Tag: imperialism

Biggar and Tombs’ Our Islands’ Story: An ideological brief for an empire preparing for war

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Nigel Biggar and Robert Tombs’Our Islands’ Story, published by Swift Press, is not a work of history but a political intervention presented in the language of scholarship. Its title deliberately echoes H.E. Marshall’s Our Island Story (1905), the Edwardian children’s book that taught generations of British schoolchildren a sanitised story of kings, battles and imperial destiny. David Cameron named it his favourite childhood book. Biggar and Tombs now offer an adult version for a society in crisis, as the ruling class seeks to rehabilitate empire as part of a broader ideological mobilisation for war.

The publisher’s own description makes its purpose clear. The book is presented as a corrective to what it calls “fashionable” accounts of Britain’s past, which focus on its crimes while overlooking its achievements. One endorsement praises it for highlighting “the good things that Britain and her Empire have done.” This is not scholarship with political implications; it is political propaganda presented as scholarship.

Both authors come to the subject with long-established agendas. In Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (2023), Biggar weighed the British Empire’s moral record, balancing railways, legal codes, and the suppression of the slave trade against Amritsar, the Bengal famine, and the detention camps in Kenya. Tombs, author of The English and Their History, founded History Reclaimed to oppose what it calls “woke distortions” of Britain’s past. He was also a prominent academic advocate for Brexit. Our Islands’ Story brings these projects together in a single, readable volume for the general public.

The balance‑sheet method: petty‑bourgeois moralism as ideology

The balance-sheet method is the book’s organising principle. It presents empire as a series of discrete policies- some good, some bad- to be judged by an impartial moralist. In doing so, it obscures what defines empire: a system of exploitation driven by British capital’s need for markets, raw materials and investment opportunities. The Irish Famine, the opium wars, the Bengal famine of 1943, Amritsar and the partition of India were not lapses in an otherwise benevolent project. They were logical outcomes of a profit-driven system. Treating these events as isolated “mistakes” falsifies their meaning. They were not deviations from the norm, but expressions of it: the violence required to maintain a global hierarchy of labour, property and political domination.

The balance‑sheet approach is not simply inadequate; it is ideological. It rests on the fiction that empire can be morally audited, its crimes offset by its “achievements.” This is the language of accountancy applied to human suffering. It presupposes that the historian stands outside history, weighing actions on a timeless moral scale. But no such figure exists. The “impartial moralist” is not a neutral observer. It is a class position: the petty‑bourgeois intellectual who claims to stand above classes while in reality serving the ruling class by laundering its crimes into moral verdicts. The balance sheet is the ideological form of this pretence: a way of transforming structural exploitation into a series of moral transactions.

Trotsky demolished this posture in Their Morals and Ours, exposing the appeal to eternal moral truths as a device that invariably justifies the interests of the powerful. He insisted that morality is historically conditioned. The ruling class invokes “universal” principles only to sanctify its own domination. Biggar’s method is a textbook example. His earlier Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning framed empire as a moral puzzle: how to weigh railways against famines, legal codes against massacres. But this is not moral reasoning; it is apologetics. It treats the products of exploitation as moral credits and the consequences of exploitation as moral debits, thereby preserving the system itself from scrutiny.

Biggar’s theological background is not incidental. The balance sheet is a secularised theodicy: sins weighed against graces to vindicate the whole. Theodicy seeks to reconcile evil’s existence with God’s goodness. Biggar’s project is to reconcile imperial violence with the supposed beneficence of British civilisation. The structure is identical. The moral ledger becomes a way to explain away atrocities rather than explain them. The question is never why empire produced famine, massacre and dispossession, but how these can be integrated into a narrative of ultimate righteousness.

This method also serves a crucial ideological function today. By dissolving empire into moral fragments, it obscures the class relations that produced it. Empire was not the collective achievement of “the nation.” It was the instrument of a ruling class whose interests lay in global expansion. The British working class had no more control over the decisions that produced the Irish Famine or the Bengal famine than the colonised populations who suffered them. To weigh empire’s “benefits” and “costs” as if they were shared nationally erases this fundamental division.

The balance‑sheet method therefore serves two purposes. It sanitises the past by transforming systemic violence into isolated moral lapses. And it prepares the present by offering a usable past for a ruling class once again turning to militarism and great‑power conflict. A population taught to see empire as “on balance” a force for good is more easily mobilised for new imperialist ventures. The moral accountant becomes the state’s ideological quartermaster.

The ideological work of “our”

The title’s possessive, Our Islands’ Story, performs essential ideological labour. It asserts a common national inheritance where none existed. The rhetorical move is simple but decisive: by placing the empire within the category of “our” history, Biggar and Tombs dissolve the class divisions that structured both the making of empire and its consequences. The British working class were not shareholders in empire; they were its domestic raw material, the source of the surplus value that financed imperial expansion. Their labour underwrote the industrial and financial power that enabled Britain’s global reach, yet they remained politically disenfranchised, economically exploited and socially subordinated. They had no more say in the decisions that produced famine in Bengal or massacres in Kenya than the peasants and workers who suffered them.

The ideological function of the possessive is therefore to universalise what was in reality a class project. Empire was not the achievement of a unified national community. It was the instrument of a ruling class whose interests lay in global expansion, the suppression of colonial resistance and the extraction of profit from subject peoples. To speak of “our” empire is to erase the fundamental division between those who benefited from imperial plunder and those who paid for it in Britain through exploitation and poverty, and across the colonies through dispossession, famine and repression.

This erasure is central to the book’s political purpose. By claiming empire as a shared inheritance, Biggar and Tombs seek to bind the working class to the ruling class’s ideological needs in the present. The appeal to national unity always precedes reaction. In periods of crisis, the ruling class turns to the myth of a common past to justify the demands it will soon impose: sacrifices for “national security,” acceptance of militarisation, and support for foreign policy adventures dressed up as moral obligations. The possessive in the title is therefore not a stylistic flourish but a strategic device. It lays the ideological groundwork for the argument that Britain’s imperial past is a source of pride, continuity, and collective identity.

But the “inheritance” Biggar and Tombs defend belongs only to those who profited from empire. The working class’s real inheritance is the history of struggle against exploitation at home and abroad: the Levellers, the Chartists, the 1926 General Strike, the solidarity of Lancashire cotton workers with the anti‑slavery cause. To reclaim that history is to reject the false unity of “our” islands and to recognise that the only genuine community of interest is the international working class, whose future lies not in reconciling with empire but in abolishing the system that produced it.

Slavery, abolition and the falsification of history

Although the book must be quoted directly once you have the text, its treatment of slavery and abolition is predictable. The standard apologetic line that Britain’s suppression of the slave trade redeems its earlier participation is a moral fable. It rests on the assumption that abolition was a spontaneous flowering of British civilisation, a moment when the nation’s conscience awoke and corrected its earlier sins. This is mythology. Enlightened rulers did not bestow abolition on enslaved people. It was the product of a specific historical conjuncture: the rise of industrial capitalism, which made slave‑based plantation production increasingly incompatible with British economic interests, combined with mass pressure from below, the working-class abolitionist movement, Caribbean slave revolts, and the political agitation of the oppressed themselves.

By the early nineteenth century, the economic foundations of empire were shifting. Industrial capitalism required wage labour, expanding markets, and new forms of investment. Plantation slavery, with its rigid labour system and limited consumer base, increasingly obstructed these needs. The ruling class did not abolish the slave trade out of moral revulsion but because British capitalism’s economic logic was changing. At the same time, enslaved people were not passive recipients of emancipation. Revolts in Jamaica, Barbados and Demerara shook the foundations of colonial rule. The Haitian Revolution demonstrated that slavery could not be maintained without permanent military occupation and escalating violence. In Britain, working-class abolitionists, including Lancashire cotton workers who later supported the Union during the American Civil War, pressured the ruling class in ways it could not ignore.

Even after abolition, British capital continued to profit from slave‑produced cotton and colonial labour. Lancashire mills were fed by cotton harvested by enslaved workers in the American South. British banks financed slave economies across the Atlantic. Colonial labour systems indenture, forced cultivation, punitive taxation reproduced the essential features of slavery under new names. The balance‑sheet method hides this continuity. By treating abolition as a moral credit that cancels earlier crimes, Biggar and Tombs obscure the fact that exploitation did not end in 1807 or 1833; it merely changed form.

The apologetic narrative of abolition serves the same ideological purpose as the rest of the book: to present empire as a moral project, flawed but ultimately benevolent, rather than as a system of global exploitation whose violence was structural, continuous and indispensable.

India, Ireland and the logic of imperial violence

The same method distorts India’s history. The Bengal famine of 1943 was not a natural disaster but the result of wartime requisitioning, price manipulation, and the diversion of grain by a colonial administration that prioritised imperial military needs. The famine directly expressed imperial policy under crisis: grain was exported from Bengal even as millions starved; Churchill’s War Cabinet rejected pleas for relief shipments because it needed shipping elsewhere; and colonial officials insisted the market must be allowed to “regulate” supply. The result was the death of three million people. To treat this as a tragic lapse, an unfortunate misjudgment in an otherwise benevolent imperial record, is to falsify its meaning. It was the predictable consequence of a system whose overriding priority was prosecuting Britain’s global war effort and protecting imperial interests, not the lives of colonial subjects.

Amritsar, likewise, was not an aberration but the normal operation of colonial rule under conditions of political resistance. The massacre of hundreds of unarmed civilians in 1919 was not the product of a rogue officer or a momentary breakdown in discipline. It was the logical extension of a regime built on coercion, surveillance and the suppression of dissent. The colonial state responded to mass political mobilisation with exemplary violence, designed to terrorise the population and reassert imperial authority. To isolate Amritsar as a “mistake” is to deny the structural character of colonial repression.

Ireland exposes the lie most starkly. The Great Famine was not a tragic misfortune but a social catastrophe produced by the enforcement of market discipline under colonial rule. British administrators refused to suspend grain exports, insisted that relief must not interfere with the “natural” operation of the market, and treated mass starvation as an unfortunate but necessary consequence of economic orthodoxy. The ideology of laissez‑faire was applied with lethal rigidity to a colonised population whose land, labour and political rights had already been stripped away. Any attempt to minimise or moralise the Famine as an unavoidable tragedy or a failure of compassion is the book’s most damning evidence of its ideological purpose. It reveals the balance‑sheet method for what it is: a device that dissolves structural violence into isolated moral episodes, preserving the legitimacy of the imperial system itself.

The treatment of India and Ireland thus exposes the core function of Biggar and Tombs’ project: to rehabilitate empire by severing its crimes from their economic and political foundations, transforming systemic exploitation into a series of unfortunate events that can be weighed, excused and ultimately forgiven.

Militarism and the ideological mobilisation for war

The timing of Our Islands’ Story is not accidental. The book arrives as governments across Europe pour money into rearmament and ideologically prepare their populations for war. In Britain, this mobilisation is inseparable from the ruling class’s role as NATO’s most aggressive European participant in the war against Russia, its surge in defence spending, and the media’s demand for an “end to the post‑Cold War peace dividend.” The political establishment speaks openly of a “pre‑war world,” of the need to rebuild munitions stockpiles, expand the arms industry, and prepare society for prolonged conflict. In such a climate, rehabilitating empire is not an academic exercise but an ideological necessity. A ruling class that seeks to wage new imperialist wars must first sanitise the old ones.

Militarism requires a usable past. A population taught to feel shame about colonial massacres is harder to mobilise than one taught that Britain has been, “on balance,” a force for good. The authors’ complaint about a “demoralising” view of history reveals more than it admits. Their concern is not historical accuracy but national morale. They object not to falsehoods but to truths that undermine the ideological cohesion required for war. The balance‑sheet method, with its moral credits and debits, functions as a psychological preparation: it reassures the public that Britain’s global interventions have historically been justified, even noble, and therefore that future interventions may be as well.

The book’s celebrity endorsements fit this pattern. John Grey, the philosopher of liberal disillusionment, praises it as essential reading. Its defence of empire as a remedy for “partisan narratives” speaks volumes about the state of official intellectual life. The liberal intelligentsia, having abandoned any serious critique of capitalism, now embraces a nostalgic nationalism that aligns seamlessly with the geopolitical aims of the ruling class. The ideological convergence between conservative imperial apologetics and liberal pessimism is not accidental. Both currents seek to stabilise a crisis-ridden social order by appealing to a mythologised past.

None of this means that the left‑liberal accounts Biggar and Tombs attack are the alternative. Much of what passes for “decolonising” history in universities substitutes moral denunciation and racial categories for class analysis. It leaves the profit system which produced both empire and its present‑day successors off the hook. The liberal critique of empire often frames itself as a struggle over national identity: whether Britain should feel pride or guilt. This is the mirror image of the right‑wing narrative, which insists on pride and rejects guilt. Both approaches treat history as a moral drama rather than as the unfolding of class relations and economic imperatives.

This symmetry is not new. As Nick Beams demonstrated in his analysis of Australia’s “History Wars,” both the revisionist right and its liberal critics treat history as a question of national identity rather than class struggle. The same pattern repeats here: both sides moralise, and neither offers class analysis. The right defends empire as a civilising mission; the liberal academy condemns it as a racial injustice. But both frameworks obscure the underlying reality: empire was a product of capitalism, driven by the need for markets, raw materials and strategic dominance. Its violence expressed class interests, not national character, whether noble or wicked. To frame empire as either national pride or national shame is to accept the nationalist premise that “the nation” acted as a unified subject. In reality, the British working class had no more control over imperial policy than the colonised populations who suffered its consequences.

The real history of these islands is not the story Biggar and Tombs tell. It includes the Levellers and the Chartists, the Irish national struggle, the 1926 General Strike, and Lancashire cotton workers’ solidarity with the anti‑slavery cause in the American Civil War. It includes the mass movements against imperialist war, the struggles of miners, dockers and engineers, and the internationalist traditions of the British working class. These movements were not marginal footnotes to the national story; they were the decisive expressions of the only social force capable of opposing imperialism: the working class. Their history shows that workers’ interests in Britain never aligned with the ruling class’s interests at home or abroad. The working class fought for democratic rights, social equality and international solidarity, while the ruling class pursued profit, domination and war.

This history points not to reconciliation with Britain’s imperial past but to the international struggle for socialism. The working class’s inheritance is not the empire but the fight against it: the strikes, mutinies, protests, and political movements that challenged capital’s power and its global system of exploitation. Reclaiming that history means rejecting the ideological project embodied in Our Islands’ Story. It is to recognise that the only genuine community of interest is the international working class, whose future lies not in rehabilitating empire but in abolishing the capitalist system that produced it.

Our Islands’ Story is an ideological artefact of a ruling class preparing for war and seeking to rehabilitate its imperial past. Its method is moralistic, its history selective, its politics reactionary. Against this stands the working-class history, the only force capable of opposing imperialism and preventing the catastrophe toward which capitalism is driving humanity. The task today, as in every period of crisis, is to arm the working class with historical truth, not the sanitised myths of bourgeois historians. Only on that basis can a movement oppose war, defend democratic rights, and fight for a socialist future.

Bibliography

Marxist Theory and Method

  • Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vols. I–III.
  • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto.
  • Leon Trotsky, Their Morals and Ours.
  • Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution.
  • V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.
  • Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital.
  • Nick Beams, “The ‘History Wars’ and the Politics of the Past,” World Socialist Web Site, 2000–2001.

World Socialist Web Site Analysis

  • Tom Scripps, “British Imperialism and the Drive to War,” WSWS May Day Report, 2023.
  • Jean Shaoul, “Emergency Exits: Britain’s Counterinsurgency Wars and the Logic of Empire,” World Socialist Web Site, 2024.
  • Chris Marsden and Thomas Scripps, “NATO’s War Against Russia and the Militarisation of Europe,” WSWS, 2023–2024.
  • David North, The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century.
  • David North, A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony 1990–2016.

British Empire: Structure, Violence, and Political Economy

  • Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World.
  • Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya.
  • Caroline Elkins, Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire.
  • Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India.
  • Utsa Patnaik, The Republic of Hunger and Other Essays.
  • Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation.
  • Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (for contrast with apologetic historiography).
  • J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study.

Ireland and Colonial Political Economy

  • Cecil Woodham‑Smith, The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845–1849.
  • Christine Kinealy, This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845–52.
  • Peter Grey, Famine, Land and Politics: British Government and Irish Society 1843–50.

India, Famine, and Colonial Rule

  • Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II.
  • Sugata Bose, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal Since 1770.
  • Bipan Chandra, The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India.
  • Ranajit Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlement.

Slavery, Abolition, and Capitalism

  • Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery.
  • Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery.
  • Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery.
  • Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery.
  • Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History.
  • David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution.

British Working Class History and Internationalism

  • E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class.
  • John Foster, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution.
  • Robert Gildea, Empires of the Mind: The Colonial Past and the Politics of the Present.
  • Kevin Morgan, Bolshevism and the British Left.
  • Logie Barrow and Ian Bullock, Democracy and the Labour Movement: Essays in Honour of Henry Pelling.
  • Gwyn A. Williams, The Search for Beulah Land: The Welsh and the Atlantic Revolution.

Contemporary Ideology, Culture Wars, and Historical Revisionism

  • Priyamvada Gopal, Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent.
  • Paul Gilroy, Postcolonial Melancholia.
  • Stefan Collini, Common Reading: Critics, Historians, Publics.
  • David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History (for contrast with liberal racial framing).
  • Robert Tombs, The English and Their History (primary source for critique).
  • Nigel Biggar, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (primary source for critique).

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This: Liberal moral revulsion and the political dead end of the intelligentsia.

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A book born of a historic crime

Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This emerges from one of the defining atrocities of the twenty-first century: the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. On October 25, 2023, three weeks into the bombardment, El Akkad published a brief social-media post predicting that, once accountability became impossible and dissent cost nothing, “everyone will claim to have always opposed the slaughter.” Viewed more than ten million times, the post captured a truth millions instinctively recognised: having justified and facilitated the mass killing, the political and media establishment would one day try to rewrite its own record. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, the book that grew from that sentence has resonated deeply with those horrified by Gaza’s destruction and repelled by the complicity of governments, universities, cultural institutions, and the press.

That response is itself politically significant. It expresses the profound alienation of broad sections of the population, especially young people, from the political establishment that has funded, armed, and defended the annihilation of an entire population. The disgust is real, deep, and justified. It reflects not only revulsion at images of children pulled from rubble, hospitals bombed, and entire neighbourhoods levelled, but also the recognition that institutions claiming to embody democratic values have revealed themselves as instruments of imperialist violence. Millions have watched the Trump administration, the European Union, and every major imperialist power provide diplomatic cover, military hardware, and political legitimacy to a campaign of extermination. Millions have watched the media parrot lies, suppress evidence, and smear protesters as antisemites. Millions have watched university administrators summon riot police against students demanding an end to genocide.

El Akkad’s book gives voice to this disgust. It catalogues the moral cowardice of editors who refused to use the word “genocide,” cultural figures who stayed silent to protect their careers, and a liberal intelligentsia that retreated into evasions and platitudes. Written in anger, the book’s anger is entirely justified. But disgust, however sincere, is not a political programme. Here, El Akkad’s book reveals the limitations of an entire social layer: the liberal intelligentsia, shaken by the abyss but unable to explain how it arrived there or how humanity can escape it. The book is framed as a “breakup letter with the West,” a lament for betrayed values. But the genocide in Gaza is not a betrayal of Western values; it expresses the real interests of the ruling classes of the United States and Europe. Imperialism did not lose its soul in Gaza. It revealed its essence.

El Akkad’s category of “the West” is therefore politically useless. It treats imperialism as a moral failure rather than a socio‑economic system rooted in the domination of finance capital and the struggle for global hegemony. It conflates rulers and ruled, obscuring the decisive fact that the same governments that bomb Gaza are waging war on the living standards and democratic rights of workers at home. The millions who marched in London, New York and Berlin; the dockworkers who refused to load arms shipments; the students beaten by police- these too are “the West.” The question is not whether the West has lied, but which class rules it, and which class can end that rule.

El Akkad’s book records the moment when a section of the liberal intelligentsia saw the abyss. But seeing the abyss is not the same as understanding it. And understanding it is not the same as developing the political perspective required to overcome it. The task is not to mourn the collapse of liberal illusions, but to arm the working class with a scientific understanding of imperialism and the revolutionary programme needed to end it.

The book’s strengths: A searing portrait of moral cowardice

El Akkad, born in Egypt, raised partly in Qatar and educated in Canada, spent years as a journalist covering Guantánamo, the war in Afghanistan and the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson. These experiences form the emotional and political substratum of his book. He writes not as a detached observer but as someone who has repeatedly witnessed the machinery of state violence and the moral evasions that accompany it. His anger toward the media, cultural institutions and the liberal intelligentsia is genuine and sharply expressed. He catalogues the editors who refused to use the word “genocide,” the university administrators who summoned riot police against peaceful encampments, and the literary figures who remained silent to protect their careers. As he puts it, these were the people who “would not use the word ‘genocide,’ the university administrators who sent riot police against encampments, the literary figures who stayed silent to protect their careers.”

His contempt for the bien-pensant press’s “both sides” evasions is entirely justified. The media’s role in laundering the genocide through euphemisms, distortions, and the systematic erasure of Palestinian voices was not an incidental failure but a structural function. The press acted as an ideological arm of the state, manufacturing consent for mass murder while presenting itself as a neutral arbiter. El Akkad’s indictment of this cowardice is one of the book’s strongest elements. As a description of the moral rot of official society, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This has undeniable force. But a description is not an explanation. And moral revulsion is not a strategy.

This is the book’s decisive limitation, and the social layer it represents. El Akkad’s outrage targets individuals and institutions that failed to live up to their professed values. But the failure is not personal; it is systemic. The media did not avoid the word “genocide” because of individual cowardice alone. They avoided it because acknowledging genocide would implicate the entire political and economic order of American imperialism. University administrators did not call riot police because they were personally timid; they did so because universities function as corporate entities integrated into the state apparatus. Literary figures did not remain silent merely out of fear for their reputations; they remained silent because the cultural establishment is structurally dependent on the same class interests that prosecute imperialist war.

El Akkad’s book captures the symptoms but not the disease. It records the moral collapse of liberal institutions but does not explain why that collapse was inevitable. The abyss shakes the liberal intelligentsia, but it cannot comprehend the historical and class forces that produced it. Its response is emotional rather than analytical, moral rather than political. It recoils from barbarism but cannot identify the social force that could end it.

The tragedy of Gaza cannot be understood through the lens of personal betrayal or institutional hypocrisy. It must be understood as the outcome of an imperialist global system driven by the interests of finance capital and enforced through military violence. To oppose genocide requires more than disgust; it requires a scientific understanding of this system and a strategy rooted in the independent mobilisation of the international working class.

The central flaw: “The West” as a moral category

El Akkad’s central analytic category is “the West,” understood as a set of professed values- freedom, human rights, the rule of law- now exposed as hypocrisy. This framework is profoundly inadequate. It treats imperialism as a moral failure rather than a socio‑economic system rooted in definite class interests. It assumes the ruling classes of the United States and Europe have betrayed their own ideals, when in fact those ideals have always served as ideological cover for pursuing global hegemony.

The genocide in Gaza is not a betrayal of the “values” of American and European capitalism. It expresses the ruling classes’ real interests in those countries. For more than a century, imperialist policy in the Middle East has been determined by the drive to control the region’s resources, strategic routes and geopolitical chokepoints. From the Sykes–Picot Agreement to the CIA‑engineered coup against Mossadegh, from the arming of the Shah to the invasion of Iraq, the imperialist powers have treated the region as a battleground for the assertion of their economic and strategic dominance. Israel functions as the spearhead of US imperialism in the region, a heavily militarised outpost whose role is to enforce American interests through overwhelming violence.

The Biden administration’s unconditional support for the slaughter continued and escalated under Trump; it was not a moral lapse. It was policy. It flowed from the strategic calculations of the Pentagon, the State Department and the intelligence agencies, which view Israel as indispensable to maintaining US control over the Middle East. The bombs dropped on Gaza were not the result of moral confusion or political cowardice; they were the logical outcome of imperialist strategy.

To speak of “the West” as a single moral community obscures the decisive question: class. It collapses rulers and ruled into a single category, erasing the fundamental antagonism between the capitalist class that directs imperialist policy and the working class that suffers its consequences. The same governments that bomb Gaza are waging war on the jobs, wages and democratic rights of workers at home. They slash social programmes, attack trade unions, criminalise protest and funnel billions into the military‑industrial complex. The working class is not the beneficiary of imperialism; it is one of its victims.

The dockworkers who refused to load arms shipments, the students beaten by police, and the millions who marched in London, New York and Berlin are also “the West.” Their actions demonstrate that opposition to genocide is not geographically or culturally determined but socially determined. It arises not from “Western values” but from the objective interests of the working class, which has no stake in imperialist domination and every reason to oppose it.

The question is not whether the West has lied, but which class rules it, and which class can end that rule. The ruling class lies because its interests require it. It speaks of human rights while arming dictatorships, of democracy while supporting coups, of peace while preparing for war. These contradictions are not accidental; they are inherent in a system based on exploitation, competition and the global struggle for markets and resources.

El Akkad’s category of “the West” therefore functions as a political diversion. It directs attention away from the capitalist class and toward an amorphous cultural entity. It encourages despair over analysis, moral lamentation over political struggle. It suggests that the problem is hypocrisy rather than imperialism, values rather than class power.

Liberal disillusionment: Expecting better from those who never offered it

The emotional centre of El Akkad’s book is disappointment with liberalism, particularly the Democratic Party milieu in which much of the American literary world lives. He writes as a man who believed the West offered justice and discovered that much of what it promises is a lie. This sense of betrayal permeates the text. It is the disillusionment of someone who expected moral courage from institutions that have never demonstrated it. The shock is genuine, but it also reveals the political naïveté of a social layer that mistook liberal rhetoric for liberal reality.

Yet the book never draws the necessary political conclusion: the Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street and the military‑intelligence apparatus. It is not a vehicle for reform, and appeals to its conscience are politically bankrupt. The same party that postures as defender of human rights has overseen drone assassinations, mass surveillance, wars of aggression and the arming of Israel to the teeth. Its role in Gaza is not an aberration but the continuation of a decades‑long imperialist trajectory. To imagine that such a party can be pressured into moral action is to misunderstand its class character entirely.

Instead, El Akkad retreats into the language of individual moral choice- refusal, bearing witness, what one person can do as a citizen and father. These impulses are not ignoble. They reflect a sincere desire to resist barbarism. But they are politically impotent. Individual refusal does not stop bombs. Bearing witness does not halt the machinery of imperialist war. The moral courage of isolated individuals, however admirable, cannot substitute for a collective, organised, class‑based struggle against the system that produces genocide.

The book is permeated by helplessness, the direct product of its failure to identify any social force capable of transforming society. El Akkad sees the abyss but cannot locate the agency capable of overcoming it. His narrative is moral collapse without political resolution, outrage without strategy, and despair without direction. This is not a personal failing but the liberal intelligentsia’s characteristic limitation: it recoils from the consequences of imperialism yet remains ideologically tethered to the very institutions that enforce it.

The tragedy of Gaza demands more than sorrow or revulsion. It demands a scientific understanding of imperialism and the recognition that only the international working class mobilised independently of all capitalist parties possesses the power to end the system responsible for such crimes.

The politics of moral witness: A dead end

This impasse mirrors the pseudo-left’s broader crisis. In a March 2024 lecture at the University of Michigan, David North addressed Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation and journalist Chris Hedges’s celebration of it, who hailed the act as “a potent political message.” North’s answer applies equally to El Akkad’s politics of moral witness. He insisted that the turn toward individual acts of desperation reflects not political clarity but political exhaustion. As North explained:

“The fundamental driving force of social revolution is not inchoate and desperate rage but an understanding of the objective contradictions of the world capitalist system and the mass social action that is guided by the comprehension of these contradictions.”

This is the essential point. Rage, grief, moral shock- these are powerful emotions, but they do not constitute a strategy. They do not identify the social forces that can halt imperialist barbarism. They do not explain the historical and economic processes that produce genocide. And they do not provide a path for the working class to intervene as an independent political force.

The problem confronting the movement against the genocide, North insisted, “has not been public indifference but the absence of a political perspective and strategy.” Millions have marched, occupied campuses, blocked ports, and defied police repression. The obstacle is not apathy but the political framework that has confined these actions. As North noted, the protests “have remained within the confines of the existing structures of bourgeois politics… directed not toward the independent political mobilisation of the working class against capitalist rule but to the application of pressure on bourgeois governments.”

This is precisely the dead end El Akkad’s book expresses. His narrative is one of moral collapse without political resolution. He documents institutional cowardice but cannot explain why those institutions behaved as they did. He condemns hypocrisy but does not identify the class interests that make hypocrisy inevitable. He recoils from genocide but cannot conceive of a social force capable of stopping it. The result is a politics of witness, not a politics of struggle.

El Akkad’s book is therefore a literary expression of the broader impasse of the pseudo‑left: a movement that responds to imperialist barbarism with moral anguish rather than scientific analysis, with individual gestures rather than collective strategy, with despair rather than revolutionary perspective. It is a politics that sees the abyss but cannot see beyond it.

Identity politics: A reactionary diversion

The promotional framing around El Akkad’s book speaks of a “deep fracture” for Black, brown and Indigenous Americans and for younger generations who had kept faith in Western ideals. This racial and generational framing- the stock-in-trade of identity politics- divides the working class precisely where unity is required. It interprets political disillusionment not as a universal response to imperialist barbarism but as the particular trauma of specific demographic groups. In doing so, it transforms what is fundamentally a class question into a mosaic of racial and generational grievances.

The opposition to the Gaza genocide has cut across every racial, ethnic and national line. Millions of workers and youth of every background have marched in London, New York, Berlin, Paris, Johannesburg, Sydney and São Paulo. Dockworkers of diverse origins refused to load shipments of arms. Students from every demographic category faced police repression. Healthcare workers, teachers, postal workers, artists and engineers joined demonstrations demanding an end to the slaughter. The movement’s strength lies in its universality: it expresses the shared interests of the international working class.

Identity politics serves the ruling class by fragmenting this unity. It encourages people to view political questions through the lens of personal identity rather than social position. It substitutes demographic categories for class analysis, obscuring the fact that imperialist violence is directed not at particular racial groups but at entire populations whose land, resources and strategic position are coveted by the major powers. It reduces the struggle against genocide to a matter of “representation,” “visibility,” or “betrayed ideals,” rather than confronting the capitalist system that produces such crimes.

Moreover, identity politics provides the ruling class with a convenient ideological shield. Governments and corporations promote diversity initiatives, symbolic gestures and rhetorical acknowledgements of historical injustice while continuing to wage war, suppress dissent and attack workers’ living standards. The same institutions that celebrate “inclusion” and “equity” have supported the bombardment of Gaza, armed Israel, censored pro‑Palestinian voices and deployed police against student encampments. Identity politics allows them to present themselves as progressive while pursuing reactionary policies.

By adopting this framework, El Akkad’s book inadvertently reinforces these divisions. It interprets disillusionment as a crisis of particular groups rather than a crisis of the entire social order. In doing so, it obscures the only force capable of ending imperialist barbarism: the unified, international working class.

The embrace of the establishment: Outrage without threat

The book’s reception carries a bitter irony. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This won the 2025 National Book Award for Nonfiction, alongside a stream of honours from the same cultural establishment whose silence El Akkad condemns. Institutions that spent two years averting their eyes now celebrate a book about averting one’s eyes. The very editors, prize committees and cultural gatekeepers who refused to speak plainly while Gaza burned now congratulate themselves for recognising a work that laments their cowardice. In this sense, the book’s success is not a contradiction but a confirmation of El Akkad’s own prediction: the official world is already preparing to have “always been against this.”

This embrace is possible because the book, for all its anger, poses no threat to anyone. It indicts complicity, not capitalism; hypocrisy, not the profit system that requires it. It condemns silence but does not expose the class interests that make silence inevitable. It mourns the collapse of liberal ideals but does not challenge the social order that weaponises those ideals in the service of imperialist violence. A literary establishment can absorb moral outrage. It cannot absorb a programme.

The cultural institutions that now celebrate El Akkad’s book are deeply integrated into the capitalist state’s ideological apparatus. Their function is not to challenge imperialism but to manage dissent, convert political anger into safe moral sentiment, and ensure outrage never develops into revolutionary consciousness. They can reward a book that expresses sorrow, disappointment and disgust. They cannot reward a book that identifies the working class as the revolutionary force capable of ending imperialist war. They can honour a narrative of personal disillusionment. They cannot honour a call for the overthrow of the system responsible for genocide.

The establishment’s embrace of El Akkad’s book therefore reveals more about the establishment than about the book. It demonstrates bourgeois culture’s capacity to metabolise criticism, turn even the documentation of its own failures into a commodity, and present moral anguish as a substitute for political clarity. The book’s success signals not institutional repentance but institutional self‑preservation. It allows the ruling class to acknowledge “mistakes” without confronting the system that produced them.

In the end, the book’s reception underscores this review’s central argument: moral revulsion, however sincere, is not a strategy. Only a scientific, class‑based programme can confront the forces responsible for genocide, and that is precisely what the cultural establishment cannot tolerate.

What is to be done: From revulsion to revolutionary consciousness

None of this dismisses El Akkad’s sincerity or the genuine emotion the book has evoked. The disgust millions feel toward the political and media establishment is a healthy, progressive development. It marks a profound shift in consciousness: a recognition that the institutions long presented as guardians of democracy, human rights and liberal values have revealed themselves as instruments of imperialist violence. The revulsion is real, deep and justified. But disgust, however sincere, must become consciousness.

The lesson of Gaza is not that “the West” has lost its soul. It is that imperialism, in its death agony, is driving toward ever greater barbarism, including world war. The genocide in Gaza is not an aberration but a warning: a demonstration of what the ruling class is prepared to do as it confronts economic crisis, geopolitical rivalry and mounting social opposition at home. The same governments that levelled Gaza are preparing for confrontation with Russia and China, expanding military budgets, militarising society and attacking democratic rights. The logic of imperialism inexorably leads to catastrophe.

Only the international working class, mobilised independently of all capitalist parties on a socialist programme, can stop it. As the WSWS editorial board has stated, the genocidal war in Gaza “can only be stopped through the unified and revolutionary action of the international working class.” This is not a rhetorical flourish but a scientific assessment of social forces. The working class, bound together across borders by global production, possesses both the objective interest and the collective power to halt the machinery of war. Dockworkers refusing to load arms shipments, autoworkers striking against militarised austerity, students defying police repression- these actions point toward the real agency capable of ending imperialist barbarism.

El Akkad’s book records the moment when a section of the liberal intelligentsia saw the abyss. But seeing the abyss is not the same as understanding it. And understanding it is not the same as developing the political perspective required to overcome it. The liberal intelligentsia recoils from genocide but remains ideologically tethered to the Democratic Party, identity politics and the moral language of individual witness. It mourns the collapse of liberal ideals but cannot conceive of a world beyond capitalism. Its despair stems from its political limitations.

The task is to explain how humanity reached the edge of the abyss and how it can escape. That requires not moral revulsion but a scientific understanding of the state’s class character, the nature of imperialism, and the historical role of the working class. It requires building a revolutionary leadership capable of turning outrage into strategy, protest into power, and moral clarity into political action. Only by consciously mobilising the international working class can we bring the profit system to its knees and finally end the barbarism it generates.

Bibliography

Primary Text

  • El Akkad, Omar. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2025.

Statements, Lectures, and Editorials

  • North, David. “The Political Meaning of the Self‑Immolation of Aaron Bushnell.” Lecture delivered at the University of Michigan, March 2024.
  • World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board. “Mobilise the Working Class to Stop the Gaza Genocide.” World Socialist Web Site, 2023.
  • North, David. The Crisis of American Democracy: The Political and Social Foundations of the January 6 Coup Attempt. Mehring Books, 2022.
  • North, David. The Heritage We Defend: A Contribution to the History of the Fourth International. Mehring Books, 1988.

WSWS Coverage of Gaza and Imperialism

  • Grey, Andre Damon, et al. “The US‑Backed Israeli Genocide in Gaza.” World Socialist Web Site, 2023–2025.
  • Kishore, Joseph. “The Role of the Working Class in the Fight Against Imperialist War.” World Socialist Web Site, 2024.
  • Van Auken, Bill. “US Imperialism and the Middle East: A Century of Intervention.” World Socialist Web Site, 2023.

Historical and Theoretical Works on Imperialism

  • Lenin, V. I. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. 1916.
  • Luxemburg, Rosa. The Accumulation of Capital. 1913.
  • Trotsky, Leon. The War and the International. 1914.
  • Trotsky, Leon. The Permanent Revolution. 1930.
  • Trotsky, Leon. The Transitional Program. 1938.

Works on Liberalism, Identity Politics, and the Crisis of the Intelligentsia

  • Reed, Adolph. Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene. New Press, 2000.
  • Michaels, Walter Benn. The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality. Metropolitan Books, 2006.
  • Lasch, Christopher. The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. W. W. Norton, 1995.

Journalistic and Political Context

  • Human Rights Watch. Israel/Palestine: Events of 2023–2025. HRW Annual Reports.
  • United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Gaza Situation Reports, 2023–2025.

Miguel Ángel Asturias, United Fruit, and the Class Dynamics of the Guatemalan Bourgeoisie.

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

Verso’s republication of Miguel Ángel Asturias’s Weekend in Guatemala provides not only a literary reflection on the 1954 CIA coup but also a chance to examine the underlying class struggles that facilitated such foreign intervention. The fall of Jacobo Árbenz’s government was not merely an external imposition on a united nation; it stemmed from an internal class conflict where the national bourgeoisie—hesitant, dependent, and structurally unable to resist imperialism—gave way at the critical moment.

Imperialism and the Guatemalan Bourgeoisie: A Relationship of Dependency, Not Invasion

The main liberal-nationalist story, common in mid-20th-century Latin American literature, depicts the coup as an external attack: the United States, via the CIA and supporting United Fruit, intervenes in Guatemala to crush its democratic efforts. While this is accurate to a degree, it overlooks the internal class dynamics that rendered Guatemala particularly susceptible.

Guatemala’s bourgeoisie was not a class capable of independent national development. It was a comprador stratum whose wealth came from its integration into foreign capital, initially British and later predominantly American. United Fruit did not just operate in Guatemala; it influenced the country’s entire economic system. The fortunes of the national elite were linked to the plantation economy, export dependency, and semi-feudal land relations. Árbenz’s modest agrarian reform threatened not only United Fruit’s assets but also the social order that the Guatemalan ruling class relied on.

When the crisis occurred, the bourgeoisie failed to defend the elected government. Instead, they either fled, hesitated, or collaborated with the coup plotters. The officer corps—trained, funded, and ideologically influenced by the United States—acted as the domestic tool for imperial intervention. The coup was not just foreign aggression; it was a coordinated effort between imperialism and its internal allies.

The Limits of Reformism: Árbenz and the National Democratic Illusion

Árbenz’s government marked the peak of Guatemala’s reformist nationalism. It aimed to modernise the nation by redistributing land, building infrastructure, and limiting foreign corporate influence. However, it operated within a capitalist framework, encouraging the national bourgeoisie to spearhead a “democratic development” project.

This strategy failed. The Guatemalan bourgeoisie could not support democratic reform because of its structural ties to imperialism. Its economic interests were tied to foreign capital, its political stance was influenced by anti-communism, and its social foundation depended on sustaining landlord authority. When faced with the choice between promoting national development and succumbing to imperial control, it chose the latter.

Árbenz’s tragedy reflects the broader failure of reformist movements trying to balance national sovereignty with capitalist property relations. His government failed to mobilise the working class and peasantry as an independent political force due to fears of radicalisation. Instead, it aimed for a compromise with an uncooperative class, leading to isolation, paralysis, and eventual defeat.

Asturias’s book vividly captures the sensory experience of the coup—the aircraft overhead, the panic, and the social fragmentation. However, the underlying mechanism was economic. United Fruit’s control over Guatemala extended beyond land ownership, functioning as an extraction system that prioritised corporate profit over national well-being. The company governed vast arable lands, railways, ports, telecommunication systems, political patronage networks, and the ideological machinery of anti-communism.

When Árbenz proposed compensating United Fruit based on the land’s declared tax value—considerably lower than its real worth—the company responded by leveraging the entire power of the US state. This coup clearly demonstrated how corporate interests can lead to military intervention. It painfully revealed that imperialism is not just a foreign policy but also a class struggle: the global enforcement of capitalist property rights through force.

Asturias’s Weekend in Guatemala and the Pseudo‑Left

Miguel Ángel Asturias’s Weekend in Guatemala remains one of the most furious literary indictments of imperialist violence in Latin America. Yet its renewed relevance today lies not only in its depiction of the 1954 CIA coup, but in how sharply it exposes the political bankruptcy of the contemporary pseudo‑left—those forces that speak the language of anti‑imperialism while accommodating themselves to the very structures that produced Guatemala’s catastrophe.

Asturias wrote from the standpoint of a society shattered by foreign intervention. His polyphonic, documentary style captures the disintegration of national life under the combined pressure of United Fruit, the CIA, and Guatemala’s own comprador elites. What the novel reveals—often more clearly than the nationalist frameworks of its era—is that imperialism operates through internal allies: landlords, military officers, and a bourgeoisie structurally dependent on foreign capital. The coup succeeded not because Guatemala was weak, but because its ruling class was organically tied to US interests.

This insight stands in stark contrast to the politics of today’s pseudo‑left. In place of a materialist analysis of class forces, they offer moral outrage, identity‑based rhetoric, and selective anti‑imperialism that leaves the foundations of capitalist power untouched. They denounce “intervention” in the abstract while supporting governments and parties that collaborate with imperialism in practice. They celebrate “progressive” administrations that, like Árbenz’s reformist project, seek to reconcile national sovereignty with capitalist property relations—an impossibility demonstrated with brutal clarity in 1954.

Asturias’s novel exposes the hollowness of such politics. The coup was not defeated by appeals to national unity, nor by the moral denunciation of foreign aggression. It required the independent mobilisation of the working class and peasantry—something Árbenz’s government, constrained by its reformist program, could not undertake. The pseudo‑left repeats this failure today, substituting NGO activism, parliamentary manoeuvring, and cultural radicalism for the class struggle necessary to confront imperialism’s economic foundations.

The recurring motif of aircraft overhead—imperialism arriving first as noise, then as fire—remains an apt metaphor for contemporary pseudo‑left politics. They hear the noise, comment on it, aestheticise it, and produce endless discourse about its symbolic meaning. What they refuse to confront is the mechanism that produces the sound: the fusion of corporate power and state violence, defended by domestic elites and sustained by global capitalism.

Asturias’s Weekend in Guatemala therefore reminds us that imperialism is not a moral failing but a structural necessity of capitalism. The pseudo‑left, which seeks to humanise or regulate this system rather than abolish it, stands politically closer to the forces that destroyed Árbenz than to those who resisted them. The novel’s rage, its fragmentation, its refusal of narrative consolation—all point toward a truth the pseudo‑left cannot acknowledge: that only the independent political action of the working class can confront the combined power of domestic and international capital.

In this sense, Asturias’s book is not merely a historical document. It is a warning. The catastrophe of 1954 was not an aberration but a demonstration of what capitalist property relations require. The pseudo‑left’s task has become to obscure this reality. Asturias’s achievement is to make it impossible to forget.

Asturias’s Weekend in Guatemala and Contemporary Historiography

Miguel Ángel Asturias’s Weekend in Guatemala has once again become a topic of scholarly debate, especially as historians now view the 1954 coup not as a Cold War anomaly but as a clear example of US imperial intervention in support of corporate interests. Recent research supports Asturias’s core political argument: that Washington orchestrated Árbenz’s overthrow, carried it out through the CIA, and defended it with propaganda that framed the action as an anti-communist effort while actually protecting United Fruit’s landholdings.

Recent studies characterise the novel as a documentary-style intervention, blending literary techniques with historical reconstruction. Asturias’s polyphonic structure—shifting between reportage, grotesque satire, and psychological portraiture—is seen as a conscious effort to depict the fragmentation of national life under imperial pressure. Scholars highlight that this variety is driven by realism influenced by catastrophe: the coup broke narrative coherence, and Asturias’s structure reflects that disruption.

Historians analysing the coup have expanded the economic perspective that Asturias only hints at. They now precisely document United Fruit’s dominance over land, infrastructure, and political influence, highlighting its role in mobilising the US government as a classic case of corporate and state collaboration. Recent research also emphasises the role of Guatemala’s elite—landlords, officers, and the comprador bourgeoisie—whose reliance on foreign capital made them willing collaborators. Asturias largely omits this aspect, reflecting mid-20th-century nationalist views that often saw imperialism as an external force rather than a relationship maintained by local elites.

Asturias’s depiction of imperialism as a sensory invasion is especially perceptive. The repeated imagery of aircraft flying overhead—a sound warning of coming violence—mirrors historical accounts of psychological warfare, aerial bombings, and radio propaganda aimed at spreading panic and lowering morale. Today, historians see these tactics as early examples of hybrid warfare, a concept Asturias grasped intuitively.

In today’s historiography, Weekend in Guatemala stands out as both a literary milestone and an early form of counter-history concerning the coup. Its main limitations—particularly its shallow class analysis—mirror the ideological perspective of its time. However, its strengths—such as its documentary drive, formal experimentation, and bold depiction of imperial violence—make it increasingly essential. The novel foresaw a view now widely accepted by historians: that the fall of Árbenz’s government marked the beginning of a prolonged counterrevolution, which eventually led to a civil war rooted in a single weekend of imperial exploitation.

The June 1954 events went beyond a simple regime change; they signified a class counterrevolution. The toppling of Árbenz’s government restored landlord dominance, strengthened the military, and increased Guatemala’s dependence on US capital. The working class and peasants—who had started to envision land reforms, literacy programs, and political participation—were pushed back into repression. The long civil war that ended in 1996 was the enduring consequence of this counterrevolution. Over 200,000 people, mostly indigenous peasants, died. The coup not only eliminated a government but also triggered decades of state terror designed to suppress any future threats to the social order.

The fall of Árbenz’s government illustrates how, in the imperialist era, capitalist property rights are actively defended. It shows that democratic reforms threatening corporate profits often face violence; dependent national bourgeoisies cannot lead democratic revolutions; imperialism is driven by class interests rather than geopolitics alone; and the working class must spearhead efforts for national and social liberation. Asturias’s book, with its intense and fragmented style, captures the human experience of these realities.

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Works

  • Asturias, Miguel Ángel. Fin de semana en Guatemala. Buenos Aires: Losada, 1956.
  • Asturias, Miguel Ángel. Weekend in Guatemala. Trans. David Unger. London: Verso, 2024.
  • Árbenz, Jacobo. Discursos y documentos de gobierno, 1951–1954. Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria, 1955.
  • United Fruit Company. Annual Reports, 1945–1955. Boston: United Fruit Corporate Archive.

Historical Studies of the 1954 Coup

  • Gleijeses, Piero. Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954. Princeton University Press, 1991. The definitive archival history of the coup; indispensable for understanding US intervention and internal class dynamics.
  • Immerman, Richard H. The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention. University of Texas Press, 1982. Key study of CIA planning, propaganda, and military coordination.
  • Cullather, Nick. Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952–1954. Stanford University Press, 1999. Declassified internal CIA narrative; essential for understanding operational detail.
  • Grandin, Greg. The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War. University of Chicago Press, 2004. Links the coup to the long arc of counterrevolution and civil war.

Contemporary Historiography and Literary Scholarship

  • Azurdia, Gabo. “Fin de semana en Guatemala como novela documental.” Revista de Literatura Hispanoamericana, 2020. Frames Asturias’s work as documentary fiction and a counter‑history of the coup.
  • Regazzoni, Susanna. “Asturias y Vargas Llosa: dos narrativas del golpe de Estado de 1954.” Revista Iberoamericana, 2021. Compares Asturias’s documentary realism with Vargas Llosa’s historical reconstruction.
  • García Duarte, Nohemy. “La polifonía y la sátira política en Fin de semana en Guatemala.” Cuadernos Americanos, 2025. Analyses Asturias’s polyphonic structure and political form.
  • Schlesinger, Stephen & Kinzer, Stephen. Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Harvard University Press, 2005 (rev. ed.). Journalistic but authoritative; widely used in contemporary scholarship.

Marxist and Political‑Economic Analyses

  • Foster, John Bellamy & McChesney, Robert W. The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly‑Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval. Monthly Review Press, 2012. Useful for situating United Fruit within the broader structure of monopoly capital.
  • Petras, James & Veltmeyer, Henry. Empire with Imperialism: The Globalising Dynamics of Neoliberal Capitalism. Zed Books, 2005. Provides a structural analysis of imperialism relevant to the coup.
  • Williams, Eric. Capitalism and Slavery. University of North Carolina Press, 1944. Foundational for understanding plantation capitalism and its modern corporate successors.
  • World Socialist Web Site (WSWS). Articles on Guatemala, US imperialism, and Cold War interventions (1998–2026). For the pseudo‑left critique and class analysis consistent with your essay’s framework.

Studies of United Fruit and Corporate Imperialism

  • Bucheli, Marcelo. Bananas and Business: The United Fruit Company in Colombia, 1899–2000. NYU Press, 2005. Corporate history showing how United Fruit operated as a political actor.
  • Kepner, Charles David & Soothill, Jay Henry. The Banana Empire: A Case Study of Economic Imperialism. Vanguard Press, 1935. Classic early critique of United Fruit’s domination in Central America.
  • McCann, Thomas P. An American Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit. Crown, 1976. Insider account of corporate strategy and political influence.

Guatemalan Civil War and Long Aftermath

  • CEH (Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico). Guatemala: Memoria del silencio. United Nations, 1999. The official truth commission report; essential for understanding the coup’s long-term consequences.
  • Sanford, Victoria. Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Links the 1954 coup to the genocidal violence of the 1980s.

Suggested Archival Sources

  • US National Archives: RG 59 (State Department), RG 263 (CIA).
  • Guatemalan National Archives: Records of the Árbenz government and military communications.
  • United Fruit Company Corporate Archive: Boston Public Library.

Imperial Hubris Then and Now: Thucydides, Kirshner, and the Crisis of American Hegemony

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

Jonathan Kirshner’s essay in Foreign Affairs goes beyond just reinterpreting Thucydides. It serves as a political statement from a segment of the American foreign-policy establishment that is growing more concerned about the Trump administration’s frank declaration of the “iron laws” of imperialist violence. Kirshner is not opposed to American power. He is opposed to its stupid exercise. Therefore, his critique doesn’t reject empire entirely but seeks to reform or preserve it. By exploring the historical parallels Kirshner hints at, we can better understand what his argument uncovers—and hides—about the American imperialism crisis in 2026.[1]

Athens and the United States: Imperial Democracies in Decline

Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War serves as the fundamental work of realist international relations. It details the rise and decline of the Athenian empire, a naval power with democratic governance that also exercised brutal control overseas. Similarly, the United States has historically portrayed itself as a democratic nation whose global leadership is both inevitable and benevolent.

Kirshner’s unease with Trump stems from his removal of the ideological disguise. Stephen Miller’s statement that the world is “governed by force” and “governed by power” reflects the straightforward Athenian logic of the Melian Dialogue, expressed plainly without euphemism.

The comparison is clear: Athens operated as a democracy, managing an empire through tribute, coercion, and military strength. Likewise, the United States is a democracy that rules a global empire using financial influence, military bases, sanctions, and alliances like “coalitions of the willing.” Both countries justified their dominance with universalist rhetoric—Athens with “freedom” and America with “democracy”—but enforced subjugation through significant force.

Melos and Venezuela: The Strong Do What They Can

The Melian Dialogue is a well-known excerpt from Thucydides. Athens demands that Melos submit; Melos appeals to justice; Athens responds, “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” Afterwards, the Athenians massacre the men and enslave the women and children.

The similarity to Venezuela is difficult to ignore. In 2026, the United States kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro, conducted covert operations, and threatened military intervention. These actions represent a “qualitative escalation in the criminality of American imperialism.”

The US justification—that Venezuela threatens regional stability, democracy, or human rights—serves as a typical ideological pretext that Thucydides would expose as baseless. However, Trump’s foreign-policy team went further, openly stating that force is the dominant principle in international affairs. Melos was destroyed not for its danger but for its defiance. Venezuela is targeted not due to any threat to the US but because it resists American dominance. 

Sicily and Iran: Imperial Overreach and Catastrophe

Some argue that Thucydides’ real lesson isn’t the Melian Dialogue but the Sicilian Expedition, where Athenian hubris caused catastrophe. Similarly, Trump’s reckless actions risk a comparable disaster. The analogy with Iran is strong. Athens believed its power was unlimited during the Sicilian Expedition, underestimating resistance, overextending, and facing destruction. Likewise, the US has issued repeated threats of bombing, regime change, and economic sanctions against Iran. However, Iran, a large and capable nation with regional allies and asymmetric tactics, presents a different challenge.

A potential war with Iran would be similar to the modern Sicilian disaster: it would involve a prolonged, large-scale conflict with heavy casualties, trigger a global economic shock, cause alliances to break down, and intensify domestic crises. Kirshner’s warning is pragmatic, emphasising that excessive imperial ambitions could threaten the empire’s survival.

The Collapse of the “Rules‑Based Order”: From Pericles to Pompeo

The post-1945 “rules-based international order” functions similarly to the Periclean ideology, serving as a legitimising story for imperial domination. However, this order “was never a true limit on American aggression—rather, it was a tool for navigating inter-imperialist conflicts amid US dominance.” Just as Athens used democratic rhetoric to conceal its coercive empire, the US’s claim to uphold international law conceals its global dominance.

When Athens faced a crisis, its democratic facade faltered, leading to the execution of generals, the purging of dissidents, and chaos. Similarly, in 2026, the U.S. is experiencing a decline: mass deportations, press suppression, civil service purges, overt authoritarian language, and militarised police. These actions are inciting increased strikes and protests, showing that imperialism’s crisis translates into a democratic crisis.

Kirshner’s idea of a ‘real Thucydides trap” suggests that imperial overreach leads to disaster. However, this isn’t an unchanging psychological rule but rather a particular manifestation of capitalism’s inherent contradictions during its imperialist phase.

Lenin showed that imperialism is an unavoidable result of monopoly capitalism, driven by the pursuit of profit. This drive leads to expansion, which in turn causes conflict, ultimately resulting in crises. The ‘iron law’ of imperialist barbarism will be confronted with the ‘iron law’ of the class struggle. The working class is not merely a passive victim of imperial decline; it is the active force capable of overthrowing the system responsible for war.

The Lesson for the Working Class

The working class does not prefer either Trump’s blunt imperialism or Kirshner’s polished version, as both are factions of the same oligarchy. Both approaches lead to war, austerity, and dictatorship. The response to Trump’s ‘might makes right’ mentality isn’t a reinstatement of the polite imperialism associated with the Council on Foreign Relations, but rather the international mobilisation of the working class and the building of a global socialist society.

This is Thucydides’ key lesson when viewed from a Marxist perspective: Empires decline not due to imprudence but because of exploitation. Imperial democracies crumble as their internal contradictions grow unmanageable. The working class alone has the power to end imperialist wars. Athens fell, and the American empire is currently facing its Sicilian moment. The responsibility of the working class is not to preserve it but to replace it.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

  • Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War.
  • Lenin, V.I. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.
  • Trotsky, Leon. In Defence of Marxism: The Revolution Betrayed.

Secondary Sources (Classical and IR)

  • Kagan, Donald. The Peloponnesian War.
  • Meiggs, Russell. The Athenian Empire.
  • Finley, M.I. The Ancient Economy.
  • Badian, E. From Plataea to Potidaea: Studies in the History and Historiography of the Pentecontaetia.
  • Gilpin, Robert. War and Change in World Politics.
  • Keohane, Robert. After Hegemony.
  • Mearsheimer, John. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
  • Kirshner, Jonathan. “The Real Thucydides Trap.” Foreign Affairs (2026).

Marxist and WSWS Analyses

  • North, David. The Crisis of American Democracy.
  • International Committee of the Fourth International. The Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party.
  • Damon, Andre. WSWS Perspectives on US foreign policy (2025–2026).
  • Walsh, Bill Van Auken, and other WSWS correspondents on Venezuela, Iran, and the “rules‑based order.”

[1] The Strong Do What They Can—and Suffer What They Must: What Thucydides Really Thought About Power Jonathan Kirshner- http://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/strong-do-what-they-can-and-suffer-what-they-must

Letter to T. G. Otte and The Coming Storm

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

Sir,

Your reply exemplifies the genre: sophisticated, polite, and carefully balanced—yet it entirely avoids addressing the central issue. You claim that your initial letter was “modest,” merely reminding readers of the “plurality” of interpretations surrounding 1914. But modesty does not equal neutrality, and plurality is not inherently virtuous when it functions to obscure decisive historical realities.

The core issue is not whether historians may legitimately differ; they always have, and they always will. The issue is why, in 2026, an expanding body of scholarship seeks to explain the origins of the First World War through vague concepts such as “complexity,” “interplay,” and “multiple explanations,” while systematically avoiding the one category that renders those explanations coherent: imperialism.

You argue that emphasising imperialism “elevates any one causal chain to the status of dogma.” Yet imperialism is not a dogma. It is a historically specific stage of capitalist development, analysed with scientific precision by Lenin, Luxemburg, and Bukharin, and confirmed by the subsequent course of the 20th century.¹ This framework clarifies why the great powers were driven into conflict, why diplomacy repeatedly failed, and why the July Crisis unfolded as it did. To treat imperialism as merely one “mode of explanation” among many is not methodological pluralism—it is historical abdication.

Your defence of Thucydides reveals further ideological implications. You claim that invoking him was simply a caution against unreflective analogies. But the very choice of Thucydides—whose narrative naturalises great‑power conflict as an eternal feature of human affairs—already performs ideological work.² It shifts attention away from the capitalist foundations of modern war and toward timeless geopolitical tragedy. This is precisely the function Thucydides serves in contemporary strategic discourse, from Graham Allison’s “Thucydides Trap” to Pentagon doctrinal literature.³ You may not intend to naturalise conflict, but the analogy does so nonetheless.

Your portrayal of Sir Edward Grey exemplifies how diplomatic history sanitises imperialism. You argue that praising Grey’s “skill” does not equate to endorsing British imperialism. Yet Grey’s diplomacy cannot be disentangled from the imperial interests it served. The London Conference of 1912–13 was not a display of statesmanship but an imperialist partition of the Balkans.⁴ Its short‑term success did not demonstrate the vitality of the Concert of Europe; it revealed the limits of diplomatic management under conditions of irreconcilable imperialist antagonisms. To describe this as a “settlement” is to adopt the perspective of the imperial powers themselves.

Your conclusion urges caution, warning against “conscripting the past into present‑day battles.” But the past is already being conscripted—by governments preparing for war, by think tanks rehabilitating great‑power rivalry, and by historians who, knowingly or not, provide intellectual cover for these developments. The relativisation of German responsibility for 1914, the elevation of “complexity” over causality, and the retreat from the category of imperialism are not neutral scholarly trends. They are ideological responses to a world in which the great powers are once again hurtling toward conflict.

The working class requires clarity, not cultivated ambiguity; analysis, not interpretative pluralism; and above all, recognition that imperialist war is not a tragic accident but the inevitable product of capitalism. To obscure this truth is not modest—it is dangerous.

Yours faithfully, Keith Livesey

Footnotes

  1. V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916); Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (1913); Nikolai Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy (1915). These works established the theoretical foundations for understanding imperialism as a structural stage of capitalist development, not a diplomatic phenomenon.
  2. Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War has long been used to frame great‑power conflict as cyclical and inevitable, a tendency reinforced by realist international relations theory from Hans Morgenthau to John Mearsheimer.
  3. Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (2017). Allison’s thesis has been widely adopted in US strategic circles, often without critical engagement with its ideological implications.
  4. For a detailed account of the London Conference and its imperialist character, see Sean McMeekin, The Balkan Wars (2012), and Fritz Fischer, War of Illusions (1969), which situate the Balkan crises within the broader imperialist rivalries of the pre‑1914 period.

Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine

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Introduction: A Book That Documents Much and Explains Little

Jules Boykoff’s Red Card comes at a time when the 2026 World Cup has already revealed the profound corruption within global capitalism. Hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada, the tournament has become a platform for militarisation, xenophobia, financial greed, and the overt display of American dominance. Therefore, Boykoff’s book is especially relevant. It provides a comprehensive list of abuses, including FIFA’s internal corruption and the blatant profiteering by the host countries.

However, the book’s political structure—highlighted right in its title—is fundamentally flawed. “Sportswashing” is not a neutral analytical category but an ideological tool. It originates in Western liberalism to criticise the misconduct of rival nations while concealing the far greater crimes of imperialist powers. Boykoff’s dependence on this framework, combined with Dave Zirin’s role as the introducer, guarantees that “Red Card” remains confined within the pseudo-left sphere from which it originates.

The book highlights symptoms of capitalist decay and exposes corruption, yet it hides its root causes. While condemning abuses and lamenting exploitation, it does not address class rule or imperialism, offering no revolutionary alternative. Essentially, it is a critique that ultimately supports the very system it criticises.

The 2026 World Cup: A Case Study in Imperialist Barbarism

Boykoff’s Red Card honestly details the authoritarian measures surrounding the 2026 tournament. The information is striking: ICE agents at every stadium, transforming venues into extensions of the US deportation system. Dynamic pricing has skyrocketed ticket costs — starting at $10,990, with one reportedly listed at $2.3 million. Iran’s team was prevented from spending a night on US soil, a petty act of geopolitical spite. The Haitian team’s Vertières symbol was forcibly removed, erasing the only successful slave revolution in history. Somali referees were detained and expelled, held for eleven hours without reason. Meanwhile, a “FIFA Peace Prize” was awarded to Donald Trump, a grotesque distortion of reality.

These incidents are part of a consistent pattern: turning a global sporting event into a tool for state repression and imperialist propaganda. The 2026 World Cup is not just commercialised; it has become militarised. It is not only corrupt; it exhibits outright authoritarian tendencies. Boykoff documents these facts but doesn’t explain.

The Ideology of “Sportswashing”

Red Card’s main flaw lies in its dependence on the idea of “sportswashing.” This term, widely promoted by Western NGOs, academics, and media, claims that authoritarian regimes use sports to improve their image. It has been frequently used against Qatar (2022), Russia (2018), China (2008), and Saudi Arabia’s LIV Golf project. However, the 2026 World Cup reveals the shortcomings of this ideological approach.

 Few terms have spread as quickly across the academic, NGO, and media worlds as “sportswashing.” It’s regularly used: Qatar “sportswashed” the 2022 World Cup; Russia “sportswashed” the 2018 tournament; Saudi Arabia “sportswashed” its LIV Golf project; China “sportswashed” the 2008 Olympics. The underlying message remains consistent: authoritarian regimes leverage sport to clean up their images.

This idea is not merely insufficient; it is ideologically toxic. It hides the true forces behind global power, sustains Western imperialism’s moral claims, and distracts from the capitalist system that has turned sports into a multimillion-dollar tool for exploitation and propaganda. “Sportswashing” isn’t just a descriptive term; it’s a strategic political tool.

The Liberal Origin of the Concept

The term did not originate in Marxist theory but rather in Western think tanks, human-rights NGOs, and media aligned with US foreign policy interests. It belongs to the same ideological toolkit as terms like “authoritarianism,” “rogue states,” “malign influence,” “hybrid warfare,” and “democratic values.” These are not neutral labels; they serve as geopolitical signals that justify the actions of imperialist powers and portray their opponents as threats.

The brutality is not concealed; it is flaunted. The Haitian team is ordered to remove the symbol of the only successful slave revolution in history. The Iranian team is barred from sleeping on US soil. ICE agents patrol stadiums. Ticket prices reach $2.3 million. A Somali referee is detained and expelled.

The phrase ‘what is being washed’ is misleading; nothing is actually being cleaned. The violence is the actual focus. The idea falls apart because it was never meant to analyse imperialism, only to conceal it. In section IV, the double standard becomes clear: Qatar and Russia are labelled sportswashes, but the US isn’t. Western media in 2022 held Qatar accountable for migrant worker deaths to criticise a geopolitical rival. Meanwhile, U.S. actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen—costing hundreds of thousands to millions of lives—were not called ‘sportswashing’ or ‘human rights abuses’ related to sports. This double standard shows how the concept is used selectively to serve Western foreign policy goals.

The Class Function of the Concept

“Sportswashing” is not just hypocritical; it serves a specific ideological purpose. It individualizes systemic issues by shifting the blame for corruption onto “bad regimes,” ignoring the broader global capitalist system. It moralizes politics by replacing analysis of class relations with a focus on virtue and vice. It diverts attention from imperialism, with US and allied crimes hidden behind moral condemnation aimed at rivals. It obscures the involvement of Western corporations—such as Nike, Adidas, Coca-Cola, Visa, Fox, Comcast, and JP Morgan—that are the real profiteers. Lastly, it depoliticizes the working class. In essence, “sportswashing” functions as a bourgeois mystification.

The Pseudo‑Left’s Embrace of the Concept

The pseudo-left, including figures like Dave Zirin, Jacobin writers, and the academic “sports activism” community, has eagerly adopted the term. This is no coincidence. The pseudo-left tends to dismiss class analysis in favor of identity politics, aligns with the Democratic Party’s foreign policy goals, moralizes politics rather than analyzes it, and replaces revolutionary strategies with activism. “Sportswashing” seamlessly fits into this ideological framework, enabling the pseudo-left to appear radical while supporting the geopolitical narratives of the US government.

The United States Is Not “Washing” Anything

The US is not hiding its crimes behind the World Cup; instead, it is using the event to promote them. The genocide in Gaza is openly defended rather than concealed. The offensive against Iran is being escalated rather than softened. The militarization of the US–Mexico border is celebrated openly instead of being disguised. The shift toward authoritarianism is being normalized rather than mitigated. What is the supposed ‘washing’? The brutality is not hidden; it is displayed proudly.

“Sportswashing” Is a Tool of Imperialist Hypocrisy

As WSWS writers like Peter Schwarz have highlighted, the Western media’s criticism of Qatar’s migrant worker policies was never genuinely about human rights. These outlets remained silent on the over a million deaths caused by US-led wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. The term “sportswashing” is used as a geopolitical weapon rather than a sincere ethical critique. Boykoff adopts this perspective uncritically, which causes him to overlook a key point: the core issue isn’t authoritarianism, but imperialism; not corruption, but capitalism.

Dave Zirin and the Politics of the Pseudo‑Left

Having Dave Zirin, the sports editor of The Nation, as the introducer highlights a political stance. Zirin symbolises the American pseudo-left: he is radical in speech but reformist in action, and his politics are aligned with the Democratic Party. While he condemns racism, exploitation, and corruption, he does not see the working class as the revolutionary force that can end these issues. His approach favours ongoing protest rather than socialist change.

Zirin’s framework considers racism and sexism as independent systems, separate from capitalist social relations. This approach enables him to criticize injustice without questioning the underlying economic structures that cause it. Zirin supported Bernie Sanders, whose role was to direct working-class frustration within the Democratic Party. However, his critique of sports capitalism does not advocate for the working class to disconnect from the Democrats and form an independent political movement. Boykoff’s book, introduced by Zirin, shares these limitations.

What the Book Cannot Say: The Marxist Explanation

A truly groundbreaking analysis of the 2026 World Cup must begin with these fundamental assumptions: 1. Sport as a Social Product of the Working Class: Football is not merely a bourgeois invention but a collective cultural creation of the working class, later exploited by capital. 2. FIFA as a Tool for Global Finance Capital: FIFA’s corruption is not just individual misconduct but results from its structural connections to media monopolies, financial institutions, corporate sponsors, and the geopolitical interests of major imperialist countries. 3. The 2026 World Cup as a Political Event: It highlights the intertwining of sport with political agendas, state repression, the use of mega-events to normalize militarization, the subordination of culture to capital, and the ideological mobilization of nationalism to divide workers. These insights fall outside the conceptual scope of Boykoff and Zirin.

Conclusion: A Book That Reveals the Crisis but Conceals Its Cause

Red Card presents a contradictory stance. It passionately condemns the barbarity of the 2026 World Cup but fails to propose solutions. Its liberal perspective doesn’t address imperialism’s realities and instead directs anger toward reformist dead-ends. While highlighting corruption, it neglects to critique the capitalist system that sustains it. Overall, Red Card isn’t a radical critique; it underscores the ideological limits of the pseudo-left. The working class’s goal isn’t to reform FIFA or combat sportswashing but to overthrow capitalism, which has turned every facet of life, including sports, into a space of exploitation, repression, and profit.

The Class Prejudice Behind the “Two Shakespeares” Myth

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The recent rise in Anti-Stratfordian theories—like Graham Phillips’ claim that there were “two William Shakespeares,” one an actor-playwright in London and the other a wealthy grain merchant in Stratford—is less about new knowledge and more a social phenomenon. It exemplifies a recurring ideological pattern: some middle-class groups refusing to accept that England’s greatest writer came from their perceived lower social classes. As the document rightly observes, this is “simply a new coat of paint on a very old piece of class snobbery.”

The continued existence of these theories isn’t backed by evidence—there is none—but by the social anxieties of their supporters. The anti-Stratfordian movement started in the late Victorian era, a time when the bourgeoisie, having achieved its historic rise, became fearful of the social forces that had helped it reach power. The idea that a glover’s son from a small provincial town could have authored Hamlet or King Lear was unacceptable to a class increasingly focused on controlling cultural boundaries and shielding “high culture” from the masses.

The Historical Record and the Bourgeois Artist

The evidence supporting Shakespeare of Stratford as the author of the works is strong and has been affirmed by numerous scholars over time. The dedications of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, signed “William Shakespeare,” are written in a modest tone typical of a commoner addressing a noble sponsor—an unlikely style for an aristocrat like the Earl of Oxford. Furthermore, Ben Jonson’s tribute in the First Folio refers to him as the “Sweet Swan of Avon,” with no associations to any aristocratic estate or London riverbank. Additionally, the plays reference events after 1604, the year of Oxford’s death, such as the 1609 Bermuda shipwreck that inspired The Tempest.

However, anti-Stratfordians are not genuinely investigating history; instead, they are erasing it. Their argument rests on a completely ahistorical assumption: that someone who bought property, lent money, or traded grain could not also be a playwright. This idea is incorrect. Shakespeare was a shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a part-owner of the Globe, and a savvy investor. He was not a starving artist living a bohemian lifestyle but a prosperous bourgeois during a time when the bourgeoisie was a revolutionary class. To deny this is to deny the social conditions that made Shakespeare possible.

The Class Roots of Anti‑Stratfordianism

The anti-Stratfordian tendency fundamentally reflects a class bias. Jonathan Bate noted that this movement arose as the Victorian middle classes grew more sensitive to perceived threats from lower social groups. Christmas Humphreys, an Oxfordian, candidly expressed this sentiment by calling it “offensive” to credit a “petty-minded tradesman” as the playwright. The quoted statement highlights this bias clearly: the disdain is obvious, and the underlying ideology is unmistakable. This is not genuine scholarship but merely class prejudice disguised as scholarly pursuit.

The “two Shakespeares” theory is just the latest effort to justify this bias by creating unnecessary divisions. It offers no real explanation. It fails to resolve any contradictions. Its only purpose is to uphold the idea that genius must be aristocratic, that culture belongs to the elite, and that the greatest works of human imagination could not have been written by someone who also knew the cost of barley.

Why These Theories Persist

The real question isn’t about who authored the plays but rather why some people doubt that Shakespeare did. The answer is tied to the social role of anti-Stratfordianism. These theories reveal a deep-seated hostility towards the notion that human creativity is universal, meaning that artistic brilliance isn’t limited to individuals of noble birth or privileged education.

Shakespeare’s greatness is tied to the historical context of his era: the ascent of the bourgeoisie, the decline of feudal stability, and the emergence of new intellectual and emotional perspectives. The Elizabethan stage reflected this societal upheaval and a world in flux. His background in the “middling sort” and his deep ties to early modern England’s complex, evolving society enabled him to understand and depict human life comprehensively.

Denying Shakespeare’s authorship is dismissing this history. It also dismisses the revolutionary nature of the bourgeois era and the ability of ordinary individuals to produce extraordinary art.

The Political Meaning of the Attack on Shakespeare

Ultimately, the anti-Stratfordian myth challenges the democratic and egalitarian values reflected in Shakespeare’s life and work. It aims to reassert a feudal view of culture, suggesting that true genius belongs only to the elite. This reactionary idea seeks to deny the historical fact that the greatest English writer was the son of a tradesman. That a ‘petty-minded tradesman’ could have written Hamlet and King Lear is not a problem to be explained away by conspiracy theories—it is a fact to be celebrated.” Indeed. Shakespeare’s life exemplifies humanity’s creative potential. The anti-Stratfordian movement, in all its forms, reveals the insecurity and decline of a ruling class that no longer trusts in that potential..

Comment On the Observer’s A Declaration of Interdependence

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The recent Observer editorial, ‘A Declaration of Interdependence,’ reveals more about the panic within Britain’s liberal-imperialist class than its analysis. It shows disorientation among a ruling elite whose global framework is collapsing under contradictions. The editors claim that Donald Trump has “pulled the rug from under the Starmer project,” implying that Britain’s capitalist crisis stems from a single reckless act rather than decades of militarism, austerity, and imperial decline. The editorial outlines four ways Trump has supposedly sabotaged Starmer. In truth, each “shock” merely exposes the corruption at the heart of the entire system.

1. The economic crisis is not Trump’s doing—it is capitalism’s

The Observer laments that the UK’s fragile economic recovery was disrupted when Trump authorized the US-Israeli attack on Iran, leading Tehran to seal the Strait of Hormuz. It mournfully notes that “world oil prices are still nearly 30% above prewar levels,” as if this situation were an unpredictable act of God rather than a direct result of imperialist intervention in the Middle East.

The editorial criticizes not the fact that the US and Israel initiated another unjust war, but that it harms British capitalism’s interests. The hardships faced by Iranian and Palestinian civilians are ignored; what’s crucial is that Starmer’s “green shoots” story doesn’t resonate with voters in Makerfield. This reveals the genuine stance of the Labour-liberal circle: war can be justified or even needed, provided it doesn’t interfere with internal political interests.

2. Labour’s crisis over Gaza is a crisis of imperialism, not of messaging

The Observer criticizes Trump’s backing of Israel’s destructive attack on Gaza, which has led to the loss of nearly 73,000 Palestinian lives, claiming it has caused a division within the Labour Party. However, Labour’s division was not caused by Trump; it was due to its persistent support for imperialist violence.

Starmer’s so-called “tortured expressions of support for Israel’s right to self-defence” are actually sincere, representing Labour’s position within the British state. The real focus of the editorial is that the working class, especially young people and Britain’s Muslim community, is shifting away from Labour towards parties perceived as more supportive of Palestine. For the Observer, the concern isn’t the widespread violence itself but the political consequences it might trigger.

3. The culture‑war panic reveals the fragility of the British state

The third critique in the editorial—that JD Vance and Elon Musk are fueling Britain’s “culture wars”—exposes a feeling of helplessness. The British elite, having spent years demonising migrants, refugees, and the poor, now shows shock when their own reactionary rhetoric is echoed by their American counterparts. The Observer points out that Musk “acted as an arsonist, reposting flagrantly false and racist comments” following the Belfast stabbing. However, Musk is not an anomaly; he embodies the core of capitalist reaction. The far right’s rise is not solely due to online provocateurs but also because the political establishment—Labor included—has legitimised nationalism, militarism, and xenophobia.

The editorial’s fear is not fascism, but the loss of control over the forces it helped unleash.

4. The defence‑spending crisis exposes the bankruptcy of British imperialism

The Observer’s final complaint is that Trump has called for NATO members to allocate 5% of their GDP to defence, a target Starmer “can’t afford.” This is seen as an outrageous demand from a reckless American leader. However, it is actually a natural extension of Britain’s own imperial commitments. The British government cannot sustain global wars, maintain a nuclear arsenal, challenge Russia and China, and keep its welfare state intact all at once. Something has to give—and the ruling class has already decided it will not cut the military. The editorial worries that the working class might resist this arrangement.

The Observer’s conclusion: a desperate plea for imperialist unity

The article concludes by urging Britain to adopt “interdependence” with NATO, Europe, and the U.S., framing it as a pragmatic alternative to Brexit’s rejection of reality. However, in reality, it demands that the working class endure ongoing austerity, perpetual conflict, and subjugation to the major imperialist powers. The Observer claims Britain is “fortunate” to be at the crossroads of these powerful systems. But is it fortunate? To be a subordinate member of NATO’s military actions, Europe’s austerity policies, and America’s military-industrial complex? That’s not luck; it’s a trap.

The Observer fails to recognize that Britain’s crisis is rooted in the failure of global capitalism itself, not in Trump, Brexit, or Starmer’s errors. The decline of the “special relationship” reflects the broader collapse of the post-Cold War international order. Ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Iran, Ukraine, and the South China Sea are not isolated incidents but signs of a coming global upheaval. The working class should reject the Observer’s appeal for “interdependence” with imperialist powers. Instead, the only effective solution is for workers across Britain, Europe, the U.S., and worldwide to organize independently in opposition to war, nationalism, and capitalism.

Disappeared Children, Coercive Adoptions, and the Continuity of Counterrevolution in Guatemala

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I.Introduction: The Disappeared as a Class Question 

The disappearance of children in Guatemala—stolen during military campaigns, placed into a global adoption network, and spread worldwide—is not an isolated humanitarian issue. Instead, it represents a long-standing counterrevolutionary effort driven by US imperialism and carried out by the Guatemalan elite and military. As a recent article notes, “children became commodities because under capitalism, everything is reduced to a commodity.” This is a literal, not figurative, truth. 

The case of Guatemala’s missing children and the aggressive international adoption industry that grew during and after the US-supported civil war highlight the criminal aspects of the capitalist system. These crimes—based on genocide, carried out through trafficking, and maintained by the continued suffering of millions—are not isolated incidents. Instead, they result from specific class interests and deliberate imperialist policies. 

As noted, the genocide in the early 1980s was carried out with direct US support. The UN Historical Clarification Commission found that “the Guatemalan military and state caused 93 per cent of the deaths.” Entire Indigenous communities were eradicated. Under General Efraín Ríos Montt, the army conducted ‘nearly 600 massacres in a scorched-earth campaign,’ destroying between 70 and 90 per cent of Ixil Maya villages. This was more than mass murder; it was a violent restructuring of Guatemalan society to serve the interests of the national bourgeoisie and its imperialist allies. The destruction of families, communities, and social systems paved the way for a new era of exploitation: the commodification of children. 

A Market Built on Genocide 

The adoption industry that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s was not driven by humanitarian concern for war victims. Instead, it functioned as a market fueled by the violence of US imperialism. Many children were “stolen, coerced from impoverished families, or simply taken after military operations and funnelled into an industry that regarded Guatemalan children as commodities.” This sector was managed by lawyers, judges, police, military personnel, and international organisations. It was maintained through bribes and justified with the rhetoric of “rescue.” However, fundamentally, it was an extension of counterinsurgency strategies. The same government that massacred Indigenous parents was also selling their children abroad. 

The United States and Europe, whose governments provided arms to the Guatemalan military, became primary destinations for these children. The imperialist powers responsible for the destruction of Guatemalan society ultimately absorbed its displaced populations, transforming the victims of genocide into commodities for middle-class consumption. 

The Continuity of Social Crime 

The causes behind this trafficking continue and have deteriorated over time. Guatemala now has a poverty rate of 59.3%, with nearly half of all children suffering from chronic malnutrition. Child welfare institutions remain unsafe, exemplified by the 2017 “safe home” fire that killed dozens of girls locked inside by authorities. In 2016, one facility alone reported 73 disappearances. 

These horrors are not just remnants of past conflicts, but an ongoing reality under a capitalist system that subjects the masses to repression, hunger, and forced migration. The Guatemalan bourgeoisie—corrupt, self-interested, and heavily dependent on US imperialism—maintains control over a society in ruin. The former guerrilla group, URNG, has long since shifted away from the working class and become part of the state apparatus. Their trajectory underscores the failure of all nationalist and Stalinist movements. 

Imperialism’s Ongoing War Against the Poor 

The fate of Guatemala’s disappeared children is deeply linked to the deaths of Guatemalan migrants in US custody. The same imperialist power that supplied arms to the Guatemalan military now also detains Guatemalan children at the border. The pattern is evident: from scorched-earth campaigns to militarised borders; from kidnapping Indigenous children to separating migrant families; from mass graves in the highlands to anonymous graves in the desert. These are not isolated tragedies but symptoms of a global system that devalues human life. 

II.The Genocidal Foundations of the Adoption Industry 

Rachel Nolan’s book appropriately highlights the UN Historical Clarification Commission’s conclusion that “the Guatemalan military and state caused 93 per cent of the deaths,” a figure that destroys the myth of an equal-force “civil war.” The Guatemalan government, supported by Washington through weapons, training, and funding, waged a brutal war against the rural poor. During Ríos Montt’s regime, the army conducted “nearly 600 massacres in a scorched-earth strategy,” destroying entire communities. In the Ixil region, “between 70 and 90 per cent of its villages” were wiped out. These numbers are not just statistics; they form the basis for child disappearances, as the army’s massacres of parents left infants and toddlers as casualties of war. 

The counterinsurgency teachings at the School of the Americas explicitly portrayed Indigenous communities as a “breeding ground” for subversion. Disrupting the family was not accidental but a deliberate goal. The adoption industry that arose in the 1980s and 1990s can be seen as a privatised, commodified extension of this governmental strategy. 

III.The Adoption Industry as Counterinsurgency by Other Means 

The book states that children were “stolen, coerced from destitute families, or simply taken after military operations and funnelled into an adoption industry that regarded Guatemalan children as commodities.” This aptly describes a system where lawyers, judges, police, military personnel, and international adoption agencies worked together to profit from the social destruction caused by the war. 

Rachel Nolan’s research shows that the adoption system was not an isolated criminal operation but a sanctioned market. The Guatemalan bourgeoisie, which had gained wealth through land theft, repression, and US support, realised that Indigenous children’s bodies could be turned into cash. The United States and  Europe—governments that supported the killers—became the main buyers of these children. This exemplifies imperialism: demolition of a society followed by the extraction of value from its remains. 

IV.Postwar Guatemala: The Continuity of Social Crime 

An article in the WSWS reported on the 2017 “safe home” fire, where dozens of girls were burned alive after being locked in by state authorities. It highlights that “in 2016 alone, there were 73 disappearances from just one facility.” These numbers show that the violence apparatus did not dismantle with the 1996 peace accords but was instead repurposed. The same government that carried out massacres against Indigenous communities now oversees: • youth shelters that act as prisons and brothels, • widespread malnutrition—“nearly half of all Guatemalan children suffer chronic malnourishment”— • and a societal structure where “59.3 per cent of the population lives in poverty.” 

The URNG, formerly guerrilla fighters, now serves as an administrator of austerity. The document correctly notes that they “abandoned the class struggle after the peace accords” and integrated into the bourgeois state. Their path is similar to that of the FMLN in El Salvador and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua: nationalist movements that cannot escape the limits of capitalism. 

This article argues that child trafficking stems from capitalism’s tendency to treat all human lives as commodities, an intrinsic feature. The genocides and the adoption industry are not moral failings but structural elements of a system that demands the dissolution of communal landownership and the control of labour. The Guatemalan bourgeoisie, which depended on US capital, relied on fear and extracting profit from every human interaction. Unable to create an independent national project, its survival hinged on oppressing the rural poor and opening the country to foreign markets, including those for children. The nationalist guerrilla groups, influenced by Stalinist and Maoist ideas of a “two-stage revolution,” subordinated the working class through alliances with the bourgeoisie. Their defeat was not predetermined but resulted from a flawed strategy. 

VI.The International Dimension: Migration, Death, and the Global Market 

The book clearly links the missing children to migrants killed in US custody. The same imperialist nation that provided arms to the Guatemalan military also detains Guatemalan children at the border. The pattern is clear: from scorchedearth strategies to ICE detention facilities; from military kidnappings to family separations; from disappeared children in the highlands to those held in US custody. These are not isolated tragedies but components of a coordinated global exploitation system. 

VII.Conclusion: The Necessity of Revolutionary Internationalism   

The missing children of Guatemala are not just remnants of past conflicts; they are living proof of capitalism’s ongoing war against humanity. Their situation condemns not only the Guatemalan government but the entire imperialist system. 

The fight for justice for these children cannot be carried out through NGOs, nationalist parties, or corrupt Guatemalan institutions. Instead, it requires building a revolutionary Marxist movement in Guatemala, connected to the international working class and guided by the goal of a global socialist revolution. 

The Counter Revolution of 1776: Gerald Horne’s Historical Falsification and the Politics of Racialist Reaction

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Introduction: The Manufacture of a Counter‑History

Gerald Horne’s The Counter-Revolution of 1776 has been praised in some academic and media circles as offering a radical reinterpretation of the American Revolution. However, it exemplifies what Trotsky termed “the Stalin school of falsification”—a tactic in which the past is not thoroughly examined but is instead reshaped to align with current political agendas. The book’s main argument—that the American Revolution was a pro-slavery counter-movement opposing an abolitionist British Empire—is not only false but also a politically driven reversal of history, achieved through repeated misquoting, misattribution, and the intentional omission of evidence that contradicts its narrative.

Horne’s thesis does not hold up under scrutiny; the book is largely a work of fiction. This article aims to do two things: first, to reveal the falsehoods underlying Horne’s narrative; second, to place his approach within the wider context of racialist political ideology in the U.S., as exemplified by the 1619 Project and its associated pseudo-left supporters.

The Historical Record and the Fabrication of a Pro‑Slavery Revolution

The American Revolution arose from intensified conflicts between the colonies and Britain over issues like taxation, sovereignty, and representation. This is supported by extensive historical evidence, including the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767, the Boston Tea Party of 1773, the Intolerable Acts of 1774, and the ongoing debate over Parliament’s authority. Notably, none of the key revolutionary texts refers to the Somerset case or British abolitionism.

This is a decisive point. The Somerset ruling of 1772—Horne’s key case—was a narrow legal decision about the status of an enslaved man brought to England. It did not end slavery across the empire, did not spark an abolitionist movement (which was non-existent then), and was not part of the political focus of the revolutionary generation. By 1772, the revolutionary crisis was already in progress.

Horne’s thesis asks the reader to accept that the colonists fought for independence to safeguard slavery from a British Empire that wouldn’t abolish it for another sixty-one years (1833). This is not a historical fact but a conspiracy theory cloaked in academic language.

The Method of Falsification: Inversion, Omission, and Fabrication

Horne’s book contains a series of egregious distortions that reveal not error but method.

1. Inversion of Sources

Horne quotes a Virginia Gazette letter as if it defended slavery. In reality, the full text is a “blistering attack on the absurdity of enslaving people based on skin colour.” This is not a mistake. It is an inversion of meaning.

2. Misattribution

Horne attributes a Loyalist pamphlet to the revolutionary William Henry Drayton, claiming Drayton was “apoplectic” about Somerset. An anonymous Loyalist wrote the words. This transforms a pro‑British argument into an anti‑British one.

3. Erasure of Abolitionists

Benjamin Franklin—who published anti‑slavery essays, collaborated with Granville Sharp, and later led the Pennsylvania Abolition Society—is portrayed as a pro‑slavery figure. This requires suppressing Franklin’s own writings, including his attack on slavery in the London Chronicle.

4. Factual Incompetence

The Gaspee Affair is mangled beyond recognition. Horne claims the Gaspee was a slave ship arriving from Africa. It was a customs enforcement vessel that had been patrolling American waters for years.

5. Suppression of Contradictory Evidence

Rhode Island is depicted as a slaveholding stronghold rebelling to protect slavery. Horne omits that Rhode Island banned slave importation in 1774 and passed gradual emancipation in 1784—explicitly linking these measures to revolutionary ideals.

These are not just occasional mistakes but part of a consistent pattern: each distortion steers the narrative toward a preset conclusion. This isn’t genuine scholarship; it amounts to propaganda.

The Political Function of Horne’s Narrative

The political context of Horne’s book involves his association with the Communist Party USA, which has ties to Stalinism. Stalinist ideology has a history of distorting facts, not as a personal critique of Horne but as an analysis of his approach. Historically, Stalinism has consistently manipulated history—up from the Moscow Trials to the reinterpretation of the October Revolution—to serve political objectives. Horne’s methodology reflects this pattern.

The modern importance of The Counter-Revolution of 1776 is not about Stalinism itself but about how it aligns with the racialist politics of the American pseudo-left. The book’s positive reviews from outlets like the New York Times, The Guardian, Democracy Now!, and academic journals show its usefulness for a political agenda that prioritises race over class as the key lens for analysing history.

The 1619 Project, citing Horne as a primary source, clearly exemplifies this pattern. It’s claimed that the Revolution was fought to preserve slavery, which is directly drawn from Horne’s biased interpretations. The intention isn’t to enhance historical knowledge but to deepen racial divisions within the working class. They serve as tools to split the working class along racial lines—replacing race with class as the main driver of history.

The Marxist Interpretation: Revolution, Class, and Historical Development

Countering this misconception, the Marxist perspective views the American Revolution as a bourgeois-democratic uprising. Marx and Engels recognised that the Revolution overthrew feudal property systems in North America, increased the political power of the emerging bourgeoisie, was closely linked to Enlightenment ideas, and inspired both the French Revolution and other democratic movements.

Instead of dismissing the contradiction of slavery, this view considers it as part of broader social relations. The Revolution spurred forces that challenged slavery’s foundations: Northern states abolished slavery during and after the war, anti-slavery sentiments grew rapidly in the 1780s and 1790s, and the Revolution laid the groundwork for the Civil War, called the “Second American Revolution,” which ended chattel slavery. This perspective is dialectical, not moralistic. It emphasises that revolutions are complex processes driven by class forces, not racial essences.

V. Horne’s Methodology: A Marxist Critique

Horne’s methodology is the antithesis of Marxism. It is characterised by:

1. Idealism

Horne treats race as the primary motor of history, independent of material conditions. This is a retreat into pre‑Marxist, quasi‑theological thinking.

2. Presentism

He projects contemporary racial politics backwards into the 18th century, reading modern anxieties into historical actors who did not share them.

3. Source Manipulation

Rather than deriving conclusions from evidence, he reshapes evidence to fit conclusions. This is the hallmark of Stalinist historiography.

4. Rejection of Class Analysis

The class struggle—central to any Marxist account—is absent. The Revolution becomes a morality play of white oppressors and Black victims, not a conflict between colonial bourgeois forces and imperial authority.

5. Political Instrumentalism

History is shaped to serve current racialist politics rather than seeking genuine understanding. Its purpose is to mobilise resentment. That’s why the pseudo-left favours Horne’s work: it offers a superficially radical appearance while backing a reactionary agenda.

Conclusion: The Necessity of Historical Truth for Working‑Class Unity

The falsification of the American Revolution is not an academic dispute. It is a political intervention aimed at disarming the working class by severing it from the progressive traditions of the past. The Revolution was not a counter‑revolution. It was a decisive step in the global struggle against feudalism and absolutism. This struggle created the conditions for the later abolition of slavery and the emergence of the modern working class.