The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World from the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests (ISBN 01-9872-112-9), published in 1982, is a major work of the British classical historian G. E. M. de Ste. Croix.
In the book, De Ste. Croix — a fellow of New College, Oxford — makes a broad-ranging attempt to establish the validity of historical materialist analysis of the ancient world, among other historical periods. De Ste. Croix begins with the attempt to define exactly what terms such as "class", "exploitation", "surplus" and "mode of production" mean, in the sense they were used by Karl Marx. The book, which spans diverse historical periods, covers questions as varied as the emergence of democracy in Ancient Athens and the social importance of the decline of the Greek city-state during the Roman Empire.
There is also lengthy discussion of the significance of the mode by which surplus value is generated. De Ste. Croix makes the point that a mode of surplus extraction, concept ofdevised by Marx, is significant and is not necessarily the same as the mode of production engaged in by a majority of a population.
De Ste. Croix was criticised by some reviewers for the suggestion that women formed a separate social class in the Ancient Greek World.
