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Marxism and History
- GenresHistory
117 pages, Paperback
First published March 10, 1998
About the author
Chris Harman
122 books185 followersBritish journalist and political activist for the Socialist Workers Party.
Harmann was involved with activism against the Viet Nam war but became controversial for denouncing Ho Chi Minh for murdering the leader of the Vietnamese Trotskists.
Harman's work on May 1968 in France and other student and workers uprisings of the late 1960s, The Fire Last Time, was recommended by rock band Rage Against the Machine in their album sleeve notes for Evil Empire.
Harmann was involved with activism against the Viet Nam war but became controversial for denouncing Ho Chi Minh for murdering the leader of the Vietnamese Trotskists.
Harman's work on May 1968 in France and other student and workers uprisings of the late 1960s, The Fire Last Time, was recommended by rock band Rage Against the Machine in their album sleeve notes for Evil Empire.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 17, 2025
Chris Harman’s Marxism and History is basically “World History 101, but make it Trotskyist.” It reads like a textbook that can’t decide whether to teach history, preach revolution, or bore undergraduates into submission — so it attempts all three, poorly.
Harman’s mission is to show how Marxism explains everything: why empires rose, why capitalism emerged, why societies collapse.
The problem? His Marxism is less a lens and more a hammer looking for nails.
Feudalism? Class struggle. Capitalism? Class struggle. French Revolution?
You guessed it: class struggle. Think history might be more complicated? Harman scolds you for straying from the catechism.
He writes as though the past were a conveyor belt rolling inevitably toward socialism, until the machine jammed somewhere around Stalin, Mao, and the collapse of the USSR. Rather than wrestle with these historical inconveniences, Harman prefers to chant “Marx was right” like a mantra, hoping readers won’t bring up gulags, famines, or Trotsky’s unfortunate ice-pick retirement plan.
The book is allergic to nuance. History’s messy actors become cardboard cutouts: workers = virtuous, rulers = villains, peasants = confused bystanders. Human beings are reduced to chess pieces moved by “modes of production” and “material forces.” Try telling that to Robespierre, Gandhi, or Toussaint Louverture — each would likely object to being flattened into Marxist stick figures.
As for prose, Harman manages the impossible: making revolutions boring. He renders upheavals in the tone of committee minutes, stripping blood, sweat, and drama from events that changed the world. Instead of guillotines and barricades, we get ladles of “dialectical materialism” and “base/superstructure” until the reader is drowning in Marxist word soup.
And the timing hasn’t helped. Written to prove Marxism’s relevance in a post-Soviet, neoliberal age, it now reads like someone insisting vinyl is the future while everyone else streams Spotify. Harman tries to rescue Marxism from the wreckage of “actually existing socialism”, but his solution boils down to: “That wasn’t real Marxism, comrades.” A neat trick, if not a persuasive one.
In truth, Marxism and History is less a work of history than a sermon. Harman doesn’t so much explain the past as catechise it, treating Marx as a secular prophet and history as his scripture. If you’re already a Trotskyist, this is bedtime comfort reading. If you’re a historian, it’s a case study in how ideology flattens complexity into dogma.
Verdict: A textbook-length sermon where history is mere wallpaper for Marxist faith.
Less history explained by Marxism than Marxism defended against history.
Harman’s mission is to show how Marxism explains everything: why empires rose, why capitalism emerged, why societies collapse.
The problem? His Marxism is less a lens and more a hammer looking for nails.
Feudalism? Class struggle. Capitalism? Class struggle. French Revolution?
You guessed it: class struggle. Think history might be more complicated? Harman scolds you for straying from the catechism.
He writes as though the past were a conveyor belt rolling inevitably toward socialism, until the machine jammed somewhere around Stalin, Mao, and the collapse of the USSR. Rather than wrestle with these historical inconveniences, Harman prefers to chant “Marx was right” like a mantra, hoping readers won’t bring up gulags, famines, or Trotsky’s unfortunate ice-pick retirement plan.
The book is allergic to nuance. History’s messy actors become cardboard cutouts: workers = virtuous, rulers = villains, peasants = confused bystanders. Human beings are reduced to chess pieces moved by “modes of production” and “material forces.” Try telling that to Robespierre, Gandhi, or Toussaint Louverture — each would likely object to being flattened into Marxist stick figures.
As for prose, Harman manages the impossible: making revolutions boring. He renders upheavals in the tone of committee minutes, stripping blood, sweat, and drama from events that changed the world. Instead of guillotines and barricades, we get ladles of “dialectical materialism” and “base/superstructure” until the reader is drowning in Marxist word soup.
And the timing hasn’t helped. Written to prove Marxism’s relevance in a post-Soviet, neoliberal age, it now reads like someone insisting vinyl is the future while everyone else streams Spotify. Harman tries to rescue Marxism from the wreckage of “actually existing socialism”, but his solution boils down to: “That wasn’t real Marxism, comrades.” A neat trick, if not a persuasive one.
In truth, Marxism and History is less a work of history than a sermon. Harman doesn’t so much explain the past as catechise it, treating Marx as a secular prophet and history as his scripture. If you’re already a Trotskyist, this is bedtime comfort reading. If you’re a historian, it’s a case study in how ideology flattens complexity into dogma.
Verdict: A textbook-length sermon where history is mere wallpaper for Marxist faith.
Less history explained by Marxism than Marxism defended against history.
August 15, 2011
this was a great little book. the base superstructure essay really broke down in a very clear way what marx meant by those concepts and the relevance they have today for people wanting to change the world. the transition from feudalism to capitalism was also interesting in seeing how using the marxist method illuminates the dynamics at work during that transition. short book very i highly recommend it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews