Wednesday, October 03, 2012

E.J. Hobsbawm 1917-2012

Eric John Hobsbawm, along with other notable historians such as E.P. Thompson, Christopher Hill and Rodney Hilton produced works informed by Marx’s theory of history. Hobsbawm gained critical and commercial success with The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848, (published 1962), The Age of Capital: 1848-1875 (published 1975), The Age of Empire: 1875-1914 (published 1987) and The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 (published 1994). These and other works of Hobsbawm have been reprinted many times and gained him a reputation as probably Britain’s best known historian and Marxist.

However, when it comes to Hobsbawm’s politics a very different picture emerges. Hobsbawm, Thompson, Hill and Hilton were at one time all members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). But whereas Thompson, Hill, Hilton and many others saw the error of their ways – especially after the suppression of the uprising in Hungary by Russian military in 1956 – and resigned, Hobsbawm remained in the CPGB until its dissolution in 1991. As a cheerleader for the CPGB and the Russian empire, Hobsbawm defended the leading role of the party advocated by Lenin, and dismissed the view that the emancipation of the working class had to be the work of the working class itself – the cornerstone of any Marxian politics. As his obituary in The Times put it on Tuesday, Hobsbawm 'believed in leadership by an educated elite for the people, not by the people'. Right until his death, aged 95, he remained unapologetic about his political beliefs. Hobsbawm the historian had some interesting things to say, but his politics remained anti-Marxist.

No comments: