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Monday, December 22, 2025

Chris Harman - Spartacus and the Slave Revolt that Shook the Roman Empire

Redwords have been bringing out a series of books with transcripts of talks by leading Marxists with new introductions. This little book is based on a talk by Chris Harman at Marxism 1998 in London as part of a course on battles that changed the world. In the talk Harman jokes that the reading wasn't to difficult as there are only two sources for the Spartacus rebellion, and these amount to five pages or so. But what we do know tells us a great deal about Ancient Rome and the position of slaves within it. Harman's historical materialist approach places the battles of the Third Servile War in the wider context of the development of Rome and the limits of the Roman Empire.

Give the short nature of the text Harman only touches on some subjects. Indeed, as Christian Høgsbjerg notes in his extremely useful introduction, at one point in the talk Harman realises he is running out of time and has to summarise a lot of material. It is useful then that Høgsbjerg has access to Harman's original notes as he is able to construct and include material that Harman couldn't include on the day of the talk. But two aspects of the talk remain vitaly important. The first is Harman's summary of the class nature of Roman society and how the army was an essential part of this:

Essentially, what happened was the victory of the Roman armies led to two sorts of immense wealth flooding to Rome. One was the immense wealth coming from the territoties which were conquered by Rome.. the second form of wealth ... was the massive enslavement of populations.

Harman continues:

The Roman rich had these vast sums of wealth... [which] enabled them to buy the slaves off the Roman state, and they systematically then established a situation in which they began tilling their estates with slave. And their calculation was quite simply this. 'The Roman army is invincible. Every year, we conquer more people. Every time we conquer more people, we enslave more people, there's an endless supply of slaves'.

This leads us to the second point of Harman's argument. This model was unsustainable and sections of Roman society understood this. The contradiction was that the cost of fighting the wars became prohibitive, and to try to resolve things the Roman ruling class tried to change society, by setting up forms of serfdom. But the centrality of slavery (and war) to the Roman economy made this impossible.

This then places the activity of Spartacus and his rebels into context. Because the taking of Rome by the rebels would have meant them implementing the very regime they were rebelling against (they were, after all, former slaves). Harman's conclusion was that the revolt was heroic, but "history hadn't advanced to such a point in which it's possible for an oppressed class to see overthrowing the empire and estabishing itself as a new ruling class upon a higher, better form of organisation of society". In other words, rather like the peasants of the German Peasants' War, their victory could never be permanent, even if they could never overcome the ruling class's forces.

While it's a short pamphlet and, to be honest, Harman's speaking style doesn't readily translate into an easy reading text, there's a great deal in this talk. Once again Chris Harman's historical materialist approach gives us far more insights that we might expect from just five pages of original source material. Christian Høgsbjerg's excellent editing, introduction and footnotes flesh out the material and make this a fine quick read.

Sunday, December 21, 2025

Bruno Leipold - Citizen Marx: Republicanism & the formation of Karl Marx's social and political thought

How did Marx come to the ideas that are today most associated with this revolutionary politics? This is a question with surprisingly complex answers. Most people who call themselves Marxists today are aware that Marx began his political trajectory as a Young Hegelian, but that he famously "turned Hegel upside down". But, as Bruno Leipold's wonderful new book shows, this is not enough to understand Marx's politics. Leipold argues that to understand Marx's communism, one has to understand its evolution from Marx's roots in Republicanism. He goes on to conclude that Marx's politics have to be seen as developing in both opposition to, and in debt to, the republican tradition.

Marx began his political career as a radical republican who believed that "the arbitary power of despotic regimes" had to be overcome and replaced with a democratic republic where people held democractic power and controlled their elected representatives "through binding mandates". While initially sharing a republican critique of communism, as Marx became a communist himself he "incorporated the republican opposition to arbitary power into his social critique of capitalism" retaining the belief in a democratic republic. Later, in response to the 1871 Paris Commune, Marx further developed his vision of democracy into one that meshed with his earlier radical views "returning to ideas he had defended as a young republican". Of course this was not a reversal, but a development of his radical democracy that "emphasized the need for a much more encompassing emocratic transformation of government."

These three stages are examined in detail in Leipold's book. The first section, which looks at Marx's republican ideas and the republican milieu he was active in is particularly interesting. Leipold begins with the progressive and radical nature of republicanism in the early to mid 19th century, but also its limitations. Marx's "shift from republicanism was driven by a growing disillusionment with the ability of political emancipation, through a democratic republic, to establish truly human emancipation" together with a growing understanding of the unique role of the working class as an agent for change. It is worth noting in passing though Leipold's point that few 19th century republicans "would be satisfied by democracy today". Their radicalism, was a genuine radicalism, but it was born from a utopian belief that everyone could be equal despite class divisions.

That said, and in something I found particularly illuminating, Leipold argues that we must see 19th century republicanism as a "distinct political movement". While liberals might form alliances against the monarchy with republicans at the time, they all "disagreed on the regime that should replace it". Republicanism was a political movement that fought for the "introduction of democracy and popular sovereignty" but with a "distinctive conception of liberty, understood as the absence of arbitrary power or domination". But as Leipold goes on to show this manifests, not as a republican vision for a society free of private property with the means of production held in common, but rather a semi-backward vision of a society of small producers.

Marx became radical within these frameworks but broke with them through a critical engagement both with social movements and with systematic studies of politics and political models. In 1843 Marx

condemned the despotic treatment of subjects and the exclusion of the mass of citizens from political particuipation that resulted from the arbitrary rule of absolute monarchs. In his critique of Hegel, Marx rehected his constitutional model of monarchy, which Marx argued only fractionally extended participation to the king's ministers, bureaucrats and the propertied elite. Marx expressed a preference for a republic over a constitutional monarchy, but also criticized the Maerican model of a republic, where the people were still estranged from the political sphere and consigned to particularism of civil society.

In constrast to these Marx proposed a "true democracy" where "people would hold active sovereign power through the popular administration of general interests... and the tight control over representatives through binding instructions [mandates]." Here I am particularly take with the word "active". It demonstrates that even then Marx's commitment to a popular participatory democracy with constant political engagement. Far more radical than our current democracy with its brief election periods every few years. It is this vision of democracy that re-emerges in 1871 when the Paris Commune explodes.

Around the same time as this, Marx was also going through a change in his attitude to communism. Leipold argues he was "sympathetic" but not convinced in the early 1840s. Marx heads to Paris to challenge communism, but ends up being converted. But, crucially, Leipold writes that "Marx did not so much convert to communism as fashion a new form of it".

This change is rooted in Marx's growing concern with the State as a body that could "not truly free people from obstacles to their freedom, it only relegated those obstacles to civil society". The republican critique of freedom was that people could never be free in a society where a ruler can make them behave in a particular way due to their power over them. Marx concluded that "in order to be free, a person has to live not only in a free state but in a free society". This insight takes Marx into the idea of revolutionary emancipation, whereby proletarian revolution coul lead to the "dissolution of all estates".

If property was the root of power, then a propertyless society could be the basis for a new set of social, political and economic relations that would bring in real freedom. Marx's conversion to communism is remarkably rapid. His time in Paris, described by Leipold as a time of politically sharp debates and engagement with socialist ideas, sees Marx develop a set of ideas that "could no longer be plausibly contained undert the banner of republicanism and democracy and amounted to an encompassing ideological and political conversion to communism."

But it was the revolutionary period of 1848/9 that cemented Marx's understandings of communism and the role of the working class in constructing a society based on freedom. While celebrating the overthrow of monarchies, Marx could also understand that the new bourgeois order was inadequate. As Leipold writes:

For Marx, the bourgeois republic was essentially a change in the political scaffolding that didn't touch the underlying social building... So closely did Marx associate the republic with being simply the poltiical accompaniment of bourgeois society that he often used 'republic' and 'bourgeois republic' interchangeably... Conflating the republic with the bourgeois republic also served Marx's political purpose of highlighting what he took to be the emancipatory limits of republicanism... Achieving the republic would, Marx stressed, not live up to the idealistic hopes of its supporters but instead cement the bourgeois transformation of society.

If the bourgeois republic offered only illusionary freedom to people then what sort of society could offer genuine freedom? Here Leipold usees Marx's Capital to explore how his understanding of capitalism allowed him to develop a vision of socialism and democracy that broke further from republicanism. Marx begins with a critique of the utopian vision of small producers as the basis for egalitarian society. Such a society was one that would be a step backward from the capitalist economy because such a collection of independent producers, isolated from each other, could not utilise the "gains from cooperation, division of labour, the application of scientific and technicalknowledge" and, in a phrase I found particularly insightful, "doomed it in the face of a mode of production that could".

Leipold writes that Marx, "recognised that the political form of bourgeois society, the bourgeois republic, was an inappropriate political form for bringing about communism". But how could a socialist society utilise these capitalist developments? Famously Marx says the "working class cannot simply lay hold of the read-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes". This line comes from Marx's writings on the Paris Commune, It was the Commune that allowed Marx to glimpse for the first time how a radical transformation of workers' relations to the means of production would usher in new forms of democracy and a new epoch of freedom. For some republicans, the opposite was true. The Giuseppe Mazzini said that the Commune's violence "ruined the possibility of national unity". Marx however saw in the Commune the possibilty of a new form of unity that shattered apart bourgeois society and constructed something new. Indeed this was a new shift in Marx's conception of the "social republic" where it was a specific form suited to maintaining and bringing about working-class social and political rule". As Marx writes:

The cry of 'Social Republic', with which the revolution of February [1848] was ushered in by the Paris proletariat did but express a vague aspiration after a Republic that wsa not only to supersede the monarchical form of class rule, but class rule itself. The Commune was the positive form of that Republic.

Crucially it was the active democratic engagement with society of working people coming together with their control of the economy that made the Commune that "positive form". Here Marx could celebrate the Parisian workers who, out of their struggle, implemented the radical vision of democracy that Marx himself had argued for in his younger republican days. The right to recall elected representatives, the payment of such representatives appropriate wages, and the ability to mandate. It was this active and real, albeit short lived, experiment in radical democracy that gave Marx the final insight into how a communist society could function.

Out of these discussions Leipold explores what freedom and equality mean. His final argument brings together earlier themes around politics, arguing that Marx was clear that politics would not vanish after the transition to communism, but take on new forms. Insightfully Leipold also argues that the argument for freedom in the sense Marx (and republicans) used it has an importance today. It means freedom from arbitary control, dictorial power and being tied to the capitalist accumulation machine. We aren't free, not because we don't have the appropriate definition of freedom in a constitution, but because workers cannot be free when they are forced to work for the capitalists - one where we are trapped by the "despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital". Leipold argues, that the "terrain of freedom has too easily been abandoned to conservatives and liberals". We need to win it back as part of a struggle for an emancipatory vision of socialism.

Bruno Leipold's book is a remarkable, and fresh, engagement with Marx's work. For me it opened up whole new areas of thought and refreshed my thinking around key concepts such as freedom, the state, and democracy. But above all I found it an exciting and stimulating reminder of why Marx's ideas remain crucial to the fight for human emancipation. Those whose understanding of Marxism is constrained by that articulated by supporters of Stalin or the regimes in China or Eastern Europe, would do well to engage with this account Marx's deeply human vision of socialism. Citizen Marx has deservedly won the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Prize, I hope that the publishers bring out an affordable paperback soon for the thousands of people who would gain so much from reading it. It is my book of the year.

Ivan Doig - English Creek

English Creek is, confusingly, the first of Ivan Doig's Montana Trilogy, but the second book chronologically. The books tell the story of the farming community around the Two Medicine Country on the east of the Rocky Mountains. It's an area similar to that were Doig grew up, and if the places are invented there is a sense of these being real places, real people and real situations.

Jick McCaskill is 14. He's the younger son of hardworking parents. His father is a forester and fire-watcher for the National Parks, keeping an eye on the people using and farming in the Two Medicine National Forest. Jick's mother is a fiercely independent woman who runs the household and small holding and keeps the family organised. Jick's elder brother Alec is the brains of the family. His amazing ability with numbers has led to his parents saving their money to send him to college. They hope he might become more than a farmer or rancher. They want him to escape. But Alec falls in love and announces his desire to get married and stay on the farm. So begins English Creek and the story of Jick's transformative summer.

English Creek is one of those novels were little happens. We see Jick's world view transformed as he is on the cusp of adulthood. Still drinking pop and with time to spare around his chores he is just beginning to see how the grown up world works. His father hands him over for a few days to a transient worker, one of many older men who make their living doing various seasonal jobs. Jick gets drunk for the first time, but also encounters the wisdom of older people who show him the way the world of Two Medicine works.

In the few week's covered by the novel there are a few key events - a rodeo, a Fourth of July picnic and a horrific thunderstorm. The story, such as it is, culminates in a dramatic forest fire. But, to be honest, little else takes place. This is a novel about a time, place and people. Rural Americans whose life has been crushed by the depression, who are desperate for rain or higher prices for their cattle and sheep, and whose lives are closely intertwined, even if not obviously, to world events. The ending, is less of a plot conclusion, and more of a shock to the reader when we realise the context for Jick and Alec's lives.

Ivan Doig's books are not well known outside of the US (and probably Montana). This is a shame. His writing is sparse, but beautifully sharp. And their's plenty of vernacular - which flows both from the local accent and the immigrant communities - something explored further in the prequel. Jick's mother makes an unorthodox, and realtively radical speech at the July Fourth celebrations. In it she talks about her father and his friend Ben. Ben English, she says, "is gone from us. He died in the summer of 1927 of a strained heart. Died, to say it plainly, of the work he put into this country, as so many have."

English Creek is a celebration of that work, that hardiness and the despair that was the lot of so many Americans between the wars. Doig's book is a mighty fine celebration of those lives and struggles.

Thursday, December 18, 2025

Catherine Merridale - Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army 1939-1945

In the Second World War the Soviet Union lost almost 27 million people. The majority of those were civilians, but some 9 million were the men and women of the Red Army and other Soviet armed forces. The Soviet Union's sacrifice broke Nazi Germany's military machine and defeated Hitler, but at enormous cost. Catherine Merridale's book Ivan's War is a history of the troops who fought against fascism. It is based on hundreds of interviews in the 1990s with veterans (though it should be noted that of the interviews that made it to the book they are all Red Army soldiers, no one from the Navy or Air Force is interviewed, and all combat veterans).

At the outset Merridale sets out to counter the traditional story of the Red Army representing a cross section of Russian society willingly fighting against fascism. In fact her account demolishes a number of myths - the all powerful Red machine is shown, especially in the early stages of the war, to be badly organised, ineptly led, fearful and inexperienced. But even after the tide was turning, she shows how the men and women of the Red Army were frequently far from the heroic figures depicted in much Soviet propaganda. In particular she does not shy from describing the mass sexual assaults and rape that took place of German women when the Red Army entered the Reich.

What is striking is that while Merridale has uncovered plenty of evidence in the archives for the less noble tale of the Red Army; records for executions, crime and so on. Few of those she interviews acknowledge this in their accounts. In fact they all very much subscribe to the official view of a united army of principled fighters for socialism against fascism. She writes:

When veterans talk of the good old days, the great communal struggle, they never mention the sleeplessness and long-term malnutrition that afflected almost everyone. They also forget the untreated toothache, the chronic infestations of lice, the diarrhea and boils. The soldiers who survived to tell their stories for this book were a small elite in physical terms. War injuries, poor diet, and strain would shorten millions of lives.

Few of them spoke of arbitary executions of prisoners, rape or sexual assault.

There were of course, millions of acts of bravery and heroism. While much is often made of the Red Army's lack of prepardness or the role of its political officers in forcing men to fight, it must also be remembered that millions of people fought to stop Hitler, and did so bravely. This was a racialised war of genocide. The barbarity of the Nazis was met in kind by the Red Army. The savage nature of the fighting did not lend itself to the small platoons fighting together through the conflict. Merridale notes that there's nothing like the memoires of Vietnam or US troops in the Pacific were men spent years together. Survival rates were far too small. This means that memories of those who survived tend to be highly individual.

That said I was disappointed by the book. Despite the huge number of interviews I felt that we heard the voices of the individual soldiers far to rarely. I thought Merridale took up some fascinating aspects to the Red Army - she explores the role of antisemitism among Soviet troops for instance, and shows how the Soviet Union propaganda distorted Nazi crimes by emphasising them as anti-Russian crimes. But there is almost nothing here about ordinary troop's experiences when they liberated Concentration Camps. Perhaps Merridale wasn't able to find any accounts by those who reached Auschwitz in the interviews, diaries or reports she studied. But that seems unlikely. Thus despite this being a book based on interviews, it was not really a book that gave us their voices very often.

Finally, while I thought Merridale's revisionist account that tried to find the real Red Army was interesting - I felt her book was weakened by a flawed understanding of Soviety history. There was a tendency to lump Stalinism together with the revolutionary socialism of 1917, rather than see the former as a bloody break with the later. Stalin's pact with Hitler would have been something that shocked Lenin's Bolsheviks, and was itself a great crime by a man who murdered many and casualy threw lives away in the name of socialism.

At the end of the book she argues that the outcome of the conflict was to enshrine a "tyranny" in place. Here she ends up victim blaming. While writing that the "human cost was paid by Stalin's people, and whether they were willing soldiers or not, all but a small minority believed that they were on the right side in a true just war". But she concludes that "the Soviety peoplem who had acquiesced, however unwillingly, in the emergence of Stalinism, and who had also fought and suffered to defend it, would now permit the tyrant to remain. The motherland was never conquered, but it had enslaved itself."

This really is a strange conclusion. The Stalinist state was a powerful, brutal and dangerous beast. Merridale's book shows how it was able to use violence to drive the Red Army forward. To blame an exhausted people for the ongoing existence of that State after WW2 and to see them as "acquiescing" in Stalin's victory is unfair and historically inaccurate. It also undermines the bravery of those troops who did fight to stop Hitler. These flaws thus make for a disappointing book.

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

Stephen King (Richard Bachman) - The Running Man

I have not yet seen the new version of The Running Man film released earlier this year. Its release however has been the occasion for me watching the original film, the 1987 one starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and finally reading the book. I am very glad I read the book - Schwarenegger's film much less so - as it is a remarkable novel.

Few readers of this blog are likely to be unfamiliar with the story. Written by Stephen King as Richard Bachman in 1982 it is set in the early 2000s in a dystopian world where poverty and lawlessness are endemic and the US state manages its citizens through a combination of violent repression and distracting TV programmes that offer tantalising prizes to the poor while offering viewers the voyeristic chance to see the players die horribly. What twisted mind could imagine such a future one asks?

This is familiar territory. The 1987 film turned the idea of a man hunted for dollars, risking his life to a massive prize into a gameshow and the trope is now a realtively common one. But, and its a big but, leaving that aside I want to recommend King's book very highly indeed. Because what King does is to turn the story into one about an ordinary, poverty stricken working class man whose daughter desperately needs medication that they cannot afford, into a story about class, power and revenge.

Ben Richards is the titular running man. He's a working class bloke who has been almost broken by the system. Blacklisted for punching a foreman, he has nearly destroyed his health working casual, manual work. His wife is a sex worker whose earnings keep the family afloat. Richards enters the running man because he has to make some money to pay for medicine. But he enters as an embittered and angry man whose frustrations are aimed much higher than those out to hunt him down. When the gameshost is waiting with Richards for a lift to go to the ground floor of the games building, Richards has feted with wealth and power. As he steps into the lift he asks the host of the Running Man, but "who could I kill if I went up?" A good question. Class runs through this book like a red thread. One good piece of advice Richards gets from the games host is "stay with your own". Because what Richards finds is solidarity - from people who look after him, to people who turn their eyes the other way.

As Richards travels he learns more, and in the most powerful bit of the book he finds himself protected by a group of Black radicals who have taught themselves in the libraries about the world they live in. They've uncovered a conspiracy by the state to hide the fact that millions are dying from appalling pollution, but that the rich have all been given nose filters to protect them. The deaths of millions of children like Richard's daughter are the result of a greedy government, not poverty. Richard's attempts to use his position on the show to expose the reality. But his urging of people to "read about pollution", "go to the library" are drowned out by mocking, middle class audience jeers. As Richards flees further he argues with a woman he kidnaps, showing her that her reality is the unreal one. Soon it becomes clear to the network that Richards is actually quite dangerous.

I have always enjoyed Stephen King's books for their insights into the dark underbelly of US history. The Running Man is perhaps the book of his I've read that is most clearly about class, poverty and resistance. There's no collective action here (though a few strikes are mentioned) but Richards is supported by a lot of people. At one point a couple of cops watch his car escape and they mutter to each other - I hope he wins says one. The ending is much more radical and satisfying than the sanitised pseudo super-hero film that Schwarenegger stars in. I've heard that the remake is closer to the original novel. But read the book - its a remarkable novel that speaks a great deal to modern times.

Tuesday, December 09, 2025

Amarpal Singh - The First Anglo-Sikh War

In the early 19th century only one power on the Indian subcontinent stood against British rule. That was the Sikh empire ruled by Ranjit Singh. Singh's kingdom was rich, cultured and big. He ruled with determination and sensitivity. The British East Indian Company looked at the Punjab where Singh ruled with greedy eyes. Singh died in 1839 and in the vacuum that resulted a series of ineffectual rulers struggled for position. In this situation the British readied themselves for war, while carefully manipulating the various Sikh rulers. In 1845 war finally broke out, with the British assuming that their force of arms and numbers would swiftly overcome the Sikh armies. That they did eventually win had little to do with their strength, and everything to do with the betrayal of the Sikh rulers.

Amarpal Singh's account of the First Anglo-Sikh War is an excellent introduction to these events. It is, however, primarily aimed at those who would (either in person or on their armchairs) explore the battlefields. Today these are hardly recognisable, and the British war memorials erected after various battles are in a delapitated state. Nonetheless for enthusasts these are useful guides.

But the strength of the book is that it draws out the day to day experiences of the combatants. Wherever possible the author has used contemporary accounts, diaries and newspaper reports to describe events. He laments that there are few surviving Sikh accounts, though those that do survive are useful.

Much rested on this war. A British victory would open up the Punjab to exploitation. A defeat would have dire consequences for the whole of colonial India. As one of the British commanders Sir Harry Smith said, "all India was at gaze and ready for anything." He continued by criticisng the tactics of his opponent Ranjodh Singh:

He shold have attacked me with the vigour his French tutors would have displayed and destroyed me, for his force compared to me was overwhelming; then turned about upon the troops at Ludhiana and beathen them and sacked and burned th ecity - when the gaze I speak of in India would have been one general blaze of revolt.

And defeat in the Punjab almost happened. Had it done so, India would have risen (as it did only slightly more than a decade later, but this time having already seen the defeat of the British army). It was close. At the battles of Mudki and Ferozeshah the British came close to significant defeat, and had huge casualties. After five hours of hand to hand combat the British at Ferozeshah fell back. Singh describes:

Few soldiers knew where their officers were and who was giving orders. As the British weakened, the Sikh army staged a significant rally and launched a counterattack all along the line. Although Lal Singh had played little part in the proceedings, the Sikh soldiers had lost none of their morale. Less weary than the British, the Sikh line moved forward and began to progressivel recapture the southern area of the Sikh camp.

British arrogance, overconfidence and no doubt racist attitudes to their opponents was once again nearly their undoing. So bad were conditions that officers offered Indian troops months wages for water and licked dew from the cannons. But they were saved by betrayal at the top of the other side. Ferozeshah should have been a supreme victory for the Sikh army, instead it was a defeat that meant that the British would likely win the rest of the war. Other things worth noting. The battles were a precussor to the industrial slaughter of World War One. Take the battle of Sabraon. For two hours both sides shelled each other with artillery, in a "grand contest between the heavy guns". A contemporary account asked the reader to "pause and imagine the thunder of 120 guns on both sides... Never shall I forget the majesty of the whole scene."

But it was the industrial slaughter of the victorious British Army that cost the Sikh army 10,000 men at the end of Sabraon that mean the campaign is shrouded in infamy. Many of those dead were murdered as they swam the river, or failed to escape. It was, says Singh, "[Commander in Chief Hugh] Gough's command to his men not to spare any Sikh soldier [that] turned what had been a battle into a massacre." Not all followed orders. "British soldiers sick of firing at their helpless counterparts offered help to wounded to drowning Sikh soldiers". Many of them refused. It was a tragic, violent end to the campaign. The British victory however only postponed further rebellion and war.

Few people in Britain today know about the first (or indeed the second) Anglo-Sikh War. More know about it in the Indian Sub-Continent, though the events are seldom marked. Amarpal Singh points out that it is the betrayal of the Sikh commanders that is the most commentated event of the war for people in the area now. Indeed without this betrayal the Sikh army would certainly have triumphed in the early battles and it is entirely possible that the history of colonial rule would have been very different.

While this book is very much designed as an introduction to the War and to the sites, it is well written and accessible. I'd recommend it.

Related Reviews

Hibbert - The Great Mutiny: India 1857
Ward - Our Bones Are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres & the Indian Mutiny of 1857
Newsinger - The Blood Never Dried
Dalrymple - The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company
Wagner - Amritsar 1919

Hal Lacroix - Here and Beyond

To escape a world ravaged by environmental crisis, biodiversity loss and economic collapse a billionaire builds a generation ship to travel to another planet. 600 people join a voyage that will last almost 400 years, far longer than anyone will hope to survive. Their children's children's children might make it. Here and Beyond is the story of what happens to the generations who live on shipworld.

Science-fiction novels that deal with generation ships are not uncommon, but the best of them allow the author and reader to play with concepts that are elusive in other environments. Communities trapped in deteriorating conditions, or limited space, is one common theme. Others play with the thoughts and frustrations of people trapped in conditions that they would not have asked for. Hal Lacroix's book looks at both of these, and interestingly the bulk of his novel doesn't concern those who arrive at HD-40307G, the exo-planet that is their destination. What concerns Lacroix is the relationships of the generations that are shipbound.

These go through various phases - there are those that remember Earth, including those that were on Earth. Then there are those that that have a connection to Earth through their parents, but as those die out the community begins to develop its own culture, theories and ways of coping. Here one of the fascinating aspects to Lacroix's book is the cultural limits imposed by the billionaire who built it. There are only 100 recordings of music that he liked, and only books from his personal library (which means our intrepid explorers have a strange collection of business books to cope with - though library is eventually recycled). Readers might see in this a metaphor for how the super-rich see themselves and what they consider of value. Its notable that one of the items on the ship is a Olmec head, stolen no doubt and placed there by the billionaire. Another is a painting that has symbolic meaning for the recipient, and is interpreted differently by its subsequent owners.

Readers looking for a scientific account of the 42 light-year trip will be disappointed. Lacroix very much focuses on the people and their relationships, and how they cope, survive and experience the various crises on route. There's some interesting commentary - youngsters go through a phase where they doubt the reality of their mission, believing they are an experiment and have to be shown the outside. Others wonder what clouds are like or what deviled eggs are. Some people rebel against the constraints of the ship. Sometimes they win. The billionaires carefully constructed eco-system quickly breaks down - when doesn't it? Birds die and spices are short.

This is very much a novel to provoke thinking. Lacroix doesn't dwell on some of the experiences - the reader can never understand, like his characters, what happens with one strange encounter. Nor is there a great deal of information on what happens after landing. That's perhaps the beauty of this work. Its not to be read for science, but to provoke you to think what it's liked to be trapped in a failing ecosystem created by the billionaires. Now there's a metaphor.

Related Reviews

Solomon - An Unkindness of Ghosts
Aldiss - Non-Stop
Robinson - Aurora

Friday, December 05, 2025

Stuart Easterling - The Mexican Revolution: A short history 1910-1920

In my favourite film genre, the Spaghetti Western, the Mexican Revolution is usually portrayed as a event led by revolutionary bandits, whose combination of greed and hatred drives the revolution. Meanwhile other social classes are left by the wayside. However, having recently watched the 1966 film A Bullet for the General which subverts some of these and is perhaps the finest of the subgenre of Zapata Westerns I decided to learn more about a revolution that is seldom discussed among European revolutionaries.

I could not have picked a finer introduction to the subject that Stuart Easterling's "Short History", which despite its length is exemplary in its description of events and personalities and its location of the revolution within wider social forces.

The revolution arose out of the contradictions caused by the dictorial politics of Porfirio Diaz, which on the one had was leading to some economic development, but on the other was constraining almost every class of society through corruption and violence. Easterling quotes one future revolutionary who said that "I began to feel the need for change... when I was 19... back in my town.. I saw the police commissioner get druunk, almost every day in the town pool hall, in the company of his secretary, with the local judge who was also the ...tax collector, with the head of the post office; and with some merchant or army officer, persons all of whom constituted the influential class of that small world."

The Diaz regieme was unable to change in the face of such "deep and widespread dissatisfaction", but the discontent was first expressed through the abortive attempt by Francisco Madero to introduce democratic and economic reforms through a Presidential bid. While unleashed social movements from below in a revolutionary wave that brought down the old regime and began to introduce very radical reforms. This story has no doubt been told before, but it is Easterling's analysis that I found so helpful in understanding the revolutionary dynamics. He writes:

A key point to understand concerning the Mexican Revolution is that it did not consist of a single movement. It was not led by a single political party, nor did it mobilise only one social class. Indeed, of the major camps within the Reovlution, only that of Zapara and his allies, based in the campesinos of the 'free' villages, was highly homogeneous in class terms. The Revolution is thus best understood by looking at the various social forces it unleashed - from campesinos to middle-class reformers to industrial workers to disgruntled landlords - and the goals and aspirations they developed. The different revolutionary camps and leaders did not simply float unattached above these various sort of people... it was from this source... that the Revolution's camps formed political programs and leaders formed worldviews.

Thus the Revolution was not a working class revolution rather it was a revolutionary movement whose base reflected the uneven development of Mexican capitalism, and its poor rural base. This is where the revolutionary bandits beloved by this reader found their base. Easterlin recounts how one of the most famous Pancho Villa made the transition from bandit to revolutionary precisely because of his connections to the rural poor. His revolutionary actions thus became those of a Robin Hood type figure:

[Villa's] first act was to attack one of Luis Terrazas' largest estates and summarily execute the administrator. The latter was a man despised by the local peones for numerous abuses, including reserving the privilege of sleeping with bridges on their wedding night.

Other acts of revolutionary violence including forcing a priest to acknowldge a child he had fathered. But Villa's military forces were his real contribution to the struggle, and army that "effectively nationalised wide swaths of territory previously owned by the state's hacendados as well as a number of factories owned by Huerta supporters... In cities and towns under Villista control the Northern Division distributed generous food rations to the urban poor, the unemployed, wiows and orphas. The price of beef was radically reduced".

But it was the tensions between the different revolutionary camps that would prove the revolutions undoing. By Summer 1915 the government had fallen and the radical Carranza was in charge. He was to turn on his previous allies having used his base in urban areas to defeat the government. But Carranza was too tied to the officer class in the army, who were unwilling to tolerate real social reforms. To appease them he turned on his former supporters in the trade union movements. "The destruction of the tyranny of capitalism... [should not be followed] by the tyranny of the workers". The most bizarre anti-capitalist justification for imposing the death penalty for striking and the smashing of the workers' movement. But Carranza himself would not survive these competing interests. He was ousted and then assassinated by the very forces he sought to appease.

The Mexican society that emerged from 1920 was one dominated by military officers, a state which "had acquired an exceptional degree of power relative to the rest of society." The "military caste" was interested in developing capitalism, and this did require a degree of social reform. This meant the state had to make "concessions to the campesino and worker when necessary" to "ensure peace and stability" for the development ocapitalism. Class struggle was to end, and instead a new "perspective was often proclaimed with radical language, and the new leaders often identified this state-supervised capitalism as a form of socialism. This was not seen as the civtory of labour over cpaital, or campesino over landlord, but rather a careful balance between the different sides". That this required the destruction of the most radical and revolutionary forces tells who was really in control.

Easterling's book is by no means a full account of the Mexican Revolution. But it is a brilliant introduction, particularly because its starting point is not just that of description of events, but rather an attempt to understand the often complex and interacting social forces that were emerging in the early 20th century. It really is a brilliant read and it is probably one of the best starting points I could find for a subject that continues to be an inspiration to radicals in South America today. Highly recommended.

Saturday, November 29, 2025

Seishi Yokomizo - The Little Sparrow Murders

In Japan a Temari Song is sung by children as they bounce balls and play together. The titular Little Sparrows Temari song tells the story of three young women, from different backgrounds, who are all "sent away". In other words they are murdered. In the song the women are from different families, whose surname, "locksmith" for instance, tells the listener who they are and what their family does. Such names are common in small rural towns, but this is post-War Japan and a society is going through rapid changes. The song is a link to the past, but it has a shocking echo during the period of the novel as three young women are, indeed, murdered.

The novel is set in Onikobe where the "famous" private detective Kosuke Kindaichi has travelled on holiday. Two decades previously it had been the scene of an intriguing and unsolved murder. But Kindaichi is not drawn there to solve a crime, but to find rest and recuperation. Nonetheless there are connections to the past and early into his holiday the village Chief disappears, leaving traces of blood and poison. An intriguing letter shows that an old lover from the past has reappeared. Has the chieftain been killed for something that happened twenty years before?

As Kindaichi's stay unfolds murder follows murder. The reader will be distracted however by the descriptions of rural Japan, and the fascinating characters. The arrival of a famous singer and actor who grew up in the village further complicates matters, as does the discovery that one of the villagers was an esteemed "silent film narrator" (a role that was peculiar to Japan and makes for a fascinating diversion). The murders are horrific and seem to follow the Temari Song. But I was a little overwhelmed by the number of characters and the convoluted plot. As such I tended to read it more for the atmosphere and aesthetic. Nonetheless I did draw some comparisons with other media - the two rival village families offered some similarities with the setting of the classic Kurosawa film Yojimbo, though perhaps its fairer to say that the context is that of many rural times with families growing rich, or loosing their once esteemed position. In fact there are some intriguing class contexts here but they aren't really fleshed out.

The Little Sparrow Murders was not my favourite Kosuke Kindaichi mystery, but it does have its merits. Readers should start with the earlier books.