Ancient History

The history of the ancient world provides a treasure trove of lessons for anyone who seeks to understand the class struggles and social transformations that have shaped the world we live in. We publish here the introduction to Alan Woods' book Class Struggle in the Roman Republic, in which he draws out some of the fundamental principles of the Marxist view of history and gives a concise explanation of the causes of the rise and eventual downfall of the Roman Republic, particularly the phenomenon of Caesarism.

For hundreds of thousands of years human beings inhabited the Earth without private property, classes, states, or any of the other elements that make up class society as we know it. And yet we are taught that class division is a natural and universal condition of human existence. As Josh Holroyd and Laurie O’Connel explain in this article first published in the IMT’s theoretical journal, In Defence of Marxism, modern archaeology has produced a plethora of evidence attesting to the fact that the division of society into classes is a relatively recent development in human history. And just as it came into existence, Marxists understand it must eventually go out of existence. Click here to subscribe and get the latest issue of In Defence of Marxism magazine.

In the first century BC, a slave named Spartacus threatened the might of Rome. Spartacus (c. 109 BC-71 BC) was the leader (or possibly one of several leaders) of the massive slave uprising known as the Third Servile War. Under his leadership, a tiny band of rebel gladiators grew into a huge revolutionary army, numbering about 100,000. In the end the full force of the Roman army was needed to crush the revolt.