The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World
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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 the mode of surplus extraction is not necessarily the same as the mode of production engaged in by a majority of the population.
