Eric Hobsbawm, 95, one of the greatest historians of the twentieth century, has passed into history. He breathed his last in London on Monday, October 1, 2012. When his historian colleague Victor Kiernan passed away in 2009 (also at the age of 95), Hobsbawm had written in The Guardian that he was "a man of unselfconscious charm and staggeringly wide range or learning”, adding:
He was also one of the last survivors of the generation of British Marxist historians of the 1930s and 1940s… He brought to the debates of the Communist Party Historians' Group between 1946 and 1956 a persistent, if always courteous, determination to think out problems of class culture and tradition for himself, whatever the orthodox position. He continued to remain loyal to the flexible, open-minded Marxism of the Group to which he contributed so much. The words, especially those in the last sentence, apply to Hobsbawm in equal measure if not more. For he was himself one of the principal organisers and driving forces of the Group which brought together the most prominent historians of the post-war era, and they included—besides Eric and Victor—Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton, A.L. Morton, E.P. Thompson, John Seville, Ralph Samuel. As was aptly mentioned in the obituary by Martin Kettle and Dorothy Wedderburn published in The Guardian (and thereafter reproduced in The Hindu), … by the time of his death…, Hobsbawm had achieved a unique position in the country's intellectual life. In his later years Hobsbawm became arguably Britain's most respected historian of any kind, recognised if not endorsed on the Right as well as the Left, and one of a tiny handful of historians of any era to enjoy genuine national and world renown. Unlike some others, Hobsbawm achieved this wider recognition without in any major way revolting against either Marxism or Marx. In his 94th year he published How to Change the World, a vigorous defence of Marx's continuing relevance in the aftermath of the banking collapse of 2008-10. What is more, he achieved his culminating reputation at a time when the socialist ideas and projects that animated so much of his writing for well over half-a-century were in historic disarray, and worse, as he himself was always unflinchingly aware. A prolific writer, he wrote more than 30 books. Hobsbawm's Industry and Empire (1968) won him the highest esteem (it has been out of print for over 30 years). Indeed his economic history of the rise of industrial capitalism established him as a pre-eminent historian. But, as Prakash Karat, Victor Kiernan's student who kept in touch with Hobsbawm till the end as the General Secretary of the CPI-M, observed, “his great quartet—The Age of Revolution; 1789-1848 (1962), The Age of Capital: 1848-1875 (1976), The Age of Empire: 1875-1914 (1987) and The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991 (1994) —is part of the intellectual equipment of progressive people…”. In fact these were even more influential in the long term than Industry and Empire.
The Independent noted:
It would be overly cynical to suggest that Hobsbawm's success as a historian stimulated jealousy. But the esteem with which he was held evoked hostility from those who could not forgive his Communism…
It is possible that some part of his reluctance to disavow Communism even when it was failing stemmed from a wish not to betray the memory of former comrades. To be a Communist in the 1930s and ‘40s was dangerous. As he wrote, “We were not liberals. Liberalism was what had failed. In the total war we were engaged in, one did not ask oneself whether there should be a limit to the sacrifices imposed on others any more than on ourselves. Since we were not in power, or likely to be, what we expected was to be prisoners rather than jailers.”
His outstanding analysis of the present-day global situation was perhaps best mirrored in a perceptive article “Socialism has failed. Now capitalism is bankrupt. So what comes next?” that appeared in The Guardian (April 10, 2009). He concluded it as follows:
The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the “capabilities” of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy—not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis. Whatever ideological logo we choose for it, it will mean a major shift away from the free market and towards public action, a bigger shift than the British Government has yet envisaged. And, given the acuteness of the economic crisis, probably a fairly rapid shift. Time is not on our side.
During his last visit to India in 2004-05, he delivered the Second Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture (organised by The Book Review Literary Trust) in New Delhi on December 17, 2004. The lecture appeared in The Book Review (February 2005) and thereafter was reproduced, with due acknowledgement, in Mainstream (March 19, 2005). That was the time when one was privileged to meet him and hear his views on various issues including the future of the communist movement in India. He had then warmly remembered Marxist ideologue Mohit Sen and the latter's memoirs which, he felt, was an “excellent book” on our times. His own autobiography, Interesting Times (2002), brought out his association with several Indian Communist leaders while they were students in Britain and highlighted the importance, for the contemporary world, of the growing strength of the Left movement in Latin America.
As a token of our tribute to Eric Hobsbawm's abiding memory we once again reproduce here the text of his Second Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture.