Arnold Wesker's play The Merchant (1983) is usually discussed as a response to its Shakespearean original, The Merchant of Venice, and criticized for being both too full of irrelevant historical detail and insufficiently attentive to history in the Marxist sense. The latter
charge overlooks the fact that Wesker's play was not just about Shakespeare's supposed anti-Semitism, but also signalled his own disillusionment with radical politics. In his analysis of history, Wesker had concluded that capitalism was more likely to promote tolerance of minorities than alternative
systems. His growing disillusionment with the left sprang from his experience of Communism in Eastern Europe, and from the Middle East wars, in which the capitalist West backed Israel. The play also reflects Wesker's quarrels with radical colleague John McGrath over cultural politics. The
Merchant does not mark Wesker's farewell to politics, therefore, but a reorientation of his politics away from radical socialism.