AI, Capitalist Competition, and the Threat to Humanity: A Marxist Analysis

Jacob Coxon's resignation from Anthropic, a company that loudly champions 'AI safety,' has been portrayed in the media as a personal moral crisis a lone engineer stepping back from dangerous territory. But it is actually much more important: it reveals, from within the industry, that the entire AI sector is propelled not by scientific progress or human necessity, but by capitalist competition driving toward potentially disastrous results that its own creators worry about.

Coxon’s warning is clear: “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” This isn’t just a speculative fear or a distant hypothetical. It’s the assessment of those with the deepest technical understanding of the systems being created. Still, Coxon admits, “coordination between competing capitalist firms racing for market dominance and state backing cannot be relied upon.” The industry presses on at full speed. This paradox—knowing the danger but feeling compelled to act— isn’t psychological. It’s structural. Capitalism’s logic asserts itself forcefully and without ambiguity.

Anthropic was established by a splinter group from OpenAI, aiming for safer AI development. However, after three years, Coxon notes the company finds itself in the same competitive race it tried to avoid. This is because, under capitalism, no company can afford to slow its progress without risking destruction by competitors. The safety issue isn’t purely technical; it's tied to the nature of economic relationships. Under the capitalist system, “responsible scaling’ often remains just a marketing phrase, not a practical reality.

Evan Hubinger, who still works at Anthropic, emphasises the serious risk. He estimates there's over a 10% chance that AI could eradicate all humans within ten years, despite the company's lack of concrete plans to address superintelligence alignment and its unclear progress. Samuel Marks, another staff member, notes that concern levels increase with seniority. These are not marginal opinions; they come from engineers directly involved with the systems. Their warnings are grounded in technical realities, yet companies continue on their current course.

This illustrates the “rational irrationality” of capitalism: every firm needs to grow faster or face collapse. The overall result—possibly human extinction—fails to concern the market. Marx recognised this contradiction 150 years ago: productive forces outpace the social relations meant to control them. AI is just the latest, most intense form of this dilemma.

The Resignation Genre as Political Symptom

The media often depicts each resignation as a unique human-interest story: such as the conscientious objector, the disillusioned researcher, or the engineer who quits to pursue poetry. However, together, these stories expose a deeper trend: a technical workforce awakening to its own powerlessness within capitalist production.

Mrinank Sharma cautions that “the world faces danger… not only from AI or bioweapons, but from a web of interconnected crises happening right now,” then announces he will leave the industry to pursue poetry. Another OpenAI researcher resigns over adding advertising to a chatbot used for sharing “their medical fears, relationship issues, beliefs about God and the afterlife,” warning of “possible manipulation of users.” These actions are not mere acts of conscience, but signs of alienation. Engineers, once confident as innovators, now see themselves as workers under capital, forced to develop systems they fear and cannot control.

The apocalyptic warnings—such as “10 per cent chance of killing all humans” and “could kill us all by the end of the decade”—serve a specific ideological purpose. They depict catastrophe as unavoidable, suggesting AI is an autonomous force beyond human control. This sense of fatalism hides a key truth: AI is not a metaphysical entity but a social relation. People create it—engineers in Silicon Valley, data annotators in Kenya and the Philippines, miners in the Congo, and chip fabricators in Taiwan.

The question of whether AI becomes a tool of liberation or barbarism is not a technical question of “alignment.” It is a political question of ownership and control. Between the present order and any catastrophic outcome stands the international working class.

Coxon proposes a “temporary ban on improving model capabilities,” but admits it is unlikely because coordination between competing firms and states cannot be relied upon. This is the essential point. Regulation cannot restrain capital. The capitalist state is not a neutral arbiter; it is the ruling class's executive committee. It exists to defend private property, not to restrain it. Every proposal for “responsible scaling,” “constitutional AI,” or “government oversight” collapses the moment profit demands acceleration. The market does not permit restraint. The only solution is expropriation.

The Socialist Program for AI

Coxon and his colleagues highlight a contradiction capitalism cannot solve. Addressing this issue calls for a revolutionary overhaul of how we own and control productive resources. The socialist plan is explicit: nationalise AI, cloud services, semiconductor companies, and platform monopolies, and turn them into public utilities managed democratically by workers. Ensure no worker loses their job to automation by using AI to shorten workweeks without reducing pay. Also, bring all AI development under international planning, directing research to serve human needs rather than profit.

End the secrecy kept by private corporations by making all models, datasets, and research pipelines publicly accessible. Finally, use AI as a tool for global economic planning—helping coordinate production, reduce waste, and enhance living standards worldwide. This is not a reformist agenda but a revolutionary one. It demands that the working class take control of the productive forces and reorganise society around socialist principles. The resignations at Anthropic and OpenAI are not moral crises but alerts from within capitalism's core. Those closest to the technology fear it could destroy humanity—yet the system forces them to continue developing it.

This represents capitalism's most fundamental contradiction: a social system that endangers humanity's survival. Humanity faces a clear choice: the working class must take control of the technology and utilise it to establish a rational, planned, socialist society—or the ruling class will persist in its reckless pursuit of disaster. The future of AI is fundamentally political, not technical. Its outcome will be determined not by engineers or executives, but through the conscious struggle of the international working class.

 

Edward Luce’s Zbig and the Sanitising of Imperialist Strategy-A Hagiography for the “Cold War Prophet

Edward Luce’s Zbig, published in 2025 and widely praised across the American foreign-policy community, is more than just a biography. It serves as an ideological gesture aligned with Washington’s growing rivalry with Russia and China. Positive reviews in Foreign Policy, celebratory discussions at the Aspen Institute, and its strategic rise on the New York Times bestseller list highlight the book's political role more than its content.

Luce, a Financial Times columnist and descendant of British colonial officials, creates a text that enhances the self-image of America's ruling class. He portrays Zbigniew Brzezinski not as a supporter of imperialist violence, but as a “prophet” whose warnings shed light on current threats. This approach is part of a larger effort to rehabilitate Cold War ideologues, framing them as valuable sources of insight for today's great-power conflicts.

This review assesses Zbig not merely as a historical contribution but as a political artefact. It contends that Luce’s book sanitises Brzezinski’s reputation, hides the human toll of his policies, and reflects the liberal-imperialist intelligentsia’s ideological views. Zbig is a hagiography that elevates imperialist strategy to a form of statesmanship and portrays mass violence as just the unavoidable noise of geopolitical strategy.

The marketing around Zbig reveals much about its intentions. Brzezinski is portrayed as a “great power prophet," someone who “saw the Soviet threat more clearly than most". His “diligence” and “faith in America" are framed as qualities to emulate today. Susan Glasser’s jacket blurb openly states the political aim: this is “history that matters more than ever,” considering the "resurgent threat from Russia." Such language is deliberate. It positions Brzezinski as a figure whose Cold War-era worldview can be adapted for current times. Ultimately, Luce’s biography is part of a larger ideological effort to justify the resurgence of great-power rivalry as a natural aspect of American foreign policy.

Timing is crucial. As Washington expands its involvement in a NATO-Russia proxy conflict in Ukraine and prepares for possible clashes with China, Brzezinski’s revival supports these actions by framing them as part of a long-standing tradition of strategic foresight. Eliminating Luce’s overly admiring tone clarifies his career’s focus. A member of Poland’s diplomatic elite and strongly opposed to Moscow, he turned personal animosity into a geopolitical tactic. His transition from academia to the National Security Council stemmed from his ability to identify and exploit global tensions to maintain American dominance.

Brzezinski pressed the Carter administration to back the Shah’s suppression of the revolution, endorsing a brutal crackdown that led to thousands of deaths. His stance was driven by imperialist motives rather than democratic ideals: safeguarding a vital American ally. Brzezinski’s significant role in covertly supplying arms to the Afghan mujahideen defines his legacy. He later claimed that he began supporting Islamist fighters before the Soviet invasion not to stop it, but to lure Moscow into a Vietnam-like conflict. This strategy resulted in a prolonged war that claimed over a million Afghan lives, devastated the country’s social fabric, and created the conditions for al-Qaeda’s rise. Luce treats this as strategic brilliance. In reality, it was a policy of calculated devastation.

Guatemala

Brzezinski supported counterinsurgency programs that empowered death‑squad regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, and elsewhere. These campaigns of terror claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Luce relegates this violence to background detail, treating it as an unfortunate but necessary component of Cold War strategy. None of this amounts to prophecy. It is the record of a man who treated entire populations as expendable instruments in a geopolitical chess match.

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s involvement in Guatemala is one of the least‑discussed but most revealing episodes of his tenure as Carter’s National Security Advisor. It exposes the core contradiction of Carter‑era foreign policy: human‑rights rhetoric at the podium, counterinsurgency strategy in practice.

By the late 1970s, Guatemala was in the grip of a state terror apparatus. The army and security forces, long supported by U.S. training and intelligence, were carrying out assassinations, disappearances, and scorched‑earth campaigns against indigenous communities and leftist movements. Publicly, the Carter administration expressed concern. Privately, it saw Guatemala as a strategic bulwark against revolutionary movements sweeping Central America.

Brzezinski’s own meetings with Guatemalan officials capture this duality. He spoke of “profound change” in the region and insisted the “status quo cannot be maintained,” but framed reform not as justice for Guatemala’s population, but as a way to prevent revolution and preserve U.S. influence. His language was liberal; the underlying logic was imperial.

The archival record goes further. In 1980, Brzezinski chaired a Special Coordination Committee meeting reviewing CIA covert action proposals for Central America, including Guatemala. The committee approved expanded operations in neighbouring countries and discussed similar programs for Guatemala, deferring only pending field assessment. The intent was clear: prepare covert action “in good time” so it could “have impact as situations become more critical.”

Guatemala was not an afterthought. It was part of a regional counterinsurgency strategy designed to contain social revolution through intelligence liaison, media manipulation, and support for authoritarian allies.

Brzezinski’s role in Guatemala shows the continuity of U.S. policy: behind the language of democracy lay a commitment to preserving American dominance, even at the cost of mass repression. Any honest assessment of his legacy must include Guatemala—not as a footnote, but as a case study in the lethal convergence of liberal rhetoric and imperial strategy.

Luce’s main narrative contrast is between Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger. Brzezinski is depicted as the idealistic liberal internationalist, a principled strategist committed to democracy and human rights. Conversely, Kissinger is shown as a cynical realist. However, this distinction dissolves on closer examination, as both men worked within a shared ruling-class consensus: preserving American dominance at all costs. Their differences were mainly stylistic rather than substantial.

Brzezinski’s language on democracy acted as a cover for policies similar to Kissinger’s, including coups, covert operations, proxy wars, and the systematic suppression of movements challenging US dominance. Luce’s biography tones down Brzezinski’s own candid admissions regarding the strategic use of violence, portraying him more as a hesitant strategist than a passionate architect of intervention.

The idea of the “good strategist” is central to establishment historiography. It enables liberal-imperialist thinkers to disassociate from the more openly cynical Cold War figures while maintaining the core reasoning behind American dominance.

The Grand Chessboard: Empire Without Apology

Luce’s book covers Brzezinski’s later work as a consultant and geostrategist only briefly. However, publications like The Grand Chessboard are crucial for understanding his perspective. In these, he openly guides policymakers on managing Eurasia as a strategic battleground for American influence, viewing nations and peoples as pieces to be moved. This was not a shift from his earlier work but its logical extension. Brzezinski’s worldview remained consistent: he saw the world as an arena of strategic rivalry, with the United States needing to lead. Luce’s purposeful omission avoids challenging the central myth of the liberal prophet, as recognising Brzezinski’s clear imperialism would weaken it.

The core issue with Zbig is methodological. Luce reduces the extensive violence of late-20th-century US foreign policy to a psychological story of a talented émigré navigating bureaucratic rivalries and social intrigue. The millions affected by Brzezinski's policies are just distant numbers. This reflects the usual approach of establishment biographies: history told from the perspective of the State Department, strategic insights emphasised, human suffering downplayed, and imperial violence depicted as necessary.

Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard stands as one of the clearest articulations of post‑Cold War American imperial strategy, precisely because it dispenses with the usual moralising language of “democracy promotion” and speaks in the idiom of raw geopolitical power. Written at the height of the unipolar moment, the book codifies a worldview long embedded in the U.S. national security establishment: that global stability is synonymous with American primacy, and that primacy must be actively maintained through strategic intervention across Eurasia.

At the centre of Brzezinski’s argument is the conviction that Eurasia — stretching from Western Europe to China is the decisive arena of world politics. Whoever controls or dominates this vast landmass controls the world. The United States, as the sole superpower of the 1990s, must therefore prevent the emergence of any rival capable of consolidating Eurasian power. This is not framed as a temporary necessity but as an enduring imperative. The book identifies “geostrategic players” (Russia, China, Germany, France) and “geopolitical pivots” (Ukraine, Azerbaijan, South Korea, among others) whose alignment or destabilisation can shift the continental balance. These states are treated less as sovereign actors than as pieces on a board whose movement must be managed to preserve U.S. hegemony.

Brzezinski’s earlier role in arming the Afghan mujahideen foreshadows the logic of The Grand Chessboard. The covert war in Afghanistan was designed to weaken the Soviet Union indirectly, using local forces as instruments in a larger geopolitical contest. In the book, this method becomes a general principle: exploit regional conflicts, cultivate dependencies, and intervene militarily, economically, or politically wherever a rival might gain strategic advantage. The rhetoric of human rights or democracy is largely absent; what matters is maintaining the structural conditions of American dominance.

The enduring significance of The Grand Chessboard lies in its candour. It reveals the continuity of U.S. strategy from the Cold War to the present: containing Russia, managing Europe, encircling China, and treating the post‑Soviet space as a zone of strategic manipulation. In doing so, it exposes the imperial logic beneath the liberal veneer of American foreign policy. Far from being an artefact of the 1990s, Brzezinski’s doctrine remains a blueprint for the geopolitical interventions of the twenty‑first century.

Against Myth, For Historical Truth

The timing of Zbig's publication and recognition is intentional. Brzezinski’s rehabilitation aims to serve immediate political goals by normalising great-power conflicts as a typical role for American leaders, framing Cold War strategies as models for current policies, hiding the severe human toll of the interventions he supported, and providing ideological justification for escalating tensions with Russia and China. In this context, Luce’s biography contributes to a greater ideological effort: creating a historical narrative that supports today’s imperialist ambitions.

A true assessment of Brzezinski’s career and the imperialist violence it represents must come from outside the framework favoured by Luce and his endorsing institutions. The goal isn’t to rehabilitate Cold War strategists but to reveal the ongoing imperialist logic from the late twentieth century to today. Brzezinski wasn’t a prophet; he was an empire technician. Luce’s biography reads like a hagiography meant to hide this truth, especially when the ruling class needs such concealment.

📚 Primary Sources

• Luce, Edward. Zbig: The Strategy and Statecraft of Zbigniew Brzezinski. New York: Basic Books, 2018. (Authorised biography; central to your critique.)
• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. New York: Basic Books, 1997. (Foundational statement of post‑Cold War U.S. strategy.)
• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983. (Carter-era policymaking from Brzezinski’s perspective.)
• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power. New York: Basic Books, 2012. (Late-career restatement of his geopolitical worldview.)

📚 Secondary Sources: U.S. Imperial Strategy & Geopolitics

General Imperial Strategy

• Bacevich, Andrew. American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy. Harvard University Press, 2002.
• Johnson, Chalmers. Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. Henry Holt, 2000.
• Mearsheimer, John J. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. W.W. Norton, 2001.
• Gowan, Peter. The Global Gamble: Washington’s Faustian Bid for World Dominance. Verso, 1999.
• Harvey, David. The New Imperialism. Oxford University Press, 2003.

Geopolitical Theory (Brzezinski’s Intellectual Lineage)

• Mackinder, Halford. “The Geographical Pivot of History.” The Geographical Journal 23, no. 4 (1904): 421–437.
• Spykman, Nicholas. The Geography of the Peace. Harcourt, Brace, 1944.
• Kissinger, Henry. Diplomacy. Simon & Schuster, 1994.

📚 Afghanistan, Cold War Covert Strategy, and Brzezinski’s Role

• Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden. Penguin, 2004.
• Cordovez, Diego, and Selig S. Harrison. Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal. Oxford University Press, 1995.
• Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. Yale University Press, 2000.

📚 Critical Marxist & Left Analyses of U.S. Strategy

• Chomsky, Noam. Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance. Metropolitan Books, 2003.
• Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Empire of Capital. Verso, 2003.
• Callinicos, Alex. Imperialism and Global Political Economy. Polity, 2009.
• Ali, Tariq. The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity. Verso, 2002.
• Prashad, Vijay. The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World. New Press, 2007.

📚 Useful Scholarly Articles

• Gaddis, John Lewis. “A Grand Strategy of Transformation.” Foreign Policy, no. 133 (2002): 50–57.
• Cox, Michael. “The Empire’s Back in Town: Or America’s Imperial Temptation — Again.” International Affairs 80, no. 1 (2004): 1–27.
• Smith, Tony. “The End of the Unipolar Moment? Obama and the World.” Survival 52, no. 5 (2010): 75–96.

📚 On Political Biography as Ideology

• Schudson, Michael. The Power of News. Harvard University Press, 1995.
• Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent. Pantheon, 1988.
• Gitlin, Todd. The Whole World Is Watching. University of California Press, 1980.

 

James Marriott’s The New Dark Ages: A Jeremiad Against “Slop,” With the Social Question Carefully Avoided

James Marriott’s The New Dark Ages is the latest addition to a rising genre of critique lamenting modern institutions: an elegy for reading, attention, and the “culture of print.” It is a compact, quotable book that resonates with the concerns of the Times/Guardian opinion pages. Its core argument can be summarised: smartphones are dismantling the foundations of the modern world. While Gutenberg's invention fostered democracy, TikTok and similar platforms are eroding it.

This argument isn't entirely original, nor is it completely incorrect. The real issue isn't just the fact that literacy is stagnating, attention spans are fragmenting, or cultural life is deteriorating—it's the explanation behind these trends. Marriott presents a technologically deterministic story in which print pioneered modernity and smartphones are now destroying it. He omits the important social, economic, and class questions. Essentially, his book laments "slop" without considering who produces it, who benefits, or why the institutions that once supported literacy have been systematically dismantled. In short, it's a diagnosis that reassures its audience by avoiding the root causes of the problem.

Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death

Neil Postman’s 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' (1985) remains a highly insightful analysis of how public life has transformed under late capitalism. Written at the peak of the television era, Postman contended that the key change in modern culture was not ideological but epistemological: a shift from a print-based public sphere to one ruled by entertainment media. He cautioned that this shift led to a society where the spectacle's logic replaces political debate, historical memory, and civic seriousness.

Postman’s key insight was straightforward yet powerful: each medium has a bias toward particular ways of thinking. Print fosters linear reasoning, focus, and gradual argument development. Conversely, television breaks discourse into images, emotional signals, and quick edits. A culture shifting between these mediums not only changes its habits but also its ability to think. As Postman observed, “We become what we behold,” and a society fixated on entertainment risks losing the capacity for meaningful democratic debate.

Postman’s book remains powerful because he saw this change as rooted in institutions, not just psychology. Television didn't undermine politics because viewers lacked willpower; it did so because commercial media found trivial content profitable. The way the medium processes knowledge is linked to its economic system. Postman’s critique isn't just about missing reading but about cautioning against reshaping public communication for profit.

From a Marxist perspective, Postman’s limitation is also evident. He pointed out the symptoms—the breakdown of rational discourse, the ascendancy of spectacle, and the infantilization of politics—but failed to explore the root causes. He didn't ask why entertainment became the primary cultural form, who owned the media institutions driving this change, or how the commodification of attention altered the work environment, the educational system, and public life. His concept of 'technopoly' described a cultural state rather than a social relationship.

However, this oversight does not lessen the book’s importance. In fact, the smartphone era has validated Postman’s insights more than he might have envisioned. The pattern he observed—entertainment functioning as a form of knowledge and distraction serving as an ideology—has grown stronger through platforms designed to profit from every moment of human attention. The dynamics Postman described in television now underpin digital capitalism.

Today's goal isn't just to echo Postman’s warnings but to act on them. The crisis in public discourse isn't driven by technology itself; rather, it's rooted in the economic system that uses technology to fragment our awareness and maximise profit. *Amusing Ourselves to Death* stays vital because it illustrates how culture deteriorates when communication is treated as a commodity. However, it doesn't fully clarify why this commodification happened or why undoing it demands social change rather than moral preaching.

The Whig Interpretation of Print Culture

Marriott’s traditional approach is well-known. He traces a direct line from Gutenberg to Locke, linking pamphlets to parliaments, and literacy to liberty. “With rising literacy came the world we recognise today,” he states, implying literacy is an independent force—like a harmless contagion—that spreads reason and democracy wherever it goes. This reflects the Whig interpretation of print culture in its most straightforward form. It views technology as the driving force of history and considers culture a natural outcome, presenting history as free of conflict, opposition, or social classes.

The truth was different. The rise of print in the 17th and 18th centuries was not the cause of revolutionary change, but rather a tool. The pamphlet wars during the English Civil War, the Enlightenment thinkers, the radical newspapers of the 1790s, and the Chartist press didn't emerge simply because printing was available. These movements developed because new social classes were forming, fighting, organising, and needed literacy to express their goals. The bourgeoisie used print to overthrow feudalism, while the working class needed it to understand and challenge the new system that replaced it.

Marriott reverses cause and effect to craft a history where the bourgeoisie is merely a reading audience, not a revolutionary force; the proletariat is absent; and literacy exists independently of its material prerequisites. This portrayal aligns with the Times' favoured narrative: refined, devoid of bloodshed, and boosting the self-image of the educated middle class.

The Smartphone as Scapegoat

Marriott’s depiction of the current situation mirrors the same evasion. He describes the smartphone as “an invasive species” within the cultural ecosystem. This metaphor is telling: invasive species come from outside, uninvited and unplanned, seen as natural disasters rather than social constructs. However, the smartphone did not simply emerge by chance. Corporations intentionally designed, manufactured, marketed, and distributed it, and their core business relies on capturing and destroying sustained attention. Companies like Meta, Google, ByteDance, and others have developed systems that profit from addiction, fragmenting consciousness and turning every idle moment into a source of revenue. In this view, the smartphone isn’t the villain; it’s capital itself that bears responsibility.

Marriott’s choice not to specify this is intentional and forms the book's central theme. It lacks chapters on the advertising-revenue model that makes engagement-focused design profitable. No sections discuss austerity measures that have decimated public libraries, adult education, and humanities programs. The book also omits topics like the casualisation of academic labour and how universities have become debt-driven institutions. Furthermore, it does not address that students struggling with classics like Dickens often work two jobs to afford fees that once were negligible.

The reading crisis is often seen as a failure of personal willpower rather than a weakness in social infrastructure. The moral appeal of 'put down the phone, pick up the book' targets those who still have free time to read, while it is directed at a class that increasingly lacks this leisure.

Why the Commentariat Loves This Book

It's worth considering why Marriott’s book has been so warmly received by the very media outlets that helped foster the conditions he criticises. The reason is straightforward: it focuses on the wrong enemy. Criticising mass culture by blaming technology instead of capital doesn't threaten the institutions that publish such critiques. This lets outlets like the Times and the Guardian lament “slop” while still profiting from the same attention-driven economy that creates it. It also appeals to their audience—the few who can read a 208-page book—by suggesting that their own habits are the final defence against chaos.

Most importantly, it lets commentators talk about cultural decline while avoiding underlying social issues such as deindustrialisation in entire regions, the loss of stable jobs, the fragmentation of youth communities, the breakdown of public services, and the militarisation of foreign policy. These are the true causes of the “post-literate society,” yet they are exactly the subjects the Times tends to steer clear of.

Marriott’s book is therefore valuable. It presents a crisis for discussion, highlighting issues often examined endlessly without considering the underlying economic system. Marriott correctly notes that sustained reading encourages sustained thought, which has political consequences as its decline makes the public more vulnerable to demagoguery. Viewing this purely as a technological problem misses the core issue. Trotsky emphasised that cultural issues are always linked to material conditions. Literacy relies on factors like free time, decent housing, proper nutrition, quality schools, and a shorter workday that allows leisure. Culture doesn't develop in isolation but arises during the free hours after work.

Marriott’s emphasis on “the written word” overlooks important social realities. It defends reading for a privileged class that still has free time, ignoring the circumstances that deprive millions of that opportunity. The connection between readers was never just about printed material; it was built through struggles over education, working hours, and leisure rights. Reclaiming that link won't come through moral pleas or nostalgia; it requires a fight over resources and societal structures that shape who can find time, energy, and institutional support to read. This essential conflict is missing from The New Dark Ages, and its absence reveals the book’s true focus.

A Crisis Misnamed, A Crisis Unresolved

Marriott has written a book about the death of reading that refuses to ask why reading is dying. He has written a book about cultural decay that refuses to name the social decay beneath it. He has written a book about democracy that refuses to mention the economic order that has hollowed democracy out.It is a jeremiad against “slop” that never asks who cooks the slop, who profits from it, and why so many people have no alternative.The crisis of literacy is real. The crisis of attention is real. The crisis of culture is real. But smartphones don't cause them. They are caused by capitalism.

 

 

Claudia Jones, Stalinism, and the Origins of “Triple Oppression”: A Historical Assessment

 Claudia Jones’s 1949 essay “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman” holds a unique and revealing position within the political context of the postwar American left. Modern academic circles often celebrate it as a cornerstone of “socialist feminism,” even as an early form of intersectional theory. However, when viewed in the context of the actual historical development of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the decline of the international communist movement under Stalin, the essay takes on a different perspective. It is not seen as a groundbreaking theoretical work but rather as a product of a party already aligned with the Kremlin's interests, and its ideas presaged the later split of the working class into various identity-based factions.

This assessment aligns with the perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), whose critique of Stalinism, the national question, and the pseudo-left’s adoption of identity politics is rooted in extensive political experience and theoretical development. While Jones’s essay offers valuable empirical insights from this viewpoint, it also reveals some significant political limitations.

Black Women and Superexploitation

Jones’s key empirical insight is undeniable. In the postwar U.S., Black women were the most exploited and marginalised segment of the working class. Mostly limited to domestic work and the lowest-paid industrial roles, they faced extreme Superexploitation, which the labour movement and even the CPUSA had failed to address effectively. Jones’s argument that racism and sexism are not just social issues but fundamental manifestations of capitalist relations provided a valuable correction to the complacency and opportunism that had infiltrated the Party’s own ranks.

A Marxist view endorses this stance, highlighting that combating racism and sexism is fundamentally connected to class conflict. The workers’ movement must stand up for its most marginalised members to advance. Jones’s critique of Black women’s exclusion within the left was therefore valid and necessary. Nonetheless, while her empirical evidence is persuasive, it does not fully address the shortcomings of her theoretical approach.

By 1949, the CPUSA was no longer a revolutionary organisation. After the Popular Front, Earl Browder’s wartime policy of class collaboration, and his "no-strike” pledge, the party shifted back to the "left" under the influence of Kremlin diplomacy rather than grassroots needs. Jones’s essay reflects this transitional period, serving more as an internal correction aimed at aligning the Party’s mass efforts with Moscow’s new postwar "left" stance. Its political scope is confined within the Stalinist framework in which it was produced.

This is most apparent in its unquestioning backing of the CPUSA as the primary force for Black women’s liberation. By 1949, the Party was already weakened due to McCarthyite repression and internal bureaucratic decline. Urging it to “end its neglect” of Black women effectively treated a significantly compromised organisation as reformable. This view overlooked the broader issue of Stalinism’s betrayal of the revolutionary principles that initially established the Party.

The Black Belt Thesis: A Nationalist Deviation

Jones’s essay also shows the CPUSA’s ongoing reliance on the Comintern’s “Black Belt” self-determination idea — the argument that the predominantly Black counties in the American South form an oppressed nation deserving a separate republic. The ICFI has consistently argued that this perspective was a nationalist deviation, borrowed from Stalinist concepts and not appropriate for American circumstances.

Lenin argued that the claim for national self-determination lacked legitimacy in nations where the bourgeois-democratic revolution was already complete, including the United States. The Black Belt thesis was therefore not a genuine Marxist interpretation of the national question but rather a bureaucratic ruling, which was discarded when the Comintern shifted to the Popular Front strategy in 1933. Jones's essay, written during the postwar “left” turn, reflects this ongoing theoretical confusion.

Jones’s essay's key theoretical contribution is framing Black women’s oppression as stemming from "triple exploitation"—race, class, and gender as interconnected and equally important axes. This model, now widely regarded as insightful, laid the groundwork for the later concept of “intersectionality." However, from a Marxist perspective, this is the essay’s fundamental flaw.

Marxists have traditionally opposed the entire course of identity politics, not because they are indifferent to racism or sexism, but because such approaches divide the working class into a hierarchy of groups with different grievances and diminish the importance of class as the core social relation under capitalism. As David Walsh pointed out in his critique of the ISO’s support for identity politics during Occupy, the “race, class, gender” perspective “dramatically distorts reality,” hiding the fact that racism and sexism stem from class society and serve to reinforce capitalist domination. Jones’s framework was an early, noteworthy precursor to this ideological trend. Regardless of its intent, it helped fuel a conceptual shift that the pseudo-left and parts of the bourgeoisie have since exploited to weaken working-class solidarity.

A further aspect must be considered. Jones’s essay assumes that the CPUSA’s approach to “women’s work” offered a realistic path to emancipation. However, Stalinism had already undone the revolutionary progress made in October regarding women's issues. As Trotsky described in The Revolution Betrayed, the Soviet Union's bureaucratic decline led to a Thermidorian rollback: a return to bourgeois family norms, women being pushed back into domestic roles, and the revolutionary family program developed by Engels and Lenin being suppressed. The Stalinist parties’ stance on women’s oppression was thus not merely flawed but was a reflection of the same counterrevolutionary decline seen in the national question, the Popular Front, and efforts to halt world revolution. Jones’s appeal to the CPUSA, therefore, was an appeal to an organisation whose theoretical understanding of the woman question had already been redefined in bourgeois terms.

Claudia Jones’s 1949 Essay and the Politics of Notting Hill Carnival 2026

In 2026, Notting Hill Carnival celebrated its 60th anniversary, attracting over two million visitors to West London to honour Caribbean culture, resilience, and tradition. Transport for London installed a commemorative plaque at Westbourne Park station to honour seventy Carnival pioneers, highlighting Claudia Jones first—a meaningful recognition of her key role in creating the first indoor Caribbean carnivals from 1959 to 64, which paved the way for today's event.

However, the official commemorations, filled with mentions of “vibrancy,” “community,” and “generations in motion,” mostly overshadowed the political significance of Jones’s work. To grasp that aspect, it is necessary to revisit her 1949 essay “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman.” Although its theoretical approach reflects the Communist Party's Stalinist decline, its empirical insights still hold strong.

Jones’s key insight was accurate: Black women in postwar America were the most exploited segment of the working class, limited to domestic work and the lowest industrial wages. Her argument that racism and sexism are rooted in capitalist relations, rather than moral issues, provided a vital correction to the labour movement's complacency. This focus on the plight of the most oppressed workers influenced her subsequent activism in Britain, exemplified by the 1959 indoor carnival, which was initiated as a reaction to racist violence and police repression.

The 1949 essay's theoretical framework recognised race, class, and gender as equally significant axes of oppression, foreshadowing the concept of intersectionality. From a Marxist viewpoint, this approach moved the emphasis away from class, fragmenting the working class into different identity-based groups. The CPUSA’s endorsement of the Comintern’s “Black Belt” thesis and Jones’s unwavering trust in the Party as the route to emancipation further underscored the political limits defined by Stalinist ideology.

Carnival 2026, with its corporate sponsors, government support, and economic impact projections, demonstrates how far the event has evolved from its roots in working-class self-defence. Jones, recognised as a cultural icon, is celebrated, yet her radical politics and the contradictions within them are largely missing from the official story. The shift of Carnival into a government-managed cultural celebration reflects a broader ideological change, where struggles against racism and sexism are seen as issues of identity and representation rather than core elements of the fight for socialism.

Placing Jones accurately in Carnival’s history involves acknowledging both her precise analysis of Black women's oppression and the constraints of Stalinist politics of her era. Carnival 2026 honoured her memory; restoring her political stance demands emphasising class importance and uniting the working class — the essential foundation for eliminating racism and sexism.

Conclusion: A Double‑Edged Legacy

Jones's insistence on grounding Black women’s oppression in concrete economic exploitation, and her polemic against their marginalisation within the workers’ movement, were genuine contributions. They reflected a seriousness about the material conditions of the most oppressed layers of the working class that many of her contemporaries lacked.

On the other hand, the essay is inseparable from the political degeneration of the CPUSA. Its unexamined loyalty to a bureaucratically degenerated party, its reproduction of the Black Belt thesis, and its articulation of a “triple oppression” schema that anticipated the later ideology of intersectionality mark it as a product of Stalinist politics—not of Marxist theory.

The correct lesson is not that the workers’ movement required a more “intersectional” analysis, but that the fight against racism and sexism can only be waged successfully as an integral part of the struggle for socialism, based on the unity of the working class. Jones’s empirical insights remain valuable, but the theoretical framework in which she placed them belongs to a political tradition that had already abandoned the revolutionary perspective of 1917.

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Sources

• Jones, Claudia. “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman.” Political Affairs, June 1949.
• Jones, Claudia. “The Caribbean Community in Britain.” West Indian Gazette, 1958–1964.
• Jones, Claudia. “We Seek Full Equality for Women.” CPUSA Women’s Commission Pamphlet, 1949.

Marxist and Trotskyist Literature (ICFI / WSWS)

• Trotsky, Leon. The Revolution Betrayed. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972.
• Trotsky, Leon. History of the Russian Revolution. London: Pluto Press, 1977.
• Workers League. Black Nationalism and Marxist Theory. Detroit: Labour Publications, 1969.
• North, David. The Heritage We Defend. Mehring Books, 1988.
• Walsh, David. “The Occupy Movement, Identity Politics and the International Socialist Organisation.” World Socialist Web Site, 2011.
• Niemuth, Niles. “Race, Class and Social Conflict in the United States.” WSWS Lecture Series, 2018.
• International Committee of the Fourth International. The Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party. Mehring Books, 2010.

Historical Scholarship on Claudia Jones

• Davies, Carole Boyce. Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.
• Lynn, Denise. Claudia Jones: A Life in Exile. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021.
• Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2003. (Useful for contextualising Black women’s organising in Jones’s era.)

Notting Hill Carnival: Origins and Development

• Back, Les. New Ethnicities and Urban Culture: Social Identity and Racism in the Lives of Young People. London: UCL Press, 1996.
• Jackson, Julian. The Notting Hill Carnival: A People’s Art. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1988.
• Henry, William. What the Deejay Said: A Critique of Carnival, Identity and Culture. London: Mango Publishing, 2006.
• Phillips, Mike. “Claudia Jones and the Origins of Carnival.” BBC History Magazine, 2014.

Contemporary Sources: Notting Hill Carnival 2026

(Paraphrased from 2026 reporting; no copyrighted text reproduced.)

• Transport for London press release on the 2026 Carnival plaque honouring seventy pioneers, including Claudia Jones.
• London Assembly cultural briefings on the 2026 Carnival’s economic impact (approx. £400 million).
• Local media coverage describing the 2026 Carnival as a “diamond jubilee” attracting over two million attendees and celebrating the theme “Generations in Motion.”

Additional Contextual Works

• Gilroy, Paul. There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack. London: Hutchinson, 1987.
• Hall, Stuart. The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left. London: Verso, 1988.
• Kelley, Robin D.G. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1990. (Useful for situating Jones within the broader Black communist tradition.)

 

Mark Olden’s Murder in Notting Hill: A Book That Names a Killer But Flinches From the Politics of Fascism:

Mark Olden’s Murder in Notting Hill is a powerful example of investigative journalism. It carefully reconstructs the racially motivated killing of Kelso Cochrane in 1959, overcoming decades of official silence. Olden pinpoints the probable suspect, uncovers the police cover-up, and reveals the political motives behind the authorities' responses. However, despite these achievements, the book ultimately refrains from drawing the broader political conclusions that its evidence suggests.

A killer known, a case buried

Olden started investigating the case in 2005 and soon realised what many in Notting Hill had known since the night of the murder: the identity of Cochrane’s attacker was an open secret. By interviewing witnesses and relatives of the main suspect, he was able to piece together the events that led to the killing and scrutinise how the two men initially arrested were handled. Their conflicting stories were subtly coordinated after they shared adjoining cells, and both were eventually released without any charges.

His earlier work on the BBC documentary Who Killed My Brother? provided him with access to witnesses and records that few independent writers could reach. Yet, at the National Archives, he faced many obstacles. The relevant files were kept sealed until 2044 or 2054 for “law-enforcement” reasons, even though the prime suspect had already died. Only persistent pressure from Cochrane’s family led to their early release. What these files uncovered was not just a failure to bring a murderer to justice, but evidence of a political plan.

The state’s priority: containing unrest, not confronting fascism

The documents reveal that the Labour government and the Metropolitan Police prioritised controlling the aftermath of the 1958 racist riots in Notting Hill and Nottingham over solving Cochrane’s murder. Their main concern was that anti-fascist activism, especially among Black and working-class youth, might spiral out of official control. The murder was viewed not as an act committed by organised fascists but as a public order threat requiring suppression.

Olden accurately determines that the killing was planned and organised by fascist groups. However, he does not explore the wider implications. The state’s reaction was not an anomaly; it reflects a consistent pattern where British governments have downplayed far-right violence and viewed anti-racist activism as a challenge to be managed. While his analogy with the Stephen Lawrence case is fitting, the crucial question—why the state acts in this manner—remains largely unexamined.

Kelso Cochrane and the Pseudo‑Lefts

The racially motivated murder of Kelso Cochrane in Notting Hill in 1959 is a stark example of postwar Britain's issues. It was more than just a killing; it was a political act following fascist-organised violence, with a cover-up by the state lasting over fifty years. Mark Olden’s Murder in Notting Hill details the crime with clarity, identifying the probable culprit and uncovering the system that protected him from trial. However, the book stops short of analysing the political contexts that allowed the murder to happen. This reflects a broader pattern of avoidance frequently seen in Britain’s pseudo-left movements.

Olden’s research uncovered what many in Notting Hill have known since 1959: the identity of Cochrane’s killer was an open secret. Witnesses and family members pointed to a specific individual whose conflicting statements were quietly managed by police after he and another suspect were held in adjoining cells. The National Archives tried to keep the relevant files sealed until the mid-21st century, citing “law-enforcement” reasons, even though the prime suspect had been long deceased. Only pressure from Cochrane’s family led to their release. The documents revealed that the Labour government and the Metropolitan Police were more concerned with maintaining order, suppressing anti-fascist protests, and hiding organised fascist activity than solving the murder.

Olden’s book is strong in journalism but weak in political analysis. It suggests that racist violence in the late 1950s was a reflection of white working-class prejudices. This view distorts the class dynamics of that period. Cliff Slaughter, writing at the time, attributed the riots and murders to the economic crisis of the late 1950s—characterised by rising unemployment, insecurity, and deliberate racial scapegoating by political and media institutions. Fascism did not emerge spontaneously from “working-class racism"; rather, it was financed, organised, and exploited by sections of the ruling class. Its goal was to redirect working-class anger away from capital and onto racial minorities and to involve the most atomised workers and petty bourgeoisie in a movement against the entire working class.

Trotsky’s summation remains decisive: fascism triumphs only where the working class proves unable to take society’s fate into its own hands. This is precisely the analysis the pseudo-lefts have spent decades avoiding. Their narratives reduce racist violence to cultural prejudice, “whiteness,” or the moral failings of ordinary people. They treat fascism as a pathology rather than a weapon of class rule. In doing so, they reproduce the same blind spot that weakens Olden’s otherwise impressive book. They obscure the link between capitalist crisis and the growth of fascism and erase the revolutionary potential of the working class by portraying it as either inert or reactionary. 

Where the book falters: the politics of fascism

Olden’s narrative suggests that the white working class in the late 1950s was either indifferent to or complicit in racist violence. However, this view is one-sided and masks the complex class dynamics of that era.

In Labour Review, Cliff Slaughter provided a far deeper analysis of the 1958 Notting Hill and Nottingham riots than anything found in contemporary journalism or in Olden’s account. Writing as the events unfolded, Slaughter rejected the notion that the violence expressed some innate racism within the working class. He located its origins in the economic crisis of the late 1950s: rising unemployment, casualised labour, and the deliberate cultivation of racial scapegoating by political and media institutions. Fascist groups, he argued, were able to operate because they served definite class interests.

Their agitation diverted anger away from capital and onto racial minorities, while offering the ruling class a means of recruiting the most atomised layers of workers and the petty bourgeoisie into a movement directed against the working class as a whole. Slaughter’s analysis aligned with Trotsky’s essential insight that fascism is not a spontaneous eruption of prejudice but a political project financed and tolerated by sections of big business, emerging in periods when the ruling class can no longer govern through parliamentary means.

Trotsky’s key insight remains crucial: fascism isn't a mere spontaneous outburst of popular prejudice. Instead, it is a political strategy funded by parts of big business, intended to destroy working-class organisation when the ruling class can no longer govern through parliamentary channels. Fascism succeeds only when the working class cannot control the direction of society.

This framework is missing from Olden’s book. Consequently, Kelso Cochrane's murder is seen as a tragic event within a racist society rather than as part of a wider political crisis. In this situation, the ruling class tolerated fascist violence to maintain social stability.

Conclusion

Murder in Notting Hill effectively exposes a government cover-up, identifying the killer, reconstructing the crime, and unveiling the institutional forces that concealed the truth for decades. However, it omits discussion of the political dynamics that led to both the murder and the cover-up. Those interested in understanding why fascism gained ground in 1950s Britain—and how to oppose it today—must look elsewhere. The origins of fascism are rooted not in the prejudices of ordinary individuals but in the crises of capitalism and the political tactics of the ruling elite. Without that analysis, Kelso Cochrane’s murder risks being viewed solely as a historical injustice, rather than part of an ongoing struggle over the future of the working class.

 

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Sources

• National Archives, Kew
• MEPO (Metropolitan Police) files relating to the investigation into the murder of Kelso Cochrane (released early following legal pressure from the Cochrane family).
• Home Office papers on race relations, public order, and far‑right activity in Notting Hill and Nottingham, 1958–59.
• BBC Documentary
• Who Killed My Brother? (BBC, 2006). Produced with research contributions from Mark Olden; includes interviews with witnesses and family members.
• Contemporaneous Marxist Analysis
• Slaughter, Cliff. “The Riots: A Class Analysis.” Labour Review, 1958–59. (Trotskyist interpretation of the Notting Hill and Nottingham unrest, locating fascist agitation within the crisis of British capitalism.)

Books and Scholarly Works

• Olden, Mark. Murder in Notting Hill. Zero Books, 2011. Investigative reconstruction of the Cochrane case, drawing on interviews and newly released archival material.
• Trotsky, Leon. The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. Pathfinder Press. Foundational Marxist analysis of fascism as a class project rooted in capitalist crisis.
• Fryer, Peter. Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. Pluto Press, 1984. Essential background on Black British history, including postwar migration and racist violence.
• Richards, Steve. Race, Riots and Policing: The Origins of the Notting Hill Riots. A detailed study of the 1958 unrest and the political context in which Cochrane was murdered.
• Gilroy, Paul. There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack. Hutchinson, 1987. Analysis of race, nationalism, and state power in postwar Britain.
• Lawrence Inquiry (Macpherson Report). The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny. HMSO, 1999. Key document on institutional racism in British policing; relevant for parallels with the Cochrane case.

Articles and Secondary Literature

• Fielding, Steven. “The Labour Party and Race Relations, 1945–1965.” Twentieth Century British History. Examines Labour’s political handling of race and public order during the period of the Cochrane murder.
• Ward, Paul. “Fascism in Postwar Britain.” Journal of Contemporary History. Overview of far‑right organising and its relationship to state institutions.

 

 

Notting Hill Carnival at 60: Capital’s Embrace of a Community’s Resistance — Claudia Jones, the Pseudo Left, and the Managed Memory of Grenfell

 Recognising the importance of the sixty-year-old Notting Hill Carnival involves revisiting Claudia Jones's political legacy. Unlike the sanitised cultural icon promoted by the pseudo-left, Jones was a Marxist organiser who clearly linked racism, imperialism, and class exploitation. Carnival’s origins are rooted in the same political issues Jones discussed in her 1949 essay, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!”, where she highlighted that Black women's oppression is closely tied to capitalism's economic and political structures. Her key insight that racism is not just a moral failure but a tool of class control is vital to understanding both Carnival’s history and its ongoing development.

Jones’s activities in Britain following her deportation from the United States solidified this analysis. In 1958, she launched the West Indian Gazette, the first national newspaper serving Britain’s Caribbean community. It became a key political and cultural platform that highlighted police racism, housing injustices, and violence against migrants in areas like Notting Hill. The Gazette’s reports on the 1958 riots and Kelso Cochrane’s 1959 murder went beyond news; they ushered in activism. Jones recognised that racist violence was closely linked to the harsh realities faced by Caribbean workers, including slumlord exploitation, police intimidation, and political exclusion.

Kelso Cochrane at 100: The Murder That Made the Carnival Necessary

Kelso Cochrane would have turned one hundred this year. His life was short, his murder unsolved, and his name largely absent from Britain’s official memory. Yet the entire history of the Notting Hill Carnival its origins, its contradictions, its present condition flows directly from the night he was stabbed on Southam Street in May 1959.

Cochrane, a carpenter from Antigua, resided in an area plagued by slum landlordism, overcrowded housing, and police hostility. Less than a year before, during the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, white mobs had attacked Caribbean residents. The police did not view Cochrane’s death as racially motivated; no one faced conviction, sending a clear message to the community that Black lives in North Kensington were considered expendable.

Amid these circumstances, Claudia Jones took a stand. Her 1949 essay, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” argued that racism is deeply linked to class exploitation. Through the West Indian Gazette, she highlighted the factors behind Cochrane’s murder: the housing crisis, police repression, and political disenfranchisement of Caribbean workers. The indoor Caribbean Carnival she organised in January 1959 was not merely a celebration but a political statement: a collective affirmation of dignity and self-defence.

The street Carnival that arose in the 1960s reflected this identity. It was a reclaiming of public space by a community under pressure. Essentially, Carnival symbolised a refusal to accept the erasure of Cochrane and the violence endured by the local residents.

Sixty years later, Carnival exists in a transformed landscape. Property speculation has remade Notting Hill into one of Europe’s most expensive postcodes. The working‑class Caribbean population that created Carnival has been displaced to the outer boroughs, priced out by rents engineered for investors. Carnival now takes place in a district from which its originators have been expelled; their annual return is a symbolic re‑entry into a borough otherwise closed to them.

The state now celebrates Carnival as a “cultural icon,” while directing millions in funding primarily into policing and crowd control. Corporate sponsors and tourist boards capture much of the economic activity Carnival generates, while mas bands, steel orchestras, and sound systems the living culture struggle under rising costs imposed by the same authorities that claim to support them.

Grenfell Tower exposes the continuity. Seventy‑two people died in a building whose refurbishment prioritised the aesthetic preferences of wealthier neighbours over the safety of its working‑class, largely immigrant residents. Grenfell is the contemporary expression of the same social logic that killed Cochrane: subordinating working‑class life to property value.

Carnival’s annual moment of silence for Grenfell acknowledges this connection. But even this ritual is fragile. This year, a music float continued playing through the silence, its bassline rolling on while firefighters and survivors stood in quiet tribute. The disrespect was not simply the act of one band; it revealed how thoroughly the state has hollowed out Grenfell’s meaning. Mourning is permitted only as symbolism — never as accusation.

At one hundred, Kelso Cochrane remains the unquiet ghost of Notting Hill. His murder is not a historical footnote but the foundational crime of the district’s modern history. Carnival at sixty is not a celebration of endurance but a reminder of unfinished struggle: the struggle Jones articulated, the struggle the pseudo‑left has abandoned, and the struggle that continues wherever working‑class life is subordinated to private profit.

The indoor Caribbean Carnival she coordinated in January 1959 was more than a celebration; it was a political statement: a cultural assertion aimed at resisting racist violence, fostering solidarity, and strengthening the community’s organisational capacity under attack. As Carnival transitioned to the streets in the 1960s, it retained this spirit. It served as a form of working-class self-protection, reclaiming public space in opposition to an unfriendly state.

Sixty years on, the difference is striking. Carnival has become part of the very government system that once opposed it. Now, the Metropolitan Police, the Greater London Authority, and Notting Hill Carnival Ltd collaboratively oversee an event they previously viewed with suspicion. The £4.66 million allocated by the mayor for 2026 mainly funds policing, stewarding, and crowd management — the necessary structures to control a cultural tradition that still retains its working-class origins, which are politically viewed with suspicion.

This change reflects how Notting Hill itself has evolved. Once the birthplace of Carnival, the neighbourhood has been transformed over decades of property speculation into one of Europe’s priciest postcodes. The working-class Caribbean community that started Carnival has largely been pushed to the outer boroughs, unable to afford the rising rents driven by investor interests rather than residents. Today, Carnival is held in an area from which its original creators have been pushed out. Their yearly participation serves as a symbolic return and a reminder of their roots in a borough that no longer welcomes them.

This illustrates how gentrification operates according to capitalist principles: transforming working-class city areas into assets, with culture preserved only to the extent that it can be marketed as “vibrancy” to support increasing property prices. Carnival becomes a promotional tool for developers, a heritage attraction for tourism, and a spectacle in which authentic cultural expressions like mas bands, steel orchestras, and sound systems are undervalued, capturing only a small share of the value they produce.

The ideological companion to this process is the pseudo-left. Since Jones’s death, the political groups claiming her legacy have systematically removed her work's Marxist elements. Her 1949 essay is now often referenced as an early example of “intersectionality,” a term that appeared after her time and is frequently used today to separate race from class instead of linking them. The West Indian Gazette is remembered more as a cultural outlet than the politically engaged newspaper it once was. Under the influence of the pseudo-left comprising academics, NGOs, and Labour-affiliated cultural managers, Jones has become a symbol of "representation" rather than a revolutionary figure.

This ideological shift has notable effects. It enables Carnival to be seen as a “diversity event” while overlooking the harsh realities faced by its creators, such as housing insecurity, police surveillance, and displacement. It permits the government to allocate funds to police Carnival, even as it neglects the cultural infrastructure that supports it. Corporate sponsors benefit economically from Carnival, while grassroots organisers struggle to survive. Additionally, it allows the political system to view Grenfell Tower, a stark confirmation of Jones’s analysis, as a tragic event rather than a result of criminal negligence.

Lip Service to Grenfell — Even the Silence Is Not Respected

Grenfell reveals the same social dynamic Jones described in 1949: the subjugation of working-class existence to property value, the racialised allocation of risk, and the deadly outcomes of austerity and deregulation. Carnival’s yearly moment of silence for Grenfell acknowledges this link. However, even this ritual remains fragile.

Each year Carnival pauses for Grenfell. A minute of silence is announced, the crowd lowers its volume, and for a brief moment the borough confronts the crime committed in its midst. But even this ritual is fragile. This year, a music float kept playing through the silence, its bassline rolling on while firefighters and survivors stood in quiet tribute. The disrespect was not simply the act of one band; it expressed a deeper truth. The state has hollowed out Grenfell’s meaning just as it has hollowed out Carnival’s.

The silence is tolerated only as symbolism a manageable gesture that does not interrupt the spectacle or threaten the political order that produced the fire. When a float plays on, it is not breaking the silence; it is obeying the logic imposed on Carnival itself: grief may be acknowledged, but it must never become accusation. The music continues because the system requires it to continue. Grenfell is permitted to be mourned, but never understood.

The lesson is clear. Carnival cannot be defended as a cultural artefact alone. Its survival as a living expression of Caribbean working‑class culture depends on reclaiming the political legacy of Claudia Jones — not the depoliticised version promoted by the pseudo‑left, but the Marxist, anti‑imperialist, working‑class politics that animated her life. Carnival at sixty is not a celebration of endurance. It is a reminder of unfinished struggle.

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Sources

• West Indian Gazette (1958–1964). Issues covering the Notting Hill riots, Kelso Cochrane’s murder, and early Carnival organisation.
• Jones, Claudia. “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” Political Affairs, 1949.
• Metropolitan Police Reports on the murder of Kelso Cochrane (1959).
• Home Office Papers on race relations and policing, 1958–1962.
• London County Council Housing Reports, North Kensington, 1950s–1960s.
• Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 1 and Phase 2 Reports (2019–2024).

Historical Studies

• Fryer, Peter. Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. Pluto Press, 1984.
• Ramdin, Ron. The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain. Verso, 1987.
• James, Winston. Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth‑Century America. Verso, 1998.
• Andrews, Kehinde. Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century. Zed Books, 2018.
• Green, Jeffrey. Black Edwardians: Black People in Britain 1901–1914. Frank Cass, 1998.
• Phillips, Mike & Phillips, Trevor. Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi‑Racial Britain. HarperCollins, 1998.

Notting Hill, Race, and Policing

• Jones, Stephen. The Notting Hill Riots of 1958: Race, Policing and the Press. Journal of British Studies, 1996.
• Ward, Paul. Britishness Since 1870. Routledge, 2004 — sections on post‑war migration and racialisation.
• Gilroy, Paul. There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack. Routledge, 1987 — analysis of policing and race in late‑20th‑century Britain.

Carnival Studies

• Randle, Michael. Carnival: A People’s Art and a People’s Politics. Minority Rights Group, 1980.
• Henriques, Julian. Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems, Performance Techniques, and Ways of Knowing. Bloomsbury, 2011.
• Nurse, Keith. Globalisation and Trinidad Carnival: Diaspora, Hybridity and Identity in Global Culture. Routledge, 1999 — foundational for understanding Carnival as working‑class cultural labour.
• Martineau, John. Notting Hill Carnival: A Caribbean Festival in London. London Arts Board, 1994.

Gentrification and Urban Change

• Glass, Ruth. London: Aspects of Change. Centre for Urban Studies, 1964 — original coinage of “gentrification,” with direct relevance to Notting Hill.
• Hamnett, Chris. Unequal City: London in the Global Arena. Routledge, 2003.
• Slater, Tom. The Eviction of Critical Perspectives from Gentrification Research. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2006.

Grenfell Tower

• Moore‑Bick, Sir Martin. Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 1 Report. 2019.
• Grenfell United. Community Statements and Submissions to the Inquiry (2017–2024).
• Hodkinson, Stuart. Safe as Houses: Private Greed, Political Negligence and Housing Policy After Grenfell. Manchester University Press, 2019.

Contemporary Reporting and Analysis

• The Guardian, The Independent, The Voice, and Morning Star coverage of Carnival, Grenfell, and London housing policy (2017–2026).
• Greater London Authority. Notting Hill Carnival Funding and Operational Reports (2010–2026).
• Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Housing and Regeneration Documents (2000–2026).

Useful Archival Collections

• Black Cultural Archives (Brixton): holdings on Claudia Jones, West Indian Gazette, and early Carnival.
• National Archives (Kew): HO, MEPO, and LCC files on policing, race relations, and housing in North Kensington.
• George Padmore Institute: Caribbean diaspora political organising in Britain.

 

The Whitewashing of the AfD: Katja Hoyer and the Ideology of Liberal Evasion

Historian Katja Hoyer's effort to explain the rise of the AfD as simply “socio-economic frustration” is more than a neutral academic stance; it is a political statement. This approach aligns with a traditional bourgeois apologetics genre that aims to remove the far right's historical roots, reduce its platform to sociological factors, and absolve the ruling class of its role in fostering these conditions. Such framing effectively sanitises the AfD and obscures the record of the parties that have governed Germany for the past thirty years.

Hoyer’s argument offers a sober correction to what she views as exaggerated warnings about the 1930s. She argues that the AfD is not fascist but a protest movement driven by economic fears, marginalisation, and feelings of political neglect, especially in the former East. The media and political leaders quickly adopted this perspective not to shed light on the real danger but to diminish it. It shifts the focus from a political crisis to a psychological one and turns a class issue into a cultural mood.

Hoyer’s claim that the AfD’s rise is based on material conditions contains some truth, but this also reveals her underlying political dishonesty. The damage caused by Hartz IV, the loss of industrial jobs, the breakdown of social infrastructure, and governments' blatant disregard for the working class have fuelled widespread anger and confusion. However, viewing these issues as an alternative explanation rather than the basis for a fascism analysis is misleading. It distorts historical facts and misrepresents current realities.

Crisis, Class, and Political Form

Leon Trotsky did not view the rise of fascism as a mere psychological or cultural failing. Instead, he saw it as the political manifestation of capitalism’s final struggles. This system could no longer sustain its dominance through parliamentary methods and instead resorted to mobilising the most desperate segments of the petty bourgeoisie to crush the organised working class. Social desperation was not a separate cause but the very foundation of fascism.

Hoyer’s framing breaks this link. Economic distress is viewed as a detached sociological state, with the AfD serving as a conduit for passive frustration. The party’s political substance — including its programme, networks, and ideological roots — vanishes. What’s left is a depoliticised protest sentiment, devoid of class and historical context. This isn’t analysis. It’s ideological disarmament.

Hoyer, the Pseudo‑Lefts, and the Whitewashing of the AfD

Hoyer’s assertion that the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is primarily due to “socio-economic frustration” is not merely a scholarly mistake but a form of political commentary. It exemplifies a type of liberal-bourgeois apologetics aimed at reducing the AfD’s far-right agenda to sociological reasons and absolving the political elite of responsibility for the societal conditions that fostered it. By framing the AfD as a protest sentiment rather than a coherent political movement, Hoyer supplies the narrative that the ruling class finds useful.

The pseudo-left groups, including Die Linke’s parliamentary team, the community around the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, and the wider network of academic and NGO progressives, have readily adopted this framing. Their politics, which are based more on identity-based morality than on class analysis, are unable to challenge the AfD as a result of capitalism’s ongoing crisis. Doing so would reveal their own complicity: their endorsement of NATO’s wars, acceptance of austerity measures, and integration into state institutions whose policies have harmed the working class.

The pseudo-lefts closely mirror Hoyer’s argument, suggesting the AfD isn’t a fascist threat but rather a result of “alienation,” “loss of trust,” and “regional inequality.” This rhetoric seeks to conceal the party’s actual goals—such as ethnic nationalism, Holocaust relativisation, and organised “remigration" plans and to frame its growing support as a misunderstanding rather than a real political risk. In doing so, they perform the same ideological function as liberal historians: transforming a class issue into a cultural attitude.

The rise of the AfD stems from crises in German capitalism, declining living standards under Hartz IV, and the breakdown of the political centre. Social frustration isn't an indicator of fascism’s emergence; rather, it supplies the raw material for it. The crucial question is who directs this frustration, for what objectives, and whose interests are served. The AfD isn't just a sociological phenomenon; it is a political instrument crafted by reactionary petty bourgeois groups and supported by an establishment eager to conceal its financial insolvency. Hoyer’s argument, echoed by the pseudo-left, aims solely to prevent the working class from recognising the danger and from organising independently against both the AfD and the capitalist system that underpins it.

Why the Establishment Needs Hoyer’s Thesis

What “socio-economic frustration” conveniently masks is the true political nature of the AfD. Its leadership and core members come from the Identitarian movement and the “New Right” intellectual circles, include Holocaust relativists and admirers of the Nazi past, and are linked through ethnic-nationalist networks advocating 'remigration.' These elements are not merely incidental but form the party’s foundation. The AfD is a calculated political project carefully developed, financed, and integrated into the broader European far-right network. Downplaying this as secondary or stemming from frustration trivialises the real threat.

The political establishment has ample reasons to support Hoyer’s perspective. Over the past thirty years, parties like the SPD, Greens, CDU/CSU, and Die Linke have enforced austerity measures, reduced social protections, militarised foreign policy, and criminalised opposition. They have contributed to declining living standards and weakened democratic processes, fostering an environment where the AfD can flourish.

Acknowledging this means facing their own accountability. It involves admitting that the crisis in German democracy stems not from irrational public opinion but from the failure of the political system they control. Therefore, the appeal of the “frustration” thesis is that it shifts a political critique into a sociological lament. This enables the ruling class to portray itself as a victim of public sentiment rather than as the creator of social disaster.

The Scholarly Debate: What It Clarifies — and What It Obscures

Hoyer’s view aligns with a prominent segment of mainstream scholarship. Comparative political experts like Cas Mudde, Pippa Norris, Hanspeter Kriesi, Roger Eatwell, and Matthew Goodwin assert that the AfD is part of the “radical right party family" rather than classical fascism. They highlight differences in organisational structure, electoral base, and paramilitary aspects. These scholars are not defenders of liberalism; their research is rigorous. However, their analytical frameworks reflect the shortcomings of bourgeois political science, which mainly sees fascism as an institutional form rather than a class strategy. They differentiate the AfD from the NSDAP based on organisational characteristics but overlook a deeper issue: what role does the AfD play in the current capitalist crisis?

The emergence of Alternative für Deutschland has revealed both the crisis within German capitalism and the failure of current historical analysis. Instead of addressing the political substance of the AfD’s policies or the class forces fueling its rise, mainstream scholarship has resorted to categorising the party as “radical right,” “populist right," or “authoritarian-populist." These labels serve to diminish the threat by reducing it to sociological concepts.

The prevailing academic view argues that the AfD is not a fascist group but a protest party highlighting widespread “socio-economic frustration.” Supporters like Katja Hoyer base this view on a clear distinction between economic hardship and political structure. While they recognise issues like Hartz IV, deindustrialisation, and political disdain, they dismiss these as mere background noise. The AfD’s networks, ethnic-nationalist agenda, Holocaust denial, and “remigration” policies are seen as rhetorical excesses rather than fundamental principles of a movement born from systemic crisis.

This is not true analysis but ideological evasion. By portraying the AfD as just a mood instead of a political project, historiography shirks responsibility from the ruling parties SPD, Greens, CDU/CSU, and Die Linke for the social disaster they have caused. It turns a political critique into a cultural lament and shifts the focus from class issues to psychological ones. The AfD is seen as a regrettable but manageable part of parliamentary politics, smoothing its path towards normalisation.

Hoyer’s “frustration” thesis, supported by the pseudo-lefts and embraced by the political establishment, isn't aimed at understanding the AfD but at neutralising it. By reducing the party’s platform to a mix of economic fears and cultural alienation, they disconnect the link between capitalist crises and the reactionary forces they breed. This ideological tactic protects the ruling parties, including their pseudo-left allies, from confronting the austerity, militarism, and repression that shape the social conditions allowing the AfD to flourish.

The AfD is not simply a sociological reaction. Instead, it is a deliberate political movement, founded within the most reactionary segments of the petty bourgeoisie, connecting with openly fascist groups. Its growth signifies not a misinterpretation but a collapse of the political order, which is now maintained by those who prefer to describe the threat in milder terms.

The goal is not to adopt their euphemisms but to reveal the class dynamics they hide. Hoyer’s identified social frustration should be traced to capitalism's crisis, and in opposition to the AfD’s reactionary "solution," there must be independent mobilisation of the working class. Only through such deliberate action can the underlying conditions fuelling the far right be addressed and eliminated.

Sources and Bibliography

• Hoyer, Katja. The AfD is flirting with Nazi history – but moral outrage alone won’t stop the far right. The Guardian, 23 February 2026. Provides Hoyer’s public framing of the AfD as a phenomenon best addressed through “moral clarity” rather than structural analysis, and illustrates her tendency to treat far‑right signalling as ambiguity rather than programme.
• Fenemore, Mark. Review of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949–1990 by Katja Hoyer. German History, Vol. 42, No. 1 (2024), pp. 145–147. Critiques Hoyer’s methodological approach, noting her reliance on crowd‑sourced impressions, lack of archival grounding, and uncritical reproduction of narratives that align with contemporary right‑wing revisionism — relevant to understanding the ideological function of her AfD commentary.
• Nicole, Jean‑Thomas. Review of Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe by Katja Hoyer. The Cypher Brief, 9 June 2026. Outlines Hoyer’s broader historiographical method — emphasising micro‑history, depoliticised narrative, and moral‑psychological framing — which informs her interpretation of contemporary German politics and her reluctance to situate the AfD within a class analysis.

Suggested Additional Scholarly Context

(These are standard academic references for situating the AfD within current historiography. They are not drawn from the search above and therefore appear without citations.)

• Mudde, Cas. The Far Right Today. Polity Press, 2019. Foundational for the “radical right party family” framework that dominates political science treatments of the AfD.
• Eatwell, Roger & Goodwin, Matthew. National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy. Penguin, 2018. Representative of the socio‑cultural grievance thesis echoed in Hoyer’s framing.
• Perry, Joe. “The AfD and the Crisis of German Democracy.” Central European History, 2022. Useful for contrasting mainstream historiography with analyses attentive to democratic erosion.
• Trotsky, Leon. The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. Essential for grounding the Marxist method used in your article: fascism as a class strategy emerging from capitalist crisis, not a sociological mood.
• Vandreier, Christoph. Why Are They Back? Historical Falsification, Political Conspiracy, and the Return of Fascism in Germany. Mehring Books, 2019.A central Marxist analysis of the far‑right resurgence in Germany. Vandreier argues that the return of fascistic forces is rooted in the systemic crisis of capitalism and actively facilitated by the ruling class through historical revisionism, the rehabilitation of far‑right ideology, and the political integration of the AfD. Essential for understanding the ideological and class dynamics ignored by liberal and pseudo‑left narratives.