>>> Rob Schaap <rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au> 05/24/00 12:35AM >>>
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'.
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CB: What's really worrying is your dogmatic liberalism. Anytime I say something you disagree with your kneejerk reaction is to call it "bureaucratic" or an echo of Stalin.
Lets put is this way. So what if Hobsbawn said it ? Who is Hobsbawn , and why should we pay special attention to what he says ?
Well, the only reason Brad D. thinks Hobsbawn's saying it is significant, IS BECAUSE HOBSBAWN IS A FAMOUS MARXIST ( which is ridiculous , since Brad is an anti-Marxist. He only brings up what Marxist says when it is anti-communist)
So what ? Lots of famous Marxists go wrong. Stalin was a famous Marxist who went wrong.
Stalin was a famous Marxist who went wrong ,so why are you and Brad so surprised that a famous Marxist could go wrong. I believe Brad and you think Lenin went wrong. So, why couldn't Hobsbawn BE wrong on this issue. Ironically, Brad and you are appealing to Hobsbawn's Marxist credentials, when Brad , at least is an anti-Marxist.
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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.
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CB: You are begging the question. What you assert in your last sentence is the issue in dispute, which you cannot settle by merely asserting your position.
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We are allowed occasionally to agree with each other, aren't we?
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CB: Natch, you are both kinda liberals, why wouldn't you agree all the time ?
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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?
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CB: Stalin did a lot of good stuff before he went bad too.
CB