A People’s History Without Revolutionary Leadership?
Raquel Varela, the Zinn Tradition, Hobsbawm’s Marxism, and the Trotskyist Conception of History
Part I
Raquel Varela’s A People’s History of Europe is a major contribution to modern left-wing historiography. It aims to blend the “history from below” perspective with a broad overview of Europe’s development from the Middle Ages to the present day. Varela’s writing is driven by a genuine commitment to workers, peasants, and oppressed groups, and it carries a moral urgency that sharply contrasts with the complacency and cynicism common in mainstream academic history. However, the strengths of her approach—such as its empathy for the exploited, focus on mass movements, and rejection of elite-focused stories—are closely linked to its weaknesses. These issues are not personal flaws but stem from the political and theoretical limits of the environment in which she operates, shaped by left-reformist, post-Trotskyist, and post-Stalinist currents that have influenced the European radical left since the 1990s.
This essay aims to analyse Varela’s approach by comparing it with that of three key figures: Howard Zinn, Eric Hobsbawm, and Leon Trotsky. Zinn embodies the populist moral story of resistance; Hobsbawm's Marxism is scholarly yet politically compromised by the Communist Party; Trotsky advocates a scientific, dialectical, revolutionary approach that provides a clear explanation of major modern upheavals. Varela’s work exists where these traditions meet, drawing from each but mainly echoing the limitations of Zinn and Hobsbawm, while remaining somewhat distant from Trotsky’s method.
This analysis is more than an academic exercise; it involves high-stakes political issues. Addressing the crisis of global capitalism, the rise of imperialist wars, the growth of fascist movements, and the escalating struggles of the working class requires a historical perspective rooted in scientific socialism. While the ‘people’s history’ genre has its strengths, it falls short of this scope. It chronicles struggles but doesn’t analyse their outcomes, celebrates resistance but overlooks defeats, and invokes “the people” while hiding the crucial role of class leadership. The outcome is a history that is morally inspiring but lacks the necessary theoretical foundations—one that motivates but doesn’t equip.
Varela’s work aligns with the tradition set by Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States—a tradition with notable strengths and notable limitations. The book is praised for emphasising class struggle, general strikes, and revolutionary upheavals. Still, it is also criticised for theoretical ambiguity and political vagueness, especially around the concept of “the people.” The main flaw identified is that “the concept of ‘the people’ is politically vague… [it] conflates the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie, and sections of the bourgeoisie itself.” This issue is fundamental, as it underpins the book's entire methodological approach. People's History
The term “the people” is not rooted in Marxist theory but is instead a populist idea. It conceals the class conflict that shapes capitalist societies. This concept enables historians to praise acts of resistance without examining the underlying political goals, class makeup, or leadership of the movements. It replaces detailed, scientific analysis with moral outrage. Furthermore, it serves as a tool for the reformist left to avoid facing the key lesson of the 20th century: that the outcome of revolutions depends not on the vague notion of “the people,” but on the political leadership within the working class.
This is where a comparison with Zinn becomes necessary. Zinn’s "People’s History" is a passionate and compelling narrative that highlights the brutality of American capitalism and amplifies the voices of the oppressed. However, it does not offer a Marxist analysis. It fails to differentiate between proletarian, populist, petty-bourgeois radical, and bourgeois liberal movements, viewing all resistance as driven by a single moral impulse. Instead, it presents a history that focuses on victims and heroes rather than on class struggles or political parties. It chronicles injustice without analysing the inherent contradictions of capitalism.
Varela adopts this framework, viewing her “people” as united by oppressions rather than their roles in production relations. Her narrative emphasises sympathy over theoretical analysis, highlighting the struggles of workers, peasants, women, colonised peoples, and soldiers without exploring the class dynamics behind these conflicts. She lauds the mass movements of 1848, the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, the German Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, and the Portuguese Revolution, but does not analyse the political leaderships that shaped their outcomes. Consequently, her history is detailed but lacks explanatory depth.
The difference with Hobsbawm is revealing. Eric Hobsbawm, a highly knowledgeable Marxist historian, authored the significant "Age of" trilogy, which is a major achievement. He comprehended capitalism's structural dynamics, the long-term shifts in class relations, and the broader European development context. However, his work was influenced by his lifelong allegiance to the Communist Party, preventing him from addressing Stalinism's crimes or the betrayals within the Communist International. Consequently, he couldn't analyse the critical role of Stalinist leadership in the failures of the German and Spanish Revolutions and the post-war revolutionary surge. While his Marxist theory was profound, his political stance remained compromised.
Varela resembles Hobsbawm in her focus on long-term processes and her sympathy for labour movements. However, she lacks his depth in theory. She does not provide a systematic analysis of capitalist development, class formation, or revolutionary dynamics. Simultaneously, she echoes his political evasions by avoiding the role of Stalinism in 20th-century defeats, the betrayals within social democracy, the political limits of anarchism, and the essential issue of revolutionary leadership.
This is where Trotsky’s approach proves essential. His works—such as The History of the Russian Revolution (1905), The Revolution Betrayed, and his analyses of the German catastrophe and the Spanish Revolution—are the pinnacle of Marxist historiography. They go beyond simple event recounting, offering scientific analyses of society’s laws of development. These works are rooted in dialectical materialism, focusing on the contradictions between productive forces and relations of production, the global nature of class struggle, and the critical influence of political leadership.
Four principles define Trotsky’s method.
First, Trotsky's class analysis does not categorise “the people” as a single analytical unit. Instead, he clearly distinguishes among classes and their political tendencies, analysing the proletariat, peasantry, petty bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie, and state apparatus as separate social forces with distinct interests. Second, Trotsky emphasises the importance of leadership. He believes that the success of revolutions depends on the revolutionary party's program, strategy, and organisation. While the working class may possess great energy and creativity, without revolutionary leadership, they cannot seize power.
Third, Trotsky advocates dialectical materialism, viewing revolutions as outcomes of capitalism’s contradictions. He explores the relationship between objective conditions and subjective factors, spontaneous struggle versus conscious leadership, and national developments in relation to the international context—fourth, internationalism. Trotsky rejects the national framework of bourgeois historiography. He analyses revolutions as part of a global process. He understands that the fate of the Russian Revolution depended on the German Revolution, that the international crisis of capitalism shaped the Spanish Revolution, and that the defeats of the 20th century were the result of the betrayals of the Stalinist bureaucracy on a world scale.
This approach highlights the weaknesses in Varela’s method, especially evident in her analysis of the Portuguese Revolution of 1974–75. The document emphasises this event as the critical test of her historiography. It states that the revolution “was ultimately contained and betrayed through the intervention of the Portuguese Communist Party… and the Socialist Party, with the complicity of the trade union bureaucracy.” This analysis aligns with Trotskyist perspectives by recognising the revolutionary potential of the working class, the counter-revolutionary roles played by Stalinism and social democracy, and the absence of a revolutionary party capable of leading the power struggle.
Varela’s interpretation of the Carnation Revolution, however, highlights the spontaneity and creativity of the masses, while downplaying the roles of the PCP and SP in maintaining capitalism. She praises the radicalisation of workers and soldiers but refrains from discussing revolutionary leadership. She outlines the process without addressing its ultimate result. Her account depicts a struggle but lacks a comprehensive theory of revolution.
This is the main flaw of the “people’s history” genre. It collects evidence of exploitation and resistance but fails to analyse the dialectical laws governing historical progress. It notes the symptoms of capitalist crises without exploring their root causes. While it praises the courage of the oppressed, it does not account for their defeats. It refers to “the people” but does not analyse the class forces that influence history. Consequently, it presents a history of victims and heroes rather than of classes and political parties.
The outcome is a history that appeals morally but fails to offer political solutions. It evokes sympathy without guiding strategy. It stirs feelings of injustice without proposing specific plans for revolutionary change. This is a significant flaw— the core limitation of the reformist left. It explains why the left struggles to give a clear response to the crisis of global capitalism, why mass movements often lead nowhere, and why betrayals by social democracy and Stalinism have not been remembered as lessons. It also clarifies why the working class lacks a revolutionary leadership.
The purpose of Marxist historiography is to analyse the class struggle, not to celebrate "the people." Its role is to explain resistance outcomes, not just record them. It aims to understand rather than moralise, and to empower rather than inspire. Varela’s book, despite its virtues, falls short of this standard. While it corrects bourgeois historiography by highlighting the working class, it does not fully explain the class's historical role. It recounts revolutions but lacks analysis of the conditions needed for their success. Although it celebrates struggle, it does not investigate leadership. It documents the oppressed’s history but does not depict the class struggle in the Marxist sense.
Part II
Varela’s A People’s History of Europe reveals its methodological weaknesses mostly through its narrative structure. The book focuses on episodes of mass resistance—such as peasant uprisings, strikes, revolutions, and anti-colonial struggles—and shows genuine sympathy for the oppressed. However, its narrative is episodic rather than dialectical, jumping from one act of resistance to another without examining the underlying contradictions or the political forces influencing these movements. Consequently, it offers a detailed account but falls short in providing comprehensive explanations.
This episodic format mirrors the influence of the Zinn tradition. Zinn’s People’s History presents a series of moral tableaux: the dispossession of Native Americans, the exploitation of workers, women’s struggles, and African American resistance. Each chapter functions as an independent critique of injustice. However, the book lacks a systematic theory of American capitalism or a dialectical analysis of its evolution. It doesn’t explore the links between economic change and political institutions, class struggle and state power, or national and international development. Overall, it is a moral narrative rather than a scientific examination.
Varela’s approach follows this pattern by depicting the struggles of “the people” as heroic episodes. However, she does not explore the underlying structural dynamics of European capitalism, such as the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the rise of the bourgeois state, the development of the modern working class, or the emergence of imperialism as a global system. She also overlooks the contradictions within the capitalist mode of production and the connection between economic crises and political upheavals. While she describes the symptoms of capitalist development, she does not analyze its fundamental laws.
This lack of theoretical analysis is intentional, mirroring the current European left's shift away from Marxist economic critique. The fall of the Soviet Union, the decline of social-democratic parties, and the emergence of post-Marxist ideas have led to a left that dismisses overarching narratives, questions class-based analysis, and resists the idea of revolutionary leadership. Consequently, the historiography focuses on resistance stories while sidestepping issues of power.
This avoidance is especially clear in Varela’s discussion of major 20th-century revolutions. The Russian Revolution of 1917, the German Revolution of 1918–23, the Spanish Revolution of 1936–39, and the Portuguese Revolution of 1974–75 are depicted as moments of popular mobilization, yet their underlying political dynamics are not analyzed. The contribution of the Bolshevik Party in guiding the Russian working class to power is recognized but not explored. The betrayals during the German Revolution by the Social Democratic Party are mentioned without analysis. The counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism in Spain is acknowledged but left unexamined. The suppression of the Portuguese Revolution by the PCP and SP is described but not sufficiently clarified.
This is not about historical facts but about the method of studying history. The outcome of revolutions depends not on the “people” in general, but on the political leadership of the working class. Trotsky’s key contribution to history shows that whether revolutions succeed or fail relies on the working class’s ability to build a revolutionary party. This party must offer strategic guidance, resist reformist and centrist influences, and lead in the fight for state power. Without such a party, the spontaneous enthusiasm of the masses cannot be turned into an aware effort to achieve socialism.
This is the lesson that Varela’s work does not fully incorporate. Her narrative is rooted in sympathy for the oppressed, yet it lacks a comprehensive theory of revolutionary leadership. She highlights the courage and creativity of the masses but does not analyze the political forces shaping their struggles. While she celebrates the Paris Commune, she overlooks the absence of a revolutionary party capable of coordinating the effort. She praises the militancy of German workers but fails to examine the SPD's role in disarming the revolution. She venerates the heroism of Spanish workers and peasants but does not address the influence of the Stalinist bureaucracy in suppressing the revolution. Although she admires the radicalization of the Portuguese working class, she does not examine the political mechanisms through which the PCP and SP stabilised capitalist rule.
The outcome is a history that inspires morally but leaves politics confused. It elicits admiration for the oppressed's struggles but fails to explain why those struggles were overcome. It creates a feeling of injustice without offering a clear strategy for change. While it presents a story of resistance, it does not provide a comprehensive theory of revolution.
The difference between Trotsky’s approach and others is clear. Trotsky’s "History of the Russian Revolution" is not just a timeline of events but a scientific analysis of revolutionary dynamics. It explores how objective conditions and subjective factors interact, the balance between spontaneous struggle and conscious leadership, and the relationship between the masses and the party. The book examines the contradictions within the Provisional Government, the role of the Soviets, the emergence of dual power, and the strategic choices that led to the October insurrection. It serves as a work of historical materialism, focusing on the laws governing societal change.
Trotsky’s analyses of the German and Spanish revolutions are equally meticulous. He argued that the German Revolution's defeat was due to betrayals by the SPD and the Communist Party's mistakes, not an inevitable outcome. Similarly, he pointed out that Spain's revolution was defeated not because of Franco's strength, but because of the Stalinist bureaucracy's counter-revolutionary policies. He examined the political forces involved in these struggles and the strategic choices that led to their outcomes.
This level of analysis is missing from Varela’s work. Her narrative is detailed yet lacks explanation. She depicts the struggles of the oppressed but fails to analyze the political forces influencing their destiny. While she celebrates resistance, she does not explore leadership. She provides a history of the people but not of the class struggle.
The impact of this methodological weakness is clear in her analysis of the Portuguese Revolution. The Carnation Revolution, a key post-war movement, saw the working class radicalize, workers’ commissions form, factories occupied, and the colonial empire collapse, leading to dual power and directly challenging state authority. However, this upheaval was ultimately controlled and stabilized through an alliance between the PCP, SP, the military, and the trade union bureaucracy.
Varela discusses the mass radicalization but overlooks the political mechanisms that limited the revolution. She fails to investigate the PCP's role in subordinating the working class to the MFA, nor does she analyze the SP's defense of capitalist property relations. Additionally, she does not address the lack of a revolutionary party capable of leading the working class to power. While describing the symptoms of the revolution, she neglects its underlying dynamics.
This issue is not about historical facts but about the approach to history. To understand the fate of the Portuguese Revolution, it is essential to examine the roles played by PCP and SP, the impacts of Stalinism and social democracy, and the lack of revolutionary leadership. These elements are crucial in shaping the revolution's outcome. Without considering them, the history of the revolution remains unfinished.
Varela’s discussion of European capitalism's history shows a similar flaw. She highlights the plight of the oppressed but fails to explore the structural forces shaping capitalist growth. She overlooks key transitions like feudalism to capitalism, the rise of the bourgeois state, the advent of imperialism, and the worldwide aspects of capitalist accumulation. While she details the symptoms of capitalist development, she neglects its underlying laws.
This lack of theoretical analysis mirrors the political stance of today's European left. After the Soviet Union's collapse and the decline of social-democratic parties, the left has become wary of overarching narratives, doubtful of class analysis, and opposed to revolutionary leadership. Consequently, historiography tends to praise resistance while sidestepping issues of power.
This is the main limitation of the “people’s history” genre: it documents struggles but lacks analysis of their results. It honors resistance but doesn’t address defeat. It refers to “the people” but downplays the key role of class leadership. It tells stories of victims and heroes rather than classes and parties. Marxist historiography aims not to celebrate “the people,” but to analyze class struggle. Its goal is not just to document resistance but to explain its outcomes. It seeks understanding over moralizing. Its purpose is not to inspire but to equip.
Varela’s book, despite its strengths, falls short of this standard. While it offers a valuable correction to bourgeois historiography, it does not significantly advance Marxist theory. It reaffirms the importance of the working class in history but fails to explain its historical role. The book recounts revolutions without analyzing the conditions necessary for their success. It celebrates struggles but does not focus on leadership. Although it chronicles the oppressed, it does not present a history of class struggle in the Marxist framework.
Part III
Varela’s historiographical approach reveals more limitations when viewed against the backdrop of the broader crisis in historical consciousness during the post-Soviet period. The fall of the USSR in 1991 was seen by the bourgeois intelligentsia as the “end of history,” marking the triumph of liberal capitalism and the ultimate overthrow of Marxism. This ideological shift significantly influenced the academic left, leading to a decline in class analysis, a shift towards cultural and identity-focused perspectives, and increased skepticism about the idea of revolution. The result was a historiography that emphasised fragmentation, contingency, and micro‑history at the expense of structural analysis and global processes.
Varela’s approach partially counters current trends by emphasizing the central role of class struggle, the significance of mass movements, and the agency of oppressed groups. She rejects both liberal historiography’s complacency and post-modernism’s fatalism, bringing the working class back to the heart of European history. These are notable accomplishments. However, her work is still influenced by the post-Soviet left’s intellectual environment. It lacks the confidence found in traditional Marxist theory, avoids discussing revolutionary leadership, and replaces the scientific concept of class with the moral notion of “the people.” While she celebrates resistance, she does not delve into the conditions necessary for achieving victory.
This tension appears in her portrayal of European development's long trajectory. Varela highlights peasant resistance to feudal lords, artisans fighting guild restrictions, workers opposing capitalist exploitation, and colonized peoples resisting imperial rule. However, she stops short of analyzing the structural shifts behind these struggles. She does not explore the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the rise of the bourgeois state, the expansion of the global market, or the rise of imperialism as a worldwide system. While she notes the signs of historical change, she overlooks its fundamental mechanisms.
Her treatment of 19th-century history notably omits structural analysis. While she links the revolutions of 1848, the unification of Germany and Italy, industrial capitalism's growth, the rise of the labour movement, and imperialism as interconnected events, she does not explore their deeper dynamics. Key contradictions of capitalist development—such as the struggle between productive forces and relations of production, the tendency of profit rates to decline, the expansion of the global market, and intensified class conflict—are left unexamined. Consequently, her narrative becomes rich in detail but lacks the necessary theoretical clarity.
The contrast with Hobsbawm highlights important differences. His series—*Age of Revolution*, *Age of Capital*, and *Age of Empire*—provide a broad analysis of key structural changes in the modern world. They explore the links between economic growth, political systems, and social movements, and analyze capitalism's contradictions and imperialism's forces. Hobsbawm’s work places European history within a global context, but it is also influenced by his loyalty to the Communist Party. This limits his ability to critique Stalinism’s role in 20th-century defeats, the Soviet state's decline, or the betrayals within the Communist International.
Varela’s work lacks the theoretical depth of Hobsbawm but echoes his political evasions. She avoids addressing Stalinism's role in the failures of the German and Spanish revolutions, does not analyze the Soviet state's degeneration, and omits the betrayals within the Communist International. While she details the struggles of the oppressed, she fails to scrutinize the political forces influencing their outcomes. Her work presents a history of the people but does not explore the broader class struggle.
This is where Trotsky’s method proves essential. His analyses of the Russian, German, and Spanish revolutions reveal that revolutions' outcomes depend not on the “people” in general, but on the political leadership within the working class. Trotsky illustrated that the Russian Revolution's success hinged on the Bolshevik Party’s capacity to provide strategic guidance, resist reformist and centrist influences, and spearhead the fight for state power. He attributed the failure of the German Revolution to betrayals by the SPD and shortcomings of the Communist Party. Additionally, he examined the counter-revolutionary role played by the Stalinist bureaucracy in Spain. His analysis also covered the interplay between objective conditions and subjective factors, spontaneous action and conscious leadership, as well as national and international developments.
This level of analysis is missing from Varela’s work. Her narrative is motivated by sympathy for the oppressed, yet it lacks a theory of revolutionary leadership. She highlights the courage and creativity of the masses but does not analyze the political forces influencing their struggles. While she celebrates resistance, she does not delve into strategy. She provides a history of the people but fails to address the broader class struggle.
This methodological weakness becomes especially clear in her discussion of the 20th century. While she links events like the First World War, the Russian Revolution, fascism's rise, the Second World War, the post-war settlement, the Cold War, and the fall of the Soviet Union as interconnected, she does not analyze the deeper factors driving these events. Issues such as imperialism's contradictions, the crisis of the nation-state, the influence of the Stalinist bureaucracy, and the global capitalist accumulation are left unexamined. Consequently, her narrative is detailed but lacks a solid theoretical foundation.
This lack of theoretical analysis mirrors the political stance of today's European left. The fall of the Soviet Union and the decline of social-democratic parties have led to a left that distrusts grand narratives, doubts class analysis, and opposes the idea of revolutionary leadership. Consequently, historiography now emphasizes resistance but sidesteps issues of power.
This is the main limitation of the “people’s history” genre. It provides a record of struggles without analyzing their results. It honors resistance but doesn’t clarify why defeats happen. While it mentions ‘the people,’ it hides the crucial part played by class leadership. Essentially, it tells a story of victims and heroes, rather than focusing on classes and parties.
Marxist historiography's purpose isn't to praise “the people” but to analyze class struggle. It aims to explain resistance outcomes rather than just record them. Its goal isn't moral judgment but understanding; not to inspire but to clarify. Varela’s book, despite its merits, doesn't meet this standard. It offers a useful correction to bourgeois historiography but doesn't significantly contribute to Marxist theory. While it restores the working class’s place in history, it doesn't clarify their historical role. It describes revolutions but doesn't analyze what conditions lead to their success. It celebrates struggle but overlooks leadership dynamics. It's a history of the oppressed, not a history of class struggle in the Marxist sense.
The comparison with Zinn, Hobsbawm, and Trotsky highlights the strengths and weaknesses of Varela’s approach. Zinn provides a moral story of resistance but lacks in-depth theoretical analysis. Hobsbawm presents a structural view of capitalism but is politically biased due to his allegiance to the Communist Party. Trotsky offers a scientific perspective on revolutionary dynamics and emphasizes the importance of political leadership. Varela takes inspiration from Zinn and Hobsbawm, however, remains somewhat detached from Trotsky's ideas. This distancing is intentional, reflecting the political stance of the modern European left, which has largely moved away from the Marxist critique of political economy and the idea of revolutionary leadership. Consequently, this historiography emphasizes resistance while sidestepping the issue of power.
The purpose of Marxist historiography is to surpass this restriction by analyzing capitalism's structural dynamics, imperialism's contradictions, the function of the state, class struggle movements, and the importance of political leadership. It should review past revolutions' achievements and setbacks, recognize the betrayals by reformist and Stalinist leaders, and identify the conditions necessary for future struggles. The goal is to offer a scientific interpretation of history rather than a moralistic story.
Varela’s 'A People’s History of Europe' offers an important challenge to bourgeois historiography by re-centering the working class and questioning liberal narratives' complacency. However, it is confined by the typical boundaries of the “people’s history' genre, lacking the depth of historical materialism, the clear political stance of Trotskyism, and the comprehensive structural analysis found in Marxist historiography at its best.
Therefore, it is important to study Varela’s work together with the classical Marxist analyses by Trotsky, Lenin, and the early Comintern. These works offer the necessary theoretical framework to understand not only how and why workers fought and were defeated but also the lessons that can be learned for the future.
The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire by John Newsinger – Bookmarks Publications, Updated Second Edition 2013
"The blood of India is on England's hands... the whole system of English rule in India is one of systematic plunder and oppression."
Ernest Jones
"In the boundless areas of India, Egypt, Persia, over which the gigantic octopus of British imperialism sprawls—in this uncharted human ocean vast internal forces are constantly at work, upheaving huge waves that cause tremors in the City's stocks and hearts."—
Leon Trotsky on Britain
We plough and sow, we're so very, very low, That we delve in the dirty clay; Till we bless the plain with the golden grain, And then we're thrust away.
Ernest Jones
"They are closely bound up with and dependent upon British capitalism. They tremble for their own property. They stand in fear of the masses. They seek compromises with British imperialism, no matter what the price, and lull the Indian masses with hopes of reforms from above."—
Leon Trotsky's Writings on Britain
John Newsinger's The Blood Never Dried offers a powerful refutation of the widely held belief that British imperialism served as a benevolent, civilising force. Drawing upon the evocative words of Chartist poet Ernest Jones for its title, Newsinger’s work forcefully asserts that violence and coercion were not exceptions but fundamental to the Empire’s foundation and maintenance. The book traces this thread of brutality from the conquest of Ireland through to the Opium Wars in China, the forceful suppression of the 1857 Indian Rebellion, and the post-war counterinsurgency campaigns in places like Malaya and Kenya.
In doing so, it provides a necessary critique of the resurgence of imperial nostalgia in contemporary discourse. This challenge is particularly pertinent given recent attempts by figures such as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to portray Western colonialism as a positive legacy, thereby highlighting the ongoing political relevance and urgency of Newsinger’s intervention.
Ernest Jones: The Revolutionary Tradition the Pseudo-Left Buries
Ernest Jones (1819–1869) remains one of the most important yet often overlooked figures in British radical history, primarily because his ideas threaten the superficial politics of the pseudo-left. He was the leading revolutionary figure of the later Chartist movement, a close political ally of Marx and Engels in England, and possibly Britain's first to deliberately combine the fight for democratic rights with a clear socialist agenda rooted in the working class.
Jones had an unlikely background, born in Germany to a British military officer, raised as a gentleman, and trained as a lawyer. However, by the 1840s, he was fully dedicated to the workers' cause. A gifted speaker and poet, he conveyed genuine class anger in his poetry. His 1852 "Song of the Lower Classes," penned during two years of hard labour in Tothill Fields prison for his Chartist activism, remains one of the most powerful expressions of working-class consciousness in English. We plough and sow, we're so very, very low, That we delve in the dirty clay; Till we bless the plain with the golden grain, And then we're thrust away.
This was not mere sentimental reformism. Jones advocated for expropriating landlords and capitalists, nationalising land and industry, and empowering the working class politically. Unlike many of his Chartist peers, he understood that the six points of the People's Charter were not the final objective but, as Engels observed, "a mere means to further ends," specifically, the socialist transformation of society.
Marx and Engels held Jones in high regard. After the 1848 defeats of Chartism, when many leaders shifted toward bourgeois liberalism, Jones remained committed to the revolutionary agenda and maintained close ties with Marx and the International Workingmen's Association (the First International). In a 1858 letter to Engels, Marx emphasised Jones's significance, describing him as "the only educated Englishman (in the professional sense) among the politicians who is fundamentally on our side." Jones lectured on political economy, using Marx's categories, and maintained regular correspondence with Marx. He understood—more than most of his British contemporaries—the international nature of the workers' struggle.
Importantly, Jones was among the rare figures in 19th-century Britain’s labour movement to adopt a principled anti-colonial position regarding Britain's empire. During the peak of the 1857 Indian Rebellion—referred to by the British ruling class as the "Indian Mutiny"—as patriotic media demanded retribution, Jones spoke at large gatherings advocating for the Indian people's right to oppose British authority. He described the rebellion in his publication, People's Paper: "The blood of India is on England's hands... the whole system of English rule in India is one of systematic plunder and oppression."
This was not merely moral indignation. Jones understood the connection between the exploitation of colonised peoples abroad and the exploitation of the working class at home — that the same ruling class that ground down the Lancashire mill workers also bled India dry through the East India Company, that the surplus extracted from colonial peoples helped finance the bribery of the upper layers of the British working class. This is precisely the insight — the connection between imperial exploitation, the labour aristocracy, and the corruption of the working-class movement that Lenin later theorised in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, and that Trotsky built upon in his analysis of Britain.
Jones's legacy offers a clear political lesson. British schools seldom teach about him. When the pseudo-left discusses British radical history, it usually focuses on the "Moral Force" branch of Chartism—represented by William Lovett—emphasising respectability, petitions, and reform, rather than the revolutionary tradition of Jones and the Newport Rising. The true revolutionary aspect of Chartism, advocating for the working class to directly challenge the capitalist state both nationally and internationally, is deliberately downplayed by the pseudo-left.
John Newsinger's The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire (first published in 2006, updated in 2013) is an accessible, unflinching chronicle of the British Empire's crimes: the slave trade and its defenders, the conquest of India and the deliberate creation of famines, the brutal suppression of the 1857 Rebellion, the Opium Wars forced upon China, the conquest of Egypt and Sudan, the Boer concentration camps, the suppression of the Irish, the Mau Mau torture camps in Kenya, the Malayan "Emergency," and the bloody retreat from empire through the mid-20th century.
Newsinger writes from a socialist perspective and plays a significant role in recovering the voices of those who resisted, including not only the colonised peoples but also the small number of British workers and radicals who refused to reconcile with the Empire. The book serves as a valuable popular history and offers a helpful counterpoint to the imperial nostalgia that periodically emerges in British society. Nonetheless, a Marxist critique of Newsinger's work must go beyond mere appreciation. Newsinger spent many years as a member of the Socialist Workers Party, the same organisation identified as a key vehicle for pseudo-left politics in Britain. The political limitations inherent in the SWP's tradition influence even Newsinger's most notable work.
The fundamental theoretical problem is this: The Blood Never Dried tends to present the crimes of the British Empire primarily as a moral and political outrage, which of course they are, without fully grounding them in the structural logic of capitalism itself. The Empire was not an aberration from British history that can be condemned and then set aside while preserving the existing social order. It was the product of British capitalism at its most expansive, driven by the imperatives of capital accumulation, the search for markets, raw materials, and fields of investment. As Marx wrote in Capital, capitalism came into the world "dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt." The enclosures that dispossessed the English peasantry, the slave trade that financed the industrial revolution, and the colonial famines that generated surplus value for British capital were not separate phenomena; they were facets of a single system.
This issue is extremely significant for contemporary politics. If the British Empire's wrongdoings are viewed simply as a historical moral scandal — terrible acts committed in the past by bad actors under a now-defunct empire — then the natural political response tends toward "decolonisation" rhetoric, reparations, and cultural politics within the current capitalist system. This pattern is evident in the SWP environment, which has shifted from a nominally anti-imperialist stance to becoming entangled in identity politics and "decolonise the curriculum" campaigns that fail to challenge capitalism and instead tend to divide the working class along racial lines.
The British Pseudo-Left's Approach to Empire: Moral Outrage Without Class Politics
This underscores the main problem with how the British pseudo-left, including groups like the SWP, Counterfire, and various Corbynite factions, approaches the history and legacy of Empire today. Their stance is characterized by three interconnected shortcomings. Firstly, they see imperialism mainly as a moral concern rather than a structural one. While they rightly condemn particular atrocities, they neglect to connect them to the underlying logic of capitalist accumulation. This view enables them to cling to the false hope that a reformed Labour government or a different foreign policy could make British imperialism "ethical." For instance, the Stop the War Coalition's proposal for Britain to pursue an "independent foreign policy" modeled after France and Germany reflects this belief: that imperialism can be made more humane from within, without challenging the capitalist class that sustains it.
Secondly, there is a shift from traditional class politics towards identity politics and the discourse of "decolonisation." The SWP's support for racial and gender issues, its endorsement of "intersectionality" as compatible with Marxism, and its focus on the professional-managerial classes in universities all tend to reduce the class debate to a cultural concern. While the atrocities of Empire are real and must be addressed, genuine confrontation occurs only when they are linked to the capitalist system that causes and sustains them. In contrast, identity politics promotes the absurd idea of a "diverse" British military—including women, people of color, and LGBT soldiers—participating in actions like bombing Afghanistan or supporting the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Representation within the imperial state is not a form of anti-imperialism; it is merely its latest cultural facade.
Most importantly, the pseudo-left fails to develop a vital political tool: an independent revolutionary party that genuinely represents the working class, the only force capable of ending imperialism. Ernest Jones understood that the working class needs its own party, program, and leadership that are fundamentally opposed to the bourgeoisie. In contrast, the SWP mainly revolves around the Labour Party, pressures the trade union bureaucracy, and confines anti-imperialist ideas within controlled bourgeois channels.
Alongside pseudo-left critiques of the British Empire, a new wave of right-wing and racist historiography has emerged, led by figures like Kehinde Andrews. Andrews' *The New Age of Empire* warrants serious critical analysis from a Marxist perspective because, although it rightly condemns imperialism and capitalism's crimes, it is fundamentally rooted in postcolonial theory and racial idealism. This framework, despite its radical rhetoric, ultimately offers a political dead end for the working class.
Andrews rightly sees that colonialism is an ongoing issue, not just a closed chapter in history. The exploitation of the Global South—through wealth extraction via unequal trade, debt dependence on international financial institutions, and the persistence of neocolonial regimes—remains a continuous aspect of capitalism. His critique of Western liberal hypocrisy is also valid. However, recognising these symptoms alone does not provide a full diagnosis, and this is where the book's framework falls short.
Andrews focuses on race rather than class as his central analytical category. He views racism—defined as a system of white supremacy rooted in colonialism and still ongoing—as the main organising principle of the modern world. This perspective resembles postcolonial theory presented as radicalism, yet it has historically favoured the interests of the upper-middle class and the national bourgeoisie in former colonial countries, rather than the working class.
His framework lacks an explanation for this history because it doesn’t clearly see it. When race is the primary lens instead of class, it's difficult to understand why formally "decolonised" nations led by Black and brown bourgeoisie remain trapped in poverty and dependence. The Marxist perspective is explicit: capitalism and imperialism are primarily class projects, and they employ race merely as a division tool.
"The Blood Never Dried" serves as a stark reminder that the crimes of the British Empire are ongoing. British imperialism has sent Challenger tanks to Ukraine and provided arms to Israel for the Gaza genocide. They detained Julian Assange and used the entire colonial state apparatus against its own working class through austerity and wage suppression. The blood continues to flow because the system responsible for shedding it remains unoverthrown. While "The Blood Never Dried" is valuable for exposing imperial crimes, workers seeking to understand the reasons for imperialism, how to oppose it, and what political strategies are needed should study Lenin's "Imperialism," Trotsky's "Permanent Revolution," and the daily analysis on the World Socialist Web Site. Ultimately, the history of empire is the history of capitalism; only when the international working class overthrows capitalism will it end.
A People's History of London-john Rees and Lyndsey German- Verso Books352 pages (Updated Edition) 2026
A People's History of London by John Rees and Lyndsey German is a revised, updated edition of their 2012 book. It broadens the narrative to cover the 21st century, examining London's social and economic crises. The book explores key issues such as the Grenfell Tower fire and its systemic implications, the rise of mass popular mobilisation, such as the Palestine solidarity movement, and the ongoing housing crisis, which highlights struggles against aggressive urban developers and corporate landlords.
John Rees is a recognised author, broadcaster, and political advocate. He is part of the editorial team at Counterfire and was a co-founder of the Stop the War Coalition. Lindsey German, a lifelong resident of London, is a socialist writer and activist. She serves as the convenor of the Stop the War Coalition and has previously run for Mayor of London.
John Rees and Lindsey German are key figures in Counterfire, a British pseudo-left group that split from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 2010. Both have played significant roles in organising the Stop the War Coalition (STWC). They maintain that the coalition isn't about establishing an authentic anti-war movement but aims to steer anti-war sentiment towards support for the Labour Party and trade union leadership. The STWC "functioned as a mechanism for capturing anti-war sentiment and bringing it under the political tutelage of the trade union bureaucracy and a handful of Labourites." This is the political environment influencing Rees and German's historical work, shaping it in fundamental ways.
What the Book Does
A People's History of London explores centuries of the city's radical and working-class history, including the Peasants' Revolt, the Levellers, the Chartists, the Matchgirls' Strike, and the Suffragettes. It is written in an accessible style and seeks to recover a tradition of popular resistance. In this way, it offers a valuable introduction to events often overlooked or misrepresented by mainstream bourgeois history.
However, the book's framework mirrors the political constraints and deceptions of its authors. Several key points need to be addressed. The "People's History" genre has a problematic history. This tradition, exemplified by Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, tends to oversimplify class differences among the oppressed, replace materialist analysis with moral outrage, and celebrate struggle as an end in itself. It fails to ask the crucial question: what program and party are necessary to guide the working class to victory? The history of London's radical movements is essentially a record of betrayed class struggles, and understanding the reasons for these betrayals requires political analysis, not mere romanticisation.
A major critique of Rees and German concerns their failure to confront reformism and the Labour Party honestly. Their political view is strongly aligned with the Labour left, including Corbynism and the STWC's focus on figures such as Jeremy Corbyn and Tony Benn. This shows they are unable to grasp key lessons from London's labour history: that the Labour Party was meant to contain the working class within capitalism, that trade union bureaucracies have often suppressed class struggle, and that London workers' setbacks are mainly due to these betrayals.
The origins of the "People's History" genre are rooted in a specific political context, rather than emerging from a vacuum. As Ann Talbot's key essay on Christopher Hill underscores, the influential first book in Britain was A.L. Morton's A People's History of England, created by the Communist Party Historians' Group, which included Hill, E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, and Rodney Hilton.
Talbot highlights the political core of this: "People's history was an attempt to give some historical foundation to the policies of the Popular Front—the subordination of the working class to supposedly progressive sections of the bourgeoisie." Essentially, the genre was developed to support Stalinist politics, overlaying class distinctions with a nationalist "people" narrative to justify class collaboration, rather than promoting independent working-class politics.
This is not merely background; it forms the core genetic code of the genre, shaping all works that carry the "People's History" label, including Howard Zinn's influential *A People's History of the United States* and E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class.
Tom Mackaman's insightful obituary of Howard Zinn, a leading figure in the genre, offers a sharp critique of its limitations. Mackaman references Engels' view on what he called "old materialist" philosophy: it "could not answer the question of what historical forces drive the motives of individuals and groups in history." Engels argued that "its conception of history, insofar as it exists at all, is mainly pragmatic; it categorises people in history as noble or ignoble and generally shows that the noble are often defrauded while the ignoble tend to prevail."
This accurately describes the "People's History" approach, which is fundamentally moral: the oppressed versus their oppressors, resisters against the controllers, and the people versus the Establishment. While names and dates may vary, the core narrative remains unchanged. It lacks dialectical contradictions, fails to recognise historically progressive class forces, and omits analysis of how material relations of production propel social change through conflict. Instead, it depicts an endless cycle of oppression and resistance without proposing a strategy to resolve or end either.
Mackaman highlights how Zinn's approach leads to significant historiographical errors. Because Zinn views history through a strict moral binary of villains and victims, he interprets the American Revolution and the Civil War as two of the most objectively progressive events in global history—as essentially elite conspiracies aimed at controlling popular unrest. Abraham Lincoln is reduced to a mere "shrewd political operative," and Tom Paine is criticised for his association with a wealthy individual. These misrepresentations are based not on evidence but on the moralising framework characteristic of the genre.
Mackaman highlights a critical point: the "People's History" genre originated from the revisionist academic work of the 1960s and 70s, which coincided with the rise of identity politics on American campuses. This alignment is deliberate. Mackaman notes: "The new studies emerged alongside the development of identity politics and the push for affirmative action on campuses, as US liberalism, trade unions, and the Democratic Party aimed to find a new base for their policies outside the working class." This genre supported this political agenda by replacing the working class—considered the revolutionary agent of history—with a diverse array of oppressed groups whose resistance could be celebrated without questioning the need to overthrow capitalism revolutionarily.
E.P. Thompson, alongside A.L. Morton and Howard Zinn, is a key figure in the genre of A People’s History. This genre and Thompson's role in it cannot be separated from his
political roots in the Communist Party Historians Group of postwar Britain. Thompson, with Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, Rodney Hilton, and others, was educated within a tradition influenced by Stalinist politics—particularly the Popular Front strategy of the 1930s and 40s.
As Ann Talbot argued in her appraisal of Christopher Hill, this school of history was not simply a scholarly tendency: "The Communist Party sponsored a form of 'People's History', which is typified by A.L. Morton's People's History of England in which the class character of earlier rebels, revolutionaries and popular leaders was obscured by regarding them all as representatives of a national revolutionary tradition. This historical approach reflected the nationalism of the bureaucracy, their hostility to internationalism and their attempts to form an unprincipled alliance with the supposedly democratic capitalists against the fascist Axis countries."
In other words, "people's history" reflected the historiographical view of Popular Front politics, portraying the working class as subordinate to supposedly progressive bourgeois factions, cloaked in the rhetoric of a unified "national people" fighting oppression. The class struggle was transformed into an inspiring moral narrative, but one that is politically benign: a legacy of "resistance" that avoids advocating for revolution, challenging the need to overthrow the bourgeois state, or calling for revolutionary leadership.
Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (1963) is truly a landmark in scholarship. Its goal — to uncover the agency, culture, and deliberate self-formation of the English working class during the late 18th and early 19th centuries — led to outstanding empirical research. Thompson emphasized that the working class was not merely shaped by industrial conditions but actively shaped itself, challenging simple economic determinism. His exploration of artisan radicalism, Methodist dissent, Luddism, and the radical clubs of the 1790s deepened our understanding of how class consciousness emerges.
But the political framework within which Thompson worked imposed severe limitations. Like Hill, Thompson was drawn to identifying a distinctively English revolutionary tradition — one running from the Civil War to the emerging labour movement that was fundamentally national in character. Talbot observes that both Hill and Thompson "had no interest in showing the continental origins of many of the ideas that inspired the English revolution," nor in tracing the genuinely international development of Enlightenment thought, democratic theory, and working-class politics.
A true Marxist approach to history involves analysing the leadership and goals of working-class movements, whether in London, the US, or elsewhere. Unlike the "People's History" genre, it must examine the class dynamics driving both victories and defeats, place national struggles in the context of global class conflict and draw lessons for today's socialist movement. It views the working class not just as victims to be pitied but as the revolutionary force whose consciousness evolves through struggle, and whose liberation depends on building an international revolutionary party.
The political role of the genre today. From a Marxist perspective, the main limitation of this genre is its strategic emptiness. While it can depict struggles, it cannot analyse their failures. It can praise resisters but cannot determine what program or party would have led them to victory. It can list the crimes of the ruling class, yet it cannot explain how these crimes are perpetuated, specifically through the capitalist mode of production and the state structures that sustain it.
Today, the "People's History" brand mainly serves as a marketing term for pseudo-left ideology. When John Rees and Lindsey German author a "People's History of London," they exploit the emotional appeal of centuries of working-class resistance yet deliberately sidestep the political conclusions such history implies. This genre permits them to praise the Chartists, match girls, and dockers without addressing why these movements were ultimately defeated. It also avoids recognizing the Labour Party and trade union bureaucracy as the primary agents of class betrayal in the twentieth century or advocating for a revolutionary party with a socialist agenda.
Notes
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1982),
[F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Moscow, 1973),
A People’s History of Football By Mickaël Correia Translated by Fionn Petch Pluto Press 2026 £ 16.99
“Complaining about boring football is a little like complaining about the sad ending of King Lear: it misses the point somehow.”
― Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch
“In football, everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team."
- Jean-Paul Sartre
“I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.”
― Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch
“Football has become one of the most profitable businesses in the world, organised not for play but rather to impede it. […] Luckily, on the field you can still see some insolent rascal, who sets aside the script and commits the blunder of dribbling past the entire opposing side, the referee and the crowd in the stands, all for the carnal delight of embracing the forbidden adventure of freedom.”
- Eduardo Galeano, in Football in Sun and Shadow
At the heart of Football, the world’s most popular sport, there's a conundrum. On the one hand, you have a grasping global capitalist elite that owns the game who will stop at nothing to make more money out of the beautiful game(See Robert Stevens ’ Billionaires’ European Super League proposal shelved amid mass opposition from football fans), on the other, you have fans who still retain a love of the game in its purest and non-capitalist form.[1]
Stevens's article shows that workers and youth, who still make up the bulk of football's audience, are not a passive body that, in the words of Mickaël Correia, bends to “logic of the market” but, time and again, have sought to “shake itself free” of greedy capitalist control of the game. It is still a “crucible of resistance to this control.
As an addition to Correia’s book, it is well worth the reader having a look at Gavin Kitching’s article, The Origins of Football: History, Ideology and the Making of the People’s Game. In this article, he examines how the modern sport emerged not as a neutral cultural pastime but as a social product shaped by class relations, schooling, institutions and ideology. Kitching traces the transition from medieval “folk” games to codified, organised association football. It shows how the game’s form, meanings and social functions were transformed by industrialisation, urbanisation, public schooling and the rise of mass spectatorship. He exposes the ideological work of institutions—schools, the press, the FA—in turning a variety of popular practices into a “people’s game” whose apparent spontaneity masks specific class origins and power relations.[2]
Having said this, one critique of Correia’s book is that it offers too little space to the working class and its historical struggles against capitalism. Roger Domeneghetti, writing in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS), makes this succinct point. “Correia’s history is epic in its scope, taking us from the origins of modern football in the late nineteenth century to the present day, from the playing fields of England’s public schools to the streets of Senegal. But this breadth is also the book’s weakness: in barely twenty pages, for example, we are taken on a whistle-stop tour of football in Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain and Stalin’s Soviet Union. The antagonisms between the respective dictatorships’ co-option of the sport for political ends and fans’ use of stadiums as a means of resistance are discussed but never afforded the space they deserve.
Correia acknowledges that the path he treads through football’s past is “meandering and fragmentary”, but this too is a weakness. Did the British football hooligans of the 1980s really have the same concerns and motivations as Palestinians trying to express a sense of national identity through football, or as the avowedly left-wing fan base of FC St Pauli of Hamburg? Beyond some loose notion of resistance to whatever form the mainstream (football) establishment in each country takes, the book never really makes a coherent argument as to how, or even whether, they did.”[3]
Even a cursory look at Correia’s A People’s History of Football would tell the reader that this is not a neutral “sports book”. Rather, it should be seen as a social-scientific document: a history of a mass cultural form shaped by capitalist property relations, class struggle and the politics of the state. Correia’s history explains why an episode like the Super League is not an aberration but an expression of capitalist accumulation in sport, how leagues are now nodes of global finance, vulnerable to crises and subject to speculative pressures. This explains recurring conflicts over ticket prices, gentrification of stadium areas, and players' labour conditions. It should be noted that not all footballers are multi-millionaires.
Correia’s book has a very contemporary relevance; he relates how football’s commercialisation and financialisation flow from capitalist accumulation and the demands of global markets. However briefly, he explains why fans, workers, and local communities are frequently in conflict with owners and governing bodies — these are class and social-interest conflicts, not mere “culture wars.” Also, how periodic crises (financial crises, pandemics) reveal the systemic contradictions of commodified sport.
Global context
Correia situates football’s transformation from a local, working‑class pastime into a global, profit‑driven industry within the same logic that governs modern imperialism, i.e. the concentration and internationalisation of capital. The expansion of transnational finance, media conglomerates and corporate ownership has turned clubs, leagues and broadcast rights into assets for speculation and surplus extraction. The 2021 European Super League episode illustrates this dynamic: billionaire owners and Wall Street financiers sought to “close” competition to guarantee revenue streams and asset values, treating clubs as franchises rather than social institutions.
Correia’s book addresses the international implications of this global, profit-driven industry for the future struggles of the working class and why those struggles must be international in both form and content. Football’s production chains and revenue flows are transnational: players move across borders, TV rights are sold worldwide, and merchandise is manufactured in low‑wage countries. Consequently, struggles are interconnected. When owners seek to centralise revenue (ESL) or when broadcasters pressure for cost efficiencies, the consequences reverberate across countries — layoffs in stadium workforces, intensified shift patterns for broadcast crews, and rising ticket and subscription costs that drive fans out of the game.
An isolated national struggle cannot stop global capital. The correct response is international working‑class coordination: rank‑and‑file committees of stadium workers, broadcast unions organised across borders, and fan organisations linking campaigns to worker demands. Partial reforms (fan seats on boards, wage floors) are necessary but insufficient. Correia’s framework leads to a strategic conclusion: only the socialisation of the commanding heights of the sporting economy — democratically controlled international public infrastructures for mass sport and public broadcasting under workers’ and communities’ control — can root out the capitalist incentives that create dispossession and commodification. This requires an international political movement of the working class that moves beyond national compromises. The strategic response is an international working‑class organisation that fuses fan resistance with the rank‑and‑file power of stadium and broadcast workers to reclaim the game as a social, not a speculative, resource.
[1] Billionaires’ European Super League proposal shelved amid mass opposition from football fans- www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/24/supe-a24.html
[2] The Origins of Football History Ideology and the Making of the People's Game- History Workshop Journal No. 79 (SPRING 2015), pp. 127-153 (27 pages)
[3] The other football: A Meandering People’s history of the beautiful game.www.the-tls.com/regular-features/in-brief/a-peoples-history-of-football-mickael-correia-book-review-roger-domeneghetti
A People’s History of Portugal-By Raquel Varela and Roberto della Santa Foreword by Michael Roberts Afterword by Gordon Lafer-Translated by Ana Daglish de Almeida-Pluto Press 2025
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past"
George Orwell 1984
“One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record, to scratch a drawing on a tusk or keep a diary… The enduring value of the past is, one might say, the very basis of civilisation.”
John Jay Chapman, American author (1862-1933)
“History is the study of all the world’s crime.”
Voltaire, French writer and philosopher (1694-1778)
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.”
Alan Bennett, English playwright (1934- )
A People’s History of Portugal is a valuable reconstruction of the last two hundred years of class struggle in Portugal. Raquel Varela writes, “In A People’s History of Portugal, written with Roberto della Santa, we develop the idea that Portuguese capitalism was dependent on British capitalism, in the sense of Ellen Wood’s notion of capitalism being exported by the British Empire to the periphery and semi-periphery”.[1]
Raquel Varela and Roberto Della Santa are contemporary historians whose work on Portugal must be assessed not as an abstract literary or moral account but as a political and social explanation rooted in concrete class relations. The central question posed by Santa and Varela and their “people’s history” is: which social forces and material conditions produced the events described, and how did political forms (parties, the army, unions) mediate the class struggle in Portugal?
Both Raquel Varela’s and Roberto Della Santa’s work belongs to a broad current in historiography often called the people’s history genre: recovering the struggles, experiences and agency of oppressed groups omitted from elite-centred narratives. This genre has considerable value insofar as it corrects bourgeois forgetfulness and restores the working class and oppressed peoples to the centre of historical inquiry.
One of the most important exponents of the genre put this way: “I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the 'obsolete' hand-loom weaver, the 'utopian' artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backwards looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience”.[2]
While this genre is legitimate and entirely worthwhile, the reader should know that, from the standpoint of orthodox Marxism, the recovery of forgotten facts is only the first step. Marxist historiography insists that facts be integrated into a scientific, materialist explanation that locates political consciousness and social movements in the social relations of production, class antagonisms and objective economic laws.
The father of Russian Marxism Georgi Plekhanov insisted that institutions, laws, and human ideas must be explained by deeper material relations and class interests, writing "The historical development of mankind is reasonable in the sense that it is law-governed; but the law-governed nature of historical development does not yet prove at all that its ultimate cause must be sought in the views of men or in their opinions".[3]
Why is Varela’s and Santa’s A People’s History of Portugal an important popular intervention? Because it recovers the social struggles, popular organisations and class conflicts that conventional bourgeois national histories either marginalise or explain away. From a classical Marxist standpoint, the value of Varela’s work lies less in doctrinal purity than in its insistence that classes and masses make history or as Karl Marx put it so succinctly ““Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionising themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis, they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes to present this new scene in world history in time-honoured disguise and borrowed language.”[4]
From the standpoint of a materialist conception of history, the people’s history method has two strengths: it exposes elite crimes and centres subordinate agency; and, in doing so, it helps break the ideological monopoly of official history. It also has its limits, as Marxist historian Tom Mackaman pointed out in his assessment of Howard Zinn. “ While it helps bring to light facts omitted from standard textbooks, Zinn’s work can only serve as a beginning in understanding US history. There is an unmistakable anachronistic, even a-historical, thread in A People’s History. If it has a theme, it is an endless duel between “resistance” and “control,” two of Zinn’s preferred words.
Populating his historical stage are, on the one side, a virtually unbroken line of “Establishment” villains who exercise this control and, on the other, benighted groups who often struck out against their plight. The names and dates change; the story does not. Complexity and contradiction do not rest comfortably in such a schema. The limitations of this approach are most evident in Zinn’s treatment of the American Revolution and the US Civil War, which he presents as instances of the elite beguiling the population to strengthen its control”.[5]
Raquel Varela’s erudition is plain to see in this scholarly book. Her work is noted for its attention to labour, popular movements and transnational dimensions of working-class struggle. She makes an important empirical contribution by documenting struggles and networks often neglected by mainstream historiography. Her work helps restore the subjectivity and agency of the working class to historical study, an indispensable corrective to bourgeois historiography.
But from the standpoint of Marxist science, any historiography must move beyond documentation to explanation, and that requires a mapping of the class composition and material interests of actors. It also needs an analysis of how material constraints shaped state and party forms. If left at the level of primarily descriptive, it can be hijacked by reformism or identity politics. Unfortunately, most books of this genre fall into this ideological trap.
In this book, Varela writes of the experiences of peasants, workers, and popular movements — showing how changes in production, imperialism and property relations shape politics and ideas. Varela’s narrative demonstrates how Portugal’s late and dependent capitalist development, colonial plunder and landlordism produced a fragmented bourgeoisie, a precarious working class and mass emigration — objective conditions that repeatedly gave rise to political radicalisation.
Varela and Santa reconstruct crucial episodes — the liberal revolutions, the rise of the republic, the consolidation of Salazar’s Estado Novo, the colonial wars, and the Carnation Revolution of 1974 — as outcomes of deeper economic and social contradictions. [6] Varela’s people-centred focus complements previous historiography showing how popular assemblies, strikes and local organisations expressed and attempted to resolve those objective contradictions. The book makes clear that Portugal’s political oscillations — reactionary regimes, fragile reformisms, anti-colonial wars — were not merely the result of individual leaders but rooted in capitalist development and imperial relations. The book is valuable because, by narrating the lives and struggles of ordinary people, Varela helps break bourgeois historiographical isolation of politics from production and class interest.
While invaluable as social history, Varela is not an orthodox Marxist, and her account can only understate the decisive political question of leadership. The Carnation Revolution contained both an immense revolutionary potential and a political defeat: social democracy, Stalinism and pseudo-left currents helped channel working-class power back into capitalist institutions.[7]
Raquel Varela’s A People’s History of Portugal is well worth reading, and I would recommend this book. It is a crucial corrective to elite-centred history: it returns the reader to popular agency, material forces and class struggle. Despite its limitations, it offers a rich source of historiography and allows for rigorous analysis by general readers and Marxists alike. Only by combining social-historical recovery with Leninist-Trotskyist political organisation can the working class carry out the socialist transformation of society. Given the rise of Trump and his fascist oligarchy, this is an urgent historical necessity.
Social Conflicts in the Portuguese Revolution, 1974–1975: Raquel Varela and Joana Alcântara Le Travail, FALL 2014 AUTOMNE, Vol. 74
Raquel Varela. A People’s History of the Portuguese Revolution. Ed. By Peter Robinson. Transl. [from Portuguese] by Sean Purdy. Pluto Press
Fifty years since Portugal’s Carnation Revolution-Paul Mitchell- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/24/fgtz-a24.html
[1] https://raquelcardeiravarela.wordpress.com/2024/05/01
[2] The Making of the English Working Class-E P Thompson
[3] Georgi Plekhanov’s The Development of the Monist View of History
[4] Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
[5] Howard Zinn, 1922-2010-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/02/zinn-f15.html
[6] See https://keith-perspective.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-review-of-raquel-varela-peoples.html
[7] See https://keith-perspective.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-portuguese-workers-revolution-1974.html
