Historian Eric Hobsbawm dies, aged 95

[RedAnarchist]

Eric Hobsbawm, one of Britain's most eminent historians, has died at the age of 95, his family have confirmed.

He died in the early hours of Monday morning at the Royal Free Hospital in London where he had been suffering from pneumonia, his daughter Julia said.

His reputation rests largely on four works including his History of the 20th Century, The Age of Extremes, which has been translated into 40 languages.

He became a lecturer at Birkbeck College London in 1947.

In a statement his family said: "He will be greatly missed not only by his wife of 50 years, Marlene, and his three children, seven grandchildren and great grandchild, but also by his many thousands of readers and students around the world."

Born to Jewish parents in Egypt in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, Hobsbawm's life and works were shaped by his commitment to radical socialism.

His British father and Austrian mother moved to Vienna when he was two, then to Berlin.

He joined the Communist Party aged 14, after he had been orphaned and was living with his uncle.

In his 80s, he reflected: "Anybody who saw Hitler's rise happen first-hand could not have helped but be shaped by it, politically. That boy is still somewhere inside, always will be."

In 1933, with Hitler's grip on power tightening, he came to London. After gaining a PhD from Cambridge, he published the first of more than 30 books in 1948.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19786929

[ComradeOm]

A truly great historian and commentator

[ed miliband]

A truly great historian and commentator

first part, yes for sure, but commentator? he had truly atrocious politics.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

He was a good writer. I enjoyed his "Age of" series. However he had an irritating habot of scholarly equivocation. "On the one hand....but on the other hand we can see..."

His autobiography Interesting Times (much of which is on google books) is a moving bittersweet history of the 20th century-he lived though most of it.

His politics were crappy but he was a good social historian. I'll miss him.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

RIP. Brilliant historian.

[Invader Zim]

An intellectual titan. This is a sad day.

[Hit The North]

An intellectual titan. This is a sad day.

Yeah, he was only 95! Tragic.

[The Idler]

Was he a Eurocommunist?

[ed miliband]

he liked stalin, the pci and blair's new labour a lot.

but yeah, he was very enamoured by eurocommunism, as his love of the pci would suggest. dunno if he ever identified as such though.

[ed miliband]

i don't think any of this should take from the bulk of his historical work, mind.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

he liked stalin, the pci and blair's new labour a lot.

but yeah, he was very enamoured by eurocommunism, as his love of the pci would suggest. dunno if he ever identified as such though.

Though his politics weren't exactly 'admirable' (I think he was a leading member of teh CPGBs Eurocommunist faction), he was scathing of Tony Blair and New Labour. He did, however, support the Kinnock re-organisation of the party.

But hey, let's remember him as the brilliant historian he was, I don't think his politics take much away from that, he was after all a professional historian, not a professional politico.

[ed miliband]

agreed, still though... he was a typical hampstead type, right? ;)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Most academics on the left are! Look at Ralph Miliband, bet he liked a good Aspall's Organic on a sunny Saturday afternoon ;)

[ed miliband]

old ralph was primrose hill, a trip to hampstead would be exotic for him.

[maskerade]

Rest in peace. I loved his book 'The Invention of Tradition' with Ranger, great read that i'd recommend to most leftists, especially those who haven't really gotten a decent grasp of how colonialism really shaped the colonized and subsequently post-colonial societies.

[Ismail]

Hobsbawm from the 80's onwards seems to have taken a "USSR from Lenin onwards was fundamentally flawed" line and used it to justify right-wing positions (hence an earlier flirtation with Eurocommunism), but as a historian of the development of capitalism (which is what he will be remembered for) he was quite good.

[bricolage]

he was quite good.
understatement much?

[Vanguard1917]

Good historian. Politically, he had been dead for decades.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Hobsbawm from the 80's onwards seems to have taken a "USSR from Lenin onwards was fundamentally flawed" line and used it to justify right-wing positions (hence an earlier flirtation with Eurocommunism), but as a historian of the development of capitalism (which is what he will be remembered for) he was quite good.

Did Hoxha have anything to say on the subject?

[Ismail]

Did Hoxha have anything to say on the subject?Well in his work Eurocommunism is Anti-Communism he called one of the foremost Eurocommunists, Santiago Carrillo (who recently died), "a bastard of revisionist bastardy" who "took all the vilest and most counterrevolutionary things from modern revisionism and made himself the apologist of utter betrayal and capitulation." He also denounced Lukács and other "independent communists," so I doubt he had a high opinion of Hobsbawm's politics.

[Invader Zim]

Yeah, he was only 95! Tragic.

So, the fact that he was old (though not so old that he wasn't still publishing work as recently as last year) means that it isn't sad that he has died?

Or is it Soylent Green time?

[Astarte]

My personal favorite piece by Hobsbawm is his 1959 "Primitive Rebels" - a must read for anyone wishing to know about pre-Marxian revolutionary movements.

[Hit The North]

So, the fact that he was old (though not so old that he wasn't still publishing work as recently as last year) means that it isn't sad that he has died?


Yes, it is stupid to be sad. Be happy he had a long life and celebrate that it was productive. You weren't expecting the old guy to contribute much to his legacy in his early 100s were you? And it's not like he was your grandfather. Or was he?



Or is it Soylent Green time?

Nyum nyum.

[sixdollarchampagne]

Well in his work Eurocommunism is Anti-Communism he called one of the foremost Eurocommunists, Santiago Carrillo (who recently died), "a bastard of revisionist bastardy" who "took all the vilest and most counterrevolutionary things from modern revisionism and made himself the apologist of utter betrayal and capitulation." He also denounced Lukács and other "independent communists," so I doubt he had a high opinion of Hobsbawm's politics.

I am pretty sure that I remember Santiago Carrillo making a US tour, decades ago, which included a stop in Boston, where, at a public forum, a young, leading comrade of the Spartacist League lit into Carrillo, as a revisionist. It's interesting – though from so long ago that I can only be vague about the specifics – that Hoxha and Robertson's people agreed on something.

Out of curiosity, I wonder if eurocommunism, about which I know nothing, has any influence today.

[Prof. Oblivion]

Yes, it is stupid to be sad. Be happy he had a long life and celebrate that it was productive. You weren't expecting the old guy to contribute much to his legacy in his early 100s were you? And it's not like he was your grandfather. Or was he?

Hobsbawm was notoriously productive even into his final years so I am not sure what you mean by this.

[Ismail]

I am pretty sure that I remember Santiago Carrillo making a US tour, decades ago, which included a stop in Boston, where, at a public forum, a young, leading comrade of the Spartacist League lit into Carrillo, as a revisionist. It's interesting – though from so long ago that I can only be vague about the specifics – that Hoxha and Robertson's people agreed on something.No one endorsed Eurocommunism except social-democrats. Trotskyists presented it as the logical end-road of "Stalinism," the Soviets considered it an unfortunate tendency because the Eurocommunists were joining with their own bourgeoisie against the Soviet bourgeoisie (although of course they still maintained "fraternal" ties with these parties regardless), and the "Stalinists" regarded it as a further development of the revisionist theses of Togliatti and others on the "national roads to socialism" which would end (as it did) in unabashed social-democracy.


Out of curiosity, I wonder if eurocommunism, about which I know nothing, has any influence today.As I just said, Eurocommunism transformed into good ol' social-democracy by the late 80's. They basically pretended to uphold Lenin as a cool guy while claiming that he was dated because "Russia in 1917 is not Western Europe in 1978" or whatever, while at the same time going on about the evils of "Stalinism" and criticizing the post-1956 Soviet Union from a right-wing angle, claiming that it did not fully excise the "Stalinist" past (i.e. was still "dogmatic" and whatnot), and so on. Stephen Cohen and other defenders of Bukharin also endorsed Eurocommunism.

[Invader Zim]

Yes, it is stupid to be sad. Be happy he had a long life and celebrate that it was productive. You weren't expecting the old guy to contribute much to his legacy in his early 100s were you? And it's not like he was your grandfather. Or was he?

Nyum nyum.

Why can one not celebrate his life as well as be sad at his passing? And as for not contributing much in later life, as noted he produced a history of Marxism at the age of 94. Evidently even extreme old age is not necessarily a barrier to productivity (and certainly not in Hobsbawm's case). And, of course, he isn't the only one. I can think of a few historians, now in their 90s, still producing work.

[blake 3:17]

Re: Eurocommunism - it was an interesting idea. Should be a different thread.

Hobsbawm was one of the most important socialist intellectuals of the latter half of the 20th century. His book on the Age of Revolution was one that was deeply formative for me.

I haven`t read his book on the 20th century, though I mean to, but his interviews and commentaries were wonderful. He had insights others didn`t have and showed a deep understanding of the odd contradictions of modernity.