Tolkien

A Socialist reads the Hobbit Part 09 – Beorn
Beorn controls his own means of production through honey-making and foraging. His Arts and Crafts style hall echoes William Morris’s medieval socialist ideals. He needs to work on how he treats his staff though.

A Socialist Reads the Hobbit Part 8 – Eagles
Tolkien’s eagles rescue the party from certain death by wargs and goblins. Though morally ambiguous—stealing sheep while helping heroes—they function as Tolkien’s ultimate plot-fixing device when characters face impossible situations.

A Socialist Reads the Hobbit Part 7: Riddles in the Dark
Bilbo’s underground riddle contest with Gollum became the archetypal Dungeons & Dragons scenario—a lone adventurer solving puzzles to escape danger. We also see Tolkien’s pre-scientific worldview with Lamarckian evolution (“the more you use it the bigger it gets”) and Platonic light-emitting vision.

A Socialist reads the Hobbit Part 6 – Goblin Town
Goblin Town mirrors the chaotic Victorian Birmingham of Tolkien’s youth—a dark maze where inhabitants love machines and inventive cleverness but create only weapons and torture devices. The bow-legged, squint-eyed goblins resemble rickets-ridden factory workers who rarely saw sunlight. Their rhythmic songs echo industrial machinery.

A Socialist reads the Hobbit Part 5 – Rivendell
Rivendell introduces Elrond’s crucial moon-map revelation — divine intervention or “you create your own luck by taking action.” The dwarves started their quest without complete information, yet moving forward allowed essential details to emerge naturally.

A Socialist Reads the Hobbit Part 4 – Meet The Trolls
Tolkien’s trolls speak in working-class dialect and defeat themselves through argumentative bickering—showing how evil lacks socialist cooperation.