Absolutely appalling interview with Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm unearthed at the National Review Online’s bloggish Corner:
IGNATIEFF: In 1934, millions of people are dying in the Soviet experiment. If you had known that, would it have made a difference to you at that time? To your commitment? To being a Communist?
HOBSBAWM: This is the sort of academic question to which an answer is simply not possible…I don’t actually know that it has any bearing on the history that I have written. If I were to give you a retrospective answer which is not the answer of a historian, I would have said, ‘Probably not.’
IGNATIEFF: Why?
HOBSBAWM: Because in a period in which, as you might imagine, mass murder and mass suffering are absolutely universal, the chance of a new world being born in great suffering would still have been worth backing. Now the point is, looking back as an historian, I would say that the sacrifices made by the Russian people were probably only marginally worthwhile. The sacrifices were enormous; they were excessive by almost any standard and excessively great. But I’m looking back at it now and I’m saying that because it turns out that the Soviet Union was not the beginning of the world revolution. Had it been, I’m not sure.
IGNATIEFF: What that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified?
HOBSBAWM: Yes.
First, note the blatant factual error contained in Hobsbawm’s critical premise – the claim that the 1920s and 1930s were a period in which “mass murder and mass suffering were absolutely universal.” This is palpably false. During the great Soviet purges, the Soviet state was the only Western nation engaged in mass murder (the Germans didn’t get into the wholesale killing business until the 1940s, really, and no other nation in Europe engaged in mass murder unless and until it was occupied by either Germans or Russians). Of course, the rewriting of history is old news when it comes to defending totalitarian states, but one shouldn’t let it pass unchallenged. Second, note that even after the failure of the Soviet experiment, the old Marxist still cannot bring himself to condemn its crimes. This isn’t even “ends justifies the means” rationalizing, because no ends were achieved. This is just plain amorality on display.
The larger point is that the collectivist mindset, leading with depressing regularity to the totalitarian state and subsequent mass murder, is greatly aided by fellow-travellers and useful idiots throughout society. To their eternal shame, vast swathes of academia and intelligentsia lauded the Soviet experiment, which continues to be defended and whitewashed to this day by a coterie of academics that are not without significant influence. The hypnotic fascination that collectivism/totalitarianism exerts on the modern academic is a topic for another day; I wish merely with to point out that this mindset, which should have been discredited and driven from the groves of academia by the palpable failure of Communism, if not its positively hyperbolic crimes, is alive and well.
Not only alive and well, but it has apparently created a new outpost in the Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies departments of our colleges, which seem consumed with apologias for the many failings of modern Islamic society, with the casting of blame on the secular West for the peculiarly self-detonating variety of Islamic evangelism much on display in the Mideast, and with the propogation of a fairy-tale vision of Islam as a “religion of peace” that is quite at odds, as far as I can tell, with both its texts and its history. Martin Kramer’s blog Sandstorm is a veritable clearinghouse of indictments of the rotten world of PC-infected, Saudi-corrupted Middle Eastern studies.
The sorry history of Marxist academia seems, in short, to be well on its way to recapitulating itself in the world of Middle Eastern Studies. The virus, this time, is not Marxism, but rather its late-model mutation, radical relativism and multi-cultural piety.
Does this Hobsbawm guy where glasses, because I swear they are rose tinted.
That’s one scary man. “A period in which mass murder and mass suffering are absolutely universal”? Sort of like…”oh, in those days, everybody was just killing everybody all over the place, so it didn’t really mean anything.”
Brrrrr.
“I would say that the sacrifices made by the Russian people were probably only marginally worthwhile. The sacrifices were enormous; they were excessive by almost any standard and excessively great.”
They didn’t make “sacrifices” in the 1930’s. They were murdered by the Soviet State.
Cydonia
And yet ask this same man about the few thousands Iraqis killed to make Iraq a better place and he would scream to high heaven.
Sickening.
Unbelievable. It’s scary to think there are probably many more just like him.
My favorite:
“IGNATIEFF: What that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified?
HOBSBAWM: Yes. ”
I wonder if it had been his family among the millions if he would think a bit differently?
What price would be considered too high to try and create this mythic utopian state?
I’d like to know why people like this aren’t held up to the public shaming and even the censorship of the state that holocaust deniers are subjected to. This guy is surely as sick.
Unbelievable. It’s scary to think there are probably many more just like him.
And some are in the libertarian fold. You’ll find them among those who value principle and morality (ideology) above all.
Robert Conquest used the same interview in his book “Reflections On A Ravaged Century” and made a comment on it. It’s an excellent book. Conquest was himself a devoted communist, but is now – and has been since early 60’s if I don’t remember wrong – on the “right” side of politics (pardon the pun).
“It is still occasionally said (e.g., by Eric Hobsbawm) that all serious approaches to history must be based on Marxism’s breakthrough in understanding, on the grounds that Marxism provided a historical perspective in the study of humanity (as if previous theories had uniformly failed to do so). But is a false perspective better than no perspective? Are highly distorting glasses better than short sight? At any rate, Hobsbawm’s addiction to Marxism led him into many years of, if not unqualified approval of, then undisguised preference for, the Communist regimes. But the notion is false to the point of absurdity on several counts. First, the idea of political conflict among economic-interest groups was very far from new and was taken for granted by Thucydides. Second, conflict occurs between “interest” groups where the mutual uncongeniality cannot be caUed economic, except by fiddling with thi ‘vidence or exaggerating minimals. Third, cooperation or regulated competition among both economic and other interest groups has been as common as -more common than- irreconcilable conflict (particularly in the more advanced countries).”
(p. 50, “Reflections On A Ravaged Century”, Robert Conquest)
At least he’s consistent with the ideology he’s supporting — the CPSU leaders themselves would have argued that these were “sacrifices” being made, that it was all for a noble end, etc. Most apologists try to distance themselves from the insane rhetoric of the totalitarian regimes they favor; this one has apparently decided to ignore how hopeless his case is on it’s face. Makes our lives easier.
Meanwhile the Russian government still has no comment on much of the work of Memorial. I’d rather have them face reality and say “this was bad,” and ignore the nutty idealogues in the West altogether. Not like Hobsbawm had mass graves unearthed in his backyard every few weeks, after all.
D Anghelone:
WTF????
Administrator or someone, some misspellings in my first post:
“caUed economic, except by fiddling with thi ‘vidence”
should be:
“called economic, except by fiddling with the evidence”
can you edit the post? (And then just delete this one)
Eeeuuw
The ideological stench of casual evil that pours from this egotistical little monster. He can’t even manage one false tear for the millions who died.
Makes your skin crawl.
It amazes me how some people refuse to see reality. A sure sign of a small mind and ego.
Shana,
Consider those who insist upon every “libertarian” principle in isolation. Open borders, for instance. Propose that the U.S. opening its borders would result in a billion people coming here with millions, if not tens of millions, dying in the trying. “I’m not their mother.” is one response I received regarding those millions of dead.
An ideologue is an ideologue.
D Anghelone says: “And some are in the libertarian fold. You’ll find them among those who value principle and morality (ideology) above all.”
Oh rubbish. Either you’re a liar, you’re stupid, or you’re pig-ignorant. Libertarian principle, the non-initiation-of-force thing, explicitly forbids any innocent “sacrifices” at all. Nobody could “value [libertarian] principle […] above all” and simultaneously condone or cause any “collateral damage” at all, let alone genocide.
D Anghelone says: “I’m not their mother.” is one response I received regarding those millions of dead.
So somehow, your asessment of the personal risk/benefit is more important that that of those who’re actually taking the risk? Your decision that people might run themselves into danger, and should be forcibly prevented, overrides the actual individual’s choice to chance it? Surely people wouldn’t take such a risk, unless the suffering where they’re already at is that much greater. You would lock them in with whatever oppression, starvation, and disease they are trying to escape? Now who’s genocidal?
Libertarian principle, the non-initiation-of-force thing, explicitly forbids any innocent “sacrifices” at all.
No, it doesn’t. It does not address the actions of third parties or the consequences thereof.
So somehow, your asessment of the personal risk/benefit is more important that that of those who’re actually taking the risk? Your decision that people might run themselves into danger, and should be forcibly prevented, overrides the actual individual’s choice to chance it? Surely people wouldn’t take such a risk, unless the suffering where they’re already at is that much greater. You would lock them in with whatever oppression, starvation, and disease they are trying to escape? Now who’s genocidal?
I’m not speaking of my assessments or of informed assessments on the part of foreigners but of what would likely occur. I’m anticipating the actions of foreign governments and “coyote” type entrepeneurs worldwide.
Those Mexican emigrees who die in the desert or in sealed trailers – are they escaping starvation and disease in Mexico or seeking some lesser advantages? Does the Mexican goverment encourage or discourage them? How about the coyotes? Are the Mexicans likely more or less informed as to their risks/rewards than would be people from elsewhere?
Which Somalis would come here? Would that be the ones facing starvation? Where would they get the money for the trip? The starving ones would have to be packed onto some ship by some entity wishing them gone, correct?
Please, let us truly think of what has occurred, is occurring and would surely occur if the U.S. opened its borders to allow unprecedented flows of immigration.
I can’t remember the context, but once Elie Wiesel was asked if, after the Holocaust, Holocaust denial was the end stage of evil. Wiesel replied that no, what was worse was acknowlegement that while the Holocaust had happened, in the end it just didn’t matter.
Such are the indifferent gibberings of this vile academic.
The point, surely, about Hobsbawm isn’t his moronic, fascist opinions, but that he was allowed to dictate them to several generations of British students.
And at our expense.
D Anghelone says: “No, it doesn’t. It does not address the actions of third parties or the consequences thereof.”
Precisely. In fact it forbids libertarians from forcibly saving others from their own choices. It doesn’t forbid defending others who are under attack, but if I choose to walk into danger, who are you to yank me back against my will?
D Anghelone continues: “Those Mexican emigrees who die in the desert or in sealed trailers – are they escaping starvation and disease in Mexico or seeking some lesser advantages?” etc
1) ITS THEIR DAMN LIFE AND NOT YOURS, YOU USURPING IDIOT! Who the hell do you think you are, to decide what gain is “lesser”, on their behalf, and enforce your decisions upon them? They know the risks, it would be patronizing to assume they don’t hear all about the shady operators and the dangerous conditions. And yet they take the risk, willingly, they even pay for it. Who would stick his head into that meat grinder for a “lesser” gain? Obviously they don’t consider it so small.
2) They wouldn’t be dying in airless trucks or cramming into cargo ships if the border was open. They are trying to sneak in. That would no longer be necesary.
D Anghelone says: “No, it doesn’t. It does not address the actions of third parties or the consequences thereof.”
Precisely. In fact it forbids libertarians from forcibly saving others from their own choices. It doesn’t forbid defending others who are under attack, but if I choose to walk into danger, who are you to yank me back against my will?
Forbids? Who enforces that?
I wouldn’t attempt to yank you back. Neither would I knowingly create the condition of danger.
D Anghelone continues: “Those Mexican emigrees who die in the desert or in sealed trailers – are they escaping starvation and disease in Mexico or seeking some lesser advantages?” etc
1) ITS THEIR DAMN LIFE AND NOT YOURS, YOU USURPING IDIOT! Who the hell do you think you are, to decide what gain is “lesser”, on their behalf, and enforce your decisions upon them? They know the risks, it would be patronizing to assume they don’t hear all about the shady operators and the dangerous conditions. And yet they take the risk, willingly, they even pay for it. Who would stick his head into that meat grinder for a “lesser” gain? Obviously they don’t consider it so small.
My particular idiocy tells me that tens if not hundreds of millions will be duped into making misinformed decisions. If, that is, they are allowed decisions. There would be nothing to stop governments from packing onto boats people they wish to be rid of.
2) They wouldn’t be dying in airless trucks or cramming into cargo ships if the border was open. They are trying to sneak in. That would no longer be necesary.
An assumption and a foolish one, IMO.
“To make an omelette, you have to break some eggs” – Mao Tse-Tung, commenting on the colossal loss of life during the Great Leap Forward
“An omelette is not made for the sake of the ingredients – Alan K. Henderson, in response to Mao
D Anghelone sure is confused about libertarian ideals. The basic rule: people are free to order their own lives as long as they do not hurt others. That freedom includes the ability to hurt themselves, with drug taking the classic analogy. All other political theories expressly or impliedly involve the assumption that people must be stopped from actions that hurt themselves.
No doubt lots of refugees die or suffer in their bids for freedom, but how can that be the fault of a belief that people are entitled to make that bid? The reason the danger exists is because the refugees have to take dangerous steps because of laws opposed by libertarians. If the US borders were opened then the average refugee would probably just catch the bus.
D Anghelone:
That statement — “I’m not their mother” — was not a statement of that person’s lack of concern; it was a statement recognizing the fact that these people are capable of making their own decisions. Whoever said it was right: they’re not in charge of those people, to control their decisions. Neither is the government of the USA. Now, we don’t have open borders here — and the reason is because it’s so much better here that we’d be flooded. Masses of people dying in the attempt to get here? Are you kidding? The point about Mexicans sneaking in is well made. If it were legal to get here, all they would need is bus fare, not a couple thousand dollars spent on the opportunity to suffocate in a semi trailer. Do you think these people are so stupid or uninformed that they don’t know what awaits them on the trip into Arizona? They send money home once they get here — do you think they don’t also send news? It’s evidently worth it to them to risk death — and who are you to say they couldn’t try (leaving aside the point that if the borders were open, there would be hardly any danger)? Do you honestly, really, deep in your soul, believe that you know better than they do what choice they should make for their future? You don’t live in Mexico. No matter what statistics you’ve seen, there’s no way you can know the reality unless you’ve lived there.
Now, about “insisting on every libertarian principle in isolation.” There’s always a fringe group in every political fold which is a little nuts. As far as I’ve seen, people who read this site aren’t; but accepting that such do exist, let’s compare libertarianism (the whole spectrum included) with communism (same). As a theory, what value does each have? One makes sense and one doesn’t. You say “an ideologue is an ideologue” — not so. Of course extremism is ridiculous; but something tells me that a libertarian extremist would tend toward the “leave me alone” side of the equation, therefore not being a danger to his neighbors, while a communist extremist would tend toward the Red China and USSR side. I’m sorry, but any ideologue does not equal any other ideologue; WHAT they believe is just as important as how strongly they believe it.
D Anghelone sure is confused about libertarian ideals.
No, ideals are just that.
The basic rule: people are free to order their own lives as long as they do not hurt others. That freedom includes the ability to hurt themselves, with drug taking the classic analogy. All other political theories expressly or impliedly involve the assumption that people must be stopped from actions that hurt themselves.
This all requires some equal standing and understanding between persons or peoples.
No doubt lots of refugees die or suffer in their bids for freedom, but how can that be the fault of a belief that people are entitled to make that bid?
It can’t be the fault of a belief. That’s voodoo. We’re speaking of the policies, not beliefs, of many governments.
The reason the danger exists is because the refugees have to take dangerous steps because of laws opposed by libertarians. If the US borders were opened then the average refugee would probably just catch the bus.
Well, some Cubans almost made it in an old Chevy truck but I doubt that many will make it from East Asia or Africa on any bus.
That statement — “I’m not their mother” — was not a statement of that person’s lack of concern;
Unknown.
it was a statement recognizing the fact that these people are capable of making their own decisions.
I hope you will be happy making your decisions as a Somali. I’ll pass on that.
Whoever said it was right: they’re not in charge of those people, to control their decisions. Neither is the government of the USA.
You feel no responsibility for the policies you champion? As with every person who has ever lived, we begin from the world as it is and not some tabula rasa, pristine world. A change of policy or elimination of policy is policy and has the consequences of policy.
Now, we don’t have open borders here — and the reason is because it’s so much better here that we’d be flooded. Masses of people dying in the attempt to get here? Are you kidding? The point about Mexicans sneaking in is well made. If it were legal to get here, all they would need is bus fare, not a couple thousand dollars spent on the opportunity to suffocate in a semi trailer. Do you think these people are so stupid or uninformed that they don’t know what awaits them on the trip into Arizona?
Why do some who cross on their own die in the desert? How informed is that? The Irish who died getting here were stupid and uninformed? Well, they were often misinformed.
Mexico is but one geography. Getting hung up on Mexico is missing the point.
They send money home once they get here —
Is that another libertarian rule that I’ve missed?
do you think they don’t also send news? It’s evidently worth it to them to risk death — and who are you to say they couldn’t try (leaving aside the point that if the borders were open, there would be hardly any danger)?
I’m not aware of any U.S. border with China. Or with Guatemala for that matter. Who again was that Chinese leader dude who offered Jimmy Carter 10 million Chinese?
Do you honestly, really, deep in your soul, believe that you know better than they do what choice they should make for their future?
“I’m a soul man…I’m a soul man!” Actually, I’m not religious.
I do not deign to make choices for them. Others will do that.
You don’t live in Mexico. No matter what statistics you’ve seen, there’s no way you can know the reality unless you’ve lived there.
I hear it’s a libertarian paradise. Guatemalans and Hondurans are welcomed with open arms.
Now, about “insisting on every libertarian principle in isolation.” There’s always a fringe group in every political fold which is a little nuts. As far as I’ve seen, people who read this site aren’t; but accepting that such do exist, let’s compare libertarianism (the whole spectrum included) with communism (same). As a theory, what value does each have? One makes sense and one doesn’t. You say “an ideologue is an ideologue” — not so. Of course extremism is ridiculous; but something tells me that a libertarian extremist would tend toward the “leave me alone” side of the equation, therefore not being a danger to his neighbors, while a communist extremist would tend toward the Red China and USSR side. I’m sorry, but any ideologue does not equal any other ideologue; WHAT they believe is just as important as how strongly they believe it.
Try eating naught but theories for a month and let me know how you make out.
I’d forgotten just how much I hate Marxists.
D Anghelone,
You’re being disingenuous on two fronts.
Firstly, you’re equating allowing people to risk their lives if they wish to with killing them. They are not even remotely the same thing. Your point that governments need to consider the real-world consequences of their policies is well taken. But to say that a libertarian who believes, for instance, that it’s right to decriminalise drugs even if doing so leads to more people overdosing and killing themselves is morally equivalent to a communist who believes that it’s right to create a collectivist utopia even if one has to exterminate millions of people in order to do so is just plain wrong.
Secondly, you keep referring to the (probably true) fact that, if the USA were to open its borders, certain of the world’s regimes would happily ship unwanted sections of their populations to America, and for this you would blame the libertarian American border-opening policy. Why not blame the distinctly anti-libertarian bastards who would be putting people into cargo containers? The problem you are referring to is one of the major problems with authoritarianism, not libertarianism. Let me ask you: when an Algerian asylum-seeker escapes to the UK from the persecution he was facing in Algeria (as many have done), do you blame the danger he faced during his journey on the British government’s policy of admitting asylum-seekers from Algeria? Or do you blame it on the authoritarian bastards who were trying to kill him, from whom he was escaping?
Anghelone is a nativist – why be surprised that he always returns to his idee fixe?
Not that I mind a good round of Hobsbawm bashing, but he wasn’t quite as off the wall as you suggest in saying that the interwar period was one of political violence and monstrousness. The suppression of the Austrian Socialists took place well before the Anschluss. Italy and Germany in the 20s were full of mob and right-wing vigilantism – remember the Freikorps? Anarchists and Trotskyites massacred priests and reactionaries in Spain in areas Soviet “advisers” never got anywhere near, and Franco’s various factions replied in kind quite without any prompting or aid by their Fascist or Nazi supporters. Even the United States had a world-wide reputation for mob control and gangster violence.
But none of this really supports Hobsbawm’s point in any substantial fashion. That the world is a harsh and bloody place is in no way an excuse for organized abominations. That there were hundreds killed in Vienna or thousands murdered in Catalonia is no justification for millions exterminated in Siberia or Silesia or Belorussia.
You’re being disingenuous on two fronts.
Firstly, you’re equating allowing people to risk their lives if they wish to with killing them.
Not unless you’re accusing Hobsbawn of the Soviet killings. Was he complicitous from afar?
They are not even remotely the same thing. Your point that governments need to consider the real-world consequences of their policies is well taken. But to say that a libertarian who believes, for instance, that it’s right to decriminalise drugs even if doing so leads to more people overdosing and killing themselves is morally equivalent to a communist who believes that it’s right to create a collectivist utopia even if one has to exterminate millions of people in order to do so is just plain wrong.
There is no evidence that decriminalizing drugs would lead to more DOA ODs. If it can be shown that precipitous decriminalization would create that situation then I would favor gradual decriminalization.
Secondly, you keep referring to the (probably true) fact that, if the USA were to open its borders, certain of the world’s regimes would happily ship unwanted sections of their populations to America, and for this you would blame the libertarian American border-opening policy.
Where you think in terms of blame is where I see practical consequences.
Why not blame the distinctly anti-libertarian bastards who would be putting people into cargo containers?The problem you are referring to is one of the major problems with authoritarianism, not libertarianism.
Why indeed do libertarians not blame the authoritarian Mexican government for the plight of Mexicans? Ditto for a hundred other countries. Why is U.S. border policy given the blame?
Let me ask you: when an Algerian asylum-seeker escapes to the UK from the persecution he was facing in Algeria (as many have done), do you blame the danger he faced during his journey on the British government’s policy of admitting asylum-seekers from Algeria? Or do you blame it on the authoritarian bastards who were trying to kill him, from whom he was escaping?
The escape is not the venture. The dangers of trespassing the Berlin Wall were patently obvious so few attempted escaping East Berlin via the wall. Those who were shot trying were clearly taking their own risks.
But what if the East German government or East German “coyotes” were encouraging people to breach the wall? What if, for reasons pecuniary or ideological, they were keeping from people the dangers of the Wall and overstating the benefits of life in West Berlin to see many more people die in the attempt to cross the barrier? Would it in that situation be moral or principled for West Germans to also encourage people to try crossing the barrier of the wall?
Anghelone is a nativist – why be surprised that he always returns to his idee fixe?
WTF? Return from where? What have I written and where?
How am I a nativist and what is my fixe? Is everyone who is not for open borders a nativist?
Not only am I from immigrants but am a New Yorker who is comfortable with immigrants. A few weeks back I had an operation. My primary physician, surgeon and anaesthesiologist were all from India. Some nativist.
“Not that I mind a good round of Hobsbawm bashing, but he wasn’t quite as off the wall as you suggest in saying that the interwar period was one of political violence and monstrousness.”
I think he was trying to equate political roughhousing and economic dislocation with the systematic exterminations carried out over decades by the Stalinists as a matter of policy, in an appalling display of moral obtuseness. Sure, many other Western countries experienced riots, beatings, and the odd murder, but these were hardly unprecedented. Similarly, it is striking in retrospect to learn that the fabled economic dislocations of the soi-disant Great Depression were fairly localized and were cycling out the economies of England and the US, and that very few people in England in the US actually died of poverty during the Depression. I can’t say the same is true of Europe; simply don’t know. I am confident that it is simply obtuse to equate the economic and political situations at their worst in the West with the systematic brutality of the Soviets.
“And yet ask this same man about the few thousands Iraqis killed to make Iraq a better place and he would scream to high heaven.”
So the difference between murder and sacrifice is measured by success?
That’s an interesting point of view. Tell me more.
I have recently finished reading Hobsbawms “Age Of Extremes – a history of the shorter 20th century”. There is no denying that he has a maxist perspective, and that he is a skillful deployer of postmoderist doublespeak. He doesn’t have the same respect and familiarity with the concept of absolute truth that readers of this site probably favour.
I don’t wish to speak in favour of his specific comments cited in this post. I do however wish to say, IMO, that the book was brilliant in many respects: his marxist, and perhaps veiled anti US perspective causes one to read and understand history in a fresh way. It didn’t change my own conception of right, but he struck me as a capable thinker who had something to say and was worth reading and thinking about. It is understood that he is an academic with Marxist leanings, and this has an impact in his writing, but it would be wrong to avoid reading anything that didn’t agree at all times with ones own views, or that was only written by people who weren’t “academics”. To make brutal attacks ad hominem on the basis of a response to a question (not even an unsolicited slogan) seems more totalitarian or commo-facist than freedom loving.
If you want a counter to Hobsbawm’s book on the 20th Century try Kissinger’s Diplomacy. Also brilliant. Covers many of the same issues and developments and is not at all in conflict with much of what Eric says….so outright dissing Eric is pretty lazy…IMO
Sounds to me that D Anghelone is trying to put libertarians into the same boat as this marxist idiot. Nice try but please spare as all this nonsence.
RC Dean has it right, I suspect. It’s not just the physical violence from China to the Chaco War that gets rolled into that sweeping statement: Hobsbawm regards the Depression as capitalist violence against the working class. He’s interested in fitting all events into the grand theoretical framework, so a pogrom, a coup, and a factory-closure are all the same to him.
Simon,
What offends in the marxist perspective is that it treats of life in general, history included, in any manner that will support and bring forward its objective. Hence it proceeds out of a lie towards a truly criminal end. If you can insulate yourself from its toxicity whilst imbibing its intellectual product, good for you. But there are countless lesser Hobsbawms in our universities – you could name many, I don’t doubt – who are spreading their influence every day. I just don’t know why they are given the opportunity of employment.
Guessedworker says “I just don’t know why they are given the opportunity of employment.” That’s simple: birds of a feather…
What really puzzles me is what on earth possessed Tony Blair to honor Hobsbawm with the highest-ranking civilian decoration at the disposal of the Government. Who was he trying to mollify? Does anyone have a clue?
Could it be anything to do with his daughter’s being in business (PR for publicly-funded bodies and trades unions) with Gordon Brown’s wife? Of course not!
Or could it be that Blair himself, his wife, and half the front bench sat at the feet of the master before they began the Long March Through the Institutions? Sheer fantasy!
The truth may be even more absurd–that he wouldn’t accept a “feudal” title so they had to give him a “democratic” CH…
To say that the great depression is caused by capitalism is a fallacy. It was government regulation that caused it. One more nail in the coffin of socialism.