[lbo-talk] Hitchens vs. Hobsbaum

[Chris Doss]

Hobsbawm, the mighty relic of the Communist left, commands respect in a
>bruising debate at Hay-on-Wye
>By Johann Hari in Hay-on-Wye
>26 May 2003
>The most keenly awaited event of the Hay-on-Wye literary festival
>approached
>yesterday, and the rumblings were felt for miles around. Eric Hobsbawm,
>the
>last relic of the pro-Soviet Union Communist left, was to be pitted
>against
>Christopher Hitchens, who has enraged the left in the past year with his
>support for George Bush's foreign policy.
>Both have had a strange year. Hobsbawm has published his autobiography,
>Interesting Times, which showed him to beunrepentant for his support for
>the
>Soviet Union. He wrote in the book that he would have spied for Joseph
>Stalin if only somebody had bothered to ask.
>Hitchens, by contrast, has been campaigning for a relentless war on
>terror,
>lecturing at the White House and agitating for Henry Kissinger to be tried
>for crimes against humanity.
>The debate, playing to a full house, began in a surprisingly affectionate
>key. Round one: Hitchens reminisced about his days as an Oxford student,
>when he would read Hobsbawm's work for "evidence of deviations from my
>Trotskyite line".
>
>He went on: "Pleasingly, there were few, and I learnt all I needed to know
>about historical materialism in the process. The fact that we now
>periodise
>history, not by the reigns of kings or queens but by eras and epochs is in
>large parts thanks to Eric.''
>Hobsbawm nodded at the compliment; clearly this verbal boxing match was
>not
>proceeding as he had expected. As Hitchens' polite questions began,
>Hobsbawm
>seemed almost irked. His replies were peppered with small gibes at
>Hitchens.
>As he explained his distaste for empire - "in any form'' - he felt obliged
>to say, "but I know that [view] is not popular in this company.''
>He even managed a jab at Hitchens from the right, complaining that the
>modernisation of the Labour Party was necessitated by "your
>infiltrationist
>friends''.
>Round two: Enter Stalin. Hitchens asked - with the same lethal deference -
>if at any time Hobsbawm feared that he had tied his life's wagon to the
>wrong cause in the 1920s when he became a Communist. Hobsbawm,
>unperturbed,
>compared the battle between the Western and Eastern blocs in the Cold War
>to
>the religious wars of the 17th century and said he hoped that soon, "we
>will
>view the 20th century in the way we now view the 17th century". He hoped
>that we had moved beyond being forced to choose between two Juggernauts.
>Yet
>he was insistent that he had made no mistakes. He was asked, if he could
>revisit his 1930s self, if he would tell little Eric that spying for
>Stalin
>was a bad idea. He said simply: "No.'' Indeed he would recommend it as
>"the
>only way to defeat Hitler''.
>Anyway, "a second Cold War'' was now beginning - he gestured to Hitchens -
>and "we are again being told to pick sides between good and evil''. This,
>he
>explained, was not the 21st century he wanted to see.
>Round three: Enter the people. An audience member asked Hobsbawm for his
>views on democracy. The historian's face puckered; the kind of society
>Hobsbawm preferred, he replied, "without special privileges for any
>groups'', was unlikely to be produced by democracy. Hitchens told Hobsbawm
>he would have made "a very good conservative don''. "Ah'', he replied,
>"But
>I was never liberal.'' The spirit of venomous attack that Hitchens is
>famous
>for seemed to flash into his eyes but he was still too respectful to land
>a
>knockout blow in favour of the revolutionary liberal democracy to which he
>is now committed.
>Hitchens seemed grudgingly to respect the old man's honesty. Even when
>Hobsbawm attacked the Iraq war, which Hitchens has tirelessly defended, he
>limited himself to saying that his opponent "subscribes to the same
>reactionary analysis of this war as Henry Kissinger''. Then, alas, the
>metaphorical bell rang - on this debate and maybe, since Hobsbawm is part
>of
>the last generation of defenders of the Soviet Union, on the debates at
>the
>heart of the 20th century.

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