Remembering Eric Hobsbawm

Eric Hobsbawm

Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) was one of the world’s most famous and perceptive communist historians. He pioneered a distinctive shape to method of historical research. exploring areas untouched. Around two months ago we commemorated his 10th death anniversary.

Hobsbawm contributed major concepts, from the general crisis of the 17th century to the Dual Revolution, and terms like “the invention of tradition” and “primitive rebels”.

There have been more articulate Marxist scholars for their respective fields  — the 17th century has sometimes been called in the English context Christopher Hill’s century, and    Geoffrey de Ste Croix has demonstrated  how classical knowledge and a deep understanding of Marxism can be integrated .. But Hobsbawm had a dynamism or originality that surpassed any of them

Life Summary

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, a few months before the October Revolution, Hobsbawm lived in Vienna, till the death of his parents. The orphaned youth then moved to Berlin. Those were critical years. The economy was in a crisis, and communists were gaining from the Social Democrats, but the Nazis led by Hitler were gaining far more swiftly. Hobsbawm worked among anti-Nazi forces and tried to make sense of Marx. By seventeen, , he had gone through Capital, Volume One, The Poverty of Philosophy, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, and The Civil War in France. Post-1933, he moved to Britain.

Hobsbawm’s being drawn to orthodox communist politics took place in when Stalin’s hold  over the Communist International was complete.. The impact of Stalinism on him was a lifelong one, although transpiring  in a complicated way, as he moved via popular frontism to a strategy of “broad progressive alliances”, defined in a very moderate way indeed, so that he would be seen as the intellectual guru for New Labour.

Hobsbawm, in spite of his Stalinist origins, transformed into a rebel within the Communist Party of Great Britain. Even before the Soviet invasion of Hungary, which shook much of the CPGB, he launched a tirade on the lack of inner-party democracy. Yet he would be one of the intellectuals who remained within the fold of the party, even if standing pretty close to the borderline and all but  inviting the bureaucrats to throw him out. Significant  that Hobsbawm thought the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, supported by the party, was a bad idea, and he refused to follow the party line against Tito, after the Tito-Stalin break-up.

As an undergraduate at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1936. ,finding a growing number of students committing themselves to communism as a result of the Labour party’s failure to support the republic in the Spanish civil war, that he finally joined the Communist party, in the form of the university’s Socialist Club. But he quickly became disillusioned with the club’s political dogmatism. He abandoned it for the non-political student periodical the Granta, duly becoming its editor, too. Here he had a space for writing about cinema, and also producing profiles of leading Cambridge characters and visiting politicians.

After the war, he continued as a member of the party and did some work in supporting sister parties in central Europe, at least until they completely subordinated Stalinisation at the end of the 1940s. But in truth, Hobsbawm never behaved as an orthodox Communist was supposed to. He was not an activist, he did not sell Communist party literature on the street corner and he wrote regularly for non-Communist (“bourgeois”) publications, earning the party’s disapproval. He confessed himself an “outsider in the movement”. His main focus was on the work of the Communist Party Historians’ Group (CPHG), a relatively short-lived organisation of the late 1940s and early 50s largely confined to “theoretical discussions”.

What Hobsbawm was committed to was an ideal of communism with a small “C”, an ideal he had imbibed as an adolescent more through reading the Marxist classics than through taking an active part in the real politics of the movement. He also remained convinced, as he had been in the 1930s, that Communists would have to join hands  with other leftist parties in the struggle for power: hence his enthusiasm for the French Popular Front, which established a socialist and liberal government in 1936 with the support of the Communist party.

Impact of Stalinism

Hobsbawm’s being drawn to orthodox communist politics took place in when Stalin’s hold  over the Communist International was complete.. The impact of Stalinism on him was a lifelong one, although transpiring  in a complicated way, as he moved via popular frontism to a strategy of “broad progressive alliances”, defined in a very moderate way indeed, so that he would be seen as the intellectual guru for New Labour.

Not long after the death of Stalin in 1953 the international communist movement was plunged into a deep crisis. On 25 February 1956, at the 20th congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin for the “cult of personality” that had grown up around him, and for the numberless murders and atrocities he had committed. As the contents of the speech found their way to the west, the British party leadership tried to ignore them. But in April 1956 the historians’ group, led by Hobsbawm, Thompson and Hill, issued a scathing criticism to the party for its failure to express regret for its “past uncritical backing of all Soviet polities and views”. An intensive debate broke out in the party periodical World News, with Hobsbawm in particular calling for an open extrication with the party’s past, its errors and its lies. He demanded that it had to be open to democratic change from below; simply imposing a “party line” from above was counter productive

The crisis deepened in October 1956 when a liberal communist government sprung to power in Hungary as a result mass popular demonstrations after months of stonewalling by the Stalinist regime in Budapest. On 4 November, Moscow retaliated with a military invasion and killing at least 2,500 Hungarians who had tried to resist. These events, Hobsbawm declared, shocked party intellectuals and “delivered a crippling blow of faith and hope”. Attempting to avoid an open confrontation with the leadership in London, which had backed the invasion, he conceded that the invasion was “a tragic necessity” in view of the threat of a reactionary rightwing government taking over, but demanded that “the USSR should withdraw its troops as soon as this is possible”.

A furious debate broke out within the party as the leadership refused to budge. “Hobsbawm,” a phone conversation monitored by MI5 recorded one member as saying, “wants to call for the overthrow of the leadership and a new policy”. His attitude towards the party leaders was described as “bellicose”. As leading historians such as Thompson resigned from the CPGB in despair, Hobsbawm demanded the right to form an inner-party opposition.

The exchange was a revealing one. Once again, Hobsbawm’s deep emotional commitment to the ideals of communism, symbolised for him by his continued membership of the party, had come to the fore. While most intellectuals in the party had become communists as part of the struggle against fascism in the 1930s, and so, once the struggle had been won, did not find it difficult to leave, Hobsbawm’s commitment went much deeper. Eric Hobsbawm took part in one of the most extraordinary conversations ever on British television. Speaking in 1994 to the author Michael Ignatieff about the fall of the Berlin Wall five years earlier, the historian was asked how he felt about his earlier support for the Soviet Union.

If Communism had achieved its aims, but at the cost of, say, 15 to 20 million people – as opposed to the 100million it actually killed in Russia and China – would Hobsbawm have supported it? His answer was a single word: ‘Yes’.

. In 1994, in an interview with Michael Ignatieff on television, he indicated that that the deaths of millions in for the goal  of communism was worth it, that in other words he was projecting  himself as a kind of utopian intellectual pardoning  mass killings for his ideal. Hobsbawm summarised  to Ignatieff that the era was one of mass murders, mass sufferings, on an absolutely universal scale, and the Soviet Union appeared, in spite of all flaws, to be the only “chance of a new world being born in great suffering”, and that was why so many became communists and supported Stalin. It is significant that he accepted this stance in the 1930s but the continuing influence of Stalinism even when he was writing his Age of Extremes (1994). The pro-Moscow parties played a negative role in the worldwide radicalism between 1968 and 1974; Hobsbawm managed to deride those struggles with sweeping comments. In the same work he managed to reduce the gulags to two brief references, and to suggest that the Stalin era was basically good for the vast majority of Soviet citizens, in opposition to the huge amount of specialized work on the Stalin era that came out after the archives were opened.

How to Change the World

‘How to Change the World’ published in 2011, is masterpiece.,written by Hobsbawm.

It most originally interprets aspects of Marx and Marxism, probing into many diverse spheres.

He delves on subjects like Marx Today, The Influence of Marxism 1880-1914, Gramisci, and Era of anti fascism and Marx and Labour.

The most perceptive writing is in analysing the Influence of Marxism, 1945-1983. , ‘On Marx Today.’,’Gramisci’ and Era of Fascism from 1929-45.His intention was that readers explored new realms or gained a different insight on Marx and Marxism.

Influence of Marxism 1945-1983

In ‘Influence of Marxism-1945-83’ ,Hobsbawm rejected concept of ‘Third world’ Examples were highlighted of Vietnam ,Cuba , Portuguese colonies, He narrated how such states ,declared themselves to be Socialist or who aim at Socialism without professing to be Marxist were all found in the third world zone. The chapter summed up how the Radical wave affected Marxism. First it multiplied the number of those who produced, read and bought Marxist writings. Secondly it made people adopt a new perspective to Marxism, in respect of re evaluating aspects. The impact of the wave was summed up, particularly on France and Italy and how it sowed the seeds for a new Left which transcended all boundaries of conventional Marxism. Anarchist tendencies were resurrected. Debate on national question was again brought up.Unlike the periods of the second and third internationals overwhelmingly sprouted amongst intellectuals. From early 1950’s socialist labour parties were no more advancing and the manual labour class, substantially lost it’s ground, thus fragmenting working class community.The striking improvement in the working class standard of living, diluted the proletarian bond. It was evaluated that Marxism was undergoing a crisis. Now the basic theory of Marxism was placed under scrutiny, seriously question what happened in the past. The author elaborated on how after the 1950’s Stalinism was perceived in a completely different light, as something antagonistic to Marxism.

Three reasons were given for why stature of Marxism rose in recent decades. First was the international impact or character of Marxism, unlike other doctrines. Second was that Marxism was a consistently opponent of the status quo.which many wished to topple., the 1970’s.The third was how intellectuals were drawn towards Marxism, due to vast expansion of secondary and University education.

Soviet Union influenced developments firstly by leading to recognition after de-Stalinisation of the USSR, that organisation and operation needed a drastic change. Second, it inspired Marxism, through breakdown of single monolithic and monocentric international communist movement, dominated by leading party of the USSR.

Thirdly, the Soviet Complex infused turbulence in East European countries like Hungary or in China, even after death of Mao.

Hobsbawm was critical of the Cultural Revolution in China, as he felt that it made Marxists examine everything through Chinese eyes and wrongly perceived as a model.

The third world complex affected Marxism by firstly concentrating attention on the liberation struggles of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and because many such movements which emerged from decolonisation were attracted to Marxist slogans. Secondly Third World experience focussed the attention of Marxists, on the relations between dominant and under developed world. specific nature of possible Socialist transition and on social and cultural peculiarities.

Gramisci

On ‘Gramisci ‘,Hosbawm penetrates every aspect of his contribution. He highlights Gramisci’s adherence to the Leninist principles and party concept. but portrays how he advances beyond Lenin,on th nature of party life and what the party organisation should be given. He reflects on Gramisci’s  insistence that the apparatus of rule comprises  mainly of intellectuals. He dwelled on how Gramisci formulated that only through the party that the working class develops its consciousness and climbs the spontaneous trade unionist phase.Gramisci had aware of the dangers of bureaucratisation and his hostility to Stalinist developments, caused him problems ,even in prison.

Hobsbawn summarised how Gramisci’ firstly, did not opt for ‘Positional warfare’, in the West, compared to what he called ‘frontal attack’..He analysed that “the War o Position’, had to be systematically organised as a fighting strategy and not a dogma to substitute building of barricades. Failure of revolution in the West may create a more dangerous long tem weakness of the forces of progress by means of a ‘passive revolution.’

Secondly Gramisci insisted that the struggle to turn the working class into a potential ruling class must be staged, before the transition of power, as well as during and after it. This struggle is not merely War of Position, but a crucial part of the strategy of revolutionaries in all circumstances.

Thirdly Gramisci had in mid a permanent organised class movement. It somewhat reverts to the Marx’s own conception, with respect to forms of political leadership and structure, an to the nature of what he called the organic relationship between class and the party.

It is discussed on Gramisci’s insistence on organic relationship of revolutionaries and mass movement.

Marx Today

In Chapter on ‘Marx Today’. Hobsbawm deeply probed into why Marx was relevant in era when Communism is on a decline and why it still appeals to people of the world. In his view end of official Marxism in USSR delinked Marx from public identification with Leninism in theory and the Leninist regimes in practice. The second reason was that the globalised capitalist world that emerged in the 1990’s was similar to the world that Marx predicted in the Commuist Manifesto.He narrates how Marx abstained from making specific statements about the economic and economic institutions of Socialism and said nothing about the concrete shape of society under Communism., only that it would evolve out of a Socialist Society. Marx had said nothing concrete about planning.

According to Hobsbawm Twentieth century Marxism is not based on thinking of Marx himself, but on posthumous interpretations or adaptations of his writings. Much of later discussion specific to the twentieth century was actually not encompassed in Marx’s writings, notably debate on model of Socialist economize asserted that Soviet model of Socialism was outdated  today. In his opinion the economic equality generated by market fundamentalism, revived period of Great depression. The realm of affluence, the goal of adequate food ,clothing, housing, and employment, and a proper welfare system, is no longer a sufficient programme for Socialists. For great part of the twentieth century, Socialist only concentrated on necessity.Thirdly, booming expansion of world economy, neglected the environment, placing no check on unlimited economic growth.

Marx in Hobsbawm’s view much of what Marx wrote is outaded.However he asserted that one should distinguish between a ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ Marx. The Central features that remain valid were irresistible global dynamic of capitalist development and its capacity to extinguish all that came before it. Second was mechanism of capitalist growth by generating internal contradictions-endless phase of tension, growth leading to crisis and change, all producing economic concentration in an increasingly globalised economy. Finally quoting John Hicks “Most of those who wish to fit and place a general course of history would use the Marxist categories or some modified version of them, since there is little in the way of alternative versions that is available.”

Era of Fascism 1929-45

In ‘Era of Fascism’ how Stalinist form of Marxism hardly appealed to Western intellectuals. They were more drawn towards Trotskyism. He attributed it to the dogmatism of the CPSU led by Stalin Radicalisation of Intellectuals in the 1930’s was rooted in the ascendancy of capitalism. The victory of Hitler crystallised major anti-fascist polarisation or rebellion. Anti-fascism turned into a central theme became prominent after establishment of the National Socialist regime in Germany. It was very hard to gauge the international wave of support for the civil war. in Spain. The threat of fascism was not a mere political threat, but one for the future of an entire civilisation. It did away with liberalism as acutely as it did with socialism and Communism. Entire heritage of twentieth Century enlightenment was thrown into dust. Finally fascism meant war. Every year after 1933, War erupted in Nazi invasion of Austria, Ethiopia, Nazi occupation of Rhineland, Spanish Civil war, Japanese invasion of China and German invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Hobsbawm expressed criticism of USSR failing to wage a battle against fascism on an International level and only encompassing the aspect internally and on the Communist parties of Europe, who placed anti-fascism struggle on a localised level. He reflected he impact of the dissolution in 1943 of the Comintern A criticism was made on the monolithic party structure in USSR and how sectarianism of Communist parties led to te demise of the republicans in the Spanish civil war.

Marxists of the 1930’s were deeply ignorant of any alternative interpretation of Marxist theory and not interested in intra-Marxist debates. They perceived Marxism as an instrument to interpreting the vast diversity of phenomena, and never doubted the Marxist diagnosis, of the great capitalist crisis.

Marxism reflected the dissatisfaction of Scientists with the determinist mechanical materialism of the 19th Century. It fragmented Science. Scientists were grossly disillusioned with mechanical, determinist materialism. Dialectical materialism paved a way to penetrate the inconsistencies of Science. Marxism also contributed to analysing the history of Science.

Euro Communism

After the mid-50s, he gravitated towards the reform-oriented “Eurocommunist” parties of Spain and Italy. By the 80s, following the ideas of Gramisci, he concluded that the British Labour party had to embark on  an alliance with elements in the middle classes, since the old working class on which it had for so long depended for its support was now in decline; otherwise democracy in Britain was doomed. Far from being a Stalinist, he had now become the catalysts of New Labour. His ideas were adopted by Neil Kinnock when he became leader of the Labour party, and put into action by Tony Blair, though he later came to regret Blair’s failure to unravel the neoliberal policies implemented by the Conservatives in the 80s (“Thatcher in trousers” was his verdict on Blair).

The most significant thing to comprehend is that his historical work was never purely Marxist. Far from being a “central European intellectual”, he was influenced above all by French intellectual ideas, particularly those of the group of historians associated with the periodical Annales. Hobsbawm’s mentor at Cambridge in the late 1930s and afterwards, the economic historian Mounia Postan, introduced him to the work of the Annales, inviting their leading figure Marc Bloch to Cambridge and sharing in many respects their belief in history as discipline that traversed every aspect, dealing analytically not only with politics, economy and society but also delving into the arts and indeed all aspects of life in the past.

Hobsbawm widened his acquaintance with the French historical school in the 1950s, when he spent long periods in Paris mixing with dissident leftwing intellectuals. His book, The Age of Revolution, published in 1962, clearly reflected the influence of the Annales, as did its successors The Age of Capital and The Age of Empire. What gave his writing a particularly wide appeal its gratitude to Marxist models of analysis, illustrated with examples and evidence researched from an amazingly wide range of sources in a variety of languages. Here, his deep insight into European literature, exerted  its influence in a style that combined elegance and wit, attracting  the reader in a way that no conventional Marxist could ever manage to do.

At the same time, like the other English Marxist historians such as Thompson, Hobsbawm was intellectually emancipated by his distancing from the British Communist party in 1956. From writing in the 1940s and early 1950s about the rise of the working class, he turned to studying marginal and deviant people in history, “primitive rebels”, millenarians, Luddites, bandits, seemingly irrational popular movements that illustrated a strong degree of rationality in their rebellion against the penetration of capitalism on their way of life. Of course, he categorised them into a basically Marxist teleology Still, the sympathy with which he treated them was apparent to everyone who was able to gauge between the lines.

Where fact and interpretation conflicted, Hobsbawm was almost always honest enough to admit, for example, his abandonment of Marxist theories of imperialism in his book The Age of Empire. Neither as a communist intellectual nor as a practising historian was he ever a mere propagandist.

What  gives The Age of Extremes much of its fascination is the spectacle of a lifelong communist trying, often but not always successfully, to come to terms with the failure of the cause he had served for so long as an intellectual.

Few historians in recent memory displayed as much prowess  as Eric Hobsbawm in  integrating personal histories of individuals with histories of communities, indeed of whole historical epochs in which past and present meet  even as a perspective, for the future never fails to emerge from the narrative, if only in broad outline. It is for a reason that Hobsbawm gave to his autobiography – Interesting Timesthe subtitle A Twentieth-Century Life, for, in a very real sense, the autobiography is a companion volume to his magnum opus, The Age of Extremes – The Short Twentieth Century.

With his 1958 monograph Primitive Rebels, he paved the foundation  for a systematic study of grassroots social resistance movements  – spearheaded by ‘social bandits’ – in pre-capitalist, predominantly rural, societies not moulded  by any political ideology. This later paved the way for extensive and diverse research into non-political social resistance traditions in different geographies in several major European, as well as other, languages, by many practitioners of cultural history and social anthropology, and Hobsbawm himself helped this work along through his books Bandits and Captain Swing, as also via many papers, articles and seminars championing this broad theme.

The 26 pieces anthologised in this book invoke Political Shoemakers, The Rules of Violence, Revolution and Sex, Victorian Values, May 1968, The Caruso of Jazz, Count Basie, The Machine-Breakers, 500 Years of Columbus, The Left’s Megaphone and Billie Holiday, among others. They present common theme that manifests through most of these essays is a perspective of how ordinary, unremarkable human beings are transformed by their past and present, and how they, in turn, mould their societies and history. Here, for instance, is how Hobsbawm begins his delightful study of political shoemakers in early-industrial Europe:

“The political radicalism of nineteenth-century shoemakers is proverbial. Social historians of a variety of persuasions have described the phenomenon and assumed it needed no explanation. A historian of the German Revolution of 1848, for example, concluded that it was ‘not accidental’ that shoemakers ‘played a dominant role in the activities of the people’. Historians of the ‘Swing’ riots in England referred to the shoemakers’ ‘notorious radicalism’ and Jacques Rougerie accounted for the shoemakers’ prominence in the Paris Commune by referring to their ‘traditional militancy’.”

The essay then goes on to unravel the roots of this radicalism and the social soil it originated from, as well as the reasons why the 19th century shoemaker could afford to be fiercely independent of social wisdom, probing the narrative with anecdotes on the very surface. The essay on the Sicilian ‘social bandit’ Salvatore Guiliano (1922-50), on the other hand, is a withering review of Mario Puzo’s 1984 pseudo-historical novel The Sicilian and is a sociological investigation, political commentary and devastating badinage in equal measure. (The American Mafia’s “substitution of private violence for state authority”, Hobsbawm avers, “is as American as apple pie”.)

On History compiles essays and talks, from the last thirty years, in which Hobsbawm examines history’s relationship to politics, society, and other disciplines and at trends traversing history itself. He says in his preface that “in most of them the limits of what can be said in a fifty-minute lecture show through”, but while they are almost all aimed at a broader audience, most of them should also interest historians. Some themes are a constant feature and some general points are repeated, but even when dealing with similar subjects Hobsbawm projects something unique and original in each presentation. On History will be an asset for anyone interested in historiography: even those who have major disagreements with Hobsbawm should find him usefully insightful.

If we are to place Hobsbawm under a microscope as a historian, we also have to look at his earlier works. The Age of Revolutions, the first of his three volumes on modern world history, stating with the French Revolution and Britain’s industrial revolution, the two turning points of the late 18th century that conscripted “the greatest transformation in human history” since antiquity. Hobsbawm imbibed this “dual revolution” two different approaches to modernity — one political, involving conscious and collective action, the other economic transformation, through individual search for profit, human greed. Both elements attempted to establish control over the theme.. But Hobsbawm repeatedly undermines the seeming independence of economics, showing that capitalist development did not crystallise without strong State intervention.

This was the dual revolution which enabled the world to make transition to modernity. But after 1830, the European bourgeoisie would no longer hoist the flag of politics. The emergence of the working class and its struggles, however rudimentary they may appear to writers today, were enough to shock the bourgeoisie into political silence. The flag of politics was adopted by the working class. The three volumes of Hobsbawm’s work, The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, and The Age of Empire, emphasise  the role of the working class as a conscious political catalyst  rather than a mere socio-economic analytical category..

Hobsbawm played an important role in the establishment of Marxist analysis of history in India.. His essays on the seventeenth century crisis were part of the material that Indian Marxists interested in India’s own transition to capitalism grappled and debated with. His Primitive Rebels and Bandits were much read by Indian scholars, but also severely criticized by Ranajit Guha for the claim that peasant struggles had been ‘prepolitical’.

Conclusion

I admire Hobsbawm for his encyclopaedic knowledge of the development of capitalism and the rise and fall of former socialist countries in the 20th century and his lifelong desire for socialism. Hobsbawm was an architect in defending Marxist spirit at the highest scale before the 1950’s, critically defending the role of USSR, or contribution of Lenin and Stalin.. He combated ‘theological Marxism’ ie MLism. An important liberal historian. His early writings before the 20th Congress in 1956 were invaluable.

His analysis of Gramisci is admirable and on the general crisis of Marxism and world situation. He makes a reader probe Lenin and Stalin, in important ways, diverted from the original path of Marx.

After 1950 he vacillated from Leninism, adhering to New Left ideology.This.in my view damaged the long term interests or survival of Marxism, negating the roe of the proletariat. No doubt, he played a positive role as a liberal, exposing the face of imperialism and later globalisation. However he failed to recognise the contribution of the Chinese revolution and third world uprisings or how Marxism took a different shape in Asiatic countries. Although he makes valid criticisms, his writings turned anti-communist and a manifestation of post-modernism. They offer no alternative to the weaknesses of past Socialist Societies and delink Marxism from Leninism. Hobsbawm gave no credence to the significance or innovations of the Cultural Revolution in China, virtually rejecting it’s contribution.

We have to understand how New Left ideology derailed many working class movements worldwide.

Ironically, the man who had been a Communist Party member for so long became a Companion of Honour in 1997.an award from the Blair government. Astonishing that did he accepted this invitation into the very den of ruling class oppression. Sadly after the 1980’s he parted with Marxism.

Harsh Thakor is a freelance journalist who has extensively researched on Marxism

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