Luke Chang
Senior Thesis | 2025
Luke Chang
Political Applications of Archaeology under Capitalism and Fascism
Archaeology is intertwined with politics. From identity creation, historical representations, antiquities reparations, and the research itself, archaeology is undeniably political. A core theme in archaeological research has been to understand the way that relationships of power leave their mark on the material world (Graeber 2004, 2011; Graeber and Wengrow 2021; Peacock et al. 2023; Sluyter 2001; Tilley 1994; VanValkenburgh and Osborne 2012). While this aspect of research is important, archaeology can offer more to politics than just analysis. Through an anticapitalist lens, archaeology has power that is relatively unrealized in countering capitalist realism and motivating people to imagine creating a social world beyond our own. Capitalist realism presents an issue, not only for those who oppose the system of Capital as a whole, but even to anyone wishing to understand fully the scope of human history, or to work towards a different reorganization of human social architecture in our future. Capitalist realism limits our understanding of the past and what is possible in the future, presenting capitalism as the end-all of social organization. Archaeology’s long-term material perspective reminds us that we live in a specific temporal and material moment, and gives us examples of the diverse ways humans have organized in the past, allowing us to imagine new ways we might organize in the future.
However, to present political archaeology without discussing fascism seems hasty. The current political climate is one
of rising fascism, and any conversation of progressive politics must now deal with that. Unfortunately for archaeology, fascism both disregards the field’s progressive potential and derides it in service of its own goals.
Popularized by Mark Fisher in his 2004 book of the same name, capitalist realism is a term used to describe the way capitalism (and those who live within it) understands the world. Counteracting capitalist realism is where archaeology has the most political potential. Capitalist realism is both a product of capitalism and an integral part of its continuation. It is the condition that defines the experience within capitalism.
To describe capitalist realism, Fisher uses an at first somewhat unintuitive terminology. However, this paper will continue to use said terminology partly for the sake of consistency, but primarily for clarity, as the language is immensely useful once understood. First, there is the Real. The Real is what actually exists, the hints of whatever ‘objective’ lies underneath our view of the world (Fisher 2004). The Real is never actually experienced, but it underlies existence. In contrast, a reality is an interpretation of the Real. It is a force which translates the Real into how we experience the world and is a product of the social and material systems in which we live. Capitalist reality is the exemplar reality of capitalism and a “pervasive atmosphere [...] acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action” (Fisher 2008:16).
Capitalist realism is an all-encompassing reality in which “capitalism seamlessly occupies the horizons of the thinkable” (Fisher 2004:8). It pretends it is natural, a neutral human state of being from which all others are deviations (Fisher 2004:14–17).
The reality seeks to claim itself as the Real, emphasizing the contradictions within other realities. For those operating within it, capitalist realism is the Real. Positioning itself as natural, capitalist realism claims that capitalism is not beholden to the same forces of historical change as other systems, such as feudalism or empire. Instead, it creates a timeline in which that ahistoricity (the denial of capitalism as a historical moment) is justified. That timeline takes the form of the evolutionary social ladder: the development of human groups from bands to tribes to kingdoms, etc., all the way to modern states (Graeber and Wengrow 2021:2). Within this narrative, the social forms with which we interact today are presupposed: Life is conflict and competition, all mired within an ever-present system of markets and exchange. Capitalist realism thinks of prehistoric peoples as operating within the same economic systems as us, merely without the convenient innovation of coinage to facilitate exchange (Graeber 2011:22–23). The idea of barter as a human universal is yet another layer of capitalist realism that projects itself into all corners of human thought.
In Capitalist Realism, Fisher posits a variety of strategies aimed at undermining capitalist reality. By invoking the Real, which underlies the capitalist reality, he argues that revealing the inconsistencies between the Real and reality will cause capitalist realism to fracture. He cites three Reals, which he believes could be effective in exposing the inconsistencies in capitalist reality. The first is environmental issues, the impossible divide between a capitalist vision in which growth is infinite and a world constrained by a finite reality. The second is mental health issues; the increasing prevalence of depression and other disorders a sign of the social dysfunction of capitalism as opposed to its claim of
being a ‘natural’ social system. The third is the contradiction between the supposed sleek, efficient capitalist market and the insufferable and inescapable bureaucracy of neoliberal capitalism (Fisher 2004:18–20; 80). I posit that archaeology is another angle, among others, from which capitalist realism can be effectively challenged.
Archaeology (and anthropology as a whole) is uniquely situated to provide a material critique of capitalist realism. While not the only focus, much archaeological research ends up discussing alternative modes of social interaction purely as a result of the extent to which societies of the past differ from our own (Graeber and Wengrow 2021). Both modern ethnographic studies and archaeological studies of the past explicitly tear holes in capitalist realism. Anthropologists are “keenly aware that most of the commonplace assumptions [about social organization] …are factually untrue” (Graeber 2004:95). Even so, capitalism has legitimized academia, and capitalist realism is often supported, not challenged, by the work done in schools of economics or various other fields (Graeber 2011). However, it is through that legitimization that archaeology has a foothold. Through the legitimacy given to it by the academy in capitalist reality, archaeology can attack intellectual arguments defending capitalist realism. The (perhaps limited) capital provided to archaeology, both social and material, can be used to illuminate the inconsistencies between the capitalist reality’s claim of naturality and the Real, a glimpse of which can be obtained through archaeological research of the human past. Archaeology can create that tiniest tear in “the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism,” letting us
imagine futures when “anything is possible again” (Fisher 2004:81).
All parts of capitalist realism work together in a web, with no single aspect independent of any other. However, the isolation and severance of a single thread can function as the beginning of its unraveling.
Capitalist realism’s primary method to create capitalism's seamless occupation of the thinkable is that of inevitability (Fisher 2004:8). Drawing from the myth of human nature, which underlies all political discourse within (and often outside of, or at least in spaces that claim to be outside of) capitalism, capitalist realism identifies itself and the past as firmly separate, creating an ahistory of buildup and the result: capitalism existing as the product of history, the final step on a staircase of straightforward social progression marched forward by humanity’s inherent greed (Graeber and Wengrow 2021:2). This fiction is supplemented by the backward projection of capitalist social organization, imagining every people as a people of commodity, hierarchy, and conflict. This is one of the most egregious oversteps of the capitalist reality, as the level of disconnect from the Real rejects even its own legitimizations of the academic institution.
This projection of modernity onto ancient peoples is perhaps the most insidious aspect of capitalist realism. Even one with an eye for critique of the capitalist system can be fully caught up in this aspect of the reality, wrongly giving ground to capitalism’s claim of ever-presence and unwriting the possibilities of difference. For capitalism, this takes the form of the myth of economic evolution (as opposed to social evolution) in which
exchange has always underpinned value. Capitalist realism presents societies without money as engaging in the same relationships as those with it, simply without the convenient technology of coinage, as an explanation for the development of commodity economies (Graeber 2011:22–28).
For every transaction, each individual is conceived of as calculating the exchange value of their contribution in opposition to the use value offered by the opposing party’s presentation. Money then seems an obvious step: create a standardized exchange value with no use value, letting exchange really step into its full glory. Perhaps not surprisingly, though, that idea is completely false. While the exact origins of money are unknown, that fog likely never lifting, we can say that there exists no evidence for this simplified understanding of the development of money (Graeber 2011:28). Rather, ethnographic and archaeological evidence show obligation or gift as playing the fundamental role in the majority of societies lacking money, barter existing not as a universal precursor to the goal of wealth (much like capitalism’s imagined relationship to the past) but rather as a consequence of money in places where it has since disappeared (Graeber 2011:37).
Gift economies, rather than a mythological past or utopian future, are actually existing features of social systems around the world in the present and past (Graeber 2011:33; Mauss 1925:92). Quite generally, in a gift society, exchange is not facilitated by quantified values, but rather through social obligation and simply by giving people things they want. In gift economies, the assumption is one of continued socialization with other people, where at one point, you may have something another person wants,
and at another, they have something you want (Graeber 2011:360). You exist in constant conversation and obligation to those around you and the cultural context of gifting as opposed to exchange. Functionally, people get what they need when they need it and give when others ask.
Understanding gift economies through the above lens can also shed light on how another aspect of capitalist realism can be contested by the field of archaeology. A seemingly logical conclusion of a gift society would be that its occupants all exist in a sort of altruistic state and that hierarchies or conflict would be reduced or eliminated. However, that idea is a projection of our modern selves onto past peoples (or present people of radically different cultural contexts). Societies with gift cultures can be violent or hierarchical; the gift economy, much like our exchange economy, a political tool (Mauss 1925:8). The implications of our cultural trappings, such as exchange, competition, and domination, are not defining features of an inherent human nature, and cannot be thought of as such. It traps imagination in stagnation. Capitalist realism’s projection of the modern cultural self onto the past is projecting capitalism onto the past, confirming its inevitability. Archaeology, looking at material culture, can avoid the projection in its analysis (though never fully nor inherently) as material culture is immediately observably different across cultures and time. The archaeological lens here provides a long-term material perspective for analyzing cultural change and diversity. Anthropology is accustomed to difference (Graeber 2004:95), and the anthropological knowledge about drastically different cultures presents the inconsistency between capitalist realism’s claim of ubiquity and the Real. The value is not necessarily within the
cultural practice of different societies; rather, their existence itself as a testament to human political consciousness.
The applications of archaeology within our current political arena lie most potently within its ability to disrupt capitalist realism, through the rejection of its claim as the only legitimate description of reality. Archaeology here holds the power to present the inconsistencies and rip a hole in the capitalist reality. Archaeology also brings the unique lens of material culture into the discussion. While capitalist realism may present its features as a constant within human symbolic culture, it cannot begin to claim a homogenous material culture. Because archaeology uses material culture to develop an understanding of symbolic culture, capitalist realism cannot deny that some variation exists. Moreover, archaeological research produces evidence of alternative social systems not based on the same values as our own (exchange, competition, hierarchy), for example, the heterarchical organization of Mohenjo-Daro as discussed in Green (2018), or the social upheavals analyzed in Peters et al. (2018). Even without intention, merely some axioms of archaeology already exist in contradiction to capitalist realism: the existence of profound cultural variation and the understanding that we can never be too careful about projecting ourselves onto the past, as we must constantly be aware of the temporality of our existence (Johnson 2012). When intentionally seeking to disrupt capitalist realism, archaeology threatens to rip capitalist realism apart.
Unfortunately for radical archaeologists, it seems that neoliberalism’s claim to the end of history is on the brink of being thoroughly crushed, not by an increase in anthropological
understanding, but by the global rise of fascism. This leaves much of the political use of archaeology hanging in question, as the new fascist reality is not the one of Capital.
To understand what role archaeology may have in the antifascist fight, one must first attempt to understand fascism. This paper will approach a ‘fascist reality,’ drawing on the psychological nature of fascism rather than through an analysis of fascist material and social organization. In Escape from Freedom (1941), Erich Fromm examines fascism as both a psychological and political response (Fromm 1941:185). Fascism arises from a specific historical moment. The beginning of the 20th century saw the collapse of the European monarchies, the First World War, and a continent pulled abruptly away from medieval social systems which had dominated for so long. Liberal democracy and the idea of the individual became dominant, rather than an identification with one’s god, church, lord, and village. The destruction of these “old forms of authority” (Fromm 1941:96) provided Europeans with newfound freedoms but left them isolated, without the security of knowing their place within the world. The “primary ties” one had to their community and social class had been severed (Fromm 1941:31). The individual is emancipated; the world into which they are freed initially appears cold and overwhelming. The individual was left utterly alone to face the economic forces of Capital.
One can either embrace or flee this freedom, accepting the world as it is with a genuine expression of the self, or abandon freedom in an attempt to recreate the security given by the previous authoritative structures and erase the individual self
(Fromm 1941:126). Fascism arises from the abandonment of freedom. Specifically, fascism arises from the authoritarian response. The authoritarian ‘character,’ as it is referred to, seeks to replicate the severed primary ties through the “striving for submission and domination,” which is then expressed in a sadomasochistic psyche (Fromm 1941:128). Fascism acts as the extreme expression of authoritarian character; people subconsciously undermine their individuality through feelings of inferiority and insecurity (those feelings derived from real material circumstance), to which fascism presents itself as a source of secondary connection and strength (Fromm 1941:128). Here is where the fascist reality begins to become clear. For the psychological needs to be met, fascist reality must then present both a sadistic object and a masochistic subject. This can be seen in the Nazi’s positioning of the German people as both the subject of Jewish oppression and the superhuman master race. This structure is expressed within the fascist system as well; the individual brownshirt secures his strength through identification with the party while at the same time submitting himself to the domination of Hitler (Fromm 1941:190–198).
The reality of fascism is far more protean than that of capitalism. Fascism’s combination of anti-intellectualism, antiestablishmentarianism, and a more self-serving and fluid reality than capitalism makes archaeology a far less useful tool in the antifascist fight. Indeed, fascism often uses archaeology, or at least postures at it, to construct a glorious, if mythical, national past (Arthurs 2015). Fascism cannot be reasoned with. Pushing the flaws of its reality does not unwind its web; its plasticity is far deeper than even capitalism’s. Fascism has no pretense to
rationality; it operates purely on the level of emotion and insecurity (Fromm 1941).
Unlike capitalist realism, where “there is no society” (Fisher 2004), and the individual is alone (hyperrealized), in fascist realism, there exists no individual (Fromm 1941:192). Because fascist reality must satisfy the psychological needs of its base, it focuses entirely on the group. The existence of social systems unlike itself is not a threat or contradiction but rather a basic assumption of fascist reality (Fromm 1941:193). The driving strength behind fascism is the idea that other systems and people are so radically different that they become alien, and thus, there is no choice for the fascist but to destroy them, providing the object for the sadistic tendency. The other in Fascism is a constant, the driving force behind its strength. What was a powerful tool for confronting the capitalist reality, the imagination of what else could be, becomes a building block of the fascist mind. That other is the terror from which the fascist system protects and strengthens its members; all others become degenerate, something to destroy. Fascist realism consciously attacks rather than denies.
The fascist is ever aware of their fascism, as opposed to the capitalist who assumes themselves as the natural state. The fascist reality is active, the capitalist passive.
This isn’t to say that archaeology does not deny fascist realism; it runs counter to it as completely as it does to capitalist realism, only that it no longer matters. Fascist ideas about human nature, race science, history, and social reality are often the exact same as capitalist ones, or often even further removed from the Real. Archaeology can in this way attack fascist reality the
same as capitalist reality: by pointing out the inconsistencies between the Real and the given reality. However, fascist realism can deal with the inconsistencies by othering the people who reveal them, removing any legitimacy from its attack. The archaeological understanding that human social existence is fluid and that any particular system is not inherently better or worse runs counter to the core of fascist realism without addressing the psychological base that it attaches to. As such, the archaeological approach is set up perfectly for disregard.
Unfortunately, though, archaeology’s relationship with fascism is not limited to sitting on the bench in the antifascist fight. Fascist regimes throughout history have used excavation and archaeological reconstruction to bolster their strength, using the past to construct the narrative of strength that is central to fulfilling fascism's psychological goals. While this use of archaeology has been present to some extent in most fascist projects, nowhere is it more clear than in Italian fascism’s romanità.
Romanità was the “invocation of the eternal spirit of Rome” by the Italian fascist Benito Mussolini, expressed through a systematic effort to create a “simultaneous experience of Roman past and Fascist present” for those living in Rome (Arthurs 2015:44–48). This romanità was a vast and continuous excavatory project focused on displaying the monuments of the Roman Empire. Romanità centered around both the city of Rome and the person of Mussolini (Arthurs 2015:51). Mussolini would act as the initiator of new excavation, linking his personhood with the represented glory of the fascist past.
The primary motivation for romanità was the creation of a mythic past in which the strength of Italy was at its peak. In this way, romanità provided both an ideal for the fascists to embody and the subject of the masochistic urge that the authoritarian response demands. The fascists engaged in a “colonization of time” (Arthurs 2015:45), attempting to destroy the temporal moment and engaging in an eternal regressive revolution toward the height of the Roman Empire. The goal was to totally reshape the city of Rome in order to fully embody this new chronology. Romanità excavations focused solely on the aesthetic and spatial, as those were the qualities that furthered the goals of the fascists, and therefore ignored everything except for the monumental constructions of the imperial period (Arthurs 2015:49). These excavations unearthed many now famous sites such as parts of the Capitoline, the Forum Romanum, and many more. These sites pushed the city towards the fascist ideal of Rome while at the same time destroying the reminders of the city’s historicity. These excavations, and the modern infrastructure projects which often accompanied them, had no concern with the city as it was. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people were displaced as demolition commenced to clear space for the romanità project. These destroyed spaces were defined by Rome’s medieval and renaissance history, their destruction “erasing reminders of past weakness and disunity” and signaling the new age of fascist unity (Arthurs 2015:52). The fascists employed an approach aimed at homogenizing the landscape and destroying the “local characteristics” contained within the city’s cultural diversity (Arthurs 2015:49). The landscape of the city instead was molded into a material projection of fascist power, both through the
resulting spatial and temporal mix of ancient Rome and contemporary Italy, and the destructive practices it employed in its creation.
Romanità transformed the city of Rome itself into a projection of the fascist project. The destruction of the city's temporality served to remind the Romans of their power, calling back to their mythic strength and of their subservience to the Duce, as it was his will that motivated the transformation of both the city and nation. Its revolutionary framing also presented a point of distance from the previous political order, which had effectively ignored the archaeological record of Rome.
However, this was not the only way that the Italian fascists employed excavation. Outside of Rome, the identification with the Roman Empire created the basis of colonial claims in North Africa. The excavation of Roman ruins and the resurrection of that ancient landscape aided in their territorial expansion, presenting “evidence of their historical right to territory” (Arthurs 2015:54). This also situated the colonies as the object of sadistic expression because it placed them in a permanent state of submission to the temporally dislocated Roman Empire.
Ultimately, though, these fascist uses of excavation are not archaeological (Arthurs 2015:58). These projects do not aim to study or preserve the material culture of these past societies but rather to provide a material and ideological basis for the establishment of national mythology and the satisfaction of sadomasochistic strivings. The redefinition of spatial and temporal existence through excavation contributes to the construction of the fascist reality by materially manifesting its claims. However, an
accurate and responsible archaeological process does not serve to better these goals; rather, it requires an understanding of the temporal separation between the site and the archaeologist. Archaeological research must understand the context of the site, without which the excavation holds no value. This is fundamentally incompatible with romanità, which exists as a denial of context and temporality.
Archaeology’s potential as a political tool works best as a positive; it destroys claims of omnipresence and inevitability, allowing for the imagination of worlds beyond our own. By forcing capitalist realism to confront the research and knowledge generated by a system it itself has legitimized, archaeology can begin to unravel the claims of capitalist realism and suddenly clear the horizon of that grey curtain, letting us set our sights on futures where anything is possible.
However, archaeology's role in the political arena of antifascism may be far smaller. It cannot deny the claim of fascist realism, that of ever-present danger from the other and strength from the ingroup, with the same power that rejects capitalist realism. The power that combats capitalist realism is of imagination, something in no short supply to the fascist. Fascism is always imagining, but imagining others that seek to destroy, others that it must fight. Fascism predisposes the mind to fear and reject the other irrationally, without consideration, because the other detracts from the strength the fascist system gives. To fight fascism, it must be confronted at its core; the image of strength from within must be shattered. Fascists have to be shown that they
are individual and that only by actualizing themselves can they actually create the connection which they seek (Fromm 1942:227).
Knowing this, then, that fascism so wholly resists the power which archaeology brings against capitalism, what then is there to do? How do the two sides of this paper become resolved; is there a place for a political archaeology at all? As we continue to face the present fascist crisis, archaeology (as well as basically every other social science and many hard sciences) is being targeted. It seems like the time for this talk, that of the power of scholarship and theoretical contradictions, is over. And to an extent, that is true. Fascism responds to power. It responds to emotive moments in which the psychological needs of its constituents may be fulfilled. Archaeological inquiry cannot fill that void. A discussion of the other will never reposition the fascist away from fascism. To confront the fascist reality, the strength that fascists seek comfort in must be made weak, and their insecurities abated.
Archaeology still has a place, though. The context for its use changes: rather than a tool of attack, archaeology can be supportive of anti-fascism. For me, it serves as an anchor point, a reminder of the materiality of the world. Not only does archaeology show, as throughout this essay I’ve argued, that there are endless possible ways for humans to socially arrange, but it also shows that no system lasts forever. The archaeological record presents us hundreds of systems, both authoritative and liberatory, many of which believed themselves immortal, which have long crumbled, leaving behind only the most limited memory of themselves. If nothing else, the very existence of the variety in the
archaeological record once again reminds us of our own temporality. What exists now has not been and will not be forever.
However, forever is not now, and we are facing fascism now, with our hands, in our time. What does this really provide, knowing that, eventually, things will change? Our lives may very well end before the fascist threat is destroyed. But archaeology can be useful, the knowledge of how systems and people function, how power and resistance manifest, all that is valuable. And all this brings hope. That hope is not to be discounted as long as we are aware of its limitations and use it not as an excuse but to propel us to action.
References
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