[lbo-talk] Cockburn cut back at Nation

Sean Andrews cultstud76 at gmail.com
Mon Feb 22 07:36:09 PST 2010


Seriously? I like him a great deal, but am sure he makes some factual errors in his attempt to digest all of the world at once. He has a new essay in the latest NLR about the Russian and Chinese revolutions.

It would likely give you many examples of particular errors. His longer works of history-Lineages of the Absolutist State and passages from Antiquity into Feudalism--might have errors (I'm sure by now some of the sources he relies upon have been amended) but the are useful in thinking about the dynamics of historical sociology. All that said, I think his greatest strength is as an intellectual historian, again, less because of the particular details he's able to marshal than the broad sweep. It's worth noting that the debate about theory v. history that Thompson engages in with Althusser was originally between Anderson and Tom Nairn. Whatever people think of either side of that debate, the postwar left would have been greatly impoverished without both.

s

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 06:04, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> That's the essay I was thinking of! Then again, it's pretty much the only thing I have read by Anderson...
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Mike Beggs <mikejbeggs at gmail.com>
> I like Perry Anderson an awful lot, and find him only occasionally
> pompous (e.g. titling an essay 'Jottings on the Conjuncture').
>
>
>
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