change.
Marxism Today
By the late 1970s, the CPGB adopted Eurocommunism, forsaking any claim to revolutionary politics. Marxism Today, the publication of the Eurocommunist faction, became the main platform for this ideological shift, with Hall being its most prominent contributor. His 1979 essay, “The Great Moving Right Show,” is often regarded as visionary. However, its true importance lies in its adaptation to Thatcherism rather than a critique of it. Hall suggested that Labour needed to move away from its traditional working-class roots and fight elections on the same “conjunctural” terrain established by Thatcher. This approach served as the ideological basis for New Labour. By 1990, Blair was using Marxism Today to float the ‘New Labour’ project. Hall later expressed mild misgivings about Blair, but this is irrelevant. He had already supplied the theoretical justification for Labour’s rightward turn: the working class was in decline, class politics were obsolete, and Labour must become a party of the “modernising” middle class.
Hall’s contributions to Marxism Today played a role in weakening the working class during the neoliberal era. By claiming that class politics were outdated, he offered ideological support for Labour’s move away from socialism and towards market reforms. His innovative theories—such as Cultural Studies, the “New Times” thesis, and conjunctural analysis—laid the groundwork for identity politics. By breaking down social analysis into individual identities, Hall fostered a politics naturally opposed to the interests of the working class.
Identity politics benefits the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia by shifting focus away from class as the main political axis, emphasizing subjective experience over objective social relations, dividing the working class into competing identity groups, and granting moral justification for middle-class progress within capitalist structures. Hall did not create identity politics, but he laid out its theoretical framework.
Hall’s memoir is the autobiography of a man who spent his entire career constructing an anti-Marxist intellectual apparatus. History will judge him more harshly: as someone who helped disarm the working class at the very moment it needed revolutionary leadership.”
Notes
1. Stuart Hall and Bill Schwartz, Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands (London: Penguin Books, 2017).
2. Paul Bond, “Stuart Hall: A Political Obituary,” World Socialist Web Site, 2014.
3. E.P. Thompson, “The Peculiarities of the English,” Socialist Register (1965).
4. Stuart Hall, “The Great Moving Right Show,” Marxism Today (January 1979).
5. Geoff Andrews, Endgames and New Times: The Final Years of British Communism (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2004).
6. Alex Callinicos, The New Mandarins of American Power (Cambridge: Polity, 2003).
7. David North, The Heritage We Defend (Detroit: Labour Publications, 1988).
Pip: July Fourth, and somewhere a pseudo-left is writing a pros-and-cons list about the Declaration of Independence — which, to be fair, is one way to spend a holiday.
Mara: freerein61 has a sharply argued case for why that approach fails, and it goes straight to the question of how the left should read 1776 — not as mythology, not as indictment, but as a world-historical turning point whose democratic stakes are very much alive in 2026.
Pip: Let's start with the Revolution itself, and what a Marxist defence of it actually looks like.
The American Revolution and the Stakes of 1776
Mara: The post opens a debate that is not really about history at all — it is about whether the left has the analytical tools to defend democratic ideals at a moment when those ideals are under direct authoritarian pressure.
Pip: The argument against the pseudo-left rests on a specific methodological charge, and the post quotes David North to crystallise it: "Calling the founders hypocrites does not explain why a revolution happened, why the Declaration gained significance beyond their intentions, or why its words resonated with abolitionists, enslaved people, workers, socialists, and civil rights activists."
Mara: What that means in practice is that listing the Revolution's exclusions — enslaved people, women, Indigenous peoples, the propertyless — while accurate, does not constitute analysis. It substitutes moral inventory for the question of historical causation and consequence.
Pip: The post traces what the Revolution actually was: a break in the global system of absolutist monarchy, one that preceded and helped ignite the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and the Latin American independence movements. Tom Paine's claim that the cause of America was the cause of all mankind was not rhetoric — it was a description of an ideological rupture of world-historical scale.
Mara: The post also takes on the Socialist Worker article directly, describing its method as swinging between praise for the Revolution's radical aspects and criticism of its shortcomings, then landing on a vague moral call to make its promises true — without naming which social forces would do that work. The post calls this, pointedly, "political tourism through the past."
Pip: And the stakes are not abstract. With democratic institutions under pressure and the executive branch openly entertaining authoritarian governance in 2026, the post argues that abandoning 1776 as an enslaver's conspiracy effectively surrenders the language of popular sovereignty to the right.
Mara: The post's conclusion is direct: the democratic principles of 1776 cannot be fully realised under capitalism, and the working class must defend that legacy not as myth but as the unfinished business of universal emancipation.
Pip: Which is, at minimum, a more useful July Fourth position than a pros-and-cons list.
Mara: The core argument is that historical materialism and democratic principle are not in tension — the Revolution's contradictions are the reason the struggle continues, not the reason to dismiss it.
The discussion on the importance of the American Revolution has become a central ideological conflict in the early 2000s. The elite, struggling with a legitimacy crisis, tries to both absorb and undermine the democratic ideals of 1776. At the same time, the pseudo-left has completely abandoned these traditions, reducing the Revolution to a moralistic list of hypocrisies, exclusions, and crimes. In this context, defending the American Revolution as a key bourgeois democratic movement is not just an academic issue but a crucial political stance.
The latest article, published by the British Socialist Workers Party, illustrates what happens when a pseudo-left view tackles a historic issue without a solid Marxist basis. The article exemplifies the pseudo-left’s failure to clearly answer key questions, swinging between praising the revolution’s “radical” aspects and criticising its shortcomings, concluding with a vague moral call to “make true” its promises—without explaining how or through which social forces. This is not representative of Marxism. It is political tourism through the past.
Currently, the only political organisation capable of providing a historical materialist perspective on the American Revolution is the ICFI and its online publication, The World Socialist Website. It rejects the vague “on the one hand, on the other’ approach used by the SWP and instead employs the method of historical materialism to uphold the revolutionary legacy of 1776.
A Marxist viewpoint sees the American Revolution differently. It views it as an important bourgeois-democratic movement in global history. The working class ought to rekindle the democratic ideals of 1776 — not as a patriotic legend, but as a vital part of the ongoing struggle for universal emancipation.
The Historical Necessity of the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution
Marxism does not view bourgeois revolutions as moral issues but as necessary historical stages in the evolution of capitalist society and the modern working class. The American Revolution was not just an accident, an enslaver’s conspiracy, or a simple colonial uprising. Instead, it symbolised big changes in property relations, class structure, global trade, ideological awareness, and the growth of Enlightenment universalism. The pseudo-left fails to understand this because it dismisses historical materialism, replacing analytical reasoning with moral outrage and current feelings without historical context.
By the mid-18th century, North American colonies had developed a distinct social landscape, including a petty-bourgeois class, a rising capitalist elite, and a literate, politically engaged artisan and labourer population. These colonies were also characterised by frontier society in conflict with aristocratic land claims and a political culture influenced by republicanism, dissenting Protestantism, and Enlightenment ideas. These factors made the colonies particularly receptive to revolutionary ideas. The Revolution was not a top-down imposition; rather, it was driven from the bottom up by a broad social coalition whose demands went beyond those of the elite.
The American Revolution marked the first significant break in the global system of absolutist monarchy. It came before and played a role in sparking the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the Latin American wars of independence, and the worldwide spread of republican ideas. Tom Paine recognised this when he stated that “the cause of America” was “the cause of all mankind.” The Revolution’s universalist language was more than mere rhetoric; it reflected an ideological shift of world-historical importance.
As David North points out in his essential formulation, the Declaration “indicted the existing social and political order and called for its overthrow in the most sweeping and universal terms. “This is the key to understanding 1776. The Declaration’s assertion that “all men are created equal” was not a description of existing social relations. It was a revolutionary negation of the entire edifice of hereditary privilege, monarchy, aristocracy, and divine right.
What the Revolution Was
The American Revolution was a bourgeois democratic movement, not a socialist one, and no Marxist has ever suggested otherwise. This term is a precise, scientific description, not an insult. As David North noted in his opening remarks at the WSWS’s 250th anniversary webinar, the Declaration of Independence “condemned the existing social and political order and called for its comprehensive overthrow.” It challenged monarchy, hereditary privileges, and colonial dominance. The statement that “all men are created equal” and have “unalienable rights” was revolutionary in a world dominated by lords and kings who claimed divine right.
The Socialist Worker article hints at this but quickly shifts to moral judgment: acknowledging that the revolution was progressive yet noting that enslavers also participated, Indigenous peoples were dispossessed, and power remained in the hands of the wealthy. This ‘pros and cons’ approach fails to offer real insight. As North pointed out: ‘Calling the founders hypocrites does not explain why a revolution happened, why the Declaration gained significance beyond their intentions, or why its words resonated with abolitionists, enslaved people, workers, socialists, and civil rights activists.”
The American Revolution was founded on contradictions. Its promises excluded enslaved individuals, women, Indigenous peoples, and those without property. However, the democratic ideals it promoted went beyond the limitations of its era. This creates a dialectic: the Revolution was both rooted in its time and forward-looking. It inspired the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, anti-colonial efforts in South America, the abolitionist movement, and later democratic and socialist campaigns. As Tom Paine stated, “the cause of America” was “the cause of all mankind.”
The Socialist Worker article views the 1788 Constitution as merely the end of a story — a compromise between Northern capitalists and Southern enslavers that temporarily masked divisions until the Civil War. However, this perspective overlooks a key point: the Civil War was not accidental or secondary. Instead, it was the second American Revolution, completing the first. As North pointed out, “The transition from the first to the second stage of the bourgeois democratic revolution proceeded rather rapidly. Thaddeus Stevens, the most prominent radical Republican, was born in the early years of George Washington’s presidency.”
The end of slavery and the Radical Reconstruction represented the realisation of the democratic ideals established in 1776, rather than their betrayal. The subsequent defeat of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow laws served as counter-revolutions that reversed the Civil War’s progress. This perspective is missing from the pseudo-left, which replaces class analysis with racial theory.
Why This Matters Now
The question “Should we celebrate the American Revolution?” is not purely academic; it has become a highly political issue in 2026. The Trump administration is intensifying its assault on democratic rights, with the president openly discussing dictatorial governance. The fundamental idea of popular sovereignty—government of, by, and for the people—is now under threat.
Under these circumstances, abandoning the revolutionary democratic tradition in favour of reaction would be a devastating political mistake. Unfortunately, that is what much of the pseudo-left effectively does when it dismisses 1776 as merely an enslaver’s plot or dismisses the Declaration’s language of equality as mere hypocrisy. As North warned: “If the left abandons the revolutionary-democratic tradition, viewing equality, rights, popular sovereignty, and universal emancipation as deception, it risks handing that tradition over to reaction. And that is precisely what is occurring.”
The working class must safeguard the democratic ideals of the American Revolution, viewing them not as complete but as unfulfilled. The goals of 1776 cannot be achieved under capitalism; instead, they demand a socialist overhaul in which the working class seizes power and the capitalist system—which accumulates wealth and authority in fewer hands—is abolished. As Andre Damon noted in 2016: “The American Revolution provided the ideological and political impetus for the French Revolution and all subsequent democratic, egalitarian and socialist movements.”
The significance of the American Revolution extends beyond mere history; it is a crucial political issue today. By 2026, democratic institutions face exceptional pressures, with the executive branch increasingly flirting with authoritarianism and democratic norms eroding rapidly. The pseudo-left’s rejection of 1776 as a conspiracy by enslavers dismisses the progressive aspects of the bourgeois revolution, rejects universal principles, weakens the ideological basis for democratic rights, and leaves the working class without political power.
Yes, we should honour the American Revolution—not as a patriotic myth, a completed achievement, or by ignoring its contradictions—but as a significant historical milestone whose democratic principles are still revolutionary today. Its unfulfilled promises can only be realised through socialist revolution, and the working class must protect its legacy against the current authoritarian threat. The ambiguous, moralistic, and politically inconsistent tone of the Socialist Worker article offers no guidance.
The democratic principles established in 1776 — such as equality, rights, and popular sovereignty — are still revolutionary. However, they cannot be fully realised within capitalism and instead demand a socialist revolution. The American Revolution was a major bourgeois-democratic revolution of global historical importance. While it had contradictions, these do not diminish its significance; rather, they highlight the need for continued revolutionary progress.
The working class must uphold the democratic legacy of 1776, not as a myth but as a historical fight for universal emancipation. Achieving the Revolution’s promises requires a socialist restructuring of society.”
The reissue of Izumi Suzuki’s Terminal Boredom and Set My Heart on Fire by Verso Books is more than just a literary event; it is a political gesture. Suzuki’s portrayal as a “radical feminist icon” by the #MeToo movement and the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia reflects the ideological needs of the ruling class facing the most severe crisis of global capitalism since the 1930s. Her fiction—branded as rebellious, provocative, and visionary—is actually a reflection of political defeat, social fragmentation, and petty-bourgeois despair.
The fact that a publisher, claiming to be “left-wing,” is now promoting this kind of work serves as a warning: identity-driven pseudo-radicalism has become a cultural tool used to redirect social anger away from capitalism and into pointless, apolitical dead ends. Suzuki’s resurgence should be viewed in a historical context. It is motivated more by ideological convenience than by literary value.
Historical and Class Context: Literature Born of Defeat
Suzuki’s worldview wasn’t born from personal eccentricity or a tragic life story. Instead, it stemmed from the devastating defeat of Japan’s working class after the war—a loss managed, justified, and upheld by the Stalinist Japanese Communist Party (JCP). The JCP’s cooperation with the American occupation, its nationalist stance, and its suppression of revolutionary efforts resulted in a political void. This vacuum left sections of the intelligentsia feeling alienated, pessimistic, and inward-looking.
Suzuki’s shift away from the working class was not merely a personal eccentricity but a result of both objective historical failures and subjective betrayals. This is the core idea. Suzuki’s writing does not symbolise progress; instead, it reflects a tired generation that lost hope and stopped seeking. The aftermath of defeat heavily influences her stories: they reject collective action, show a breakdown in historical awareness, and elevate individual trauma to a metaphysical level. This background forms the foundation of her fiction.
Suzuki’s Worldview: Gender War as Ersatz Politics
Suzuki’s stories centre around themes of gender conflict, misanthropy, and personal grievances. They portray worlds where men are imprisoned, women wield power through bureaucratic oppression, and social conflict is replaced by personal domination. This does not represent feminism or radical ideas. Instead, it reflects the ideology of a petty-bourgeois class that has lost faith in the working class, resorting to identity categories rather than class analysis.
Her dystopias mirror oppressive systems rather than challenge them. They don’t provide a route to human freedom, only a reshuffling of the prison hierarchy. The uploaded document states: “Suzuki’s focus on gender classifications and identity… aligns with a petty-bourgeois movement that replaces collective class action with individual grievances.” This explains why the #MeToo movement supports her. As it’s rooted in upper-middle-class circles, it emphasises personal trauma over social analysis and views gender identity as the main political focus. Suzuki offers a simplified mythology: a world where men are naturally oppressive, women are inherently victims, and social change is reduced to interpersonal power struggles. Her writings reflect a resignation rather than resistance.
The Philip K. Dick Comparison: A Category Error
Calling Suzuki ‘Japan’s Philip K. Dick” is not just inaccurate but also politically telling. Dick, despite his contradictions, wrestled with major 20th-century issues such as fascism, technological power, the vulnerability of democracies, and the manipulation of consciousness. As the uploaded document mentions, The Man in the High Castle explores themes of historical memory and the political fallout of losing.
Suzuki, in contrast, completely withdraws from history. Her worlds are sealed off, lacking social conflict, class distinctions, or collective action. They feel claustrophobic, introspective, and politically inert. Comparing Dick and Suzuki blurs the lines between pessimism and depth. Dick explores the roots of alienation, while Suzuki depicts alienation as an aesthetic. This comparison unfairly favours Dick and misrepresents Suzuki.
Her work risks falling into psychologism, but her personal experiences—marriage to Kaoru Abe, violence, the toe-cutting incident, and suicide—should not be seen as explanations for her writing. Instead, they reflect the same social pathology that influences her fiction: the isolation of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, disconnected from the working class and overwhelmed by personal despair.
A Marxist review should reject the liberal approach that treats biography as direct causation. Instead, the focus is not on pathologising Suzuki but on uncovering the social forces that shaped her art and tragedy. Both her personal life and her fiction originate from the same source: the political defeat of the working class and the ideological collapse of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia.
A polemical review must do more than reject; it needs to establish clear standards. What sets progressive science fiction apart is not its optimism but its awareness of history. It portrays humans as active participants within a social whole, capable of changing their circumstances. It acknowledges that alienation stems from social class rather than being a metaphysical constant. Writers like Dick, Lem, and certain aspects of New Wave SF understood this. Their work, despite certain flaws, engages with the social and historical forces influencing human life. Suzuki, however, does not. Her fiction reflects paralysis rather than potential. A Marxist critique should explicitly define this criterion.
Why Suzuki, and Why Now? The Ideological Function of Her Revival
This is the key question. Suzuki’s resurgence is motivated more by ideological usefulness than literary quality. Bourgeois publishers—including Verso—have adopted identity politics as a replacement for true social critique. They favour stories of personal trauma, gender conflict, and apolitical melancholy because these types of “dissent” do not challenge capitalist property systems.
Suzuki’s fiction resonates now because it lets readers feel “radical” without having to take political action. It diverts social frustration from capitalism to personal relationships. By framing the crisis of bourgeois society as a gender conflict, it shields the ruling class from criticism. Her revival functions as a cultural strategy: elevating a petty-bourgeois perspective exactly when many are mobilising against capitalism.
Conclusion: A Literature of Political Defeat
Suzuki’s fiction is neither revolutionary, feminist, nor progressive. It represents the artistic voice of political defeat. Verso’s revival is a concession to the ruling class’s ideological needs, aiming to redirect social anger into identity-based dead ends. A Marxist review must critically expose this process. The goal is not to mourn Suzuki but to understand her: to situate her work within the broader historical crisis that shaped it and to oppose the ideological forces seeking to weaponise it against the working class.
Her fiction is a thing of the past. The future will be shaped by a working class that refuses to accept the petty-bourgeois despair that Suzuki mistakenly took as truth.
The Declaration as a Battleground of Historical Memory
Edward L. Widmer’s The Living Declaration is framed as a “biography” of the Declaration of Independence. This genre has grown popular in recent years amid the commercialisation of the American founding. In mainstream liberal scholarship, these biographies often serve not as critical examinations of revolutionary ideas but as tools to reinforce the current ideological framework. Despite its engaging writing style and clear narrative, Widmer’s book fits well within this tradition.
The Declaration of Independence isn’t a neutral document; it serves as a revolutionary manifesto. Its core principles—equality, popular sovereignty, and the right to revolution—have significantly influenced major social conflicts throughout American history. Any in-depth analysis must address the radical implications of these ideas for today’s society. However, Widmer avoids this challenge, presenting a cleaned-up, heritage-focused version that downplays the Declaration’s revolutionary significance and reframes it as a civic symbol aligned with capitalist elites.
The Declaration as a Product of World-Historical Crisis
The Declaration of Independence was more than a philosophical concept created by Jefferson and his team. It signified a profound global crisis: the fall of the ancien régime, the rise of capitalist social relations, and the emergence of a revolutionary bourgeoisie. This new class’s struggle against feudal absolutism drastically changed the world.
A Marxist reconstruction starts not with Jefferson’s writing or Locke’s essays, but with the material changes in Atlantic capitalism during the eighteenth century. The Declaration served as the ideological manifestation of a society in flux, during a period when the emergent bourgeoisie aimed to dismantle feudal political structures while maintaining their economic base in private property. Its roots are deeply intertwined with the inherent contradictions within bourgeois society.
By the mid-1700s, the North American colonies had become deeply connected to Atlantic capitalism. The production of commodities such as tobacco, wheat, timber, and rum, as well as the use of enslaved labour, created a class of colonial merchants, planters, and professionals whose interests increasingly conflicted with those of the British imperial government.
Britain’s victory in the Seven Years’ War resulted in a substantial imperial debt. The Crown sought to increase revenue from the colonies via taxes and tighter administrative oversight. This was not driven by ethical concerns but by a material conflict between a growing bourgeois class and a declining imperial system.
The colonies operated as economically capitalist entities but remained politically subordinate to a monarchical and aristocratic state. This contradiction—capitalist economic relations existing under feudal political structures—was the root of the revolutionary crisis. The Declaration represents the ideological resolution to this conflict.
The Declaration’s phrases—“self-evident truths,” “unalienable rights,” “consent of the governed”—embody the core principles of Enlightenment rationalism. However, Enlightenment ideas were not purely abstract philosophy; they formed the ideological foundation of an advancing bourgeois class.
Locke’s theory of natural rights mainly served to justify private property. His well-known idea that property comes from labour isn’t an absolute truth but rather a bourgeois rationalisation that supports capitalist accumulation. Jefferson’s version— “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”—also reflects this classical perspective. The rights declared in the Declaration appear universal in structure but are bourgeois in substance.
The statement that “all men are created equal” was not a philosophical assertion. Instead, it served as a political tool to oppose aristocracy, monarchy, and inherited privilege. In this context, equality referred to equal legal status within a capitalist system, not equal social or economic conditions.
The Declaration’s reference to “self-evident truths” embodies the Enlightenment belief that society could be restructured based on rational principles. This expressed the bourgeoisie’s desire to overthrow irrational feudal systems. Reason was a revolutionary force—yet its revolutionary potential was confined within the bounds of bourgeois society.
The main authors of the Declaration were members of the colonial bourgeoisie, including lawyers, merchants, planters, and intellectuals. They articulated grievances related to taxation, trade restrictions, and imperial oversight, which were rooted in class interests. While artisans, small farmers, and urban labourers also significantly contributed to the revolutionary movement, their interests differed from those of the bourgeois elite. However, the imperial crisis temporarily unified these diverse groups with a shared purpose.
The Declaration’s universalism intentionally excluded enslaved Africans and indigenous peoples, reflecting a deliberate choice tied to the bourgeois revolution within a slave society. The tension between universal equality and racial slavery is not merely moral but also reveals a core contradiction in bourgeois property relations. Its most radical claim—that people can “alter or abolish” any government threatening their rights—appears revolutionary but fundamentally aligns with bourgeois interests.
The right of revolution was aimed at overthrowing monarchy and aristocracy, serving as the ideological basis for dismantling feudal political structures. While the bourgeoisie endorsed this right, they also feared it might threaten their own class interests. Interestingly, the same individuals who supported the right to overthrow oppressive governments also suppressed Shays’ Rebellion and slave uprisings.
The Declaration’s revolutionary ideas could not be fully put into practice within bourgeois society. Its focus on universal principles extended beyond capitalism itself. This is why the Declaration served as the ideological basis for the Civil War—the second American revolution—and why its principles are still not fully realised today.
The Declaration’s ideological roots are in the bourgeois revolution, but its future is with the working class. As the Socialist Equality Party states, the true successors of 1776 are not the representatives of the American ruling class, but the workers and youth fighting against inequality, war, and the erosion of democratic rights. The Declaration remains vital—not merely as a historical artefact, but as a revolutionary document that demands a socialist transformation of society.
The Ideological Function of Gordon Wood in American Historiography
Gordon S. Wood holds a unique place in American historical scholarship. He is both the most renowned interpreter of the American Revolution and a key defender of bourgeois ideological continuity. His introduction to Edward L. Widmer’s The Living Declaration exemplifies this duality. Wood describes the Declaration of Independence as the “most profound manifesto of democratic revolution in history,” but his framing diminishes its revolutionary significance for today.
Wood’s prose is refined and erudite, yet his approach remains largely conservative. He presents the Declaration as a victory of enlightened thought, deliberately sidestepping the societal contradictions that led to it and the volatile implications of its principles for modern capitalism. His introduction doesn’t advocate for revolutionary change but instead honours a heritage that has been safely preserved.
Wood’s opening highlights that the United States is “unique because it was founded entirely on a set of philosophical ideas rather than shared heritage or ethnicity.” This reflects Wood’s overall historiographical approach: emphasising ideology over material conditions and portraying the Revolution as a victory of enlightened ideas rather than as a struggle rooted in class, colonial economics, or imperial crises.
The issue isn’t that ideas had no role—they did. Instead, Wood overlooks how social forces shaped these ideas. He views the Declaration as a result of philosophical agreement, not a revolutionary break. That’s why Wood claims Jefferson’s statement that “all men are created equal” reflected the mainstream enlightened thought of the time. But this is historically questionable and politically telling. Equality wasn’t just a conventional idea; it challenged the entire hierarchical order dominated by monarchy, aristocracy, and hereditary privilege. Wood’s approach trivialises the Revolution by framing its most radical principle as a polite, common belief.
Wood emphasises Jefferson’s belief in a universal “moral sense,” even among enslaved people, implying that this shared empathy helped shape abolitionist arguments. This reflects Wood’s typical approach: a moral-philosophical interpretation that conceals the harsh material realities of slavery and the economic motives behind it. Jefferson’s moral sense did not stop him from enslaving people, nor did it prevent the new republic from establishing a constitutional framework that protected slave property for nearly a century. Wood’s reference to moral sense acts as a liberal justification—an effort to reconcile the universal ideals in the Declaration with the founders’ active participation in a slaveholding society.
A Marxist analysis begins from the opposite premise: the contradiction between universal equality and private property in human beings is not a moral paradox but a structural contradiction of bourgeois revolution. Wood cannot confront this because his method is idealistic rather than materialistic.
Wood’s introduction notably omits key points. He does not mention the Declaration’s claim that people can “alter or abolish” governments that threaten their rights. Additionally, he overlooks the relevance of this principle during the Civil War, which Lincoln viewed as the embodiment of the Declaration’s revolutionary ideas. Moreover, he neglects to consider how this principle applies in a society controlled by a financial oligarchy.
Wood’s introduction celebrates the ideals of the Declaration rather than analysing their outcomes. He commends the Revolution’s opposition to aristocracy but overlooks the rise of a new wealthy aristocracy. While praising equality, he ignores the significant inequality present in modern America. This is intentional, as Wood’s purpose in American historiography is to uphold the established order by framing the founding as a completed, accomplished event rather than an ongoing revolutionary process.
The Political Context: Wood vs the 1619 Project, and the Limits of Liberal Defence
Wood has been a notable critic of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, rightly pointing it out as a racialist distortion of history. However, his critique is constrained by his ideological biases. While he defends the Revolution against racial reductionism, he does so from a liberal perspective that fails to recognise the class struggles inherent in the Revolution or the enduring importance of its principles.The WSWS has shown that rejecting 1776 as a pro-slavery conspiracy, as the 1619 Project does, is both historically inaccurate and politically reactionary.However, Wood’s alternative—an idealist praise of enlightened ideas—falls short.It defends the founders but weakens the Declaration’s revolutionary significance.
Wood criticises the racialist distortion of history but fails to challenge the capitalist distortion. His introduction overlooks that today’s ruling class openly disregards every right listed in the Declaration. He is unable to admit that the Declaration’s revolutionary ideals condemn the social order he aims to maintain.
The Declaration as a Living Document: Wood’s Title, Widmer’s Book, and the Marxist Alternative
Wood agrees with Widmer’s idea of a “living declaration,” but he sees “living” as more conservative. To Wood, it’s alive because it continues to inspire civic pride and a sense of democracy. Widmer, however, believes it remains alive because each new generation has reinterpreted it. In contrast, Marxists see the Declaration as alive because its ideals remain unfulfilled, and achieving them would require a revolutionary societal change.
The Declaration remains alive not due to admiration but because it continues to reveal the contradictions within capitalist society. It stays relevant by affirming equality in a world marked by inequality and by declaring the right to revolution against oligarchic rule. Wood, however, cannot recognise this. His introduction romanticises the Declaration with reverent language while diminishing its revolutionary power.
Gordon Wood’s introduction to The Living Declaration is a refined, knowledgeable and ultimately conservative piece. It extols the ideals of the Declaration while toning down their implications. It defends the Revolution from racialist distortions yet sidesteps the class conflicts that influenced it. While praising equality, it overlooks the capitalist system that makes such equality unachievable. Overall, Wood’s introduction is not a genuine living declaration but a sanitised version that serves the interests of the ruling class.
Widmer’s Method: Liberal Antiquarianism in the Service of the Present Order
Widmer’s “biography” approach exemplifies the heritage industry in American historiography, as the WSWS frequently criticises. Instead of placing the Declaration within the ongoing dialectical evolution of bourgeois revolution, Widmer regards it as a cultural artefact whose “life” is shaped by how it has been received, reinterpreted, and symbolically employed over time.
This approach yields three distinct effects: First, the Revolution becomes depoliticised, as Widmer emphasises anecdotes, personalities, and textual idiosyncrasies, while minimising the Declaration’s significance as the ideological source of significant social change. Second, the contradictions of the Revolution are viewed through a psychological lens, transforming questions about class tensions, property rights, and slavery into moral or personal dilemmas rather than material disputes. Third, the current situation is presented as natural.
The Declaration as Revolutionary Manifesto: What Widmer Cannot Confront
Widmer’s account cannot encompass the Declaration’s most radical claim: “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…”
This is not just a decorative element; it forms the heart of the document. As David North stated, the principles of the Declaration “were obtained through the application of scientific thought, i.e., Reason,” and their revolutionary power remains because they express universal, not just colonial, claims.
Widmer’s biography treats this passage as a historical footnote rather than an active critique of today’s capitalist oligarchy that rules the United States. He fails to recognise that the Declaration’s underlying logic extends beyond bourgeois society itself—suggesting that the promise of equality conflicts with a social system in which a few billionaires possess more wealth than the entire bottom half of humanity. Addressing this would mean acknowledging the Declaration’s role in the Civil War—the so-called “second American revolution”—and its ongoing significance to modern working-class struggles. Yet, Widmer completely sidesteps this connection.
Widmer’s book comes at a time when the Declaration faces fierce political debate. Two main forces drive this contest: The New York Times’ 1619 Project criticises the Declaration as a hypocritical document meant to defend slavery. As the WSWS has shown, this view is both historically inaccurate and politically reactionary. It ignores the revolutionary significance of 1776 and reduces the American Revolution to a racial myth. Widmer does not oppose this false narrative; instead, it sidesteps it.
The ruling elite claims the Declaration as a patriotic symbol while simultaneously ignoring every right it guarantees. Patrick Martin pointed out that “Every basic right enumerated in it is openly flouted.” The right to revolution is dismissed as sedition, extreme inequalities undermine equality, and due process is compromised through widespread surveillance and militarised policing. Widmer does not challenge this contradiction; instead, he aestheticises it. In both instances, Widmer’s silence aligns with the ideological interests of the current order. His biography does not defend the revolutionary ideals of the Declaration but rather contributes to their neutralisation.
Bourgeois Scholarship and the Neutralisation of Revolution
Widmer’s book highlights the wider limitations of bourgeois historiography. It lauds the Declaration as an element of America’s “heritage” but neglects its revolutionary core. This aligns with James P. Cannon’s warning: “Nobody can sell me the Fourth of July speeches which represent the start as the finish and the promise as the fulfilment.” Widmer’s biography resembles a Fourth of July speech in book form, presenting the Declaration as a finished accomplishment instead of an ongoing revolutionary effort.
A truly critical biography of the Declaration would place it in the context of the global crisis of the ancien régime and the emergence of bourgeois revolution. It would examine its Enlightenment roots—drawing from Locke, Scottish moral philosophers, and 18th-century scientific rationalism. It would reveal contradictions in its founding, such as slavery, property relations, and class conflicts. The biography would track its lasting revolutionary influence, particularly in the Civil War and abolition movements. It would also show its incompatibility with modern capitalism, where equality cannot exist under private ownership of the means of production. The biography would highlight the working class as the agent capable of realising its promise. However, Widmer’s biography does none of these; it is not a living Declaration but an embalmed one.
Conclusion: The Declaration Lives—But Not in Widmer’s Book
Widmer’s The Living Declaration is a refined, accessible, and ultimately conservative account. It provides a biography of the Declaration that is suitable for corporate publishers, university lectures, and Fourth of July celebrations. It avoids addressing the Declaration’s revolutionary potential today or recognising the social forces that could bring its promises to fruition. The Declaration endures—though not within Widmer’s family-friendly narrative. It persists in the working class’s struggles against inequality, war, and the erosion of democratic rights. Its principles serve as a critique of tyranny and a rallying cry for revolutionary change. Widmer’s book is a biography; the working class will author the sequel
But where, say some, is the King of America? I’ll tell you, friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of humanity like the Royal Brute of Great Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honours, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the Charter; let it be brought forth, placed on the Divine Law, the Word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king.
The Writings of Thomas Paine, Vol. I (1774-1779)
“Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; for ’tis better to be alone than in bad company.”
George Washington
“The workingmen of Europe feel sure that… it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.”
Karl Marx
“We hold the power to start the world anew. No similar situation has occurred since Noah’s days until now. A new world’s birth is imminent, and a population, possibly as large as all of Europe, is about to gain their share of freedom”
The upcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has starkly exposed a deep crisis in the United States’ historical awareness. At a time when democratic rights face unprecedented threats, the political elite and its media outlets have shown what the World Socialist Web Site accurately describes as “disinterest and even hostility… toward the bourgeois democratic traditions of the United States.’”¹ The ruling class, mired in oligarchic decay, recoils from the revolutionary origins of its own state because those origins expose the illegitimacy of its present‑day authoritarian turn.
In this context, the WSWS hosted a significant international webinar titled “The American Revolution and Its Place in History: From the War Against Monarchy to ‘No Kings.’” Featuring prominent historians such as James Oakes, Sean Wilentz, Richard Carwardine, Adam Hochschild, and Thomas Mackaman, it represented the most in-depth scholarly discussion of the Revolution during this anniversary year. Its importance extends beyond academic clarification, reflecting the ongoing political debate over the significance of 1776.
The core question is whether the American Revolution was a groundbreaking democratic shift in world history or, as the 1619 Project and its academic allies claim, a reactionary revolt aimed at preserving slavery. This answer shapes both our understanding of history and our approach to current fights against dictatorship.
The Revolutionary Character of 1776
The Declaration of Independence remains one of the most consequential documents in world history. As David North emphasised, it “indicted the existing social and political order and called for its overthrow in the most sweeping and universal terms.”² Its proclamation that “all men are created equal” established a new standard of political legitimacy, one that transcended the limitations of its time and pointed toward future struggles for emancipation.
James Oakes underscored this universalism, noting that the Declaration “establishes an entirely new revolutionary standard by which every social movement from that point on is evaluated.”³ The Revolution shattered the ancien régime’s world of inherited rank and ascribed status. Richard Carwardine described 1776 as the formal end of a social order in which one’s place was fixed by birth.⁴
This was not a provincial tax revolt. It was the first great bourgeois‑democratic revolution of the modern era, whose reverberations were felt across the Atlantic world. As Sean Wilentz observed, “you can’t understand any of the other revolutions without understanding the American Revolution.”⁵ The upheaval in North America helped detonate the French Revolution, inspired abolitionist networks in Britain, and later shaped the international working‑class movement.
The Two Revolutions: Against Monarchy and Against Slavery
The Revolution’s internal contradictions—between universal equality and the persistence of slavery—did not negate its revolutionary character. Rather, they generated a second, deeper revolution culminating in the Civil War. Wilentz emphasised that the struggle against slavery was not external to 1776 but inherent within it.⁶
Karl Marx grasped this dialectic with unmatched clarity. Writing for the International Working Men’s Association, he recognised that the Civil War represented the completion of the bourgeois‑democratic revolution begun in 1776.⁷ The working class in Britain, influenced by Marx and Engels, sided with the Union against the Confederacy, despite the economic hardships caused by the cotton famine.
The WSWS webinar traced this international thread: abolitionist diagrams circulated from London to Philadelphia; Lafayette carried the spirit of 1776 to Paris; British workers mourned Lincoln’s assassination.⁸ The Revolution’s universalist content proved irrepressible.
The Presentist Falsification of History
The greatest threat to the Revolution today stems from racialist narratives promoted by the New York Times’ 1619 Project and Gerald Horne’s The Counter-Revolution of 1776. These works suggest that the Revolution aimed to preserve slavery, argue that 1776 was not truly a revolution, or even describe it as a counter-revolution.
Thomas Mackaman demolished this fabrication: “In its time, nobody, including its enemies, thought it was anything but a revolution.”⁹ The claim that the Revolution was a pro‑slavery conspiracy is a grotesque anachronism, a projection of contemporary racial politics onto the eighteenth century.
Both Mackaman and Wilentz identified the method of these narratives as “presentism” and “anachronism.”¹⁰ They reduce history to moral denunciation, stripping events of their material context and class dynamics. David North exposed the underlying ideology as a “petty‑bourgeois view of history” that substitutes race for class and rests on a “perverted zoological conception” of human society.¹¹
Oakes drew the logical conclusion: the universalist principle of equality is “seriously antithetical to identity politics,” which fragments society into antagonistic racial blocs.¹² The 1619 Project’s racial essentialism is not a radical critique of America’s past but a reactionary repudiation of Enlightenment rationality.
The 1619 Project did not develop in isolation. It reflects the worldview of a ruling class that has become increasingly distrustful of its revolutionary democratic roots. As the WSWS notes, the political elite shows “disinterest and indeed hostility… to the bourgeois democratic traditions of the United States itself.” In this context, the New York Times’ 1619 Project serves a clear political purpose: it disconnects the working class from the universalist, Enlightenment-inspired principles of 1776. Instead, it promotes a racial mythology that hampers collective action.
The central claim of the Project—that the United States was founded as a slavocracy, that 1619 is the actual founding year, and that the Revolution was fought primarily to defend slavery—is not just mistaken; it distorts history through flawed methods that conflict with rigorous scholarship. It replaces class with race, moralism with materialism, and judges the past through a modern lens.
The 1619 Project isn’t a historical account but a moral story crafted to support current political objectives. As Thomas Mackaman and Sean Wilentz pointed out in the WSWS webinar, it employs ‘presentism’ and ‘anachronism’ by judging the past through today’s standards, reducing complex historical events to moral judgments about individuals. Presentism isn’t just a flawed method; it fundamentally rejects genuine historical analysis by blurring the line between past and present, preventing understanding of historical figures within their own context. David North highlighted that this approach replaces explanation with moral condemnation and lacks true explanatory power.
The racial essentialism underlying the Project.
The 1619 Project is based on what North correctly calls a “perverted zoological conception” of human society. It views race as a timeless, unchangeable factor that determines human behaviour. This isn’t radical thinking; it’s a step backwards to pre-Enlightenment ideas. It dismisses the idea that human reason is universal and that people can overcome inherited social roles.
The Project criticises the Declaration of Independence because its claim that “all men are created equal” clashes with its racial worldview. As Oakes notes, the universalist idea of equality directly conflicts with identity politics. Consequently, the 1619 Project seeks to challenge the validity of the Enlightenment itself.
The Revolution was not fought to defend slavery
The Project claims that colonists rebelled to defend slavery from British abolition, but this is clearly false. There is no evidence—none—that fears of abolition drove the Revolution. As Mackaman noted earlier, “In its time, nobody, including its enemies, thought it was anything but a revolution.” The British Empire didn’t abolish slavery until 1833, fifty-seven years after the Declaration. The Somerset decision of 1772 applied only to England and Wales, not to the colonies. The idea that it threatened colonial slavery is a myth.
The Revolution sparked ideological forces that made slavery increasingly difficult to sustain. The earliest abolition societies appeared in the 1770s and 1780s. Northern states began to enact gradual emancipation. The Declaration’s universal principles directly influenced the antislavery movement. Wilentz repeated his point that “you can’t understand any of the other revolutions without understanding the American Revolution.” The 1619 Project, however, isolates the Revolution from the Atlantic world, overlooking its crucial role in the French and Haitian Revolutions and the global push for democracy.
The Continuity of Democratic Struggle
Far from being a dead letter, the Declaration’s principles have animated every major democratic movement in American history. Oakes noted that labour radicals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries “repeatedly invoked the Declaration of Independence,” as did abolitionists and suffragists before them.¹³
Adam Hochschild demonstrated the contemporary relevance of the Declaration’s indictment of George III. Its charges—military power over civil authority, the transportation of people “beyond seas” for “pretended offences”—read, he observed, as if they “were written this morning.”¹⁴The continuity is unmistakable: the struggle for democratic rights is inseparable from the revolutionary legacy of 1776.
The Present Crisis and the Necessity of Historical Consciousness
The United States is undergoing a profound crisis of bourgeois democracy. Trump’s open embrace of dictatorial methods, his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and his use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for mass deportations all testify to the breakdown of constitutional norms.¹⁵The Supreme Court’s reactionary rulings, the impunity of the January 6 conspirators, and the draconian sentences imposed on anti‑ICE protesters reveal a ruling class that has repudiated even the pretence of democratic rights.¹⁶
In this context, the fight over the meaning of 1776 is not academic. It is a struggle over political consciousness. As North concluded, “the political consciousness and perspective required for the future” cannot be supplied by any faction of the ruling class.¹⁷ The defence of democratic rights falls to the international working class, whose interests align with the universalist principles first articulated in 1776.
Conclusion: Toward 2036 and Beyond
North ventured a prediction: “The America and the world of 2036 will look vastly different from the world of today.”¹⁸ This is not utopian speculation but a sober assessment of the contradictions tearing apart global capitalism. The revolutionary potential of the international working class, the globalised character of modern society, and the intensifying social opposition all point toward profound transformations.
To realise this potential, the working class must reclaim the revolutionary heritage of 1776—not as nationalist mythology, but as part of the world‑historical struggle for human emancipation. The fight for socialism requires a fight for historical truth.
The WSWS webinar stands as a major contribution to that struggle. Its analysis must be studied, disseminated, and armed with Marxist clarity. The meaning of 1776 is not settled in the past; it is being fought over in the present, and its outcome will shape the future.
Footnotes
On the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, 1.
Ibid., 2.
Ibid., 4.
Ibid., 5.
Ibid., 3.
Ibid., 5.
Karl Marx, The Civil War in the United States (New York: International Publishers, 1937).
On the eve…, 3–4.
Ibid., 6.
Ibid., 6.
Ibid., 7.
Ibid., 7.
Ibid., 4.
Ibid., 8.
Ibid., 2.
Ibid., 8.
Ibid., 9.
Ibid., 9.
Endnotes
The Writings of Thomas Paine, (1774-1779) oll.libertyfund.org/titles/paine-the-writings-of-thomas-paine-vol-i-1774-1779
Richard Ruland and Malcolm Bradbury’s 1991 book, From Puritanism to Postmodernism, remains a staple in American university course lists, where it is regarded as an authoritative overview of American literary history. However, its longevity reflects more the ideological preferences of the modern academic world than rigorous scholarship. The book presents a sanitised, depoliticised account of American literature, one that neglects the class struggle, suppresses the Marxist perspective, and concludes with a celebration of postmodernism. This ideological stance represents a social order in decline.
Marxist criticism’s role is not merely to annotate distortions politely but to reveal their social purpose. Trotsky emphasised that, like science, art does not seek orders and inherently cannot accept them.”¹ The bourgeois academy, however, requires this kind of obedience: a literary history that normalises capitalist growth and hides the revolutionary contribution of the working class.
Teleology as Ideology: “From Puritanism to Postmodernism”
The book’s title presents its ideological stance. It suggests that American literature evolved from Puritanism to postmodernism, implying that the latter is the inevitable result of a three-century progression. This notion of teleology is significant because it subtly endorses the reactionary view that postmodernism—characterised by its dismissal of objective truth, rejection of historical causality, and emphasis on subjectivity—is the rightful conclusion of American literary evolution.
As David North has shown, postmodernism did not originate from a true philosophical breakthrough. Instead, it resulted from the political disintegration of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia after Stalinism’s betrayals, the setbacks faced by the working class in the 1970s and 1980s, and the collapse of the USSR.² Its central dogmas—the “incredulity toward metanarratives,” fragmentation, pastiche—are the ideological rationalisations of a social layer that has abandoned any connection to the revolutionary struggle of the working class. To present this retreat as the “culmination” of American literary history is to falsify history itself.
A Literary History Without History
Ruland and Bradbury’s approach exemplifies standard academic idealism: viewing literature as a self-contained domain driven by the internal development of aesthetic forms. The role of class struggle—the driving force of American history—is practically missing. It’s possible to read hundreds of pages without encountering the Civil War as a conflict over the expansion of slavery production³. The transformation of literary production by industrial capitalism⁴ and the impact of the Great Depression and the class battles of the 1930s⁵the cultural devastation wrought by the Cold War anti‑communist purge⁶Instead, literature appears as a polite conversation among authors, floating serenely above the social convulsions that shaped their work. This is not history but embalming.
The Erasure of the Working Class
The most noticeable oversight is the absence of the working class. American literature features a strong tradition of authors who directly addressed class conflict—such as Jack London, Upton Sinclair, John Dos Passos, Richard Wright, Tillie Olsen, and others. However, in Ruland and Bradbury’s portrayal, these figures are merely seen as “protest literature” or “naturalism,” with their political beliefs reduced to stylistic labels.
Their depoliticisation reaches its lowest point in the way they handle Theodore Dreiser. ‘An American Tragedy’ (1925), arguably the most impactful American novel of the 20th century, is not just a naturalist story but a harsh critique of the American class system—the “American dream” revealed as a tool that destroys human lives. As David Walsh pointed out, Dreiser achieved “perhaps the most acute and all-sided alignment of the individual and national tragedy” because he understood how social forces shape personal destinies. Ruland and Bradbury can’t recognise this because their framework fails to see class as a significant historical factor.
Why Dreiser Matters
Any Marxist reinterpretation of American literary history must prioritise Theodore Dreiser. No other American novelist of the twentieth century directly addressed the harsh realities of capitalism with such honesty. Dreiser’s major works—especially Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925)—stand as the most detailed effort in American literature to explore how social factors shape individual destinies. As David Walsh has noted, Dreiser achieved “perhaps the most keen and comprehensive alignment of personal and national tragedy” within the American canon.
Dreiser is often dismissed, depoliticised, or overlooked by bourgeois literary historians. For example, Ruland and Bradbury, in From Puritanism to Postmodernism, portray him as merely a “naturalist” and a writer focused on “social conditions,” viewing him as a precursor to protest literature. This view erases his political commitments, his involvement in class struggle, and his sharp critique of American capitalism.
Restoring Dreiser’s proper position involves seeing him not just as a naturalist portraying social suffering, but as the leading figure of American realism from a Marxist perspective—an artist who understands the dialectical connection between individual psychology and social totality.
Dreiser’s Realism and the Materialist Conception of History
Dreiser’s realism is closely linked to a materialist view of history. He instinctively and increasingly consciously recognised that social forces, beyond individual control, shape human behaviour. This perspective aligns him with the major European realists—Balzac, Tolstoy, Zola—who Engels praised for illustrating “the social relations of their time”, even if they held conservative political views.³ Dreiser’s novels reveal: the commodification of human relationships, the fierce competition of capitalist society, the ideological deception of the “American dream,” and the oppressive influence of class status.
In Sister Carrie, the protagonist’s ascent reflects the influence of impersonal economic forces rather than personal determination. Similarly, in An American Tragedy, Clyde Griffiths’ downfall is driven by the systemic flaws of American capitalism rather than moral failings. Dreiser’s realism emphasises historical and social contexts rather than psychological or moral interpretations; it is rooted in materialism rather than idealism.
An American Tragedy: The Novel of the American Century
An American Tragedy is considered the most significant American novel of the twentieth century. It uniquely tackles the core paradox of its time: the hope of endless opportunity in a society divided by class inequality.
Clyde Griffiths exemplifies a common outcome of a society that encourages youth to pursue wealth but restricts their access to it. His story illustrates problems inherent in American capitalism. Dreiser’s success is in demonstrating how: Clyde’s desires are moulded by consumer culture; his social class limits his opportunities; economic pressures influence his moral decisions; and the legal system acts as a tool for maintaining class dominance. This embodies Marxist realism, exposing social realities through the individual’s fate.
Dreiser and the Class Struggle
Dreiser’s political journey was inconsistent and influenced by the turbulent events of the early 20th century. He expressed sympathy for the working class, backed the Russian Revolution, and criticised the abuses of American capitalism. However, he also, unfortunately, fell under the Popular Front’s ideological pressures. Like many artists of his time, he confused Stalinism with socialism and sacrificed his artistic independence to serve the diplomatic interests of the Soviet bureaucracy.
A Marxist evaluation must recognize both aspects: Dreiser’s realism as a pinnacle of American literature and his political surrender as a sign of Stalinism’s harmful effect on the American left. This duality is crucial for understanding twentieth-century cultural history.
Ruland & Bradbury’s Falsification of Dreiser
Ruland and Bradbury’s analysis of Dreiser exemplifies bourgeois literary mystification. They reduce him to a mere ‘naturalist,’ overlook his critique of capitalism, ignore his involvement with socialism, and fail to place his work within the context of class struggle. Instead, they interpret _An American Tragedy_ as a psychological analysis rather than a social critique. Their chapter on Dreiser is not only lacking but also driven by ideological bias. Recognizing Dreiser’s Marxist relevance would threaten the overall teleological narrative of their book, which ultimately celebrates postmodernism.
Dreiser reveals the social truth often denied by postmodernism: that human life is influenced by objective forces, society has an underlying structure, and capitalism is a historical system with a start and an end.
Dreiser and the Decline of American Literature
The decline of American literature after the 1930s cannot be fully understood without considering Dreiser. He symbolizes the last key figure in a realism tradition that aimed to expose the truths of American society. Following Dreiser, various forces—including Stalinism, anti-communism, the Cold War purges, the commercialization of culture, and the emergence of postmodernism—eroded the conditions necessary for meaningful artistic engagement with social realities. In the postwar period, the novel shifted towards formal experimentation, psychological depth, irony, pastiche, subjectivism, and identity politics. This shift was not driven by artistic innovation but by the ideological demands of a ruling class that prefers to avoid confronting reality.
Dreiser and the Marxist Reconstruction of American Literature
Dreiser is central to any Marxist reinterpretation of American literary history. He is the author who most deeply understood the social conflicts within American capitalism and vividly illustrated their tragic impacts on individual lives. Restoring Dreiser to his deserved position means placing the working class at the heart of American cultural history. It also involves rejecting postmodernist claims denying objective truth and reaffirming the Marxist belief that literature can—and should—expose society’s structural realities. Dreiser’s writings remain vital because the systemic issues he highlighted are still present. His novels speak not only to history but also to today’s crises of American capitalism, serving as tools in the ongoing fight for truth.
The Suppressed Marxist Tradition
Equally absent is the revolutionary Marxist tradition in American literary criticism: V.F. Calverton, Granville Hicks, Joseph Freeman, and the early Partisan Review before its capitulation to anti‑communism. Calverton insisted that literature must be understood as “a social product, conditioned by the economic and political forces of its time.”⁸ Hicks argued that the task of criticism was to reveal “the relation of literature to the class struggle.”⁹ These insights are incompatible with Ruland and Bradbury’s idealist framework and are therefore ignored.
Nor do the authors examine the catastrophic impact of Stalinism on American cultural life—the Popular Front’s subordination of artistic integrity to the diplomatic needs of the Soviet bureaucracy, the ideological confusion sown by the Communist Party’s zigzags, or the long‑term damage inflicted by the postwar purge. As Trotsky warned, the Stalinist bureaucracy represented “the antithesis of socialist culture.”¹⁰ Its influence on American letters cannot be omitted without falsifying the historical record.
Postmodernism: The Ideology of a Decaying Order
By the time Ruland and Bradbury arrive at postmodernism, their framework disintegrates into the very phenomenon it attempts to analyze. They regard postmodernism as a valid literary evolution, linking it to writers like Hawthorne, Melville, James, and Faulkner. However, this is a distorted misrepresentation. The gap between nineteenth-century realists—who believed literature could reveal social truths—and postmodernists—who deny the existence of truth—is not a progression but a downfall. The fragmentation, irony, and pastiche that postmodern theorists praise are not purely artistic innovations but signs of a ruling class that can no longer confront reality.Postmodernism is the cultural superstructure of a capitalism that has exhausted its progressive historical role.¹¹
Toward a Marxist History of American Literature
A truly Marxist history would start not with Puritan theology but with the material development of American capitalism: including primitive accumulation and the genocide of indigenous peoples, the slave South and its destruction during the Civil War, the rise of industrial capitalism and the class conflicts from 1877 to 1934, the betrayals involving the CIO and Stalinists, the Cold War, and the long decline of American imperialism. It would also view major writers—Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, James, Wharton, Dreiser, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Wright—not as isolated geniuses but as artists who, to varying degrees, reflected the social realities of life under capitalism.
And it would explain the decline of American literature since the 1930s not as a sequence of aesthetic fashions but as the cultural expression of a ruling class that has nothing left to say.
Conclusion: The Working Class as the Heir of Culture
Trotsky insisted that the working class is the heir of all genuine culture.¹² It does not need a literary history that ends in postmodern cynicism, relativism, and despair. It needs a literary history that arms it with the truth—about capitalism, about its own revolutionary role, and about the profound social forces that shape artistic creation.
Ruland and Bradbury’s From Puritanism to Postmodernism presents a sanitized, depoliticized, and reactionary view. It should be rejected not just academically but politically as well. Marxist criticism’s role is to free American literature from academic ideological biases and reestablish its connection to the fight for human emancipation.
Footnotes
Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1991), 182.
David North, In Defence of Leon Trotsky (Oak Park: Mehring Books, 2012), 245–60.
Karl Marx, The Civil War in the United States (New York: International Publishers, 1937), 54–60.
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 27–45.
Mike Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream (London: Verso, 1986), 89–120.
Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 3–40.
David Walsh, “Theodore Dreiser and the Tragedy of American Life,” World Socialist Web Site, 2001.
V.F. Calverton, The Liberation of American Literature (New York: Scribner’s, 1932), 12.
Granville Hicks, The Great Tradition (New York: Macmillan, 1933), 4.
Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972), 112.
North, In Defence of Leon Trotsky, 258.
Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, 40.
Bibliography
Calverton, V.F. The Liberation of American Literature. New York: Scribner’s, 1932.
Davis, Mike. Prisoners of the American Dream. London: Verso, 1986.
Engels, Friedrich. The Condition of the Working Class in England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Hicks, Granville. The Great Tradition. New York: Macmillan, 1933.
Marx, Karl. The Civil War in the United States. New York: International Publishers, 1937.
North, David. In Defence of Leon Trotsky. Oak Park: Mehring Books, 2012.
Schrecker, Ellen. No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Trotsky, Leon. Literature and Revolution. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1991.
———. The Revolution Betrayed. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972.
Walsh, David. “Theodore Dreiser and the Tragedy of American Life.” World Socialist Web Site. 2001.
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