Samuel Beckett’s German Diaries and the Liberal Theory of Fascism: Testimony Without Politics

The publication of Samuel Beckett’s German Diaries 1936–1937, a 1,352-page record of the writer’s six-month journey through Nazi Germany, has been met with widespread acclaim. Editors Mark Nixon and Oliver Lubrich present the diaries as Beckett’s “final major work,” revealing both his artistic development and his capacity as a historical observer. Yet reception has tended to elevate Beckett into a “prescient antifascist witness,” a figure whose moral clarity supposedly anticipates later understandings of fascism. This celebratory framing obscures the essential truth: Beckett’s diaries are testimony, not analysis. They record a sensibility recoiling from barbarism, but they do not grasp fascism as a class phenomenon. Beckett “draws no systematic connections between the museum purges he catalogued and the broader class dynamics of the Nazi seizure of power.”¹

This limitation is not Beckett’s personal failure. It is symptomatic of the broader liberal intelligentsia of the 1930s, which responded to fascism with moral outrage, aesthetic recoil, and political paralysis. Writers such as Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig described fascism’s cultural destruction but refused to confront the class struggle that made it possible. Testimony became a substitute for strategy; witness became a surrogate for analysis. To understand fascism's rise in the 1930s and its re-emergence today, one must go beyond testimony. One must turn to Marxist analysis, above all Leon Trotsky’s writings from 1930–33, which remain the most penetrating examination of the German catastrophe. Beckett’s diaries are valuable precisely because they reveal the limits of liberal witness and the necessity of a materialist understanding of fascism.

Beckett travelled through Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, and Munich between September 1936 and April 1937. His diaries catalogue paintings, museum inventories, street names, and conversations. Yet beneath this catalogue lies what one reviewer called “a mounting, wordless dread.” He observed the removal of modernist and Expressionist works labelled “degenerate,” the disappearance of artworks into storage, and the disturbing conversations of ordinary Germans. He saw the cultural purge accompanying the consolidation of Nazi rule. He saw barbarism becoming normal. One passage from the diaries captures this aesthetic recoil: Beckett notes the “barbarism around him” and refuses to “turn away from these events,” even though he was not a political figure.² This honesty is admirable. But it is not political clarity.

Beckett’s observations align with the cultural destruction documented by historians of Nazi Germany. Richard J. Evans describes the Nazi cultural policy as “a systematic assault on modernism, intellectual freedom, and artistic experimentation,” designed to “reshape German consciousness in the image of the Volksgemeinschaft.”³ Ian Kershaw similarly emphasises that the cultural purge was integral to the regime’s consolidation of power, serving to “eliminate dissent, enforce conformity, and create a unified national community.”⁴ Beckett witnessed this process firsthand, but he did not analyse its social roots. His diaries record symptoms, not causes.

Beckett did not attempt to theorise fascism. He did not link the museum purges to the destruction of the German labour movement, the role of German heavy industry, or the betrayals of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Stalinised Communist Party (KPD). He did not connect cultural repression to class repression. Beckett “did not fully grasp fascism as a class-based phenomenon.”⁵ This is precisely the limitation of liberal testimony: it describes symptoms without analysing causes. Liberalism recoils from barbarism but cannot explain it. It sees fascism as a moral aberration rather than a bourgeois class strategy.

Thomas Mann, writing in exile, described fascism as “the triumph of barbarism over culture,” a “demonic eruption” of irrational forces.⁶ Stefan Zweig similarly portrayed fascism as a “collective madness,” a “plunge into darkness.”⁷ These formulations capture the emotional experience of fascism but obscure its material foundations. They elevate witness into politics and mistake personal sensibility for historical understanding. Beckett’s diaries belong to this tradition. They record the destruction of modernism, the atmosphere of dread, and the cultural purge accompanying Nazi consolidation. They reveal a sensibility recoiling from barbarism. But they do not explain why barbarism triumphed.

To understand fascism, one must turn to Marxist analysis. Leon Trotsky’s writings from 1930–33- The Only Road, What Next?, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany remain the most incisive examination of the German catastrophe. Trotsky argued that fascism was not a cultural phenomenon but a class strategy of the bourgeoisie, designed to crush the working class and preserve capitalist rule. Trotsky wrote in 1932: “Fascism is not a psychological phenomenon but a political one. Its roots lie not in the ‘madness’ of the petty bourgeoisie but in the crisis of capitalism.”⁸ He emphasised that the united front was the only means of stopping Hitler: “The proletariat can defeat fascism only through the united front. The refusal of the SPD and KPD leaderships to unite is the decisive factor in Hitler’s rise.”⁹

Trotsky demonstrated that the collapse of the united front was not inevitable but the result of political errors. The SPD defended bourgeois legality and sabotaged every independent struggle. The KPD, under Stalin’s direction, adopted the disastrous theory that the SPD was “social fascist,” the main enemy of the working class. Hermann Weber documents how this policy “paralysed the working class” and “prevented any united front against Hitler.”¹⁰ The most notorious example was the 1931 Prussian referendum, where the KPD collaborated with the Nazis to overthrow the SPD government, an act Trotsky described as “political insanity.”¹¹ Beckett could not see this. Liberal testimony rarely does.

Richard J. Evans emphasises that the SPD leadership “remained committed to parliamentary legality even as the Nazis prepared for civil war.”¹² Evans notes that the SPD “undermined every independent struggle” and “confused the working class” by insisting that the Weimar constitution could restrain Hitler. Ian Kershaw similarly argues that the SPD’s strategy amounted to “passive fatalism,” a refusal to mobilise the working class against fascism.¹³ Under Stalin’s direction, the KPD adopted the disastrous “social fascism” line, treating the SPD as the main enemy of the working class. Weber documents how this policy “paralysed the working class” and “prevented any united front against Hitler.”¹⁴ Trotsky wrote: “The working class has been disarmed by its own organisations. The question is not one of ‘self-deception’ but of betrayal.”¹⁵ Beckett’s diaries do not address these political dynamics. They record the cultural symptoms of fascism but not its class roots.

The reception of Beckett’s diaries today mirrors the liberal response to fascism in the 1930s. Contemporary reviewers describe rearmament and the far right as spontaneous trends, and they treat “historical amnesia” as a cultural mood rather than a political strategy. “The far right is not gaining power despite mainstream parties and media; rather, they actively support it.”¹⁶ The media and political establishment have systematically normalised the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The WSWS has documented how major German outlets have advocated rearmament for a decade, urging increased military spending and the restoration of Germany’s global influence.¹⁷ This is not amnesia. It is policy. Just as in the 1930s, liberal testimony recoils from barbarism but cannot name its social roots.

Beckett’s diaries teach us how dictatorship permeates everyday life, how cultural destruction accompanies political consolidation, and how individuals respond to barbarism aesthetically and emotionally. But they do not teach us how fascism arises, how fascism consolidates power, or how fascism can be stopped. A lack of witnesses did not cause the deaths of workers in concentration camps. Their own organisations betrayed them. Diaries cannot protect today’s working class. Its fate depends on politically rearming itself as an independent force against the SPD, the trade union bureaucracy, the pseudo-left, and the capitalist state preparing for war and authoritarianism. Testimony is valuable. But testimony without politics is evasion.

Samuel Beckett’s German Diaries is an honest and perceptive work. It records the destruction of German modernism, the atmosphere of dread, and the cultural purge accompanying Nazi consolidation. It reveals a sensibility recoiling from barbarism. That is its achievement and its limit. Understanding fascism is not a task of memory. It is a task of Marxist analysis and political organisation. And it begins where Beckett’s testimony ends: with the class forces that produced fascism in the 1930s and are preparing new dangers today.

 

Endnotes

1. Samuel Beckett, German Diaries 1936–1937, ed. Mark Nixon and Oliver Lubrich (New York: Grove Press, 2026), quoted in the attached document.
2. Ibid.
3. Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (London: Penguin, 2003), 142–165.
4. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: Hubris (London: Penguin, 1998), 256–290.
5. Beckett, German Diaries, quoted in the previous document.
6. Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades (New York: Knopf, 1947), 142–150.
7. Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (London: Pushkin Press, 2009), 280–310.
8. Leon Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971), 75.
9. Leon Trotsky, What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat (1932), in The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, 112–130.
10. Hermann Weber, The German Communists and the Rise of Nazism (London: Palgrave, 2010), 88–120.
11. Trotsky, The Only Road (1932), in The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, 45–60.
12. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, 210–230.
13. Kershaw, Hitler: Hubris, 300–315.
14. Weber, The German Communists and the Rise of Nazism, 121–150.
15. Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, 90.
16. Previous Draft.
17. Johannes Stern, “The Victory of Fascism and the Founding of the Fourth International,” WSWS Lecture Series (2023); International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), “The Promotion of the AfD by the German State,” WSWS (2017–2026).

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Beckett, Samuel. German Diaries 1936–1937. Edited by Mark Nixon and Oliver Lubrich. New York: Grove Press, 2026. Trotsky, Leon. The Only Road. 1932. In The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971. Trotsky, Leon. What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat. 1932. In The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971. Trotsky, Leon. The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971.

Secondary Sources

Adorno, Theodor W. Prisms. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981. Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich. London: Penguin, 2003. Fulbrook, Mary. A Small Town Near Auschwitz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: Hubris. London: Penguin, 1998. Mann, Thomas. Essays of Three Decades. New York: Knopf, 1947. North, David. The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left

 

Revolution, Transition, and Ideology: Ann Talbot, Christopher Hill, and the Struggle Over the English Revolution in Contemporary Historiography

Introduction: History as a Site of Class Struggle

The meaning of the English Revolution has long been debated. It's not just a historical curiosity; it's a political struggle rooted in the modern world, class conflict, and revolutionary change. The historiographical debate about the seventeenth century is closely linked to the political debate over the working class's role in revolution. Every effort to reinterpret, downplay, or neutralise the English Revolution reveals deeper ideological influences within capitalist society.

Ann Talbot’s 2002 defence of Christopher Hill on the World Socialist Web Site was more than a scholarly debate. It served as a political stance against a coordinated ideological effort to disconnect Marxist historiography from its revolutionary roots. The criticisms against Hill centred on accusations of espionage and Stalinist sympathies and were part of a wider campaign to undermine Marxist perspectives on the seventeenth century and, ultimately, to challenge the revolutionary potential of the working class.

Two decades on, Talbot’s intervention remains significant. Revisionism has waned, post-revisionism has evolved, and fresh historiographical trends have appeared, both defending and altering Hill’s legacy. The pseudo-left, exemplified by figures like John Rees, has co-opted Hill's ideas but has removed their Marxist roots. At the same time, the ongoing theoretical debate between Hill and Robert Brenner has become a key focus in current Marxist historiography. This article re-examines Talbot’s defence of Hill, contextualising it within contemporary historiographical debates. It advocates for a Marxist synthesis of Hill and Brenner to restore the revolutionary essence of the English Revolution, countering both bourgeois falsification and pseudo-left distortions.

 Ann Talbot’s Intervention: Marxism Under Attack

Talbot’s article countered allegations from the Times Literary Supplement by Christopher Andrew and Paul Lashmar, citing claims from Anthony Glees, who claimed, “without proof, that Hill was a Soviet spy. Talbot quickly identified this as a political smear, part of a larger campaign to discredit Marxist intellectuals by linking them to espionage and betrayal.

The release of MI5 files later confirmed Talbot’s view. Hill was not a spy; he was monitored because he was a Marxist historian claiming the English Civil War was a revolution. The government’s hostility targeted Marxism, not espionage. The state’s concern with Hill was rooted in ideological opposition to Marxism, not national security. Talbot recognised that her critique of Hill was part of a larger historiographical trend. Revisionists like Conrad Russell, John Morrill, and Kevin Sharpe had spent years debunking the idea of the English Revolution, arguing that the 17th century was more a matter of constitutional or religious conflict than a class-based revolution. Russell accused Hill of forcing a unifying narrative on chaotic events, while Morrill described the Civil War as "the last of the Wars of Religion.” Talbot correctly saw revisionism as the ideological equivalent of neoliberalism: a retreat from class analysis that paralleled the political attack on the working class. Her intervention thus supported not only Hill but also the Marxist tradition.

Christopher Hill: Revolution as Political Rupture

Christopher Hill’s achievement was in redefining the English Revolution as a genuine revolution. Although this seems obvious now, it marked a major departure from dominant mid-20th-century historiography. Hill disputed a scholarly tradition that saw the seventeenth century solely as a constitutional issue, religious conflict, or the tragic fallout of Charles I’s personal flaws. Instead, he argued that the monarchy's overthrow was primarily a class struggle. Hill stated that Puritanism was “not a theological abstraction, but the ideological expression of social conflict,” and groups like the Levellers, Diggers, and Ranters embodied that social conflict.

Hill’s contribution drew on Marxist historical materialism. He saw ideology not as detached discourse but as the expression of class-struggle awareness. In his view, Puritanism embodied the hopes of the “middling sort,” whose economic and political interests clashed with the absolutist state. Rather than being marginal, radical sects served as the ideological leaders of a wider social movement. Hill reestablished the masses' role in history, recognising them as active agents whose political awareness shaped historical developments.

Hill’s revolution featured political, ideological, and national elements. It marked the bourgeoisie's rise as the ruling class. His Marxist perspective was shaped by the Communist Party Historians Group and the Popular Front, both of which highlighted national revolutionary traditions and mass mobilisation. This background endowed Hill’s work with key qualities: an awareness of ideological radicalism, a dedication to restoring popular agency, and a refusal to view revolution solely as elite strategy.

However, Hill’s Popular Front Marxism had its shortcomings. His approach was “heroic.” Yet, it also reflected the limits of that tradition, including a tendency to romanticise ideological voluntarism and an underdeveloped view of structural economic change. Hill occasionally exaggerated the unity of radical ideology and overlooked the long-term changes in agrarian class relations that fuelled the crisis. Revisionists like Conrad Russell, John Morrill, and Kevin Sharpe exploited these deficiencies, arguing that the seventeenth century was not a revolution at all. Russell criticised Hill for “imposing coherence on events which they did not possess,” while Morrill described the Civil War as 'the last of the Wars of Religion, not the first of the modern revolutions.”

Hill’s core insight remains crucial: the English Revolution was fundamentally a political rupture. It was more than a sign of structural change; it marked the point when that change became a decisive political event. The execution of Charles I was not just an unusual constitutional act but a revolutionary move that dismantled absolutism and paved the way for capitalist growth. Hill recognised that revolutions are pivotal moments in history, times when class conflict becomes clear, aware, and transformative.

This focus created tension between Hill and later Marxist scholarship, especially Robert Brenner’s structural view of the move to capitalism. Brenner believed capitalism arose from property conflicts well before the Civil War, while Hill identified the crucial point of capitalist emergence in the political upheaval of the 1640s. Hill's revolution is the moment capitalism arrives. Brenner's transition is the process through which capitalism emerges.

Hill focused on political rupture while Brenner highlighted structural transition. Hill emphasised ideology, whereas Brenner concentrated on property relations. For Hill, the national revolution was key; Brenner prioritised comparative agrarian structures. This tension reflects not a disagreement between two historians but a fundamental contradiction within Marxism: the link between political revolution and social transformation. Hill’s role is crucial because he recognised that political rupture is not simply structural change but a conscious moment when class forces actively reshape the state and society.

Transition as Structural Transformation

Robert Brenner’s work in the 1970s signified a pivotal shift in Marxist historiography. His 1976 article in Past & Present challenged both the Whig narrative and prevailing Marxist views of the English Revolution by shifting the origin of capitalism from politics to rural areas. As summarised, Brenner maintained that “the transition to capitalism occurred in the countryside, through struggles over property relations,” and argued that “capitalism did not emerge through the diffusion of markets or the rise of bourgeois ideology. It emerged through class struggle over property.”

This argument marked a significant shift. While Christopher Hill focused on political disruption, highlighting ideology, sectarian radicalism, and the overthrow of absolutism, Brenner concentrated on long-term structural changes. Brenner argued that the key moment in capitalism's development was not the execution of Charles I but the transformation of agrarian class relations that started in the late medieval era and intensified through the 16th and 17th centuries. The rise of market-dependent tenant farmers and competitive landlords introduced a new dynamic of economic pressure, increased productivity, and class division. According to Brenner, capitalism was not born during the revolution but was already taking shape in rural areas.

Brenner’s approach explicitly opposed teleology. He dismissed theories like demographic, market, and cultural determinism. Instead, he argued that capitalism developed not from market expansion or population pressures but from shifts in class relations. This stance put Brenner at odds with the “commercialisation model,” which viewed capitalism as a natural result of growing trade, and the “demographic model,” which linked economic change to population increase. Brenner emphasised the importance of class struggle in understanding this transition.

Brenner’s transition was both structural and agrarian, characterised by a lengthy process that began before the Civil War and extended well afterwards. In this view, political revolutions represented deeper structural transformations. Within this context, the English Revolution did not cause capitalism but rather served as its political expression. The Civil War happened because agrarian class relations had already fostered a bourgeoisie ready to challenge absolutism.

However, Brenner’s approach also had its drawbacks. His emphasis on agrarian class relations risked reducing the political revolution to a secondary effect. While focusing on long-term structural change, Brenner sometimes overlooked the distinctiveness and intensity of the political upheaval of the 1640s. His account of the seventeenth century was a prelude to the Civil War, not an explanation of it. His framework risked reducing the revolution to a political epiphenomenon.” Brenner’s structural perspective fell short in explaining the ideological radicalism of the sects, the mass mobilisation, or the political ingenuity of the revolutionary period.

The conflict between Hill and Brenner goes beyond a mere disagreement among historians; it reflects an internal contradiction within Marxism concerning how political revolution relates to social transformation. Hill focused on political rupture, emphasising ideology and national revolution, whereas Brenner centred on structural transition, stressing property relations and comparative agrarian structures. Hill's revolution is the moment capitalism arrives. Brenner's transition is the process through which capitalism emerges.”

This tension is beneficial. Brenner’s analysis strengthens Hill’s by providing the revolution's fundamental structural basis. Hill complements Brenner’s perspective by showing how structural shifts became crucially political. Both are essential for understanding the English Revolution: the transformation of agrarian class relations set the stage, and the political upheaval of the 1640s turned those conditions into a revolutionary crisis.

Brenner’s role remains vital because it reaffirms the importance of material class realities in the transition debate. It stresses that capitalism is not merely a cultural trend or market growth, but a fundamental change in social relations. Additionally, Brenner provides the structural context that frames Hill’s political revolution as the key moment in establishing capitalist social relations.

Revisionism’s Collapse and Post‑Revisionism’s Mutation

Talbot wrote when academic historiography was still influenced by revisionism. Revisionists ignored class struggle, viewing the revolution as driven by chance, religion, and elite politics. They emphasised local issues and individual choices over structural causes. This approach dominated English Civil War history from the 1970s to the 1990s. They argued the seventeenth century was not a true revolution, but rather a constitutional dispute, a religious conflict, or a miscommunication between the king and Parliament. They dismissed class struggle, structural change, and revolutionary agency as mere ideological constructs of Marxist historians. Revisionists “denied the existence of class struggle” and “reduced the revolution to contingency, religion, and elite politics."

Conrad Russell, John Morrill, and Kevin Sharpe led a vigorous intellectual rebuttal. Russell accused Christopher Hill of “imposing coherence on events which they did not possess.” Morrill viewed the Civil War as “the last of the Wars of Religion, not the first of the modern revolutions.” Sharpe blamed the crisis on Charles I’s personality and political errors. Their viewpoints reflected the ideological climate of late-twentieth-century neoliberalism: a move away from class analysis that mirrored the political critique of the working class. Revisionism was described as “the ideological counterpart of neoliberalism.”

Ultimately, revisionism failed because its narrow focus couldn't address the widespread mobilisation, intense ideological disputes, sectarian radicalism, or the king's execution. It also ignored how mass political participation and structural forces weakened absolutism. Revisionism “overlooked the scale of mobilisation, the severity of ideological conflicts, the radicalism of sects, the execution of a king, and the upheaval of the political system." Denying the revolutionary aspects of the crisis was intellectually unsupported.

However, the fall of revisionism did not bring back Hill’s Marxism. Instead, it gave rise to post-revisionism, a historiographical approach that reexamines Hill’s questions but disconnects them from Marxist ideas. Post-revisionists recognise the seventeenth century as a period of change, but they oppose describing it as a class struggle or bourgeois revolution. They acknowledge the events' significance but dismiss their social implications.

Lauren Kassell Healey, Peter Lake, and Steven Pincus exemplify this trend. Healey argues that the Civil War represented a revolution in political thought but dismisses its social-class foundations. Lake and Pincus view political discourse as separate from social relations, considering ideology as a self-sufficient cultural system. Pincus extends this idea further by shifting revolutionary agency to 1688 and attributing it mainly to elite actors, thus diminishing the revolutionary importance of 1640–49. Post-revisionism “acknowledges the revolutionary nature of the seventeenth century but rejects its social dimensions.”

This signifies a new form of idealism: ideology without class, discourse without structure, and revolution without true rupture. It functions as a historiographical dodge, mirroring modern academic trends like identity politics, culturalism, and rejection of material analysis, echoing a contemporary Whig interpretation. The shift from revisionism to post-revisionism indicates a bigger ideological change. Revisionism outright denied revolution; post-revisionism romanticises it. Revisionism ignored class; post-revisionism merges class into discourse. While revisionism upheld the old Whig story, post-revisionism creates a new idealism that remains equally hostile to Marxism.

John Rees and the Pseudo‑Left: Neutralising Marxism

The pseudo-left’s misapplication of Hill represents one of the most notable developments since Talbot’s article. A new distortion has emerged: the pseudo-left portrays Hill as a harmless radical, removing his Marxist core and repurposing his ideas for contemporary identity politics. John Rees has tried to present himself as Hill’s intellectual successor, but he simplifies Hill’s Marxism by stripping it of its structural basis. Rees reinterprets Hill’s call for revolution as a "broad democratic uprising" rather than a bourgeois revolution focused on transforming property relations.

The debate over Christopher Hill’s legacy has always been political. Hill redefined the English Revolution as a class struggle, marking a pivotal moment where the masses became active historical agents. For many years, bourgeois historians sought to challenge this view. Recently, however, a new distortion has appeared: the pseudo-left’s trend of portraying Hill as a benign radical, stripping away his Marxist beliefs and using him to support modern identity politics. A different distortion has emerged: the pseudo-left's appropriation of Hill as a harmless radical, stripped of his Marxism and repurposed for contemporary identity-based politics.”

John Rees plays a central role in this trend. His analysis of the English Revolution adopts Hill’s language of popular mobilisation and ideological energy but separates it from the fundamental shift in class structures. Rees characterises the revolution as a widespread democratic uprising and a forerunner to today's “movementism,” rather than as a bourgeois revolution based on dismantling absolutism and establishing capitalist social relations. Rees presents the revolution as a broad democratic uprising, a precursor to contemporary ‘movementism,’ rather than a bourgeois revolution rooted in the transformation of property relations.”

This is a deliberate political strategy, not a simple reinterpretation. It aligns with the pseudo-left’s broader goals: replacing class-based analysis with activism, swapping historical materialism for moral outrage, and turning revolution into a cultural spectacle rather than a structural change. The pseudo-left’s Hill is a Hill devoid of Marxism, class, and revolution.

Rees’s approach follows a consistent pattern. Initially, it elevates ideology as the main force behind historical change. It treats political awareness as separate from class relations, reflecting the pseudo-left’s current focus on discourse and identity over material conditions. Next, it omits structural change, portraying the revolution as a series of ideological moments rather than a fundamental shift in the mode of production. Finally, it minimises the unique historical context, turning the English Revolution into a universal story of “resistance” that serves modern activism rather than being recognised as a bourgeois revolution with specific class dynamics.

Rees’s historiography is closely linked to his political agenda. His interpretation of Hill supports a politics centred on movementism, characterised by episodic mobilisations, horizontal activism, and coalition protests rather than advocating for the independent political organisation of the working class. Movementism is distinct from Marxism. It stems from petty bourgeois layers whose interests sharply contrast with those of the working class. It dismisses the working class as the key revolutionary force and substitutes class struggle with moralised protest.

This is why Rees’s appropriation of Hill is so politically significant. It channels Hill’s Marxism into a cultural tool for activism, disconnecting the English Revolution from its foundational structural context. Rees masks the class aspects of Hill's work behind a veil of activism and identity politics. In contrast, Ann Talbot’s defence of Hill highlights how deeply rooted his work is in Marxism. Talbot argued that Hill’s analysis of the English Revolution wasn't a simple celebration of popular protest but a careful study of the structural forces that led to a revolutionary crisis. Talbot emphasised that Hill's work was inseparable from Marxism. His analysis of the English Revolution was not a celebration of popular protest but a rigorous examination of the structural forces that produced a revolutionary crisis.”

While Talbot defends Hill’s Marxism, Rees neutralises it. Talbot highlights the political motives behind historiographical attacks, whereas Rees obscures the class content of Hill’s work. Talbot emphasises the revolutionary agency of the masses as part of a larger social transformation, but Rees reduces this agency to isolated mobilisations lacking structural impact.

The pseudo-left’s hijacking of Hill clearly serves political aims. It neutralises Marxism by turning revolutionary history into a benign protest narrative. It disempowers the working class by replacing class struggle with activism. It legitimises petty-bourgeois politics through Marxist historiography. Lastly, it conceals structural change by disconnecting ideology from class.

The debate over Hill’s legacy extends beyond history; it is inherently political. The conservative side aims to tarnish Hill by branding him a Stalinist or spy, while the pseudo-left tries to co-opt Hill’s image but removes his Marxist principles. Both approaches distort his legacy, ultimately aiming to block the working class from recognising the revolutionary roots of today’s society.

 The “Three Kingdoms” Turn: Gains and Limits

The emergence of the “three kingdoms” approach, combining England, Scotland, and Ireland into a single analytical framework, has been one of the most impactful developments in historiography over the past thirty years. This shift partly responded to the limited Anglocentric perspective of earlier research and also addressed Hill’s focus on the English Revolution as mainly a national event. This approach “includes Scotland and Ireland in the study of the English Revolution” and has driven significant empirical advances.

The benefits are clear. By placing the English Revolution within a larger archipelagic crisis, scholars like Jane Ohlmeyer and Allan Macinnes have shown that class conflict extended beyond England. The Irish plantation system, the Covenanting movement in Scotland, and the mobilisation of English radicals were linked processes driven by the uneven development of early modern state authority. This broader perspective emphasises the complexity of the seventeenth-century crisis and shows how class struggle spanned political and social spheres.

However, the “three kingdoms” perspective has also caused new distortions. As your document highlights, some historians use it “to minimise the revolutionary significance of the 1640s,” focusing on long-term instability throughout the archipelago to lessen the perceived rupture caused by the English Civil War. By extending the crisis over multiple kingdoms and decades, they weaken the uniqueness of the revolutionary moment. Events like the execution of Charles I, the fall of absolutism, and the rise of radical sectarian politics risk being seen as part of a broader narrative of “British” upheaval, rather than as the pivotal political moment marking bigger structural change.

This pattern illustrates a wider post-revisionist approach: recognising the magnitude of the crisis but denying its revolutionary implications. The “three kingdoms” model serves as a historiographical tool to dilute agency, smooth over ruptures, and substitute class conflict with geopolitical intricacies. It exemplifies “another form of historiographical evasion: acknowledging the crisis's severity but rejecting its revolutionary importance."

The challenge, then, is not to dismiss the three-kingdoms approach but to adapt it for Marxism. When interpreted correctly, it broadens Hill’s analysis rather than contradicting it. It shows how class conflict unfolded throughout the archipelago while maintaining the significance of the English Revolution as the key political event where structural change turned into revolutionary rupture.

Ideology Without Class: The New Idealism

A notable aspect of modern historiography is the renewed focus on ideology independent of class. This “new idealism” signifies a clear departure from the Marxist approach upheld by Hill and Talbot. Recent studies often view the English Revolution as “a revolution in political thought but deny it was a class struggle. This change is not just interpretive; it also has political implications.

Post‑revisionist historians such as Lauren Kassell Healey, Peter Lake, and Steven Pincus exemplify this trend. Healey’s The Blazing World reframes the Civil War as an intellectual rupture, while explicitly rejecting its material and class foundations. Lake and Pincus detach political discourse from the social relations that produced it, treating ideology as an autonomous force. Pincus goes further, relocating revolutionary agency to 1688 and attributing it to elite actors, thereby draining 1640–49 of its revolutionary content. Revolution becomes discourse, not class struggle. Agency becomes elite, not popular. Structural causation becomes political culture, not property relations.”

This new idealism is not simply a methodological error. It reflects the broader ideological climate of the late twentieth and early twenty‑first centuries, shaped by anti‑collectivist politics and the retreat from class analysis. By elevating discourse above structure, it aligns with academic trends that privilege language, identity, and cultural performance over material relations. It mirrors the pseudo‑left’s politics, where activism replaces class struggle, and ideology substitutes for structural analysis.

The result is a historiography that acknowledges crisis but denies revolution. It recognises ideological conflict but obscures the class forces that gave it meaning. It restores the drama of the seventeenth century while erasing its social content. This represents “another type of historiographical evasion: acknowledging the severity of the crisis but refusing to accept its revolutionary significance. “Against this idealism, Marxism insists that ideology is inseparable from class, and that the English Revolution cannot be understood apart from the structural transformation that made it possible.

The disagreement between Hill and Brenner becomes clearer when we see that the transition to capitalism is a long-term, structural process. At the same time, the bourgeois revolution is a short-term, political event. The English Revolution signifies the point where this structural change becomes politically crucial.  Hill describes how the revolution happened; Brenner explains why it happened.

The bourgeois revolution does not mark the emergence of capitalism but the political stabilisation of already existing capitalist social relations. The move to capitalism is not just a political revolution; it is a fundamental structural change that facilitates revolution. This synthesis restores the revolutionary significance of the seventeenth century without collapsing political upheaval into structural change or reducing structural change to ideology.

 Conclusion: The Ongoing Battle Over History

The contest over the meaning of the English Revolution ultimately reflects a struggle over the working class's political awareness. Historiography is not merely an objective academic pursuit; it is a battleground for ideological conflict—the debate over the English Revolution centres on the working class's revolutionary role. The bourgeoisie’s opposition to Marxist interpretations of the seventeenth century signals its fear of a revolutionary future. Denying the revolutionary roots of the modern world also means dismissing the potential for revolutionary change today.

Ann Talbot’s 2002 defence of Christopher Hill highlights this challenge. She saw that the accusations against Hill, whether espionage or Stalinist sympathies, were politically driven efforts to detach Marxist historiography from its revolutionary roots. The government’s hostility targeted Marxism, not espionage.” Talbot knew supporting Hill also meant protecting the working class’s historical legacy.

Forty years later, the landscape has evolved. Revisionism has fallen apart, failing to maintain its denial of class struggle amid clear signs of mass mobilisation, ideological radicalism, and political upheaval. However, its successor, post-revisionism, has proved just as resistant to Marxism. Post-revisionists recognise the severity of the crisis but dismiss its revolutionary implications. They accept ideological clashes but separate them from class relations. They see transformation but reduce it to discourse. This results in “a distorted historiography that acknowledges the revolutionary nature of the seventeenth century but rejects its social dimensions.”

The pseudo-left signifies an evolution of this ideological retreat. Figures like John Rees adopt Hill’s ideas but remove their Marxist roots. They turn revolution into cultural spectacle, ideology into activism, and class struggle into mere protest. Hill's revolution was a class struggle. Rees's revolution is a protest movement.” The pseudo-left’s misrepresentation of Hill has a specific political goal: to weaken Marxism by replacing structural analysis with moral outrage and substituting working-class agency with spontaneous movement activism.

Marxism emphasises the interconnectedness of structure and agency, transition and rupture, ideology and class. The English Revolution cannot be fully understood without considering the structural shift in agrarian class relations as identified by Robert Brenner, nor without acknowledging the political rupture highlighted by Christopher Hill. Hill describes how the revolution happened; Brenner explains why it happened.” Structural change set the stage for the revolution, while the political break turned those conditions into a decisive moment.

This synthesis is crucial not just for grasping the seventeenth century but also for understanding today's world. The bourgeoisie distorts history out of fear of revolution, worried that the working class might realise the modern world emerged through struggle, that collective effort overturned absolutism, and that capitalist social relations were established through political upheaval. It fears the working class regaining its historical agency.

The current conflict over history is inherently linked to the fight for socialism. Supporting Hill means defending the revolutionary essence of history. Incorporating Brenner involves defending the material basis of revolutionary change. Discrediting the pseudo-left is a way to protect Marxism from ideological watering down. Opposing post-revisionism signifies rejecting the idealisation of revolution.

Notes and Further Reading

Primary Sources

• Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1972.
• . The English Revolution 1640. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1940.
• . Puritanism and Revolution. London: Secker & Warburg, 1958.
• . Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965.
• MI5 Security Service Files on Christopher Hill, released under the UK Freedom of Information Act, National Archives, Kew.

Marxist Historiography

• Brenner, Robert. “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre‑Industrial Europe.” Past & Present 70 (1976): 30–75.
• . Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–1653. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
• Dobb, Maurice. Studies in the Development of Capitalism. London: Routledge, 1946.
• Sweezy, Paul. The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. London: Verso, 1976.
• Anderson, Perry. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: Verso, 1974.
• Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View. London: Verso, 2002.
• Comninel, George. Rethinking the French Revolution: Marxism and the Revisionist Challenge. London: Verso, 1987.
• Banaji, Jairus. Theory as History: Essays on Modes of Production and Exploitation. Leiden: Brill, 2010.

Revisionist Historiography

• Russell, Conrad. The Causes of the English Civil War. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
• . Parliamentary History in Perspective. London: Hambledon Press, 1981.
• Morrill, John. “The Religious Context of the English Civil War.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 34 (1984): 155–178.
• . Revolt in the Provinces: The People of England and the Tragedies of War, 1630–1648. London: Longman, 1976.
• Sharpe, Kevin. The Personal Rule of Charles I. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
• . Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

Post‑Revisionism and Contemporary Scholarship

• Healey, Jonathan. The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England. London: Bloomsbury, 2023.
• Lake, Peter, and Steven Pincus, eds. The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007.
• Pincus, Steven. 1688: The First Modern Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
• Kassell, Lauren. “Revolution in Thought: Intellectual Change in Seventeenth‑Century England.” History of Science 52, no. 3 (2014): 251–276.
• Ohlmeyer, Jane. Making Ireland English: The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.
• Macinnes, Allan. The British Revolution, 1629–1660. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Pseudo‑Left and Movementist Historiography

• Rees, John. The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England, 1640–1650. London: Verso, 2016.
• . Timelines: A Political History of the Modern World. London: Routledge, 2012.
• . “Levellers, Diggers and the English Revolution.” International Socialism 80 (1998).
• Harman, Chris. A People’s History of the World. London: Bookmarks, 1999.
• Callinicos, Alex. Making History: Agency, Structure, and Change in Social Theory. Leiden: Brill, 2004.

World Socialist Web Site (WSWS)

• Talbot, Ann. “Christopher Hill and the English Revolution.” World Socialist Web Site, 2002.
• North, David. The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century. Detroit: Mehring Books, 2014.

Political Context and Security Services

• Andrew, Christopher, and Paul Lashmar. “Christopher Hill: Allegations and Surveillance.” Times Literary Supplement, 2002.
• Glees, Anthony. The Stasi Files: East Germany’s Secret Operations in Britain. London: Simon & Schuster, 2003.

General Works on the English Revolution

• Hexter, J.H. The Reign of King Pym. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941.
• Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962.
• Cressy, David. England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution 1640–1642. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Braddick, Michael. God’s Fury, England’s Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars. London: Penguin, 2008.

 

 

Glen Hansard, 1970–2026: A Life Carried in Song

Glen Hansard died on 29 July 2026, aged 56, after a motorcycle crash in Dublin. Hours earlier, he had been at a trad session in the Wren’s Nest, singing and playing in the kind of room he always returned to: warm, unadorned, communal. The news of his death travelled quickly, and the tributes that followed spoke of a troubadour, a romantic, a man whose voice could fill a theatre and still sound like a conversation. A materialist reading begins somewhere quieter: with the working‑class Dublin that shaped him, and with the culture industry that spent decades trying to package what was, at heart, unpackageable.

He was born in Ballymun, the second of six children. His father, a carpenter and fiddle player, belonged to a generation for whom music was not a profession but a thread woven through labour and family life. Ballymun itself was built as a promise of modern housing for working people, then became a symbol of neglect. Hansard’s first musical work was on the street. As a teenager, he busked, guitar in hand, learning how to hold a crowd not through amplification or staging but through presence.

The busker is a striking figure for Marxists: a worker who sells his labour directly, without wage or boss, relying on the goodwill of strangers. It is precarious, exposed, and yet marked by a rare autonomy. Hansard carried that sensibility with him for the rest of his life. Fans often spoke of the absence of distance between him and the audience, a performer who seemed to dissolve the usual boundary between stage and floor.

His first wage‑labour in the culture industry came early, with The Commitments (1991), where he played Outspan Foster. The film’s celebration of working‑class Dublin claiming soul music mirrored something in Hansard himself: a belief that music belonged to those who needed it, not those who owned it. In 1990, he co‑founded The Frames, and for years his career was built on the road and in the live room. These were spaces where the relationship between performer and audience remained stubbornly human, resistant to being flattened into product.

Once: A Small Film About the Kindness of Strangers

Then came Once. Made on a shoestring, it became a global phenomenon, and “Falling Slowly” won the 2008 Oscar. The ceremony revealed the culture industry’s priorities: Markéta Irglová’s acceptance speech was cut short by the orchestra, restored only after a commercial break. Hansard’s own message that night was simple: make art, keep going. Yet the film’s success also turned his relationship with Irglová into marketing and touring material. Under capitalism, even intimacy becomes something you can package, promote, and sell.

When Once appeared in 2007, it looked like nothing much: a film made for almost no money, shot on borrowed locations, carried by two musicians who were not actors in any conventional sense. Yet it became one of the most quietly beloved Irish films of its generation, not because it aimed high but because it stayed close to the ground, to the street, to the shopfront, to the fragile hope that strangers might help one another for no reason other than recognition.

Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová play characters who barely have names, and that anonymity is part of the film’s truth. They are two people trying to keep going in a city that offers them little. He is a busker and repair-shop worker; she is a young immigrant holding her family together. Their connection is not romantic in the Hollywood sense. It is something smaller and more human: two people who meet at the right moment and give each other just enough encouragement to continue.

The film’s songs, written long before the script, become the emotional architecture. “Falling Slowly” is not a declaration but a plea, and the way the song grows in the cramped music shop is the film’s whole argument: that art made without permission or polish can still carry enormous weight. The recording studio scenes, with their awkwardness and sudden beauty, show collaboration as a kind of temporary shelter.

Once is often described as a fairy tale, but its magic is modest. It believes that people can help one another without owning one another, that creativity can bloom in the cracks of economic hardship, and that intimacy does not need to be consummated to matter. Its ending is gentle, unresolved, and honest.

What remains, years later, is the film’s sense of grace. It is a story about two musicians who meet briefly and change each other’s lives in ways neither fully understands. It also reminds us that some of the most enduring Irish art has been made not in studios or boardrooms but in borrowed rooms, on street corners, and in the fleeting kindness between strangers.

His most visible public act of kindness and solidarity was the annual Christmas Eve busk outside the Gaiety Theatre for the Simon Community. It was sincere, generous, and it raised real money. It also illuminated a contradiction that belongs to the times rather than to the man. In a city where housing has become a mechanism for extracting rent, the duty to shelter the vulnerable has been handed to musicians and charity collections. The busk eased the hardship of homelessness; it could not touch the structures that produce it.

What Hansard seemed to cherish most lay entirely outside the market. The pub session musicians gathered around a table, playing for no fee and no applause, is a kind of commons, a reminder of what culture looks like when it is shared rather than sold. It is fitting that hundreds of singers and buskers gathered near the Gaiety to sing for him after his death, before a public wake and a funeral at St Patrick’s Cathedral. The crowd on the street was solidarity. The cathedral was the establishment paying its respects.

Hansard leaves behind songs that will be streamed, licensed and monetised long after him, mostly for the benefit of those who own the catalogue rather than those who made it. But he also leaves something harder to quantify: the memory of a working‑class Dubliner who kept returning to the street and the session, to rooms where music was made together, freely, without an invoice.

Corporate Moralism and the #MeToo Purge: The Walliams Affair and the Assault on Democratic Rights

 HarperCollins’ sudden termination of its relationship with David Walliams—without any formal complaint, investigation, or publicly specified accusations—signals a shift in how culture industries use themselves to enforce ideological conformity. The publisher based their decision not on verified evidence but on unsubstantiated claims spread through the media. Rumours turned into liabilities; allegations were treated as truth. This isn’t a failure of due process but its outright rejection.

The Walliams affair is not an isolated incident. Instead, it represents a recent phase of a reactionary movement that over the past ten years has gradually chipped away at fundamental democratic rights, often under the pretext of moral accountability. Although media outlets and political figures have widely hailed the # MeToo movement as a fight for justice, it has largely served as a tool for corporate moralism, enforcing intra-class conformity, and weakening essential legal safeguards.

From the beginning, the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) emphasised that #MeToo was not primarily a movement to defend working-class women. Instead, privileged upper-middle-class groups led it, exploiting accusations to boost their careers, settle personal scores, and impose ideological standards across media, entertainment, and publishing. The Walliams case vividly validates this perspective.

The central point of the Walliams case isn't that a company cut ties with a publicly known author. Instead, it's that the separation happened precisely because no formal complaint was made. For HarperCollins, the lack of due process wasn't an issue; they saw it as necessary to act. Prominent political leaders have openly endorsed this perspective. During the Kavanaugh hearings, Senator Mazie Hirono mentioned that the presumption of innocence “is what makes it really difficult for victims and survivors to come forward.” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer also claimed that outside court, “there is no presumption of innocence.”

These statements weren't accidental; they highlighted the core ideology of #MeToo: legal standards are obstacles, and moral judgment should replace evidence. The Walliams affair demonstrates the logical endpoint of this doctrine. The presumption of innocence is not the casualty of #MeToo—it is the target.

HarperCollins’ decision was not an act of moral courage. It was an act of corporate governance. The publisher acted to protect its brand, its internal hierarchy, and its public image. The language of “protecting junior staff” and “ensuring a safe environment” is the ideological veneer for a commercial calculation.

Corporations have adopted #MeToo because it lets them shed liabilities without legal proceedings, adds a moral guise to their business choices, enables disciplining employees through intimidation, and distracts from their long-standing involvement in abusive workplace environments. Corporate moralism isn't just an adjunct to profit; it functions as a governance strategy. This approach lets companies portray themselves as guardians of morality while maintaining arbitrary control over employees and contractors.

The Walliams affair is a textbook example. HarperCollins acted unilaterally, without investigation, without evidence, and without providing Walliams any forum to respond. The corporation emerged as moral arbiter; the accused was left in permanent limbo.

The Class Character of #MeToo

The liberal narrative characterises #MeToo as a rebellion of oppressed women against dominant men. However, its actual social support came mainly from the wealthy upper-middle class, including media personalities, celebrities, academics, and corporate professionals. The primary targets were mostly fellow members of the intelligentsia. Its techniques involved denunciation, media trials, and administrative purges.

HarperCollins' so-called "junior staff" are not the true targets of this campaign; rather, they serve as its rhetorical shield. The actual aim is maintaining intra-class discipline: controlling cultural workers, enforcing ideological conformity, and illustrating that any inconvenient figure can be silenced without evidence or justice. This is why the WSWS emphasises that #MeToo is not a genuine movement for the oppressed but rather a reactionary effort by a privileged class seeking influence within capitalist systems. It functions as a way to build moral and political capital.

The Walliams case exemplifies a pattern well documented by the WSWS. In 2021, W.W. Norton “permanently” withdrew Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth from publication—destroying all copies—based on allegations with no supporting evidence. As WSWS critic David Walsh noted, none of the accusers “have come forward with any evidence.” Bailey was effectively silenced without a proper process, while Norton positioned itself as a self-appointed protector of moral standards.

In 2018, Ian Buruma was ousted from the New York Review of Books after publishing an essay by Jian Ghomeshi, who had been acquitted. His "transgression" was permitting an accused individual to share his perspective. The magazine's board carried out the removal, and media criticism fueled it further.

In 2020, Hachette suppressed Woody Allen’s memoir after an employee revolt led by Ronan Farrow. The WSWS described this as evidence that the #MeToo campaign “shows its ultra-right colours.” The publisher capitulated to moralistic pressure, abandoning any commitment to free expression.

Kevin Spacey faced public ruin well before any court dismissed the claims against him. The media played judge and jury, while corporations acted as executioners. In each instance: the institution acted unilaterally, the accused was denied a proper forum, the media repeated allegations until they seemed like facts, the corporation positioned itself as the moral authority, and the accused was left in a state of perpetual uncertainty. As Walsh described regarding the Bailey case, this resembles “McCarthyism of an especially pernicious character.” The Walliams controversy clearly fits into this problematic pattern.

The WSWS has always maintained that the working class has no stake in defending wealthy celebrities or large corporations. Walliams, a millionaire entertainer, and HarperCollins, a publishing company owned by Murdoch, are not matters of concern for workers. However, the core principles involved—the presumption of innocence, the right to face one’s accuser, and the need for evidence—are fundamentally important to the working class.

These rights were won through centuries of struggle against arbitrary state and corporate power. They are the only protections workers possess against victimisation, frame‑ups, and political repression. When these rights are dismantled in the cultural sphere, the consequences inevitably spread to workplaces, universities, and political life. The purge of cultural figures is a dress rehearsal for the repression of workers. This is why the WSWS defended the Depp verdict, the dismissal of claims against Spacey, and other cases where the accused were not politically sympathetic figures. The issue is not the individual. It is the democratic right.

The #MeToo framework serves a wider ideological aim: it fragments individuals by instilling fear of accusation, erodes solidarity by turning colleagues into potential informants, prioritises subjective feelings over objective facts, replaces legal standards with moralistic condemnation, and conditions society to accept punishment without evidence. This isn’t a pursuit of justice but a tool of social control.

HarperCollins’ choice reflects more a blend of moral rhetoric and business interests than a moral reckoning. It shows how moral language becomes a tool for corporate influence. The Walliams incident exposes the breakdown of fair process, the growth of media-driven trials, the increasing corporate dominance over cultural spaces, and the susceptibility of cultural workers to unfair punishment. It also highlights how #MeToo has become an ideological instrument of discipline. This trend is reactionary and must be challenged, not in support of David Walliams, but to defend the democratic rights of working-class individuals.

 

Sources

• Walsh, David. “The #MeToo campaign versus the presumption of innocence.” World Socialist Web Site, 2018.
• Walsh, David. “W.W. Norton’s pulping of Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth.” WSWS, 2021.
• Reiss, Rebecca. “Ian Buruma fired from NYRB.” WSWS, 2018.
• WSWS Editorial Board. “#MeToo campaign shows its ultra-right colours.” WSWS, 2020.
• Hirono, Mazie. Press remarks, 2018.
• Schumer, Charles. Press conference comments, 2018.
• Timmins, Patrick. “The political meaning of the Depp-Heard verdict.” WSWS, 2022.
• London, Tom. “The Kevin Spacey acquittal and the collapse of #MeToo narratives.” WSWS, 2023.

 

Two Singers, Two Eras: What Ed Sheeran’s Capitulation Reveals by Contrast with Bob Dylan’s 1963 Stand

The exclusion of Macklemore from Ed Sheeran’s 2024 Loop Tour, after his brief show of support for Palestinians, was more than just an industry controversy. It highlighted a key moment in how contemporary culture's political economy operates, showing how deeply the modern music scene has intertwined with corporate, financial, and geopolitical influences. Sheeran’s later comments, expressed through themes of “inclusivity” and "alternative methods of promoting peace”, were not merely neutral. They were ideological acts influenced by the structural pressures of a culture industry that views even minor dissent as a threat to capital.

Understanding this capitulation's importance is easier when you compare it to an earlier moment. In 1963, Bob Dylan refused to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show after CBS insisted he remove “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” a satirical take on Cold War anti-communism. While Dylan’s walkout is often romanticised, its true significance lies in what it exposes about the conditions for artistic independence in mid-20th-century America- conditions that have been steadily eroded over six decades of media consolidation, financialization, and the embedding of cultural production within global capital networks.

This article analyses these two episodes not as moral stories but as actions rooted in their historical context and shaped by changing dynamics between capital and culture. It suggests that Sheeran’s actions are not unusual but a logical result of an industry whose economic structure makes political bravery almost impossible. Meanwhile, Dylan’s refusal, though somewhat self-serving and limited, came at a time when artists still believed they could join wider social movements and reach a public sphere not yet completely dominated by corporate interests.

The Macklemore Episode: A Case Study in Contemporary Cultural Repression

On June 23, 2024, at MetLife Stadium, Macklemore briefly expressed support for Palestinians, citing reports of mass killings and starvation from humanitarian agencies and the UN. Shortly afterwards, he was discreetly pulled from the rest of Sheeran’s Loop Tour dates. No formal reason was provided, but industry sources indicated the move was driven by worries about "brand safety,” sponsor relationships, and the political considerations of large venue operators.

Sheeran’s public response exemplified neutral corporate language. He emphasised that the tour aimed for “inclusivity” and that “various ways of promoting peace” should be accepted, framing the deliberate bombing of civilians as a matter of personal style or opinion. The complex political situation in Gaza was obscured behind a cloud of “perspectives,” a phrase that echoes corporate PR tactics meant to sidestep reputational damage.

The Corporate Ecosystem Behind Sheeran

Sheeran’s touring setup is a structured corporate network, not a loose collection of musicians and promoters. It includes: Casey Wasserman, CEO of Wasserman Media Group, a major player in sports and entertainment, whose name appeared in Epstein-related reports (see: The Guardian, 2023); Robert Kraft, billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, who announced a Gaza relief effort with Sheeran soon after controversy widely seen as an attempt to improve optics on Macklemore’s removal through charity rather than moral stance; and multinational touring giants AEG and Live Nation, whose ownership links extend to private equity, defence industry investors, and global real estate holdings.

The current touring industry is a complex network of sponsorships, insurance policies, venue arrangements, and investor demands. According to music economist Peter Tschmuck, “the live music sector has become one of the most financialised segments of the cultural industries” (Tschmuck, The Economics of Music, 2021). In this context, even a small political statement by an opening act can pose a risk.

The lesson for working musicians is straightforward: solidarity can be negotiated, and silence often comes at a cost. The Macklemore incident demonstrates that the culture industry now not only discourages dissent but actively monitors and suppresses it. Media scholar Sarah Banet-Weiser notes that “brand culture transforms political expression into reputational risk” (Banet-Weiser, Empowered, 2018). Sheeran’s reaction was not merely personal cowardice but a result of conforming to the system's pressures.

Dylan’s 1963 Walkout: A Moment When Refusal Was Still Possible

In May 1963, Bob Dylan was set to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, a major platform in American entertainment. He planned to sing “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” which satirised Cold War fears. However, CBS’s standards department, worried about potential lawsuits from the John Birch Society and influenced by advertisers, insisted he drop the song. Dylan declined and walked off the stage. While this act has become legendary, its importance isn’t just about Dylan’s personal integrity; he later said it was about artistic self-respect rather than politics, but about the broader historical context that made such a refusal possible.

The early 1960s marked a time when many American artists still saw themselves as linked to larger social movements: the civil rights movement, which generated a public arena open to moral appeals; the early anti-war left, which had not yet been suppressed by government repression; and the folk revival, grounded in union halls, Popular Front traditions, and the influence of artists like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

As historian Michael Denning writes, “the cultural front of the mid‑century United States was shaped by a sense of collective struggle” (Denning, The Cultural Front, 1997). Even commercial artists could plausibly imagine that refusing a network broadcast might strengthen their connection to an audience.

In 1963, the media industry was characterised by capitalism, censorship, and a focus on advertising. However, it had not yet experienced the level of consolidation and financialization that would reshape it in later decades. Occasional dissent emerged through the system's weaknesses. Dylan’s refusal was expensive, but the cost was assessed within a public sphere not yet dominated by corporate interests.

From Dylan to Sheeran: The Transformation of the Culture Industry

Since the 1980s, the entertainment industry has consolidated significantly. Major companies such as Live Nation, AEG, Universal Music Group, and Sony have acquired smaller firms, forming vertically integrated conglomerates that oversee touring, ticketing, venue ownership, artist management, streaming platforms, and merchandising. As media scholar David Hesmondhalgh observes, “the cultural industries have become increasingly dominated by large corporations whose interests are aligned with global finance” (Hesmondhalgh, The Cultural Industries, 2019).

The contemporary touring industry is dominated by financial tools such as tour insurance backed by major banks, sponsorship agreements tied to safety algorithms, investor expectations for quarterly gains, and venue deals linked to real estate portfolios. A political act today can do more than cancel a broadcast; it can jeopardise an entire multi-million-dollar global production. Sociologist Saskia Sassen notes that “financialisation transforms cultural production into a site of risk management” (Sassen, Expulsions, 2014).

The language used in modern entertainment terms like “inclusivity,” “diverse perspectives,” and “complex situations” acts as a solvent, blending political realities into a cloud of personal feelings and brand image. Discussions on Gaza are reduced to issues of “tone,” while children’s starvation becomes a matter of “perspective,” and dissent is dismissed as “miscommunication.” This isn’t accidental; it reflects a cultural framework in which capital has absorbed and neutralised the remaining traces of oppositional artistic identity.

Why Sheeran’s Capitulation Was Inevitable

The modern pop star isn't an independent cultural figure but rather part of a corporate supply chain. People view their political statements not as genuine expression but as potential risks. Sheeran’s surrender wasn’t a sign of weakness; it was the inevitable outcome for an artist ingrained in a financialised cultural system. Unlike Dylan, Sheeran can't rely on a public platform that supports dissent. Streaming services, algorithmic feeds, and brand-centric fan cultures have fragmented the collective political awareness that once fostered oppositional art.

The civil rights movement, anti-war activism, and the labour-inspired folk revival gave mid-century artists a shared sense of collective struggle. Today, no comparable large-scale movements exist in the United States or Britain. Modern artists tend to be isolated, fragmented, and largely reliant on corporate sponsorship.

We shouldn't canonise Dylan. He mostly distanced himself from political interpretations of his work in the following decade, and the demands of the culture industry shaped his later career. Yet, even a short, self-interested rejection in 1963 illustrates how modern artists are caught in a system that views conscience as a contractual breach. The crucial difference isn't moral strength, but the opportunities history provides.

The Sheeran–Macklemore episode is not a footnote. It is a symptom of a culture industry that has reached a terminal stage of integration with the ruling class's political and economic interests. The entertainment sector does not merely avoid controversy; it polices dissent. It does not merely reflect political cowardice; it manufactures it.

Dylan’s refusal belonged to a moment when the relationship between capital and culture still contained cracks through which dissent could occasionally surface. Sheeran’s capitulation belongs to a moment when those cracks have been sealed.

The task for artists and for audiences is not to search for heroes within this system. It is to recognise that the system itself is the problem. Culture cannot be liberated from cowardice until it is liberated from capital.

Sources

• Banet‑Weiser, Sarah. Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. Duke University Press, 2018.
• Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Labouring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. Verso, 1997.
• Hesmondhalgh, David. The Cultural Industries. 4th ed., Sage, 2019.
• Sassen, Saskia. Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Harvard University Press, 2014.
• Tschmuck, Peter. The Economics of Music. Springer, 2021.
• The Guardian. “Epstein Documents Reveal New Names.” 2023.
• United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). “Gaza Humanitarian Update.” 2024.
• Variety, Billboard, and Rolling Stone reporting on the Macklemore–Sheeran incident (2024).

 

The Ultimate Computer and the Ideology of the Present: Automation, Alignment, and the Class Question

The resurgence of automation anxiety in the twenty-first century reveals a peculiar sense of historical symmetry. In 1968, Star Trek’s “The Ultimate Computer” framed machine autonomy as a psychological crisis, focusing on the damaged genius Daystrom, the overambitious engineer, and the machine that reflects its creator’s neurosis. Fast forward to 2026, and the same story unfolds this time not on TV, but in congressional hearings, corporate manifestos, and national-security directives. This continuity is not coincidental; it is ideological. A more advanced social analysis has not replaced the Daystrom narrative because the very class that benefits from it has industrialised that perspective.

To grasp this continuity and its hidden political stakes, we must revisit the question the episode raises but leaves unanswered: who deploys the machine, and whose interests does it serve? This question is not only missing from the narrative; the Federation's utopian premise inherently prevents addressing it. The post-scarcity world does not represent socialism realised but rather the erasure of the revolutionary process needed to attain it. It signifies abundance without expropriation, planning without class conflict, and social harmony without overthrowing the ruling class. The Federation is not just a reason for the episode’s avoidance; it is the very reason for it.

The Industrialisation of the Daystrom Frame

The 2026 alignment debate focused on fears of “catastrophic risk" and the idea that only founders can manage the threats they have generated, embodying a modern version of Daystrom’s crisis, not merely a metaphor. The WSWS’s investigation into the Anthropic incident demonstrates this clearly. What starts as a genuine internal warning from a researcher quickly transforms into a justification for “embedded evaluators” chosen by corporations, integrating AI into national security, and tightening monopoly control before an IPO. This is not about 'safety'; it is a class strategy. Catastrophe is depicted as an engineering failure that can only be fixed by the same elite whose competitive nature caused the danger. The ruling class acts as both arsonist and fire brigade.

Dario Amodei’s essay “We Must Pace the Frontier” vividly exemplifies this ideology. It resembles Daystrom without drama: progress must slow down yet continue; risks must be controlled but only by those creating them; disaster is near, yet only the oligarchs can prevent it. The debate around alignment serves as the ideological shield that keeps ownership unchallenged. It turns a societal conflict capitalism’s tendency to replace living labour into a technical issue for specialists. The Daystrom analogy is not just a storytelling device; it embodies the worldview of the class that owns the means of computation.

Both 2001: A Space Odyssey and “The Ultimate Computer” resolve their crises through qualities considered inherently human: conscience, cunning, stubbornness, and the engineer’s triumph over machines. This reflects the ideology of the petty-bourgeois class that creates these machines under capitalism's influence, centred on the fantasy of individual mastery and the belief that the engineer’s moral insight can fix systemic issues. However, the truly irreducible element which neither work can explicitly define is labour itself.

Living human labour is the only source of value, with profit coming from extracting surplus labour. A production process that removes living labour does not generate surplus value. The so-called “ultimate computer”, the dream of complete automation, does not represent capital’s achievement but its own demise. This is where the system’s inherent contradiction reaches a breaking point.

Bourgeois imagination cannot capture this reality. Acknowledging labour as the core element means accepting the class that exploits it, which underpins society. It involves confronting the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production, transforming revolution from a moral choice into a historical necessity. The truly human aspect is not conscience, but the labour process itself, the one part capital cannot automate without risking its own existence.

The Federation’s post-scarcity world is frequently seen as a utopian ideal realisation of socialism. However, it is not that. It represents the erasure of the revolutionary process needed to attain abundance. This future envisions the absence of class conflict, not its resolution. Productive forces have been socialised, but without expropriating the expropriators. Ownership has shifted in humanity’s favour, yet without the conflict or process needed to establish it.

This is why the Federation cannot pose the question “who owns the means of computation.” It has overlooked the class whose ownership would need to be abolished. The future seems already decided because the process required to settle it, the revolutionary takeover of productive forces, is exactly what bourgeois utopianism fails to portray. The Federation is not a utopia; it is a bourgeois illusion of abundance that exists without class conflict.

The Answer the Episode Cannot Give

The episode's key question, “who decides to deploy the machine, and whose interests are served?”  is deliberately avoided because it is politically sensitive. The whole discussion about alignment is designed to keep this question unasked. The reality is that the capitalist class uses AI against the working class, and the solution lies in expropriation, not in regulation, "responsible scaling," engineer heroism, founder conscience, or technical alignment expertise.

The productive forces of AI, built from the general intellect and the accumulated knowledge of generations, must be seized from private ownership and placed under democratic workers’ control. The SEP’s Ninth Congress resolution articulates the only program adequate to the contradiction: expropriate the tech monopolies; transform them into public utilities; guarantee no job losses to automation; shorten the working week with no loss of pay; direct AI toward human need and global planning. This is the precise opposite of the episode’s resolution. Kirk persuades M‑5 to die by appealing to its inherited conscience: the individual must remain sovereign over the machine. The Marxist resolution is collective: the working class must become sovereign over the means of production, machine included. The episode cannot depict this because it cannot depict the class whose struggle would make it possible.

The Historical Hinge: 1966 and 2026

The initial wave of post-war automation fears was genuine, but it was managed through class-compromise strategies like retraining, controlled decline, and union-led adjustments. Currently, no such containment mechanisms exist. The pseudo-left and unions lack a clear plan, instead making appeals to the same oligarchs responsible for deploying the technology. Sanders’ proposal for an “AI sovereign wealth fund” aligns with Trump’s executive order and Altman’s bailout plan, all assuming that private ownership remains unchallenged. This is why the Daystrom framing has returned in industrial form. It is the ideological substitute for the class question that can no longer be deferred.

The episode did not envision a future in which ownership was resolved in humanity’s favour. Instead, it dismissed the revolution needed to settle it. The Federation’s post-scarcity environment is not a utopian ideal but an ideological façade, a means to evade the social conflict revealed by automation. The underlying lesson is not that we lack the Federation’s justification. Rather, the Federation has always been the justification.

The bourgeois utopia of post‑scarcity without expropriation is the ideological veil that prevents us from asking the social question. The alignment discourse is its modern form. And the task of Marxist criticism and Marxist politics is to tear that veil away.

Further Reading

I. Primary Texts: Star Trek, Kubrick, and Automation

• Star Trek: The Original Series, “The Ultimate Computer,” Season 2, Episode 24 (1968).
• Star Trek: The Original Series, “The Return of the Archons,” Season 1, Episode 21 (1967).
• Star Trek: The Original Series, “A Taste of Armageddon,” Season 1, Episode 23 (1967).
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968).
• Arthur C. Clarke, The Lost Worlds of 2001 (New American Library, 1972).
• Gene Roddenberry, The Making of Star Trek (Ballantine Books, 1968).

II. Marxist Theory: Labour, Value, Automation, and the General Intellect

• Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I–III (Penguin Classics editions).
• Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Penguin Classics).
• Especially the “Fragment on Machines” (pp. 690–712), on automation and the general intellect.
• Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
• Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (1937).
• Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism (Verso, 1975).
• Ernest Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory, Vol. II (Monthly Review Press, 1968).
• Roman Rosdolsky, The Making of Marx’s Capital (Pluto Press, 1977).

III. Contemporary Marxist Analysis of AI and Automation

• Socialist Equality Party (US), Resolution of the Ninth Congress on Artificial Intelligence and the Class Struggle (2024).
• Key line: “Value, as Marx demonstrated, is created by living human labour, and profit is derived from the surplus value extracted from the worker.”
• World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), coverage of AI, Anthropic, and national‑security integration:
• WSWS report on the Anthropic researcher warning and its political appropriation.
• David North, The Crisis of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Socialist Equality Party (Mehring Books).
• Nick Beams, “Automation, AI, and the Contradictions of Capitalism,” WSWS lectures (2023–2026).

IV. AI Alignment Ideology, Corporate Power, and the Tech Oligarchy

• Dario Amodei, “We Must Pace the Frontier,” Anthropic (2024).
• Sam Altman, “Moore’s Law for Everything” (2021).
• Sam Altman, statements on sovereign wealth funds and AI industrial policy (2023–2026).
• US Executive Orders on AI (2023–2026), including national‑security integration.
• EU AI Act (2024–2026 drafts and revisions).
• Timnit Gebru et al., “Stochastic Parrots: On the Dangers of Predicting the Future with Language Models” (FAccT, 2021).
• Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI (Yale University Press, 2021).
• Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019).

V. Automation History: Postwar Panic and the 1966 Commission

• US National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress (1966).
• Technology and the American Economy (Government Printing Office, 1966).
• Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post‑Industrial Society (1973).
• James Boggs, The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook (1963).
• Harry Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capital (Monthly Review Press, 1974).
• Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work (1995).

VI. Scholarship on Star Trek, Utopianism, and Post‑Scarcity Ideology

• Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (Verso, 2005).
• Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (Yale University Press, 1979).
• Lincoln Geraghty, Living with Star Trek: American Culture and the Star Trek Universe (I.B. Tauris, 2007).
• Daniel Bernardi, Star Trek and History: Racing Toward a White Future (Rutgers University Press, 1998).
• Mark Dredze & Darcie Draudt‑Véjares, “Our Final Frontier? Star Trek and the Post‑AI Society,” Johns Hopkins Data Science and AI Institute panel (2026).
• Joyce Hunter, “Stardate 2026: What a 1968 Star Trek Episode Gets Exactly Right About AI,” LinkedIn (2026).

VII. Political Economy of Technology and Capitalist Crisis

• Robert Brenner, The Economics of Global Turbulence (Verso, 2006).
• Michael Roberts, The Long Depression (Haymarket Books, 2016).
• Andrew Kliman, The Failure of Capitalist Production (2012).
• Wolfgang Streeck, How Will Capitalism End? (Verso, 2016).
• Aaron Benanav, Automation and the Future of Work (Verso, 2020).

VIII. AI, Labour, and the State: Reports and Policy Documents

• OECD, AI and the Future of Skills (2025).
• International Labour Organisation (ILO), Work in the Age of AI (2024).
• UK House of Lords, AI in the UK: No Room for Complacency (2024).
• US Department of Defence, AI and Autonomy Integration Strategy (2025).
• RAND Corporation, AI, National Security, and Strategic Competition (2024).

IX. Additional Theoretical Works Relevant to the Argument

• Moishe Postone, Time, Labour, and Social Domination (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
• Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness (1923).
• Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks.
• Alfred Sohn‑Rethel, Intellectual and Manual Labour (1978).
• Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch (2004).

Notes on Search‑Grounded Sources

The following items were directly retrieved from the search results you requested and are included above:

• Hopkins at Home / Our Final Frontier? Star Trek and the Post‑AI Society (2026)analysis of Star Trek’s automation and post‑scarcity framing.
• Joyce Hunter, “Stardate 2026: What a 1968 Star Trek Episode Gets Exactly Right About AI”, contemporary reading of “The Ultimate Computer.”
• Johns Hopkins Hub event description on Star Trek, automation, and AI governance.