Blood and Gold: the Spanish Conquest of the Americas When the Spanish arrived in the Americas 500 years ago, they encountered diverse cultures across the continent, including powerful civilisations such as the Mexica and the Incas. This article, first published in issue 40 of In Defence of Marxism magazine (click here to subscribe), takes a look at the material foundations of these rich cultures, their internal contradictions, as well as the conditions of contemporary Spain itself at the time of the conquest. Only by understanding these conditions can we in turn understand the devastation that the conquest wrought, and the wider role of these events in the ascent of capitalism.
"The Eighteenth Brumaire": a masterpiece of Marxism The fall of the short-lived Second French Republic in December 1851 marks one of the most rapid and complete reversals in modern political history. Born out of the February Revolution of 1848, the Republic appeared to promise a new era of progress and democracy for the whole of Europe. But this proved to be a false dawn. In less than four years the most democratic republic on Earth was transformed into its opposite: the naked dictatorship of Napoleon III.
The ideas of V. Gordon Childe: In defence of historical materialism 19 October marks 65 years since the death of Vere Gordon Childe – an archaeologist who, by applying the Marxist view of history, made enormous leaps forward in our understanding of early human societies and the Neolithic revolution.
