Cultural critique under capitalism faces a paradox. It can reveal how capital exploits and sanitises opposition, yet it often halts at Marxist analysis. The Frankfurt School identified the industrialisation of culture with sharp insight, and Baudrillard analysed the spread of sign-value with notable brilliance. However, both eventually withdrew from class struggle, falling into pessimism, nihilism, or a focus on the simulacrum’s metaphysics. While their descriptions are insightful, their political outcomes can be harmful.

The CUPRA ad campaign—a shiny interpretation of “street culture” aimed at selling a €26,000 electric vehicle—serves as a prime example for exploring this contradiction. It shows how cultural critique can shed light on capitalism’s ideological workings while also exposing the limitations of viewing culture as separate from production. The ad’s boldness, its cynical awareness, and its portrayal of “rebellion” as a buyable lifestyle make sense when examined through the ideas of Adorno, Horkheimer, Debord, and Baudrillard. However, the campaign’s most profound contradiction isn’t in its imagery. Still, in the social relationships it omits: the workers at Martorell who assemble the car, the union officials overseeing them, and the gentrification of Barcelona’s neighbourhoods, which the campaign’s aesthetic exploits.

The Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School’s concept of the culture industry remains one of the most detailed analyses of how culture is produced under monopoly capitalism. Adorno and Horkheimer recognized that culture had become industrialized, standardized, and turned into a commodity; that false uniqueness concealed the uniformity of mass-produced items; and that the idea of personal expression served as a tool for ideological control. However, their cultural theory was inherently biased politically. It was based on the idea that the working class had been fully integrated into capitalism, with its revolutionary capacity depleted. The notion of a “totally administered society” was not an insight but a conclusion based on the failures of the 1930s and the betrayals by Stalinism. The culture industry concept was created to explain why the working class no longer pursued revolutionary change — not to explore capitalism’s inherent contradictions.

This is the Frankfurt School’s critical flaw. Their descriptive insights are compelling because they remain detached from the political outcomes they aim to support. While their analysis of commodified culture can be adopted, the political implications cannot. The CUPRA campaign exemplifies this well. The ad’s false rebellion, its industrial-like aesthetic of “authenticity,” and its simplification of lived struggle into stylish consumption all align with the Frankfurt School’s framework. However, the political conclusion Adorno might make — that resistance is pointless, that the working class is co-opted, and that critique is the sole form of negativity left — is contradicted by the very production conditions the ad hides.

Baudrillard: When Cultural Critique Becomes Liquidation

If the Frankfurt School embodies the more pessimistic side of Western Marxism, Baudrillard represents its end. His early work on consumer society offers insightful observations on advertising, identity fetishism, and the spread of sign-value. However, the turning point comes with The Mirror of Production (1975), where Baudrillard sharply rejects Marxism, calls use-value and exchange-value outdated categories, and argues that signs have replaced production as society’s main organising principle. This shift is not just a theoretical development; it is a direct challenge.

Baudrillard’s focus on consumption rather than production highlights the political decline of a petty-bourgeois class that abandoned revolutionary efforts after 1968. His disdain for the masses — “they know they are nothing and they have no desire to know” — conveys despair rather than understanding. His later adoption of nihilism, simulacrum, and the vanishing of reality symbolises intellectual capitulation and political surrender.

Stefan Steinberg’s WSWS obituary accurately traced Baudrillard’s trajectory, portraying his work as the ideological voice of a generation that confused its own demoralisation with a sense of inevitable history. Baudrillard’s observation — that advertising promotes identity over utility — remains relevant. The CUPRA campaign doesn’t merely sell a car; it promotes a lifestyle, an attitude, and a deliberately crafted rebellious identity. However, Baudrillard’s conclusion that class analysis is irrelevant is challenged by the very existence of the workers who assemble the cars. While the description can be borrowed, the underlying framework should be rejected. The limit of cultural critique is its tendency to treat culture as autonomous from production.

The CUPRA campaign’s omission of the material base is deliberate and central to its ideological message. CUPRA, a brand owned by SEAT and Volkswagen Group, has experienced notable workforce cuts—such as 686 layoffs in 2005 after strikes—and has faced wage reductions and deteriorating working conditions amid the EV transition. Union negotiations, exemplified by UGT at Ford Valencia in 2022, have led to some concessions. These unseen workers are the backbone behind the campaign—whose labour produces the items that marketing depicts as rebellious. Their exploitation sustains the illusion of individual freedom that the advertisement champions.

The Raval neighbourhood in Barcelona, chosen as the campaign’s visual backdrop, has experienced swift gentrification. Working-class and immigrant communities are being pushed out to make room for the demographic CUPRA aims to attract. The “street culture” highlighted in the ad is gradually being erased from the streets it professes to honour.

The core fact remains: a worker in Martorell is assembling the car. She knows the sign-value doesn’t deceive her; she understands her wages and the car’s selling price. The difference between these figures highlights exploitation. The disconnect between the ad’s illusion and actual production isn’t a complex puzzle but a clear class contradiction. Such contradictions are ultimately addressed through struggle, not just critique.

The CUPRA campaign’s focus on “self-expression” and “creating your own way” embodies neoliberal notions of the entrepreneurial self—viewing each individual as a brand and every life as a startup, with structural constraints seen as personal shortcomings. Marx and Engels countered this in The German Ideology, stating that bourgeois freedom is simply about individual independence separated from social relations. They argued that true freedom is a collective, conscious control over the conditions of life. While CUPRA offers the fantasy, Marxism exposes the reality.

Cultural critique can expose contradictions, reveal ideological operations, and illuminate the mechanisms of commodification. But it cannot explain the social relations that produce those mechanisms. It cannot account for exploitation, surplus value, or the role of the union bureaucracy. It cannot identify the agent of historical change. And it cannot provide a political strategy. The CUPRA campaign is a perfect specimen of late capitalist advertising because it makes its own contradictions visible. It sells rebellion while suppressing the conditions that produce rebellion. It sells authenticity while erasing the workers whose labour makes the commodity possible. It sells cynicism as a lifestyle while relying on the very social relations it denies.

The scope of cultural critique is limited by the tendency to see culture as separate from production. The Frankfurt School recognised the symptoms but failed to address the root causes. Baudrillard outlined the problems but declared the organism dead. The Situationists revealed the mechanism yet mistook exposure for genuine politics.

Marxism, however, offers a comprehensive method to integrate cultural phenomena within the broader framework of capitalist social relations. It uniquely identifies the working class as the agent capable of resolving the contradictions that cultural critique merely describes. Only Marxism firmly asserts that the real has not disappeared—though it is masked by ideology, it still underpins the terrain on which history unfolds.

The CUPRA campaign is not merely an advertisement. It is a window into the ideological operations of contemporary capitalism— and a reminder that cultural critique reaches its limit precisely where Marxism begins.

Five teenagers died in a high-speed crash in Athy, County Kildare, causing widespread shock across Ireland. The loss of young lives and the severe injuries to a local family have left a deep human impact—families torn apart and a community in mourning. The usual response from politicians and the media has been to issue condemnations, advocate for stricter penalties, and call for increased police powers. This tragedy is often depicted as a matter of “individual responsibility,” “criminality,” and “youth disorder.”

This narrative is more than just superficial; it is ideological. It masks the social origins of the catastrophe and justifies expanding the state’s repressive forces. A true scientific, Marxist analysis shows that this event is not an anomaly but a clear manifestation of the ongoing social crisis caused by decades of austerity, inequality, and neglect of working-class youth.

Athy and the social landscape of Irish capitalism

Athy exemplifies the experience of many working-class towns across Ireland, Britain, and Europe. Over the years, deindustrialisation has eroded stable jobs, giving way to insecure service-sector roles and ongoing underemployment. Austerity policies—carried out by governments from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, and now Sinn Féin—have severely reduced youth programs, cultural venues, mental health services, and community infrastructure.

In 2010, the WSWS cautioned that the economic crisis was severely affecting broad layers of workers, especially the most vulnerable—children, elders, low-income earners, and those with insecure housing. Since then, these impacts have only worsened. Today’s working-class youth confront collapsing public housing, underfunded schools, growing poverty, limited access to sports, arts, and cultural activities, no secure jobs, and no political representation advocating for their interests. Under such circumstances, feelings of alienation are widespread. The phenomenon of “Lucky Dip”—car thefts recorded and shared on social media—is not about moral failure but a social indicator. It reflects the despair of a generation for whom capitalism offers no future, stability, or meaningful societal role. The ruling elite criminalizes the fallout of its own neglect.

The political establishment demands repression, not reform

Hours after the tragedy, politicians and media figures called for new criminal laws, stricter penalties, and additional Garda officers. Proposing a specific offence for wrong-way driving reflects a broader trend: the state often responds to social decay with repression. This pattern is not unique to Ireland; many advanced capitalist nations have also increased police powers, imposed harsher sentences, militarized domestic policing, expanded youth surveillance, and demonized working-class communities in response to rising inequality and social despair. The Socialist Equality Party, commenting on the 2005 Macquarie Fields tragedy in Australia, highlighted this link: “There is a deep-going connection between the trampling of democratic rights at home and the prosecution of war abroad.”

Under conditions of widening inequality and declining legitimacy, the ruling class increasingly relies on coercion rather than consent. The “law and order” agenda is not about safety. It is about managing the social consequences of austerity while preparing the state for future unrest.

None of these measures addresses the root causes of youth alienation. They intensify the cycle: poverty produces despair; despair produces destructive behaviour; the state responds with criminalisation; criminalisation deepens poverty and despair.

The funeral: grief, solidarity, and political vacuum

The funeral of 15-year-old Joe Carthy, featuring a gold coffin, a horse-drawn carriage, and T-shirts with his image, was a powerful display of grief, loyalty, and defiance. It symbolized a community that feels under attack, believing the boys were victims of social conditions and rejecting the official story of criminality. However, this grief lacks a clear political focus. It’s a shared emotion without collective purpose. While the anger is genuine, the community lacks an organized way to express its understanding. The substantial Garda presence — including checkpoints, riot units ready, and surveillance — indicates that the state perceives the political significance of such grief better than the community itself. The ruling class fears that mourning might turn into resistance.

The pseudo‑left and trade unions: guardians of capitalist stability

The lack of political leadership among the working class is crucial. Sinn Féin, Labour, and the various Stalinist and social-democratic groups do not provide an alternative. They have long ceased fighting against austerity; instead, they manage capitalism and fail to oppose it. The trade unions act as industrial police, quelling protests and supporting state policies. None of these forces offers working-class youth a vision beyond voting for a capitalist party. Consequently, a political void has formed, turning tragedies like Athy into personal tragedies rather than social crises that demand collective action.

The Marxist conclusion: abolish the conditions that produce tragedy

The five boys in the car and the family they hit are not on opposite sides; rather, they are all victims of the same social order — one that inherently leads to alienation, despair, and social disintegration. The solution does not lie in increasing police presence, prisons, or criminal offenses. Instead, it requires a socialist transformation of society: restructuring the economy to prioritize human needs over private profits. This entails full employment at a living wage, high-quality public housing, free university education, cultural and recreational facilities for youth, large-scale investment in social infrastructure, and the eradication of poverty and inequality.

Such a program requires a political break from all parties of Irish capitalism. The working class must build its own revolutionary leadership, grounded in socialist internationalism and committed to unifying workers and youth across national lines.

The Athy tragedy is a warning. It reveals the human cost of a decaying society. The only way to prevent future catastrophes is to abolish the conditions that produce them.

The Guardian’s recent concern over a supposed “kissing recession” among young people is more than just a shallow cultural critique. It exposes bourgeois demoralisation—the ruling class sensing the social order’s breakdown but unable to confront its causes without self-accusation. The article’s approach, tone, and findings are deliberate and serve ideological purposes. They aestheticise, psychologise, and ultimately depoliticise the crisis, turning it into a psychological or aesthetic issue rather than a political one. What seems to be a compassionate portrayal of youth anxiety is actually a political move designed to prevent a deep analysis of the social factors that caused this crisis. The Guardian’s approach is to evade such examination.

The Liberal Method: Personalisation as Political Containment

Contemporary liberal journalism often replaces historical and economic analysis with personal biography and psychological language. The Guardian’s article exemplifies this shift, showcasing a selective collection of anxious youth, each depicted as a psychological issue: “risk-averse,” “traumatised,” “lacking confidence.” Readers are encouraged to empathise and feel a vague sadness, but not to grasp underlying causes. This is not merely a stylistic choice; it reflects a class-based approach.

By focusing on individual psychology, solutions like therapy, self-care, and resilience-building become the only options. Structural issues—such as austerity, precarity, the erosion of community, and the atomization caused by decades of neoliberal policies—are ignored. The therapeutic language doesn’t enhance social analysis; it replaces it, serving as an ideological tool for the bourgeoisie to avoid facing the outcomes of their policies. The Guardian’s role seems to be to prevent readers from recognising that the crisis of intimacy is fundamentally a crisis of capitalism.

The Guardian’s article mentions “social atrophy” but does not specify its tangible causes. The elimination of “third spaces”—such as youth centres, libraries, community halls, parks, and informal gathering spots—was not merely cultural change. It was a targeted class policy. As documented by the WSWS, UK local government spending on youth services was cut by over a third from 2011 to 2016, removing more than £60 million, closing over 350 youth centres, and cutting 41,000 youth service positions. The Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition enacted these reductions, set in motion by previous Labour governments, serving the interests of finance capital while councils favoured developer tax breaks and corporate subsidies.

What was lost wasn’t just physical “places to hang out” but also the infrastructure supporting unsupervised, face-to-face social interactions—essential for developing social skills that enable intimacy. The capacity to meet, flirt, argue, reconcile, and form relationships outside market logic was systematically dismantled. In this void, dating apps emerged: algorithm-driven platforms that profit from the loneliness capitalism engenders. Ironically, capitalism erodes the free social spaces where people meet, then monetises the resulting loneliness by selling digital profiles based on data, attention, and advertising. This process transforms alienation into a profitable commodity.

The Guardian portrays the pandemic as a natural event that ‘interrupted’ youth development, but this is misleading. In reality, the response to the pandemic was driven by class interests. Governments globally directed trillions of dollars to corporations and financial markets via measures like the CARES Act, while neglecting young people, leaving them to face isolation, unemployment, and mental health crises. The WSWS had already reported a sharp increase in youth mental health issues well before COVID-19, noting that suicide rates among Americans aged 10–24 rose by 56 per cent from 2007 to 2017—an era marked by austerity, job insecurity, and the disintegration of community life. The pandemic hastened existing trends driven by capitalist restructuring. Schools reopened not primarily for children’s well-being but to sustain economic productivity. Young people were pressured to give up their education, friendships, and social growth—all to safeguard asset prices and corporate profits. Viewing this solely as an individual misfortune instead of a class-based injustice is an act of ideological violence.

What the Guardian Cannot Name: Alienation

The Guardian’s social theorist mentions “social atrophy” but avoids naming it, as doing so would require addressing its root cause. The actual term is alienation—the process in which humans become estranged from each other and their social essence, stemming from a mode of production that turns every human relationship into a relation between objects. Alienation isn’t a simple mood; it’s the fundamental condition of life under capitalism: human abilities are turned into commodities, survival needs shape personality, intimacy becomes a gamble, and social interactions are influenced by money and algorithms.

The “kissing recession” isn’t just a cultural phenomenon; it reflects a society where the market infiltrates every aspect of life. However, Marx’s insight—distinguishing Marxism from Frankfurt School pessimism—is that alienation breeds its own opposition. The same generation that reports loneliness and anxiety also supports socialism, led teachers’ strikes, formed the core of UAW and UPS actions, and is entering politics under conditions blocking reform. Alienation isn’t inevitable; it is the foundation for revolutionary awareness.

The Guardian’s Despair Is the Bourgeoisie’s Despair

The Guardian’s article does not diagnose youth; instead, it reveals a bourgeois sense of helplessness. It admits something is wrong, yet its approach prevents action. It is a resignation wrapped in empathy. The ruling class feels the social order is crumbling. It cannot explain the crisis without admitting fault, nor describe suffering without risking revolutionary ideas. Acknowledging structural causes would threaten its legitimacy. Therefore, it resorts to biography, psychology, and therapeutic clichés — akin to hiding behind a curtain.

Marxists aim to restore the social wholeness that liberal journalism suppresses, illustrating how the crisis of intimacy stems from capitalism, and identifying the class most harmed by this system as the one capable of overthrowing it. The breakdown of communal life was intentionally engineered, not inevitable, and since it was engineered, it can be dismantled. Abolishing private property in the means of production isn’t just a slogan; it’s essential for restoring genuine intimacy, solidarity, and collective life. Only a socialist restructuring can recreate the spaces, time, and social relations necessary for humans to meet as equals. Capitalism has commodified even the kiss, and it falls to the working class to reclaim a world where genuine connection is possible again.

Marvin’s book arrives at a time when the British ruling class, alongside its media and academic supporters, tirelessly seeks to dissolve class into a mosaic of identities. In this environment, his steadfast emphasis on the reality of class—specifically, the ongoing existence of a working class shaped by exploitation, dispossession, and political betrayal—is particularly valuable. The book courageously challenges the popular notion that class has vanished into culture, region, or lifestyle categories. Marvin writes with sincerity, empathy, and a genuine effort to reclaim some of the collective dignity historically associated with working-class life. However, sincerity alone is not a strategy, and empathy does not substitute for analysis.

Marvin’s book, despite its vivid descriptions, primarily presents a phenomenology of decline rather than a clear explanation. It details the breakdown of working-class consciousness—such as its divisions into white, male, northern, immigrant, disabled, unemployed groups—but stops short of identifying the political forces behind this fragmentation. While it captures the emotional tone of defeat, it does not specify the institutions responsible for creating it. The author calls for a revival of “collective will,’ yet fails to propose a concrete plan to achieve it. Consequently, the book serves more as a lament than an intervention: it paints a picture of destruction but offers no insight into who built it.

The International Committee of the Fourth International has long argued that the British working class’s defeat was not an inherent social process. It wasn’t an unavoidable result of deindustrialisation, globalisation, or cultural shifts. Instead, it was a deliberate political failure caused by organisations that claimed to represent workers. Marvin’s book fails to confront this issue.

Instead of addressing the specific institutions that disarmed the working class—such as the Labour Party, trade unions, and labour reformist structures—he replaces them with vague terms like “power,” “capital,” and “the system.” By not naming these responsible forces, Marvin turns a political defeat into a cultural tragedy, framing the working class as victims of impersonal forces rather than of particular betrayals. This omission is significant; it’s the book’s primary limitation.

The miners’ strike of 1984–85

The miners’ strike of 1984–85 stands as a pivotal moment in modern British working-class history. It marked the point when the ruling class, supported by the state, faced off against a militant section of workers — with the Labour and trade-union bureaucracy ensuring their defeat. The SEP’s fortieth-anniversary analysis remains the clearest summary: Scargill waged the strike on a national-reformist platform, believing that militant action would secure concessions and that Labour would carry out a “Plan for Coal.” In response, the state used unprecedented force. The TUC refused to organise solidarity actions, Neil Kinnock opposed the strike, and the NUM fought alone for an entire year.

This was not incompetence but the logic embedded in the trade-union bureaucracy’s structural role: a social layer whose existence hinges on suppressing independent working-class activism. The miners’ defeat did not transform Labour and the unions; it set the stage for such change. Blairism was not a mere deviation but the natural completion of Labour’s development. Marvin’s book cannot account for the decline of working-class power because it cannot explain the miners’ loss. Without that defeat, the later fragmentation of class consciousness does not make sense.

Identity Politics: The Ideological Weapon Marvin Describes but Cannot Analyse

Marvin catalogues the proliferation of identities — white, male, northern, immigrant, disabled — but treats them as organic developments. They were not. They were promoted. The SEP’s 2018 congress resolution identified identity politics as the political weapon of an upper-middle-class layer seeking to defend its privileges; it is directed against the working class and involves governments, media, universities, and NGOs. — all embraced identity politics because it fragments class consciousness, substitutes cultural antagonisms for class antagonism, diverts anger away from capitalism, and legitimises the political dominance of privileged layers. Marvin describes the fragmentation but not its purpose. He sees the symptoms but not the strategy.

The endorsements from Richard Seymour and China Miéville are deliberate indicators, revealing more than mere support. Both are tied to the post-Corbyn environment that has reconciled with parliamentary reformism—an approach that, instead of challenging the system responsible for working-class defeats, has acted as its latest conduit. Corbynism wasn’t a challenge to Blairism; it functioned as a safety valve. It channelled the radical energy of hundreds of thousands, especially young people, back into the Labour Party—an institution historically guilty of betrayal. Every retreat was presented as a strategic calculation; every capitulation, a tactical move. This led to Starmer’s rise as the most right-wing Labour leader ever, a trajectory rooted in Corbyn’s own failure to reject Labourism. Marvin’s book, supported by this milieu, cannot criticise the machinery of betrayal because its endorsers are part of it.

The ongoing crisis facing the Starmer government confirms the ICFI’s long-standing analysis. Labour now primarily appeals to higher managerial and professional workers, with only 14 per cent of routine and manual workers supporting it—far behind Reform. This trend isn’t just temporary; it signifies Labour’s complete disconnection from the working class. However, the Labour “left”—including Corbyn, McDonnell, and the Socialist Campaign Group—plays a key role in maintaining stability by advocating for an “orderly transition” and discouraging workers from taking independent action. Marvin’s book cannot account for this crisis because it fails to explain Labour’s fundamental transformation.

Marvin and the Pseudo‑Lefts: The Elegy That Protects the Betrayers

Marvin’s book naturally belongs to the sphere of the pseudo-left — including the post-Corbyn intelligentsia, the academic-NGO sector, and the cultural left that has severed ties with revolutionary politics. This group excels at lamenting the working class while often defending, sanitising, or ignoring the political forces responsible for its decline. Marvin’s tribute aligns perfectly with this perspective.

The pseudo-left acknowledges the working class’s setbacks but focuses obsessively on defeat through memoirs, documentaries, and sociological portraits of “left-behind” communities. However, it views these defeats as a social condition rather than a political failure. These setbacks are seen as tragic stories to be told, not betrayals to be examined or challenged. The role of the pseudo-left is to keep the suffering of the working class continuously visible without providing explanations or addressing the underlying causes.

This explains why figures like Seymour and Miéville endorse Marvin’s book. Their support isn’t accidental; it reveals a pattern: a sorrow for the working class that overlooks the institutions that disarmed it. The Labour Party, trade unions, the Corbyn movement, and all of identity politics vanish into the fog of “power” and “capital.” The pseudo-left favours this because it absolves them of accountability. They can mourn the working class while still defending the very systems that contributed to its defeat.

In this context, Marvin’s book does not oppose the pseudo-left; it actually supports it. By avoiding mention of Labourism, trade-unionism, and identity politics as the main factors that fragmented class consciousness and hindered working-class struggles, Marvin offers the pseudo-left exactly what it seeks: a cultural story of decline that masks the political betrayal at its heart. His lament becomes a shield—protecting Labour, the unions, and the post-Corbyn left from the accountability they deserve. The working class doesn’t need another lament; it doesn’t need another book that lists its injuries while concealing those responsible. Instead, it needs clarity, strategy, and leadership. It needs a movement that explicitly names its enemies—concretely—and prepares for a renewed, internationalist socialist struggle.

Marvin’s book cannot accomplish this. The pseudo-left fails to deliver, and only a revolutionary party that strongly rejects Labourism, identity politics, and the petty-bourgeois ideology can. In Britain, this is represented by the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International. Marvin talks about a betrayed class, but without identifying the betrayers, the betrayal continues. His book is more a lament than a rallying cry. The working class needs more than emotional descriptions of suffering; it needs a political movement that directly names those who have robbed it of power and offers a plan to regain the struggle.

(This is Part One of a Two-Part Article)

Ariel Hessayon’s “What Happened at Bishopsgate. Part One” initially appears to be a minor investigation: a detailed analysis of a small mutiny in April 1649 and the execution of cavalry trooper Robert Lockier. However, the essay fits into a genre familiar to Marxist historiography—meticulously reconstructing a seemingly trivial military event to expose the underlying conflicts ripping apart a revolution gradually being strangled by its own leaders. Hessayon’s success lies in illustrating how a pay dispute, equal to about a week’s wages, escalated in hours into a debate over the very meaning of the English Revolution. This isn’t just historical curiosity. It’s a study of how revolutionary groups create martyrs, how counter-revolutionaries enforce discipline, and how both sides strive to shape their narratives around the same event.

The Funeral as Political Theatre

Hessayon’s framing is masterful. He starts with Lockyer’s funeral two days after his execution: thousands march through the City; sea-green and black ribbons indicate Leveller loyalty; trumpets play a soldier’s farewell; a riderless horse is led as if for a fallen leader. This scene resembles Marx’s descriptions of funerals as political spectacles — from Baltimore textile workers to the Paris Commune — a familiar image. Death becomes a stage where class struggles play out.

Karl Marx’s varied yet vivid accounts of funerals—from Baltimore textile workers to the Paris Commune—view them not merely as private ceremonies but as public expressions of class. For Marx, funerals are moments when the oppressed turn grief into political power, using the dead as tools of the living. Ariel Hessayon’s reconstruction of Robert Lockier’s funeral in April 1649 aligns closely with this Marxian perspective, even without directly referencing Marx. The similarities are evident.

Marx consistently highlighted that working-class funerals served as visible displays of support. He believed a funeral procession could showcase a movement’s power more effectively than any written statement. In his writings on American labour, he called funerals “marches of labour,” noting that the coffin acted as a banner around which thousands gathered.

Hessayon’s description of Lockyer’s funeral aligns with this perspective. The sea-green ribbons, trumpets, riderless horse, and the thousands marching through the City were not just mourning rituals but a demonstration of Leveller power. The Levellers recognised, as Marx later explained, that funerals reveal class distinctions. Lockier’s funeral served as a political protest disguised as mourning.

 In The Civil War in France, Marx noted that the funerals of Communards acted as ‘public lessons,’ where the revolution expressed its identity through martyrs. The fallen became symbols of collective resistance, and various political groups debated their importance. Hessayon points out a similar pattern in 1649: Lockier’s death was quickly exploited by the Leveller leaders to rally support, seeking “fresh martyr’s blood” to revive a struggling movement. Meanwhile, Cromwell and Fairfax, from the opposing social class, also acknowledged the corpse’s symbolic power. Lockier’s execution aimed to discipline the army and strengthen the Grandees’ authority. Both sides fought to interpret the dead’s meaning—mirroring Marx’s analysis of the funerals of Delescluze and other Communards.

Marx’s insights on Ireland and Chartism highlight that funerals serve as stages where different factions vie to shape their narratives. The body becomes a focal point for ideological conflict. Hessayon’s study of the pamphlet war involving Lockyer — including True Narrative, The Army’s Martyr, and royalist newsbooks — exemplifies this dynamic. The funeral was more than just a procession; it marked the start of a propaganda battle, with each faction aiming to reinterpret Lockier’s life and death to advance their political agendas. Marx would have instantly understood this struggle.

Marx viewed funerals as events that turn individual death into collective meaning, with the deceased often drawn into struggles they did not choose. Hessayon’s main point—that Levellers did not mainly drive Lockier’s mutiny and that they later co-opted his death—aligns with Marx’s idea of revolutionary martyrdom. Lockier’s life remains largely unknown, and his political stance unclear. However, his death became a symbol because political groups needed it. Both the Levellers and the Grandees used him, reducing him to a symbol. This exemplifies Marx’s funeral theory in action.

Hessayon’s reinterpretation of Lockyer’s funeral functions as a Marxist critique, albeit without directly mentioning Marx. It portrays funerals as acts of class performance, with martyrs serving as tools for political agendas, and the deceased as battlegrounds for ideological conflict. The analysis illustrates how both revolutionary groups and counter-revolutionary elites vie to shape the narrative surrounding the same body.

Hessayon correctly states that this event was not mere spontaneous grief but a carefully coordinated political message. The Levellers, whose movement had suffered repression and was losing influence within the army, recognised the power of martyrdom. They quickly worked to turn Lockier — a largely obscure figure — into a symbol of their mission. The funeral was more than an act of mourning; it was an effort to reassert control over the revolutionary army and challenge the authority of the Grandees, who were increasingly bringing the army under their discipline.

The dispute over Lockyer’s significance started even before his body was cold. Hessayon outlines how competing print outlets—including the officially approved True Narrative, the Leveller-backed Army’s Martyr, and numerous royalist newsbooks—all aimed to shape the event to serve their own agendas. The funeral marked the first act in this propaganda battle.

The Mutiny: A Footnote That Refuses to Stay Small

The traditional view, inherited from Brailsford, Manning, and Rees, sees Bishopsgate as a Leveller mutiny, described as the “penultimate act” before Burford. However, Hessayon’s archival research undermines this straightforward story. His evidence shows the arrears amounted to just three to eleven days’ pay—hardly a sign of a principled rebellion. Whalley’s regiment was not randomly selected for the unpopular Irish service, which typically ignited Leveller protests. Additionally, sources offer no reliable information about Lockier’s ideological stance—whether Baptist, Leveller, or Dissenter. This conclusion challenges familiar Leveller veneration: the mutiny appears to have been mainly a spontaneous response to economic grievances. Leveller leaders like Lilburne and Overton only arrived later and exploited Lockier’s death for their own purposes.

This does not criticise the Levellers but clarifies how revolutionary politics truly operate. Leaders often do not originate events; rather, they interpret, frame, and use them. Hessayon’s detailed account is more grounded than the romantic view because it forces us to consider the link between grassroots discontent and political leadership’s efforts to stay coherent under repression.

Grandees and Levellers: Opposing Politics, Parallel Needs

Hessayon’s key insight, evident even through a simple reading of his document, is that Cromwell and Fairfax, on one side, and Lilburne and Overton, on the other, arrived at similar conclusions despite having different political aims. For the Grandees, setting an example was crucial; the army was divided over issues like Ireland, unpaid wages, and political unrest. A swift execution would serve as a disciplinary act and demonstrate that the revolution’s military authority was now securely in place. Conversely, for the Levellers, Lockyer’s death became a source of inspiration—serving as martyrs’ blood—to motivate supporters who felt discouraged by repression and the consolidation of power by the Grandees.

Both factions reduced Lockyer to a symbol, using his death to serve their own interests. They competed over how his story was told. This isn’t about morality; it’s about class power. The elites aimed to protect property and social order, while the Levellers sought to keep democratic activism alive. Both sides recognised the political value of a martyr’s body.

Historiographical Comparison: Brailsford, Manning, Rees, and the Revisionists

A mid-20th-century Marxist perspective has historically influenced the historiography of Bishopsgate and the Leveller mutinies. This view regarded the Levellers as the ideological leaders of the revolutionary army. Christopher Hill’s broader interpretation — viewing the English Revolution as a bourgeois uprising propelled by plebeian radicalism — created the intellectual environment in which scholars like H. N. Brailsford, Brian Manning, and John Rees developed their accounts. Although these historians differed in details, they all shared the assumption that Leveller influence within the army was widespread, organised, and ultimately decisive.

H.Brailsford, active in the 1910s and 1920s, provided the basic narrative. His book, The Levellers and the English Revolution, depicted Bishopsgate as an early Leveller mutiny—a principled protest by politically aware soldiers against the Grandees’ shift towards counter-revolution. Brailsford’s notable strength was his moral clarity, but he tended to overreach with evidence. He regarded sparse sources as supporting the disciplined ideology of the Levellers, even though the historical record is actually ambiguous.

Brian Manning, working in the 1960s–90s, refined the class analysis but retained the same interpretive architecture. For him, Bishopsgate was part of a rising wave of plebeian radicalism driven by material grievances and Leveller agitation. Manning’s emphasis on social depth — artisans, small producers, and soldiers as the revolutionary engine — strengthened the Marxist reading but did not substantially question the assumption that Leveller cadres were central to mutiny dynamics.

John Rees, writing from a modern socialist viewpoint, emphasises the political importance. In The Leveller Revolution, he describes Bishopsgate as the “penultimate act” before Burford, marking a critical moment when Leveller influence in the military was at its peak. Rees considers factional complexities more carefully than Brailsford but still portrays Lockyer and his associates as deliberate Leveller activists. His storytelling is engaging, yet it relies on a level of ideological confidence that the sources do not fully support.

Revisionists like Morrill, Kishlansky, and Foxley oppose the traditional Marxist view. They minimise ideology, overlook class conflict, and see mutinies as administrative issues rather than political struggles. Kishlansky, for instance, dismisses Leveller influence in the army, considering them minor pamphleteers with little impact on military reality. While the revisionists excel at source interpretation, they lack political insight. By removing ideological elements, they reduce the revolution to a constitutional dispute among elites.

Hessayon’s approach falls between these extremes. He preserves class analysis and resists dismissing ideology, instead scrutinising the traditional Marxist story with detailed archival research. His conclusion—that Bishopsgate was not mainly a Leveller mutiny and that Leveller leaders later claimed Lockyer’s death—contradicts Brailsford, Manning, and Rees, yet avoids endorsing revisionist doubt. Hessayon maintains complexity while upholding political significance.

In doing so, he forces a reconsideration of how revolutionary leadership relates to spontaneous rank‑and‑file discontent. The Levellers were neither omnipresent nor irrelevant; they were a political movement operating under severe constraints, capable of rapid ideological framing but not always in command of events. The Grandees were not merely administrators but active agents of counter‑revolution. The revisionists miss this entirely; the older Marxists overstated it. Hessayon threads the needle.

 Avoiding the Trap of Source‑Critical Agnosticism

This type of source-critical reconstruction risks becoming a form of agnostic even-handedness, where propaganda from Grandees and Levellers is seen as equally distorted versions of a truth beyond reach. Hessayon avoids this by situating Bishopsgate within the broader revolutionary crisis. That week, following Lockyer’s death, was marked by intense upheaval: the Diggers occupied St George’s Hill, a women’s petition with 10,000 signatures was presented to Parliament, Colonel Poyer was executed by a firing squad—the same size as the one that would kill Lockyer two days later—and mutinies broke out at Salisbury, Banbury, and Burford. Weeks later, Captain William Thompson, killed at Wellingborough, still referenced Lockyer’s blood among his grievances.

This was part of the Grandees’ broader effort to dismantle the revolutionary army that enabled their victory, not an isolated barracks dispute. Hessayon’s contextualization maintains the episode’s class significance and avoids drifting into postmodern relativism.

Hessayon’s intervention matters because it challenges two simplistic narratives: the romantic Leveller myth—which claims every mutineer was a dedicated Leveller and every Leveller a near-socialist hero—and the revisionist view that ideology was irrelevant. The Civil War was merely a misunderstanding among aristocratic gentlemen. He rejects both, restoring complexity without ignoring class. Hessayon depicts the Levellers as a political movement with genuine influence but limited scope, capable of effective propaganda but not pervasive throughout the army. He also portrays the Grandees as evolving into counter-revolutionaries, intent on disciplining the soldiers who propelled them to power. This is the precise area where serious Marxist scholarship must engage.

Part two’s success is anticipated because it will present one of the most significant Leveller studies in recent years — not by dismissing the Levellers, but by placing them within their true historical context.

Martyrdom and Counter‑Revolution

Lockyer’s death is not merely a moral lesson. Instead, it serves as a detailed example of how revolutions are initiated, challenged, and ultimately betrayed. Hessayon’s essay, along with the broader context he describes, reveals a fundamental truth: each revolutionary movement creates martyrs, and each counter-revolution fosters the conditions for their emergence. The debate over their significance itself becomes part of the class struggle. As the English Revolution of 1649 neared its end, the leading figures solidified their authority, the Levellers fought to maintain their influence, and ordinary soldiers were disciplined into submission. Lockyer’s execution marked a pivotal moment—not because of his identity, but because of what his death might symbolise.

Hessayon reopens the case of Robert Lockyer. In doing so, he reopens the question of how revolutions die, how their meanings are fought over, and how the dead are conscripted into battles they never chose.

Sources and Bibliography

I. Primary Sources: Karl Marx and Revolutionary Funerals

Marx, Karl.

• The Civil War in France (1871). Marx’s most substantial discussion of funerals as revolutionary theatre, especially the burial of Communards such as Charles Delescluze.
• Articles on the American Labour Movement (1850s). Includes descriptions of Baltimore textile workers’ funerals as demonstrations of class strength. Collected in Marx/Engels Collected Works (MECW), vols. 12–15.

Engels, Frederick.

• “Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx,” Highgate Cemetery, 17 March 1883.
• “Karl Marx’s Funeral,” Der Sozialdemokrat, 22 March 1883. Essential for understanding how Marx’s closest collaborator interpreted funerals as political acts.

Liebknecht, Wilhelm.

• “Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx,” Der Sozialdemokrat, 22 March 1883. A key example of how the German Social Democrats immediately politicised Marx’s death.

II. Primary Sources: Lockyer, Bishopsgate, and the Levellers (1649)

Pamphlets and Newsbooks

• A True Narrative of the Late Mutiny (Grandees’ official account).
• The Army’s Martyr (Leveller-sponsored pamphlet).
• Royalist newsbooks including Mercurius Pragmaticus, The Moderate Intelligencer, Mercurius Elencticus, etc.

These constitute the propaganda battlefield Hessayon reconstructs — 33 newsbook references across 17 titles, each shaping Lockier’s meaning.

Hessayon, Ariel.

• “What Happened at Bishopsgate. Part One” (2024). The central modern source for Lockier’s funeral, the mutiny’s chronology, and the competing narratives.

III. Secondary Sources: Marx, Funerals, and Political Symbolism

Draper, Hal.

• Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Vols. I–IV. Contains discussions of mass demonstrations, symbolic politics, and Marx’s treatment of public rituals.

Stedman Jones, Gareth.

• Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion (2016). Offers contextual analysis of Marx’s political journalism and his use of public spectacle.

Sperber, Jonathan.

• Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life (2013). Provides biographical context for Marx’s political engagements, including funeral culture.

Musto, Marcello (ed.).

• Workers Unite! The International 150 Years Later (2014). Contains essays on Marx’s political strategies and symbolic practices.

IV. Secondary Sources: Levellers, Mutinies, and the English Revolution

Classic Marxist Historiography

Brailsford, H. N.

• The Levellers and the English Revolution (1912; reissued 1961). Foundational narrative treating Bishopsgate as a Leveller mutiny.

Manning, Brian.

• The English People and the English Revolution (1976). Emphasises plebeian radicalism and Leveller influence.

Rees, John.

• The Leveller Revolution (2016). Presents Bishopsgate as the “penultimate act” before Burford.

Revisionist Historiography

Kishlansky, Michael.

• The Rise of the New Model Army (1979). Minimises Leveller influence; treats mutinies as administrative breakdowns.

Morrill, John.

• Essays on the English Civil War (1980s–2000s). Representative of the constitutionalist revisionist school.

Foxley, Rachel.

• The Levellers: Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution (2013). Modern scholarly reassessment of Leveller ideology.

Robertson, Geoffrey.

• The Levellers: The Putney Debates (2007). Useful for political context and modern interpretations.