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Eric Hobsbawn 1917 - 2012 - an appreciation
Topic Started: Oct 1 2012, 10:53 AM (404 Views)
caissier
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An appreciation by Martin kettle.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2012/oct/01/eric-hobsbawm-an-appreciation?CMP=twt_fd

He was a intellectual of rigour of a kind rare if not extinct now.
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rumbaba
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Yes, they don't make them like that anymore. Today's self-appointed 'intellectuals' all seem to want to be TV celebrities and top selling authors. I'm sure there are real intellectuals out there but all we seem to see on TV are people I can't stand like; Alain de Bouton Niall Ferguson, Roger Scruton, et al.
Edited by rumbaba, Oct 2 2012, 03:02 PM.
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Norm Deplume
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This creature was a staunch Communist, who revered Stalin and never did renounce the multitude of murders that that monster committed.
Perhaps it is just as well that they don't make them like him any more!
Edited by Norm Deplume, Oct 3 2012, 08:49 PM.
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tafkaj

Norm, have you no respect? You're a disgrace ...

I wanted to say that! <laugh>
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caissier
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Now then ...... !

In one article there was an explanation for his support for communist Russia (until I think 1956).

Iirc he felt communism, despite its failing, did bring about great advances for the people of Russia, in the context of the country's previous history and fascistic tendencies elsewhere. I don't think he was blind to the horrors. His achievements were not just concerned with that subject, though
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dai Cottomy
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In his book 'Interesting Times', Hobsbawm says:

"The dream of the October Revolution is still there somewhere inside me . . . I have abandoned, nay, rejected it, but it has not been obliterated. To this day, I notice myself treating the memory and tradition of the USSR with an indulgence and tenderness."

If he had been Russian and lived in and after the revolution, he might have thought differently. In his 80s he reflected: "Anybody who saw Hitler's rise happen first hand could not have helped but be shaped by it, politically.

For all that, he is a fascinating writer.
Edited by dai Cottomy, Oct 7 2012, 02:47 PM.
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May-Cee

It was interesting - in the week that R3 broadcast Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony; "The Disappeared" - to hear a R4 repeat of a Simon Schama interview with Hobsbawm.

Schama played him a clip of his Desert Island Disc appearance; Hobsbawm not only refusing to criticise Stalin but getting tetchy with Sue Lawley for even asking some pertinent questions.

Schama gave him the chance to measure his language, reconsider his stance. Hobsbawm was having none of it. He said what he said and he meant what he meant. He claimed it's a "non-question".

(It's actually the "non-question" that Orwell, a far greater writer - and more humane person - grappled with until the day he died.)
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madfor4

For all it's faults the Russian revolution was, like the French, a necessary 'evil'....

Sadly, Orwell's 'Animal Farm' got it dead right; changes made with good intentions are hi-jacked by those with personal ambitions. T'was ever thus (otherwise where would the surfacing of the 'road to hell' come from?)...
The current conference implementing (to applause) 'cuts' to the disabled, and those in most need, may not be a 'kulak cleansing' but it's just a matter of degree....
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caissier
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Before the revolution Russia was an horrific place for most of the population. Communism did improve the lot of the people en masse, albeit accompanied by terrible cruelty and brutality. It was immediately attacked by Western interests which presumably created ongoing hostility and defensiveness, which might have partly accounted for Stalinism. The authoritarism of communism-in-practice is no advert for it, but looking around the world, at widescale poverty and ignorance, and people's lives hanging on the capitalist economic cycle, alongside the outrageous affluence of those with power (of whatever kind), it could be said that communists do have a bit of a point.
Edited by caissier, Oct 9 2012, 01:36 PM.
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waiting4atickle
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caissier
Oct 9 2012, 01:35 PM
Communism did improve the lot of the people en masse

You mean the ones who survived?


There was an old Russian called Lenin
Who did one or two million men in.
That's a lot to have done in,
But where he did one in,
That old Russian, Stalin, did ten in.

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caissier
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waiting4atickle
Oct 9 2012, 02:01 PM
caissier
Oct 9 2012, 01:35 PM
Communism did improve the lot of the people en masse

You mean the ones who survived?


There was an old Russian called Lenin
Who did one or two million men in.
That's a lot to have done in,
But where he did one in,
That old Russian, Stalin, did ten in.

I don't under-estimate the suffering, tickles, truly. The unpleasant thing about Marxism imo is that it does deal in great aggregate masses of humanity with the fate and pain of individuals, it seems, not overly cared about. A huge flaw is the tendency to cruel central control justified by moral certainty and self-righteousness, backed by academic political theory. When has it not gone that way?

(Compromising social-democracy for me ....... )
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waiting4atickle
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I'm not sure it was inevitable, but the October Revolution did have its inspirational aspects. And, as Mad says, changes were made with good intentions. I used to think - and many still do, I suppose - that it would have turned out much better had Trotsky succeeded Lenin, but maybe not. Whatever happens, the lunatics always seem to take over the asylum.

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caissier
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Yes, that's the trouble it is an asylum, an institution, take-overable, and there are are meglamaniacs who see an opportunity. Communism has benefitted people intially because it has had many wrongs to right but then it degenerates into dead-handed control. You can't suppress individual impulses without tyranny.
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waiting4atickle
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And the bigger (and less homogeneous) the country, the more extreme that tyranny tends to be.

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caissier
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Documentary about Stalin up to 1939 - quite good I thought .... narrated by Nigel Hawthorne

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4hXhy8_hho&feature=g-vrec
Edited by caissier, Oct 11 2012, 10:09 AM.
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waiting4atickle
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I'd quite like to watch that - just as I would like to read the latest biography of Trotsky. Unfortunately, I'd probably fall asleep in either case. To put it in a nutshell, I have not that alacrity of spirit, nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have.


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caissier
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There are ten one hour programmes and it looks very detailed, so all the more damning. I managed two last night. It's incredible how, no matter what he did, everybody clung to him .... for some kind of idea of security, I suppose - though it was very unlikely to be their own.
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madfor4

caissier
Oct 11 2012, 10:14 AM
There are ten one hour programmes and it looks very detailed, so all the more damning. I managed two last night. It's incredible how, no matter what he did, everybody clung to him .... for some kind of idea of security, I suppose - though it was very unlikely to be their own.
Robert Mugabe?
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caissier
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Yes ..... very often people suck up to bullies, perhaps to sycophantically appease them or perhaps for other complex reasons .... such as to vicariously join in with the crimes. It is clear that Stalin was a sadistic pathological monster on a stupendous scale. It is an alarming thing that the mechanics of power in social organisations very often gives such people a path to power and a chance to legitimately satisfy their inclinations.
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Mobson
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caissier
Oct 11 2012, 11:09 AM
Yes ..... very often people suck up to bullies, perhaps to sycophantically appease them or perhaps for other complex reasons .... such as to vicariously join in with the crimes. It is clear that Stalin was a sadistic pathological monster on a stupendous scale. It is an alarming thing that the mechanics of power in social organisations very often gives such people a path to power and a chance to legitimately satisfy their inclinations.
Yes that it so true....I have met a few such people in various walks of life, particularly in the course of business! I will not name them as they are very much alive - for now! <cool>
Edited by Mobson, Oct 11 2012, 11:14 AM.
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caissier
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Ahh .... go-arnn !
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waiting4atickle
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I'm reminded, as I often am, of these lines of Wordsworth's:-

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul which through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

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