[PEN-L:30449] eric hobsbawm interview

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Man of the extreme century
Sunday September 22, 2002
The Observer

[snip]

TH: So much of the current surge in history has to do with English and
British identity. What came out from your autobiography was a strong
affection for England and your own sense of Englishness. Do you think the
public obsession with British roots and identity illustrates a fallow
intellectual retreat? We seem to be returning to nation-state history and an
insecurity about our identity.

EH: Nation-state history is probably the most damaging part of history today
since the world cannot be understood in terms of nation states. On the other
hand, it's very difficult to know how to break away from it since schools
are essentially geared to states.

[snip]

EH: Why I stayed [in the Communist Party] is not a political question about
communism, it's a one-off biographical question. It wasn't out of
idealisation of the October Revolution. I'm not an idealiser. One should not
delude oneself about the people or things one cares most about in one's
life. Communism is one of these things and I've done my best not to delude
myself about it even though I was loyal to it and to its memory. The
phenomenon of communism and the passion it aroused is specific to the
twentieth century. It was a combination of the great hopes which were
brought with progress and the belief in human improvement during the
nineteenth century along with the discovery that the bourgeois society in
which we live (however great and successful) did not work and at certain
stages looked as though it was on the verge of collapse. And it did collapse
and generated awful nightmares.

I don't think that this particular movement is likely to revive, certainly
not as a global movement of its kind because its particular historical
moment has passed.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/history/story/0,6000,796548,00.html