A “Masterclass in Scholarship” or an Ideological Retreat? John Morrill’s Cromwell Edition and the Politics of Historical Revisionism

The publication of John Morrill’s new edition of The Letters, Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell has been greeted with a remarkable unanimity of praise from the historical profession. Such consensus is itself a political fact. As the uploaded document insists, this edition “deserves to be examined not merely as an editorial achievement but in terms of its political and historiographical implications,” and the “universal acclaim from the historical profession should itself be interrogated.”¹ The task of Marxist historiography is not to echo academic fashion but to expose the class forces that shape it. Morrill’s edition is not a neutral scholarly improvement upon Thomas Carlyle’s 1845 text; it is an intervention in a decades‑long ideological struggle over the meaning of the English Revolution.

Carlyle’s Edition and the Revolutionary Tradition

Thomas Carlyle’s 1845 edition of Cromwell’s writings was a landmark in nineteenth‑century historiography. Despite his limitations—his “great man” theory and his later reactionary turn—Carlyle possessed the intellectual courage to recognise Cromwell as a revolutionary figure. Marx praised Carlyle for having “taken the literary field against the bourgeoisie at a time when its views, tastes and ideas held the whole of official English literature totally in thrall,” citing “his apology for Cromwell” as one of his most significant interventions.²

Carlyle understood, however imperfectly, that the English Civil War was not a constitutional misunderstanding but, in the words of the uploaded document, “a world-historical convulsion in which a class seized power through the execution of a king.”³ This insight—partial, distorted, but nonetheless real—explains why Marx and Engels valued Carlyle’s work. They recognised in the English Revolution the first great bourgeois revolution, the event that cleared the ground for capitalist development and inaugurated the modern epoch.

Carlyle’s edition was flawed, as the document acknowledges: “his transcriptions were not always reliable, his selection was idiosyncratic, his commentary was infused with his own increasingly authoritarian worldview.”⁴ But these were the flaws of a bourgeois radical struggling to articulate the class dynamics of a revolution whose full meaning only Marxism could later reveal.

The Rise of Revisionism and Morrill’s Role

John Morrill is not a neutral editor. He is a leading figure of the revisionist school that has dominated English Civil War historiography since the 1970s. This tendency—associated with Conrad Russell and others—denies that the 1640s constituted a bourgeois revolution. It rejects the notion of a rising bourgeoisie, dismisses the class character of the conflict, and reinterprets the revolution as a contingent political or religious crisis.

The revisionists insist that “there was no bourgeois revolution because there was no rising bourgeoisie and that people from all social classes can be found on either side of the struggle.”⁵ Even Cromwell, they argue, was not a revolutionary but “a representative of the declining gentry.”⁶

This is the intellectual framework within which Morrill has worked for decades. His edition is therefore, as the document states, “not a politically innocent replacement of a ‘flawed’ Victorian text with a ‘scientific’ modern one. It is an intervention in a long-running class struggle within historiography.”⁷

What Revisionism Seeks to Erase

The revisionist school does not correct Carlyle’s limitations from a more advanced standpoint. It retreats from them. It denies that the English Revolution was a revolution at all.

Against this retreat, Christopher Hill’s Marxist historiography stands as a towering achievement. Hill demonstrated in God’s Englishman that Cromwell was a revolutionary leader of the bourgeoisie: a man who purged Parliament until it reflected the needs of his class, built the New Model Army as an instrument of revolutionary power, and suppressed the Levellers when they threatened to push the revolution beyond the limits of capitalist development. Hill’s position was that Cromwell “must be understood as a revolutionary leader of the bourgeoisie… who suppressed the Levellers when the plebeian elements threatened to push the revolution beyond the limits required for capitalist society.”⁸

Hill’s work followed Trotsky’s analysis in Where Is Britain Going?, which identified two revolutionary traditions in British history—Cromwell and Chartism—both of which were systematically denied by the Whig myth of gradualism. Revisionism, for all its claims to sophistication, represents a return to this Whig outlook: the comforting fiction that Britain has been uniquely blessed with peaceful, incremental change. As the document notes, Simon Schama proudly declares himself “a born-again Whig.”⁹

The Political Meaning of Today’s Acclaim

The universal praise for Morrill’s edition is not a matter of scholarly merit alone. It reflects the political trajectory of the bourgeoisie itself. The class that once celebrated Cromwell as its revolutionary ancestor now finds that ancestry embarrassing. Having long since abandoned all progressive historical tasks, the bourgeoisie prefers to pretend that revolution never happened.

The bourgeoisie now insists that “the execution of Charles I was a regrettable incident, that the Levellers were irrelevant extremists, and that the whole unpleasant episode could have been avoided if only people had been more reasonable.”¹⁰This ideological sanitisation is not accidental. It serves contemporary political needs. A ruling class that fears revolution must deny that revolutions have ever been necessary, progressive, or successful.

Hence, the “unanimity of the acclaim” for Morrill’s edition. It “conforms to what the contemporary historical profession wants to believe about the seventeenth century and about revolution in general.”¹¹ A genuinely critical edition—one that illuminated rather than obscured the class forces at work—would not receive such praise. 

The Working Class and the Revolutionary Heritage

The working class has every interest in understanding the English Revolution for what it was: the first in the series of bourgeois revolutions that created the conditions for modern capitalism and, in doing so, brought into being the proletariat itself.

The revolutionary traditions of the bourgeoisie—however historically limited—belong not to today’s anaemic liberalism but to the international working class. As the document concludes, these traditions “belong to the heritage of the international working class – not to the anaemic, phlegmatic liberalism that now disowns them.”¹²

To defend the revolutionary content of the English Civil War is therefore not an antiquarian exercise. It is part of the broader struggle to arm the working class with an understanding of the historical processes that shaped the modern world—and to expose the ideological falsifications through which the bourgeoisie seeks to obscure its own past and the revolutionary future that confronts it.

Notes

1.  “This is a significant publication… the universal acclaim from the historical profession should itself be interrogated.”
2. Ibid.: Marx praised Carlyle for “having taken the literary field against the bourgeoisie… citing specifically ‘his apology for Cromwell’.”
3. Ibid.: Carlyle recognised the Civil War as “a world-historical convulsion in which a class seized power through the execution of a king.”
4. Ibid.: “His transcriptions were not always reliable… his commentary was infused with his own increasingly authoritarian worldview.”
5. Ibid.: “There was no bourgeois revolution because there was no rising bourgeoisie…”
6. Ibid.: “Even Cromwell… can better be understood as a representative of the declining gentry.”
7. Ibid.: Morrill’s edition “is an intervention in a long-running class struggle within historiography.”
8. Ibid.: Cromwell “must be understood as a revolutionary leader of the bourgeoisie… who suppressed the Levellers…”
9. Ibid.: “Simon Schama… happily declares himself ‘a born-again Whig.’”
10. Ibid.: The bourgeoisie now claims “the execution of Charles I was a regrettable incident…”
11. Ibid.: Morrill’s edition “conforms to what the contemporary historical profession wants to believe…”
12. Ibid.: “The revolutionary traditions of the bourgeoisie… belong to the heritage of the international working class.”

 

Carlo Ginzburg (1939–2026): An Obituary of a Historian of the Fragment in an Age of Retreat¹

Carlo Ginzburg, who died on June 17^th  2026, at the age of 87, was one of the most influential historians of the late twentieth century—a scholar whose work, especially The Cheese and the Worms, became emblematic of the micro historical turn that reshaped large sectors of the historical profession from the 1970s onward.² His death marks the passing of a figure whose intellectual trajectory expressed, in concentrated form, the political and theoretical disorientation of an entire generation of European intellectuals confronted with the defeats of the working class and the collapse of the revolutionary movements of the post‑1968 period.³

Ginzburg was an exceptionally knowledgeable historian, known for his precise philology and archival skills. However, despite his brilliance, his work was fundamentally limited by a significant theoretical shortcoming: he distanced himself from the analysis of social totality, class relations, and the laws governing historical progress.⁴ His body of work serves as a testament to the intellectual impact of the prolonged decline of the workers’ movement, the fading of Marxism in academia, and the growth of culturalist approaches that prioritized fragments over entire systems, anecdotes over structures, and the idea of the “exceptional normal” over the actual processes of class struggle.⁵

A Scholar Formed in the Ruins of the Italian Left

Born in Turin in 1939 to the literary critic Leone Ginzburg and the novelist Natalia Ginzburg, Carlo Ginzburg grew up in a milieu shaped by anti‑fascist resistance and the cultural ferment of postwar Italy.⁶ His intellectual development occurred not during the revolutionary surge of the late 1960s but afterwards, as that movement waned. The autunno caldo of 1969, along with the factory councils and mass strikes that challenged Italian capitalism, was succeeded by the fragmentation of the extra-parliamentary left, the infiltration of terrorism by some intelligentsia, and an overall sense of demoralization within the radical circles.⁷

It was in this context—of retreat, exhaustion, and the abandonment of revolutionary politics—that microhistory emerged as a self‑consciously anti‑totalizing method.⁸ Ginzburg wasn't a direct participant in these conflicts, but his intellectual focus was influenced by the same circumstances. His shift away from topics like class, modes of production, and the analysis of capitalist development toward the local, the unusual, and the culturally unique was intentional. It reflected the ideology of a generation that had become disillusioned with the prospects of revolutionary change.⁹

The Cheese and the Worms: Achievement and Limitation

Ginzburg’s most celebrated work, The Cheese and the Worms (1976), reconstructed the mental universe of Menocchio, a sixteenth‑century Friulian miller executed by the Inquisition.¹⁰ Through painstaking analysis of trial records, Ginzburg demonstrated that this semi‑literate peasant possessed a strikingly original cosmology, drawing on scraps of printed books, oral traditions, and his own material experience.¹¹

This was a real achievement. Against the Annales School’s depersonalised serial history—what Guy Bois called “a history without people”—Ginzburg insisted that the consciousness of the oppressed was recoverable, complex, and worthy of study.¹² Yet the very category at the heart of the book—“popular culture”—revealed the idealist foundation of Ginzburg’s method.¹³ Popular culture was defined not by class position or the relations of production but by its opposition to “elite” culture.¹⁴

Menocchio’s cosmology—his vision of the world emerging from chaos “just as cheese is made from milk, and worms appear in it”—was rooted in his daily labour as a miller.¹⁵ But Ginzburg’s framework could not account for this material determination. Culture, in his hands, became autonomous, self‑generating, governed by internal dynamics of transmission and reinterpretation.¹⁶

Microhistory and the Flight from Totality

Ginzburg’s microhistory was premised on the intensive study of the “exceptional normal”—the anomalous case that illuminates broader structures.¹⁷ But as a programmatic orientation, microhistory systematically avoided the analysis of the totality of social relations.¹⁸ It substituted the fragment for the whole.

Marxism does not reject the study of individuals or local contexts. The Eighteenth Brumaire is a masterful analysis of individual actors—Louis Bonaparte, the party leaders, the lumpen conspirators—. Still, these individuals are understood as representatives of class forces acting within a determinate historical conjuncture.¹⁹ Ginzburg’s method, by contrast, provided no basis for moving from the village miller to the feudal mode of production, from the Inquisition trial to the role of the Church in the class struggles of early modern Europe.²⁰

The “Evidential Paradigm”: A Retreat from Scientific Method

In “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm” (1979), Ginzburg proposed an epistemology based on the hunter’s tracking of traces—the conjectural reconstruction of reality from insignificant details.²¹ He counterposed this to the “Galilean” paradigm of experimental, mathematical science.²²

From a Marxist standpoint, this represented a retreat from the aspiration to scientific knowledge of society.²³ The “evidential paradigm” elevated the fragmentary, the intuitive, and the conjectural into a methodological principle.²⁴

Ginzburg and Gramsci: A Culturalist Appropriation

Ginzburg engaged with Marxism primarily through the cultural writings of Antonio Gramsci.²⁵ But his use of Gramsci was selective and culturalist. He extracted insights into hegemony while discarding the revolutionary political framework within which those insights were developed.²⁶

Gramsci’s concept of hegemony was not a cultural‑studies toolkit; it was a theory of bourgeois rule and proletarian revolution.²⁷ Ginzburg’s Gramsci was a Gramsci without the October Revolution, without the factory councils, without the Communist Party.²⁸

Legacy: A Historian of the Fragment in an Age of Defeat

Carlo Ginzburg leaves behind a body of work that is often brilliant in its particulars, rich in empirical detail, and animated by a genuine commitment to recovering the voices of the oppressed.²⁹ But his work does not provide an alternative to historical materialism.³⁰ It provides, at best, empirical material that can only be adequately understood through the Marxist method he declined to embrace.³¹

Microhistory can tell us what Menocchio thought; it cannot explain why he thought it, why he was burned for it, or why the society that burned him was destined to be overthrown by the class whose labour sustained it.³² Those questions require a theory of history grounded in the mode of production, class struggle, and the laws of social development.³³

ENDNOTES

1. For a biographical overview, see Carlo Ginzburg, Il filo e le tracce (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2006).
2. Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth‑Century Miller, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).
3. Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism (London: HarperCollins, 1996).
4. Perry Anderson, “The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci,” New Left Review I/100 (1976).
5. Geoff Eley, A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society (Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press, 2005).
6. Natalia Ginzburg, Family Lexicon, trans. Jenny McPhee (New York: NYRB Classics, 2017).
7. Robert Lumley, States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978 (London: Verso, 1990).
8. Giovanni Levi, “On Microhistory,” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Peter Burke (Cambridge: Polity, 1991).
9. Eley, A Crooked Line.
10. Ginzburg, Cheese and the Worms.
11. Ibid.
12. Guy Bois, The Crisis of Feudalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
13. Eley, A Crooked Line.
14. Levi, “On Microhistory.”
15. Ginzburg, Cheese and the Worms, 4.
16. Ibid.
17. Carlo Ginzburg, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know About It,” Critical Inquiry 20, no. 1 (1993).
18. Ibid.
19. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852).
20. Bois, Crisis of Feudalism.
21. Carlo Ginzburg, “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm,” Theory and Society 7, no. 3 (1979).
22. Ibid.
23. Alex Callinicos, Making History (Leiden: Brill, 2004).
24. Ginzburg, “Clues.”
25. Carlo Ginzburg, “Some Queries Addressed to Myself,” in Threads and Traces (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).
26. Anderson, “Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci.”
27. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. Hoare and Nowell‑Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971).
28. Ibid.
29. Ginzburg, Threads and Traces.
30. Callinicos, Making History.
31. Ibid.
32. Ginzburg, Cheese and the Worms.
33. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire.

 

A Marxist Critique of Robin Blackburn’s An Unfinished Revolution: Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln

Robin Blackburn’s An Unfinished Revolution: Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln offers a significant addition to the study of Marx’s role in the American Civil War. It includes Marx’s journalism, his letters to Engels, and the International Workingmen’s Association’s messages to Lincoln. However, as the review suggests, Blackburn’s political and methodological approach—shaped by the decline of the academic left and its distancing from revolutionary Marxism—limits the interpretations. While the book sheds light on many aspects, it ultimately does not fully capture the revolutionary importance of the history it describes.

Blackburn’s observations are accurate. He rightly highlights that Marx’s engagement with the Civil War was core to his political work in the 1860s, not just a side interest. As the review states, Marx closely tracked military campaigns, contributed extensively to the New York Daily Tribune and the Vienna Presse, and coordinated widespread working-class resistance in Britain against Palmerston's pro-Confederate interventionist policies.”¹ Blackburn also notes Marx’s respect for Lincoln as a bourgeois revolutionary who, faced with circumstances, went beyond his class boundaries. Marx’s 1865 tribute—cited in the assessment—praises Lincoln as “one of the rare men who succeed in becoming great, without ceasing to be good.”²—was not diplomatic rhetoric but a political judgment grounded in historical necessity.

Blackburn’s political framework is rooted in his longstanding connection to the New Left Review and its post-Trotskyist origins. The assessment places Blackburn within the tradition of the International Marxist Group and the reunified Fourth International, which split from the International Committee in 1963, leading to a trajectory of political abandonment. This milieu transitioned from Pabloite entryism into the Labour Party to Eurocommunism, support for national-liberation movements, and ultimately to academic postmodernism and identity politics prevalent in today's pseudo-left. As noted, this development “is not a series of disconnected errors. It flows from the abandonment of the central Marxist principle: the political independence of the working class and the fight for world socialist revolution".”³

This political lineage influences Blackburn’s view of the American Revolution as an unfinished process. Marx considered the Civil War a bourgeois-democratic revolution that dismantled the slaveholding elite. However, the emancipation of four million enslaved individuals highlighted social issues—land redistribution, political rights, education, and economic independence—that capitalism could not address. The failure of Reconstruction—marked by the withdrawal of federal troops and the reinstatement of white supremacist rule in the South—further exemplifies this ongoing incompleteness.”⁴—expressed the class limits of the bourgeoisie, not the failure of American democracy in the abstract. From this perspective, the unfinished tasks of the Civil War point not toward liberal reform but toward socialist revolution.

Blackburn, however, examines the issue from a left-liberal reformist perspective. The critique suggests that the New Left Review’s shifting politics—ranging from Keynesianism to left-nationalism and academic radicalism—fail to recognize the working class as a crucial revolutionary subject. Consequently, their idea of the “unfinished revolution” stays confined within bourgeois political boundaries. Here, the working class is seen merely as an object of analysis rather than as an active agent shaping history.

The methodological critique is equally decisive. Marx did not approach the Civil War as an intellectual curiosity but as a revolutionary strategist. His journalism was “a political act aimed at clarifying the stakes of the conflict for workers in Europe and America.”⁵ He aimed to analyze the class forces at play and the strategic consequences of their conflict. Blackburn’s research, however, views Marx’s involvement as a moment in intellectual history rather than a blueprint for revolutionary action. This difference in approach highlights the divide between Marxism as a revolutionary practice and the academic Marxism that now largely influences the post-Trotskyist left.

The assessment compares Blackburn’s method with the stance of the International Committee of the Fourth International regarding the 1619 Project. It characterizes the project as a defense of the revolutionary legacy of the Civil War, opposing a racialist misrepresentation. The argument suggests that the 1619 Project replaces “an immutable racial pathology”⁶ with the class dynamics of American history, thereby serving contemporary ruling‑class interests by dividing the working class. This example illustrates what it means to apply Marx’s method to contemporary political struggles: history is not merely to be interpreted but to be used as a guide to revolutionary practice.

The review concludes by asserting that the working class is the rightful successor to the democratic revolutions of 1776 and 1865. These victories—such as equality before the law, the abolition of slavery, and birthright citizenship—are currently under persistent threat from a capitalist oligarchy that is shifting towards authoritarianism. Defending these gains is inherently linked to the struggle for socialism. As David North writes, “The American working class will not arrive at the construction of independent organs of struggle and rule without studying the history of the country in which it lives.”⁷ The unfinished tasks of the Civil War, the assessment argues, cannot be resolved within the framework of the New Left Review or the academic left more broadly.

Blackburn’s book is useful but constrained. It retrieves key historical data but misses its revolutionary significance. A true Marxist approach to the Civil War should start not with academic analysis but with revolutionary planning. Only then can the concept of the “unfinished revolution” be fully understood and realized.

Footnotes

1. A Marxist Assessment of Robin Blackburn’s An Unfinished Revolution, 1. (“Marx followed the military campaigns in detail, wrote extensively… organised mass working-class opposition…”)
2. Ibid., 2. (“one of the rare men who succeed in becoming great, without ceasing to be good”)
3. Ibid., 3. (“is not a series of disconnected errors… abandonment of the central Marxist principle…”)
4. Ibid., 4. (“the withdrawal of federal troops, the restoration of white supremacist rule in the South”)
5. Ibid., 5. (“a political act aimed at clarifying the stakes of the conflict for workers…”)
6. Ibid., 6. (“an immutable racial pathology”)
7. Ibid., 7. (“The American working class will not arrive at the construction of independent organs of struggle…”)

 

The Impotence of the Pabloite Critique: Tariq Ali and the Politics of Permanent Evasion

The political turmoil in the British Labour Party has once again prompted a wave of commentary from the pseudo-left intelligentsia. Tariq Ali’s recent article “Tweedledee” is particularly revealing; despite its superficial correctness, it ultimately exposes the exhaustion of the Pabloite tradition he has represented for over fifty years. Ali’s article lists accurate observations that ultimately lead nowhere, serving as a display of radical awareness designed to stop the working class from reaching revolutionary insights.[1]

Ali’s critique of Starmer and Burnham is accurate but ultimately ineffective. He is “factually correct on many points,” such as Starmer’s targeting of the left, his backing of austerity and the Gaza conflict, and Burnham’s clear stance on welfare reductions and increased militarism. Ali even admits that Labour’s drop to 18 per cent reflects a broader collapse of social democracy across the continent, driven by “total capitulation to the markets and US policies.” These are significant acknowledgements.

However, these are the admissions of a man who has spent years recording failures without ever helping to create a revolutionary alternative. Ali’s is "the truth of the salon radical," someone who watches history from a distance and then congratulates himself for seeing the blood on the floor.

A Political Life in Permanent Retreat

Tariq Ali’s political journey does not trace the path of a revolutionary who has strayed or a Marxist corrupted by age. Instead, it reflects a man who remained within the petty-bourgeois radical environment that influenced him, with his career marked by adapting to the forces he once opposed. His recent article, “Tweedledee,” is not an anomaly but a reflection of a lifetime spent avoiding the core issue of modern politics: the need to develop a revolutionary leadership within the working class.

Ali’s political biography recounts a series of retreats, often cloaked in rhetorical flourish and geopolitical analysis. His life has been shaped by Pabloism, the ideology that fragmented the Fourth International into the “broad left,” subordinated Marxism to Stalinism and bourgeois nationalism, and shifted focus from revolutionary strategy to impressionistic commentary on global affairs.

The Early Years: Radicalism Without Strategy

Ali’s early prominence in the late 1960s—through his involvement with the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, media presence, and ties to the International Marxist Group—has been mythologised as proof of revolutionary dedication. However, it actually reflected the political stance of a generation of radicalised students who, while genuinely opposed to imperialism, still maintained a fundamentally petty-bourgeois class perspective.

The IMG, representing the British section of the Pabloite “Fourth International,” already believed that external forces would inevitably pressure Stalinist, social-democratic, and nationalist bureaucracies to adopt revolutionary roles. Ali fully supported this view, which provided a convenient excuse for avoiding the difficult and unglamorous work of building a Marxist party within the working class. According to David Walsh, Ali “passed through the International Marxist Group… as a careerist passes through a fashionable phase,” and his greed and self-interest “developed early on, and just grew.”

The 1970s–80s: From Revolutionary Pretensions to Open Adaptation

The dissolution of the IMG into the Labour Party in 1981 was not a betrayal of its principles but their natural evolution. Pabloism consistently opposed the working class's struggle for political independence. Ali’s active involvement in this process demonstrated his shift from a radical outsider to a left-wing figure within the Labour structure.

During this time, Ali’s political writing increasingly focused on geopolitical issues. His books on the Soviet Union, the Middle East, and world politics consistently failed to mention the working class as an active force in history. Instead, he highlighted “progressive” bourgeois figures, nationalist leaders, and dissident bureaucrats as the main agents of change.

His 1988 tribute to Boris Yeltsin’s “political courage” stands out as a particularly grotesque example. It is not surprising that Ali could praise the man responsible for dismantling the USSR, looting its social resources, and causing hardship for millions. This attitude epitomises Pabloite politics: the idea that history is shaped by enlightened elites rather than the working class.

The 1990s–2000s: The Global Commentator and the Lesser Evilist

By the 1990s, Ali had established himself as a prominent figure in the global commentariat. He was no longer seen as a revolutionary but rather as a left-leaning analyst providing insights on world events for the liberal intellectuals. During this period, his political responses show a growing alignment with bourgeois politics.

His advisory role with Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party—widely viewed as highly corrupt and reactionary in South Asia—was part of his consistent alignment with “progressive” elites and not a mistake. His 2004 endorsement of John Kerry, motivated by the belief that “a defeat for a warmonger government would be seen as a step forward," exemplifies decades of justifying lesser-evil tactics. This approach characterises his political strategy: a series of capitulations to bourgeois politics disguised as sophisticated radicalism.

The New Left Review and the Cultivation of Cynicism

Ali’s extensive connection with the New Left Review has played a key role in shaping his political development. The NLR, acting as the intellectual hub for the Pabloite thinkers, has influenced Ali’s outlook, combining literary depth, geopolitical insights, and a cultivated sense of pessimism.

Ali’s writing embodies the NLR’s typical outlook—cynicism masked as realism. His “Tweedledee” article showcases this, offering a confident shrug at Labourism’s crisis. It presents accurate observations but shows no revolutionary intent; it’s “the knowing shrug of the NLR intellectual who has seen it all and believes nothing can be changed."

This cynicism is not harmless. It functions as a political brake, ensuring that the working class remains trapped within the framework of bourgeois politics. 

The Present: A Spent Force in a New Crisis

The current British political crisis—marked by Starmer’s downfall, Burnham’s rise, and the collapse of social democracy—has revealed the failure of the pseudo-left. Ali’s reply has been to vaguely reference the Greens and the remnants of Corbynism without critically assessing their true influence.

He cannot face the reality that the Greens “actively supplied their voters to Burnham" or that Corbynism “exists in name only” following its systematic demobilisation by Corbyn himself. Recognising this would mean admitting that the pseudo-left has significantly hindered the rise of a revolutionary alternative. Ali is unable to reach revolutionary conclusions because he has spent his entire political career avoiding such insights.

Tariq Ali as a Political Type

Tariq Ali embodies a political archetype: a Pabloite intellectual who favours commentary over strategy, cynicism over Marxism, and adaptation over fight. His political journey—from an IMG radical to NLR leader, from a Yeltsin supporter to a Corbyn sympathiser—reflects a tradition that has repeatedly betrayed the working class. The pseudo-left is not an ally for revolution but an obstacle. Ali’s career exemplifies this pattern.

The Pabloite Method: Cynicism as a Worldview

Ali’s political ineffectiveness is rooted in his methodological approach rather than personal failings. It stems from the Pabloite tradition he came from and remains connected to through the New Left Review, which he recommends at the end of his article. Pabloism has shifted away from the Marxist view of the working class as the revolutionary agent. Instead, it favours geopolitical speculation, petty-bourgeois radicalism, and a cultivated cynicism that dismisses revolutionary strategy as naive.

Pabloism replaces class analysis with geopolitical commentary, replaces revolutionary strategy with world-weary cynicism, and favours literary sophistication over the diligent work of building a party. Ali’s label, “Tweedledee,” is more than just a dismissive joke; it symbolises the attitude of an NLR intellectual who believes they have seen everything and that nothing can change. It suggests that all parties are identical, outcomes are fixed, and resistance is pointless. This attitude is not Marxism but resignation disguised as insight.

Ali admits that the Corbyn supporters “disgraced themselves by rejoining the Parliamentary Labour Party,” but he still sees them as the foundation for creating something new. This isn't analysis; it's avoidance. Asking why Corbynism didn't succeed means confronting the influence of the trade-union bureaucracy, the Labour left, and the pseudo-left intellectuals—including Ali himself—that prevented an independent working-class movement from forming. And that's a question Ali cannot pose, because he has no answer.

The Real Question: What Is to Be Done?

Labour's crisis isn't about personalities or shifting policies. It reveals a fundamental truth: Labour, as the WSWS states, is “a political tool of the corporate and financial elite—body and soul.” Burnham isn't just a lesser evil; he's a candidate representing continuity who will deepen the attack on workers. The Corbyn supporters and the trade-union leadership have been key in silencing opposition and maintaining Labour's authority.

The pseudo-left—spanning from the New Left Review and the Greens to the Corbynite faction—acts not as a genuine alternative but as an obstacle. Its purpose is to articulate the crisis within bourgeois politics in increasingly elaborate terms, all the while preventing the working class from reaching revolutionary conclusions. The working class doesn't require more superficial commentary like Tweedledum-and-Tweedledee; it needs its own political party.

 

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[1] Tweedledee Tariq Ali 19 June 2026-newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/tweedledee

Scam Compounds and the Terminal Crisis of Global Capitalism

 Introduction: A System Exposed in Its Naked Brutality

The insights in Scam: Inside Southeast Asia’s Cybercrime Compounds go beyond exposing a criminal underground. They reveal how modern capitalism operates, eliminating its ideological illusions. As noted, these compounds exemplify “the most extreme manifestation of the essential logic of capitalism; these are human beings that enjoy no rights beyond those of the commodity: to be bought, sold, and used.” This point is crucial. The authors show that this isn't a deviation but the inevitable outcome of a global system built on extracting surplus value from increasingly vulnerable, disposable, and surplus populations.

The scam compounds—fortified complexes in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and the Philippines—are not anomalies. They operate as state-approved capitalist ventures, are integrated into global financial systems, and depend on the same labour control, coercion, and profit-motivated methods that drive the world economy. The book’s findings underscore an important point the WSWS has long stressed: modern slavery is not just a leftover from pre-capitalist eras but a core feature of today's capitalism.

The Scam Compound as a New Form of Capitalist Production

Industrialised Fraud as a Labour Regime

The scam compounds exemplify a new, hybrid form of capitalist production: they commodify deception itself, employing trafficked workers who are both victims and coerced tools of exploitation. Workers are compelled “to become the instruments of exploitation against others,” caught in a “victim-offender trap.” This is not just crime; it is organised, hierarchical, profit-driven production on a global scale. The compounds operate through shift systems, quotas, performance metrics, punitive discipline, vertical management, and financialised profit extraction. Essentially, they resemble the Amazon warehouse, Foxconn factory, and Uber.

The Role of Surplus Humanity

The Asia-Pacific region’s share of “66 per cent of the world’s modern slaves” is intentional. It results from large-scale surplus populations generated by agrarian collapse, IMF-led structural adjustments, export-focused industrialisation, land dispossession, and climate-driven displacement. These millions of people serve as the human foundation for both sweatshops and scam operations. Capitalism not only accepts these conditions but depends on them.

State, Crime, and Capital: A Single Integrated Apparatus

A key politically sensitive point in the document is its claim that “systemic impunity" is not a flaw but the norm in the capitalist state within these regions. The compounds are not secret criminal hideouts but are: Licensed casinos, tax-paying tech parks, Joint ventures with political elites, and protected by police and military forces. The distinctions between state, business, and organised crime are nonexistent—they are fully integrated. Although this situation is not unique to Southeast Asia, it is more visible there. The scam compound exemplifies how the capitalist state can function under high inequality and global capital flows: as a tool to safeguard profits, irrespective of legality, morality, or human cost.

The Liberal‑Reformist Dead End: The Limits of the Verso Framework

As the book in question was published by Verso, it is worth looking at the politics promoted by the publisher. Verso Books holds a unique place in today's intellectual scene. It is the most prominent “radical” publisher in the English-speaking world, but also one of the most politically tame. Its catalogue features detailed explorations of global capitalism's horrors—such as sweatshops, border controls, environmental destruction, and financial exploitation—yet it often stops short of advocating the revolutionary actions that its evidence suggests are necessary.

Although Verso’s output “meticulously documents capitalist horrors, it ultimately channels opposition into dead-end political conclusions. This is not just a flaw; it defines Verso’s role: managing dissent, transforming systemic critique into marketable radicalism, and preventing outrage from developing into revolutionary consciousness. Its degeneration is therefore political, structural, and historical, not merely editorial.

The Political Economy of Radical Publishing

Verso originated within the New Left Review environment, which itself developed after the 1956 crisis of Stalinism and the decline of traditional Communist Parties. Its founders aimed to establish a space for independent Marxist scholarship, separate from both Soviet orthodoxy and Western social democracy. However, the fall of the USSR, neoliberal changes in academia, and the commercialisation of “radical theory” have shifted Verso from being a platform for Marxist discussion to a niche brand within left-wing critique.

Today, Verso operates under the same market logic as any other cultural enterprise: it must sell books, cultivate a brand, appeal to a professional-managerial audience, and avoid alienating liberal institutions, NGOs, and academia. It also must stay within the ideological boundaries of the capitalist state. This structural position shapes its politics, preventing Verso from advocating the overthrow of capitalism, since its survival depends on reproducing the class relations it criticises. Therefore, there's a contradiction: Verso markets radical ideas as a commodity while simultaneously neutralising their revolutionary potential.

The Ideological Function: Radicalism Without Revolution

Verso’s political decline is most evident in the genre typified by Scam: Inside Southeast Asia’s Cybercrime Compounds. This book reveals a shocking brutality—trafficked workers coerced into large-scale fraud, shielded by alliances between the state and criminal networks—yet the political scope stays limited to: “better regulation,” “international cooperation,” “corporate accountability,” “ethical consumerism,” and “strengthening civil society.”

The founder of the Global Slavery Index suggests consumers should “ask the company where it was made,” a view that simplifies structural exploitation into individual choices. This encapsulates Verso’s approach: a systemic critique that ultimately issues a moral urging. The literature that arises from this approach: identifies capitalism’s crimes, explains how it operates, details its victims, reveals its hypocrisies, and then offers solutions that preserve capitalism. This is not radicalism but left-wing liberalism with a Marxist visual style.

The Class Basis of Verso’s Degeneration

To grasp Verso’s political direction, it’s essential to analyse the class forces it appeals to. Its primary audience includes: academics, NGO professionals, graduate students, cultural workers, journalists, and the progressive segment of the professional-managerial class. This group opposes the ruling class but is wary of the working class. They advocate for social justice yet fear social revolution. Their goal is to regulate capitalism, not dismantle it. They pursue moral purity rather than engaging in class struggle.

Verso’s catalogue reflects this social position. Its books critique capitalism’s excesses but stop short of challenging its fundamental structure. They support reforms that do not threaten property rights, promote activism that does not confront state authority, and celebrate movements driven by moral outrage rather than class analysis. Furthermore, these publications favour identity-based frameworks over class-based explanations. This approach explains why Verso can publish works on slavery, trafficking, and exploitation without concluding that only expropriation of capital by the working class can eliminate these issues.

The Commodification of Dissent

Verso’s decline is closely linked to the wider commodification of radical politics. In the neoliberal age, dissent has become a commercialised niche. Radical critique is often packaged, branded, and marketed to an audience that treats it as a lifestyle choice. Verso’s role is to offer: the semblance of radicalism, the language of critique, the aesthetics of Marxism, and the moral comfort of “being informed” — all without endangering the material interests of its readership. That’s why Verso books frequently conclude with appeals to NGOs, calls for increased “awareness,” demands for transparency, pleas for ethical consumption, and proposals for regulatory change. These are not revolutionary tactics; instead, they serve as means of draining revolutionary energy.

The Political Consequences: Paralysis in the Face of Crisis

The world faces an unprecedented crisis: widespread inequality, worsening climate change, mass migration caused by war and ecological collapse, authoritarian regimes, disrupted global supply chains, a resurgence of slavery and forced labour, border militarisation, and rising imperialist conflicts. The Scam Compounds are not isolated incidents but part of a larger ongoing pattern of exploitation. This includes Amazon warehouses with injury rates exceeding those in logging and mining, gig-economy workers considered "independent contractors,” sweatshops in Bangladesh and Vietnam, migrant detention centres in the US and EU, Foxconn’s suicide nets, and quasi-indentured labour in the global shipping industry. The same relentless pursuit of profit fuels these issues—driving Amazon warehouse conditions, the gig economy, and catastrophic factory collapses and suicides. The scam compound is capitalism stripped of its facade.

Why Policing Cannot Solve the Problem

The push for transnational policing—like Interpol task forces, crypto-tracking, and border enforcement—relies on a major misconception. These scam hubs are not outside the system; they are embedded within it, serving as profitable points in global capital flows. Policing cannot eliminate them because it addresses only symptoms, not root causes. It ends up reinforcing the repressive tools of the capitalist state, shifting exploitation elsewhere, criminalising migrants and trafficked workers, and leaving the profit system intact. No amount of transnational policing… will abolish this industry.”

Conclusion: The Future Is Being Written in Sihanoukville

The scam compounds aren't just a peripheral horror; they serve as a warning—a preview of the future capitalism is heading toward as its crisis worsens. With the rise of automation, climate disasters, and geopolitical instability, the ruling class will increasingly depend on Coercive labour systems, criminalised profit-making, State-backed violence, Digital monitoring, and disposable populations. The scam compound is not the final form but a prototype. Only the organised, global effort of the working class can stop this slide into a world in which the Sihanoukville model becomes widespread.

 

Alexander Rabinowitch (1934–2026): Historian of the October Revolution and Defender of Historical Truth

 

Alexander Rabinowitch, who passed away on June 16, 2026, at age 91, was the foremost American historian of the 1917 Russian Revolution. Over more than sixty years, his extensive research created a body of scholarship that critically challenged both Stalinist distortions and Cold War anti-communist myths. His work revived the vibrant, democratic, mass nature of Bolshevism and highlighted the revolutionary role of the Russian working class in history.

Rabinowitch’s notable achievement is even more impressive given the political and intellectual climate in which he grew up. Born in London to Russian-Jewish émigrés who fled Petrograd after the revolution, he was raised among Mensheviks and liberal critics of Bolshevism. He remembered that in his family’s circle, the October Revolution was seen as “a cold-blooded coup... by a small group of Lenin’s fanatic followers." During his time in the United States amid the McCarthy era, he was taught in ROTC to see the Soviet Union as the personification of evil.

Rabinowitch’s research challenged the biases of his upbringing. A pivotal 1963–64 trip to the Soviet Union led him to dispute the Western view of 1917. His 1968 dissertation, Prelude to Revolution, argued that the July Days were a popular uprising, not a Bolshevik coup attempt, and that the Bolsheviks initially tried to control it. This conclusion set him apart from both Cold War orthodoxy and Stalinist doctrine.

His second book, The Bolsheviks Come to Power (1976), marked a significant milestone in the historiography of revolution. Despite lacking access to Soviet archives, Rabinowitch carefully reconstructed Petrograd's political landscape by analysing newspapers, minutes, and memoirs. He demonstrated that in 1917, the Bolshevik Party was not a secretive, conspiratorial group, but rather a large workers’ party with deep connections to factories, barracks, and local districts. Its internal dynamics featured lively debate, factional fights, and broad democratic involvement. Lenin’s April Theses and Trotsky’s leadership of the Military Revolutionary Committee were not top-down commands but reflected the revolutionary hopes and demands of the working class.

This work significantly challenged the anti-communist view of October as a coup and questioned the Stalinist myth of a united party that followed Lenin without deviation. Rabinowitch’s conclusions largely aligned with Trotsky’s analysis in Lessons of October, a point that Soviet authorities quickly recognised, condemning him as a “bourgeois falsifier.”

The collapse of the Soviet Union granted Rabinowitch access to archives that had long been unavailable to him. Instead of succumbing to cynicism, as many scholars did after 1991, he deepened his research. This led to the publication of The Bolsheviks in Power (2007), a comprehensive analysis of the first year of Soviet governance in Petrograd. Utilising newly accessible party, government, and Cheka records, he depicted the enormous difficulties faced by the revolutionary administration: economic collapse, famine, sabotage, foreign intervention, and the breakdown of the previous state structure.

Rabinowitch’s account uncovers a political process far more intricate and democratic than the simplified portrayals in anti-communist and Stalinist histories. He highlights the intense debates within the Bolshevik Party regarding the formation of the Soviet government, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, and the Red Terror. Additionally, he restores the contributions of many Bolshevik leaders—such as Smilga, Uritsky, and Volodarsky—who were later killed during Stalin’s purges and subsequently erased from official history.

His final book, The Bolsheviks Survive: Petrograd 1919 (2026), completed just before his death, explored the remarkable endurance of the revolution during the civil war. It represents the culmination of his lifelong efforts to uncover the truth of one of the most significant events in world history.

Rabinowitch’s research put him at odds with the reactionary intellectual climate of the post-Soviet period. In Germany, where the ruling elites have tried to downplay Nazi crimes and restore imperialist militarism, right-wing historians like Jörg Baberowski have attempted to prevent his lectures. Their opposition was more than academic: Rabinowitch’s work revealed the distortions that underpin modern historical revisionism. His lectures in Berlin and Vienna, organised by the International Students for Social Equality and attended by hundreds, became notable political events.

During these struggles, Rabinowitch formed close intellectual ties with members of the Trotskyist movement. He worked with Mehring Verlag on the German editions of his books and gave interviews to the World Socialist Web Site. This was driven not by political allegiance but by a shared dedication to uncovering historical truth. As the WSWS obituary pointed out, he was part of a rare generation of historians who saw history as a science aimed at enhancing human understanding.

When Empiricism Becomes a Political Blind Spot

Rabinowitch’s work has some limitations. His empirical approach, though highly valuable, occasionally caused him to underestimate the broader international context of the revolution or to misread the political reasoning behind certain decisions.

Alexander Rabinowitch’s extensive four-volume series on the Russian Revolution represents a significant scholarly milestone. However, even meticulous empirical research struggles with complex political issues that cannot be fully understood through archives alone. The most notable flaw in Rabinowitch's analysis is his handling of the Shchastny affair—Trotsky's decision to prosecute and execute Admiral Aleksei Shchastny in June 1918. This mistake is more than a simple misinterpretation; it signifies a fundamental category error that exposes the limitations of relying solely on empirical data without incorporating the Marxist theoretical framework.

Rabinowitch labels the trial a "sham" and claims Trotsky organised it alone, possibly making it the first Soviet show trial. Yet, this characterisation is both inaccurate and historically unsound. It conflates revolutionary coercion with bureaucratic terror and confuses the defence of a workers’ state with Stalinist attempts to dismantle the revolution. Rabinowitch’s analysis of the Shchastny affair is not only flawed but also a theoretical oversight that contradicts the very evidence he presents.

 

The Historical Context Rabinowitch Underestimates

By spring 1918, the Baltic Fleet faced near-insurrection as German forces advanced following the collapse of the Brest-Litovsk talks. Mutinous mine-layer crews and factory workers at Obukhov were on the verge of revolt. British agents—Cromie, Lockhart, O’Reilly—were actively encouraging counterrevolution, circulating forged documents alleging Bolshevik plans to surrender Kronstadt and the fleet to Germany. Rabinowitch describes this tense situation in detail but does not incorporate it into his analysis of the Shchastny case.

Shchastny was not just a neutral military officer. He circulated false documents accusing Bolsheviks of treason, promoted distrust toward the Soviet government, defied orders to relocate or scuttle the fleet, and positioned himself as a potential Bonapartist leader within the navy. In a revolutionary context, these actions go beyond mere administrative errors—they are political acts that could lead to severe consequences.

Rabinowitch’s assertion that the Shchastny trial was “possibly the first Soviet show trial” is historically unfounded. A show trial, in the Stalinist context, involves fabricated charges, forced confessions, predetermined verdicts, and the political suppression of the Old Bolsheviks. The Shchastny trial does not fit this description. Trotsky’s charges were public and political, aligned with the revolutionary government’s need to control the armed forces during a civil war. Comparing Trotsky’s 1918 actions to Stalin’s purges of 1936–38 ignores the critical difference between defending a workers’ state and establishing a bureaucratic dictatorship. This distinction is not merely semantic but is central to 20th-century revolutionary history.

Rabinowitch’s mistake arises from a methodological flaw: he views political events as isolated administrative incidents rather than as parts of a larger class struggle of historical importance. He notices a trial, a formidable commissar, and an officer being condemned. However, he overlooks the German advance, the mutinying fleet, British agents, and the fragile state of the revolution. Absent the dialectical approach, the deeper political significance of these events is lost.

Trotsky openly admitted his involvement, sharing his testimony in 'How the Revolution Armed' and later in his 1926 Works edition. This is not indicative of someone orchestrating a “sham trial,’ but rather of a revolutionary leader defending a political decision to the working class. Trotsky understood that the fleet was a vital military resource; its fall could result in German forces occupying Petrograd, and Shchastny’s actions threatened the revolution's survival. In such a context, revolutionary justice is concrete, representing the dictatorship of the proletariat as it safeguards its existence.

Rabinowitch’s key point is that his own archival evidence contradicts his conclusion. He presents records of the mine-layers' mutiny, the Obukhov uprising, forged German documents, British intelligence efforts, the Left SR assassination of Mirbach, and Petrograd’s near-collapse. However, he treats the Shchastny trial as if it happened in isolation. This isn’t just an oversight but stems from a theoretical bias: a failure to differentiate between revolutionary coercion and bureaucratic repression.

By suggesting a link between Trotsky’s actions and Stalin’s purges, Rabinowitch unintentionally supports the flawed idea that Stalinism was an unavoidable result of Bolshevism. This contradicts what his research actually shows. However, these limitations do not undermine his overall contribution. His work offers the essential empirical basis for developing a Marxist interpretation of the revolution.

He is survived by his wife of more than six decades, Janet Rabinowitch, an accomplished editor who supported his work at every stage. His death is a profound loss to the historical profession and to all those committed to the defence of historical truth. Yet his legacy endures. As new generations confront the crises of global capitalism, the appeal and significance of his work will only grow.

Alexander Rabinowitch’s scholarship epitomises intellectual honesty. Amidst an era of misinformation, he emphasised the importance of evidence. During times of reaction, he championed the revolutionary role of the working class. And in a world increasingly at risk of war and authoritarian regimes, he highlighted the crucial period when humanity nearly escaped exploitation. His work will continue to be essential for anyone studying the Russian Revolution and for those advocating for a socialist future.

 

The Miseducation of Emancipation: Robin Blackburn, the New Left Review, and the Retreat from Marxism

Robin Blackburn’s The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights was seen in academia as the final part of a significant trilogy on New World slavery, with an impressive empirical scope. However, Marxism’s role is not to praise scholarship for its own sake but to examine the political and theoretical assumptions behind historical narratives. In this aspect, Blackburn’s work does not embody a Marxist synthesis; instead, it reveals the gradual decline of the New Left Review environment and its shift away from revolutionary politics towards the more comfortable, conformist corridors of liberal academia.¹

The tragedy is not Blackburn's lack of knowledge but his absence of a revolutionary perspective. Without this standpoint, the history of slavery and emancipation—arguably one of the most pivotal moments in the global capitalist development—fails to be fully understood in its world-historical context.

The New Left Review and Robin Blackburn: A Political Intellectual Symbiosis

Blackburn’s political development is closely linked to the growth of the New Left Review. Over the years, the NLR has claimed to represent “Western Marxism.” Yet, it has consistently dismissed key Marxist principles: the revolutionary importance of the working class, the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and Trotskyism's internationalist agenda.²

Since Perry Anderson’s early involvement with Maoism and Tariq Ali’s support for Castroism and other nationalist regimes, the NLR has been a center for various pseudo-radical movements, but it has notably excluded the essential: the autonomous political action of the working class against capitalism.

Blackburn’s commitments—like his support for the Cuban Revolution, his sympathy for “third world” nationalism, and his connections to reformist and Stalinist movements—are fundamental rather than incidental, shaping how The American Crucible is understood at every level. The book’s political stance aligns with the academic left: it uses radical language, maintains a liberal content, and generally downplays the revolutionary potential of historical materialism.

The connection between Robin Blackburn and the New Left Review is more than just biographical or institutional; it is structural. Blackburn is not a rare exception within the NLR; he embodies its core ideals. His work encapsulates the political development, theoretical evasions, and class stance of the NLR over sixty years.

To grasp Blackburn’s view on slavery and emancipation, it's essential to recognize the NLR's political agenda—a project that has continually favored academic radicalism over revolutionary Marxism and eclectic theory over a strategic focus on the international working class. The NLR’s fundamental contradiction is its Marxism without revolution.

From its beginning, the NLR positioned itself as the successor to a defeated and discredited left — including the Stalinist CPs, the Labour left, and the collapsing post-war consensus. However, instead of reviving revolutionary Marxism, it developed a hybrid approach: Marxist in language, anti-Trotskyist politically, nationalist in sympathies, academic in style, and pessimistic about the working class. This was the NLR's original sin — attempting to analyse capitalism without seeking to overthrow it, critiquing the system without forming a movement to dismantle it. Blackburn entered this environment not as a dissident but as a loyal architect. With an erudite, cosmopolitan, and empirically strong intellectual persona — qualities highly valued by the NLR — his work’s political content nonetheless reveals the limitations of that milieu.

A hostility to the revolutionary proletariat

The NLR’s suspicion of the working class is not occasional but fundamental. From Anderson’s initial structuralist approaches to Nairn’s nationalist theories, the journal persistently dismisses the Marxist idea of the proletariat as the agent of history. Blackburn reflects this stance by concluding history prior to the rise of the working class. There is a notable fascination with nationalist and Stalinist regimes.

The NLR’s fascination with Cuba, Vietnam, Algeria, and other “Third World” nationalist projects influenced Blackburn’s own political views. He tends to see emancipation more as a national-moral saga than as a class revolution, aligning with liberal human-rights discourse—a form of academic radicalism. By the 1980s, the NLR had become a hub for world-systems theory, post-Althusserian structuralism, and post-colonial critique, all of which replaced class struggle with abstract theory. Blackburn’s focus on “human rights” as a key concept reflects this ideological shift.

The NLR’s Ideological Drift and Its Impact on Blackburn

The NLR’s development can be outlined in three stages, each aligning with Blackburn’s intellectual growth: first, Western Marxism (1960s–70s), which focuses on philosophy and culture rather than revolutionary class struggle, reflecting Blackburn’s early work on slavery that is rich in theory but limited in political strategy.

Second, Academic Leftism (1980s–90s), where the journal becomes a centre for academic radicalism increasingly disconnected from the working class, paralleling Blackburn’s emphasis on structural analysis over class agency. Third, Liberal Human-Rights Marxism (2000s–present), with the NLR adopting NGO perspectives, global civil society, and the moral framework of human rights. "The American Crucible" epitomizes this stage, recounting emancipation through the lens of liberal ideology.

Why Blackburn Cannot Produce a Marxist History of Emancipation

Blackburn’s work reflects a lack of political perspective rather than intellectual deficiency. Since he shares the NLR’s core beliefs, he cannot anchor emancipation in the fundamental conflict between free and enslaved labor, see the enslaved as revolutionary agents, view the Civil War as a bourgeois-democratic revolution, or understand the rise of the modern working class from slavery’s abolition, nor recognize the Civil War’s role in the global evolution of capitalism. Instead, he replaces these with human rights instead of class struggle, moral progress instead of revolutionary breakages, national histories instead of internationalist analysis, and academic neutrality instead of political engagement. This is not coincidental but logically follows from the NLR’s gradual departure from Marxism and the Political Meaning of the Blackburn–NLR Synthesis.

The Blackburn–NLR nexus illustrates a wider trend: the post-1960s left evolving into a professional-managerial class embedded in universities, NGOs, and cultural institutions. This group criticizes capitalism but does not oppose it fundamentally, praises resistance without mobilizing it, and references Marxism while dismissing its revolutionary aspects. Blackburn’s trilogy on slavery exemplifies this political and intellectual formation.

The Fetish of “Human Rights”: Liberal Ideology in Radical Dress

Blackburn’s explicit use of “human rights” as the main framework to interpret the end of slavery clearly reflects this retreat. The subtitle—Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights—is intentionally chosen, indicating a theoretical surrender rather than neutrality.

The language of human rights is not a universal liberation doctrine. Instead, it serves as the legal ideology of the bourgeois system. As Marx showed in On the Jewish Question, the Rights of Man primarily protect the rights of the individual property owner, emphasizing the egoistic rights of a person separated from others and the community.”³ To elevate this ideology to the status of historical motor is to invert the real relationship between class struggle and its ideological forms.

Blackburn’s framework conceals a crucial truth: the abolition of slavery was not merely driven by humanitarian ideals. Instead, it resulted from a fierce conflict between opposing social systems—free labor and slave labor—that could no longer coexist. The enslaved people, through widespread resistance and the general strike from 1861 to 65, compelled this issue to the forefront of history.⁴ The capitalist North, compelled by military necessity and class interest, destroyed a rival ruling class based on slave property. This was not a moral awakening. It was a revolution.

The Civil War: A Revolution Without a Revolutionary Analysis

Blackburn recognizes the revolutionary nature of the Civil War, but his approach diminishes its class significance. His perspective aligns with the “New Historians of Capitalism,' emphasizing the economic integration of the North and South and minimizing their fundamental social conflicts.

This is a profound distortion. The Civil War was not a fratricidal misunderstanding among capitalists. It was, in William Seward’s famous phrase, an “irrepressible conflict.”⁵ As Marx wrote in Capital, “the veiled slavery of the wage workers in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery pure and simple in the new world.”⁶ The destruction of that pedestal was a world‑historical act that reshaped the global trajectory of capitalism.

Blackburn’s failure to emphasize the fundamental clash between free and enslaved labor causes him to overlook the revolutionary role of the enslaved and the importance of the Union victory. The Civil War was the most significant social revolution of the 1800s. Considering it merely as part of the development of “human rights” diminishes its true significance.

The Vanishing Working Class: A Political Omission with Theoretical Consequences

The key omission in Blackburn’s narrative is the working class itself. His account concludes with emancipation and Reconstruction, yet the end of slavery marked only the start of a new phase. From the wreckage of the slave system and the growth of industrial capitalism arose the modern American working class—comprising both Black and white individuals, native-born and immigrant.

The great strike waves of the 1870s, the rise of industrial unionism, the formation of the CIO in the 1930s—these were not peripheral developments. They were the dialectical resolution of the contradictions unleashed by the destruction of the slave power.⁷ The working class, not the discourse of human rights, is the engine of historical progress.

Blackburn’s framework has no place for this. And this omission is not accidental. It reflects the NLR’s longstanding hostility to the revolutionary role of the proletariat. A history of slavery that cannot account for the emergence of the working class is not a Marxist history. It is a liberal history with radical footnotes.

 What a Marxist Analysis Requires

A genuinely Marxist account of slavery and emancipation must begin from the following premises: Slavery was integral to the rise of capitalism, not a pre‑capitalist residue. The enslaved were central agents of their own liberation, not passive recipients of humanitarian benevolence. The Civil War was a social revolution, rooted in the clash between incompatible labour systems. The destruction of slavery set the stage for the emergence of the modern working class. Human rights discourse is an ideological form, not the motor of historical change. The international working class is the decisive revolutionary force. These principles are absent from Blackburn’s work because they are absent from the political tradition to which he belongs.

Conclusion: The Necessity of Revolutionary Marxism

The American Crucible is a thorough scholarly work, but it doesn't present a Marxist analysis. Instead, it shows the tiredness of the New Left Review tradition, which has replaced revolutionary politics with academic radicalism and shifted from human-rights liberalism to class struggle. Marxism's role isn't to dress up liberal ideas with history, but to expose the class forces shaping history and equip the working class with the awareness needed for liberation. To do this, one should look not to Blackburn, but to Marx and Engels, to Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction, to classical Marxist historiography, and especially to the ongoing tradition of the Fourth International.¹⁰.

FOOTNOTES

1. Robin Blackburn, The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights (London: Verso, 2011).
2. Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism (London: Verso, 1976).
3. Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in Early Writings, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London: Penguin, 1992), 234.
4. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (New York: Free Press, 1998), esp. ch. 4, “The General Strike.”
5. William H. Seward, “The Irrepressible Conflict,” speech delivered October 25, 1858.
6. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1976), 925.
7. Philip S. Foner, History of the Labour Movement in the United States, vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1947).
8. Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944).
9. Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution (New York: Pathfinder, 1969).
10. David North, The Civil War in the United States and the Birth of the American Working Class (Oak Park: Mehring Books, 2016).

 

 

 

Slavery, Capitalism, and the Problem of Historical Categories: A Critical Assessment of David McNally’s Slavery and Capitalism

Abstract

This article critically examines David McNally’s Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History (2020) within the broader discussion of slavery's connection to capitalism. While McNally seeks to distinguish his view from the “New Historians of Capitalism” (NHC) and the racialist elements of the 1619 Project, his approach ultimately exhibits a common flaw: merging slavery and capitalism into a single, unified system.¹Building on classical Marxist theory, especially the concept of modes of production, this article argues that McNally’s framework conceals the fundamental differences between enslaved people and capitalist relations and fails to fully account for the origins or revolutionary importance of the American Civil War. It concludes by emphasising the importance of preserving clear analytical categories in Marxist historiography.

Introduction

The connection between slavery and capitalism has become a hotly debated topic in recent history. The emergence of the NHC in the 2010s, along with the 2019 launch of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, triggered a surge of research claiming that American capitalism is deeply linked to racial slavery.² Historians of the Civil War era have criticised these works, asserting that merging slavery and capitalism blurs the fundamental differences between them and makes the Civil War harder to understand historically.³

David McNally’s 'Slavery and Capitalism' positions itself as a deliberate Marxist critique. He aims to address what he perceives as the shortcomings of both the NHC and specific Marxist interpretations, which, according to him, draw an overly strict line between slavery and capitalism. His main argument is that slavery was not separate from capitalism but a fundamental part of its rise as a global system, especially in the context of cotton production for British industrial growth.⁴

This article contends that, although McNally's empirical input is valuable, his analysis ultimately replicates the conceptual collapse typical of the NHC. By focusing on how slave-produced commodities are integrated into global markets, McNally conflates slavery as a mode of production with capitalism as a separate social system.⁵ This blurring carries important historiographical and political implications, especially for grasping the essence of the American Civil War and the mechanisms of racial oppression in the contemporary United States.

The Historiographical Context: The NHC and the 1619 Project

The NHC, including experts like Sven Beckert, Edward Baptist, Walter Johnson, and Matthew Desmond, contends that slavery was not just a leftover from pre-capitalist times but actually played a key role in driving the growth of American capitalism.⁶ Their work highlights the managerial strategies, productivity measures, and global commodity networks that connected the plantation South with the industrialising North and British textile manufacturing.

Critics observe that this method depends more on analogy than detailed analysis. James Oakes contends that the NHC “effectively erase the fundamental differences between the two systems” by emphasising only superficial similarities in commercial practices.⁷ The outcome is a historical account where the Civil War appears inexplicable. If slavery and capitalism are fundamentally the same system, then the underlying reason for the North-South conflict disappears.

The 1619 Project popularised this framework, arguing that racial slavery is intrinsic to American capitalism and that the country's founding principles are based on racial dominance.⁸ Although McNally does not support the racial essentialism promoted by the 1619 Project, his work is influenced by the historiographical landscape it has helped shape.

McNally’s Intervention: A “New Marxist History”

McNally’s book seeks to reshape the understanding of the link between slavery and capitalism through a Marxist lens. He cites Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation, emphasising that colonial slavery and the transatlantic slave trade were pivotal episodes in the violent sequence of events that set the stage for capitalism's development.⁹ McNally argues that cotton produced by enslaved people was crucial to the rise of British industrial capitalism, framing slavery as a pivotal part of the development of the global capitalist system.

This argument provides valuable insights. Marx indeed recognised the importance of colonial plunder, such as slavery, in the development of capitalism.¹⁰ McNally correctly highlights that capitalism's roots are intertwined with centuries of global violence, dispossession, and forced labour, rather than arising in isolation. However, the central question remains whether slavery should be considered a form of capitalist production, not merely whether it contributed to capitalism’s development. This is where McNally’s argument becomes weaker.

Modes of Production and the Problem of Conceptual Precision

Classical Marxism differentiates modes of production based on their core social relations. In slavery, the direct producer is treated as property; labour-power itself is not a commodity. In capitalism, the worker is legally free and sells their labour-power on the market.¹¹ These differences create distinct economic laws of movement, class organisations, and political behaviours. The enslaved individual in the South existed within a slave society. Wealth was rooted in human property, the economy was relatively conservative technologically, and a planter aristocracy dominated the class structure, with interests opposed to those of the northern bourgeoisie.¹² The capitalist North, by contrast, developed based on free labour, industrialisation, and the expansion of an internal market.

McNally’s focus on incorporating slave-produced cotton into global markets causes him to blend these distinctions. However, being part of a world market does not define how the cotton is produced. Merchant capital has historically shown no concern for the social systems involved in trade.¹³ Manchester manufacturers buying cotton from slave plantations does not make the plantations capitalist, just as medieval merchants purchasing wool from feudal estates does not turn those estates capitalist. By confusing exchange relations with relations of production, McNally undermines the analytical framework necessary for Marxist historical analysis. 

The Civil War and the Consequences of Conceptual Collapse

The merging of slavery and capitalism profoundly impacts how we interpret the American Civil War. If slavery is viewed as a form of capitalism, then the North-South conflict appears as an internal struggle within the same system, rather than a revolutionary clash between fundamentally different modes of production.¹⁴

This interpretation cannot explain the secession of the slave states, the political economy of the planter class, the industrial and demographic bases of Union victory, or the revolutionary nature of emancipation. Marx himself acknowledged the Civil War as a revolutionary conflict between free and enslaved labour.¹⁵ To collapse the two systems into one is to obscure the historical significance of the war and to undermine the Marxist understanding of its causes and consequences.

Marx, Engels, and the American Civil War: Capital, Free Labour, and the Revolutionary Destruction of Slavery

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels closely examined the American Civil War, creating over fifty articles and letters from 1861 to 1865 that analysed the conflict, its class struggles, and its international implications.¹⁶ Their writings represent the most comprehensive engagement by nineteenth-century socialist thinkers with the issue of slavery and its link to capitalism. Unlike modern views that see slavery as a form of capitalism, Marx and Engels emphasised the fundamental differences between the two systems. They viewed the Civil War not as an internal conflict within capitalism but as a revolutionary clash between two different modes of production: slave labour and free wage labour.¹⁷

Marx and Engels on Slavery as a Distinct Mode of Production

Marx’s analysis of slavery is based on his overall theory of modes of production. In Capital, he differentiates slave labour from capitalist wage labour through the nature of property relations. In slavery, “the labourer himself is sold as a commodity,” while in capitalism, “the worker sells his labour-power.”¹⁸

This distinction was not just legal but structural, influencing how accumulation, production, class relations, and political structures developed. Marx and Engels often pointed out that enslaved individuals in the South were not capitalists. In a 1861 article for Die Presse, Marx described the South as embodying “a specific mode of production based on slavery,” with its expansion driven by the limitations inherent in slave labour.¹⁹ Engels, writing to Marx in 1862, described the planters as “a quasi‑feudal aristocracy” whose economic interests were fundamentally opposed to those of the northern bourgeoisie.²⁰ This analytical distinction is central to their interpretation of the Civil War.

Free Labour and the Dynamics of Capitalist Development

In the mid-1800s, Marx and Engels regarded the North as the most advanced example of capitalism. Its industrial expansion, expanding domestic market, and reliance on free wage labour demonstrated its clear alignment with the process of capitalist accumulation.²¹

Marx argued that free labour was the necessary foundation of capitalist development because it created a mobile, commodified labour‑power and compelled constant technological innovation. Slave labour, by contrast, was economically stagnant, technologically conservative, and dependent on territorial expansion to maintain profitability.²² This divergence produced a structural antagonism between North and South.

The Civil War as a Revolutionary Conflict Between Modes of Production

Marx and Engels viewed the Civil War as a revolutionary conflict between opposing social systems. In an 1861 article, Marx described the conflict as “a war of two social systems,” emphasising it was more than just a political disagreement.²³ The South aimed to maintain a slave-based economy, while the North, despite initial doubts, was driven by the conflict's logic to abolish slavery. Engels was clearer, stating in an 1863 letter that the war would “necessarily lead to the abolition of slavery,” as the Union couldn't defeat the Confederacy without disrupting its economic basis.²⁴ This interpretation stands in stark contrast to contemporary frameworks that treat the Civil War as a conflict internal to capitalism.

Emancipation and the Transformation of the War

Marx praised the Emancipation Proclamation as a pivotal step in the revolution. In his 1863 speech for the International Working Men’s Association, he stated that Abraham Lincoln had “inaugurated a new era of the ascendant working class. .²⁵ Emancipation changed the war from merely defending the Union into a revolutionary attack on slavery. Marx and Engels highlighted the active role of enslaved people, pointing out that widespread self-emancipation—such as fleeing to Union forces, stopping work, and fighting—was crucial in weakening the Confederacy.²⁶.

VI. The Global Significance of the Civil War

Marx and Engels regarded the Civil War as a significant moment in world history. They believed that abolishing slavery in the United States would eliminate a major barrier to the growth of the global labour movement.²⁷ Engels noted that the British working class overwhelmingly supported the Union despite the cotton famine, demonstrating the international solidarity of labour against slavery. This solidarity was, for Marx and Engels, evidence that the struggle against slavery was inseparable from the struggle for socialism.²⁸

Marx and Engels Against the Collapse of Historical Categories

Marx and Engels’ analysis sharply differs from modern interpretations that conflate slavery and capitalism into one system. Their works emphasise the structural differences between enslaved people and the capitalist modes of production, highlight the revolutionary significance of the Civil War, and underline the importance of free labour in the development of capitalism.²⁹ To treat slavery as capitalism is to negate the theoretical foundations of their analysis and to render the Civil War historically unintelligible.

Marx and Engels’ writings on the American Civil War represent a highly detailed analysis of slavery, capitalism, and revolutionary change in nineteenth-century political thought. Their focus on the fundamental conflict between enslaved people and capitalist modes of production provides clarity that remains vital in modern historiography. At a time when the line between slavery and capitalism is becoming increasingly unclear, their analysis offers a solid alternative based on historical materialism. It emphasises the revolutionary importance of the Civil War and reaffirms the essential role of free labour in the development of capitalism.

Political Implications: Race, Class, and the Contemporary Left

The breakdown of the connection between slavery and capitalism in historiography has political implications. If slavery is seen as a form of capitalism, then racial oppression appears as a permanent aspect of American society, rather than a historically specific form of domination rooted in particular social relationships.³⁰ This framework aligns, however unintentionally, with the racialist politics that have gained prominence in contemporary liberal and pseudo‑left circles.

McNally’s political background within the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) is significant here. The ISO’s politics were influenced by the interests of the professional-managerial class, frequently substituting racial categories for class analysis. Although McNally’s scholarship is more precise than the ISO’s public messaging, his analytical approach still tends to blur class boundaries and align with dominant ideological trends.³¹

Conclusion

David McNally’s Slavery and Capitalism is a serious and ambitious contribution to a contentious field. Its empirical material is valuable, and its engagement with Marx’s analysis of primitive accumulation is welcome. However, its conceptual framework ultimately reproduces the NHC’s central weakness: collapsing slavery and capitalism into a single system.

A Marxist historiography must maintain clear analytical distinctions between modes of production. Only by doing so can it adequately explain the origins and dynamics of the American Civil War and provide a coherent framework for understanding the persistence of racial oppression in the modern United States. McNally’s “New Marxist History,” despite its intentions, represents a retreat from this clarity.

ENDNOTES

1. David McNally, Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History (London: Verso, 2020), 3–5.
2. For an overview of the NHC, see Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Knopf, 2014); Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2014); Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).
3. James Oakes, The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Norton, 2014), 12–15.
4. McNally, Slavery and Capitalism, 27–30.
5. Ibid., 41–45.
6. Beckert, Empire of Cotton; Baptist, Half Has Never Been Told; Johnson, River of Dark Dreams; Matthew Desmond, “To Understand the Brutality of American Capitalism, You Have to Start on the Plantation,” New York Times Magazine, August 14, 2019.
7. Oakes, Scorpion’s Sting, 14.
8. Nikole Hannah‑Jones, “Our Democracy’s Founding Ideals Were False When They Were Written,” New York Times Magazine, August 14, 2019.
9. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1976), 915–926.
10. Ibid., 915.
11. Marx, Capital, 270–72.
12. Eugene D. Genovese, The Political Economy of Slavery (New York: Pantheon, 1965), 7–12.
13. Robert Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre‑Industrial Europe,” Past & Present 70 (1976): 30–75.
14. For a critique of this collapse, see Charles Post, The American Road to Capitalism (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 45–52.
15. Karl Marx, “The North American Civil War,” Die Presse, October 20, 1861.
16. See the collection in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Civil War in the United States (New York: International Publishers, 1937).
17. Marx, “The North American Civil War.”
18. Marx, Capital, 271.
19. Marx, “The North American Civil War.”
20. Friedrich Engels to Karl Marx, June 1862, in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 41 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1986), 389.
21. Marx, Capital, 713–15.
22. Ibid., 716–20.
23. Marx, “The North American Civil War.”
24. Engels to Marx, January 1863, in MECW, vol. 41, 453.
25. Karl Marx, “Address of the International Working Men’s Association to Abraham Lincoln,” January 1863.
26. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935), 67–108.
27. Marx, “Address to Lincoln.”
28. Engels to Marx, February 1863, in MECW, vol. 41, 470.
29. Marx, Capital, 270–72; Engels to Marx, June 1862.
30. Adolph Reed Jr., “The Limits of Anti‑Racism,” Left Business Observer 121 (2009).
31. For a critical history of the ISO’s political evolution, see Paul D’Amato, The Meaning of Marxism (Chicago: Haymarket, 2006), though the ISO’s later racial‑political turn is better analysed in Reed, “Limits of Anti‑Racism.”