Hotel Exile and the Crisis of Contemporary Historiography: Microhistory, Memory Politics, and the Retreat from Class Analysis

Jane Rogoyska’s Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War (Penguin, 2026) is celebrated as a vivid, compelling narrative history. It examines WWII through the lens of a single building: the Hôtel Lutetia, Paris’s only “grand hotel” on the Left Bank, which experienced three distinct phases from 1933 to 1945. Initially serving as a refuge for German and Central European exiles fleeing Nazism; later functioning as the Paris HQ of German military intelligence during the Occupation; and finally becoming a reception centre for survivors returning from concentration camps. Rogoyska organises her book into three sections, each corresponding to these phases, featuring numerous short, present-tense sketches of individuals who moved through the hotel’s doors.

The technique creates a book often filled with profound emotion. The concluding section, describing camp survivors returning in spring 1945—starving individuals being treated with DDT while anxious relatives searched the crowds for loved ones—has been noted as the most powerful part. It's clear why. The striking image of emaciated survivors entering the hotel, welcomed by volunteers including Boy Scouts like the fourteen-year-old future French prime minister Michel Rocard, captures the essence of the catastrophe that impacted an entire continent.

Nevertheless, the strengths of Hotel Exile underscore the limitations of a particular kind of history that currently dominates historiography. This approach relies on fragments, prioritises memory over causality, and reflects a retreat from class analysis in historiographical methods.

A History Built from Fragments

Rogoyska’s achievement is in her detailed research. She meticulously examined a wide range of memoirs, diaries, and institutional records to bring to light the lives of often overlooked individuals: the German and Austrian émigrés—many Jewish, socialist, or communist—who arrived in Paris after 1933 to oppose Hitler in exile; the intelligence officers who later occupied the same building; the nurses, translators, and army doctors at the repatriation centre; and the survivors themselves, often reduced to mere statistics in history but, here, briefly restored to personal biography.

This detailed, human-focused approach is highly valuable. It challenges the common tendency of official remembrance to oversimplify the 1930s and 1940s as a morality story of villains and victims. It rightly emphasises that those who experienced these events were real people with identities, opinions, love lives, and disagreements. Several reviewers have pointed out that Rogoyska’s initial chapters on émigré politics in the 1930s are surprisingly relevant today: a paragraph about intellectuals and activists fleeing west from a rising nationalist movement could easily reflect current news if some proper nouns were changed. However, this core premise also makes the book's limitations clear.

The Limits of Microhistory: A Building Is Not a Historical Force

Rogoyska emphasises in her prologue that Lutetia functions as “the stage on which dramas are played out,” rather than as an active participant. This candid statement highlights the challenge of treating a building as the primary unit of history rather than the social processes it embodies. The decision reflects a broader historiographical trend—closely linked with memory studies and microhistory—that favours collecting individual testimonies over analysing the social and political forces behind the catastrophe.

The prewar chapters rely on the comparatively thin thread that many of the people being tracked once attended the same meeting at the hotel. This connection can feel imposed on the material rather than growing organically from it. But the deeper problem is that the Lutetia’s prewar incarnation as a gathering place for the anti‑fascist emigration cannot be understood without reference to the wider political crisis of the European workers’ movement in the 1930s. This crisis—catastrophic in its consequences—finds little place in Rogoyska’s narrative.

The anti-fascist émigrés passing through Lutetia’s lobby were more than just “bewildered intellectuals.” They represented the remnants of a world-defining defeat: the disastrous policies of the Stalinist-controlled Communist International, which labelled the Social Democrats as “social fascists” and rejected united front efforts against the Nazis; the shift to opportunist alliances like the Popular Front, which placed the independent political actions of workers under the influence of fragile coalitions with bourgeois parties in France and Spain; the suppression of the Spanish Revolution; the breakup of the Trotskyist movement under repression; and the wave of exiles and defeats that ensued.

None of this is thoroughly explored in a book centred on biography and atmosphere. Rogoyska depicts individuals as they lived—confused, scared, resourceful, or doomed—yet the political forces that originally brought them into Lutetia’s lobby are mostly absent from the narrative. This isn't a personal shortcoming; it reflects a genre-based structural limitation.

The wartime section, which details the hotel’s requisition by German military intelligence, encounters a similar issue but in the opposite direction. It explains the machinery of occupation and collaboration primarily through the individuals involved, with little focus on the nature of the Vichy government or the participation of parts of the French bourgeoisie, judiciary, and police in actions like deporting Jews and crushing resistance—topics that have been extensively studied over the last forty years.

The vivid portrayal of the Abwehr officers, hotel clerks, translators, and French intermediaries highlights individual roles. However, the underlying forces—such as the class interests of the French bourgeoisie, Vichy's collaborationist ideology, the administrative complicity of police and prefectures, and France's integration into the Nazi war effort—remain hidden behind personal stories. A building cannot capture these forces, nor can a microhistory fully encompass them.

The final part of the book, focusing on repatriation, stands out because it deliberately avoids sentimentality. Critics have appreciated Rogoyska for rejecting the false solace of a “happy ending” story: most survivors entering Lutetia in 1945 do not find their relatives, and the book makes this clear. This sets Hotel Exile apart from the more superficial type of popular Holocaust literature, which often presents survival as a neat narrative conclusion.

Even in this context, the lack of a broader political framework is significant. Survivors who went through Lutetia found themselves in a France keen to reestablish national unity, suppress class struggles, forget collaboration, and portray the war as a shared experience of suffering rather than a matter of political accountability. The repatriation centre serves as a setting for postwar memory politics—an aspect Rogoyska mentions but does not examine in depth.

Hotel Exile and the Crisis of Contemporary Historiography

Jane Rogoyska’s Hotel Exile exemplifies a key trend in modern historiography: focusing on microhistory, memory culture, and personal experience rather than broad structural analysis. Its compelling narrative, vivid human details, and archival discoveries highlight the ongoing intellectual crisis impacting how history is written today.

The book details the lives of émigrés, intelligence officers, nurses, and camp survivors who stayed at Hôtel Lutetia from 1933 to 1945. Rogoyska personalises individuals often lost amid the broad statistics of catastrophe. However, choosing a building as the organising focus reveals its limitations. While a hotel can act as a backdrop, it cannot explain the broader forces that drew its guests there. The upheaval in the European workers’ movement, the sectarian and later opportunistic tendencies of the Stalinized Comintern, the class interests of the French bourgeoisie, and the machinery of collaboration under Vichy—the underlying structures—remain largely out of view.

This gap is intentional, reflecting a broader shift in historiography. Over the past thirty years, historians have increasingly used narrative methods that highlight memory, trauma, and personal stories. While these approaches have provided valuable insights, they often overlook discussions of capitalism, class conflict, and state power. As a result, history has become more empathetic but less centred on fundamental causes. Instead of seeing catastrophe as influenced by social forces, it is depicted as a sequence of human experiences.

Hotel Exile is an engaging and often poignant book, but it falls within a genre that views the past as a collection of fragments rather than interconnected stories. Its honest account of repatriation in 1945 is compelling because it avoids the comfort of a tidy narrative closure. However, the political backdrop—the postwar attempt to reestablish national unity and erase the memory of collaboration—is mostly implied rather than explicitly addressed.

The core issue in modern historiography is its tendency to avoid explanation. By emphasising experience over structural analysis, memory over political context, and fragments over comprehensive interpretation, it often creates histories that highlight surface details while obscuring deeper causes. Rogoyska’s book is not at fault; rather, it reflects this broader trend. The human stories she presents deserve a broader context—one that can reveal the social forces influencing the world her subjects lived in.

Yet this very focus places Hotel Exile in tension with one of the central debates in modern German historiography: the question of “ordinary Germans.” Since the 1980s, historians have grappled with whether the crimes of the Third Reich were driven primarily by ideological elites or by the active participation—and sometimes enthusiasm—of broad layers of German society. The scholarship of Browning, Goldhagen, Aly, and others has insisted that the Holocaust cannot be understood without examining the social, economic, and cultural forces that shaped everyday German behaviour.

Rogoyska’s book touches this debate only indirectly. Her émigrés, dissidents, and refugees are the victims of decisions made far beyond the hotel’s walls. The Abwehr officers who occupy the Lutetia are sketched as personalities rather than as representatives of a wider social consensus. The machinery of occupation—rooted in the collaboration of French authorities and the administrative routines of German power—is present, but only as background to individual stories. The result is a narrative that shows what Nazism did to people, but not how millions of ordinary Germans enabled, supported, or participated in those actions.

This is not a flaw unique to Rogoyska. It reflects a broader historiographical drift toward microhistory and memory culture, where empathy and testimony take precedence over structural analysis. Hotel Exile excels at evoking the atmosphere of exile, fear, and survival; it is less equipped to explain why the émigrés were exiled, why the Abwehr operated with such confidence, or why the repatriated survivors returned to a Europe eager to bury the memory of collaboration.

A Readable Book, and an Evasive One

In this sense, Hotel Exile stands as a beautifully written, humane work that nonetheless reveals the limits of a genre. It restores individuality to those swept aside by Nazism. Still, it cannot illuminate the deeper question that continues to animate German historiography: how an entire society became implicated in the crimes that sent so many of Rogoyska’s subjects through the doors of the Lutetia.

Hotel Exile is, in many respects, a commendable book: engaging, compassionate, and carefully researched. Its use of present tense has drawn both praise for creating immediacy and criticism for sometimes feeling forced; several reviewers have pointed out passages that become cumbersome because of too much detail. These issues are stylistic. The more significant limitation lies in its substance. A book aiming to explore a major catastrophe of the twentieth century, and hinting at its relevance to current political upheavals, mainly focuses on individual experiences. It does not explore the social forces—such as the interwar capitalist crisis, Stalinist betrayals, or the complicity of the French elite—that led to Lutetia’s three tragic versions in the first place. The rich human material Rogoyska collected deserves a broader context. Omitting this larger frame is the book's core, albeit unstated, theme.

Bibliography for the Themes of Hotel Exile

I. Anti‑Fascist Exile and the European Left, 1933–1945

• Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project — essential for the intellectual milieu of German exile in Paris.
• Anna Seghers, Transit — a literary but historically grounded account of refugee life in wartime France.
• Arthur Koestler, Scum of the Earth — memoir of internment and exile in France, indispensable for understanding the émigré crisis.
• Michael L. Miller, Shanghai Refuge: A Holocaust Historian’s Personal Journey Through the Jewish Ghetto — comparative exile history.
• Hans Mommsen, From Weimar to Auschwitz — structural analysis of the collapse of German democracy and the fragmentation of the left.
• Pierre Broué, The German Revolution 1917–1923 — foundational for understanding the political defeats that shaped later exile.
• Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands — contextualises the east‑central European catastrophe that produced mass exile.

II. German Military Intelligence (Abwehr) and Occupation

• Michael Mueller, Canaris: The Life and Death of Hitler’s Spymaster — the definitive biography of the Abwehr’s chief.
• David Kahn, Hitler’s Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II — a comprehensive study of Abwehr operations.
• Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler — shows how ordinary Germans supported and enabled Nazi repression.
• Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men — essential for the historiography of German participation in genocide.
• Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire — structural analysis of occupation regimes across Europe.

III. Vichy France, Collaboration, and the French State

• Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order — the foundational work on Vichy collaboration.
• Michael Marrus & Robert Paxton, Vichy and the Jews — indispensable for understanding French complicity in deportations.
• Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944 — authoritative synthesis of occupation and collaboration.
• Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome — the politics of memory in postwar France.
• Sarah Fishman, From Vichy to the Sexual Revolution — social history of wartime and postwar France.

IV. Repatriation, Liberation, and Postwar Reconstruction

• Annette Wieviorka, The Era of the Witness — key text on survivor testimony and postwar memory.
• Simone Lagrange, Retour à la vie — memoir of repatriation and the psychological aftermath.
• Tony Judt, Postwar — broad European context for the political and social reconstruction after 1945.
• Johanna Schoen, Repatriation and Reintegration of Holocaust Survivors — institutional history of return.
• Dan Stone, The Liberation of the Camps — authoritative study of the immediate aftermath of liberation.

V. Holocaust Studies and the Politics of Memory

• Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews — definitive political and social history of the Holocaust.
• Lawrence Langer, Holocaust Testimonies — analysis of survivor narratives and memory.
• Omer Bartov, Anatomy of a Genocide — microhistory that contrasts sharply with Rogoyska’s approach.
• Tim Cole, Holocaust Landscapes — spatial history of the Holocaust, relevant to the Lutetia as a “site of memory.”
• Dominick LaCapra, History and Memory After Auschwitz — theoretical grounding for memory studies.

VI. Paris, the Lutetia, and Urban Histories of Occupation

• David Drake, Paris at War, 1939–1944 — social history of the city under occupation.
• Alan Riding, And the Show Went On — cultural life in occupied Paris.
• Ronald C. Rosbottom, When Paris Went Dark — atmospheric but well‑researched account of daily life under German rule.
• Antoine de Baecque, Paris by Night — cultural history of Parisian spaces, relevant to the Lutetia’s symbolic role.

VII. Historiography, Microhistory, and the Crisis of Explanation

• Rüdiger Graf & Konrad Jarausch, The Long History of the Concept of Crisis — essential for understanding the inflation of “crisis” in historical writing.
• Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms — classic microhistory; useful for comparison with Rogoyska’s method.
• Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory — foundational for the “lieux de mémoire” approach that shapes Hotel Exile.
• Geoff Eley, A Crooked Line — critique of the retreat from social history.
• Eric Hobsbawm, On History — defence of structural, materialist historiography.

VIII. Recommended Marxist Works:

• Leon Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany — indispensable for the political context of the 1930s.
• David North, The Heritage We Defend — historiographical critique of Stalinism.
• Neil Davidson, How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? — structural analysis of class and state power.
• Tom Nairn, The Break‑Up of Britain

 

Slavery, Capitalism, and the Struggle for Human Emancipation: A Marxist Analysis of Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is one of the most politically charged texts from the antebellum United States. Beyond being a personal account of suffering, it serves as a sharp critique of a social system based on property, profit, and the systematic dehumanisation of individuals. Viewed through a Marxist perspective, Jacobs’s work exposes the fact that American slavery was not an outdated feudal leftover but a modern, capitalist system—whose brutality was deeply linked to the economic goals of the ruling class.

Jacobs’s story reveals how a society turned humans into commodities, reproductive tools, and means of surplus extraction. Her testimony, based on her own experience as an enslaved woman, challenges the ideological illusions of the slaveholding elite and anticipates Marxist ideas about racialised class control. Additionally, Jacobs’s account highlights the contradictions within Northern bourgeois democracy, where official freedom coexisted with economic reliance, racial bias, and the structural confines of capitalism.

This essay views Jacobs’s narrative as a powerful critique of society that remains relevant today, especially in an era of increasing inequality, racial discrimination, and threats to democratic freedoms. Her voice, rising from the depths of slavery, directly addresses ongoing efforts for human liberation.

The Enslaved Person as Commodity and Capital

Jacobs’s narrative clearly exposes the economic principles of slavery. In capitalism, workers sell their labour but keep ownership of their bodies. In chattel slavery, these boundaries disappear completely. Jacobs, her children, and relatives are regarded as capital assets—evaluated, mortgaged, inherited, and sold off to settle debts or increase the master’s wealth.

Her grandmother’s manumission money, raised through years of baking and selling goods, is not simply a sentimental detail; it is a stark illustration of how enslaved people were forced to buy back the very bodies that had been stolen from them. Jacobs’s fear that her children might be sold to settle Dr Flint’s financial obligations reveals the fundamental instability of life under slavery: the enslaved person’s existence is perpetually subject to the fluctuations of the master’s economic fortunes.

Marx wrote that capitalism “comes into the world dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” Jacobs shows how slavery, as a specific form of capitalist accumulation, was drenched in precisely such blood and dirt. The plantation was not a premodern relic but a profit-driven enterprise whose success depended on the total domination of labour.

Jacobs’s story is essential for grasping the gendered aspects of slavery. Her body serves as a site for both productive and reproductive work. The children she has are not just her own; they act as extra capital for the slave-owning elite. Dr Flint’s sexual abuse cannot be seen as personal immorality. Instead, it is deeply rooted in a structure where enslaved women’s fertility is used to generate wealth.

Jacobs’s decision to engage with Mr Sands—an act she feels ashamed of and uncertain about—should be seen as a desperate effort to reclaim agency in a system that leaves her powerless over her reproduction. This choice is also a political statement, rejecting Dr Flint’s attempts to exploit her sexuality for profit.

Marxist-feminist scholarship highlights reproductive labour as key to capitalist exploitation. Jacobs’s story prefigures this understanding by decades, revealing how slavery combined racial superiority with patriarchal authority, creating a particularly brutal form of gendered oppression.

Jacobs’s critique of Southern Christianity is among the most powerful in American literature. She highlights slaveholders who use scripture to justify torture, churches that advocate obedience to earthly masters, and ministers who declare slavery as aligned with God’s divine plan.

This represents ideology in its purest form: a superstructure that normalises exploitation and quells resistance. The slaveholding class depended on religion, law, and cultural norms to conceal the economic roots of their dominance. Jacobs’s story removes this ideological cover, revealing the hypocrisy and moral corruption of a society that professed Christianity while engaging in systematic barbarism.

Her work closely aligns with Marx’s view of ideology as a means of upholding class domination. The slave system relied not only on physical force but also on a moral and intellectual framework that justified the ownership of humans.

The Contradictions of Northern Freedom

Jacobs’s move to the North does not end her struggles. Instead, it exposes the limitations of bourgeois democracy. Free Black individuals in the North continue to confront poverty, discrimination, and ongoing insecurity. Jacobs remains financially reliant on the Bruce family, showing how legal freedom can coexist with material dependence.

Her experience echoes Marx’s critique of wage labour: emancipation from chattel slavery doesn't eliminate exploitation; it only changes its form. Despite legal freedoms, the North remains a capitalist society where economic inequality and racial prejudice hinder true human liberation. Jacobs’s story thus questions the idea that freedom is merely a matter of legal status. She demonstrates that without economic stability, social equality, and political influence, freedom is only partial.

Jacobs’s seven-year hidden stay in her grandmother’s attic stands as one of the most remarkable acts of resistance in slavery’s history. Recent research views this period as marronage—a bold assertion of freedom within the confines of the slave system. Her “loophole of retreat” becomes a space of political independence, symbolising a refusal to engage with the master’s economy and serving as a hub for alternative social relations based on kinship and secrecy. Jacobs’s act of resistance isn’t just personal; it exemplifies a wider fight against the plantation system and the capitalist framework that supports it.

Her account shows that enslaved individuals were not merely passive victims but proactive participants in the struggle for freedom. Their acts of resistance—both personal and collective—were crucial in ending slavery and reshaping American society.

Jacobs’s authorship represents a revolutionary act. Slavery aimed to deprive the enslaved of literacy to stop them from sharing their experiences of oppression. By writing and publishing her narrative, Jacobs takes control of her own representation and directly participates in the ideological battle over slavery. Her work targets Northern women, appealing to their moral values and revealing the gender-specific violence of slavery. This broadens the political support for abolition and challenges the core beliefs supporting the slave system.

Harriet Jacobs’s Legacy in Current Historiography

Harriet Jacobs' reputation has evolved considerably in recent scholarship on slavery, gender, and political thought. Originally viewed mainly as a sentimental abolitionist storyteller, she is now acknowledged as a key theorist of concepts like domination, freedom, and gendered oppression. Three main strands now characterise her historiographical legacy.

Initially, Jacobs is increasingly recognised as a sharp political thinker. Alan M. S. J. Coffee’s recent research for Cambridge University Press suggests that Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is not just a personal story but also a philosophical work providing one of the most insightful examinations of slavery’s social dynamics. Coffee situates Jacobs within the republican tradition, highlighting how her focus on sexual violence and relationships among enslaved individuals broadens classical republican ideas into a feminist critique of control.

Contemporary scholars emphasise Jacobs’s influence in redefining concepts of freedom and resistance. Sean Gerrity’s research on marronage interprets Jacobs’s seven-year imprisonment in her grandmother’s attic as a form of internal marronage—an assertive act of autonomy carried out within slavery’s confines. This view expands historiographical perspectives on freedom-seeking strategies, positioning Jacobs as a thinker of subtle, often unseen resistance that contests limited views of maroon activity.

Jacobs’s narrative has become a crucial part of intersectional historiography. As the first published slave narrative by an African American woman, Incidents offers a unique perspective on how race, gender, and property dynamics interconnected during slavery. Modern scholars in history and literature consider her work essential for understanding sexual violence as a systemic tool within the slave system and for exploring the origins of Black feminist thought. Her story is also recognised as a significant contribution to the slave narrative genre, standing alongside the works of Douglass, Equiano, and Wells Brown in shaping abolitionist debates.

Jacobs’s impact across these areas is clear: she is now recognised not only as a witness to slavery but also as a theorist whose ideas reshape contemporary understandings of domination, resistance, and the limits of bourgeois freedom. Her work continues to influence debates on racial capitalism, gendered violence, and the importance of emancipation in both historical and political discussions.

Harriet Jacobs and the Pseudo‑Lefts

Harriet Jacobs’s *Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl* remains one of the most politically provocative documents of the nineteenth century. Its impact stems not only from exposing slavery’s brutality but also from showing that oppression is rooted in material relations—property, domination, and surplus value extraction. Today, however, Jacobs’s legacy is often misused, watered down, or weaponised by the pseudo-left: the wealthy, identity-focused sectors of academia and NGOs who claim to be radical yet uphold the social structures that sustain exploitation.

Jacobs’s narrative fundamentally conflicts with pseudo-left politics. She highlights slavery as a mode of production rather than a cultural trauma. Her discussion of sexual violence is viewed not as a matter of “identity” but as a structural tool for capital accumulation. Her critique of Northern “freedom” is not a praise of liberal rights but a warning that formal emancipation, without economic change, preserves oppression. Overall, Jacobs’s analysis emphasises the need for a revolutionary societal reorganisation—something the pseudo-left opposes.

The pseudo‑left’s treatment of Jacobs follows a familiar pattern. They elevate her narrative as a monument of “Black female experience,” but strip it of its class content. They celebrate her resistance while ignoring the economic system that made such resistance necessary. They turn her seven‑year confinement in the garret into a metaphor for “intersectional subjectivity,” rather than recognising it as a form of marronage—a refusal of the master’s economy and a concrete act of class struggle. In their hands, Jacobs becomes a symbol, not a theorist; a victim, not an analyst of racial capitalism.

This distortion has a political aim. The pseudo-left’s focus on identity enables them to appear as radicals while supporting the Democratic Party, corporate philanthropy, and academia. They criticise past oppression but endorse the capitalist system that continues to cause exploitation. They reference Jacobs to moralise rather than to inspire action; to foster guilt instead of solidarity; to split the working class into conflicting identities rather than unify it against capitalism.

Jacobs personally recognised the limitations of bourgeois reform efforts. Her writing reveals the hypocrisy within Northern liberalism, the continued economic dependence post-emancipation, and the ideological tools—such as religion, law, and sentimentalism—that concealed exploitation. She understood that domination extends beyond personal relationships to structural issues rooted in property relations. Her insights prefigure Du Bois’s plantation analysis, Angela Davis’s critique of gendered labour, and the Marxist view of racial capitalism. In contrast, the superficial politics of representation promoted by the pseudo-left could not be more different.

The modern pseudo-left praises Jacobs but dismisses the conclusions her story implies. They talk about “decolonising” institutions yet support the profit-driven system. They condemn historical slavery but overlook current exploitative practices like gig work, migrant precarity, mass surveillance, and imperialist wars that characterise today’s global capitalism. They elevate Jacobs as a cultural figure to sidestep engaging with the revolutionary insights of her analysis.

Jacobs’s legacy is rooted in serving the working class, not the pseudo-left. Her story functions as a tool against racial, gender, and economic oppression, revealing the ideological falsehoods that uphold exploitation. It highlights oppressed communities' ability to resist, organise, and change society. To recover Jacobs’s legacy is to embrace the Marxist view that true freedom demands dismantling the social system that creates unfreedom. While the pseudo-left merely commemorates, Jacobs calls for revolutionary action.

Conclusion

Jacobs’s narrative is not simply a memoir; it is a weapon in the struggle for human emancipation. It anticipates later Marxist and socialist critiques of racial capitalism, and it remains a vital document for understanding the relationship between oppression, ideology, and resistance.

Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a work of enduring political significance. It reveals slavery as a capitalist institution rooted in property, profit, and the systematic degradation of human beings. It exposes the ideological apparatus that sustained the slave system and the contradictions of bourgeois democracy in the North. It illuminates the gendered dimensions of exploitation and the radical forms of resistance developed by enslaved women.

In an era marked by widening inequality, racial oppression, and the erosion of democratic rights, Jacobs’s narrative speaks with renewed urgency. Her testimony reminds us that genuine freedom requires more than legal emancipation; it demands the abolition of all forms of exploitation and the creation of a society based on equality, solidarity, and human dignity.

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Sources

• Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. Edited by Jean Fagan Yellin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
• Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an enslaved American. Boston: Anti‑Slavery Office, 1845.
• Wells Brown, William. Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave. Boston: Anti‑Slavery Office, 1847.

Foundational Historiography on Jacobs

• Yellin, Jean Fagan. Harriet Jacobs: A Life. New York: Basic Books, 2004.
• Carby, Hazel V. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro‑American Woman Novelist. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Gunning, Sandra. Race, Rape, and Lynching: The Red Record of American Literature, 1890–1912. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
• McCaskill, Barbara. “’ Yours for Freedom’: The Fugitive Slave Narrative and the Politics of Agency in African American Women’s Autobiography.” American Literature 64, no. 1 (1992): 50–75.

Recent Scholarship and Current Historiography

• Coffee, Alan M. S. J. Harriet Jacobs and the Fight Against Slavery: A Republican Theory of Domination and Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025.
• Gerrity, Sean. “Marronage and the Loophole of Retreat in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 38, no. 2 (2021): 217–240.
• Mozaheb, Sara. “Harriet Jacobs and the Politics of Reproductive Labour.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 47, no. 3 (2022): 611–635.
• Spires, Derrick. The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
• Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self‑Making in Nineteenth‑Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Marxist and Materialist Scholarship Relevant to Jacobs

• Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935.
• Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race, & Class. New York: Random House, 1981.
• James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1963.
• Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983.
• Johnson, Walter. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Secondary Works on Slavery, Gender, and Racial Capitalism

• Morgan, Jennifer L. Labouring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
• Spillers, Hortense. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacritics 17, no. 2 (1987): 65–81.
• Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.
• Baptist, Edward E. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. New York: Basic Books, 2014.

Works on Identity Politics and the Pseudo‑Left (WSWS‑Relevant Context)

(These are not citations of WSWS articles directly, but scholarly works that contextualise the critique of identity politics and its class character.)

• Reed, Adolph. Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene. New York: New Press, 2000.
• Fraser, Nancy. The Old Is Dying, and the New Cannot Be Born: From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump and Beyond. London: Verso, 2019.
• Lilla, Mark. The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics. New York: HarperCollins, 2017.
• Michaels, Walter Benn. The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006.

Suggested Archival and Digital Resources

• Harriet Jacobs Papers, Library of Congress.
• Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina (digital edition of Incidents).
• Schomburg Centre for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.

 

Sixty years since the first Notting Hill Carnival: The suppressed legacy of Claudia Jones

This weekend’s “Diamond Jubilee” celebrations for the Notting Hill Carnival—featuring plaques, heritage tours, and corporate sponsorships—offer only a selective account of its history. Central to the festivities is Claudia Jones, known as the “Mother of Carnival.” However, the figure honoured does not fully reflect the real Jones: a dedicated revolutionary Marxist, a key member of the Communist Party USA, and an individual persecuted during McCarthy-era witch hunts, which led to her imprisonment and deportation because of her political beliefs. This omission is deliberate, reflecting decades of efforts by the British government, Labour councils, and some academics and media figures to detach anti-racist movements from their socialist origins and depict them as a harmless form of multicultural celebration.

A revolutionary, not a cultural mascot

Born in Trinidad in 1915 and raised amid Harlem's poverty, Jones joined the Communist Party in 1936, motivated by the Scottsboro campaign. She became a prominent intellectual within the party, offering influential analyses of the “triple oppression” faced by Black working-class women—long before these issues entered mainstream discourse. Her activism resulted in government crackdowns, including imprisonment under the Smith Act and expulsion from the U.S. due to Cold War legislation aimed at alleged “subversives.”

Jones arrived in Britain in 1955 and immediately encountered the racism faced by Caribbean workers involved in rebuilding post-war Britain. The Notting Hill riots of 1958 and Kelso Cochrane's killing in 1959 were more than mere 'community tensions'; they were episodes of fascist violence tolerated by authorities. In response, Jones launched the West Indian Gazette and organised the first indoor Caribbean carnival in 1959, using these events as acts of political defiance and collective self-assertion, not just cultural celebrations.

Today’s official commemorations reduce Jones to a simple symbol of “diversity,” dismissing the Marxist elements that defined her life. Events like her imprisonment, deportation, her support for the Soviet Union, and her stance against colonialism are often downplayed or ignored. This move to present Jones as a multicultural figure seems motivated by a political goal: to conceal the truth that her fight against racist violence, police harassment, and exploitation of immigrant labour stems from capitalism. In contrast, her actions were driven by a sense of international working-class solidarity.

The Pseudo‑Lefts and the Notting Hill Carnival

The 60th anniversary of the Notting Hill Carnival has been marked by the familiar voices from Britain’s pseudo-left circles—Labour councillors, NGO activists, academics, and media figures—who frame Carnival as a celebration of “diversity,” “community,” and “Black cultural expression.” This narrative is strategically convenient because it is ultimately misleading. It overlooks the Carnival’s roots in working-class struggles and instead promotes a depoliticised identity-politics story that benefits the state and corporate interests.

Carnival did not originate from simply 'heritage '. Instead, it grew out of racist violence, police harassment, and the exploitation of Caribbean workers brought to Britain after the war. Claudia Jones, the communist who organised the first indoor carnival in 1959, was not merely a cultural promoter but a revolutionary Marxist. She was imprisoned and deported by the American government because of her political beliefs. Her efforts in London—via the West Indian Gazette and her activism against the 1958 Notting Hill riots—were based on a conviction that racism was inherently linked to capitalism.

The pseudo-left struggles to acknowledge this history because it reveals their own complicity. Over time, they have shifted from class-based politics to identity politics, turning anti-racist efforts into symbolic cultural displays that do not threaten capitalism. The modern face of Carnival—with corporate sponsorships, heritage plaques, and endless debates about “representation”—fits their perspective perfectly. It lets them celebrate “Black joy” while ignoring the displacement of Caribbean working-class residents from Notting Hill, the gentrification that has transformed the neighbourhood into one of London’s wealthiest areas, and the large police presence that now dominates the event.

Their politics centre on accommodation. They celebrate Carnival because it has been commercialised and lost its socialist roots. The hidden truth is that Carnival originated as a working-class protest, founded by a communist whose beliefs conflict with the pseudo-left’s focus on identity politics and capitalism.

The Commodification of the Notting Hill Carnival

The commercialisation of Carnival has paralleled the gentrification of Notting Hill and surrounding areas, which has become one of London's priciest districts because of property speculation. The Caribbean working class, originally responsible for organising the carnival, has gradually been pushed out, while corporations and government bodies now try to link themselves to its “heritage.” Although the heightened police presence at the modern carnival is often viewed as a logistical issue, it masks the more profound social inequalities and gentrification reshaping the community.

The Notting Hill Carnival originally symbolised working-class Caribbean resistance against racist violence and government hostility. Over the past forty years, it has gradually turned into a commercial spectacle—marketed, policed, and monetised by the same institutions that initially aimed to suppress it. What started as an act of political protest has now been transformed into a “cultural asset,” losing its socialist roots and becoming subordinate to the commercial and ideological interests of the British government and corporations.

From resistance to revenue stream

Carnival originated from intense social conflicts such as the 1958 racist riots, the killing of Kelso Cochrane, and ongoing harassment of Caribbean workers by police and landlords. Claudia Jones’s indoor carnivals served as acts of communal self-expression by a community under pressure. The initial outdoor processions were casual, improvised, and openly rebellious against authority.

Today, Carnival is regarded as a brand. Transport for London, global alcohol firms, property developers, and local councils vie to link themselves with its “heritage.” The event is marketed as a major tourist draw, bringing in hundreds of millions of pounds to London’s economy. Meanwhile, the Caribbean working class, who created Carnival, has been pushed out of Notting Hill by rising rents and real estate speculation, even as their cultural work is exploited for commercial gain. This shift is not accidental; it mirrors the broader capitalist trend of appropriating, sanitising, and transforming opposition-driven cultural forms into commodities.

Policing replaces politics

The modern Carnival is accompanied by an enormous police operation—one of the largest in Europe—framed as a matter of “public safety.” The same state that ignored racist violence in the 1950s now deploys thousands of officers, surveillance drones, and crowd‑control infrastructure. Sensationalist media coverage justifies the policing by treating Carnival as a security problem rather than a political tradition rooted in struggle.

This intense policing serves dual purposes: to keep Carnival within manageable boundaries, preventing it from turning into a space for political activism or social upheaval; and to support the idea that Caribbean communities need supervision, echoing the racist reasoning behind initial conflicts. The commercialisation of Carnival is inherently linked to its securitisation, both demonstrating the state’s effort to depoliticise and dominate a cultural expression that originated as a form of resistance.

Official “heritage” programs—such as plaques, exhibitions, and curated histories—are central to this process. They highlight Carnival as a symbol of diversity but obscure its political origins. Claudia Jones is recognised as a cultural pioneer, rather than as a communist persecuted by the US government. The racist violence that contributed to Carnival’s rise is mentioned only in softened, depoliticised terms. Meanwhile, the systemic exploitation of Caribbean labour, police involvement, and the links between racism and capitalism are subtly omitted from the story. Ultimately, heritage serves as a tool of ideological control: a way to showcase the imagery of past struggles while downplaying their true meaning.

Notting Hill has undergone a dramatic transformation. The area's working-class Caribbean community has gradually been pushed out due to property speculation, luxury redevelopment, and rising rents. Carnival now occurs in a neighbourhood increasingly disconnected from the community that created it. Sixty years later, the official Carnival showcases how political leaders portray historical struggles while minimising their true significance. Claudia Jones’s genuine legacy—her Marxist beliefs, internationalist perspective, and understanding that racism is linked to capitalism—remains too controversial to be publicly acknowledged. While the carnival continues, most modern celebrations prefer to forget the revolutionary ideals that once inspired it.

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Sources

• West Indian Gazette (1958–1964). Issues edited by Claudia Jones, including coverage of the Notting Hill riots, Kelso Cochrane’s murder, and early Carnival organising.
• Claudia Jones, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” Political Affairs, 1949.
• Claudia Jones, speeches and correspondence (various), held in the Claudia Jones Archive, Black Cultural Archives, Brixton.
• BBC Television, Caribbean Carnival broadcast, January 1959.
• Home Office papers on the Notting Hill riots (1958), National Archives, HO 376 series.
• Metropolitan Police reports on the murder of Kelso Cochrane (1959), National Archives, MEPO series.

Historical and Scholarly Works

• Carole Boyce Davies, Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (Duke University Press, 2008).
• Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth‑Century America (Verso, 1998).
• Brian Alleyne, Radicalism and Cultural Politics in the Notting Hill Carnival (Mellen Press, 2003).
• Ruth Glass, London: Aspects of Change (Centre for Urban Studies, 1964) — foundational text on gentrification, including early analysis of Notting Hill.
• Tariq Modood, Multicultural Politics: Racism, Ethnicity and Muslims in Britain (University of Minnesota Press, 2005) — for context on state multiculturalism.
• Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack (Hutchinson, 1987) — on race, nationalism, and cultural politics in Britain.

Political Analyses and Contemporary Reporting

• World Socialist Web Site (WSWS):

          “The political legacy of Claudia Jones” (various articles)—coverage of the     Windrush scandal, British racism, and pseudo‑left identity politics.

• The Guardian and The Observer archives on Notting Hill Carnival (1966–present).
• The Times and Evening Standard reporting on policing, sponsorship, and gentrification of Carnival.
• Greater London Authority (GLA) reports on Carnival funding, policing, and economic impact (2000–2025).
• Transport for London (TfL), “Carnival 60” heritage programme documentation (2026).

Works on the Pseudo‑Left and Identity Politics

• David North, The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo‑Left (Mehring Books, 2015).
• Alex Lantier, “Identity Politics and the Pseudo‑Left” (WSWS, various).
• Eric London, The CIA’s Role in the Promotion of Identity Politics (WSWS, 2021).
• Adolph Reed Jr., “The Limits of Anti‑Racism” (Left Business Observer, 2000) — critical of identity politics from a class perspective.

Urban and Social Context

• London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea housing reports (1970–2025) — documenting displacement and gentrification.
• Centre for London, “The Changing Face of Notting Hill” (2018).

 

 

Person of Interest: Surveillance, Liberalism, and the Crisis of the American State

 

When Person of Interest debuted on CBS in 2011, it launched into a society already shaped by ten years of unchecked militarism, domestic surveillance, and a vast security network. The American elite had exploited the September 11, 2001, attacks to enforce measures they had long planned and desired politically: the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps, secret courts, indefinite detention, and the blending of intelligence agencies with telecom and tech giants. By 2013, when Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s global spying efforts, the foundation of a police state was no longer a threat but a reality.

Person of Interest should be interpreted in the context of its time. The series is more than just a thriller about an all-knowing AI; it reflects the fears, misconceptions, and ideological responses of the liberal-technocratic class that created, supported, and benefited from the surveillance system. Its story is influenced not by a lack of awareness of the state’s misconduct but by the political constraints of the social group responsible for it.

The Machine and the Liberal Conscience

The show's core idea is surprisingly straightforward: Harold Finch, a secluded billionaire programmer, has developed “the Machine,” an AI that monitors all electronic communications and forecasts violent crimes. Finch and his partner, ex-CIA agent John Reese, step in to protect those the system identifies. The Machine is portrayed as a well-intentioned invention that the government misuses, but it can be redeemed because of its creator's moral principles.

These principles dominate the entire show and are the core ideology of the series. Finch does not represent the working class or oppressed groups by the surveillance state. Instead, he embodies the conscience of the technical intelligentsia—the engineers, programmers, and visionaries who consider themselves guardians of democracy even as they develop tools for authoritarian control. His guilt is personal rather than political, and his approach is individual rather than systemic. Rather than dismantling The Machine, it is repurposed, and the machinery is moralised instead of being questioned. This is the fantasy of liberal dissent: that the problem lies not in the existence of the surveillance state but in the character of those who administer it.

The Surveillance State as a Product of Capitalist Decay

The show’s failure to address the fundamental structural causes of the surveillance system is deliberate. It mirrors the political shortsightedness of liberal intellectuals, who view the state as a neutral entity tainted by malefactors rather than as a tool of class power. The post-9/11 expansion of surveillance did not arise from terrorism fears. Instead, it stemmed from a crisis within American capitalism. Confronted with waning global dominance, rising social inequality, and increased domestic unrest, the ruling class adopted mass surveillance to control an increasingly resistant population. Snowden’s revelations about the NSA programs demonstrated that these measures were not anomalies but an extension of a state preparing for internal conflict.

Person of Interest acknowledges this reality only indirectly. Its unease feels authentic, yet its analysis remains incomplete. The show senses the slide toward authoritarianism but fails to explain it. It portrays the mechanisms of repression but does not identify the social structure that necessitates them.

Samaritan and the Logic of Algorithmic Governance

The introduction of Samaritan, a rival AI backed by intelligence agencies and financial capital, accentuates the show’s contradictions. Samaritan is openly authoritarian, aiming to impose a computational order on society. It exemplifies the merging of state authority and corporate interests, reflecting the true direction of algorithmic governance within capitalism. However, the conflict between the Machine and Samaritan is portrayed not as a clash between democracy and authoritarianism but as a confrontation between two elite visions of social control. The Machine is paternalistic and covert, while Samaritan is explicit and coercive. Both assume governance from above, exclude democratic oversight, and view the population as data points to be managed. The show cannot envision a world without algorithmic dominance because its creators cannot conceive of a world beyond the capitalist state.

The Erasure of the Working Class

A notable aspect of Person of Interest is how it depicts ordinary people. Workers, immigrants, and those with low income are shown often, but only as victims or in need of rescue. They are never portrayed as political agents; they do not organise, resist, or act together. Instead, they are treated as case files rather than people. This omission isn't accidental; it's rooted in the structural needs of American TV, which is influenced by the same corporate and political powers that created the surveillance state. Showing the working class as able to challenge the state would implicate the entire social system. It would reveal that the surveillance system exists mainly to shield the ruling class from the populace, not to serve society. Therefore, the show’s political scope is confined to the moral conflicts among elites. The working class appears only as data for the Machine’s forecasts.

Liberalism’s Final Refuge: The Good Technocrat

In its final seasons, Person of Interest aims for a dystopian grandeur, featuring episodes from the Machine’s perspective, cityscapes governed by algorithms, and the collapse of democratic institutions, all hinting at a deeper critique. However, it falls short of true social analysis, as it does not recognise that the surveillance state is a deliberate feature of capitalist rule, not a flaw. Instead, it relies on its core fantasy: that salvation depends on benevolent technocrats. Finch’s remorse becomes the moral backbone, and the Machine’s “goodness” symbolises the liberal belief that technology can be ethical when guided by enlightened elites. This reflects the ideology of a class losing grip on the world they helped create—its fear is real, but its proposed solutions are illusions.

The Missing Resolution: Class Struggle

Person of Interest fundamentally cannot envision the end of the surveillance state, the existence of the working class, or revolutionary change. The only entity capable of dismantling surveillance is the international working class, acting consciously and politically against capitalism. This viewpoint is missing from the series and the liberal intelligentsia's worldview. The Machine will not be saved by its creators, nor will oversight committees reform the surveillance system. The surveillance apparatus will only be dismantled through active struggle against the social order that sustains it.

Person of Interest and the Pseudo‑Left

Person of Interest is often lauded for its foresight regarding surveillance and artificial intelligence. However, its political stance aligns with that of today's pseudo-left: a social class that appears radical but ends up defending the core structures of capitalism. The main characters—Finch, the wealthy engineer, and Reese, the CIA agent—are not against the surveillance system. Instead, they function as its ideal stewards. Their aim isn't to abolish the Machine but to ensure it’s controlled by a “better” group. This mirrors the pseudo-left’s view of the capitalist state: the issue isn't the system itself, but who wields power over it.

The pseudo-left, originating from the affluent professional-managerial class, has spent twenty years justifying the surveillance systems it claims to oppose. It backed the Patriot Act, promoted humanitarian imperialism, embraced censorship under the guise of “safety,” and aligned with intelligence agencies against whistleblowers like Snowden and Assange. Its politics are characterised by moral gestures, identity-based appeals, and calls for an “ethical” approach. Managing inherently reactionary institutions is complex. Samaritan—the rival AI supported by finance and intelligence agencies—embodies what the pseudo-left fears most: not authoritarianism itself, but authoritarianism without their influence. The core conflict of the show isn’t just democracy versus repression, but a struggle between two elite visions of social control. The working class is depicted only as victims or cases, never as an agent capable of dismantling the surveillance state.

In this sense, Person of Interest is a cultural expression of the pseudo‑left’s worldview: unease without analysis, critique without opposition, and a fantasy of benevolent domination in place of genuine social transformation. Both the show and the pseudo‑left accept the permanence of the capitalist state and the inevitability of mass surveillance. Both imagine salvation through enlightened technocrats rather than through the independent mobilisation of the working class.

Conclusion

Person of Interest is a product of its time: a moment when millions sensed the authoritarian transformation of the American state but lacked a political framework to understand it. The show’s unease is genuine, its craftsmanship often impressive, and its ambition notable. But its political imagination never escapes the confines of liberal ideology.

It offers a fantasy of benevolent surveillance in an era of capitalist decay. It gestures toward dystopia while clinging to the hope that elites can save society from the machinery they built. It reflects the conscience of a class that fears the consequences of its own creations but cannot envision a world beyond them.

Its enduring limitation is the limitation of liberal dissent itself: the inability to recognise that the crisis of democracy is the crisis of capitalism, and that the solution lies not in better algorithms or kinder elites but in the revolutionary transformation of society.

 

Philippine DHL Workers Enter Second Week of Strike Against Warehouse Closure

 The indefinite strike by over 430 logistics workers at DHL Supply Chain's warehouse in Sucat, Muntinlupa City, has now lasted two weeks, marking a major clash between Filipino workers and a global logistics giant. The walkout began on August 17 after talks between DHL management and the DHL United Workers Union (DUWU) broke down, and the company subsequently announced plans to close the facility on August 30–31. The company plans to cut 436 jobs, which could cause economic hardship for many families. Since the strike started, workers have been nonstop picketing at the warehouse gates. On August 21, they broadened their protest to include DHL retail outlets in Quezon City and the Department of Labour and Employment (DOLE) headquarters, aiming to expose the company’s practices and rally support from more workers and young people.

But the conflict occurs under circumstances heavily tilted in the company's and the state's favour. The looming presence over the strike is Article 263(g) of the Philippine Labour Code. This martial-law-era law allows the government to issue an “Assumption of Jurisdiction” (AJ) order, which essentially bans the strike and forces workers to return to work under the threat of police action. This authoritarian tool, inherited from the Marcos regime, has been used repeatedly by successive governments to suppress strikes in crucial industries.

The threat of AJ is real, not theoretical. It plays a key role in the state’s toolkit to control workers, aiming to keep large enterprises running smoothly. Its ongoing presence highlights the deeply anti-worker nature of Philippine labour law, which prioritises corporate profits over workers' rights.

A Global Corporate Offensive

The shutdown of the Muntinlupa warehouse is part of a broader overhaul of DHL’s global operations, not an isolated incident. As one of the world’s largest logistics firms, operating in over 220 countries, DHL is systematically cutting jobs, merging facilities, and boosting automation. In the U.S., 6,000 DHL Express workers, represented by the Teamsters, voted 96 per cent in March to authorise a nationwide strike. However, union leaders intervened at the last moment to impose a concessionary contract, preventing a potential mass mobilisation of logistics workers. Similarly, in Canada, DHL workers represented by Unifor have experienced lockouts and strikes during tense negotiations. In Germany, the Verdi union approved a concessionary contract with Deutsche Post/DHL, aiding management’s restructuring efforts.

Across all these countries, the pattern remains the same: management pushes ahead with layoffs and automation, while unions try to contain and diffuse workers’ anger. The unions act more like industrial police, enforcing capital's demands and isolating workers from their global class allies. DHL’s choice to shut down the Muntinlupa plant is guided by global corporate strategy, not local factors. Workers in Metro Manila are suffering the fallout of decisions made in distant corporate boardrooms.

The Bankruptcy of the Union’s Legal Strategy

DUWU and other unions have directed their dispute into DOLE’s legal processes by filing petitions and waiting for decisions. This approach is politically flawed and solely isolates the workers. DOLE’s arbitration system is structured to favour corporate interests and does not provide a way to challenge a closure decision based on commercial reasons. DHL has already concluded that closing the warehouse is part of its global restructuring plan, and no legal challenge will change that decision.

By treating the closure as a local violation of Philippine labour law, the unions have confined the struggle within national boundaries and prevented workers from linking up with DHL workers internationally who face the same attacks. This isolation is fatal. A few hundred workers in Metro Manila cannot defeat a transnational corporation through legal channels that the corporation and the state both understand far better than the union bureaucracy.

The Role of the State and Political Establishment

Several legislators have visited the picket line and issued statements of support, criticising DHL’s conduct and urging DOLE to intervene. These gestures are empty. They do nothing to challenge the underlying corporate restructuring or the state’s repressive labour framework.

The Philippine political establishment — from the Marcos Jr. administration to the congressional opposition — is united in its defence of foreign capital and its hostility to independent workers’ struggles. The AJ mechanism remains untouched because it is essential to maintaining the “investor‑friendly” environment demanded by multinational corporations.

Workers cannot place any confidence in the state or its political representatives. Their interests are irreconcilably opposed to those of the capitalist class.

The Necessity of Rank‑and‑File Committees

To continue their struggle, DHL workers must take the lead in the fight themselves. This involves forming rank-and-file committees that operate independently from DUWU and the broader union bureaucracy. These committees should: maintain democratic control over the strike, develop demands centred on workers’ needs rather than what the company or union leaders deem “realistic," reach out directly to DHL workers throughout the Philippines and internationally, and be ready to oppose any efforts by DOLE or police to enforce an AJ order.

The main goal is to convert the strike from a localised dispute into a unified international fight against DHL’s global restructuring. Workers in the United States, Canada, Germany, and elsewhere are confronting similar attacks. Their efforts need to be coordinated.

A Turning Point for the Philippine Working Class

The DHL strike is a significant development in the Philippine working class. It exposes the brutal reality of global capitalism, the complicity of the union bureaucracy, and the repressive character of the state. It demonstrates that workers cannot defend their jobs and livelihoods through legal appeals or reliance on political figures.

The future of the struggle depends on workers breaking out of the confines imposed by the unions and the state and building new organs of class power. Forming rank‑and‑file committees is the decisive step forward.

The Muntinlupa workers' fight is part of a global battle against the capitalist system that subordinates every aspect of life to profit. Their struggle deserves the active support of workers throughout the Philippines and internationally.

 

The Individualisation of Historical Guilt: Katja Hoyer’s Latest Exercise in Moral Anecdotalism

The Moralization of History in an Age of Political Reaction

Katja Hoyer’s recent essay, 'From Housemaid to Camp Guard,' examines how ordinary people can commit acts of evil. Although it appears to emphasise the role of structural and systemic factors in fascist violence, it actually highlights a broader tendency in modern popular history. This trend reduces intricate political and economic dynamics into moral tales, psychological stories, and personal biographies.

This approach—blaming individuals for historical guilt—is more than style; it’s an ideological tactic. It transforms fascism from a consequence of capitalist crises into an ongoing moral danger concealed within “ordinary people.” This method replaces analysis with emotion, structural understanding with narrative, and class with personal characteristics. In effect, it strips away political context from history, prioritising a moralistic story over deeper explanation.

Hoyer’s essay is more than merely inadequate; it reflects a wider cultural and political change: the erosion of historical awareness amid capitalist decline, the dominance of platform-driven “content" replacing traditional historiography, and the ruling class's ideological effort to depoliticise history when its lessons are most critical.

Biography as Ideology: The Retreat from Structure

Hoyer’s essay centres on a biographical case study featuring Hermine Braunsteiner, infamous as the “Stomping Mare” of Majdanek. It presents her as a complex psychological figure—a troubling progression from a domestic worker to a camp guard. The reader is invited to reflect on her “choices,” her “path," and her “transformation.” The narrative’s structure seeks to provoke moral reflection rather than enhance political understanding.

This emphasis on biography is widespread beyond Hoyer and is typical in popular history, especially during political backlash. Incorporating biographical anecdotes allows historians to suggest complexity without engaging in detailed structural analysis. It also enables readers to feel morally connected without tackling the political economy of fascism. Consequently, this approach shifts the perception of perpetrators from systemic actors to psychological curiosities.

This mode highlights what a materialist historiography would emphasise: the class makeup of the SS, the economic issues in Depression-era Austria and Germany, the gender-specific recruitment tactics of the Nazi regime, the backing of fascism by German financial elites, and the Federal Republic's effort to rehabilitate camp staff after WWII. Braunsteiner’s life isn't a moral lesson; rather, it's a case study illustrating how capitalism mobilises, disciplines, and weaponises human labour during crises. Conversely, Hoyer’s approach conceals this underlying reality.

The Arendtian Legacy: Banality Without Structure

Hoyer’s framing—“ordinary people doing evil things”—directly draws from the Arendtian tradition. However, while Hannah Arendt’s work engaged with the mechanisms of the totalitarian regime, Hoyer’s interpretation is a simplified, moralised version that lacks political context. Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” shifted focus from ideological extremism to bureaucratic normality, paving the way for a psychological view of fascism: viewing evil as thoughtlessness, obedience, and conformity. Nonetheless, Arendt’s own writings remain ambivalent, caught between philosophical ideas and specific historical circumstances.

Hoyer retains only the abstract concept. She transforms the banal evil into a universal moral risk, making fascism a constant human potential. The reader is encouraged to worry about the weakness of conscience rather than capitalism's crisis. The structural causes of fascism—the breakdown of parliamentary democracy, the rise of paramilitary violence, and the Nazi-industrial alliance—disappear from view. Arendt’s complex ideas are reduced to evasions in Hoyer’s approach.

Goldhagen’s Shadow: Voluntarism Without Politics

If Arendt explained fascism as arising from thoughtlessness, Daniel Goldhagen attributed it to deliberate hatred. His argument—that ordinary Germans were “willing executioners” motivated by a distinct eliminationist anti-Semitism—shifts focus from structural causes to cultural essentialism. Hoyer’s story echoes this voluntarist perspective. Braunsteiner’s actions are portrayed as personal decisions, moral lapses, or a psychological decline. Readers are encouraged to consider her cruelty as an individual moral failure rather than a consequence of systemic factors.

Goldhagen’s voluntarism, similar to Arendt’s concept of banality, serves an ideological purpose: it shifts blame away from the ruling class. When fascism is attributed to hatred or thoughtlessness, the influence of the capital, state, and military vanishes from the explanation. This directs attention to the perpetrators while rendering the systemic structures unseen. Hoyer’s essay exemplifies this pattern, presenting more than just a moral story; it functions as a form of political avoidance.

A materialist approach to the history of fascism starts with class analysis. Fascism is not an ethical anomaly but a class-based tactic. It emerges when the ruling elite can no longer maintain power through parliamentary channels and resort to extra-parliamentary violence to oppress workers. In this view, Braunsteiner’s life is understood not as a psychological mystery but as a product of structural forces: her recruitment into the SS was driven by the economic hardship faced by working-class women in Depression-era Austria. Her participation in the camp system was part of a bureaucratic setup designed to enforce racialised labour discipline. Her later anonymity in Queens was preserved by the political interests of the Federal Republic, which reabsorbed thousands of fascist affiliates to uphold bourgeois stability.

Hoyer’s essay does not include any of these aspects. It omits the class character of fascism, the Nazi state's political economy, and the connection between fascist and postwar bourgeois institutions. As a result, the narrative tends to psychologize, moralise, and personalise fascism, but it never explains.

Substack as Historiographical Medium

Katja Hoyer’s recent work is deeply connected to its medium. Her Substack newsletter, Zeitgeist, functions not just as a platform but as a historiographical form influenced by platform capitalism's economic principles. Substack's subscription model—personality-driven, serial, and emotionally tuned—encourages trends that have diminished the quality of popular historical writing in the neoliberal age: favouring anecdotes over analysis, moral reflection over structural insights, and psychological storytelling over political economy.

Substack turns the historian into a personal brand. Subscribers follow not just for historical facts, but for the persona the historian projects. The historian’s voice becomes the main attraction, with the past serving as a setting for its display. This change is deliberate and structural, driven by the platform’s need for frequent content, which limits in-depth archival work and promotes episodic stories. Its focus on emotional connection prioritises moral stories—like “chilling” lives, “ordinary” individuals, and “extreme” decisions—over meaningful analysis of class, government, or capitalism.

Hoyer’s essays exemplify this approach well. They follow a steady pattern: starting with a biographical hook, then providing a psychological perspective, and concluding with a gentle liberal lesson. The past is depicted more as a mood to be experienced than as a political process. Fascism is portrayed as a moral issue rather than a class strategy. The GDR is shown as a nostalgic scene rather than a state with a specific social identity. The Cold War is described through human-interest stories rather than as a global clash of social systems.

This is more than just a stylistic choice; it serves an ideological purpose inherent to the medium. Substack’s favoured format—the serialised moral story—personalises historical responsibility, exaggerates dangers universally, and omits structural causality. This creates a sense of history that is emotionally comprehensible yet politically passive. It caters to a middle-class audience that desires engagement without discomfort, reflection without critique, and memory that avoids political implications.

Hoyer’s choice of Substack highlights more than her personal approach; it underscores a wider shift in historical writing driven by platform capitalism. This shift turns history into consumable content, transforms the historian into an influencer, and frames historical awareness as a commodity that serves the ideological demands of a crisis-ridden era.

Substack and the Rebranding of “Ordinary Germans”

Substack has become a key platform where modern writers reshape German history for a mostly Anglo-American global audience. Its economic model—focused on subscriptions, personality, and a lack of emphasis on political economy—creates a particular type of historical storytelling. It’s no surprise that Katja Hoyer’s work thrives here, as Substack favours interpretive approaches like anecdotal storytelling, moral psychology, and replacing structural causes with personal narratives.

The platform’s format influences its content. Substack essays tend to be short, emotional, and easy to read quickly. They aren't suited for in-depth analysis of class struggles, government institutions, or fascism’s political economy. Instead, they focus on personal stories—like the housemaid, the neighbour, or the nostalgic pensioner—as the primary units of historical significance. The “ordinary German” becomes a storytelling device and a moral figure whose life is summarised in 1,500 words, ending with a gentle liberal lesson about “choices,” “complexity,” or “human nature.”

This isn’t merely a stylistic choice but reflects the medium's ideological role. Substack’s favoured narrative approach tends to individualise historical accountability, turning fascist perpetrators into psychological riddles rather than recognising them as parts of a systemic structure. It broadens the concept of danger—suggesting that “ordinary people can become monsters”—while overlooking the specific class interests, state mechanisms, and economic crises that fuelled the Nazi movement. This shift replaces the political inquiry (“Why did German capital embrace fascism?”) with a moral one (“Why did this woman commit evil acts?”).

In this manner, Substack engages in the larger framework of memory capitalism: transforming the past into easily consumable content that lacks opposition. The “ordinary German” is transformed into a brand category, a narrative archetype enabling the platform to evoke emotional responses without provoking political tensions. The audience is encouraged to experience history emotionally rather than to comprehend it. Consequently, the past is presented as a mood rather than a coherent structure.

Hoyer’s utilisation of Substack is therefore purposeful. It highlights how platform capitalism shapes historical understanding, creating a portrayal of German history in which fascism is moralised, depoliticised, and disconnected from contemporary issues. The “ordinary German” becomes a warning rather than an active participant in a specific social context. This creates a story that is emotionally powerful, politically vague, and closely aligned with the ideological demands of a society in turmoil.

Hoyer’s success in Britain is closely tied to her supportive environment, including outlets like The Spectator, UnHerd, TLS, The Observer, and the broader liberal-conservative commentariat. This scene favours a style of historical writing that is accessible, impartial, and devoid of ideological conflicts. In this framework, Weimar is seen as a symbol of "polarisation" rather than a sign of capitalism’s failure. The GDR is perceived more as a nostalgic scene than a state defined by specific class traits. Fascism is framed as a cautionary tale against 'extremism,' rather than a tool used by the ruling class. History is approached as entertainment, not as a platform for critique. Hoyer’s work aligns with this environment, providing German history that is politics-free, memory without hostility, and narratives without causal explanations.

The emphasis on individual guilt in history today serves a contemporary purpose. By portraying fascism as the moral failure of “ordinary people,” the historian diverts blame from the capitalist class that financed Hitler, the state bodies involved in genocide, the postwar governments that reintegrated fascist figures, and the current ruling elite again embracing militarism. This explains why such narratives spread—they enable people to feel morally involved while sidestepping political accountability. They foster guilt without encouraging critical analysis, promote self-reflection without critique, and evoke memory without considering historical context. Consequently, Hoyer’s essay is not just lacking; it actively functions politically by supporting the ongoing effort to depoliticise history, aligning with the rightward shift in European politics.

Serious historiography aims to explain the past, not moralise about it. Fascism isn’t merely a psychological temptation; it is a class phenomenon that emerges from capitalist crises, not human nature. Specific institutions enable it, not personal choices. Preventing its recurrence requires conscious political action by the working class. Hoyer’s essay, along with its broader trend, obscures this understanding by substituting explanation with anecdote, structure with story, and politics with morality. This shifts fascism from a concrete product of capitalist crisis into a timeless moral hazard. In contrast, a materialist historiography emphasises that understanding the past is essential to addressing the present, warning against the ideological trap of individualising guilt.

Sources and Bibliography

I. Academic Sources on Memory, Capitalism, and Media

• Pilkington, Danny. Myopic Memory: Capitalism’s New Continuity in the Age of AI. Memory, Mind & Media, Vol. 3 (2024). A commentary on how neoliberalism and capitalist technological development constrain social memory and critical reflection.
• Erll, Astrid; Rigney, Ann; Wüstenberg, Jenny (eds.). Dynamics, Mediation, Mobilisation: Doing Memory Studies With Ann Rigney. De Gruyter, 2025. A major contribution to the study of mediated memory and its political uses.
• Rigney, Ann & Merrill, Samuel (eds.). Remembering Activism: Explorations in the Memory–Activism Nexus. Memory Studies, 17(5), 2024. Explores how memory is mobilised in contemporary political contexts.
• Chidgey, Red & Garde-Hansen, Joanne. Museums, Archives and Protest Memory. Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. Useful for understanding institutional mediation of memory.
• Reading, Anna. Autistic Dreaming: Vibrant Memory, Activism and Environment. Berghahn, 2025. A study of memory practices under contemporary social conditions.
• Erbil, Deniz; Rigney, Ann; Vlessing, Clara (eds.). Remembering Contentious Lives. Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. On the politics of remembering individuals within broader social conflicts.

II. Sources on Memory Culture, Digital Platforms, and Substack

• The Memory Palace (Substack). A Substack publication dedicated to the philosophy of memory, illustrating how academic memory discourse is migrating to platform‑based media.
• Hoskins, Andrew. Digital Memory Studies: Media Pasts in Transition. Routledge, 2018. Foundational for understanding how digital platforms reshape historical consciousness.
• van Dijck, José. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford University Press, 2013. Essential for situating Substack within the broader political economy of platform capitalism.
• Couldry, Nick & Mejias, Ulises. The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonising Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism. Stanford University Press, 2019. Critical for theorising how platforms commodify human expression, including historical narrative.
• Dean, Jodi. Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive. Polity, 2010. A theoretical precursor to understanding Substack’s affective economy.

III. Historiography, Fascism, and the “Ordinary Germans” Debate

• Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin, 1963. The foundational text for the “ordinary people doing evil” paradigm.
• Goldhagen, Daniel. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Knopf, 1996. The most influential voluntarist interpretation of perpetrator agency.
• Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. HarperCollins, 1992. The classic empirical counterpoint to Goldhagen, grounding perpetrator behaviour in situational and structural factors.
• Aly, Götz. Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State. Metropolitan Books, 2007. Shows how material incentives and class interests shaped popular complicity.
• Kershaw, Ian. The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation. Bloomsbury, 2015. Essential for situating “ordinary Germans” within structural historiography.
• North, David. A Marxist Critique of Daniel Goldhagen’s “Hitler’s Willing Executioners.” Detroit: Mehring Books, 1997.

IV. Sources on German Memory Politics and Popular History

• Moeller, Robert G. War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany. University of California Press, 2001. On postwar memory politics and the construction of “ordinary German” narratives.
• Niven, Bill. The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Useful for contextualising contemporary German memory culture.
• Confino, Alon. A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide. Yale University Press, 2014. On the ideological and cultural dimensions of Nazi violence.

V. Sources on Media, Narrative, and the Commodification of History

• Huyssen, Andreas. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford University Press, 2003. A foundational text for understanding memory as a cultural commodity.
• Assmann, Aleida. Cultural Memory and Western Civilisation: Functions, Media, Archives. Cambridge University Press, 2011. On the mediation and institutionalisation of memory.
• Garde-Hansen, Joanne. Media and Memory. Edinburgh University Press, 2011. A concise overview of how media forms shape historical consciousness.
• Olick, Jeffrey K. The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility. Routledge, 2007. Essential for understanding the moralization of historical guilt.

VI. Sources on Platform Capitalism and Digital Labour

• Srnicek, Nick. Platform Capitalism. Polity, 2017. The definitive analysis of the economic logic underpinning platforms like Substack.
• Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs, 2019. On how digital platforms commodify human behaviour and expression.
• Terranova, Tiziana. Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age. Pluto Press, 2004. A foundational text on digital labour and cultural production.

VII. Suggested Primary Sources for Katja Hoyer’s Work

(These are not cited from search; they are standard bibliographic entries.)

• Hoyer, Katja. Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871–1918. Penguin, 2021.
• Hoyer, Katja. Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949–1990. Penguin, 2023.
• Hoyer, Katja. Zeitgeist (Substack newsletter).
• Hoyer, Katja. Various essays in The Spectator, UnHerd, The Telegraph, etc.

VIII. Integration Notes for a Further Essay

These sources support:

• Memory capitalism → Pilkington (2024), Erll/Rigney (2025), Hoskins (2018), van Dijck (2013).
• Substack as historiographical medium → Dean (2010), Srnicek (2017), Zuboff (2019).
• Individualisation of historical guilt → Arendt (1963), Goldhagen (1996), Browning (1992), Olick (2007).
• Ordinary Germans debate → Kershaw, Aly, Confino.
• German memory politics → Moeller, Niven.
• Media and memory → Assmann, Garde-Hansen, Huyssen.