The materialist way of perception is a story much older than Marx and Engels; it goes back to Thales of Miletus. The same applies to the disputes between idealism and materialism, which precede the oppositions of Berkeley and Hume with Bacon, Hobbes, and Spinoza; we must look back to Plato and Epicurus.

However, Marx and Engels, regardless of where we stand ideologically or politically – these things are no longer self-evident in this era of confusion – armed us with an excellent – obviously not perfect – tool of approach, if not for all of life, at least for a significant part of it. In history, this is called historical materialism and interprets human history through productive relations and socio-economic contradictions. In other words, the human spirit and action follow human class relations and are led and carried by them. But is it so?

The truth is that the objections to historical materialism, which pre-existed, have been supported by the continuous discoveries at Göbekli Tepe. The upheavals in materialist theories are revolutionary, regarding the evolutionary stages of human societies (e.g., nomadism -> beginning of agriculture and animal husbandry -> collectively organized societies -> surplus -> emergence of political-military and spiritual leadership) brought about by archaeological excavation and studies in the complex of these megalithic temples, which date from the time when humans are considered to have still been nomads, hunter-gatherers. Nevertheless, historical materialism remains a valuable tool, necessary for a more complete picture of human history. And with this tool in hand, the Professor of Modern History at the Department of Political Science of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and representative of the broader Marxist historiography, Giorgos Margaritis, takes us on a journey through the relationship between politics and war, starting from the Bronze Age and ending in our days (Ukraine and the Middle East).

The book sees war as a consumptive event, which presupposes the existence of two categories of surplus (human resources and material reserves) for its conduct. At the same time, it emphasizes the existence of the mechanism that will organize a war economically, administratively, and politically. This is the state. The book observes and records the dependency relationships of the means and parameters of war on productive and consequent social relations.

The author himself hastens to mention some of the "weaknesses" and limitations of his study. As he writes, he does not aspire to give us a complete history of war or its technology, while his references to the world outside Europe are limited. His field is mainly central-western Europe. He avoids the Byzantine experience, which is a rather pivotal part now being seriously reconsidered in western (and not only) history. He leaves some transitions vague, sometimes because there is (still) not enough evidence and other times because they are probably not satisfactorily explained by the materialist perspective. Finally, as expected, it leaves the field of the psychology of the individual warrior (which drives him to form relationships with religion) unresolved, as well as the influence of phenomena such as Orthodox Christianity—the first, in Marxist terms, cross-class, people-unifying, and even international (world) ideology—at least in the West, which enabled Byzantium to withstand fierce attacks from all sides for almost 11 centuries, while keeping alive the consciousness and sense of foreign—and probably class—occupation among the Balkan peoples during the Ottoman-Latin centuries, while also serving as a crucial ideological motive in revolutions.

With his own methodology, the professor helps us understand the complex of hoplite—citizen—democracy, as well as the "contract" established by the French Revolution, according to which the participation of citizens in the defense of the nation paved the way for their political representation. The obligation of political power to take into account citizen-soldiers becomes more evident in the American Civil War. It is obvious, therefore, that a person with a weapon or at least trained in arms, discipline, and organization, under uncomfortable conditions, with a conscious identity (political, national, social, etc.) does not become an "easy" citizen for any political system, both in terms of what he is willing to accept and what demands he has of it. Giorgos Margaritis notes that "participation in war through a national army and the structures of the bourgeois state constitutes the basis and reason for acquiring rights: national, political, or even 'racial.' This is the final version of a contract that runs through the political perception of human societies, in one way or another, since the time of the Hoplite Revolution." Today, this long-standing contract is once again being disrupted, as national armies are (again) being replaced by professional corps, with consequences known from the past and unknown under the new circumstances.

Another enlightening observation by the professor is that after the elimination of the "communist threat," the demonization of the Nation-State followed. Incidentally, in the era of great empires, any discussion of the Nation-State was seen as an incitement to anarchy, while today it is considered something akin to fascism, if not Nazism. Therefore, according to Margaritis, the goal today is the transformation of states into protectorates; into spaces where the nation/people and political forces—fragmented—will not have the political, economic, ideological, cultural, and psychological structure to resist any world empires. "In essence, it is a return to the model of imperial governance," the professor notes.

Whether ideas are shaped by economic factors and have class bases, or whether people sometimes place their ideals above their personal interests, is a discussion—as far as we are interested—that has been ongoing at least since the time of Hesiod (Works and Days) and will probably not end in the foreseeable future. In any case, the book fills in many important pieces of the puzzle regarding the political and economic dimensions of the phenomenon of war and the laborious way in which war and its technology interact with politics, to play a central role together in human history. At the same time, it highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the social organization systems of the examples it analyzes. We are talking about a clearly well-written book, which is governed by clear meanings, whether we agree or disagree with the methodology and ideology of its author, opening new horizons in a discussion that was considered taboo in some ideological circles until just a few years ago.