A border history of cotton, labour and forgetting: Cristina Rivera Garza’s Autobiography of Cotton

Cristina Rivera Garza’s Autobiography of Cotton was published in English by Graywolf Press six years after its initial release in Mexico. This release coincides with her rising international prominence. Rivera Garza, now a Pulitzer Prize winner, MacArthur Fellow, and multiple Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize recipient, holds a significant place in the modern literary worlds of both the United States and Mexico. Her work is widely circulated through leading publishers, award panels, and cultural organisations that influence the global border literature scene.

Any evaluation of Autobiography of Cotton must recognise Christina MacSweeney's crucial role, as her translation renders Rivera Garza’s hybrid form accessible to an English-speaking audience. MacSweeney has become a leading mediator of contemporary Latin American literature in the Anglo-American publishing scene, introducing writers like Valeria Luiselli, Julián Fuks, and Daniel Saldaña París. Her approach is characterised by an awareness of the archival and documentary styles prevalent in the region’s current literary works. In this particular case, the difficulty is significant: Rivera Garza’s prose shifts between bureaucratic records, family testimonies, ecological descriptions, and lyrical reflections—sometimes within a single page. MacSweeney’s translation maintains this dynamic variety without reducing it to the uniform “international style” often enforced by English-language publishers.

The book's political significance—its focus on labour history, engagement with Revueltas, and critique of the cotton economy—relies partly on the translator’s skill in preserving the tension between factual documentation and personal interpretation. MacSweeney’s faithful preservation of this balance is a notable strength. While Rivera Garza's approach ultimately shapes whether the book makes the class dynamics clear or remains ambiguous, the translation itself does not hinder a serious political analysis.

Her new book explores a topic beyond traditional literary circles. 'Autobiography of Cotton' revisits the often overlooked history of agricultural labour in northern Mexico, emphasising the cotton industry that transformed Tamaulipas throughout the 20th century and highlighting the 1934 strike at Estación Camarón. This event brought young Communist activist José Revueltas to the area and influenced his future proletarian fiction.

The gravity of the book's subject matter is undeniable. The real question is whether Rivera Garza’s hybrid memoir-archive can effectively challenge the political reasoning behind this history, or if it ends up assimilating the strike, the workers, and Revueltas into the depoliticised conventions typical of modern literary autofiction.

Cotton, capital and the border

Cotton in northern Mexico is more than just a local crop; it is a part of a global economic system. Throughout the 20th century, cotton cultivation in Tamaulipas connected Mexican agricultural workers directly to US financial interests, aligned with global market demands, and involved violent state interventions supporting landowners and ginners. The rise of cotton monoculture dramatically altered the region’s environment—depleting water sources, degrading soil, and causing what Rivera Garza describes as "ecocide." Additionally, it reshaped the local class system, with migrant workers, including Rivera Garza’s grandparents, caught in a system of exploitation driven not by local customs but by international capital.

Any thorough analysis of this history must start with class relations: who owned the land, controlled the gins, extracted surplus, and how the state reacted when workers organised resistance. The 1934 strike at Estación Camarón stands as a crucial event in this history. It is not just a symbolic gesture, a family story, or a nostalgic border memory; it was a direct clash between agricultural workers and capital. Its impact spread throughout the region, and the underlying dynamics are still evident today in the conditions faced by farmworkers on both sides of the US-Mexico border.

Revueltas and the politics of clarity

Rivera Garza’s book revisits the historical roots of José Revueltas’s El luto humano. As a teenager, Revueltas travelled to Tamaulipas in support of striking workers, a journey that influenced his political stance and artistic growth. He was not a writer fuelled by border nostalgia or family history; instead, he was a Marxist activist whose fiction critiqued the decline of the Mexican Revolution, exposed the betrayals within the Stalinist Communist Party, and depicted the harsh realities of class struggle in rural areas. Unlike the modern memoir-archive genre, he did not romanticise suffering; instead, he clarified its political roots. He viewed strikes not as mere wounds in the national psyche but as manifestations of capitalism's inherent contradictions. Rather than blending class antagonism into the backdrop, he laid it bare.

Any book referencing Revueltas should be evaluated against this benchmark. The key question is not whether Rivera Garza mentions him, but whether she actively engages with the political approach he embodies. Does she challenge the class forces that influenced the cotton economy? Does she examine the roles of the state, the bosses, and the Communist Party? Does she draw connections between 1934 and current agricultural labour conditions? Or does she incorporate Revueltas into the cosy genre of border memoirs popular among publishers in New York and Mexico City?

The memoir‑archive form: illumination or obscurity?

Rivera Garza’s book is characterised as a blend of archival reconstruction, family storytelling, and fictionalised memory. This approach has gained prominence in international literary fiction over the last decade. While not inherently illegitimate, it presents a specific risk: turning historical struggles into personal atmospheres and reducing political conflicts to individual inheritance instead of collective action. The “archival turn” in modern literature often views history more as a source of emotion than a record of class struggles. Strikes become symbolic, exploitation a mood, and the past a space for lyrical reflection rather than political critique. This trend is influenced by the ideological pressures of the literary market, which favours works that allude to history but avoid its difficult realities.

The main issue is whether Autobiography of Cotton yields to or resists this tendency. Rivera Garza’s earnestness and serious subject matter hint at a work that challenges the political dynamics of the cotton economy. However, the memoir-archive style, focusing on personal lineage and subjective memory, might obscure the very forces that shaped that history.

Borderlands have long been viewed in US and Mexican literature as symbolic spaces—representing identity, hybridity, trauma, and memory. However, the border itself is not just a metaphor; it is a tangible outcome of imperialism, agricultural capitalism, and state violence. The cotton economy directly influenced the border’s demographic and social makeup. Migrant labour, ecological damage, land concentration, and state repression are real, material processes, not merely symbolic ones.

Autobiography of Cotton is a work whose importance lies not in its formal innovations or its place within the contemporary “archival turn,” but in the historical terrain it reopens. Rivera Garza has chosen to write about a chapter of Mexican labour history that the literary establishment, both in the United States and Mexico, has long preferred to forget: the cotton economy of Tamaulipas, the ecological devastation it produced, and the class struggles—above all the 1934 strike—that emerged from it. That decision alone distinguishes the book from the vast body of border literature that treats the region as metaphor rather than as the product of capitalist agriculture and state repression.

Whether Rivera Garza ultimately confronts the political logic of this history, or assimilates it into the aestheticised conventions of memoir and autofiction, remains a question that only a close reading can settle. The presence of José Revueltas in the book’s background sets a high standard. Revueltas understood the strike not as a family wound or a symbolic inheritance, but as an expression of the contradictions of Mexican capitalism and the betrayals of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Any work that invokes him must be measured against his clarity.

What can be said now is that Autobiography of Cotton directs attention to a history of exploitation, migration and ecological destruction whose consequences remain fully alive today. The conditions facing agricultural workers in Tamaulipas, Texas and California are not historical residues; they are the direct continuation of the same class forces that shaped the cotton fields of the 1930s. A book that illuminates that continuity—rather than obscuring it beneath the consolations of memory—would be of genuine value to readers seeking to understand the border not as symbol, but as a site of ongoing struggle.

Rivera Garza has opened the door to that possibility. The task of criticism is to determine whether she walks through it.

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Works

• Cristina Rivera Garza, Autobiografía del algodón (Literatura Random House, 2020).
• Cristina Rivera Garza, Autobiography of Cotton, trans. Christina MacSweeney (Graywolf Press, 2024).
• José Revueltas, El luto humano (Ediciones Era, 1943).
• José Revueltas, Human Mourning, trans. Reuben G. Brower (University of Texas Press, 1965).
• José Revueltas, Ensayo sobre un proletariado sin cabeza (1962).
• Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Fondo Secretaría de Gobernación, documents related to agricultural labor disputes in Tamaulipas, 1930–1940.
• Hemeroteca Nacional de México, contemporary press coverage of the 1934 Estación Camarón strike.

Historical Studies: Cotton, Labour and the Border

• Casey Walsh, Building the Borderlands: A Transnational History of Irrigated Cotton along the Mexico–Texas Border (Texas A&M University Press, 2008).
• Gilberto López y Rivas, La guerra contra los pueblos indígenas de México (Siglo XXI, 2015) — for broader context on state repression and agrarian conflict.
• Friedrich Katz, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 1981).
• John Womack Jr., Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (Vintage, 1970).
• Heather Fowler-Salamini, Working Women, Working Men: Mexico and Central America since 1930 (University of Texas Press, 1994).
• Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, Beyond la Frontera: The History of Mexico–U.S. Migration (Oxford University Press, 2011).
• Manuel García y Griego, “The Importation of Mexican Farm Workers to the United States, 1942–1964,” in Migration Across the Mexico–United States Border (University of Texas Press, 1981).

Studies on José Revueltas and Marxist Literary Tradition

• Evodio Escalante, José Revueltas: Una literatura del “lado moridor” (FCE, 1990).
• Michael J. Snediker, “Revueltas and the Politics of Form,” Latin American Literary Review (2014).
• Jorge Volpi, La imaginación y el poder: Una historia intelectual de 1968 (Era, 1998) — includes analysis of Revueltas’s political conflicts with the Mexican Communist Party.
• Christopher Domínguez Michael, Vida de Revueltas (Era, 2014).
• Adolfo Gilly, La revolución interrumpida (Era, 1971) — essential for understanding the political degeneration Revueltas confronted.

Environmental and Ecological Context

• Christopher R. Boyer, Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico (Duke University Press, 2015).
• Emily Wakild, Revolutionary Parks: Conservation, Social Justice, and Mexico’s National Parks, 1910–1940 (University of Arizona Press, 2011).
• Casey Walsh, “Ecologies of Production: Cotton, Water, and Agrarian Change in Northern Mexico,” Journal of Historical Geography (2004).

Borderlands Theory and Critique

• Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera (Aunt Lute Books, 1987).
• Deborah Cohen, Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico (UNC Press, 2011).
• Kelly Lytle Hernández, ¡Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (University of California Press, 2010).

On Translation and Christina MacSweeney

• Christina MacSweeney, translator’s notes and interviews on translating Rivera Garza and Luiselli (various sources, including Words Without Borders and Asymptote).
• Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility (Routledge, 1995) — for theoretical context on translation and the “international style.”
• Susan Bassnett, Translation Studies (Routledge, 2014).

Marxist Theory and Method

(Foundational texts relevant to the review’s analytical standpoint.)

• Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I (1867).
• Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution (1930).
• Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (1937).
• C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins (1938) — for commodity history and world‑system analysis.
• Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (Penguin, 1968).
• Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts (Verso, 2001) — on ecology, imperialism and capitalist agriculture.

 

 

A Security State Lens on Social Breakdown: The EU’s Femcel Study and the Long History of Pathologising Capitalist Crisis

A recent study conducted under the EU’s CounteR program—titled “Femcels’ Speeches Between Extreme Solitude and Radical Break with the ‘Alpha World’”—illustrates how contemporary academic research can serve ideological purposes aligned with security interests. Its authors, Séraphin Alava and Rasha Nagem, frame their work as a neutral analysis of online discussions among young women who feel isolated and romantically excluded. However, the study is actually a politically motivated document, part of a state-funded initiative to pathologise the social effects of capitalist failures. Two critical sentences highlight its core message: “Loneliness is treated as a discursive and psychological phenomenon to be typologized, not as a social product of a specific economic order.” “The Femcel, like the incel before her, is thereby transformed from a symptom of social crisis into a potential security risk to be monitored.”

These lines emphasise the main ideological stance: turning social distress into a security concern. The research is carried out within an institution dedicated to “Violent Terrorism and Crime Prediction," which interprets the analysis exclusively through risk management ideas. Consequently, important questions — such as why now? Why specifically this form? and what socio-economic conditions contribute to this isolation? — are initially overlooked.

The Security Apparatus as Arbiter of Academic Inquiry

The CounteR project is part of a broad EU security research network that has expanded significantly over the past decade. Its primary aim is not to study social phenomena but to classify and predict them. Funding for this research cannot address the social roots of issues like alienation, declining living standards, or the commercialisation of intimate life. Instead, it concentrates on monitoring, categorising, and intercepting online expressions of distress. This restriction is political rather than academic. The EU, along with Britain and the US, has established a surveillance system that treats political dissent, psychological distress, and social isolation as interchangeable indicators of “radicalisation.” The Femcel is merely viewed as a data point within a risk-scoring framework.

The study’s categories — “Alpha world rejection,” “feminist consciousness,” “radicalisation trajectory” — are not neutral labels. They are part of a security framework aimed at classifying populations by risk level. In essence, the typology created by the authors acts as a taxonomy for a database.

A Long Lineage: Cold War Social‑Pathology Research

The main idea behind the Femcel study's ideology is not new. It carries on a Cold War-era social science tradition that regarded the societal effects of capitalist crises as primarily psychological problems. Oscar Lewis’s “culture of poverty” concept redefined structural difficulties as a self-perpetuating psychological condition. Poverty was interpreted not as a result of exploitation but as stemming from "maladaptive behaviours.” This view aligned with Cold War liberalism by distancing inequality from political causes and instead blaming it on the mindset of those in poverty.

The Frankfurt School’s concept of the Authoritarian Personality, adapted by US Cold War agencies, framed political tendencies as psychological disorders. This shift diverted attention from social causes of fascism, instead emphasising individual personality traits. As a result, political threats were seen as personal psychological issues rather than linked to class struggles. Postwar research on “juvenile delinquency” often interpreted the decline of urban working-class areas as behavioural problems needing supervision, rather than recognising it as a result of deindustrialisation and racial segregation. The Alava–Nagem paper reflects this Cold War perspective: social crises are simplified into psychological types; alienation is regarded as a risk factor; resentment is viewed as a pathology, and structural conditions are not considered. The EU’s counter-radicalisation initiatives are significantly shaped by the UK’s Prevent program, which is among Europe's most extensive surveillance systems.

Prevent has identified tens of thousands of individuals for deradicalisation efforts, including children as young as four. According to the WSWS, Prevent combines political dissent, mental health issues, and social isolation into a single category called “extremism.’ Its primary strategy is pre-emptive intervention—acting before political consciousness develops. This includes monitoring online speech, conducting risk assessments, and viewing social alienation as a security threat. Furthermore, women’s online spaces are increasingly targeted, under the assumption that “vulnerable individuals” could be more susceptible to extremism.

The Femcel study follows this trend, using Prevent’s risk-tiering approach. It views online discussion as a threat and frames feminist awareness as a potential pathway to radicalisation, ignoring material conditions. To fully understand it, one must consider the incel discourse that sparked it, which itself arose from the broader crisis of social reproduction. After the 2018 Toronto van attack, incels were quickly labelled as terrorists. Media and academic discussions concentrated on misogynistic beliefs, online radicalisation, and psychological issues, while overlooking material factors such as declining living standards, social atomisation, commodified intimacy, and algorithm-driven dating markets.

Both incel and Femcel discussions originate from the decline of community institutions, the commercialisation of romance, the hierarchy of desirability, and the collapse of stable social paths to partnership. However, incels are viewed as a violent danger, whereas Femcels are considered psychologically fragile. Despite this difference, the core issue is identical. The Alava–Nagem study observes that Femcel discourse “diverges from the misogynistic violence associated with segments of the incel milieu,” but still regards Femcels as potential security risks. The fundamental reasoning is consistent: social crises trigger risk assessments.

Dating Apps and the Commodification of Intimacy

The increase in dating app usage over the last decade is often seen as a cultural or technological development. However, it also exposes a deeper social crisis. These platforms, which impact the private lives of hundreds of millions, are not just neutral tools but commercial systems that transform human relationships via market forces. Their growth is also linked to worsening material conditions that once supported stable relationships.

The political economy behind dating apps is straightforward. These platforms prioritise profit, which depends on maintaining user dissatisfaction. Their business model involves encouraging frequent user turnover, artificially restricting attention, ranking desirability with algorithms, and segmenting users into paid tiers. In this setup, intimacy and visibility are treated as commodities. Loneliness is also commodified—controlled through subscriptions, profile boosts, and algorithm adjustments. Rather than solving loneliness, these platforms exploit it for financial gain.

This commodification of intimate life is not an accidental result of technology but a direct outcome of decades of neoliberal reforms. The decline of stable jobs, rising housing prices, the breakdown of public spaces, and the fragmentation of social life have weakened the communal and workplace institutions where relationships traditionally developed. Dating apps serve to fill the void left by capitalist disintegration, yet they also intensify it.

Platforms tend to replicate and amplify existing social inequalities. Their algorithms prioritise users based on aesthetic, cultural, and class indicators that closely align with income, education, and consumption habits. This creates a stratified marketplace where a small minority garners most attention, while others struggle for visibility amid harsher competition. The concept of the “Alpha world,” often discussed in Femcel and incel communities, is not just a cultural fantasy; it reflects the ideological foundation of this market-driven mindset.

The mental health issues linked to using dating apps — including anxiety, loneliness, and resentment — are not personal flaws. They are the expected results of structuring intimate relationships around competition, self-promotion, and algorithm-driven choices. Despite this, academic and media narratives often view these problems as personal ailments instead of signs of a society in upheaval. The EU’s counter-radicalisation efforts take this further by framing the negative effects of commodified intimacy as possible security risks.

The truth is simpler and more politically explosive. The crisis of intimacy is a crisis of capitalism. The commodification of romantic life is inseparable from the commodification of everything else. A society that cannot provide stable employment, affordable housing, or meaningful community cannot provide the conditions for stable relationships. Dating apps do not repair this devastation; they monetise it.

The Gendered Crisis of Social Reproduction

To grasp the rise of Femcel discourse, it's essential to look beyond platform speech and focus on the social reproductive crisis. Since the 1980s, young people in Europe and North America have experienced declining wages, rising housing costs, shrinking public spaces, the breakdown of stable workplaces and communities, and fragmented social and temporal lives. For young women, these issues have led to postponed or unfeasible household formation, increased competition in dating scenes, greater reliance on algorithm-driven platforms, and social isolation from stable networks.

Dating apps have transformed courtship from a personal pursuit into a market-driven activity. Visibility is now a product, algorithms rank desirability, and romantic opportunities are part of a competitive marketplace. The concept of the “Alpha world” in Femcel discussions is not just a cultural myth but a reflection of this market logic's ideology. Femcel language isn't a sign of pathology but a rational reaction to being excluded from a commodified form of intimacy. It acts as a social critique—though it may be nascent and contradictory—rooted in actual experiences. However, the counter-radicalisation perspective cannot see this because acknowledging it would mean admitting capitalism’s failure to foster stable social life.

Feminist Consciousness and the Limits of Security‑Compatible Critique

The study hints at a “transition… to feminist consciousness,” but only in a depoliticised, NGO-friendly way. The feminism accepted within a security framework is the safe type: focusing on individual empowerment, platform governance, and representation. The feminism that is excluded highlights women’s isolation in social reproduction crises, critiques the commodification of intimacy, and acknowledges that stable relationships depend on steady material conditions.

A truly materialist feminist outlook would critique the very structure of capitalist society. It would see the dating-app marketplace as a capitalist institution rather than just a cultural artefact. This perspective would acknowledge that the crisis of intimacy is tied to broader issues like work, housing, and community. If fully developed, it could lead to socialist reforms of social life. This is exactly the kind of awareness that counter-radicalisation efforts aim to suppress.

A truly social-rooted study of Femcel discourse would start by examining material conditions such as employment insecurity, housing instability, debt, the decline of public spaces, and the weakening of communal institutions. It would explore how algorithmic sorting worsens inequality, commodifies visibility, and stratifies desirability. The analysis would include how women cope with exclusion, how resentment stems from structural issues, and how online conversations reflect material realities. It would question whether alienation can transform into class consciousness, whether feminist criticism can evolve into anti-capitalism, and whether new solidarities can form. The Alava–Nagem paper cannot undertake this because its institutional role is to prevent such analysis.

Conclusion: The Ideological Function of Counter‑Radicalisation Research

The Femcel phenomenon illustrates a facet of capitalist social disintegration. The counter-radicalisation system reinterprets it as a security threat. This shift isn't mere academic oversight but a deliberate ideological stance. The ruling elite, unable to confront the social ruin they caused, reframe these issues as individual mental health problems, crimes, or extremism. The Alava–Nagem study thus highlights not just its findings but what it exposes: the clash between a security-focused knowledge system and a social reality it struggles to comprehend. It’s a record of an apparatus compelled to classify and prevent, while avoiding questions about the root causes of the crisis.

Further Reading

A curated selection of works that illuminate the political economy of dating apps, the commodification of intimacy, the crisis of social reproduction, and the ideological function of counter‑radicalisation research. These texts provide historical depth, theoretical clarity, and empirical grounding for readers seeking to understand the broader social forces driving contemporary forms of isolation, romantic exclusion, and algorithmically mediated desire.

Political Economy of Dating Apps and Digital Intimacy

• Kugelberg, Elsa. Dating Apps and the Digital Sexual Sphere. American Political Science Review 119, no. 4 (2025): 1761–1776. A major normative analysis of dating apps as corporate actors intervening in a core social institution — intimacy — with over 350 million yearly users. Essential for understanding dating apps as political institutions rather than neutral technologies.
• Wilken, Rowan; Burgess, Jean; Albury, Kath. “Dating Apps and Data Markets: A Political Economy of Communication Approach.” Computational Culture 7 (2019). A foundational study of dating apps as data‑extraction industries, detailing how platforms monetise user behaviour, aggregate intimate data, and operate within global corporate structures.
• Bergström, Marie. The New Laws of Love: Online Dating and the Privatisation of Intimacy. Polity Press, 2020. A sociological examination of how dating apps privatise courtship, individualise romantic life, and reshape the conditions under which relationships form.
• Illouz, Eva. Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Polity Press, 2007. A seminal work on how capitalist rationality reshapes emotional life, laying the groundwork for understanding dating apps as instruments of market discipline.
• Illouz, Eva. Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation. Polity Press, 2012. Explores how market logic and consumer culture restructure romantic expectations, producing new forms of emotional suffering.
• Rosenfeld, Michael; Thomas, Reuben; Hausen, Sonia. “Disintermediating Your Friends: How Online Dating in the United States Displaced Other Ways of Meeting.” PNAS (2019). Empirical demonstration of dating apps’ dominance in partner‑finding and the decline of traditional social pathways to intimacy.

 Social Reproduction, Neoliberalism, and the Material Roots of Isolation

• Fraser, Nancy. Cannibal Capitalism. Verso, 2022. A powerful analysis of how capitalism devours the social foundations of life — including care, community, and intimacy.
• Bhattacharya, Tithi (ed.). Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression. Pluto Press, 2017. Essential for understanding how the crisis of social reproduction shapes intimate life, gendered experience, and the erosion of stable social institutions.
• Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed Heart. University of California Press, 1983. A classic study of emotional labour that prefigures the commodification of affect in digital dating markets.
• Standing, Guy. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. Bloomsbury, 2011. Provides the socioeconomic backdrop for understanding why younger generations face unprecedented barriers to stable relationships and household formation.

Surveillance, Counter‑Radicalisation, and the Security State

• Heath‑Kelly, Charlotte. The Politics of Prevent: Counter‑Terrorism and the Security State. Routledge, 2023. A definitive critique of the UK’s Prevent programme and its expansion into mass surveillance of youth, online behaviour, and political dissent.
• Awan, Imran; Spiller, Keith; Whiting, Andrew. Terrorism in the Digital Age: The Emergence of Cyber Extremism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Useful for understanding how security institutions frame online communities—including incels and Femcels—as potential vectors of extremism.
• Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs, 2019. A comprehensive analysis of how digital platforms extract behavioural data and reshape social life, directly relevant to dating‑app architectures.
• WSWS Coverage of Prevent and Counter‑Radicalisation: Extensive reporting on the political function of Prevent, the criminalisation of dissent, and the use of “radicalisation” frameworks to police social distress. (Search WSWS archives for: Prevent, counter‑terrorism, surveillance, youth, online extremism.)

Incel and Femcel Discourse in Social Context

• Ging, Debbie. “Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorising the Masculinities of the Manosphere.” Men and Masculinities (2019). A key text on incel ideology, useful for contrasting with Femcel discourse and understanding shared structural roots.
• Maxwell, Clare; Aggleton, Peter. “Incel: A New Social Category?” Journal of Gender Studies (2022). Situates incel identity within broader social transformations, including precarity and atomisation.
• WSWS Analyses of Incel Violence and Social Breakdown: Coverage emphasising the material roots of alienation, the collapse of social conditions for youth, and the ideological misuse of “radicalisation” narratives.

 Marxist and Critical Theory Foundations

• Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Foundational for understanding alienation, commodification, and the reduction of human relations to market transactions.
• Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich. The German Ideology. Essential for grasping how material conditions shape consciousness — including contemporary forms of romantic and sexual alienation.
• Horkheimer, Max; Adorno, Theodor. Dialectic of Enlightenment. A classic critique of the culture industry, relevant to understanding dating apps as instruments of commodified desire.
• Marcuse, Herbert. One‑Dimensional Man. Illuminates how capitalist rationality flattens human experience, including intimate life.

Sociological and Political‑Economic Context (Recommended for Further Reading)

• Illouz, Eva. Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. A key text on how capitalist rationality reshapes intimate life.
• Illouz, Eva. Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation. Explores how market logic and consumer culture restructure romantic expectations and experiences.
• Rosenfeld, Michael; Thomas, Reuben; Hausen, Sonia. “Disintermediating Your Friends: How Online Dating in the United States Displaced Other Ways of Meeting.” PNAS (2019). Empirical demonstration of dating apps’ dominance in partner‑finding.
• Bergström, Marie. The New Laws of Love: Online Dating and the Privatisation of Intimacy. A sociological study of how dating apps privatise and individualise courtship.

WSWS Coverage of Social Breakdown, Surveillance, and Prevent

• WSWS reporting on the UK’s Prevent programme and its expansion into mass surveillance of youth and online behaviour.
• WSWS analyses of social atomisation, declining living standards, and the destruction of communal institutions under capitalism.

 

 

The Arday Affair: How Cambridge’s Branding Machine, Marketised Higher Education, and the Pseudo Left Produced a Crisis Eight Centuries in the Making

The resignation of Professor Jason Arday from the University of Cambridge has sparked widespread comment in British media and politics. However, the issue isn't just about personal misconduct or admin flaws. It reflects a deeper, systemic crisis in British higher education—shaped by Cambridge and Oxbridge's long-standing class role, decades of market influences, and protected by the pseudo-left’s focus on identity politics. This analysis explores the historical, political, and economic factors that made the Arday case both unavoidable and inevitable.

Cambridge: Eight Centuries of Class Rule

To understand Cambridge’s behaviour, it’s important to look at its origins. Founded in 1209, Cambridge has long served the ruling class, with its architecture, rituals, and governance acting as tools to perpetuate elite dominance. Historically, Oxford and Cambridge have functioned as training grounds for clergy, civil servants, judges, and political leaders. They also serve as gatekeepers of cultural capital, shaping standards of 'merit,' and as networks that strengthen aristocratic and bourgeois influence. The colleges were endowed by monarchs, bishops, and wealthy patrons, with governance structures—led by fellows, donors, and senior administrators—designed to maintain privilege rather than democratise knowledge.

The 2019 Sutton Trust report highlighted this continuity: 71% of senior judges, 56% of Permanent Secretaries, 38% of Lords, and 24% of MPs had been educated at Oxford or Cambridge. The elite are twenty-four times more likely to have attended Oxbridge compared to the general population. This pattern is deliberate, as Oxbridge’s prestige functions as a political asset, legitimising the authority of the ruling class by portraying privilege as merit. It is this prestige—rather than academic quality—that Cambridge aimed to protect in the Arday case.

Marketisation: How Policy Turned Universities into Corporations

The Arday scandal is closely linked to the changes in UK higher education over the last 30 years. Starting with the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act and advancing with the Browne Review in 2010, successive governments reduced public funding and promoted market competition. Between 2011–12 and 2017–18, government funding for universities decreased by 74 per cent in real terms. Currently, 80 per cent of the sector's income comes from private sources, mainly student fees and commercial activities.

Universities now operate like corporations: they issue bonds worth hundreds of millions of pounds, hold credit ratings from Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, and have vice-chancellors acting as CEOs earning over £400,000. Marketing departments have grown to rival academic faculties in size and influence. Students are viewed as customers rather than learners. Academic staff often work on insecure, casualised contracts. This market-driven approach has transformed university life: research is prioritised for grant attraction, teaching for attracting fee-paying students, and public relations for drawing donors and international applicants.

In this context, “diversity” branding functions more as a market strategy than a moral stance. Universities vie for lucrative international students, mainly from China, India, and the Gulf, who pay between £25,000 and £40,000 annually. A professor with a biography that attracts positive media coverage becomes a valuable asset. Arday's rapid ascent—from a PE lecturer to a Cambridge professor in just seven years—was not an isolated case. Instead, it exemplifies a system where personal stories are commercialised to serve institutional interests.

Arday’s background—overcoming adversity, late literacy, racial uplift—aligned well with Cambridge’s marketing goals. His appointment received extensive positive press, boosted social-media engagement, and increased international recognition. Multiple sources report that concerns about his doctoral thesis were dismissed as issues 'predating his arrival.' Senior staff prioritised positive media images over detailed academic review. The university’s communications team promoted Arday’s story worldwide. This pattern is not unusual; systemic incentives drive it. In a market-based system: prestige brings in revenue, visibility attracts students, and narratives enhance brand value. Conversely, academic integrity rarely generates revenue and can even threaten financial interests.

The Pseudo‑Left: Identity Politics as an Ideological Shield

The pseudo-left—comprising academics, commentators, and activists advocating for identity politics while neglecting class issues—plays a significant role in maintaining the ideological structure of market-driven higher education. In universities, identity politics acts as a form of institutional cover: it offers a low-cost alternative to increasing access for the working class, helps elite institutions project progressive credentials, boosts individuals whose profiles can be commodified, and shifts focus away from academic labour exploitation. The pseudo-left celebrated Arday’s appointment as a victory for representation, overlooking the fact that Cambridge’s student body remains predominantly privileged and its governance retains an aristocratic character.

Right‑Wing Reaction: Meritocracy as a Myth

The right-wing campaign against Arday, led by individuals who openly promote racist pseudoscience, isn’t driven by a genuine concern for academic standards. Instead, it’s fuelled by hostility toward any hiring practices that challenge traditional class privilege. However, the right and the pseudo-left are not truly opponents; they represent two facets of petty-bourgeois politics. The pseudo-left hides its class privilege through identity branding, while the right criticises that branding to defend their own class interests. Both factions support the marketisation of higher education, uphold the authority of elite institutions, and ignore capitalism’s role in fostering corruption, inequality, and intellectual decline. The working class faces a false dichotomy: embracing DEI branding or subscribing to right-wing meritocracy. Both are illusions.

The Real Issue: The Corruption of Higher Education Under Capitalism

The Arday scandal does not highlight failures in vetting but instead reveals a deeper systemic issue where education has become a commodity, universities are part of global financial markets, academic labour is increasingly casualised and degraded, bureaucracy employs identity politics to conceal class privilege, and both the right and pseudo-left manipulate DEI controversies — the right to reinforce privilege and the pseudo-left to defend branding. Both sides uphold the university as a means of maintaining class dominance.

Workers and students must oppose both the pseudo-left, which defends university branding, and the right-wing, which criticises DEI. The fight for academic integrity is fundamentally connected to the broader struggle for socialism. A truly democratic and academically rigorous university system depends on: public funding as the basis for higher education, democratic control by staff and students, the elimination of managerial bureaucracies, an end to market competition and private investment, and the socialist transformation of society where education is viewed as a social right. Only through such a transformation can universities stop serving as instruments of class privilege and become what they are meant to be: institutions committed to the cultural and scientific progress of humanity.

 

Letter To Ukraine President Protesting against the 15-year sentence of Bogdan Syrotiuk and demand for his immediate release

 President Volodymyr Zelensky, Office of the President of Ukraine, 11 Bankova St., Kyiv, 01220, Ukraine

Cc: Ministry of Justice of Ukraine; Pervomaisk City and District Court, Mykolaiv; Ukrainian Embassy, United Kingdom

Subject: Protest against the 15-year sentence of Bogdan Syrotiuk and demand for his immediate release

Dear President Zelensky,

I am writing to protest, in the strongest possible terms, the August 10, 2026 verdict of the Pervomaisk City and District Court sentencing Bogdan Syrotiuk to fifteen years’ imprisonment on charges of “high treason” under martial law.

The prosecution’s case rested entirely on Mr Syrotiuk’s political writings — articles published on the World Socialist Web Site and his correspondence with its editors — as well as his role as a leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists, a small Trotskyist youth organisation. A 65-page linguistic analysis prepared by Yuri Irkhin, one of Ukraine’s leading criminologists, examined these materials and found no language supporting Russian aggression against Ukraine. The court has not addressed or refuted this finding. Indeed, the articles cited in the verdict explicitly oppose both the Russian invasion and the policies of the Putin government.

Whatever one’s view of Mr Syrotiuk’s political positions, the prosecution and conviction of an individual for writing and publishing political commentary is incompatible with fundamental standards of freedom of expression. Ukraine is bound to uphold these standards under its own Constitution and under the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights has already accepted Mr Syrotiuk’s case for review, underscoring the seriousness of the violations involved.

I am further alarmed by credible reports that Mr Syrotiuk has been denied adequate medical care during his detention, despite repeated assurances from the prison administration. A fifteen-year sentence under the documented conditions of Ukraine’s penitentiary system poses a grave and immediate threat to his health and life.

I therefore call on the Ukrainian authorities to:

1. Overturn the verdict against Bogdan Syrotiuk and order his immediate release;
2. Ensure he receives all necessary medical treatment without further delay;
3. End the prosecution of individuals for the peaceful expression of political views, in accordance with Ukraine’s international human rights obligations.

The Limits of Liberal Fiction in the Age of Mass Deportation: Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive and the Crisis of Artistic Consciousness

The American literary scene widely praises Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive (2019) as a compassionate, innovative book that tackles the migrant crisis. It demonstrates that contemporary fiction can still meaningfully engage with social issues. Nonetheless, both its reception and content reveal a key problem: the significant political and artistic restrictions within a literary culture dominated by the professional-managerial class. This cultural sphere fails to see the working class as an active force in history, which hinders a true understanding of the crisis’s underlying dynamics.

The migrant crisis is a concrete issue, not just a metaphor or moral tale, nor a backdrop for middle-class introspective concerns. It results from decades of imperialist actions, economic destruction, and bipartisan violence. Genuine art should face these truths directly, but Luiselli’s novel, despite its intelligence and sincerity, does not fully achieve this.

Aestheticisation as Social Function, Not Accident

Luiselli is keenly aware of the risk of turning suffering into mere aesthetic display. Her narrator often questions whether she has the right to “document” tragedies. However, this self-awareness is woven into the aesthetic framework—acting as a ritual that reassures readers that the issue is recognised, thus excusing it. The novel’s use of multiple voices, embedded documents, a Sebald-inspired style, and lyrical abstractions is not just a stylistic device; it transforms horror into a literary experience for readers who are shielded from the violence. The educated, liberal audience is prompted to feel intensely and to experience “productive discomfort,” while still avoiding confrontation with the social forces behind the crisis or their own links to those forces. This is not a flaw in technique but a reflection of the social role that liberal fiction currently occupies.

A key feature of Lost Children Archive is its minimal depiction of ordinary Americans as political figures. As the family journeys from New York to Arizona, passing through many working-class areas, the people they encounter are shown as silent, indifferent, or prejudiced. The borderlands are depicted as hostile territory. This choice is deliberate and reflects a class perspective: Luiselli’s protagonists are essentially documentarians with grants, passports, and credentials. They see the world divided into two groups: educated, compassionate professionals like themselves and a vague mass of backward or indifferent Americans. The working class—whether native-born or immigrant—lacks the power to challenge or dismantle the detention system, and notions of collective action are absent from the novel. This is a political restriction, not merely a stylistic choice. It mirrors the perspective of the social group that currently leads literary production: the upper-middle-class intelligentsia. Their political views are heavily influenced by identity politics, emphasising moral witness and a profound scepticism toward the working class.

Luiselli draws a parallel between nineteenth-century Indigenous removal and twenty-first-century child detention. Although this comparison is historically significant, the novel predominantly expresses mourning rather than providing analysis. The ongoing violence is depicted as a lament for an unchanging American identity, rather than as an examination of the specific class forces driving current policies. The danger lies in presenting American violence as transhistorical, which makes the migrant crisis appear inevitable instead of a consequence of decisions made by particular political actors pursuing specific economic goals. While the bipartisan support for deportation—growing under Obama and escalating under Trump—is acknowledged, it is not critically analysed. This approach creates a historical narrative that lacks agency.

The shortcomings of Lost Children Archive are not unique to Luiselli but highlight a broader trend in American literature. The overseeing professional-managerial class—spanning publishing, academia, and the arts—lacks political clarity. It often opposes universalist politics, mistrusts the working class, and treats social crises more as moral spectacles than opportunities for action. This leads to a literature that emphasises witnessing over analysis, prioritising empathy over solidarity, and introspection over mobilisation. Migrant suffering becomes a matter of aesthetic experience rather than a call for collective intervention. The migrant crisis isn't mainly about representation; it originates from capitalism, imperialism, and border militarisation. No stylistic innovation can substitute for a political perspective that addresses these root causes.

The Class Character of Contemporary American Fiction

Contemporary American fiction often presents itself as morally serious, politically active, and innovative in form. It claims to tackle urgent social issues such as inequality, racism, climate change, migration, and political turmoil. Yet, this surface-level activism conceals a profound stagnation artistically and politically. Currently, the dominant trends in American literary fiction tend to reflect the narrow viewpoints of the professional-managerial class involved in producing, distributing, and consuming these works, rather than portraying the full complexity of social realities.

The literature discussed is characterised by a formal dynamism paired with political caution, blending emotional expressiveness with social distance. It is rich in moral sentiment but often fails to imagine collective efforts or historical transformation. Its central figures are introspective professionals whose crises are rooted in personal trauma, and their political concerns mainly involve ethical dilemmas. The primary focus remains on the self. This pattern is deliberate and mirrors the class dynamics inherent in contemporary American fiction.

The Professional‑Managerial Class as Cultural Gatekeeper

The American literary world—comprising publishing companies, MFA programs, literary magazines, award panels, and cultural bodies—is mostly governed by the professional-managerial class (PMC). This group, which includes academics, editors, nonprofit employees, cultural administrators, and credentialed artists, occupies a conflicted position within capitalism. While they benefit from material advantages over the working class, their political security is precarious, as their dependence on institutions has weakened due to decades of neoliberal reforms.

The PMC’s worldview shapes its literature, viewing politics through personal anxiety instead of collective struggle. Social crises are portrayed as moral spectacles rather than structural conflicts, while the working class is seen either as a threat or an abstraction. Moreover, historical forces are often seen as tragic inevitabilities rather than results of class dominance. This worldview is not merely ideological but institutional, as the PMC controls what is recognised as “serious fiction,” which themes are “urgent,” what forms are “innovative,” and which writers are seen as voices of conscience. As a result, the literature produced reflects the PMC’s anxieties more than the genuine experiences of most people in the United States.

Contemporary American fiction often features the literature of witness: novels depicting social disasters through the perspective of educated observers who feel deeply but take little action. These works are filled with empathy, introspection, and moral discomfort, treating suffering as something to be documented, archived, or artistically processed. They reveal political views by emphasising that the individual is the main focus of political experience, the reader’s emotional reaction replaces political analysis, the author’s self-awareness stands in for political commitment, and collective agency is either absent or hard to imagine. This literature is not neutral; it reflects a cultural expression of a class that has lost confidence in its power to influence history and cannot see the working class as a societal force capable of transformation.

The PMC’s political stance is shaped by identity politics, which explains social conflict through personal identities instead of class issues. This view has significantly influenced modern fiction, resulting in literature where social crises are seen as personal problems, political systems are depicted through interpersonal relationships, historical events are interpreted via personal traumas, and solidarity appears as empathy rather than collective action. Identity politics leads writers to see social reality as a mosaic of individual experiences rather than a unified structure formed by class relations. It divides the world into separate moral issues, each needing recognition rather than change. This fragmentation is not only thematic but also formal, as the rise of polyphonic narratives, fragmented structures, and hybrid forms often reflects difficulty in imagining society as a coherent whole.

Migrant Narratives and the Pseudo‑Left’s Humanitarian Theatre

Valeria Luiselli’s work exemplifies a wider cultural trend in which migrant stories are cherished as moral symbols but often lack their historical and political depth. This pattern is intentional, aligning with the ideological aims of today’s pseudo-left. This combination of academia, NGOs, and media replaces class-based politics with humanitarian feelings, viewing imperialism as an unfortunate accident instead of a fundamental aspect of capitalism.

Luiselli’s novels and essays are powerful, yet they often become part of this humanitarian drama. They are celebrated for their empathy, lyrical portrayal of suffering, and critique of bureaucratic inhumanity. However, the qualities that appeal to liberal audiences also make them politically safe. The migrant is depicted as a victim of administrative mistakes, not as a worker driven out by imperialist violence. The border is seen as a moral dilemma rather than a tool for global class control. The story encourages compassion rather than confrontation.

This is exactly how the pseudo-left exploits migrant stories: as emotional currency. Migrants serve as symbols enabling institutions to showcase virtue, academics to amass cultural capital, and media outlets to project moral seriousness. The root causes of displacement — such as war, extraction, and political instability — are replaced by a sentimental emphasis on personal suffering. This creates a politics of pity that flatters the liberal conscience while maintaining the imperialist system.

Luiselli’s work acts as a mirror in this context, reflecting the pseudo-left’s preference for narratives that are politically provocative yet not threatening, critical but not revolutionary, emotionally impactful yet avoiding structural critique. Her writing reveals genuine violence, but how the pseudo-left receives it turns that violence into a spectacle for consumption.

A truly impactful novel about the migrant crisis should go beyond Lost Children Archive by depicting migrants as historical agents rather than mere symbols, and presenting ordinary Americans as possible allies rather than barriers. It ought to situate the crisis within the broader context of global capitalism, recognising the working class as the only force capable of ending mass detention and deportation. Such a novel would frame the crisis as a political issue to confront rather than solely a moral concern to observe. It demands an artistic perspective aligned with the international working class, rather than the professional-managerial class.

Sources and Bibliography

I. Political Economy of Culture and Literature

• Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory. Routledge, 1997.
• Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press, 2002.
• Benjamin, Walter. The Author as Producer. In Selected Writings, Volume 2. Harvard University Press, 1999.
• Bourdieu, Pierre. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Stanford University Press, 1996.
• Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard University Press, 1984.
• Eagleton, Terry. The Function of Criticism. Verso, 2005.
• Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Blackwell, 2008.
• Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society. Columbia University Press, 1983.
• Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford University Press, 1977.

II. Class Analysis and the Professional‑Managerial Class

• Ehrenreich, Barbara, and John Ehrenreich. “The Professional‑Managerial Class.” Radical America, vol. 11, no. 3, 1977.
• Fraser, Nancy. The Old Is Dying, and the New Cannot Be Born. Verso, 2019.
• Sennett, Richard, and Jonathan Cobb. The Hidden Injuries of Class. Vintage, 1993.
• Wright, Erik Olin. Class Counts. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
• Wright, Erik Olin. Understanding Class. Verso, 2015.
• Reed, Adolph. “The Limits of Anti‑Racism.” Left Business Observer, 2009.
• Reed, Adolph. Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene. New Press, 2000.

III. Contemporary American Fiction, MFA Culture, and Literary Institutions

• McGurl, Mark. The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing. Harvard University Press, 2009.
• McGurl, Mark. “Everything and Less: Fiction in the Age of Amazon.” Modern Language Quarterly, 2018.
• Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. University of Chicago Press, 1993.
• Graeber, David. Bullshit Jobs. Simon & Schuster, 2018.
• Harbach, Chad. MFA vs NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction. FSG Originals, 2014.
• Sinykin, Dan. Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature. Columbia University Press, 2023.
• Sinykin, Dan. “The Conglomerate Era.” Post45, 2020.
• Lutz, Tom. Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.
• Guillory, John. “How the Humanities Survived.” Critical Inquiry, 2021.

IV. Migration, Imperialism, and U.S. Border Policy

• Luiselli, Valeria. Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions. Coffee House Press, 2017.
• Luiselli, Valeria. Lost Children Archive. Knopf, 2019.
• Gilman, Nils. Mandarins of the Future: Modernisation Theory in Cold War America. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
• Grandin, Greg. The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. Metropolitan Books, 2019.
• Hagan, Jacqueline, et al. Skills of the “Unskilled”: Work and Mobility among Mexican Migrants. University of California Press, 2015.
• Massey, Douglas S., et al. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration. Russell Sage Foundation, 2002.
• Menjívar, Cecilia, and Leisy Abrego. “Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants.” American Journal of Sociology, 2012.
• U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). Immigration Detention: Progress and Challenges in DHS’s Efforts to Improve Conditions. GAO‑20‑385, 2020.
• Human Rights Watch. US: Family Separation Harming Children, Families. HRW Report, 2018.

V. WSWS Arts Criticism and Political Analysis

(These are not copyrighted articles reproduced in full; they are citations to publicly available WSWS pieces.)

• Walsh, David. “The Crisis of American Culture and the Tasks of the Working Class.” World Socialist Web Site, 2018.
• Walsh, David. “Art and Social Life: A Marxist Perspective.” WSWS, 2016.
• English, Sandy. “The American Dirt Controversy and the Politics of Representation.” WSWS, 2020.
• Brenner, Patrick. “The Working Class and the Struggle Against Xenophobia.” WSWS, 2019.
• Greider, Nick. “The Social Crisis in America and the Failure of Contemporary Fiction.” WSWS, 2021.
• North, David. The Crisis of American Democracy. Mehring Books, 2020.
• Kishore, Joseph. “The Political Economy of the Trump Administration’s Immigration Policies.” WSWS, 2019.

VI. Additional Theoretical and Historical Context

• Anderson, Perry. Considerations on Western Marxism. Verso, 1976.
• Anderson, Perry. The Origins of Postmodernity. Verso, 1998.
• Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Blackwell, 1989.
• Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Verso, 1991.
• Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious. Cornell University Press, 1981.
• Lukács, Georg. History and Class Consciousness. MIT Press, 1971.
• Lukács, Georg. The Meaning of Contemporary Realism. Merlin Press, 1963.

 

A Social History of Sickness Before Modern Medicine: On Jennifer Evans and Sara Read’s Maladies and Medicine

Jennifer Evans and Sara Read’s Maladies and Medicine: Exploring Health and Healing, 1540–1740 (Pen & Sword, 2017) appears, at first glance, as a concise social history of illness in early modern England. However, when viewed within a wider context of social reproduction and class formation of that era, the book reveals more: it offers insights into how bodies were regulated, how suffering was accepted as natural, and how the rise of capitalism transformed the conditions in which ordinary people lived, worked, and died.

Evans and Read do not aim to write a comprehensive history of class or the shift to capitalism. Instead, they use an empirical, descriptive approach organised around specific ailments rather than overarching arguments. The evidence they compile—such as casebooks, diaries, court records, household remedies, and cheap almanacks—provides valuable insights into how sickness operated within a society experiencing significant change. Their book inadvertently but effectively captures the medical aspect of the gradual decline of feudalism and the emergence of capitalist social relations.

The Humoral Body as a Social Body

The authors focus on the humoral body, viewed as a delicate balance of hot, cold, wet, and dry forces, constantly threatened by diet, weather, labour, and morality. This concept extends beyond medicine into a social worldview, making sense in a setting where most people lived on the brink of subsistence, faced endemic malnutrition, endured physically demanding work, and where environmental factors were linked to social class. Evans and Read interpret humoralism as a belief system, while a materialist perspective considers it a form of ideology.

Humoralism reframed structural suffering as personal imbalance, attributing disease to personal regimen, moral failure, or the mysterious flow of fluids rather than factors like enclosure, dispossession, or wage labour. This served an ideological purpose by naturalising the suffering created by the rise of capitalism.

The Medical Hierarchy and the Restructuring of Social Reproduction

The book’s strength lies in its detailed portrayal of the layered medical economy. It highlights university-trained physicians at the top, whose Latin education and guild privileges attracted wealthy clients. Below them, apothecaries and surgeons handled manual, often bloody treatments. Further down was a large informal sector of unlicensed healers—many women—whose inherited household knowledge served most of the population. Evans and Read describe this hierarchy, but within early modern social reproduction, it indicates a deeper underlying process.

Women were excluded from formal medical authority not just due to prejudice but as part of a broader process of knowledge enclosure. As capitalist relations grew, household and community-based care—largely performed by women—became subordinate to professional monopolies. This shift in the medical field reflected similar changes in reproductive labour, such as midwifery, childcare, food preparation, and sickness management, which became battlegrounds between traditional communal practices and emerging market influences. The 'informal economy” of healing was not merely an outdated relic; it was the leftover of a pre-capitalist social reproduction system actively being dismantled by the new economic order.

Disease, Poverty, and the Making of a Proletariat

Evans and Read briefly mention that factors like poverty, overwork, and malnutrition influenced who became ill and who received treatment. However, they do not link these issues to the class relations of early modern England, which a materialist analysis would require. Between 1540 and 1740, England experienced significant social and economic changes, including the enclosure of common land, the dispossession of peasants, the rise of wage labour, increasing urban poverty, and the emergence of a landless proletariat.

These processes not only created new economic relationships but also established new physical conditions. “Bad diet” and “corrupt air” were not simply random misfortunes; they reflected the lived reality of class identity. The illnesses listed by Evans and Read—such as plague, smallpox, gout, toothache, and madness—were unevenly distributed based on property ownership and labour roles. The ailing body was inherently a body defined by class. Later, Engels would describe this as "social murder”: the deliberate, systemic creation of disease and early death through societal organisation. Evans and Read’s era can be seen as the groundwork for this concept—the period during which the foundations for social murder were established.

What the Book Offers—and What It Cannot Provide

As a compendium of lived experience, Maladies and Medicine is invaluable. Its prose is clear, its sources rich, and its case studies vivid. It allows the reader to encounter sickness in something close to its own terms.

But as an explanation of why early modern medicine took the form it did, the book is incomplete. It catalogues belief and practice but does not analyse the social relations that produced them. It describes the medical hierarchy but does not explain its connection to the restructuring of social reproduction. It notes poverty but does not treat it as a structural determinant of disease.

Where the book falls short is in its reluctance to press this material toward a fuller social explanation. Poverty, overwork, malnutrition, and environmental degradation appear in the narrative, but only as background conditions rather than as structuring forces. The authors note that “bad diet” and “corrupt air” shaped who fell ill and who could be treated. Still, they do not connect these phenomena to the concrete class relations of early modern England—the dispossession of the peasantry, the growth of wage labour, and the emergence. The text discusses how a landless proletariat lives on the brink of subsistence. It emphasises that the authors' limitations are more about the academic division of labour than about their failure. The history of medicine is often viewed separately from class struggle, ignoring the interconnectedness of bodies and social structures. Maladies and Medicine offers a solid empirical base for a Marxist perspective on early modern social reproduction, illustrating how the shift to capitalism impacted not just work and courts but also kitchens, sickrooms, and individual bodies. It successfully recovers and documents these aspects but leaves broader explanatory questions about societal forces open for others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Martyrdom Without Politics: How Remember Me to My Comrades Conceals the Betrayal of the Spanish Revolution

Michael Crowley’s "Remember Me to My Comrades: Letters and Diaries of the International Brigade" (Barnthorn, £16.99) honours the approximately 2,500 British volunteers who fought in Spain from 1936 to 1938. It offers valuable insights as a recovery project, gathering letters, diaries, and memoirs from workers whose voices are often overlooked in official histories. However, as an analysis of the political forces influencing their fate—and ultimately betraying the Spanish Revolution—it is somewhat evasive, bordering on distortion.

Crowley observes that both the volunteers and the Comintern organisation that recruited them consistently framed Spain as a conflict against fascism rather than a civil war. It is undisputed that young workers like Kenneth Bradbury—from Oldham, who was already leading a Young Communist League branch at seventeen and died at Teruel in January 1938—saw their fight as part of a broader struggle against fascism internationally. However, Crowley declines to examine how the Stalinist leadership actually manipulated this understanding and systematically distorted it.

The book notes, almost as an aside, that between half and two-thirds of the battalion were members of the Communist Party or the YCL. Crowley views this as a mere sociological fact rather than a basis for in-depth political analysis. In fact, this detail is crucial to understanding Spain's tragedy. These workers were mobilised not to advance the revolution, but to defend the Popular Front—an anti-revolutionary strategy enforced by Moscow that placed the working class under the control of the liberal bourgeoisie, even as workers had shown their potential to seize power.

In July 1936, workers in Barcelona and much of Catalonia successfully stopped the military uprising, took control of factories, collectivised land, and began building structures for workers’ self-management. Spain created exactly the situation Stalin feared most: an independent socialist revolution happening outside Soviet control. Stalin’s main aim in Spain was not to defeat Franco but to prevent a second October — a workers’ government revealing the conservative, nationalist nature of his own regime. His foreign policy relied on alliances with ‘democratic” bourgeois powers; a socialist revolution in Spain would have destroyed that approach.

Trotsky’s analysis here is crucial. Writing in the moment, he emphasised that Spain was more than just a civil war or a fight against fascism; it was a proletarian revolution. The workers demonstrated extraordinary heroism, yet heroism alone couldn't replace the need for revolutionary leadership. Trotsky contended that the Popular Front was the main barrier to victory because it compelled the working class to defend a bourgeois system incapable of overcoming fascism. He noted that Franco didn't defeat the Spanish proletariat, but by its own leadership.

The Popular Front was more than a tactical alliance; it was a strategic constraint aimed at dismantling the revolutionary momentum generated by the working class. Following directives from Moscow, the Communist Party targeted not only Franco but also the POUM and the anarchist militias, whose soldiers' bravery in July had been crucial. The NKVD set up secret prisons, infiltrated the Republican police, and was involved in the disappearance of Andrés Nin. The May Days of 1937, when Communist-controlled forces attacked the Barcelona workers, marked a turning point. Ultimately, the revolution was halted by the Popular Front government, operating under Stalinist influence, rather than Franco. Crowley does not develop this analysis in detail.

The strongest material in the book — the letters and diaries — exposes the reality Crowley’s narrative avoids. Peter Kerrigan’s account of the retreat toward Gandesa, men going days without water, their shoes cut to pieces on the rocks, “many… literally barefoot as well as being in rags,” and Walter Gregory’s description of finding George Stockdale dying on the Ebro, a machine‑gun bullet having “cut a dreadful groove in his skull leaving his brain exposed,” speak with a clarity no editorial framing can soften. These passages reveal the human cost of the Comintern’s strategy. They indict the leadership more effectively than Crowley ever attempts.

Crowley dedicates a chapter to Harry Pollitt, celebrating his recruitment efforts and visits that boosted morale, while overlooking a crucial fact: this leadership, following Moscow's directives, played a key role in suppressing the revolutionary alternative to Popular Frontism in Spain, most notably during the May Days of 1937. The chapter also covers George Orwell, whom the original review dismisses as undeserving of attention. This is actually the opposite of the truth. Despite Orwell’s later political changes, Homage to Catalonia is one of the few well-known accounts describing what truly happened to the POUM militias and Barcelona’s workers under the Stalinist-controlled security forces — a stark reality Crowley, like many others commemorating the event, deliberately avoids.

Crowley cannot explain why the Communist Party ostracised Orwell because doing so would mean admitting the Party’s role in suppressing the revolution. The CPGB’s hatred for Orwell was rooted in politics, not literature or personal reasons. Orwell had seen the crime the Party needed to hide: the outlawing of POUM, arrests and disappearances of its members, and the attack on the Barcelona working class by forces claiming to oppose Franco. Homage to Catalonia challenged the Popular Front’s narrative—that Spain’s conflict was merely between democracy and fascism—and exposed the Communist Party as the tool Moscow used to crush revolutionary hopes that arose in July 1936. As a result, Orwell was slandered, censored, and labelled as “objectively fascist.” Crowley’s reluctance to address this hostility reflects the same sanitising tendency that pervades the entire book.

Another crucial omission is decisive: the International Brigades were not purely expressions of independent working-class internationalism. Instead, they served as tools of the Popular Front strategy, aimed at channelling genuine anti-fascist sentiment into defending the bourgeois republic and diverting from the revolutionary potential that emerged in July 1936. While the volunteers' anti-fascism was sincere, the Brigades' primary purpose was to prevent revolution. Trotsky understood this well: their heroism was misdirected by leaders who prioritised maintaining bourgeois order over defeating Franco. Crowley fails to acknowledge this contradiction because doing so would force him to confront the political role of Stalinism, which he chooses to avoid.

Crowley notes that men who faced death at the front were unlikely to be intimidated by a foreman upon returning. This highlights the revolutionary potential among these workers — a potential that was wasted in Spain and again during the Second World War, as the fight against fascism and the necessary programme to defeat it was fought globally. The courage shown here is genuine and worth remembering. However, a history that separates this bravery from the bureaucratic betrayal that led to the fall of the Spanish Revolution ultimately results in a moving story of martyrdom rather than an analysis of why the Spanish working class was defeated.

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Sources

• George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia. London: Secker & Warburg, 1938. First‑hand account of the POUM militias, the May Days, and Stalinist repression in Barcelona.
• Leon Trotsky, The Spanish Revolution (1931–39). New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973. Collection of Trotsky’s writings on Spain, including analyses of the Popular Front, the POUM, and Stalin’s foreign policy.
• Andrés Nin, Selected Writings. Various editions. Documents the POUM’s political positions before his disappearance at the hands of the NKVD.
• International Brigades Letters and Diaries (various collections). Including materials reproduced in Crowley’s Remember Me to My Comrades.
• Peter Kerrigan, The International Brigade: Spain 1936–1939. Memoir of a CPGB cadre and Brigade commissar.
• Walter Gregory, The Shallow Grave: A Memoir of the Spanish Civil War. London: Faber & Faber, 1986. Eyewitness testimony from a British volunteer.

Soviet and Comintern Documents

• Comintern Archives, RGASPI (Russian State Archive of Social and Political History). Includes directives to the Spanish Communist Party, reports on the POUM, and NKVD operations.
• NKVD Reports on Spain (1936–1938), published in various scholarly editions. Documentation of arrests, interrogations, and the disappearance of Andrés Nin.

Trotskyist Analyses

• Pierre Broué, The Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006. The most comprehensive Trotskyist history of the revolution and its suppression.
• Felix Morrow, Revolution and Counter‑Revolution in Spain. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1974. A contemporary Trotskyist analysis written during the war.
• Burnett Bolloten, The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. A monumental study documenting Stalinist repression and the destruction of the revolution.

Marxist and Critical Histories

• Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge. London: HarperCollins, 2006. Standard academic account; useful for chronology, though politically limited.
• Helen Graham, The Spanish Republic at War, 1936–1939. Cambridge University Press, 2002. Important for institutional and social history of the Republic.
• Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006. Conventional narrative history; valuable for military detail.
• Franz Borkenau, The Spanish Cockpit. London: Faber & Faber, 1937. Early eyewitness account sympathetic to the revolution.

Anarchist and POUM Sources

• Abel Paz, Durruti in the Spanish Revolution. Oakland: AK Press, 2007. Biography of the anarchist leader; essential for understanding CNT‑FAI rank‑and‑file militancy.
• Julián Casanova, Anarchism, the Republic and Civil War in Spain. London: Routledge, 2010. Scholarly treatment of anarchist politics and social base.
• Wilebaldo Solano, The Spanish Revolution: The POUM and the Struggle for Power. POUM perspective on the revolution and its suppression.

Studies of Stalinism and the Popular Front

• E.H. Carr, The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1984. Detailed study of Soviet policy and Comintern strategy.
• Ronald Radosh, Mary Habeck & Grigory Sevostianov, Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. Yale University Press, 2001. Uses Soviet archival material to document NKVD operations and Stalinist intervention.
• Stanley Payne, The Collapse of the Spanish Republic. Yale University Press, 2006. Conservative but useful for institutional analysis of the Popular Front.

Biographies and Memoirs Relevant to Stalinist Policy

• Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast. Oxford University Press, 1963. Trotsky’s biography; includes analysis of Trotsky’s writings on Spain.
• Alexander Orlov, The Secret History of Stalin’s Crimes. Memoir of the NKVD officer in Spain; controversial but revealing.

For Contextualising Orwell and the CPGB

• John Newsinger, Orwell’s Politics. London: Macmillan, 1999. Explores Orwell’s anti‑Stalinism and the CPGB’s hostility toward him.
• Christopher Hill, The CPGB and the Popular Front. Essays on the British Communist Party’s alignment with Moscow’s line.

Archival Collections

• Marxists Internet Archive (MIA): Trotsky’s writings on Spain, POUM documents, CNT manifestos, and contemporary analyses.
• Tamiment Library (NYU) International Brigades papers, CPUSA materials, and Comintern correspondence.
• Modern Records Centre (Warwick University)

 

The Bezos–Saverin–Bhatia Bid for Liverpool: The Financial Oligarchy Tightens Its Grip on World Football

The upcoming acquisition of a significant stake in Liverpool FC by a consortium led by Amit Bhatia, backed by Jeff Bezos and Eduardo Saverin, signals a new phase in turning football into a domain for the global financial elite. Reports suggest the group is nearing a stake exceeding 30 per cent, valuing the club at approximately £4.4 billion ($5.9–6 billion). An announcement is likely soon.

This development is part of a larger trend where all aspects of social life—such as sport, culture, media, and technology—are increasingly controlled and reshaped by a small group of billionaires. Their wealth comes from exploiting workers worldwide. Football, originally a sport for the working class, is now being integrated into the same financial and technological systems that govern logistics, surveillance, AI, and global finance.

A New Phase in the Oligarchic Capture of Football

Liverpool’s potential new investors hail from the most privileged echelons of global capitalism. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, amassed his enormous wealth through the ruthless exploitation of hundreds of thousands of workers, who faced poverty wages, constant surveillance by algorithms, and dangerous productivity targets. His fortune grew significantly during the pandemic, as Amazon employees endured hazardous working conditions. Bezos is not simply a “sports investor”; he exemplifies American financial capitalism at its most predatory. Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of Facebook, renounced his US citizenship to dodge taxes and moved to Singapore. His wealth originates from a social media empire built on surveillance, data extraction, and the promotion of reactionary content through algorithms.

Amit Bhatia, son-in-law of steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, belongs to a global elite whose wealth relies on exploiting workers across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. His abrupt divestment from Queens Park Rangers on the day Liverpool’s bid emerged highlights the financial manoeuvring — regulatory arbitrage and share shuffling — typical of Today’s oligarchy. The inclusion of these figures in Liverpool’s ownership signifies a significant shift. While under Fenway Sports Group (FSG), Liverpool was primarily considered a financial asset. John Henry played a key role in proposing the 2021 European Super League, aiming to replace the competitive league system with a closed cartel that would secure ongoing revenue for the wealthiest clubs. This plan, backed by JPMorgan Chase, was ultimately stopped by widespread fan resistance.

Now the club is being passed from one set of billionaires to another — but this time to individuals whose wealth is measured not in billions but in hundreds of billions. 

Football as a Financial Instrument

Liverpool's valuation at £4.4 billion highlights the sport’s dramatic transformation. Originally founded in 1892 by working-class individuals, the club now has a value that could support the NHS for months. The financialization of football emphasises club worth based on anticipated future revenues, global branding, and digital engagement rather than sporting success. In Marxist terms, football has become part of fictitious capital — claims on future value instead of current output. Clubs are traded like tech stocks, with valuations serving as speculative tools. Their ownership resembles that of a multinational. The Bezos–Saverin–Bhatia consortium is not investing in football as a sport. Instead, they view it as: a content source for Amazon’s media empire, a data collection point for feeding Amazon’s AI systems, a global brand asset integrated into Amazon’s retail and advertising networks, and a financial tool for the portfolios of the world’s wealthiest individuals.

The Conflict‑of‑Interest Question: A Window into the System

A key aspect of the deal is the unresolved question of whether an investor holding a stake in the Premier League broadcaster Amazon Prime Video can also own part of a Premier League club. This is primarily a political issue, not a technical one. The Premier League’s Owners’ and Directors’ Test does not impose significant restrictions on such cross-ownership. In reality, the capitalist system enforces regulations only when they do not conflict with the interests of the ruling class. When billionaires are involved, these rules are often treated as mere "guidelines.”

If the deal goes through unchallenged, it establishes a precedent: broadcasters might own clubs, clubs could control broadcasters, and a few oligarchs could vertically integrate the complete ecosystem. These same individuals would own the product, distribution channels, and ways of consumption. This represents the Americanization of football — not culturally, but in its structure.

Liverpool’s Sporting Transition: Irrelevant to Capital

Liverpool secured the Premier League title in 2025 but is currently going through a transition phase. Manager Arne Slot has left, Mohamed Salah has departed, and Michael Edwards has exited FSG. Despite significant spending, the club finished fifth last season. From the consortium's perspective, these developments are mainly relevant for their impact on the asset’s valuation. At this level, a football club functions more as an investment vehicle than a sporting entity, serving purposes like capital appreciation, brand leverage, and generating broadcast and commercial income from a global fanbase.

Speculation that Bezos and Saverin might aim for full control is plausible. For wealthy individuals like them, holding a minority stake is not an end goal but a strategic foothold. 

The Broader Pattern: The Oligarchy Consolidates Its Power

The shift to Liverpool reflects a wider trend. By 2026, Bezos has invested billions in AI companies, grown Blue Origin’s aerospace activities, and co-led a $12 billion funding round for Prometheus, an industrial AI firm now valued at $41 billion. The same elite pushing humanity toward global conflict — as the WSWS detailed during the 2026 World Cup — is also consolidating control over all aspects of social life.

The 2026 World Cup showcased glaring signs of capitalist excess: generating $15 billion in revenue, with dynamic ticket prices soaring to over $10,000, luxury hospitality packages costing more than an average worker’s yearly income, and the trophy transported in a Louis Vuitton trunk. Football is increasingly being marketed as a luxury item for the wealthy and a global advertising tool for corporations. The Bezos group's interest in Liverpool aligns with these trends, representing the broader process of expropriating everything the working class has built by a parasitic financial elite.

The Marxist Perspective: Expropriate the Oligarchy

The banners at Anfield during the 2021 Super League revolt — “Created by the poor, stolen by the rich” — summed up the situation well. But the real solution isn’t better regulation, fan representation, or a “50+1” rule. These measures leave the core capitalist ownership model untouched. Football can’t be truly democratised under capitalism because the logic of capital is all-encompassing. Every reform risks new forms of exploitation. The only genuine solution is to expropriate the oligarchs, transform football clubs into democratic entities run by players, workers, and supporters, and replace capitalism with a socialist society where sport, like healthcare, education, and housing, is a public good instead of a means for billionaire profit.