Sophie Scott-Brown’s article on Raphael Samuel is a thoughtful, well-researched contribution to understanding postwar British left intellectual culture. It benefits from careful critical analysis, especially from a Trotskyist perspective, as it uncovers not only the contradictions within Samuel’s project but also highlights the broader political trend of the British left during the second half of the twentieth century. This trend, as the essay suggests, is one of political withdrawal, often disguised by rhetoric around democratic education, cultural diversity, and the praise of “ordinary people” as key historical actors.[1]
Scott-Brown’s essay effectively emphasises several key
points. She observes the theatrical and deliberately crafted nature of Samuel’s
“people’s historian” persona—his “iron resolution” hidden behind a
“deliberately dozy and slightly dotty front,” as Sheila Rowbotham noted. She
also examines the contradictions between Samuel’s professed egalitarian ideals
and his actual behaviours: for example, overriding Ruskin students’ choices on
Workshop themes, staging the 1979 confrontation between E.P. Thompson, Stuart
Hall, and Richard Johnson like a theatrical director, and employing charm and
tactics where his theoretical authority was lacking. These insights are
important corrections to the often romanticised views of Samuel’s legacy.
She correctly traces Samuel’s organising style back to the
culture of the Stalinist Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), highlighting
the Popular Front approach of persuasion—prioritising "friendly persuasion
over theoretical cudgelling.” However, the article stops short of extracting
the essential political implications of this insight. From a Marxist and
Trotskyist perspective, Samuel’s involvement with the CPGB isn’t just a biographical
detail but rather the key political environment that shaped his entire
intellectual path.
I. The CPGB Historians’ Group and the Popular Front
Tradition
The Communist Party Historians’ Group, which educated Samuel
alongside notable figures like Christopher Hill, E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm,
and Rodney Hilton, was deeply influenced by Stalinist politics. Ann Talbot
noted that Hill's “people’s history” approach, promoted by the CPGB, was more
than just an academic tradition; it served as a political tool aligned with
Popular Front ideology. This approach offered a democratic facade for a
political stance that placed the working class under the control of the
"progressive” sections of the bourgeoisie and justified the international
repression of revolutionary Marxists.
A.L. Morton’s People’s History of England, the key work of
the genre that Samuel inherited, intentionally downplayed the class aspects of
historical struggles, blending them into a unified national-popular story. This
nationalist skew was deliberate, driven by the CPGB’s focus on forming
cross-class alliances. Even after Samuel left the Party in 1956, his “people’s
history” continued to reflect this distortion.
Scott-Brown observes that many in Samuel’s generation left
the CPGB following the Soviet invasion of Hungary. However, she does not
mention that the most ideologically committed members joined the Trotskyist
movement. Those who moved towards the New Left, including Samuel, retained the
core political flaw of Stalinism: their rejection of an independent
working-class political agenda in favour of a broad, pluralist, cross-class
cultural movement.
II. Thompson, Althusser, and the Retreat from Marxism
Scott-Brown regards the clash between Thompson’s “socialist
humanism” and the Althusserian structuralism of Hall and Johnson as the key
theoretical controversy of that era. From a Trotskyist perspective, this debate
was essentially a retreat from Marxism.
Thompson’s *Making of the English Working Class* is a truly
brilliant work, but his idea of "socialist humanism” marked a retreat into
empiricism, moralism, and eventually a nationalist view of working-class
history. His polemic *The Poverty of Theory* argued for English empiricism
against Continental theory, not scientific Marxism against idealism. Meanwhile,
Althusserianism reduced class struggle to structuralist abstraction.
Samuel’s refusal to choose between these positions—his
emphasis on “plurality”—was not a genuine compromise but a political dodge. The
failure of Workshop 13 in 1979, as vividly detailed by Scott-Brown, was not
just bad event management. It revealed the deeper incoherence of a political
movement that had forsaken clear programmatic goals and sought to unify
conflicting intellectual tendencies through organisational talent and personal
charisma.
III. The Democratisation of History and Its Class Content
Samuel’s main initiative—the democratisation of historical
practice—aims to empower “ordinary people” to produce their own histories,
reflecting a genuine emancipatory goal. He believes that workers should understand
their own history, as traditional ruling-class historiography often mystifies
and subjugates them. Contributions such as the Ruskin College pamphlets on pit
life, narratives from rail workers, and working-class club culture are
important examples of this effort.
However, democratisation lacking political clarity risks
becoming empty radicalism. Samuel’s idea of a “people’s historian” served more
as a cultural stand-in for revolutionary political education. The key issue is
not just whether workers can write their own history, but whether they can
comprehend their role within capitalist society well enough to change it.
The traditional Samuel obstructed this understanding by
reducing class analysis to a sort of 'plurality' and favouring cultural
populism over political action. By the 1990s, as Scott-Brown observes, he had
adapted more to the Thatcherite heritage industry than challenged it. The
progression from the Ruskin pamphlets to 'Theatres of Memory' (1994)
illustrates this shift. By that time, Samuel had moved from encouraging workers
to investigate their own exploitation to praising popular historical
entertainment—such as period dramas, country houses, and ‘retrochic'—as ways of
creating history. Richard Hoggart’s comment that the book was created by a
“traumatised Marxist” is harsh, but it holds some truth.
IV. Memory as a Substitute for Politics
Samuel’s shift to memory studies was more a political
response than an intellectual breakthrough. When history is viewed as a
cultural activity rather than a scientific analysis of class society, it
becomes impossible to differentiate between progressive and reactionary
historical views. If all “meaning-making about the past” holds equal validity,
then miners’ oral histories and the National Trust’s curated nostalgia are seen
as comparable.
This marks Samuel’s conception of pluralism: a theoretical
approach where the working class and the bourgeoisie are seen as equal
contributors to memory, rather than as opposing classes in conflict. The
working class is viewed as a remembering subject, not just a resisting one. The
past transforms into a space for identity formation rather than a field for
critique. History turns into a theatrical stage rather than a purely scientific
discipline.
V. The Limits of Cultural Democracy
Samuel’s approach to democratizing history increased
participation but narrowed political perspectives. It made archives accessible
but limited avenues for revolutionary ideas. While it amplified diverse voices,
it also diminished the relevance of class. Workers can document their
histories, yet if the framework is influenced by Popular Front nationalism or
New Left culturalism, it results in self-expression confined to bourgeois
ideology rather than fostering revolutionary consciousness.
The democratisation of history is significant only if it is
connected to the political self-liberation of the working class, which demands
a scientific grasp of capitalism, an internationalist outlook, and a
revolutionary agenda. Samuel did not provide any of these elements.
VI. The Trotskyist Alternative: History as a Weapon
While Samuel’s tradition dissolves into cultural populism,
the Trotskyist tradition emphasises the importance of the unity between
historical knowledge and revolutionary practice. Trotskyism regards history as
a science rather than a stage, considers the working class to be a
revolutionary force rather than merely a cultural identity, and views the past
not as a memory resource but as a strategic guide for overthrowing capitalism.
This is the response Samuel was unable to give when asked in
1979, “What is socialist history?” His reply—“it’s an awfully big question,
Brian”—was not due to modesty but evasion. A truthful answer would have
involved confronting the Stalinist tradition he inherited and recognising the
need for an independent working-class political program.
Postscript: The Contemporary Stakes of Reassessing
Raphael Samuel
A Trotskyist re-assessment of Raphael Samuel goes beyond
mere antiquarian interests; it engages directly with current political and
intellectual debates. The British left's crisis in the late twentieth
century—characterized by a retreat from class-based politics, an embrace of
culturalism, and the shift from unified programs to pluralism—remains
unresolved and has even intensified. The intellectual currents Samuel helped
shape now dominate the humanities, while the working class continues to face
systemic exclusion from political representation.
The modern academy, largely focused on cultural studies,
memory, and identity-based histories, reflects the tendencies Samuel
represented. The shift from class to culture, the prioritization of “voices”
over analysis, and the celebration of diversity without political focus are now
standard in historical research. Although seen as radical, these approaches
serve as ideological compromises that allow a capitalist system to incorporate
cultural criticism while suppressing conflicts over class.
Samuel’s legacy requires careful examination, not because of
personal failings, but because his path illustrates a larger historical trend:
the shift of the left from advocating revolutionary self-emancipation of
workers to becoming a cultural and intellectual sphere focused on
representation, identity, and memory. This shift has significant political
implications. A left that neglects class struggle cannot challenge capitalism
effectively. Similarly, a historical perspective that ignores class cannot reveal
the true workings of exploitation. Without a clear program, politics cannot
lead to genuine emancipation.
Today, Marxist historiography should focus on clarifying the
structure of capitalist society and the role of the working class, rather than
generating multiple narratives. It needs to reject the culturalist
fragmentation legitimized by Samuel’s pluralism, reaffirm the scientific basis
of historical materialism in opposition to the relativism of memory studies,
and restore the connection between historical research and the political aim of
socialist revolution.
This calls for a break not just from the Stalinist
distortions of history but also from current culturalist distortions. It
necessitates returning to the methodological clarity of Marx, Engels, Lenin,
and Trotsky—not treating them as icons, but as theorists of a dynamic movement.
It requires a historiography that views the past not as a stage for memory but
as a battleground of struggle, where their lessons are crucial for future
battles.
Raphael Samuel’s work, despite its vibrancy and generosity,
ultimately aligns with a political tradition that lacked clarity. His idea of a
“people’s history” made the archive more accessible but stripped away the
political conflict of class struggle. It highlighted the ingenuity of ordinary
people but overlooked the deep structural forces influencing their lives. While
it expanded the number of stories and fostered engagement with warmth and
color, it lacked the theoretical tools necessary to challenge capitalism.
A Marxist revaluation of Samuel does not reject his
dedication to ordinary people but instead reclaims the political scope that his
tradition denied. The working class requires more than just a platform for
remembrance; it needs a thorough understanding of history. It needs an
actionable plan and a movement that can change society, not just analyse its
history.
Only the revolutionary Marxist tradition, embodied by the
International Committee of the Fourth International, provides this perspective.
It uniquely maintains the continuity in the fight against Stalinism,
nationalism, and the culturalist dissolution of class. Additionally, it asserts
that history is not a collection of competing stories but a tool for a class
poised to seize power.
Samuel's critique is not meant as a closing but as an
opening gesture. It extends beyond the cultural turn, the New Left, and the
Popular Front, aiming to reaffirm a Marxist historiography suitable for the
twenty-first century. The goal is not merely to democratize history but to
equip the working class with the historical awareness essential for its
emancipation.
[1] Raphael
Samuel and the Politics of the People’s Historian Sophie Scott-Brown-journal.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Socialist-History-61_Final-76-95.pdf
