As part of the 2023 Festival of Urbanism at the City Road Podcast organised by Dallas Rogers, Adam David Morton talks with Mark Steven in the podcast, below, about his new book, Class War: A Literary History.
A thrilling and vivid work of history, Class War weaves together literature and politics to chart the making and unmaking of social class through revolutionary combat. In a narrative that spans the globe and more than two centuries of history, Mark Steven traces the history of class war from the Haitian Revolution to Black Lives Matter. Surveying the literature of revolution, from the poetry of Shelley and Byron to the novels of Émile Zola and Jack London, exploring the writings of Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, and Assata Shakur, Class War reveals the interplay between military action and the politics of class, showing how solidarity flourishes in times of conflict. Written with verve and ranging across diverse historical settings, Class War traverses industrial battles, guerrilla insurgencies, and anticolonial resistance, as well as large-scale combat operations waged against capitalism’s regimes and its interstate system. In our age of economic crisis, ecological catastrophe, and planetary unrest, Steven tells the stories of those whose actions will help guide future militants toward a revolutionary horizon.
Buy the book here: Class War: A Literary History
Set Image: Black Panther Party armed demonstration on May 2, 1967 | Wikimedia Commons: courtesy of the State Governors’ Negative Collection, 1949-1975, Washington State Archives.
