Imperial Hubris Then and Now: Thucydides, Kirshner, and the Crisis of American Hegemony

Jonathan Kirshner’s essay in Foreign Affairs goes beyond just reinterpreting Thucydides. It serves as a political statement from a segment of the American foreign-policy establishment that is growing more concerned about the Trump administration’s frank declaration of the “iron laws” of imperialist violence. Kirshner is not opposed to American power. He is opposed to its stupid exercise. Therefore, his critique doesn’t reject empire entirely but seeks to reform or preserve it. By exploring the historical parallels Kirshner hints at, we can better understand what his argument uncovers—and hides—about the American imperialism crisis in 2026.[1]

Athens and the United States: Imperial Democracies in Decline

Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War serves as the fundamental work of realist international relations. It details the rise and decline of the Athenian empire, a naval power with democratic governance that also exercised brutal control overseas. Similarly, the United States has historically portrayed itself as a democratic nation whose global leadership is both inevitable and benevolent.

Kirshner’s unease with Trump stems from his removal of the ideological disguise. Stephen Miller’s statement that the world is “governed by force” and “governed by power” reflects the straightforward Athenian logic of the Melian Dialogue, expressed plainly without euphemism.

The comparison is clear: Athens operated as a democracy, managing an empire through tribute, coercion, and military strength. Likewise, the United States is a democracy that rules a global empire using financial influence, military bases, sanctions, and alliances like "coalitions of the willing." Both countries justified their dominance with universalist rhetoric—Athens with "freedom" and America with “democracy”—but enforced subjugation through significant force.

Melos and Venezuela: The Strong Do What They Can

The Melian Dialogue is a well-known excerpt from Thucydides. Athens demands that Melos submit; Melos appeals to justice; Athens responds, “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” Afterwards, the Athenians massacre the men and enslave the women and children.

The similarity to Venezuela is difficult to ignore. In 2026, the United States kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro, conducted covert operations, and threatened military intervention. These actions represent a “qualitative escalation in the criminality of American imperialism.”

The US justification—that Venezuela threatens regional stability, democracy, or human rights—serves as a typical ideological pretext that Thucydides would expose as baseless. However, Trump’s foreign-policy team went further, openly stating that force is the dominant principle in international affairs. Melos was destroyed not for its danger but for its defiance. Venezuela is targeted not due to any threat to the US but because it resists American dominance. 

Sicily and Iran: Imperial Overreach and Catastrophe

Some argue that Thucydides’ real lesson isn’t the Melian Dialogue but the Sicilian Expedition, where Athenian hubris caused catastrophe. Similarly, Trump’s reckless actions risk a comparable disaster. The analogy with Iran is strong. Athens believed its power was unlimited during the Sicilian Expedition, underestimating resistance, overextending, and facing destruction. Likewise, the US has issued repeated threats of bombing, regime change, and economic sanctions against Iran. However, Iran, a large and capable nation with regional allies and asymmetric tactics, presents a different challenge.

A potential war with Iran would be similar to the modern Sicilian disaster: it would involve a prolonged, large-scale conflict with heavy casualties, trigger a global economic shock, cause alliances to break down, and intensify domestic crises. Kirshner’s warning is pragmatic, emphasising that excessive imperial ambitions could threaten the empire's survival.

The Collapse of the “Rules‑Based Order”: From Pericles to Pompeo

The post-1945 “rules-based international order” functions similarly to the Periclean ideology, serving as a legitimising story for imperial domination. However, this order “was never a true limit on American aggression—rather, it was a tool for navigating inter-imperialist conflicts amid US dominance.” Just as Athens used democratic rhetoric to conceal its coercive empire, the US’s claim to uphold international law conceals its global dominance.

When Athens faced a crisis, its democratic facade faltered, leading to the execution of generals, the purging of dissidents, and chaos. Similarly, in 2026, the U.S. is experiencing a decline: mass deportations, press suppression, civil service purges, overt authoritarian language, and militarised police. These actions are inciting increased strikes and protests, showing that imperialism’s crisis translates into a democratic crisis.

Kirshner’s idea of a ‘real Thucydides trap” suggests that imperial overreach leads to disaster. However, this isn’t an unchanging psychological rule but rather a particular manifestation of capitalism’s inherent contradictions during its imperialist phase.

Lenin showed that imperialism is an unavoidable result of monopoly capitalism, driven by the pursuit of profit. This drive leads to expansion, which in turn causes conflict, ultimately resulting in crises. The ‘iron law’ of imperialist barbarism will be confronted with the ‘iron law’ of the class struggle. The working class is not merely a passive victim of imperial decline; it is the active force capable of overthrowing the system responsible for war.

The Lesson for the Working Class

The working class does not prefer either Trump’s blunt imperialism or Kirshner’s polished version, as both are factions of the same oligarchy. Both approaches lead to war, austerity, and dictatorship. The response to Trump’s ‘might makes right’ mentality isn’t a reinstatement of the polite imperialism associated with the Council on Foreign Relations, but rather the international mobilisation of the working class and the building of a global socialist society.

This is Thucydides' key lesson when viewed from a Marxist perspective: Empires decline not due to imprudence but because of exploitation. Imperial democracies crumble as their internal contradictions grow unmanageable. The working class alone has the power to end imperialist wars. Athens fell, and the American empire is currently facing its Sicilian moment. The responsibility of the working class is not to preserve it but to replace it.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

• Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War.
• Lenin, V.I. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.
• Trotsky, Leon. In Defence of Marxism: The Revolution Betrayed.

Secondary Sources (Classical and IR)

• Kagan, Donald. The Peloponnesian War.
• Meiggs, Russell. The Athenian Empire.
• Finley, M.I. The Ancient Economy.
• Badian, E. From Plataea to Potidaea: Studies in the History and Historiography of the Pentecontaetia.
• Gilpin, Robert. War and Change in World Politics.
• Keohane, Robert. After Hegemony.
• Mearsheimer, John. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
• Kirshner, Jonathan. “The Real Thucydides Trap.” Foreign Affairs (2026).

Marxist and WSWS Analyses

• North, David. The Crisis of American Democracy.
• International Committee of the Fourth International. The Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party.
• Damon, Andre. WSWS Perspectives on US foreign policy (2025–2026).
• Walsh, Bill Van Auken, and other WSWS correspondents on Venezuela, Iran, and the “rules‑based order.”

 

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[1] The Strong Do What They Can—and Suffer What They Must: What Thucydides Really Thought About Power Jonathan Kirshner- www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/strong-do-what-they-can-and-suffer-what-they-must

Letter to T. G. Otte and The Coming Storm

Sir,

Your reply exemplifies the genre: sophisticated, polite, and carefully balanced—yet it entirely avoids addressing the central issue. You claim that your initial letter was “modest,” merely reminding readers of the “plurality” of interpretations surrounding 1914. But modesty does not equal neutrality, and plurality is not inherently virtuous when it functions to obscure decisive historical realities.

The core issue is not whether historians may legitimately differ; they always have, and they always will. The issue is why, in 2026, an expanding body of scholarship seeks to explain the origins of the First World War through vague concepts such as “complexity,” “interplay,” and “multiple explanations,” while systematically avoiding the one category that renders those explanations coherent: imperialism.

You argue that emphasising imperialism “elevates any one causal chain to the status of dogma.” Yet imperialism is not a dogma. It is a historically specific stage of capitalist development, analysed with scientific precision by Lenin, Luxemburg, and Bukharin, and confirmed by the subsequent course of the 20th century.¹ This framework clarifies why the great powers were driven into conflict, why diplomacy repeatedly failed, and why the July Crisis unfolded as it did. To treat imperialism as merely one “mode of explanation” among many is not methodological pluralism—it is historical abdication.

Your defence of Thucydides reveals further ideological implications. You claim that invoking him was simply a caution against unreflective analogies. But the very choice of Thucydides—whose narrative naturalises great‑power conflict as an eternal feature of human affairs—already performs ideological work.² It shifts attention away from the capitalist foundations of modern war and toward timeless geopolitical tragedy. This is precisely the function Thucydides serves in contemporary strategic discourse, from Graham Allison’s “Thucydides Trap” to Pentagon doctrinal literature.³ You may not intend to naturalise conflict, but the analogy does so nonetheless.

Your portrayal of Sir Edward Grey exemplifies how diplomatic history sanitises imperialism. You argue that praising Grey’s “skill” does not equate to endorsing British imperialism. Yet Grey’s diplomacy cannot be disentangled from the imperial interests it served. The London Conference of 1912–13 was not a display of statesmanship but an imperialist partition of the Balkans.⁴ Its short‑term success did not demonstrate the vitality of the Concert of Europe; it revealed the limits of diplomatic management under conditions of irreconcilable imperialist antagonisms. To describe this as a “settlement” is to adopt the perspective of the imperial powers themselves.

Your conclusion urges caution, warning against “conscripting the past into present‑day battles.” But the past is already being conscripted—by governments preparing for war, by think tanks rehabilitating great‑power rivalry, and by historians who, knowingly or not, provide intellectual cover for these developments. The relativisation of German responsibility for 1914, the elevation of “complexity” over causality, and the retreat from the category of imperialism are not neutral scholarly trends. They are ideological responses to a world in which the great powers are once again hurtling toward conflict.

The working class requires clarity, not cultivated ambiguity; analysis, not interpretative pluralism; and above all, recognition that imperialist war is not a tragic accident but the inevitable product of capitalism. To obscure this truth is not modest—it is dangerous.

Yours faithfully, 

Keith Livesey

Footnotes

1. V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916); Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (1913); Nikolai Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy (1915). These works established the theoretical foundations for understanding imperialism as a structural stage of capitalist development, not a diplomatic phenomenon.
2. Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War has long been used to frame great‑power conflict as cyclical and inevitable, a tendency reinforced by realist international relations theory from Hans Morgenthau to John Mearsheimer.
3. Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (2017). Allison’s thesis has been widely adopted in US strategic circles, often without critical engagement with its ideological implications.
4. For a detailed account of the London Conference and its imperialist character, see Sean McMeekin, The Balkan Wars (2012), and Fritz Fischer, War of Illusions (1969), which situate the Balkan crises within the broader imperialist rivalries of the pre‑1914 period.

 

Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Generation: A Marxist Analysis of Rebellion, Class, and Cultural Absorption

The Problem of the Beat Generation in Historical Perspective

Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey. His centenary this year coincides with a resurgence of the conditions that inspired his most famous work — including fears of nuclear destruction, the depletion of intellectual and political engagement, and a sense of a generation caught between falsehoods and a lack of visible revolutionary options. It is valuable to explore what Ginsberg achieved, what he was unable to accomplish, and what his legacy reveals about the connection between art and the working class in the 20th century.

A rigorous Marxist examination of Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Generation must start with the real historical circumstances that led to their emergence. The Beats did not appear out of nowhere, nor were they merely a sudden burst of bohemian innovation. Instead, they represented the cultural response to a distinct period in American capitalism: the post-war strengthening of imperialist dominance, the dismantling of organised leftist movements, and the ideological suppression enforced by Cold War conformity.

Ginsberg appeared in the mid-1950s, a time characterised by McCarthyite witch hunts, the collapse of the Communist Party, and the dominance of the “American way of life” as a tool for class control. This era was the 'grey post-World War II doldrums, built on false material promises.' The political, organisational, and psychological defeat of the working class during this period provides the essential context for works such as Howl, Kerouac’s On the Road, and the Beat movement as a whole. Their rebellion was genuine but influenced and constrained by the conditions of its emergence.

Post‑War America: Reaction, Conformity, and the Defeat of the Left

The Second World War concluded with the United States establishing unparalleled global dominance. The development of the atomic bomb, the Bretton Woods system, and a sustained war economy laid the foundation for the post-war economic expansion. However, this prosperity was fuelled by domestic political repression and imperialist violence overseas.

The American working class, which had organised large-scale strikes in the 1930s and early 1940s, was left politically powerless. The Stalinist Communist Party, already plagued by bureaucratic decline, was fractured by McCarthyism. Meanwhile, the trade-union bureaucracy aligned itself with the Cold War state. Consequently, this led to a time of relative silence, during which authentic left-wing politics were suppressed or pushed underground.

Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs grew up amid an environment of ideological repression. Ginsberg’s mother, Naomi, a communist, was institutionalised and harmed by American psychiatry's brutal practices. This context is crucial, forming the psychological background that led to Howl, a poem reflecting both personal trauma and broader historical loss. 

The Artistic Achievement of Howl: Protest in a Time of Silence

Ginsberg's "Howl," composed in 1955 and published in 1956 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Books, continues to be one of the most widely read poems of the 20th century — with over a million copies sold and translated into nearly every language. Its famous opening line — "I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked" — has become iconic in the literary world.

A Marxist interpretation does not negate the artistic strength of Howl. Instead, its power comes from capturing the contradictions of its era. The opening line — "I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness" — is more than a personal lament; it serves as a critique of a generation of intellectuals and artists who struggled to find their place within the rigid, conformist culture of Cold War America.

The poem’s critique of “Moloch — whose soul is electricity and banks!” serves as an early, sincere protest against capitalism. It emphasises the horror of sacrificing human lives to the gods of profit and war. Andras Gyorgy points out that Howl is a protest poem grounded in real historical experiences — including the draft, the Bomb, mental hospitals, the “scholars of war,” and young men “trembling before the machinery of other skeletons.” This is not abstract; it reflects lived reality. The 1957 obscenity trial, which concluded that the poem had “redeeming social importance,” was itself a political statement. The defenders of official culture recognised that Ginsberg’s rage, though potentially misdirected, was ultimately directed at them.

However, artistic success does not free the Beats from class analysis, as their rebellion was essentially petty-bourgeois. While they opposed American capitalist conformism, they did so through individualistic withdrawal rather than collective action. They pursued liberation via drugs, sex, mysticism, and travel instead of mobilising the working class. Their shift toward Buddhism, psychedelics, and personal transcendence mirrored the political emptiness left by the decline of the left. Without revolutionary politics, spiritualism became a substitute.

When Ginsberg mentions those “who distributed Super communist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing,” he is referring not to revolutionary activism but to a personal crisis. The reference to the “Fifth International” in the poem’s footnote is a poetic device, not an endorsement of political ideals. Ginsberg had no ties to Trotskyism and did not aim to establish a revolutionary party.

Trotsky’s analysis of Futurism in Literature and Revolution offers a useful theoretical comparison. He acknowledged the Futurists’ authentic challenge to bourgeois artistic norms, while also criticising their bohemian origins and disconnect from the proletariat. A similar dialectic exists with the Beats: their rebellion was genuine, but because of its class foundation, it stayed confined within bourgeois society.

Art and the Working Class

The centenary of Ginsberg's birth raises the question that the Beats themselves could never answer: what would a genuinely revolutionary art look like? The answer cannot be found in bohemian subcultures, however sincere their disgust with bourgeois society. It can only be found in the reconnection of artistic work to the struggles of the international working class.

The Stalinist counter-revolution in the Soviet Union and the betrayals by social democracy broke the connection between artists and the working class during the 20th century. The Beats were a consequence of this rupture. They experienced the horrors of capitalism—the atomic bomb, the conformist postwar America, and the destruction of authentic intellectual pursuits—but lacked access to a social force capable of challenging it. Their mysticism, drug use, and focus on spontaneous individual "kicks" were not strategies for change but expressions of political powerlessness.

Ginsberg's footnote to "Howl" famously proclaims, "Holy the Fifth International." It was a vision he could not realize. The Fourth International, established by Trotsky in 1938, was the body that preserved revolutionary Marxism's continuity throughout the upheavals of the mid-20th century. However, the Beats never aligned with it. Factors like the American Trotskyist movement's political marginalization, the intense pressures of McCarthyism, and the pull of the Democratic Party along with the rising "New Left" all hindered any such connection.

Ginsberg and Kerouac's journey from early rebellion to later commercialisation reflects a social process rather than a personal failure. The early Ginsberg—"the man in the Brooks Brothers jacket… desperately trying to ‘go straight’"—created work of true anguish, with 'Howl' emerging from a crisis that was both personal and historical. By the 1970s, however, Ginsberg was described as "all show biz." He had become a campus performer and a countercultural icon, chanting over Kerouac’s grave alongside Bob Dylan. The poet who once emphasised the rawness of his art had become a familiar figure within the institutions he initially condemned.

Kerouac’s decline was more tragic. The poet of the open road died as a bloated alcoholic and a conservative supporter of William Buckley, ranting about “the Jewish Conspiracy” and claiming Ginsberg was one of its agents. Neal Cassady died at age 41. This decline illustrates how petty-bourgeois bohemian rebellion has been absorbed into the culture industry. Capitalism excels at commodifying dissent, turning rebellion into marketable counterculture. Since the Beats lacked ties to the working class, they were especially susceptible to this process.

The Dialectic of Rebellion and Class

Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Generation embody a complex paradox. Their authentic rebellion, born from the trauma and oppression of post-war America, is exemplified by works like Howl, which remains a compelling artistic testament of its era. However, their revolt, rooted in petty-bourgeois, individualistic, and mystical values, limited their political impact and led to their absorption into capitalism's cultural landscape. From a Marxist perspective, both truths are necessary: the Beats truly expressed suffering and protest, but their class position and historical context confined their rebellion. Only the organised working class can turn protest into a social revolution. Despite their passion, the Beats never reached that revolutionary threshold. 

References

Primary Sources

• Ginsberg, Allen. Howl and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1956.
• Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. New York: Viking Press, 1957.
• Burroughs, William S. Naked Lunch. Paris: Olympia Press, 1959.
• Trotsky, Leon. Literature and Revolution. Translated by Rose Strunsky. New York: Russell & Russell, 1957 (original 1924).
• United States v. Howl, 248 Cal. App. 2d (1957). Court transcripts and judicial opinions.

Secondary Sources: Marxist Theory and Cultural Critique

• Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.
• Benjamin, Walter. The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
• Eagleton, Terry. Marxism and Literary Criticism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
• Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.
• Mandel, Ernest. Late Capitalism. London: Verso, 1975.
• Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1780–1950. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.

Historical Studies of Post‑War America

• Brinkley, Alan. The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War. New York: Vintage, 1996.
• Caute, David. The Great Fear: The Anti‑Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978.
• Schrecker, Ellen. Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.
• Whitfield, Stephen J. The Culture of the Cold War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Beat Generation Scholarship

• Charters, Ann. The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1983.
• Morgan, Bill. I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg. New York: Viking, 2006.
• Raskin, Jonah. American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
• Miles, Barry. Ginsberg: A Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.
• McNally, Dennis. Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America. New York: Da Capo Press, 2003.

Studies of Culture Industry and Commodification

• Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red, 1977.
• Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” In Dialectic of Enlightenment.
• Marcuse, Herbert. One‑Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.
• Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism. New York: Norton, 1979.

WSWS and Contemporary Marxist Commentary

• Gyorgy, Andras. “Allen Ginsberg: A Critical Assessment.” World Socialist Web Site, 1997.
• Walsh, David. “Howl at 50: Art, Protest, and the Cold War.” World Socialist Web Site, 2007.
• North, David. The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo‑Left. Mehring Books, 2015.

 

 

The Restless Republic: A Restorationist Fable for the Present Crisis

 

Anna Keay’s The Restless Republic offers a lively account of Britain from 1649 to 1660. Still, beneath its refined language, it reveals a strong ideological stance: the suppression of the revolutionary aspects of the English Civil War and Interregnum. Keay writes not as an independent scholar but as a longstanding member of Britain’s heritage sector—“she writes from within the institutions that exist to manage and curate Britain’s official historical memory”—and her book aligns closely with the political goals of those institutions.

Her framing reveals a clear bias. The title, The Restless Republic, depicts the Interregnum as a pathological deviation — a nation unable to "settle" — suggesting it was a temporary disruption in the natural order. The subtitle, Britain Without a Crown, emphasises absence, implying that monarchy is the default state of political life and that its absence is a cosmic mistake. This approach is not objective history but ideological signalling.

The Revisionist Orthodoxy Repackaged for a Popular Audience

Keay’s work aligns well with the post-revisionist consensus that has dominated academic history since the 1970s. Revisionists like Conrad Russell, John Morrill, and Kevin Sharpe systematically challenged the Marxist interpretation put forward by Christopher Hill. Their core argument, now widely accepted, is that “there was no bourgeois revolution because there was no rising bourgeoisie” and that the Civil War was mainly an avoidable mistake, resulting from Charles I’s political errors.

Keay presents this orthodoxy confidently, as if she has never needed to defend it. Her story focuses on elite figures — Cromwell, Lambert, Monck, and the Rump — whose actions are seen as the main causes of history. The mass movements from below — the Levellers, Diggers, Fifth Monarchists — are shown only as interesting side notes or annoying disruptions. The class forces behind the revolution are ignored. This is intentional. It serves the ideological purpose of revisionism: to diminish the English Revolution's revolutionary significance and portray it as merely a constitutional debate among aristocrats.

Keay vs Hill: Two Histories of the English Revolution, Two Visions of Britain

Anna Keay and Christopher Hill differ not just in their academic specialities but also in their perspectives on history: one emphasises Britain’s heritage institutions, while the other aligns with Marxist and revolutionary ideas. Comparing Keay and Hill illustrates that discussions about the English Revolution also reflect broader debates on Britain’s political identity and future.

Keay functions within Britain’s official historical memory framework; she writes from within the institutions that exist to manage and curate Britain’s official historical memory.” Her positions at English Heritage and the Landmark Trust place her directly in the system responsible for preserving, interpreting, and showcasing the national history to the public.

Hill was a Marxist historian influenced by the mid-twentieth-century intellectual movements, including the workers’ movement, anti-imperialist struggles, and global revolutions. He viewed the seventeenth century not as a mere heritage but as a conflict zone of class interests. In contrast, Keay’s perspective is conservative, focused on institutions, and seeks to restore traditions. Meanwhile, Hill’s outlook is revolutionary, grounded in materialist analysis, and internationalist.

Keay’s framing is notably negative. Her title, The Restless Republic, depicts the Interregnum as a period of instability, unrest, and a nation out of sync. The subtitle, Britain Without a Crown, highlights what is missing — the monarchy — suggesting that the natural order has been temporarily halted. In contrast, Hill’s framing is more positive. He views the 1640s–1650s as the first significant bourgeois revolution in European history. The execution of Charles I is seen not as an accident but as a pivotal historical event that marks a fundamental break.  “When the people execute their king… it has a profound revolutionary significance entailing a complete break with the feudal past.” While Keay perceives absence, Hill perceives emergence. Where Keay sees chaos, Hill recognises transformation. What Keay considers an interlude, Hill interprets as a revolution.

Keay’s narrative centres on elite figures—Cromwell, Lambert, Monck, and the Rump—while the common people are hardly more than background noise. The Levellers and Diggers are seen as curiosities rather than main actors. This approach exemplifies the revisionist view: history is shaped mainly by elite misjudgments, constitutional crises, and personal conflicts.

Hill’s work reestablishes agency among the masses, illustrating how the rising bourgeoisie, agrarian capitalists, and the “middling sort” challenged the feudal nobility. He highlights the Levellers, Diggers, Fifth Monarchists, and radical sects as manifestations of broader social forces unleashed during the revolution. Hill emphasises that understanding the English Revolution requires recognising the central role of class struggle. While Keay depicts England ruled from above, Hill depicts an England transformed from below. Keay inherits the revisionist dogma that the Civil War was essentially avoidable — a tragic accident caused by Charles I’s political incompetence and the breakdown of the “ancient constitution.”

Hill completely rejects this view. He sees the Civil War as the inevitable result of a deep social change: the emergence of capitalist relations within a collapsing feudal system. For him, the conflict was not accidental but a fundamental clash between two incompatible modes of production. While Keay views the Civil War as a constitutional failure, Hill considers it a necessary revolution.

Keay views the Restoration of 1660 as a return to rationality — a re-establishment of the natural order following a period of risky experimentation. This aligns with the classic Whig perspective: Britain’s strength lies in moderation, continuity, and steering clear of continental extremes. Conversely, Hill considers the Restoration a political compromise. The monarchy was reinstated, but only on conditions that maintained the core achievements of the revolution — primarily safeguarding bourgeois property. The old regime was not simply restored; it was made subordinate. Keay’s Restoration symbolises a homecoming, whereas Hill’s version is a settlement enforced by victorious social forces.

Keay’s work, like much of established historiography, plays a political role: to erase Britain’s revolutionary roots and promote the myth of peaceful, gradual change. As your document highlights, this tradition spans from the late seventeenth century through Macaulay to the present day. Trotsky’s critique of Macaulay also applies to Keay: “vulgarises the social drama… with platitudes that are sometimes interesting but always superficial.” Hill’s work takes a different stance: to emphasise the revolutionary nature of the English Revolution, to bring class struggle back to the forefront, and to link the bourgeois revolution of the seventeenth century with the socialist revolution of the future. Keay’s history offers comfort; Hill’s history invites challenge.

What Keay Cannot Admit: The Revolution Was Real.

The Marxist analysis, shaped by Marx, Engels, Trotsky, and Hill, views the 1640–1660 events as Europe's first major bourgeois revolution. Keay cannot accept this because it would mean recognising that Britain’s modern state emerged not gradually but through a break—marked by civil war, regicide, and the overthrow of feudal absolutism.

Charles I's execution was not merely a mistake but a historic act: “when the people execute their king after a solemn trial… it has a profound revolutionary significance entailing a complete break with the feudal past." Consequently, no monarch remained securely on the throne until the late 19th century.

This act was driven by deep social forces. The growing bourgeoisie—merchants, capitalist farmers, and the “middling sort”—faced a feudal nobility whose economic base was deteriorating. The Civil War wasn't just an internal elite dispute but a class struggle, with emerging economic forces dismantling the old political power.

The revolution sparked mass movements whose demands exceeded the cautious goals of the gentry. The Levellers called for democratic rights and the end of aristocratic privileges. The Diggers claimed the earth as a “common treasury.” Radical sects foresaw a complete overhaul of the social order. Cromwell harshly suppressed these movements—not because they lacked relevance, but because they threatened to push the revolution beyond the boundaries needed for capitalist property relations. This is the true drama of the English Revolution. Keay’s narrative fails to include it.

The Restoration Myth and the Sanitisation of Britain’s Past

Keay’s book continues a long tradition of sanitising Britain’s revolutionary origins. Since the late seventeenth century, the ruling class has preferred to frame its legitimacy around the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688—a peaceful palace coup—rather than the turbulent events of the 1640s. Macaulay, a prominent Whig historian, turned the revolution into a comforting myth of steady, peaceful progress. As Trotsky noted, “Macaulay vulgarises the social drama of the seventeenth century by obscuring the inner struggle of forces with platitudes.”

Keay modernises this tradition for the twenty-first century. The Interregnum is depicted as a tumultuous, unsuccessful experiment and a cautionary tale against radical shifts. The Restoration is seen more as a return to rationality rather than merely a political compromise that safeguarded the core achievements of the revolution, especially the preservation of bourgeois property. Her book isn't mere crude propaganda; rather, it functions more subtly as an institutionally embedded narrative that renders revolution unthinkable by concealing it.

Why This Matters Today

The debate over how to interpret the English Revolution is more than just academic; it reflects a wider ideological campaign against the very idea of revolution. The revisionist shift of the 1970s happened alongside the suppression of workers' struggles, the rise of postmodernism, and a move away from class analysis. Disputing the occurrence of a bourgeois revolution in seventeenth-century England is akin to denying the proletarian nature of 1917—it essentially removes revolution from history.

Keay’s book is a well-crafted addition to this topic. It reassures readers that radical breaks are deviations, that it is elites who shape history, and that overthrowing oppressive systems is neither essential nor beneficial. The goal isn’t to dismiss Keay’s work but to uncover its ideological underpinnings. The English Revolution should be recognised as a crucial moment in global history—a bourgeois revolution whose contradictions and successes highlight the route toward the socialist revolution, an ongoing goal of our era.

 

Against Antiquarianism: A Critique of Margaret Willes’s The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn

Margaret Willes’s The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn exemplifies more than just a flawed book; it highlights a broader intellectual decline in modern historiography. A retreat from social analysis characterises this decline, the abandonment of class as a key historical category, and the transformation of history into a refined part of the heritage industry. Willes’s work serves as yet another instance of a widespread trend in academia and publishing—portraying history as a lifestyle rather than an analytical discipline.¹

The book’s premise is simple: Pepys and Evelyn were curious individuals and keen observers of Restoration England, with diaries that provide charming glimpses into a vibrant era. While this follows the typical bourgeois-antiquarian pattern, it is also historically unjustifiable.

Pepys and Evelyn lived “through and after the greatest social upheaval England had ever experienced.”² They were not mere floating personalities in a timeless Restoration scene. Instead, they were actors—though minor—who revealed much in the aftermath of the English bourgeois revolution. To dismiss them as eccentric hobbyists, as Willes does, undermines their historical significance and reduces the Restoration to a depoliticised space of wigs, gardens, coffee houses, and domestic trivia. This shift is more than an interpretive mistake; it is an act of ideological shaping.

The Academic Abdication: Class Removed, Revolution Denied

Modern historians have mostly set aside the Marxist ideas that once fuelled serious research on the 17th century. Today, Christopher Hill’s work—often seen as outdated by many scholars—still stands as the only comprehensive framework for understanding that era. Hill showed that the mid-17th-century crisis dismantled one social class’s dominance and installed another.³ This is not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of historical fact.

Yet Willes, like her peers, writes as though the English Revolution never occurred. The Civil War becomes background noise. The Commonwealth is reduced to a curiosity. The Restoration is treated as a return to normality rather than a class compromise forced upon a frightened bourgeoisie. The Glorious Revolution is barely acknowledged as the culmination of capitalist consolidation.⁴ This is not ignorance. It is avoidance.

Pepys and Evelyn: Not Curiosities, but Class Representatives

Pepys was not a gossiping flâneur. He was a bureaucrat of the capitalist state. His diary is saturated with the machinery of empire—shipbuilding, naval contracts, colonial administration. As the accompanying document notes, this was “the apparatus of a nascent capitalist state projecting its power across the globe.”⁵ Pepys’s rise through the Admiralty reflects the increasing importance of administrative competence in a society transitioning from feudal personal rule to capitalist state rationality.

Pepys exemplifies what Ellen Meiksins Wood has described as the “political form of capitalist social relations,” in which the early modern state becomes increasingly central to the organisation of economic life.⁶ His diary reveals the emergence of bureaucratic rationality, contract management, and logistical planning—key features of the developing capitalist state.

Evelyn was more than just a gentleman gardener; he was an innovative scientist whose Sylva was created to fulfil the navy’s timber needs. His interests in pollution, architecture, and horticulture mirrored the bourgeoisie's rationalist ideals. As a Royal Society member, he played a key role in shaping bourgeois science. Engels recognised this well: contemporary science arose from the breakdown of the medieval worldview under the pressure of capitalist progress.⁷ Willes perceives the Royal Society as a charming assembly of inquisitive individuals, reflecting the commonplace liberal view. However, in actuality, the Society served as a tool for maintaining class dominance. Its focus on empirical research, experimentation, measurement, and progress aligned with the interests of a growing capitalist elite. Fields such as navigation, metallurgy, ballistics, forestry, and colonial mapping were not merely genteel hobbies but the technical backbone of capitalist growth.⁸ To present the Royal Society as an apolitical intellectual salon is to falsify its historical function.

Bourgeois Antiquarianism: The Ideology of Contemporary History Writing

Willes’s book exemplifies “bourgeois antiquarianism.”⁹ This is not simply a methodological flaw; it is an ideological stance. It is the refusal to acknowledge that history is shaped by class struggle. It is the displacement of social conflict by personality, of revolution by anecdote, of material forces by domestic interiors.

The World Socialist Website (WSWS) has criticised this trend repeatedly, most recently in its appraisal of Lucy Worsley, whose work “consistently displaces class antagonism, economic crisis, and mass political struggle, fixating on monarchs, courtiers, domestic interiors and historical cosplay.”¹⁰ Willes belongs to the same school: history as entertainment, history as escapism, history as depoliticised spectacle. This is not accidental. It reflects the ideological needs of the present bourgeois order, which seeks to naturalise itself by erasing the revolutionary processes that created it.

The Academic and Media Establishment: A Catalogue of Evasion

Let us speak plainly. The contemporary historical establishment has abandoned the English Revolution. It has abandoned class analysis. It has abandoned materialism. It has abandoned the very concept of historical causality. Worsley’s output—generously funded, heavily promoted, and ever-present—embodies the essence of bourgeois-antiquarian kitsch. As the WSWS pointed out, her work repeatedly shifts focus away from class conflict, economic crises, and large-scale political struggles, instead emphasising monarchs, courtiers, domestic settings, and historical cosplay.¹¹ Willes’s book belongs to precisely this tradition: history as costume drama. Other historians follow a similar path. One being David Starky.

Starkey’s extensive career has centred on the idea that history is primarily shaped by monarchs, courtiers, and individual personalities. He is widely known for his disdain for social history. His impact has been damaging, as he contributed to fostering an intellectual climate where a book like Willes’s could be published without shame.¹² Antonia Fraser’s Restoration biographies are elegant but politically vacuous. They treat the 17th century as a theatre of personalities rather than a battleground of classes. Her approach has shaped public expectations of the period, encouraging precisely the depoliticised reading Willes reproduces.¹³ Simon Schama stands out as the most polished in the group, but his work ultimately portrays a liberal-bourgeois narrative that highlights continuity, compromise, and national identity. His perspective on the English Revolution is somewhat vague and sentimental, and it sidesteps class analysis.¹⁴ He has helped normalise the idea that the Revolution was a cultural moment rather than a social rupture.

These historians are not purely neutral chroniclers but ideological architects. Their influence has cultivated a cultural setting in which the English Revolution is either minimised or overlooked, thereby enabling Pepys and Evelyn to be seen as charming eccentricities rather than as representatives of a burgeoning class consolidating its authority.

The shift from viewing history as heritage is more than a cultural trend; it’s a political move. When historians avoid addressing class issues, they make the past incomprehensible and the present fixed. This creates a world where social conflicts vanish, revolutions are unthinkable, and the bourgeoisie seems timeless. Pepys and Evelyn become mere charming curiosities instead of symbols of a class whose victory transformed England and established modern capitalism. Willes’s book isn’t just lacking; it reflects a wider intellectual surrender.

Restoring History to History

It is time to say openly what many historians privately acknowledge: the field has been intellectually captured by a bourgeois‑antiquarian sensibility that is hostile to social analysis and allergic to class. The English Revolution has been domesticated. Pepys and Evelyn have been trivialised. The Restoration has been aestheticised.

A Marxist critique restores what Willes and her peers omit: class, revolution, contradiction, and the emergence of the capitalist state. Pepys and Evelyn were not eccentric diarists. They were functionaries and intellectuals of a class consolidating its power after a revolutionary upheaval.

Their diaries are not curiosities. They are instruments of history. Contemporary historians who refuse to confront this reality are not writing history. They are producing ideology.

Footnotes

1. For the concept of “heritage history,” see Robert Hewison, The Heritage Industry (London: Methuen, 1987).
2. Previous Draft, p. 2.
3. Christopher Hill, The English Revolution 1640 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1940), 7.
4. J. H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675–1725 (London: Macmillan, 1967).
5. Previous Draft p. 3.
6. Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism (London: Verso, 1999).
7. Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature (1883).
8. Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
9. Previous Draft p. 4.
10. WSWS, “Lucy Worsley and the Politics of Heritage History,” accessed 2024.
11. Ibid.
12. See David Starkey, The Reign of Henry VIII (London: Vintage, 2002).
13. Antonia Fraser, King Charles II (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979).
14. Simon Schama, A History of Britain: The British Wars 1603–1776 (London: BBC Books, 2001).

 

Anne Frank, Fascism, and the Dialectic of History

Anne Frank’s diary stands as one of the most widely read human records of the twentieth century, yet its historical importance has often been misrepresented. It is frequently depicted as a universal moral symbol—symbolising innocence lost to “evil” and serving as a beacon of hope during dark times. This sentimental view is intentionally crafted to align with the ideological interests of the postwar capitalist system, transforming the Holocaust into an abstract moral lesson that disconnects from the social and political factors behind it. As a result, this leads to a significant distortion of history.

A Marxist analysis starts from a different perspective. Anne Frank’s fate is not separable from the crisis of global capitalism from 1914 to 1945. The First World War broke down the old European order and sparked a period of revolutionary upheaval. The German working class, Europe's most potent and politically advanced, entered history with remarkable revolutionary potential. However, the betrayal by the Social Democratic Party—especially its support for the Kaiser’s war in 1914 and its suppression of the Spartacist uprising in 1919—left the working class disoriented and demoralised. The later decline of the Communist Party under Stalinism, marked by the disastrous “social fascist” line of the late 1920s, further deepened political paralysis. During this time, the working class was divided precisely when unity was most needed.

Trotsky examined this disaster with exceptional clarity. In his writings about Germany from 1930 to 1933, he argued that fascism was more than just a reaction; it was a counter-revolution—the mobilisation of the furious petty bourgeoisie as a battering ram against the proletariat. He described fascism as “the most savage expression of the decay of capitalism,” a movement that emerged when the bourgeoisie could no longer uphold its rule via parliamentary methods. Trotsky explained that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was closely linked to his hatred of the working class. The Jew was used as a symbol representing Marxists, Bolsheviks, and revolutionaries. Anti-Semitism was called  “the socialism of fools”—a fake explanation for social crises that misdirected anger away from capitalists and toward a vulnerable minority.

Trotsky’s insights into the Jewish question are crucial for grasping Anne Frank’s story. He dismissed both Zionism and assimilationism as ineffective solutions. According to him, Jews are a “people-class" dispersed by capitalism and made vulnerable during its crises. In a 1938 appeal to American Jews, Trotsky forewarned: “It is possible to imagine without difficulty what awaits the Jews at the mere outbreak of the future world war.” He stressed that only a victory for the international working class could avert disaster. The tragedy of Anne Frank’s life is that Trotsky’s warnings went unheeded—not for lack of clarity, but because the working-class organisations that claimed allegiance to them refused to act.

Fascism did not originate from metaphysical ideas, cultural illnesses, or the longstanding German anti-Semitic tradition. Instead, it was a deliberate counter-revolutionary tool used by the bourgeoisie to suppress the working class and uphold capitalist property systems. The Holocaust represents the extreme manifestation of this logic, involving the mass extermination of millions during a war of colonization against the Soviet Union and a social counter-revolution aimed at erasing the impact of 1917. Anne Frank’s diary, written inside the cramped Secret Annex, is a human record created amid this tumult of historical forces. Her thoughts on war, inequality, and societal irrationality—such as “Why do governments give millions each day for war, when they spend nothing on medicine or poor people?”—are not accidental. They reflect, in raw form, the awareness of a young person living at the heart of capitalism’s slide into barbarism.

After World War II, the way Anne Frank’s legacy was managed was influenced by Cold War ideology. The same nations that denied Jewish refugees in the 1930s later celebrated Anne Frank as a moral figure—since icons like her do not threaten capitalist interests. Her diary was decontextualized, serving as a symbol of broad “tolerance,” while ex-Nazis found roles within West Germany's government agencies, including the CIA-controlled Gehlen Organisation and the BND. Karl Josef Silberbauer, the Gestapo officer who arrested the Franks, was never convicted and lived out his days unpunished. In this way, memory was sanitized and historical truth was distorted.

Trotsky foresaw this distortion. He cautioned that the bourgeoisie would attempt to turn the crimes of fascism into abstract metaphysical concepts, disconnected from the class struggle. He emphasised that truly honouring fascism’s victims requires understanding the social forces behind it and developing a revolutionary movement to prevent its future rise.

Ignoring Trotsky’s analysis has clear consequences today. Across Europe and the U.S., far-right groups are resurging. These fascist movements are actively supported by parts of the ruling class, with funding, weapons, and political backing. The rise of fascism isn't due to “extremism” or "populism," but reflects capitalism’s failure to resolve its internal conflicts through democratic processes. The diary’s importance now is strategic, not just commemorative. Anne Frank’s story is not just history; it’s a warning for the future.

Honouring Anne Frank means facing the reality of the world that led to her death. It involves recognizing, as Trotsky argued, that fascism arises when capitalism fails to sustain its dominance through parliamentary systems. It also requires understanding that the Holocaust was not an accident but a direct consequence of imperialism and counter-revolution. Furthermore, it demands acknowledging that preventing such tragedies again calls for the deliberate, coordinated action of the global working class against capitalism.

Anne Frank once said, “I want to go on living after my death.” She has achieved this, but the significance of her survival hinges on current political struggles. Her diary endures not merely as a symbol of despair but as a powerful call for historical awareness and revolutionary effort. The ongoing struggle for human emancipation—halted by fascism, compromised by reformist approaches, and distorted by Stalinism—continues to be the most critical challenge of our era.

This article situates The Diary of a Young Girl within the historical context that produced it. Anne Frank’s voice endures because it is inseparable from the crisis of capitalism. To honour that voice is to confront the system that silenced it—and to build the socialist movement capable of ensuring that such crimes never recur.

Anne Frank’s voice persists because it is fundamentally linked to the crisis of capitalism. Honouring her voice means confronting the system that silenced her and creating a socialist movement that prevents such crimes from happening again.

 

Katja Hoyer’s Cultural Dreams, Political Nightmares: Liberal Historiography and the Erasure of Class in the Interpretation of Weimar Germany

Abstract

This essay presents a Marxist critique of Katja Hoyer’s recent interpretation of the Weimar Republic, placing her account within the broader context of liberal historiography that prevails in modern British media and cultural circles. Using primary sources, Marxist theory, and the historiography of the German Revolution and the rise of Nazism, it argues that Hoyer’s perspective systematically obscures the class dynamics that shaped the Weimar Republic from its start. By omitting the counterrevolutionary role of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the damaging effects of Stalinisation on the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), Hoyer promotes a politically convenient myth: that fascism results from “polarisation” and economic hardship rather than the deliberate actions of political entities within a capitalist crisis. The essay ends by analysing the ideological significance of this liberal narrative today and reaffirming the revolutionary lessons of Weimar for today’s working class.[1]

Introduction: Liberal Historiography and the Sanitisation of Weimar

Katja Hoyer’s depiction of the Weimar Republic reflects a prevalent liberal interpretive style, framing it as a meditation on how "democratic dreams can die in the face of economic ills and polarising politics" (Hoyer, 2024). This style features a moralising narrative, a culturalist view of political conflict, and a systematic neglect of class analysis. Hoyer’s framing is “seductive and utterly misleading,” turning the German catastrophe into a morality tale rather than a concrete historical process shaped by specific class forces: "This is not history; it is a morality play designed to inoculate readers against the real lessons of the German catastrophe.”

The liberal view presents Weimar as a delicate democratic venture tragically disrupted by bad luck. However, this perspective hides the reality that the Weimar Republic resulted from a counterrevolutionary agreement enforced by the SPD alongside military and industrial elites, rather than democratic ideals. This essay revises that history and explains why overlooking it is politically important now.

The SPD as Gravedigger of the German Revolution

The German Revolution of 1918–1919 marked the most important proletarian uprising in Europe after Russia's, with workers' and soldiers’ councils forming nationwide to challenge the imperial authority and propose a socialist shift (Broué, 2005, pp. 3–45). However, the revolution was swiftly suppressed and ultimately defeated by the SPD leadership, Friedrich Ebert and Gustav Noske.

Hoyer’s account largely omits the SPD’s counterrevolutionary role: “There is no mention that the SPD leadership under Friedrich Ebert and Gustav Noske formed a secret pact with the Supreme Army Command to drown the revolutionary workers’ movement in blood.” This refers to the Ebert–Groener Pact of 10 November 1918, in which the SPD agreed to preserve the authority of the military command in exchange for its support against the revolutionary councils (Groener, 1925, pp. 457–460). The pact ensured that the old officer corps, the Prussian Junkers, and the industrial magnates retained their power.

The Freikorps and the Murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht

The SPD’s alliance with reaction was not just institutional but also violently repressive. Noske, who became Minister of Defence, notably stated: “Someone must be the bloodhound; I am not afraid of responsibility” (Noske, 1920, p. 68). Under his leadership, the government armed and sent the Freikorps—far-right paramilitary groups mainly made up of demobilised officers and soldiers—to suppress revolutionary uprisings in Berlin, Bremen, Munich, and the Ruhr.

On 15 January 1919, the Freikorps killed Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Their killers operated with impunity, protected by the judiciary and the SPD-led government (Frölich, 1940, pp. 312–330). As the critique highlights: “The Freikorps—the direct precursors of Hitler’s stormtroopers—were recruited and armed by a Social Democratic government to murder Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.” This fact alone challenges the liberal view of the SPD as champions of democracy.

The Counterrevolutionary Settlement of Weimar

The suppression of the revolution shaped the Weimar Republic’s institutional architecture. The judiciary remained staffed by imperial judges; the army retained its monarchist officer corps; the industrial barons kept their property; and the Junkers preserved their estates (Peukert, 1991, pp. 45–67). As the attached critique states: “The Weimar Republic was not a democracy tragically undone. It was a counterrevolutionary settlement from its inception.”

This is consistent with Trotsky’s assessment: “The German Revolution was a proletarian revolution beheaded by social democracy; more correctly, it is a bourgeois counterrevolution forced to preserve pseudo-democratic forms after the victory over the proletariat.” (Trotsky 1932, p. 112)Hoyer’s narrative omits this foundational reality.

The Rise of Nazism: Political Betrayal, Not Economic Fate

Liberal accounts often attribute the rise of Nazism to economic crisis and political polarisation. Hoyer follows this pattern, emphasising “economic ills” and “polarising politics” (Hoyer, 2024). However, the electoral data contradict the notion that the Nazis were an unstoppable force. In the November 1932 elections, the SPD and KPD together won 221 seats, while the Nazis won only 196 (Mommsen, 1996, p. 312). The workers’ parties were still far stronger than Hitler’s movement.” The decisive factor was not economic distress but political paralysis within the workers’ movement.

The SPD leadership repeatedly failed to rally its mass base against the fascist threat. It approved the Brüning government’s emergency decrees, supported Hindenburg’s presidential bid, and responded to the 1932 Prussian coup with a legal challenge rather than mass mobilisation (Winkler, 1993, pp. 421–450). “When Hindenburg and von Papen forcibly removed the SPD-led Prussian state government in 1932—a direct coup against the republic—the SPD did nothing.” This inaction demoralised SPD workers and encouraged reactionary forces.

Under Stalin’s orders, the KPD embraced the “social fascism” thesis, asserting that the SPD and Nazis were essentially identical, not opposites (Comintern, 1930, p. 12). This extreme-left stance hindered the formation of a united front against fascism and at times even led the KPD to tactically collaborate with the Nazis, such as during the 1931 Prussian referendum (Broué, 2005, pp. 789–795). The attached critique encapsulates Trotsky’s harsh judgment: "The Social Democratic workers remained with their leaders; the Communist workers lost faith in themselves and in the leadership"  This division within the working class proved disastrous.

The Bauhaus/Buchenwald Fallacy: Culturalism vs Class Analysis

Hoyer frames Weimar as a space of “uncomfortable proximity of idealism and barbarism,” juxtaposing the Bauhaus and Buchenwald (Hoyer, 2024). This culturalist framing is aesthetically appealing but analytically empty. This transforms a class question into a cultural juxtaposition, as though Nazism were simply the dark flipside of modernist creativity.

In 1925, reactionary forces ousted the Bauhaus from Weimar, forces that later backed the Nazis (Droste, 2002, pp. 112–130). Buchenwald was constructed by the same state apparatus that the SPD maintained after 1918. These two events are not cultural opposites but both reflect the same class-based dynamics.

Liberal narratives about Weimar serve a modern ideological purpose. They suggest fascism arose from ‘polarisation” and economic hardship, hiding the influence of political leadership and class conflict. The lesson for today is to be cautious of extremism, have faith in moderate institutions, and avoid economic crises pushing people toward radical politics. This aligns with the interests of current elites, aiming to weaken the working class amidst growing far-right movements, militarism, and authoritarian tendencies.

The core lesson of Weimar is the opposite: Fascism does not stem from cultural pathology but from capitalist crises. When threatened, the ruling class resorts to authoritarian measures, while the working class needs independent revolutionary leadership. These key lessons are often systematically omitted in liberal historiography.

The Revolutionary Lessons of Weimar

The Weimar Republic was not merely a failed democratic attempt but a regime formed through the repression of the German working class. Nazism's emergence was not unavoidable; it stemmed from the betrayal of workers by the SPD and the damaging sectarianism enforced on the KPD by Stalin. Hoyer’s account, similar to many liberal histories, tends to hide these factors, replacing them with cultural metaphors and moralistic cautions about.

It is crucial to conclude with a clear warning: “Without revolutionary leadership, the unresolved capitalist crisis will lead society back to barbarism.”

This statement is supported by history, not mere rhetoric. The lessons from Weimar are still relevant today, as the capitalist crisis worsens and far-right groups grow stronger across Europe and elsewhere. The only way to avoid repeating the catastrophe of 1933 is through a deliberate, organised revolutionary movement of the working class.

References

Broué, P. (2005). The German Revolution 1917–1923. Chicago: Haymarket.

Comintern (1930). Resolution on the Struggle Against Social Democracy. Moscow: Executive Committee.

Droste, M. (2002). Bauhaus 1919–1933. Cologne: Taschen.

Frölich, P. (1940). Rosa Luxemburg: Her Life and Work. London: Victor Gollancz.

Groener, W. (1925). Erinnerungen eines Soldaten. Leipzig: Köhler.

Hoyer, K. (2024). Cultural Dreams, Political Nightmares. BBC.

Mommsen, H. (1996). The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Noske, G. (1920). Von Kiel bis Kapp. Berlin: Verlag für Politik und Wirtschaft.

Peukert, D. (1991). The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity. New York: Hill and Wang.

Trotsky, L. (1932). The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. New York: Pathfinder.

Winkler, H.A. (1993). Weimar 1918–1933: Die Geschichte der ersten deutschen Demokratie. Munich: Beck.

 

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[1] "Cultural Dreams, Political Nightmares" is a historical essay by British-German historian Katja Hoyer. Published in History Extra Magazine, it explores how interwar Weimar Germany became a crucible where utopian modernism flourished alongside the rise of Nazism. The piece specifically uses the town of Weimar as a lens to show how economic crises and polarisation destroyed democratic dreams.

Against the Revisionist Denial of the English Revolution

Christopher Thompson's recent writing offers a sober critique of Marxist views on the English Revolution. However, it essentially follows a familiar revisionist pattern: pulling away from structural analysis, refusing to consider the socio-economic changes of the 16th and 17th centuries, and portraying the Civil Wars as merely “un grand soulevement” instead of a crucial turning point in the shift from feudalism to capitalism. The author’s stance is not just anti-Marxist; it’s anti-historical, as it dismisses the long-term processes that contributed to the crisis of the 1640s. This counter-essay aims to outline the dialectical framework of the English Revolution and show why the revisionist view fails under close examination.

The Revisionist Premise: Politics Without Structure

Jonathan Healey’s main assertion is definitive: “There was no ‘bourgeois revolution’, no preceding ‘class conflict’, and certainly no ‘feudal/absolutist state’.” This statement is more of a negation than an argument; it claims that there is no structural conflict by highlighting the lack of explicit anti-commercial policies. However, Marxist historiography does not rely on the idea that the Tudors or early Stuarts deliberately aimed to suppress capitalism. The shift from feudalism to capitalism results from inherent contradictions within the relations of production, rather than royal intent.

The revisionist position collapses because it equates structure with policy. It assumes that if monarchs encouraged trade, then no structural impediment existed. This is a category error. Absolutism was not defined by hostility to commerce; it was defined by the attempt to preserve the political supremacy of a landed ruling class in conditions where market relations were expanding beneath them. The author’s argument is therefore premised on a misunderstanding of what Marxists mean by “feudal” and “absolutist.”

The Long Transition: Agrarian Capitalism and Class Formation

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, significant socio-economic changes occurred: Enclosure increased, leading to a landless rural proletariat. Tenant farming evolved towards competitive leasing and market-driven production. London's rapid expansion fostered a national market and a rise in commercial bourgeoisie. The gentry grew, shifting from static feudal landlords to capitalist farmers and investors. Meanwhile, the state’s fiscal crisis worsened as traditional feudal revenues proved insufficient for a modernizing government.

These developments are well-documented in manorial records, court rolls, probate inventories, and by historians ranging from R.H. Tawney to Robert Brenner. However, the author of the document overlooks all this evidence. Instead, they claim that population growth up to 1630 happened “without major conflicts,” suggesting that the lack of peasant revolts indicates social harmony. Yet, class conflict doesn't always manifest as open rebellion. It can be seen in litigation over enclosure, disputes over customary rights, wage struggles, religious polarization, and political alliances driven by economic interests. A single spark did not cause the English Revolution; it was the culmination of a century of structural transformation. 

The State as a Site of Contradiction

Thompson dismisses the idea of a “feudal/absolutist state,” but in reality, the early Stuart monarchy embodied that very form. It aimed to uphold the dominance of a landowning elite while increasingly relying on capitalist economic activities. This created a sharp contradiction: the Crown needed revenue, yet its traditional sources were insufficient. Since Parliament controlled taxation, the monarchy tried to impose extra-parliamentary levies such as ship money and monopolies. These actions alienated both gentry and merchants. Additionally, religious conflicts intensified political divides, and the issue of multiple kingdoms deepened the crisis. This wasn’t just a random “great uprising”—it was the political manifestation of systemic tensions in a society in transition. The author’s refusal to recognize this isn’t humility but a form of theoretical blindness.

Supporters of King and Parliament were present at every societal level. This fact is accurate but not relevant, as class is defined by one’s relationship to the means of production, not political loyalty. The fact that individuals with similar class backgrounds chose different sides shows that class conflict persists, with ideology, religion, and political culture acting as mediators. Marxists have never claimed the Civil Wars were fought by purely self-aware bourgeois armies waving banners of capitalism. Instead, they see the political crisis as revealing deeper socio-economic contradictions. Revisionism fails because it insists on a simplistic, mechanistic class alignment that no Marxist historian has ever endorsed.

Christopher Hill and the Straw Man

Thompson seeks to undermine Marxist historiography by highlighting changes in Christopher Hill’s work. However, Hill’s development was not a repudiation of Marxism; rather, it was an evolution. His initial focus was on class conflict, while his later work highlighted the bourgeois outcomes of the revolution. This shift is not inconsistency but dialectical progress. Hill recognized that: the revolution did not immediately establish capitalism but destroyed political barriers to its development, created a state structure compatible with market relations, and hastened the emergence of a bourgeois political culture. Therefore, the author’s dismissive view of Hill is superficial, as it misinterprets both Hill’s intellectual evolution and the Marxist approach.

The Restoration Was Not a Royalist Victory

“A great uprising … which ended in a Royalist victory in and after 1660.” This characterization is historically inaccurate. The Restoration was a negotiated compromise that retained many of the revolution's gains: the monarchy was restored, but absolutism was not. Parliament's dominance was maintained, the fiscal-military state grew, agrarian capitalism advanced, and the bourgeoisie gained influence. The Glorious Revolution finalized this process. If this is considered a “Royalist victory,” it is a peculiar one—one that undermines the very foundations of Royalist power. The author’s assertion appears rhetorical rather than analytical.

The Necessity of Structural Explanation

The revisionist view outlined in the document is not only incorrect but also insufficient. It fails to account for key developments such as England's long-term socio-economic changes, the state's fiscal crisis, political polarization in the 1630s and 1640s, the ideological radicalization of the New Model Army, the abolition of the monarchy and House of Lords, and the rise of a state aligned with capitalist growth. Marxist historiography can explain these phenomena, as it doesn’t reduce the revolution solely to class conflict but places political events within societal contradictions during structural change. The English Revolution was not merely a “great uprising"; it was a pivotal break in the shift from feudalism to capitalism. Denying this is to deny the course of history itself.

 

The Sullivan Affair and the Ideological Degradation of Holocaust Historiography

“Why do governments give millions each day for war, when they spend nothing on medicine or poor people?

Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl, entry of 3 May 1944.

"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

 — Elie Wiesel

"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist... Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." — Martin Niemöller.

"It is possible to imagine without difficulty what awaits the Jews at the mere outbreak of the future world war. But even without war, the next development of world reaction signifies with certainty the physical extermination of the Jews.

Leon Trotsky

In 2022, Rosemary Sullivan’s The Betrayal of Anne Frank was withdrawn by its Dutch publisher after its main claim was proven unfounded. This wasn’t just a correction of an academic error but also a revealing sign of how Holocaust historiography is progressively degrading under modern capitalism. The book falsely claimed there was a “Jewish betrayer” responsible for the Frank family’s arrest—an allegation based on guesswork, misinterpretation, and pseudo-forensic showmanship. Despite its flaws, major media outlets endorsed and heavily promoted the book, only retracting it after experts showed its claims fell apart under minimal examination.

The Sullivan affair exemplifies a wider trend: the shift of the Holocaust from a historical event tied to capitalism, imperialism, and class conflict into a depoliticised morality story, a detective mystery, and ultimately a tool used by the ruling class for ideological purposes.

The Individualisation of Fascist Crime

Sullivan’s core argument in “Who betrayed Anne Frank?” is flawed. It suggests that the moral failure of a single person is the key to understanding Anne Frank’s death, which resembles crime fiction more than historical analysis. Anne Frank was not betrayed by an informant; she was murdered by the Nazi regime—an instrument of German financial capital in its most brutal form. The relentless search for a single betrayer serves an ideological purpose: it simplifies a complex historical atrocity into a moral failure, shifting focus from social forces to finding a villain.

This pattern is now widespread. Popular Holocaust stories—memoirs, films, museum exhibits, and “cold case” investigations—mainly highlight personal accounts, moral conflicts, and psychological profiles. The Holocaust is seen as a platform for individual heroism or guilt, while the broader social, economic, and political factors that led to fascism are overlooked. This focus on individualisation is deliberate, aligned with modern bourgeois ideology, which struggles to recognise the link between fascism and capitalism without condemning itself.

From Historical Event to Cultural Commodity

The public perception of the Holocaust has significantly evolved over time. In the years right after World War II, its memory was influenced by survivors, scholars, and political groups who saw fascism as stemming from a crisis within capitalism. The genocide was closely linked to the fall of bourgeois democracy, the betrayal of the working class by Social Democracy and Stalinist regimes, and Germany's imperialist ambitions for dominance.

By the late 20th century, the way Holocaust memory was presented changed significantly. Museums, films, memoirs, and educational programs multiplied, but their focus shifted mainly to personal stories, moral lessons, and emotional engagement. As a result, the Holocaust evolved into a universal symbol of “evil,” losing touch with its specific historical context.

This commodification fulfils a specific ideological role by turning the Holocaust from a political incident into a commercial commodity. It replaces critical analysis with emotional appeal, factual history with storytelling, and class conflict with individual tragedy. As a result, the Holocaust is transformed into a brand—one that is referenced, consumed, and marketed—rather than a cautionary tale about risks associated with capitalist crises.

The Reactionary Function of the “Jewish Betrayer” Narrative

Sullivan’s book specifically aimed to identify a Jewish betrayer, not just any traitor. This choice is deliberate and significant. The image of the Jewish collaborator—such as a Judenrat official, kapo, or informant—has historically been employed to blur the moral distinctions of the Holocaust and suggest a false “shared responsibility” between victims and perpetrators. In reality, these individuals operated under extreme coercion and degradation, and their actions, though morally complex, were driven by the totalitarian system of extermination. However, the political implications of emphasising these figures depend entirely on the surrounding context.

Currently, promoting a “Jewish betrayer” narrative serves reactionary goals: it downplays fascist crimes by implying Jews were partly responsible for their own fate. It fuels far-right ideas that aim to diminish accountability for German imperialism. Additionally, it supports the German state’s cynical use of Holocaust remembrance to justify its backing of Israel’s actions in Gaza and its wider militarist goals. Institutions like the Buchenwald memorial have prohibited criticising Israel under the pretence of fighting antisemitism, thus exploiting Holocaust memory for modern imperialist aims. In this environment, seeking a Jewish betrayer is not just misguided but also politically perilous.

The Pseudo‑Science of the Cold Case Method

Historians like Johannes Houwink ten Cate, Bart van der Boom, and others challenged Sullivan’s claims by showing that the book’s main accusation was based on speculation, misinterpretation, and a lack of understanding of historical context. The so-called "smoking gun,” an anonymous note from after the war, lacked any real evidence. The supposed betrayer, Arnold van den Bergh, was already in hiding by 1944. When examined critically by scholars, the entire case fell apart immediately.

The core problem is methodological. The cold-case approach views history as a solvable puzzle using forensic clues, rather than recognising it as a complex social process influenced by class forces. This pseudo-scientific method, borrowed from criminal investigation and the true-crime genre, appeals to the desire for narrative closure and a definitive villain.

This method is fundamentally anti-historical. It fails to recognise the Holocaust as a result of capitalism in crisis, imperialism, and the collapse of the working-class movement. Instead of providing analysis, it resorts to speculation; instead of offering context, it leans on conjecture; and rather than presenting history, it seeks entertainment. The appeal of these approaches mirrors the ideological demands of bourgeois culture, which favours soothing stories over confronting uncomfortable realities.

The Real Betrayal: The Collapse of Working‑Class Leadership

From a Marxist perspective, the key betrayal enabling Anne Frank’s death was not carried out by any single informant, but rather by the organisations professing to represent the working class, which ultimately betrayed them.

The Social Democratic parties surrendered to their national bourgeoisies well before Hitler rose to power. Meanwhile, the Stalinist bureaucracy placed the fight against fascism behind its diplomatic tactics, resulting in the 1939 Hitler–Stalin Pact. The Communist Party of the Netherlands, which had organised the brave February 1941 strike—the first large-scale protest against the Nazis in Europe—was politically rendered powerless by Stalinism and unable to lead a revolutionary movement. Without a revolutionary socialist movement, the working class was left vulnerable to fascism.

This is the true historical lesson of the Holocaust. It is also the lesson that bourgeois historiography tries to hide by focusing on individual morality and betrayal stories.

The Contemporary Stakes: Memory as Ideology

The Sullivan affair must be seen within a larger crisis in our understanding of history today. As capitalism encounters new difficulties—such as war, authoritarian states, and economic recessions—the ruling class often manipulates historical memory for its

Three key trends are apparent: firstly, the commercialisation of Holocaust remembrance, turning it into a product disconnected from its political significance and aimed at consumerism; secondly, the depoliticisation of fascism, viewed as a moral flaw or anomaly rather than a result of capitalist crises; and thirdly, the exploitation of Holocaust memory to justify modern militarism, nationalism, and imperialism. Within this context, the Sullivan affair exemplifies how Holocaust history is being ideologically compromised in a capitalist system.

Conclusion: The Necessity of Revolutionary Leadership

Anne Frank’s words from May 3, 1944—“Why do governments give millions each day for war, when they spend nothing on medicine or poor people?”—challenge decades of ideological distortion. Her question isn’t a moral dilemma; it’s a political critique of a capitalist system that fosters war, poverty, and genocide.

Her death teaches us that the real lesson isn't to pursue informants after eighty years, but that the working class must create its own revolutionary party—free from capitalist, nationalist, Stalinist, and social-democratic influences—to stop the barbarism that took her life from returning. This barbarism isn't just history; it's an active threat, nurtured by the same capitalist system that is pushing the world toward a third world war.