The Magnificent Seven succeeds as a piece of cinema on every level. As an allegory illustrating the role and necessity of the revolutionary party it is without peer.

The opening scenes introduce us to the hyper oppressed peasants – allegorically representing hyper oppressed peasants scratching a living from the land. The bandits are the parasitic exploiters whom we can immediately identify as the bourgeoisie extracting surplus value by force from the subaltern class. Forced by the harsh economic climate to intensify the extraction of food and money from the peasants the bandits provoke a debate and a reaction. All the heterogeneous moods of the class are expressed. Some want to yield to the pressure and carry on living in ever greater misery. Some think that a compromise is possible, if only by hiding their possessions. A handful argue for resistance.

The village’s organic intellectual counsels them to resist but cautions them that they need the backup of people who have dedicated their lives to struggle, professionals with the skills needed to fight successfully.

Chris is the Lenin figure. He is introduced to us as the tribune of the oppressed who faces down the small town racists who refused to allow a Native American to be buried in Boot Hill. His use of a mixture of armed force and support from the proletarian stagecoach drivers shows that he is more than the stereotypical gunfighter. Through a process of patiently explaining, slow recruitment and ideological clarification he assembles his combat party who will fight for little more than subsistence wages. The reference to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 is made explicit by the number of fighters. Seven.

Each is a pen portrait of a revolutionary type. Britt is good with a knife but taciturn to the point of being anti-social. We are given no hint about his standards of personal hygiene. Chico the youngest cadre is impetuous, headstrong and insecure around the others but always on the lookout for a bit of love action. Lee is burdened by the knowledge that he is burned out and prone to finding comfort and motivation in the bottle. He likes to reminisce about when he was great. Bernardo O’Reilly is the dependable middle cadre who, with a little prompting, is enthused to resume the fight. Harry Luck is there to meet the recruitment target and lacks the ideological conviction of the others.

Immersed in the life of the villagers it soon becomes apparent that the professional revolutionaries are a separate breed. They have trouble fitting into normal life and lack the interests and attachments of those for whom they are fighting, often finding them tedious and unfulfilling compared to the satisfactions of the lives they have chosen. Though they are not without a sense that they are missing something.

At the heart of the film is the dialectical process through which the peasants liberate themselves from their oppressors. The Seven share with them the skills that they have spent years perfecting and the disunited mass learns the importance of technique, discipline and organisation through its struggle against the bandits. Sacrifice is part of any revolutionary process and victory is bought with the blood of several villagers and the majority of the vanguard party, a reference to the war against the White armies which is as plain as a barn door.

With the battle won we are offered a vision of a self-governing workers’ state. Decisions among the villagers had been made by consensus and there was a pronounced absence of hierarchy. A small oversight is the absence of women in the decision making processes but only a rampantly petit-bourgeois anti-materialist would expect a film made in 1960 to be free from some of the prejudices of its epoch. Probably.

The ending is self-evidently in the Trotskyist tradition, daringly so if we remember the dominance of Stalinism in the workers’ movement at the time. Having overthrown the old oppressors and gained massive political credibility and social weight the fighters could have chosen to remain in the village and become its new rulers. They self consciously remain true to their anti-bureaucratic heritage, refuse to coalesce as a caste and move on in search of fresh revolutionary opportunities. Vin and Chris ride out of town leaving the peasants in control. In this they prefigured and perhaps inspired Che Guevara’s campaigns in Africa and Bolivia .

It’s all obvious, isn’t it?