Let's start the new year with a Marxist

Hello, 

Quite a few things that deserve comment have accumulated while I've been off doing others things. However I wanted to highlight today's Guardian, where Tristam Hunt interviews Eric Hobshawn.

'Borrowed' from socialistunity.com

I would hope that he wouldn't be too offended if I described Hobshawn as a figure from another age. His age (93) has some part to play in that. The main cause of that statement though is his political views - Hobshawn is a Marxist. He is a controversial Marxist too. Many have accused him of conducting an apologist campaign for the Soviet Union (especially the Stalin-era USSR). I don't want to go into that at this point, but if you read some of the comments on this Guardian editorial in praise of Hobshawn then it should give you some idea.

Now unlike a great many names that I mention on this blog, I have actually read some of his work - I got through a fair chunk of his The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 during a research trip to Edinburgh last September. He writes fluently and engagingly, highlighting the seminal role that socio-economic forces played in the development of capitalistic empires during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. He displays too an exhaustive knowledge, binding together into his grand overview developments in cattle farming in the American midwest, nationalism in central Europe and movements in Russian ballet. 

There are some flaws to the book. A reader looking for central figures to hang their understanding of the narrative on will be look in vain (there's a reason why I only got through 'a large chunk' of it). He freely admits too to being casual in his referencing; understandable perhaps given the range of knowledge on display but nonetheless a violation of one of the cardinal rules of historiography (show your working!).
 

Then of course there's the Marxism. Hobshawn is not shy in admitting his ideological influences (there's an entire chapter labelled 'The Bourgeois World'). Nor is he alone in holding such views. Hunt, himself an historian, seems sympathetic in that interview, while Marx's ideas on economics and globalisation are receiving hearings not only in Historical Departments but also in Business Studies schools. 

I wouldn't like to say that we should all embrace our inner dialectic materialist. There are many reasons, mainly ideologically, why when reading what Marx, Engels and Hobshawn say, we should take their words with a large pinch of salt. If you going to read Hobshawn, please read Niall Ferguson (or another neo-liberal historian) to counterbalance Hobshawn's words.  Yet that doesn't mean we should stop our minds against consideration of what Marx had to say. Or indeed, and dare one bring some literary criticism into this, the times in which he and Engels said it. Marx and Engels had some interesting, apt and realistic points to say about globalisation, economics and society. Even if you disagree with them (and I write this as a conservative Christian), it's worth listening to what they had to say (and I write this as a man who hasn't picked up his copy of The Communist Manifesto in quite a while).

P.S: For an alternative view on Hobshawn - one that emphasises his questionable attitudes to the USSR -  see this Times article here