[lbo-talk] Hofstadter

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Fri Mar 10 16:28:07 PST 2006


Dennis Claxton wrote:


>Doug wrote:
>
>>What do you mean by that? Isn't political history pretty important?
>
>
>Classical political history, also legal and military history, is
>associated with positivist notions of proof and is now more often
>called the "great men" school of history. It was blown out of the
>water beginning with the French Annales school in the 30s.

Now I'm confused. I thought the criticism of Hofstadter was that he blamed the masses too much for right-wing paranoia and manipulative elites too little. Now he's a Great Man theorist, just like the target of that Gang of Four song.

Doug



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