Culture as politics introduces the most accessible and relevant works of Christopher Caudwell, considered by many to be the most innovative British Marxist writer of the twentieth century. Caldwell had a powerful interest in how things worked - aeronautics, physics, human psychology, language, and society. In the anti-fascist struggles of the 1930s he saw that capitalism was a system that could not work properly and distorted the thinking of the age. Self-educated from the age of 15, he wrote with a directness that is alien to most cultural theory. Although already a published writer of aeronautic texts and crime fiction, he was practically unknown to the public until reviews appeared of Illusion and reality: a study of the sources of poetry. A strikingly original study of poetry's role, the book explained in clear language how the organizing of emotion in society plays a part in social change and development. Material in this collection is drawn from Illusion and reality among other texts.