In September 2011, Syrian leftist Yassin al-Haj Salah warned that the revolution was entering “a fateful situation, predisposed toward destruction.” The first peaceful protests that spring were viciously repressed by Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship, and over the summer the revolt developed into an armed uprising. Yet after eight years of this “fateful situation,” today it is the Assad regime that has prevailed.

Despite the length of the war and the catastrophes it has brought, the deeper forces behind Syria’s conflict remain poorly understood, even on the Left. The protagonists are too often seen in the culturalist terms of “Sunnis vs. Shias,” or “Islamists vs. Secularists.” Just as often, the war is reduced to pure geopolitics, with the lead actors assumed to be mere proxies for America and its international opponents (or allies).

Rarest of all is any developed discussion of the class dynamics that shaped the Syrian state and society even before the 2011 conflict. Yet these had a decisive effect on the uprising and the regime’s ability to withstand it. Grasping these social elements of the conflict is just as important today if we want to understand the Assad regime’s strategy for the “new Syria,” and how it intersects with the plans of his Russian and Syrian allies.