Confusion

[Rob Schaap]

G'day Charles,

There's something worryingly familiar about implying Hobsbawm must no
longer be on the side of the angels because he disagrees with you about
something - I reckon it's the kind of argument we've come to associate with
'bureaucratic centralism'.

Hobsbawm has shifted on a couple of issues during his long life, which the
honest thinker ever must (as Marx and Lenin did), but his history is the
history of a scholar who deeply understands and respects the materialist
conception of history, for mine (he's never turned into his opposite,
that's for sure_.  Sure,we can safely assume North Korea is regularly
misrepresented to us (I mean why should North Korea be any different?), but
North Korea's polity is an outrage against Marxist principles no less than
it is against Brad's liberal ones.

We are allowed occasionally to agree with each other, aren't we?

And Hobsbawm's 'Age' series is quite simply the best big-picture histories
of the last few hundred years that exist (amongst historical works - my
lifelong favourite genre - only EP Thompson's *Making of the English
Working Class* has ever filled me with the awe elicited by Hobsbawm's
genuineness, ambition, breadth, clarity, consistency, erudition and
insight).

So tread lightly when you have a go at the great man, eh?

Cheers,
Rob.