The Guardian and similar liberal-bourgeois outlets celebrate “booksmaxxing,” but this isn’t a sign of a cultural revival. Instead, it reveals the deep decline of bourgeois culture under late capitalism. The term—borrowed from the pseudo-Darwinian language of online manosphere self-optimisation—highlights the social forces at play. As noted, it reduces reading to “another tool for building one’s personal brand… another aesthetic marker to be curated on BookTok, Instagram, or Goodreads.”
This is not a revival of reading. Instead, it represents the commercialisation of reading at its peak—transforming intellectual engagement into a social media spectacle. The book serves as a prop; the reader becomes a self-promoter; and culture morphs into a marketplace of carefully crafted identities.
The Guardian’s enthusiasm for this trend is predictable, reflecting a privileged class whose view of culture is shaped by consumerism and fears of maintaining social status. Their claim that reading is now “sexy” signals not cultural vitality but its decline, highlighting a lack of genuine engagement with art, history, or social issues.
The publishing industry has historically moved away from representing the experiences of the working class. James McDonald’s question—“Where is our Zola?”—is genuine, highlighting a structural truth: the industry is dominated by the upper-middle class, whose preferences and ideological interests shape what gets published, promoted, and celebrated.
The popular genres—romance, YA fantasy, mystery/thriller—are no coincidence. They reflect a social group focused inward, fixated on identity, self-expression, and escapism. In contrast, literary fiction that engages with social issues is considered the least important, as the document notes.
This creates a disturbing scenario in which the lives of hundreds of millions of workers—such as warehouse staff, nurses, delivery drivers, teachers, and cleaners—are rendered invisible within the cultural domain. The “booksmaxxing” bookshelf serves as a showcase of upper-middle-class narcissism, presenting a curated display of aestheticised consumption.
Cultural Decay and the Crisis of Bourgeois Society
Marxists maintain that the cultural crisis is fundamentally connected to the capitalist crisis. David Walsh highlights a core contradiction: despite the existence of conditions conducive to a vibrant global artistic culture, capitalism’s social relations hinder its growth. As Leon Trotsky notes, the decline of bourgeois society intensifies social contradictions, creating a pressing demand for liberating art. However, this demand is not fulfilled by today’s cultural institutions, which instead suppress it through layers of identity-based censorship, market-driven infantilization, and the ongoing commodification of all human activities.
Booksmaxxing isn’t a departure from this process; instead, it represents its outcome. It substitutes authentic intellectual engagement for a shallow show, trading real comprehension for the mere act of reading.
Self-Optimisation Ideology and the Policing of Culture
The “-maxxing” suffix is more than a meme; it represents the mindset of hustle culture, integrating market principles into personal beliefs. Reading is viewed as a way to build cultural capital, providing a competitive edge in pursuing career and social achievements.
This ideology explains the emergence of “sensitivity readers,” who are more accurately described as “DEI inquisitors.” Their role isn’t to safeguard readers but to oversee cultural matters in favour of the upper-middle class, enforcing the principles of identity politics and limiting literature to narrow notions of personal authenticity and “lived experience.”
The result is a restrictive atmosphere where artists are told to “stay in their lane,” and attempting to depict social realities beyond their identity group is considered morally wrong. This approach does not signify progress; rather, it results in the fragmentation and depoliticisation of culture, turning art into a series of identity-centred performances.
The Working Class and the Necessity of Cultural Renewal
In this context, the working class requires authentic culture instead of the commercialized copies provided by the upper-middle class. They desire art that directly addresses social issues, pays tribute to ordinary people’s lives, and includes—quoting Trotsky—“an element of protest against intolerable conditions.”
This culture cannot emerge from TikTok trends, marketing campaigns, or the self-made rituals of the professional-managerial class. Instead, it can only be cultivated by revitalizing the socialist movement and re-establishing the connection between artistic creation and workers’ struggles. The great realist tradition—embodied by Zola, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dreiser, Steinbeck—did not develop spontaneously. It was driven by the growth of the international workers’ movement and the belief that society is understandable and subject to change. Rebuilding this movement is crucial for a genuine cultural revival.
Conclusion
Booksmaxxing does not signify a cultural awakening but instead indicates cultural exhaustion. It exposes the narcissism, insecurity, and ideological emptiness of the upper-middle class, whose dominance over cultural institutions has led to a landscape characterized by triviality, censorship, and self-branding.
The working class holds the duty of cultural renewal, not influencers, publishers, or liberal newspapers. Humanity can develop a new, sincere, and freeing culture solely through the creation of a revolutionary socialist movement.
The Associated Press recently featured a charming story of cultural interest: a first edition of Wuthering Heights expected to sell for between £400,000 and £600,000. But this is more than just a collectable; it offers a keen insight into a declining social structure. The novel, which vividly illustrates the destructive impacts of property, class oppression, and social exclusion, is now being auctioned as a speculative asset to the highest bidder. “What we have is a society in which if you want to enjoy art, you must be a billionaire.” The irony is not incidental. It is structural. It expresses the logic of capitalism applied to culture in its most naked form.
The Brontës and the Market: A Historical Crime Scene
Emily Brontë passed away in 1848 at age 30, having endured material struggles and strict social limits in a Yorkshire parsonage. She and her sisters used male pseudonyms because the literary world—similar to other bourgeois institutions—excluded women from serious involvement. Their writing was driven not by profit, which was minimal, but by an inner desire to explore fundamental human questions.
The initial critics of Wuthering Heights reacted with shock. One condemned it for its “vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors.” The novel’s brutal depiction of how property disputes corrupt love, family bonds, and the human spirit was too intense for Victorian sensibilities. It emerged from suffering, brilliance, and a strong artistic integrity that challenged the shallow values of its time.
Nearly 180 years later, that same novel has become a symbol of wealth for the ultra-rich. The Brontës’ creative work—created under conditions of oppression and hardship—is now just another luxury item. This shift is not accidental but the unavoidable result of a system that places private wealth above all human values.
Art as Loot: The Oligarchic Appropriation of Culture
Marx explained long ago that under capitalism, money acts as “the visible divinity”—transforming all human and natural properties into their opposites. Today, this idea is verified daily in the art market. Auction houses that once sold a banana duct-taped to a wall for $6.24 million now also list Wuthering Heights, not because the market can tell the difference, but because it cannot. The sole indicator remains price.
The estimated cost of £400,000–£600,000 for this project must be viewed in the global context, where billions face poverty, homelessness, failing public services, and declining support for cultural institutions. Public museums and libraries are being closed or dismantled. For example, the British Library has destroyed tens of thousands of books and historic newspapers. At the same time, wealthy oligarchs are creating private museums—such as Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges, Roman Abramovich’s New Holland Island complex, and Eli Broad’s Los Angeles gallery—to enclose their collections. This trend does not represent the preservation of culture but rather its privatisation and sequestration.
What Wuthering Heights Actually Says
Auctioneers may praise the novel’s “cultural significance” and “emotional power,” but they often overlook that Wuthering Heights also critically examines property-based society. Heathcliff’s transformation from an orphan to a vengeful figure is driven entirely by the class humiliations he suffers. The novel vividly illustrates—shockingly to early readers and still disturbingly relevant today—that a social system rooted in property ownership and inheritance can devastate human lives. Now, if the same work is marketed as a speculative investment for the very class Brontë depicted with brutal honesty, it is not only ironic but also deeply obscene.
Capitalism’s War on Culture
The commercialisation of Wuthering Heights exemplifies a broader pattern: the decline of public culture and the privatisation of artistic heritage. The wealthy elite, possessing vast resources, tend to view art primarily as a means to increase their capital. Meanwhile, the working class—who generate all wealth and cultural output—are continually denied access to these cultural treasures that they helped create. It’s the working class that produces all wealth and culture, but is systematically excluded from the cultural heritage that rightly belongs to them.
The Socialist Answer: Expropriate the Expropriators
Marx envisioned a society where enjoying art required being an artistically cultivated individual. Today, this is reversed: to enjoy art, one must be a billionaire. The answer isn’t to criticise the rich’s philistinism or rely on their non-existent sense of responsibility.
Instead, we must abolish social structures that privatise culture for a parasitic elite. Artistic and literary treasures should be democratically controlled by those who created them. Achieving this demands expropriating the expropriators and transforming society along socialist lines. Only then can classics like Wuthering Heights—and all of humanity’s cultural heritage—be restored to their true owners: the international working class.
Katja Hoyer’s essay on the Weimar Republic exemplifies contemporary liberal ideology: it is humane in tone, superficially balanced, yet fundamentally inaccurate. It echoes the bourgeois historiographical claim that Weimar was a fragile but genuine democracy that tragically failed to rally its citizens. However, this narrative is not only incomplete but also a political distortion that conceals the key lessons of the German Revolution, the counterrevolutionary nature of the Weimar state, and the significant influence of Social Democracy and Stalinism in paving the way for fascism.[1]
A Marxist perspective suggests a different explanation. Weimar’s fall wasn’t due to a lack of “optimism,” “credible leadership,” or “real change on the ballot paper.” Instead, it failed because it was founded on oppressing the working class and upheld by parties that repeatedly betrayed it. Hoyer’s liberal moralism—her claim that democracies must “offer hope”—acts today as a political sedative, dulling the working class’s awareness amid capitalism’s renewed crisis and the far right’s resurgence.
This article clarifies the historical facts that Hoyer’s account conceals. It argues that Weimar was not a failed democratic experiment but a short-lived counterrevolutionary regime that temporarily maintained bourgeois dominance. Its collapse was driven not by voter disillusionment but by political betrayals from the SPD, the Stalinist-led KPD, and the trade union bureaucracy. The key lesson for today is not about the importance of charismatic centrists, but about the urgent need to develop an independent revolutionary leadership within the working class.
I. Weimar Was Born as a Counterrevolution
Liberal interpretations of Weimar typically start with the November Revolution as a sign of democratic awakening. Hoyer also describes the 1919 elections as a moment of civic renewal. However, this story falls apart under even basic historical examination.
1. The November Revolution and the SPD’s Counterrevolutionary Role
The German Revolution of 1918–19 was not an unplanned democratic reform effort. Instead, it was a proletarian uprising that toppled the Kaiser, created workers’ and soldiers’ councils nationwide, and raised issues of state power. The SPD leaders—Ebert, Scheidemann, Noske—quickly moved to suppress this revolution. Their goal was not to expand the revolution but to control, steer, and eventually suppress it.
Ebert’s covert agreement with General Groener on 10 November 1918 marked the birth of the Weimar Republic. In return for military backing, Ebert committed to protecting the existing officer class and capitalist system from revolutionary workers. This was not a democratic compromise but a counterrevolutionary alliance.
2. The January 1919 Elections: Democracy at Gunpoint
Hoyer’s sentimental reference to Kate Lehmann’s diary—her “celebratory mood” on election day—ignores a crucial reality. The elections occurred right after the SPD-ordered crackdown on the Berlin uprising, during which the Freikorps, authorised by Noske, brutally suppressed the revolution. On 15 January 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered by officers with the silent approval of the SPD government. Therefore, the Weimar Republic was not founded on democratic victory but on political murders. The electorate’s “joy” was ultimately based on the deaths of revolutionary leaders.
3. Continuity of the Old State Apparatus
The new republic maintained much of the Kaiserreich’s structure: the judiciary was still staffed by monarchist judges who gave lenient sentences to right-wing killers while harshly persecuting leftists. The Reichswehr stayed unreformed, operating as a “state within a state” with leadership that despised democracy and plotted against it openly. The civil service remained a stronghold of reaction, loyal to the old order. Although it appeared democratic, the regime’s rule was actually sustained by the old elites. Weimar was not a true break from the past; rather, it was the political framework that allowed the bourgeoisie to survive the revolutionary upheaval.
II. The Collapse of Weimar: Betrayal, Not Disillusionment
Hoyer’s main argument—that Weimar fell because voters grew “disenchanted” with democracy—oversimplifies a significant class struggle into a psychological issue. It presents a liberal morality story suggesting democracy collapses when citizens lose faith, rather than due to actions by the ruling class. A Marxist perspective shows a different picture: the working class was not defeated by fascism; instead, it was betrayed by its own leaders.
1. The Balance of Forces in 1932
In the November 1932 free elections, the SPD secured 121 seats, the KPD 100, and the Nazis 196. Together, the workers’ parties still held a majority in Parliament. The proletariat remained Germany’s most influential social force, yet it was politically immobilised.
2. The SPD: From Counterrevolution to Capitulation
The SPD’s actions in the early 1930s can be seen as a continuation of its betrayal in 1918–19. It supported Brüning’s presidential dictatorship by voting for emergency decrees that undermined parliamentary democracy. The party also endorsed Hindenburg’s re-election, endorsing the man who would later appoint Hitler. Additionally, it failed to mobilise its millions of members when von Papen staged the coup against the Prussian SPD government in July 1932. Trotsky’s assessment remains clear: the SPD leadership acted as if Germany’s fate depended not on the strength of the working class, but on “the pure spirit of the Weimar Constitution,”
3. The KPD: Stalinism’s Catastrophic “Social Fascism” Line
Under Stalin’s guidance, the KPD labelled the SPD and fascism as “twins.” This extreme-left stance rejected forming a united front against the Nazis, focused its criticism mainly on the SPD, and even caused the KPD to collaborate with the Nazis during the 1931 Prussian referendum. Consequently, this approach led to political confusion among the working class and undermined its unity when it was most needed.
4. The Trade Unions: Total Capitulation
Before Hitler’s ascent to power, the ADGB leadership handed over control. On 1 May 1933, unions marched under the swastika. The next day, Nazi forces raided their offices. Due to the union bureaucracy’s failure to rally the working class, it disbanded itself and integrated into the new regime.
5. The Myth of “Democratic Failure”
Weimar’s fall was not due to democracy’s failure but because the parties professing to represent the working class subordinated it to the bourgeois order. Reformism and Stalinism—both forms of opportunism—eliminated the chance for a revolutionary alternative.
III. Liberal Optimism as Political Anaesthetic
Hoyer’s core lesson—that democracies need to present “optimism,” “hope,” and tangible change—encapsulates liberal ideology. It presumes that the crisis in bourgeois democracy can be addressed internally, simply by improving messaging and personalities. This, however, is a form of political mystification.
1. The Crisis of Bourgeois Democracy Is Structural, Not Psychological
Hoyer points out that 83 per cent support parliament “in principle,” yet only 31 per cent approve of its actual functioning. This isn’t a communication failure but an acknowledgement that parliament primarily serves the capitalist class. The core contradiction isn’t between voters and politicians but between the state’s democratic appearance and its capitalist substance.
2. The Working Class Does Not Need Optimism
The liberal use of “hope” serves as a replacement for actual political analysis. It encourages passivity and trust in institutions that have consistently let down the working class.
3. The Real Lesson of Weimar
When the ruling class is unable to maintain democratic rule, it will readily forsake democracy. The sole force capable of safeguarding democratic rights is the working class, which must be independently organized outside all bourgeois parties and equipped with a socialist agenda.
IV. The Present Crisis: Why Hoyer’s Liberalism Is Dangerous
Hoyer’s argument is not merely historically wrong. It is politically disorienting in a moment of acute crisis.
1. Germany Today: The Return of Militarism and the Far Right
The German ruling class is rebuilding its military on a scale not seen since the Nazi era. Democratic rights are under ongoing attack. The far-right AfD is becoming normalized and cultivated by parts of the establishment. Across Europe, the political centre is disintegrating.
In this environment, calls for “credible leadership” and “genuine change on the ballot” essentially urge the working class to entrust its future once more to the bourgeoisie.
2. The SPD and Greens: Continuity, Not Renewal
The modern SPD and Greens, similar to their Weimar counterparts, act as tools for stabilizing capitalism. Their backing of militarism, austerity measures, and the suppression of dissent shows they are not capable of driving democratic renewal.
3. The Only Hopeful Lesson
The lesson from Weimar is not about improving how democracy is promoted. Instead, it emphasizes that the working class must decisively separate itself from all bourgeois parties and form an international revolutionary movement against capitalism. Such a movement is essential for defending and expanding democratic rights.
Conclusion
Katja Hoyer’s liberal interpretation of Weimar offers a reassuring myth for today’s ruling elites. It reimagines a counterrevolutionary regime as a democratic experiment, attributes the failure of bourgeois democracy to issues of optimism, and obscures the crucial roles played by Social Democracy and Stalinism in enabling fascism.
A Marxist perspective uncovers the reality: Weimar was inherently counterrevolutionary from the start, sustained through betrayal, and ultimately brought down by the working class’s political indecision. Its true lesson isn’t about needing better leaders or more inspiring speeches, but about forming a revolutionary leadership that can unite workers against both fascism and the bourgeois “democrats” who facilitate its rise. This lesson remains vital today, as capitalism’s crisis worsens and the far right gains ground across Europe. The working class must resist liberal illusions and prepare for struggle.
The media-fueled controversy over ITV featuring former Chelsea Women’s manager Emma Hayes in a kitchen-like studio setup during Women’s World Cup coverage has been exploited by the upper-middle class to showcase their grievances publicly. This incident—quickly amplified into a “sexism row”—serves as a prime example of how identity politics are used to distract from the dire social issues affecting working-class communities. “The ‘sexism row’ is a conflict between wealthy media bosses and a well-paid pundit… a dispute in which the working class has no involvement.”
This sentence reveals the political deception entirely. Emma Hayes is not a victim of patriarchal oppression; she is a prominent and well-paid figure in women’s football. ITV, a corporate broadcaster worth billions, is involved. The dispute is an elite disagreement over how football commentary looks—an issue that has no impact on millions facing survival challenges due to failing public services, rising costs, and austerity.
Identity Politics and the Politics of Diversion
The episode follows a familiar pattern. In 2018, the BBC gender-pay dispute involved presenters earning £400,000–£500,000 annually, portraying themselves as victims of systemic discrimination. An article by Laura Tiernan showed that these privileged groups “are not remotely interested in the problems faced by most women in the workforce.”
Working-class women encounter real challenges like balancing work and family, limited maternity leave, low wages, poorly paid part-time jobs, inflexible shifts, and costly childcare. These problems are rooted not in “the patriarchy” but in capitalism itself. They are the consequences of decades of bipartisan austerity, privatization, and the erosion of social infrastructure.
The Hayes–ITV pseudo-controversy serves a similar political purpose. It sparks days of social-media outrage, opinion pieces, and performative outrage, giving the illusion that society is actively fighting for women’s liberation. However, the real issues faced by working-class women—such as collapsing hospitals, unaffordable childcare, stagnant wages, and the weakening of the NHS—are consistently ignored in public debate.
This is intentional. The goal of identity politics is to substitute class struggles with personal grievances, structural exploitation with symbolic gestures, and the battle against capitalism with efforts to increase diversity in corporate leadership.
The Reactionary Contempt Behind the “Kitchen” Outrage
A key aspect of the controversy is the argument that placing Hayes in a kitchen-themed set is inherently insulting. “The suggestion that a kitchen set is inherently ‘demeaning’ rests on a contemptuous attitude toward domestic labour.” This harshly criticizes the class dimension of modern feminism. For countless working-class women, domestic labour isn’t a form of oppression but an everyday, physically demanding task—done unpaid, unrecognized, and lacking social support. The wealthy elite involved in identity politics are not advocating for better recognition of domestic work or shared childcare. Instead, they aim to distance themselves from anything linked to ordinary women’s experiences.
Their anger isn’t about the exploitation of domestic work itself, but about its symbolic link to it. This reflects a politics of personal branding rather than a pursuit of social liberation.
A Conflict Among Elites, Irrelevant to the Working Class
The working class remains uninvolved in conflicts between millionaire pundits and billionaire broadcasters. The media’s intense focus on these trivial issues is a deliberate political move. It aims to keep the public distracted by symbolic debates while the ruling class speeds up its attack on living standards.
Readers’ conclusions should be clear-cut: “Achieving true equality for women requires not just more women in executive positions, but fundamentally overthrowing the capitalist system that sustains gender oppression.” This core view must steer the working class. As with all social inequalities, gender oppression originates from the capitalist mode of production. It cannot be solved through corporate diversity efforts, media outrage, or elevating a few privileged women to elite roles.
The Socialist Alternative
The sole progressive response to the social crisis affecting working-class women and men is the independent, international mobilization of the working class around a socialist program. This involves restoring public services dismantled by years of austerity, socialising childcare and domestic work, ensuring secure, well-paid employment for everyone, and expropriating the financial oligarchy that controls all aspects of social life.
The Hayes–ITV controversy serves as a distraction from critical issues, a fabricated spectacle designed to keep the population politically confused and socially fragmented. The working class should reject identity politics in all its forms and instead focus on the struggle for socialism—the only route to true equality and human liberation.
“Give me liberty, or give me death!” – Patrick Henry, speaking at the Second Virginia Convention (1775)
“These are the times that try men’s souls.” – Thomas Paine, The American Crisis (1776)
“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” –
Attributed to Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence (1776)
“Join, or Die” – A famous political cartoon and slogan created by Benjamin Franklin to promote colonial unity against the French and their Native American allies, which later became a symbol of unity against British rule.
Introduction: Propaganda, Class, and the American Revolution
George Goodwin’s Propaganda Wars of the American Revolution comes at a time
of deep crisis in American and global capitalism. As the 1776 semiquincentennial approaches, it coincides with widespread social inequality, imperialist conflicts, and a rapid decline of democratic institutions in the US. It’s no surprise that debates over the meaning of the American Revolution—its origins, class implications, and legacy—have become central in current political discussions. Published by Yale University Press, Goodwin’s book aims to contribute to this debate by exploring how the Patriot movement used pamphlets, sermons, newspapers, broadsides, and political theatre to shape public opinion.
Goodwin is a talented historian and lucid writer. His book makes a significant contribution to a field traditionally dominated by Bernard Bailyn and Gordon S. Wood’s “ideological school.” However, Propaganda Wars also reveals a main weakness of that perspective by isolating ideas from the material class interests that influence them. Consequently, it presents a polished but somewhat idealist view of the Revolution—focusing on persuasion techniques while underplaying the social forces that made those techniques successful.
The Ideological School and Its Strengths
Goodwin’s intellectual legacy is clearly visible. His emphasis on propaganda as a key element places him mainly in the ‘ideological’ school of Revolutionary historiography, established by Bernard Bailyn. This approach, starting with Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), argues that the colonists were driven by a unified worldview rooted in radical Whig ideas. Bailyn and Wood carefully analysed pamphlets, sermons, and political debates from that period, opposing the dismissive view that all declarations of principle are driven solely by self-interest.
From a Marxist perspective, this emphasis on ideas is a notable strength. “It was a school that approached the record of human thought with great seriousness.” This is a welcome corrective to the postmodernist trivialisation of intellectual history and to the racialist distortions of the 1619 Project. Goodwin’s book continues this tradition by showing how the Patriot cause deliberately shaped public opinion—how Thomas Paine energised the colonies, how the Boston Tea Party was used as political theatre, and how Washington actively promoted the image of republican virtue.
Goodwin rightly emphasises that propaganda played a crucial role. Revolutions depend not just on economic factors but also on mobilising large groups, expressing grievances, and envisioning a new political future. The real question is: which forces were being mobilised, and for what purpose?
The Ideological School and Its Afterlives: Bailyn, Wood, and Goodwin in Comparative Perspective
Any Marxist critique of George Goodwin’s Propaganda Wars of the American Revolution must place the work within the wider historiographical context from which it originates. Goodwin is part of a broader intellectual tradition. His book represents the latest version of the “ideological school,” originally established by Bernard Bailyn and further expanded with sharper analysis by Gordon S. Wood. The advantages and drawbacks of Goodwin’s research are linked to those of this entire tradition.
The ideological school has significantly influenced modern interpretations of the American Revolution. It has also been the main opposition to postmodernist and racial-essentialist critiques, which culminated in the New York Times’ 1619 Project. The International Committee of the Fourth International, through its collaboration with Wood and its support for Enlightenment universalism, has actively engaged in this historiographical debate. As such, a clear, materialist evaluation of the ideological school is essential.
Bernard Bailyn: Ideology as Prime Mover
Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967) marked a major turning point in the study of Revolutionary history. Moving away from the Progressive focus on economic grievances and class struggles, Bailyn proposed that the colonists’ motivations were rooted in a consistent worldview inspired by radical Whig ideas. According to this view, the Revolution was primarily an ideological uprising—a fight to defend liberty against a perceived British plot to wield arbitrary authority.
Bailyn’s contribution was significant. He brought rigour back to the analysis of ideas, elevating Revolutionary pamphlets from scholars’ dismissive view of them as simple rationalisations of self-interest. “It was a school that approached the record of human thought with great seriousness.”
Bailyn’s framework was highly idealistic, portraying ideas as independent forces separate from the material conditions and class dynamics that generate them. The Revolution is depicted as a conflict of political ideas rather than a fight shaped by the contradictions within colonial society. Class conflict is scarcely mentioned; slavery is seen as a minor issue; and the economic and social changes following the Revolution are viewed as minor outcomes rather than fundamental causes. Consequently, Bailyn’s approach is both a significant advance and a limitation—it expanded the scope of intellectual history but also restricted understanding to a non-materialist perspective.
Gordon S. Wood: Ideology as Social Transformation
Gordon S. Wood, Bailyn’s top student, maintained the ideological school’s focus on ideas while expanding its view to include a more vibrant and comprehensive understanding of social change. In his works, The Creation of the American Republic (1969) and The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992), Wood showed that republican ideology was more than just abstract principles; it was a powerful force that transformed political culture, social structures, and daily life.
Wood’s work represents the most materialist analysis within the ideological school. He demonstrates that the Revolution dismantled monarchical and hierarchical social relationships, empowered the “middling sort,’ and unleashed democratic forces that even the Founders could not fully control. Additionally, he addressed the Revolution’s core contradiction with remarkable clarity: the coexistence of liberty and slavery. Wood argued that the Civil War was an inevitable culmination of a tragedy that originated in the Revolution itself.
Wood’s accomplishment lies in recognising that ideas are rooted in society rather than existing in isolation. However, he avoids adopting a Marxist perspective. He does not view the Revolution as a bourgeois-democratic event, nor does he see slavery as a fundamental aspect of capitalist growth. His approach stays within the ideological tradition, despite pushing against its boundaries.
George Goodwin: Ideology Reduced to Technique
George Goodwin’s Propaganda Wars adopts the strengths of the ideological school but lacks its deeper analytical depth. While Bailyn explored the origins of ideology and Wood examined societal transformations, Goodwin focuses on the
mechanics of persuasion. His emphasis is not on the internal logic of Revolutionary ideas but on how they circulated, were performed, and emotionally resonated.
The book thoroughly explores printers, pamphleteers, preachers, and political leaders, illustrating how the Patriot movement intentionally influenced public opinion. It shows how Paine’s writings inspired the colonies, how the destruction of the tea served as a political spectacle, and how Washington fostered an image of republican virtue. However, Goodwin’s approach is more limited than that of earlier scholars. It’s important to remember that propaganda is grounded in tangible social forces, not just ideas—it is the ideological expression of actual social dynamics.
Goodwin views propaganda primarily as a technological feat rather than a reflection of class-based ideology. He describes how the Patriots succeeded in convincing the public, but does not explore why their messages connected with various social groups. Consequently, the Revolution is seen more as a success of strategic communication than as a bourgeois-democratic upheaval driven by colonial societal conflicts. In this way, Goodwin exemplifies the continuation of the ideological school. This tradition has lost its core intellectual focus and now persists through cultural history, communication analysis, and political technique.
The Marxist Position: Ideas as the Expression of Class Forces
A Marxist analysis acknowledges the valuable contributions of Bailyn, Wood, and Goodwin. It values their honest engagement with ideas and their opposition to the cynical reductionism often seen in modern academia. Nonetheless, it emphasises that ideas gain historical significance only when they align with material interests and social needs.
The American Revolution was a bourgeois-democratic uprising. Its propaganda functioned as the ideological voice of a rising bourgeois class opposing monarchical authority. The contradictions within that system—especially the tension between liberty and slavery—were evident in its language, silences, and evasive tactics. Bailyn studied the key ideas of Revolutionary ideology, while Wood investigated its social effects. Goodwin analysed how these ideas were disseminated.
The ideological school is essential for understanding the intellectual landscape of the American Revolution, but its focus on idealism limits its ability to fully interpret the Revolution’s significance. Goodwin’s Propaganda Wars offers meaningful insight into this tradition, yet it also reveals its inherent limitations, which are amplified here. “Propaganda does not float free of the material world… They were the ideological expression of real social forces.”
This is the core issue. The American Revolution was primarily a bourgeoisdemocratic movement, influenced by the conflicts within colonial society. The pamphlets from Boston radicals, sermons from New England clergy, and Paine’s fiery speeches were not independent forces shaping history but rather ideological expressions of various social classes: a rising colonial bourgeoisie limited by imperial mercantilism, artisans and mechanics opposing British economic policies, small farmers fighting taxation and landlordism, and Southern planters wanting westward expansion but hindered by the Crown.
Goodwin’s emphasis on technique—the “how” of persuasion—shields the underlying reasons. Why did Paine’s Common Sense strike such a chord? Why did conspiracy and liberty rhetoric energise urban crowds, frontier farmers, and some enslaved individuals fleeing to British forces? These questions cannot be answered solely by examining propaganda. Instead, they demand a class-based Analysis of colonial society. The ideological school has always faced challenges despite its achievements. It views ideas as the main drivers of history, rather than as expressions of material interests. Goodwin’s book, despite its merits, still operates within this idealist perspective.
The Revolution “From Above”
The subtitle—From the Boston Patriots to George Washington—reveals a further limitation. It moves from discussing Boston’s radical protests to emphasising Washington, the Virginia planter who represents the Revolution’s consolidation through elite leadership. “The propaganda wars were not just Patriots versus
Loyalists; they were also… a struggle over what kind of republic would emerge.”
This is a pivotal moment. The American Revolution, similar to all bourgeois revolutions, involved a deep tension between the democratic hopes it sparked and the class interests that ultimately constrained it. The urban crowds who brought down the George III statue, the workers who enforced non-importation agreements, and the farmers who later participated in Shays’ Rebellion—these groups drove the Revolution beyond what the colonial elite found acceptable.
Goodwin describes this trajectory but doesn’t question it. The Revolution is portrayed as a story of growing propaganda rather than as a conflict in which different class forces competed to influence the new republic. The ideological perspective often views the Founders as natural leaders of the Revolution, rather than as representatives of a particular class whose interests lay in rallying and controlling popular support.
The Silence at the Heart of Revolutionary Rhetoric: Slavery
No analysis of Revolutionary propaganda can ignore the core contradiction of 1776: the simultaneous fight for liberty and the perpetuation of chattel slavery. This was not accidental but a fundamental aspect of a revolution led by a class that included slaveholders. Revolutionary language used the metaphor of “slavery” to describe the colonists’ relationship with Britain, largely ignoring the reality of actual slavery. Jefferson’s initial objection to the slave trade was removed from the Declaration. Patriot propaganda aimed to preserve unity among both slaveholders and non-slaveholders across North and South.
Goodwin recognises this contradiction but does not incorporate it into his analysis of propaganda. However, the silences, evasions, and metaphors used in Revolutionary rhetoric were not accidental; they were crucial for maintaining the ideological unity of a movement led by a class whose material interests relied on human bondage. As Wood stated in Empire of Liberty, the tragedy was “preordained from the time of the Revolution.” The Civil War was the inevitable outcome of the contradiction that the Revolution could not resolve.
What Goodwin Achieves—and What He Cannot
Goodwin’s book is insightful and well-researched, offering an engaging look at the mechanics of persuasion. It highlights the roles of pamphleteers, printers, preachers, and political figures who influenced public opinion before independence. The book treats the intellectual environment of the Revolution with seriousness, pushing back against modern academic cynicism. However, its focus on an idealist framework limits its ability to explain events fully.
Propaganda was significant because it reflected the material interests and democratic hopes of large sections of colonial society. It was effective because, even if imperfectly, it conveyed the emerging bourgeois order’s challenge to monarchical authority. Seeing propaganda as an independent force is a mistake; it conflates the form with the underlying social content and reality.
Conclusion: Toward a Marxist Understanding of Revolutionary Propaganda
A Marxist view of the American Revolution recognises the influence of ideas but emphasises that ideas only gain power when linked to material interests and historical needs. The Revolution was a bourgeois-democratic uprising that laid the groundwork for capitalist growth, with its propaganda serving as the ideological expression of this change.
While Goodwin’s Propaganda Wars explores persuasion techniques, it does not address the class forces behind their effectiveness. Although a serious work, it remains rooted in the idealist tradition of the ideological school. To fully understand revolutionary propaganda, one must consider it within the context of colonial American social structure, the contradictions of slavery, and the global rise of capitalism. Only then can we comprehend the Revolution’s true historical logic—and its ongoing significance in a time when the crisis in American democracy raises questions about social revolution.
Today’s interest in Nostradamus, astrology, and mystical prophecies isn’t just innocent fascination. It reflects a deep intellectual decline in bourgeois society. Trying to explain Hitler’s rise with 16th-century cryptic verses isn’t just foolish; it’s a reactionary act. The document notes, “The framing of this question… is itself an expression of the irrationalism that pervades bourgeois culture in decay.” This irrationalism isn’t marginal; it acts as an ideological shield for capitalism during its final crisis.
The ruling elite, troubled by the disastrous consequences of their system, seeks comfort through mystification. The petty-bourgeois classes, bewildered by social upheaval, rely on supernatural explanations. Meanwhile, the academic community, having moved away from the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason, now promotes the idea that history is driven by fate, myth, or “dark forces,” rather than by class struggle. Hitler’s rise was not predicted by Nostradamus nor written in the stars; it resulted from specific, identifiable, and preventable political betrayals by the leaders of the German workers’ movement.
The Material Foundations of Fascism
The rise of Nazism can only be understood through the Marxist lens of historical materialism. In the early 1930s, Germany was Europe’s most developed industrial economy, yet it was constrained by the Versailles Treaty and the global capitalist crisis. The productive forces had surpassed the limits of the nation-state. German imperialism aimed for expansion, but before fighting abroad, it needed to suppress the working class domestically.
The Nazis were not a supernatural anomaly. As Trotsky described, they were “a party of national despair,” gaining backing from the devastated petty bourgeoisie—“the small artisans and shopkeepers of the cities, petty officials, employees, technical staff, the intelligentsia, and impoverished peasants.” These groups, shattered by the crisis, were whipped into a rage of hatred toward the proletariat, whom they blamed for their social downfall.
However, fascism in power was not merely the rule of these devastated classes. As Trotsky aptly states, “fascism in power is least of all the rule of the petty bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it is the most ruthless dictatorship of monopoly capital.” German industrialists, bankers, and military leaders saw Hitler as the tool they needed to break down workers’ organizations and gear up for imperialist conflict. The Düsseldorf meeting of January 1932, where leading industrialists pledged their support to Hitler, was not a mystical convergence of destiny. It was a class decision.
The Working Class Wanted No Part of Fascism
Contrary to the myth—propagated by both fascists and liberals—that Hitler rose to power on widespread popular support, the German working class largely opposed him. The document clearly states: “The working class did not want fascism.” In the November 1932 elections, the combined votes for the Social Democrats and Communists exceeded those for the Nazis. Furthermore, in the factories, the Nazis were held in contempt.
The decisive factor was not the will of the masses but the treachery of their leaders.
The Stalinist and Social Democratic Betrayals
The Stalinist leadership of the Communist Party, following Moscow’s orders, embraced the harmful theory of “social fascism,” labeling the Social Democrats as the primary enemy. This strategy—one of the worst crimes in workers’ movement history—blocked the creation of a united front for the working class when such unity could have defeated the Nazis. Meanwhile, Social Democratic leaders failed to mobilize their workers, fearing revolution. They surrendered to the bourgeois state, disarming the working class and enabling Hitler to become chancellor in January 1933.
Trotsky’s warnings proved to be prophetic in the true sense: they were based on scientific analysis. He stated that a Nazi victory would lead to “the extermination of the best of the German proletariat, the destruction of its organizations, and the eradication of its self-belief and hope for the future.” He also predicted that Italian fascism would seem “pale” in comparison. Every prediction was confirmed.
Mysticism as a Weapon Against the Working Class
The shift towards Nostradamus and astrology is not impartial. It fulfills specific ideological roles: depicting fascism as unavoidable rather than stoppable; excusing the responsibilities of the ruling class and leaderships like reformist and Stalinist; replacing class analysis with fatalism; and discouraging the working class by implying that supernatural forces shape history. The pursuit of prophecies and astrological justifications for Hitler is not only unserious but also politically reactionary. This type of irrationalism echoes the postwar pessimism of the Frankfurt School, which blamed “the Enlightenment” for fascism, thus diverting attention from capitalism and the failures of the workers’ movement.
The Lessons for Today
The worldwide rise of fascist movements, increasing irrationalism, and the decline of bourgeois democracy are not just predictions but stem from capitalism’s fundamental contradictions. These include economic crises, imperialist competition, and the ruling class’s failure to resolve these issues democratically. The focus shouldn’t be on deciphering old astrological texts, but on cultivating the revolutionary leadership that Germany lacked in 1933.
Introduction: A “Gaffe” That Reveals the Social Order
The controversy over Rafael van der Vaart’s televised comment that Japanese footballers “look alike” has been dismissed by the media as just another case of personal bias. However, this statement actually exemplifies the racial dehumanisation that capitalism fosters. It is “a textbook expression of the racial dehumanisation that capitalism systematically produces and reproduces.” The importance of this incident is not in the personal beliefs of a former football player but in the social conditions that normalise and even trivialise such thinking.
The phrase “they all look alike” has a dark history, used for centuries to overlook individual differences and lump entire groups together. It’s not surprising that a former international player—who has played with teammates and opponents from around the world—would repeat this cliché on air. This reflects a broader culture rife with racial stereotypes, one whose core beliefs are deeply intertwined with the capitalist system supporting it.
The Media’s Ritual of Containment
The media response adhered to a familiar pattern. Outrage was aimed at the individual, with commentators calling for an apology, which Van der Vaart provided. The cycle then continued. As noted in the document, capitalist society tends to “individualize the offense, focus outrage on one person, demand an apology, and then move on.” This ritual has a clear political purpose: it treats racism as a personal moral failing rather than a structural issue rooted in class society.
The sports-media complex, which benefits financially from the worldwide movement of athletic labour, is especially skilled at this kind of ideological control. It can criticise a pundit’s comment while still running an industry that views players—particularly from Africa, Asia, and Latin America—as commodities. This industry is “more than willing to publicly condemn racist remarks while continuing to operate the commercial system that treats those same players as commodities.” The hypocrisy is glaring. The media condemns van der Vaart while reproducing the very conditions that make such remarks inevitable.
Identity Politics and the Politics of Evasion
Liberal commentators and identity-politics advocates respond in a similarly insufficient manner. They concentrate on personal responsibility, diversity training, and public ‘calling out,’ but these actions fail to address the fundamental social structures. Such initiatives do nothing to challenge the capitalist system that generates racial oppression. “
Identity politics views racism as stemming from individual attitudes, cultural insensitivity, or representational issues. It advocates for moral education, corporate training, and symbolic actions. However, racism is not merely a psychological flaw. It is “a product of class society, deliberately cultivated by the ruling class to divide workers who share a common interest in abolishing capitalism.”
Reducing racism to an interpersonal offense masks its material foundations, turning a structural class domination mechanism into a question of etiquette. It replaces political struggle with moralism, thus diluting its political significance.
Racism as a Tool of Class Rule
The persistence of racialised thinking in sport is intentional. Modern professional sports are part of a global industry that generates profit by exploiting workers, who are mostly from the most oppressed parts of the world. The commercialisation of athletic labour cannot be separated from the broader patterns of imperialism and global inequality.
Racism is central to this process, as it normalizes inequality, justifies exploitation, and divides workers with similar material interests. It is not just a relic of history but an active tool used in modern class domination. The claim that racism is “deliberately cultivated by the ruling class” is supported by the entire history of capitalism, from colonialism to today’s global supply chains. Van der Vaart’s comment is not just an anomaly; it reveals the ideological forces supporting the global sports industry and, more generally, capitalist society.
The International Working Class and the Fight Against Racism
The only effective way to fight racism is through the independent political mobilisation of the global working class. This is not a moral appeal but a strategic move. Racism cannot be eradicated with apologies, media outrage, or corporate diversity efforts. It can only be eliminated by dismantling the social system that sustains it.
The genuine fight against racism requires the building of an independent political movement of the working class, internationally united, that can abolish the material foundation of all racial and national oppression.” This view sharply contrasts with the narrow focus of identity politics and the cynicism often seen in the media.
The global working class—comprising diverse races and nations and becoming more interconnected—has no stake in racial divisions. Its quest for emancipation is inherently linked to the fight against all oppression. Consequently, the struggle against racism is inherently connected to the pursuit of socialism.
Conclusion: Beyond Outrage, Toward Emancipation
The van der Vaart incident is not solely about an individual’s bias. Instead, it highlights the social system that fosters such prejudice and leverages media spectacles to mask its roots. Publicly condemning individuals merely sustains the illusion that racism is a personal flaw, rather than a fundamental component of capitalist dominance.
Introduction: Reclaiming Antiquity for Historical Materialism
G.E.M. de Ste. Croix’s 1982 publication, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, marked a pivotal moment in twentieth-century historiography. During a period when structuralism, Weberian sociology, and the “cultural turn” were weakening the explanatory role of class analysis, de Ste. Croix presented a comprehensive 700-page argument showing that the ancient world was fundamentally organised around relations of exploitation. This book is regarded as “one of the great works of Marxist historiography,’ applying historical materialism across the entire span of Greco-Roman antiquity.
This review places de Ste. Croix within the wider historiographical context, outlines his key arguments, and evaluates his impact on Marxist theory and ancient studies. It emphasises that his main contribution was not just his impressive knowledge—though his mastery of sources was remarkable—but also his revival of class struggle as the driving force in ancient history. Challenging the dominant Weberian view held by Moses Finley and others, de Ste. Croix argued that the crucial issue in any mode of production is how surplus value is extracted, asserting that the ancient world was primarily characterised by the exploitation of unfree labour, especially enslaved people.
I. The Finley–Weber Paradigm: Status, Not Class
By the middle of the 20th century, the exploration of the ancient world was mainly influenced by a Weberian approach emphasising status groups, legal categories, and political institutions. Moses Finley, a prominent ancient historian, argued that Greek and Roman societies were structured around status rather than class divisions. He explicitly stated that ancient societies organised themselves into various political statuses, including citizen, metic, freedman, and enslaved person, thereby rendering the idea of class an unnecessary classification.
Finley’s argument was based on two main points: first, that social status hierarchy outweighed economic position, as a wealthy metic in Athens did not have the political rights of a poor citizen; second, that ancient ideology was mainly political rather than economic, since ancient writers portrayed social conflict through citizenship, honour, and legal privileges. Consequently, modern historians should consider this perspective.
This approach seemed sophisticated, rejecting simple economic determinism and emphasising the independence of politics. It also aligned with the mid-20th-century trend toward sociological pluralism. However, its impact was to eliminate the idea of class struggle in the ancient world, turning it into a realm of fixed hierarchies rather than active conflict.
De Ste. Croix understood that this issue was not just a methodological mistake but also an ideological one. Accordingly, he viewed Finley’s criticism as identical to the opposition Marx encountered: the assertion that ancient society was centred on politics, much as medieval society was centred on religion. In both instances, the ideological appearance was confused with the actual social structure.
II. De Ste. Croix’s Reconstruction of Class: Surplus Extraction as the Key
De Ste. Croix’s main contribution was redefining class as the key analytical category in ancient history. He revisited Marx’s original view of class as a relation of exploitation rather than merely a sociological group. The crucial question shifts from the legal status of individuals to how the dominant property-owning classes extract surplus value from direct producers. This idea is summarised thus: “The most significant distinguishing feature of any mode of production is not how the bulk of labour is done, but how the dominant propertied classes ensure the extraction of the surplus…”
This formulation is fundamental to de Ste. Croix’s approach. It helps him pierce the ideological haze in ancient political discourse to reveal the underlying mechanisms of exploitation: slavery as the main means of surplus extraction, with rent, debt, and taxation serving as secondary tools applied to free producers. State coercion acts as the enforcement of elite dominance. In contrast to Finley, de Ste. Croix argued that the ancient world was not “pre-economic” but pre-capitalist, with an economy not driven by markets or profit motives. Nonetheless, it was an economy where the propertied classes derived their wealth from the surplus generated by enslaved people, peasants, and dependent workers.
This method enabled de Ste. Croix to incorporate the full scope of Greco-Roman history into a unified materialist framework, spanning from the Archaic Age to the Arab conquests. It also helped him interpret the political crises of antiquity—such as stasis, civil war, and revolution—not as anomalies but as manifestations of fundamental class conflicts.
III. Aristotle as a Witness to Class Antagonism
One of de Ste. Croix’s most insightful historiographical strategies was to view ancient authors not just as sources of information but as commentators on their own social contexts. Aristotle, specifically, can be seen as an early thinker resembling a proto-Marxist in his analysis of class struggle. He believed that a man’s economic status is the key factor shaping his political actions. Although he recognises the existence of middle groups, Aristotle often simplifies political conflict into a division between property owners and non-owners.
This divide becomes more pronounced during crises when the fundamental opposition between the rich and the poor becomes evident. Aristotle’s concern about stasis—civil unrest caused by class struggles—shows his keen understanding of the built-in tensions within the polis. De Ste. Croix points out that Aristotle’s approach closely resembles Marx’s methodology. This is not an anachronistic misinterpretation but an acknowledgement that ancient thinkers also saw politics as driven by material interests.
By emphasising Aristotle’s class analysis, de Ste. Croix challenges the Weberian idea that class is a modern concept unrelated to antiquity. Instead, he shows that the ancients had a distinct, although ideologically influenced, awareness of their own social classes.
IV. Democracy and Slavery: The Political Economy of the Polis
One of the most debated points in de Ste. Croix’s work is his claim that the structure of Athenian democracy relied on slavery. This challenges both idealised views of ancient democracy and revisionist theories tracing its origins to the free peasantry. “He understood that it was based on slavery… [the propertied class] intensified their exploitation of those who could not defend themselves: the slaves.” This is not a moral judgment but a materialist analysis. The reforms by Solon and Cleisthenes reduced elite exploitation of citizens, compelling the propertied classes to shift their oppression onto enslaved individuals. Therefore, the democratic rights of citizens were fundamentally linked to the subjugation of the enslaved.
De Ste. Croix also dismisses the idea that internal contradictions caused democracy to decline. Instead, it was toppled by the propertied classes, particularly after the Peloponnesian War, when oligarchic coups—supported by Sparta—aimed to re-establish elite control. Over time, citizens’ rights were gradually reduced until, by the third century CE, “a poor Roman citizen could legally be flogged and tortured—penalties once reserved for slaves.” This extended decline of democracy can only be understood through a class analysis: the propertied classes dismantled democratic institutions because those institutions limited their ability to extract surplus.
V. The Decline of Rome: Exploitation and the Collapse of Social Reproduction
De Ste. Croix offers a compelling materialist interpretation of the Roman Empire’s decline. He dismisses cultural, moral, and military reasons, asserting that Rome’s fall resulted from the ruling classes escalating exploitation, ultimately dismantling the empire’s social foundation. The propertied class “drained the life-blood from their world and thus destroyed Graeco-Roman civilisation…”
The oppressed populations, burdened by heavy taxes, military demands, and later by the parasitic Christian clergy, lacked motivation to protect the empire from barbarian invasions. The ruling elite, focusing on their immediate gains, weakened the long-term stability of the social system—an example of Marx’s concept of the “fetishism of private property.” This interpretation emphasises the role of the exploited classes: Rome’s fall was not solely due to external factors but also to internal exploitation, which rendered the empire unsustainable.
VI. The Peasantry Debate: Numbers vs Structure
A major debate in historiography focuses on the role of the peasantry. Ellen Meiksins Wood argued that Greek democracy relied on the free labour of independent smallholders, rather than slavery. In contrast, Ann Talbot criticises Wood’s view, describing it as “purely arithmetical and formal.”
The core issue is structural: the numerical majority of peasants does not influence the dynamics of the class struggle. Instead, what matters are the conflicts between rich and poor citizens, and between citizens and enslaved individuals. These contradictions, rather than demographic proportions, fuelled the political crises of antiquity. Therefore, De Ste. Croix’s analysis remains valid, even amidst revisionist efforts to downplay slavery’s importance.
Conclusion: De Ste. Croix’s Enduring Significance
De Ste. Croix’s intellectual and moral stature has remained strong over time. He “did not view the ancient world merely as a collection of dead structures; he engaged with its political struggles as if they were his own.” His work reflects the finest traditions of twentieth-century Marxism, influenced by the Russian Revolution and opposition to fascism.
De Ste. Croix proved that historical materialism extends beyond capitalism, shedding light on the entire class-based society. His contributions continue to be essential to understanding not only antiquity but also the ongoing mechanisms of exploitation and resistance across eras.
Historiographical Appendix: Finley, Wood, de Ste. Croix, and the WSWS Tradition
I. Introduction
Over the past fifty years, the study of the ancient world has been influenced by markedly different methodological approaches. These debates are not just about how to interpret Greek and Roman history but also concern the status of concepts like class, surplus extraction, and historical materialism as analytical tools. This appendix reviews four key perspectives: Moses Finley’s Weberian focus on status; Ellen Meiksins Wood’s ‘political Marxism’; G.E.M. de Ste. Croix’s traditional Marxism; and Trotskyist historiography.
This appendix sets a clear interpretive framework for the latter two, describing de Ste. Croix’s “Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World” as “one of the great works of Marxist historiography” and highlighting his claim that “the most significant distinguishing feature of any mode of production is… how the dominant propertied classes ensure the extraction of the surplus.”¹
II. Moses Finley and the Weberian Displacement of Class
Finley’s work is the most significant effort to omit class as an explanatory factor in ancient history. Influenced by Max Weber, he contended that the ancient Mediterranean was mainly organised around status groups—such as citizens, metics, freedmen, and enslaved individuals—rather than economic classes.² Finley argued that “ancient Greece and Rome were societies structured around a range of political statuses, making class an unsuitable category.”³
Finley’s argument was based on two key ideas: that social status took precedence over economic wealth. For example, a wealthy metic did not have the political rights of a poor citizen, and an imperial freedman could be wealthier than a senator but still hold a lower social status.⁴ Ancient ideology primarily focused on political issues rather than economic ones. Since ancient writers depicted conflict through themes of citizenship and honour, modern historians ought to approach it in a similar way.
Finley reshaped the ancient world into a realm of fixed social hierarchies, in which the processes of surplus extraction became less visible. His method was praised for its elegance but effectively blocked the use of historical materialism. As the referenced document mentions, de Ste. Croix saw this as similar to what Marx faced: the argument that ancient society was “based on politics” because its ideology expressed political ideas.⁵
III. Ellen Meiksins Wood and the Peasant‑Citizen Thesis
Ellen Meiksins Wood aimed to reposition class at the heart of ancient history. She achieved this by shifting the focus from slavery to the autonomous labour of smallholder farmers as the basis of Greek democracy. In her work Peasant-Citizen and Enslaved Person, she contended that the polis was a community of free producers whose political equality depended on their economic independence.⁶ Slavery existed, but it was not structurally constitutive of democracy.
In reference to Ann Talbot’s discussion in the WSWS, Wood’s method is characterised as “purely arithmetical and formal,” treating “peasant” as a generic label that overlooks the diversity among the numerous peasant societies throughout history.⁷ The issue is not about numbers but about structure: the key question is how surplus is extracted, rather than the number of peasants. Wood’s concept of ‘political Marxism” therefore tends to emphasise free labour and civic community as the main categories, often overlooking the slave mode of production as the fundamental basis of Athenian democracy.
IV. G.E.M. de Ste. Croix: Class as Surplus Extraction
De Ste. Croix’s intervention was to reexamine Marx’s initial idea of class as a relation of exploitation, focusing on the mode of surplus extraction rather than viewing class as just a sociological category. It is this process of surplus extraction that characterises class.⁸ “The most significant distinguishing feature of any mode of production is not how the bulk of labour is done, but how the dominant propertied classes ensure the extraction of the surplus…”⁹
De Ste. Croix argued against Finley, asserting that the ancient world was not “status-based,” but instead a slave-based system where the propertied class gained surplus through the exploitation of unfree labour, mainly enslaved people. Regarding Wood, he contended that Athens’ democratic structure was fundamentally rooted in the organic link between citizen rights and the unfree status of slaves. The reforms introduced by Solon and Cleisthenes aimed to curb elite exploitation of citizens, which led the propertied classes to increase their exploitation of enslaved individuals.¹¹
De Ste. Croix’s approach also included a radical reinterpretation of ancient writers. For instance, Aristotle is seen not merely as a theorist of social hierarchies but as an analyst of class conflict shaped by ideological influences. He consistently simplifies political disputes into a dichotomy between hoi tas ousias echontes (property owners) and hoi aporoi (those without). As the uploaded document points out, Aristotle’s analysis closely resembles the approach used by Marx.”¹³
V. The Trotskyist Tradition: De Ste. Croix as a Model of Historical Materialism
The Trotskyist tradition regards de Ste. Croix as an example of authentic Marxist historiography. It commends him for dismissing “fashionable structuralism and ‘French phrasemongering’” and for showing “a true understanding of Marx and a dedication to the class struggle as essential to comprehending all human history.”¹⁴
This tradition’s reading is characterised by three features: historical materialism as a universal approach and recognition of the ancient world not as a pre-economic period but as a unique historical setting of exploitation and resistance. It also views democracy as a form of class rule, noting that Athenian democracy “was based on slavery,” and its fall was due to deliberate actions by the elite rather than internal decline.¹⁵ Elite self-destruction as a historical process: The Roman ruling class “drained the life-blood from their world and thus destroyed Graeco-Roman civilisation.”¹⁶
VI. Comparative Synthesis
The four positions can be outlined as follows: Finley emphasises status-centrism, with a marginalised view of class, analysing democracy through political structures; slavery is acknowledged but not viewed as structurally central. Wood reintroduces class, focusing on free smallholders, considers slavery as secondary, and sees democracy rooted in peasant-citizenship.
De Ste. Croix characterises class as the extraction of surplus, with slavery being fundamentally embedded in this process. He sees democracy as a form of rule based on slave exploitation. Trotskyists regard De Ste. Croix, as a key model, universalises the concept of class struggle and interprets ancient history through the framework of exploitation and resistance. His work is considered an essential resource for Marxists, showing that historical materialism explains the full scope of class society.”¹⁷
Notes
Appx. Doc., “G.E.M. de Ste. Croix’s The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World… stands as one of the great works of Marxist historiography,” and “The most significant distinguishing feature… is how the dominant propertied classes ensure the extraction of the surplus.”
Moses I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).
Appx. Doc., “Finley argued that ancient Greece and Rome were societies organised around a spectrum of political statuses… and that class was therefore an inappropriate category.”
Ibid.
Appx. Doc., “De Ste. Croix recognised this as the same objection Marx himself had faced…”
Ellen Meiksins Wood, Peasant-Citizen and enslaved person: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy (London: Verso, 1988).
Appx. Doc., “This is a purely arithmetical and formal approach… ‘peasant’ is an empty term…”
Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3, ch. 47.
Appx. Doc., “The most significant distinguishing feature…”
Appx. Doc., “by the exploitation of unfree (especially slave) labour.”
Appx. Doc., “the constitutional measures… prevented the propertied class from exploiting the peasantry… [so] they intensified their exploitation of… slaves.”
Aristotle, Politics, 1279b–1281a.
Appx. Doc., “bears a remarkable resemblance to the method of approach adopted by Marx.”
Appx. Doc., “fashionable structuralism and ‘French phrasemongering’… genuine knowledge of Marx…”
Appx. Doc., “He understood that [democracy] was based on slavery.”
Appx. Doc., “drained the life-blood from their world and thus destroyed Graeco-Roman civilisation.”
Appx. Doc., “His work remains an indispensable resource for Marxists…”
The BBC’s focus on a VAR official’s hand gesture during the 2026 World Cup isn’t a rare mistake or journalistic error. Instead, it reflects a corrupt political culture where those in power, facing growing social issues and increasing imperialist violence, depend increasingly on divisive identity politics. This strategy aims to split the working class and steer collective dissent into meaningless, symbolic conflicts. The so-called “OK sign” controversy is just the most recent example of this reactionary approach.
While the media was breathlessly speculating about “a VAR official’s fingers,” the United States, as the host of the tournament, was engaged in violent actions: prosecuting a war of aggression against Iran, preparing military operations against Cuba, sustaining the Gaza genocide, and conducting mass deportations unseen in modern American history. The World Cup itself has become a militarized spectacle: ICE agents patrolling stadiums, entire national teams denied entry, African nations subjected to degrading “quarantine” procedures, and ticket prices soaring to $32,970 for the final—turning a sport originally created by the working class into an event reserved for the global elite.
However, the BBC and the broader media industry focus their attention not on these crimes but on the supposed racial significance of a referee’s hand gesture. This is intentional. It is a political move.
The Function of Identity Politics Under Capitalism
Identity politics is not an uprising from the grassroots nor an opposition to oppression. Instead, it functions as a tool of dominance, engineered and exploited by the bourgeoisie to divert social rage from the capitalist system toward ongoing, unresolved symbolic disputes. The ruling class has realized that nothing better suppresses class awareness than fostering the idea that workers see each other as racial enemies, potential racists, or carriers of concealed “dog whistles.”
The VAR controversy serves as a clear example. Whether the gesture was meant to be innocent doesn’t matter. What matters is that the media focused on it because it is harmless, symbolic, and divisive. This encourages the public to engage in a moral policing ritual instead of challenging the underlying structures of exploitation.
The “OK sign” controversy started as a hoax on 4chan—deliberately designed to trick the liberal media into believing a harmless gesture was a white supremacist symbol. The media bought into it, and the Anti-Defamation League added it to their database. Consequently, a gesture used by millions worldwide was transformed into a racialized symbol, fueling suspicion, accusations, and performative outrage. This exemplifies identity politics at its most superficial: a focus on symbols without real substance, morality divorced from materialism, and vigilance disconnected from actual struggle.
The Real Conditions of the 2026 World Cup
While the media focuses on racist hand gestures, the real aspects of the tournament expose the harsh realities of modern capitalism. A host country engaged in several imperialist wars, with police-state security present throughout stadiums, mass deportations disrupting immigrant communities, and entire national teams barred from entry. African nations face racist humiliation disguised as “public health,” and FIFA’s president awards Donald Trump an “inaugural FIFA Peace Prize”—a disturbing mockery of diplomacy.
This is the truth the BBC avoids addressing. The World Cup now serves as a worldwide showcase for authoritarianism, militarism, and the commercialisation of human life. It is a celebration of oligarchic wealth, built on excluding the working class—whose labour created the sport and whose enthusiasm keeps it alive. The media’s responsibility is to prevent any of this from becoming a source of public anger.
Why the Ruling Class Needs Identity Politics
The capitalist class faces a world in chaos: economic stagnation, geopolitical conflicts, declining living standards, and increasing working-class resistance. In such times, the ruling elite cannot allow the rise of a unified, class-aware movement of workers—whether American, Iranian, Congolese, Mexican, European, African, or Asian—who identify their shared adversary in the capitalist system.
Identity politics counters unity by prompting workers to view each other not as allies in a common struggle but as racialized suspects, potential bigots, or members of hostile identity groups. It shifts focus from the universalism of class to the particularism of identity, turning the battle against oppression into a rivalry for symbolic acknowledgment.
The VAR controversy exemplifies a situation where a trivial gesture becomes a national scandal, serving as a distraction that deepens racial divisions among workers while the state continues its war effort, deports millions, and benefits the oligarchy.
The Task of the Working Class
The remedy to this spectacle isn’t increased vigilant policing of symbols, but rather cultivating revolutionary class consciousness. Workers need to reject the entire framework of identity politics, which mainly hides the material roots of oppression and causes division among the exploited majority. The core issue isn’t what a referee did with his fingers; it’s why workers should accept a system that sends them to fight and die in imperialist wars, deport their neighbours, humiliates entire nations, makes them unable to afford the sport they helped create, and then demands they focus on media-fuelled symbolic disputes. The working class must respond to this not with outrage over small gestures, but through a united fight against capitalism itself.
Osip Mandelstam’s fate epitomises the Stalinist bureaucracy’s suppression of the revolutionary intelligentsia. His life and death unveil, with striking clarity, the fundamental conflict between true artistic independence and the parasitic ruling class that seized political power from the working class. His destruction was not an isolated incident or a tragic accident of a lone poet; it was a deliberate consequence of a political counter-revolution that aimed to silence any voice resisting its ideological dominance.
A new book highlights that “Mandelstam’s fate symbolises the broader destruction of the Soviet artistic and literary avant-garde by Stalinist counter-revolution. The bureaucracy, which seized political power from the working class, could not accept true artistic independence.” This is more than just a biographical note; it serves as a political critique.[1]
The Revolution and the Poet: A Brief Convergence
Mandelstam was not a Bolshevik and never claimed to be one. However, he had something that the bureaucracy feared even more than political allegiance: a spiritual independence that could not be assimilated, a dedication to truth, form, and historical awareness. His early Acmeist emphasis on “clarity, concreteness, and craftsmanship—’ the word as such'” served as a subtle critique of the growing Stalinist aesthetic, which favoured bureaucratic bombast and ideological kitsch.
The October Revolution’s heroic phase fostered an extraordinary surge in artistic experimentation. Mandelstam’s nuanced yet insightful reaction to 1917—as illustrated by his mention of “The Twilight of Freedom”—mirrored the conflicted stance of an artist who recognised the revolution’s global importance while preserving his intellectual independence.
However, the outcome of the revolution remained uncertain. The Civil War, economic devastation, and the Soviet state’s isolation fostered the development of a bureaucratic system whose priorities were essentially at odds with those of the working class and the revolutionary intelligentsia.
Osip Mandelstam and Leon Trotsky: Two Fates in the Grip of the Stalinist Counter‑Revolution
Osip Mandelstam and Leon Trotsky’s lives intersect not just through a brief personal encounter or biographical detail but through the broader historical narrative of the Russian Revolution and its subsequent betrayal. They exemplify two of the most brilliant figures of that revolutionary era—one in politics, the other in poetry—whose downfall under Stalinism exposes the bureaucratic counter-revolution that seized power from the working class.
Mandelstam’s fate exemplifies how the Stalinist counter-revolution destroyed the Soviet artistic and literary avant-garde. He was killed because his poetry represented a spiritual independence that the totalitarian regime could not tolerate. These words highlight not only the poet’s personal tragedy but also the larger historical catastrophe that affected Trotsky and the entire October generation.
Two Figures Formed by the Revolution, Not by Stalinism
Trotsky and Mandelstam belonged to different worlds—one the strategist of the Red Army, the other a poet of Acmeist clarity—but both were products of the same historical rupture: the collapse of the old order and the birth of a new one.
As previously noted, Mandelstam was neither a Bolshevik nor a reactionary. His early works focused on “clarity, concreteness, and craftsmanship,” demonstrating a profound cultural seriousness that resonated with the revolutionary spirit. He viewed the October Revolution as a pivotal world-historical event, though there was some ambivalence. Trotsky, in Literature and Revolution, correctly labelled this type of thinker as a “fellow-traveller,” attracted to the revolution by its cultural and historical significance, even without full political allegiance.
Trotsky’s stance towards these writers was never sectarian. He argued that the workers’ state should safeguard the independence of the intelligentsia rather than subordinate it to bureaucratic control. This was driven not by generosity but by a historical need: the revolution required the finest achievements of human culture, not their suppression.
The Crimea Episode: Trotsky Intervenes to Save Mandelstam
The closest connection between the two men happened in 1920 during the Civil War. After Mandelstam was captured by Wrangel’s counter-revolutionary troops in Crimea, he was later detained again—this time by fervent Cheka agents following the Red Army’s reoccupation of the peninsula. Nadezhda Joffe reports that Trotsky personally stepped in to help secure Mandelstam’s release.
This incident is more than a minor anecdote; it highlights the stark contrast between the revolutionary leadership of 1917–23 and the later bureaucratic system. Trotsky recognised that the revolution’s role was to protect culture, not destroy it. Mandelstam, after this event, “revered” Trotsky, seeing him as a protector of civilisation against both White and Red barbarism. This was the final moment when the revolution still retained its original essence.
The Bureaucracy Rises: Mandelstam and Trotsky Become Targets
By the late 1920s, the Stalinist bureaucracy had solidified its control. The elimination of the Left Opposition, enforced collectivisation, and the cult of Stalin were more than mere political acts—they were cultural. A regime built on falsification and coercion could not tolerate independent thought in any area. Mandelstam was a poet who could not be silenced and could not be co-opted, making him an enemy of the bureaucracy. Similarly, Trotsky became the main political threat to Stalin’s power. The elimination of both figures was not accidental; it was structurally driven by the needs of the bureaucratic caste.
Mandelstam’s “Stalin Epigram”: The Poet Speaks the Truth, Trotsky Theorised
In 1933, Mandelstam wrote the “Stalin Epigram,” depicting the dictator as “the Kremlin mountaineer” with “his cockroach moustache” and “fingers fat as grubs.” The poem served as a poetic parallel to Trotsky’s political critique: a sharp, impactful expose of the bureaucratic despotism that had strangled the revolution.
Trotsky had previously warned that Stalinism was not the continuation of October but its negation. Mandelstam conveyed this same truth through poetry, the only language he could use. Both recognised that the bureaucracy was a destructive, parasitic caste feeding on the revolution’s corpse.
The outcomes were similar. Mandelstam was arrested in 1934, exiled, rearrested in 1938, and died in a transit camp. Trotsky was expelled, exiled, slandered, tried in the Moscow Trials, and ultimately assassinated in 1940. Two different paths driven by a common historical logic.
The Shared Fate: Victims of the Same Counter‑Revolution
Mandelstam and Trotsky were victims of the same historical force: the Stalinist counter-revolution. Trotsky’s assassination in Mexico and Mandelstam’s death in a transit camp near Vladivostok are not isolated tragedies but manifestations of the same process— the destruction of the generation that held the revolutionary and cultural hopes of 1917. Mandelstam was ‘murdered because his poetry embodied a spiritual independence that the totalitarian regime found intolerable,’ which also applies to Trotsky, whose political independence made him a mortal enemy of the bureaucracy. Both represented the living conscience of the revolution and had to be eliminated for the bureaucracy’s survival.
The Bureaucracy Consolidates Power: The Artist Becomes the Enemy
By the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Stalinist bureaucracy had fully expropriated the proletariat politically. The suppression of the Left Opposition, forced collectivization, and the cult of the infallible Leader were not just political acts—they were cultural transformations. A regime that wielded falsification, coercion, and fear could not allow any area of life to be free from its influence. Mandelstam “was a poet who could not be silenced or co-opted.” This is exactly why he had to be eliminated. The Stalinist state demanded obedience over art, flattery over truth, and complete submission of the creative mind to the ruling caste’s needs, rather than independence. Mandelstam’s refusal to conform—his rejection of the grotesque spectacle of bureaucratic self-promotion—made him unacceptable.
The “Stalin Epigram”: A Poet’s Truth Against a Regime of Lies
The “Stalin Epigram” was more than just a poem; it was a daring act of political defiance that displayed remarkable clarity and bravery. The poem vividly depicts Stalin as “the Kremlin mountaineer,” with descriptions like “his cockroach moustache” and “fingers fat as grubs.” These lines were not mere satire—they directly challenged the personality cult that underpinned the bureaucracy’s ideology. In a society where even a careless remark could result in arrest, Mandelstam’s choice to recite this poem, even to a small audience, was an act of revolutionary integrity. It asserted the artist’s right to speak truthfully in a regime built on lies.
The bureaucracy’s response was as expected. His 1934 arrest, exile, 1938 detention, and death at a transit camp near Vladivostok were not due to “excesses” or “mistakes.” Instead, they reflected a regime that could only endure by eradicating all independent voices.
Nadezhda Mandelstam and the Underground Survival of Truth
Dutli’s book rightly emphasises Nadezhda Mandelstam’s remarkable role, describing how she “memorised his unpublished poetry to preserve it – one of the great acts of literary devotion in history.” Her effort was not just personal but also political. In a society where the state aimed to erase its victims’ memories, she became a living testament of resistance. Her memoirs, Hope Against Hope and Hope Abandoned, stand as some of the most powerful condemnations of Stalinism ever written. They reveal the moral and psychological destruction caused by a regime that demands complete obedience and punishes even the faintest hint of dissent.
V. The Historical Meaning of Mandelstam’s Murder
Mandelstam died in 1938, at the peak of the Great Terror, a period when the bureaucracy eradicated the generation that had pioneered the revolution. His death reflected the same political agenda that eliminated the Old Bolsheviks, the Red Army leaders, the Marxist intellectuals, and countless workers and peasants.
Mandelstam “was murdered because his poetry embodied a spiritual independence that the totalitarian regime found intolerable.” While accurate, this statement should be understood within its full historical background. His “spiritual independence” was especially unacceptable because it signified the continued existence of the revolutionary spirit—the essence of truth, clarity, and human dignity—resisting a regime that had betrayed the revolution and maintained control through terror.
The Legacy: Mandelstam Against the Bureaucratic Lie
Today, Mandelstam’s poetry continues to stand as a symbol of artistic achievement and political rebellion. His work endured because individuals—his wife and later scholars like Ralph Dutli—refused to let bureaucratic attempts to destroy culture succeed. Dutli belongs to the group of “deep literary links across generations,” where later figures dedicate themselves to reviving and sharing voices that the Stalinist regime tried to silence.
Mandelstam’s work enduringly survives as a testament against Stalinism, showing that truth, even when hidden, cannot be completely eliminated. It reveals the failure of the bureaucratic system and highlights the lasting strength of the revolutionary intellectuals.
Mandelstam’s story is more than a tragedy; it serves as a political lesson. It highlights the deep conflict between a creative mind and a repressive bureaucratic regime. It shows that fighting for artistic truth is inherently linked to the fight for political freedom. Additionally, it clearly states that the Stalinist counter-revolution was not a continuation of October but its reversal.
[1] Osip Mandelstam: A Biography By Ralph Dutli (Translated from German by Ben Fowkes) Verso 432pp £25
A Trumpet of Sedition 