The Late Show - Eric Hobsbawm - Age of Extremes (24 October 1994)

[@michaeltaylor6782]

Christ, this makes me feel old. I remember watching this when it was first broadcast.

[@samibabar]

The ending! A classic slap on the face of modern civilization by one of the greatest historian.

[@willhovell9019]

Such a great intellect and analysis of the 20th century . He responded well some of Ignatief's dafter questions, and used them as a vehicle to expound his thoughtful views.

[@teebeedahbow]

really?

[@gustavoemannueldeangolasil243]

Don't see like this,he a hipocrosy.

[@aickensun7246]

The Age of Extremes is lasting to today, to every moment we experience. The Conflicts of multiple ideologies under the Capitalism Society are growing in a terrifying sheer pace, These phenomena are obvious on Twitter or any social medias you could find.

[@aickensun7246]

if I had chance to make a time travel, I would choose to have a talk with Hobsbawm, I need his words or opinions on the monstrosity world we are in nowadays.

[@THEPBFELIPE]

Profoundly admirable. The kind of man who seems to love humanity.

[@m1k2n9]

😂😂 Definitively, it loves humanity so much that killing 15 to 20 million people are just a little thing...kkk [13’30’’] M Ignatieff: So what that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of 15, 20 million people might have been justified. [13’42’’] E Hobsbawn: Yes.

[@stephenspence-d9q]

@@m1k2n9 Excellent response. Of course it is no surprise that you did not get a reply.

[@Respect____91]

Who is watching this after 10 yrs✋🏻

[@rachelsanger8629]

Me in Stockholm. My friend in London is also watching. An excellent and interesting talk, so rational and so measured in both manner and content. A rarity nowaday. How marvellously prescient he was about the coming degradation of our culture.

[@jodawgsup]

@@rachelsanger8629 "degradation of our culture" in what sense?

[@drmayookhdave]

This man is primarily and historian and not a communist he has inspired me by giving prophetic revelation in his book age of extremes which has come to life now and will.

[@johndeagle4389]

Hobsbawm was a Marxist until the day he died.

[@virtuousglean7216]

@@johndeagle4389 And still primarily a historian.

[@IsmailofeRegime]

@@virtuousglean7216 Saying "primarily" implies that Marxism (which includes what is known as historical materialism) is completely separate from the study of history, as if being a Marxist in this context is akin to being a gardener or a football player.

[@virtuousglean7216]

@@IsmailofeRegime False. True historians who are also conservative respect this man as a historian as well. Being denied legitimacy in trying to poison the well (logical fallacy) is not a me problem. Just cope.

[@IsmailofeRegime]

​@@virtuousglean7216 And there were/are Marxist historians who have respected conservative historians as well. What's your point? Marxism isn't something incidental or irrelevant to Hobsbawm's work as a historian. "Legitimacy" has nothing to do with it unless you think being a Marxist makes someone incapable of researching and writing "real" history.

[@MrBolaextra]

We should be thankful for his honesty and scholarship.

[@busterbiloxi3833]

Are you crazy? He’s a complete liar.

[@lucbral30]

The Age of Barbarism, once again he was right, as one can see the comments below. Great mind and work, RIP.

[@awesomeavenger2810]

You'd be hard pressed to find a more barbarous ideology than the one this rancid old fucker supported.

[@karolgolden231]

Who is a great mind, Hobswam? This man was crazy as fuck. He said killing millions of people for crazy communist ideology was worth to do it also he said killing thousands and thousands people durning Warsaw Uprising was an punishment for them. He said many many more crazy things, he was crazy commie.

[@v.mvarga4979]

Hobsbawm being a household name in most universities across the world makes you wonder how delusional most historians are, i said this as i am an historian myself who works in the field since 15 years now. It's so crazy that, not only a maniac but a man with so many fallacies in his whole work gets so much respect to this day. Then you have people like the first commenter that never got out of the socialist bubble that encapsulates historic science.

[@kescowethtys]

@@awesomeavenger2810 We've been fed a pack of fascist bullshit, pal.

[@rorojara001]

@@awesomeavenger2810 Yep, that ideology Was 19th century economic liberalism, I'm absoluetely laughing at your emotional, unthinking and ignorant comment. I defy you to live hoy the 60% of People lived in the victorian slums, or With famine in India and China, or with the Irish murderous mafias of the Jacksonian era. If you were a true and doctrinaire liberal, you can move inmediatly to Dharavi, India. You will experience the plenty of classical liberalism.

[@DgzM67]

Both this guy and Carl Sagan, I can easily shed a tear thinking they are not around anymore...

[@m1k2n9]

😂😂😂 about Sagan I dont have any opinion, but about Hobsbawn the relatives of those 15 to 20 million lives that were killed for the "radiant tomorrow" that never happened have certainly shed many tears...

[@wolfwind1]

Regarding filming, and the closeness of the camera on the interview subject, this was another fad in the 80's and 90's as if getting as close as possible would reveal something unseeable from one and a half foot away, regarding insight or meaning either being conveyed to or seen by the viewer. Nostril hair and spittle on lips and decaying teeth do not convey anything, especially in non-drama filming, such as interviews. It's actually a limited technique in its value and overused of course. Same as the ridiculous 'shaking camera' effect pervasive now to simulate the camera as the human head of the viewer and giving a 'real life' effect. For the most part, this new fad has ruined filmmaking and television in our current day.

[@alfielb8040]

good comment.

[@gustavoemannueldeangolasil243]

He suffer with National German socialism, but the holodomor starvin death white stalin sell grain around of the world. Slaugther by foolish scroudel dirty politicol ideal of powefull.

[@HaseebKhan-nb2bv]

I am reading this comment after 6 years but is worth appreciation

[@InnocenceExperience]

thanks. Saw this the other night & hoped it would be on youtube.

[@matheuscardosodasilva6163]

The major biographer of 20th Century. RIP

[@raushankabir9733]

greatest historian of all time....your books would be ultimate guide for....future...***********

[@blackrose89-96]

ooo i totally agree with you!!!! the greatest historian of all time!!

[@ianwilliams6042]

Does the camera have to be so close to Hobsbawm's face. It doesn't flatter him.

[@queenanne5917]

You can see the roots of his teeth

Least you can say about it!

[@chusty93]

To all those who make a scandal about 13:30, please, see the whole interview, he was asked nota bout his current position about the mass murders by Stalin, he was asked if knowing about the mass murders would have changed his position towards communism at that time, when he was young during the 30's.

[@pliniojunior9208]

I tend do disagree but still... how many more people will have to die to build the "radiant tomorrow" for people who still suports this idea TODAY?

[@chusty93]

@@pliniojunior9208 I don't know honestly. There are almost no Stalinists nowadays. Most of them stopped being communists at some point, mainly after the dissolution of the ussr. Though Hobsbawm stopped being communist much before, though he remained a Marxist. He makes a clear point in this, at the time mass murders were common, so it order to achieve a radiant future it was acceptable. But after the WWII and Stalinism it became unacceptable and such a price was no longer acceptable.

[@pliniojunior9208]

@@chusty93 yeah, I get what you mean. Unfortunately i have to say that the latin-american lefts are quite essentially stalinists, in plain XXI century. The european left has distanced itself from the horrors of USRR but the latin american ones are still regarding Cuba as the standard of the progress and all. x

[@chusty93]

@@pliniojunior9208 I don't know. Here in Argentina there are not many Stalinists left. Only a handful of Trotskyists who are quite critical of Stalinist countries.

[@pliniojunior9208]

@@chusty93 That's very fortunate for you hermano. Here in Brazil our foreign policy and some Heads of most of left parties are quite stalinists.

[@jabel6434]

History gives us hind sights that can be turned into foresights in the present

[@Rorschach1974]

Ele parece pensar nas pessoas como se elas não fossem reais, mas apenas personagens literários!

[@marcussoares3209]

Perfeito!

[@Samuel-rh9fk]

não atoa apoia o genocidio de 20 milhões de pessoas

[@Samuel-rh9fk]

Tanto que defende matar 20 milhões de pessoas pelo esquerdismo

[@Rorschach1974]

13:30

[@Doudrigo]

Thanks. I was looking for this.

[@davia.3485]

Vim por essa parte, n acreditava q alguem pudesse falar uma barbaridade dessa

[@thenicollas]

@@davia.3485 Vim pelo Impérios AD kkkkkk.

[@DJsaima]

What a pleasure to hear this great historian. He had his political beliefs like we all do.

[@drmayookhdave]

The world is missing historians.

[@teebeedahbow]

Actually, there are quite a few really good ones writing in English... Adam Tooze, Christopher Clarke etc etc etc

[@jacpratt8608]

Try Timothy Snyder, on YT. Must be 10 years worth of long lectures. Similar subject matter, time range in there. But no way is he a Commo. Or you could read 10 books by AJP Taylor. Not Commo either.

[@pulgasari]

I can't tell how much of Ignatieff's ignorance is willful vs natural. But it does rather blight this interview

[@josephgreen2824]

He is so naive

[@slacker50x]

What a comprised soul.

[@m1k2n9]

😂😂😂😂 definitively, a jhigly accomplished soul see by yourselves: [13’30’’] M Ignatieff: So what that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of 15, 20 million people might have been justified. [13’42’’] E Hobsbawn: Yes.

[@andrewahonen6721]

Fascinating portrait. Michael Ignatieff seems utterly unconscious, desperate to assert some sort of neoliberal ideological historical supremacy that really hasn't aged well (after Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, etc.), while Hobsbawm's stature continues to grow.

[@Samuel-rh9fk]

He supports the genocide of 20 million people. Great stature.

[@halvaman3]

13:30 Unbelievable. He gets away with it.

[@arambadalyan2469]

Lol before that he said that the 1930s purges have no effect on his support for Communism

[@chusty93]

@@arambadalyan2469 No, he said that the 1930's purges wouldn't have had any effect on his support for communism AT THAT TIME, when he was a young communist, not now. The interviewer asked him if knowing all that about gulags would have changed his support of communism when he was young.

[@IsmailofeRegime]

@@chusty93 It's also worth noting that "communism" in this context can refer to Marxism, the Soviet Union (and by extension the CPGB), or both things. There were quite a few individuals who publicly or privately deplored the Great Purges yet still considered themselves Marxists. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself from 1956 onward described the mid-late 30s as having contained "violations of socialist legality" and groundless repressions.

[@gardeniabee]

He reports the historical contast: Looking back people think the loss of life in WWI not “worth“ the outcome, yet the even greater loss of life in WWII worth the outcome. What is it about the times that makes the previous loss a tragedy, and the second loss a victory for humanity?

[@teebeedahbow]

22'48'' For all his undoubted brilliance and achievements as a writer and historian, this kind of equivocation represents an unforgivable moral and political flaw. Hitler represented 'liberation' in many people's eyes, and for that matter still does, if death be liberation, that is.

[@jtcarbonaro7566]

It's a citation.

[@teebeedahbow]

@@jtcarbonaro7566 it is, but it seems to be cited with approval, and it is, in my opinion, a quite revolting thing to say. This massive fault in Hobsbawn needs to be addressed - indeed I think Tony Judt already sunk him as a serious thinker. His tone is horrible, those selfish Russians, trying to compare Stalin to Hitler... two masters of death. He talks about '57... what about the attacks on civilians by Russian tanks in East Germany in '53? Hobsbawm knew everything. He'd have known intimately about those.

[@untwerf]

Can someone explain that "rape rape rape" joke that Ignatieff tells at 23:00 ? I genuinely don't get it ... !

[@Lucas-q9n3n]

i heard ripe ripe, but did not understand too

[@depapier]

What a terrible interview. So many things could have been discussed on the occasion of this book, yet the host is unable to move past the tabloid type of question, talking over and over about the same thing, when Hobsbawm has clearly answered the question from multiple points of view. Perhaps it is important to mention that Ignatieff actually has been a politician and a pundit, not a journalist or historian.

[@xiaowang9302]

10:48 and the long silence

[@dingane]

When he wasn't talking about communism (see the first five minute and last five minutes of this interview) Eric Hobsbawm was a brilliant man, if somewhat pessimistic. When he talked about communism and his own part in the communist movement, his emotions seemed to get the better of him absolutely and cloud his judgement.

[@GMMandetowitch]

I think it was quite the opposite. He sheds light into what meant to be a communist at that time, the level of acriticism towards the reality of Soviet Union, the very concrete reasons why foreing communist parties felt compelled to develop that level of acriticism, which now, in retrospect, can be seen as false or naive, etc. He is then honest about the past, but nonetheless sticks to the idea that the truth of that past can only be grasped entirely in retrospect, and in this regard, I think he get's to the core of ideology, as it is best understood: a false but necessary form of counsciousness, strictly related to historical conditions and so on.

[@Isoviaergatis]

Ignatieff makes the stupidest questions

[@gustavoemannueldeangolasil243]

Why?

[@bobsims8828]

I have been watching Cosmos recently. I agree with your comment. Humanist beacons that offer hope above the cynicism.

[@YTC1234]

Carl Sagan is irrelevant to a historical video. He's a scientist, not an historian.

[@rogerlunde8668]

Så see now what Hobsbown ment, darkness.

[@Ynimixer]

13:30 based

[@oooright]

Squinty maglinder like name of Ren

[@tomdrowry]

Born in Egypt to a Polish father and Austrian mother, how can he be described as English? He hated England and was a 'Bollinger Bolshevik' who left £ 2 million in his will.

[@fransciscoau]

Um I see, having lived his entire life in the UK from about the age of 17 he cannot be called British, or English.........please! What has his will got to do with his work as a successful historian?

[@GOLDSMITHEXILE]

why would a marxist have 2 million in an estate? I thought inherited wealth was anathema to his sort. Oh but I forgot they arent proper marxists unless they have their own private assets secreted away just in case. They love money, just like everyone else, in fact they love it so much they dont want anyone else to have any and hoard it for themselves, if they are a high up marxist personage, parasite hypocrites

Well, he went to Cambridge!!!

[@karolgolden231]

Thomas Drowry this man was cruel devil in love with commies and their crazy ideology. He said killing millions of people by Soviets was worth to fight for their ideology. When he died BBC CNN The Guardian paid tribute to him. Now imagine if someone would say something like that towards Jews, main stream media and others would just destroy that person.

[@pablosegalinas4261]

@@GOLDSMITHEXILE Sounds like someone is extremely jealous that the guy was making more money than him/her playing by the system's rules :) Btw, the idea that if you are a Marxist, you need to live like a medieval monk is frankly hilarious.

[@katemartin1308]

"the slaughter of the Kulaks would have been worth it if the radiant tomorrow had been created", I beg to differ

Like the slaughter of the Jews...... Eric

[@TheBirdyyeses]

Hypothetical: A car with four passengers hits a patch of ice and swerves off the road. All four members are in critical condition. Another person pulls over - they happen to have a first-aid kit that contains all of the medicines/tools necessary to save the four endangered lives. However, the individual with the medical kit is unwilling to voluntarily provide the kit, asserting that the kit is his/her/their private property. Note: You are in a remote location and all four passengers will die before medical first-responders can arrive at the case. Do you: (a) Use force to obtain the kit and, in turn, save the four lives. (b) Accept that the kit is the individual's private property and allow the four individuals to die.

[@TheBirdyyeses]

@Nix yeah exactly. I constantly see people bring up the kulaks... yet when given an identical analogy, almost all affirm that they’d have acted the same way the USSR did. Edit: keep in mind this is the easy version of the analogy (which most people still answer that force is morally permissible to save the 4). A more perfectly mapped analogy would switch the first-aid driver with a business owner of a first-aid company with scores of first aid packs in his vehicle. I think even fewer would be against using force to obtain a kit from that subject.

[@pliniojunior9208]

@@TheBirdyyeses Yeah, people wouldn't necessarily oppose using force to obtain the kit. The problem is to assume that the "collective" is legitimate to use force in whatever situation it wants. People were deliberately starved to death and enslaved so that a minor elite could have the same standards as the west. This tradeoff of having a extremely minor glimpse of whatever the "radient tomorrow" would be with all the disastreous and negative consequences it produced is not something to be argued when trying to legitimate the kulaks situation.

[@benthejrporter]

@@TheBirdyyeses It depends if the four passengers were sadistic philosophers who enjoy posing ethical dilemmas.

[@_dongato]

13:30 Eric Hobsbawn's (in)moral. Dangerous and terrorific idea.

[@paulsummerville5497]

The inhumanity of the ideological purity of what being a member of the Communist Party demanded - turning a blind eye to mass death to being told who you could date - is so profound in the case of this tortured academic that it underlines how powerful historical thinking is. It can overwhelm our deepest instincts. A figure of great tragedy.

[@tensevo]

What we see is, history will keep repeating unless we take the time to remember the past. Learn from our ancestors, instead of being a perpetual victim. ANy kind of tribalism or extremism causes us to become victims of ideology.

[@gustavoemannueldeangolasil243]

Who passion fors speak so much lie ,hitler went against democracy persecustion by cause of ethinic, race ,religion or filosopher ideologic.But lenin stalin did the same thing ,all with the excuse figthing of iquality class.

[@gardeniabee]

I conclude Eric Hobsbawm an idealist, working for “human communities taking responsibility for themselves and their future.” 30:44 He did not abandon his youthful hope for a world ( as opposed to no world) even after seeing the failure of communism unrealized in the Soviet Union. Therefore he held to the ideal. Just as we see today in America people continue to believe in the Constitution and the ideal of democracy snd capitalism, even though we see the abuse of the Bill of Rights, exploitative wars, and predatory capitalism. The failure is not in the ideal, but in the perversion of those who gain control for power, greed, and other evils.

[@kingsugulleh]

the soviet union isn't the end of communism lol. please read a book

[@latinsoundssouls]

Worrying, very worrying when murder is justified as progress, clearly a perceptive historian but the line between 2 extreme & opposite ideas is more imagined than a reality for the victims, I would humbly suggest. I guess his response would be that's the vain glory of hindsight. Unsettling.

[@awesomeavenger2810]

Let's be honest here, he was safely tucked away in Cambridge. He was never likely to be a victim of his own ideology. And didn't have the intellect to think along your lines.

[@palaaaurinkoon]

murder happens everyday in slow motion

[@TroutMaskReplicaa]

the only difference lies in hobsbawm's honesty. he has chosen an ideological standpoint knowingly and stands by it - rightly or wrongly. we live during a period where murder is routinely justified by states as by-product or evidence of progress. the extreme is hidden and the ideology of corporatism is disguised under the latest foreign policy narratives, assisted by an unthinking mainstream media that acts to legitimise criminal abuses (war on terror, ISIS, syria, iraq, libya, afghanistan).

[@NosyFella]

Do you live on a planet made of cotton candy? Mass suffering is unfortunately the norm in history, particularly in the early 20th century. That was the historical moment that informed his political leanings. Don't de-contextualise him.

[@wapo46]

Mr. Hobsbawm of blessed memory expired in October 2012.

[@hernan_972]

A bit cynical to think that the killing of 15-20 million people in the Gulags "could have" led to a world revolution. In this regard, I think Ignatieff's point of view makes more sense: there is no possibility of a world revolution if this implies the murdering of millions of people. This presupposes an interesting insight in a broader sense, and it can be briefly stated in terms of ideology vs. practice. A good example is Christianity, which throughout History, justified all of the pain inflicted on others, by the use of the same logic: the relativization of "Thou shalt not kill" and the idea that, in some cases, "You might have to kill", to defend your interests. In that sense, Communism can be seen as a sort of religion with a more rational background.

[@ramseypietronasser2]

What Hobsbawm is saying is: "socialism or barbarism." Ignatieff is a typical liberal

[@angusgus123]

It's hard not to like Hobsbawm, and his books are excellent. But listening to this interview is to be exposed to a horrifying distortion of morality.

[@DemonetisedZone]

That American guy, all thru this interview he keeps on with this "how could you" shtick Doesn't he know about American atrocities? Doesn't he know about the 20th Century? Its really tiresome

[@msmsmsms8515]

Ignatieff is Canadian buddy

[@Templar112299]

13:30 wow

[@NosyFella]

A lot of Americans will be shocked by his statement despite living in a country that owes its' existence to genocide and slavery.

[@Samuel-rh9fk]

​@@NosyFellaLie

[@MorePlausible]

Unimaginable how Hobsbawn claims it the 10+ million Stalin deaths were justified in order to create a new society.

[@aickensun7246]

Did he justify? Didn't he say the Justification to death is happening after the construction of new society? How about that: The death in USA civil war is justified after the victory of North. Oh, so pity.

[@lucianopavarotti2843]

Don't mistake this man for a kindly old professor. He was an unrepentant Stalinist who admitted it in a BBC interview where he was challenged about the mass murders of Stalin. He just shrugged it off like nothing.

[@johndorney7812]

'The Soviet Union was an awful place... we underestimated how many people had been killed and imprisoned by it.' But if it had created a new world it would have been worth it. Just crazy. You can admire Hobsbawm's intellect and writing but he had these intellectual cul de sacs from which he would not retreat. Even when he know they were worng.

[@luismoreira729]

Marxista honesto. Deve ser dos únicos.

[@dsdfsdfdsfsdfds3800]

fuck. I can read his name.

[@Maximilian0011]

is there any chance this to be a human by any chance?

[@rsns311257]

It pains me to see that a great intellectual is this this much biased and can but think in dichotomies. Sad.

[@ArslanOtcular]

Anderson Steven Miller Ruth Hernandez Steven

[@GreatMan_from_East]

Most important question 29:10 True although Communism is no more People demanding welfare as 1) affordable or Free education 2) affordable or free healthcare 3) social security or pension in old age Political Stability and social mobility among Nation will be dependent upon who provides above in the best possible way

[@GreatMan_from_East]

Although he is communist He is historian or storyteller at core

[@system1912]

7:40

[@bikeandsee1647]

Communism has not been wrong but has come too early, Marx and Lenin were too advanced for their time. Accordingly the birth of Communism was like the premature birth of a baby, hence the problems and distortions, not in the soul and feelings of this or that leader. Why this early birth of communist countries ? Because History and Nature required, or took advantage of the very existance of these revolutionary parties in order to use them as historic agents of the impending industrial revolutions in Russia and China. At the moment the Soviet Communist Party stopped to develop the URSS, its time went off. The same happened in China, with the difference that the CCP found its historical task, till now. Basically humanity is still living in the Era of the French and Industrial Revolutions, basically. At the right moment Communism will reign, since Capitalism is unable to guarantee housing, work, health and education for all, it is too pricy for the rich in their own view.

[@kescowethtys]

Yes, and the "early birth" was made both possible and necessary by the Great War .... imho.

[@jacpratt8608]

hmm. so that's what young people are thinking. I suspect China is not going to fall into the same pits others have demonstrated. China is many moves ahead. Realists.

[@slacker50x]

One can achieve extreme levels of academic intelligence, all the while gaining no wisdom at all.

[@kyuhyunjo8479]

One still needs academic intelligence to achieve something equivalent or synonymous with wisdom; those who profess to have wisdom are ideologues who do not know how or what it is that they really ought to achieve.

[@victormedeiros6890]

i'm really worried how people would rather speak whatever they think, without even THINK. he's is one of the biggest in historiography. Respect him. and oh gosh try to use this thing that you use in your head... it's called brain, and it's free i garantee. separem o joio do trigo.

[@jabel6434]

At 32:20 the answer could be put much more starkly: Using state commanded mass murder to settle conflicts of interest between nations is pure barbarism.

[@ambersmith1456]

who are u?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

As Goebbels used to say: actors and intellectuals live on the moon.

[@kyuhyunjo8479]

Funny that you believe in even a tad of morality or veracity in one of the worst murderers the world has ever produced, when Goebbels should not have lived at all.

[@danielnu389]

@@kyuhyunjo8479 He could be that worse, still doesn't invalidate the truth behind the phrase.

[@FelipePascoalin]

13:30 you can see how much evil was this man.

[@commonzac]

Not really.

[@MrBolaextra]

He wasn't evil at all. Read his recent biography by Richard J. Evans.

[@jacpratt8608]

sure you're not looking in the mirror?

[@emil_rainbow]

silly old man.

[@mattb-iq3iv]

is that necessary to take "Close up" of the disgusting face of the guy all the time?

[@bingolittle8725]

a communist

His face could have been borrowed from the "Stürmer".

[@nicksim1602]

I know it pales in comparison to Eric Hobsbawm's correct predictions regarding barbarism, prolonged wars & people 'living under conditions which should not be tolerated'. But in a much more stable west, I bet he never foresaw that 'conditions which should not be tolerated' would have been imposed politically for twenty five years by the Liberal Left. (Many thanks to the Greeks for democracy & Tim Berners-Lee for the W.W.W.)

[@kwakkers68]

Define 'Liberal Left' ?

[@nicksim1602]

Define 'Liberal Left' ? Proponents of political correctness, soft law & judicial enforcement, globalism (one world government), free movement, overt sexual immorality, pornography, irreligion, and so on. But I suspect you already know !

[@kwakkers68]

Re: "bet he never foresaw that 'conditions which should not be tolerated' would have been *imposed politically* for twenty five years by the *Liberal Left*." To 'impose' would infer political power - so, unless we're talking about Cultural aspects, consider 'Administrations' (governments) If I can ask you to refine your answer still farther, which governments might you propose to have motored these aspects? (the aspects you've listed above)

[@nicksim1602]

In our case, the Liberal left PM Tony Blair, and the Liberal PM David Cameron, (both of whom masqueraded under the Labour & conservative party's banners respectively) alongside the Liberally leftist, corporately fascist led EU ! Yes, I know, hence the immence distrust of politicians & the recent political outcomes in the UK & USA.

[@kwakkers68]

nick sim To make it more manageable, I'll break this up into segments..........

[@ROMA--AETERNA]

Hobsbawm equated what was fought for in World War II to what was fought for under Communism. UTTERLY SHOCKING! I guess Mao's China was “not really Communism”, too. …!!

[@GustavoEmmanueldeangolasilva]

A hipocroty like all socialista not thoug in many cases of slaugther by communist part. Like soviet union , china ,north korea,cuba etc...

[@TheWhitehiker]

Glad he saw the light and ditched communism! He still seems a bit naive about its goals.

It's a shame he ended up being a mutant supremacist

[@DiamorphineDeath]

I love how he finishes the introduction with a statement concerning Hobsbawm's fear of a return to barbarism. It is the domesticated and neurotic civilized being that commits 'barbaric' acts and carries themselves in such a way; the 'barbarism' that he so fears is a return to a traditional life rooted in nature and existing and not in marxist scientific theoretic's. I'll take barbarity any day of the week.

[@IsmailofeRegime]

Except there is no way to "return to a traditional life." Yearnings for such a life can only be resolved through the overcoming of capitalism, not through trying to turn back the clock. I am reminded of Friedrich Engels ridiculing Proudhon who, in effect, wanted everyone to be a self-employed artisan: "[Proudhon] wants 'eternal justice' and nothing else. Each shall receive in exchange for his product the full proceeds of his labour, the full value of his labour. But to reckon that out in a product of modern industry is a complicated matter. For modern industry obscures the particular share of the individual in the total product, which in the old individual handicraft was obviously represented by the finished product. Further, modern industry abolishes more and more the individual exchange on which Proudhon’s whole system is built up, namely direct exchange between two producers, each of whom takes the product of the other in order to consume it. Consequently a reactionary character runs throughout the whole of Proudhonism; an aversion to the industrial revolution, and the desire, sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly expressed, to drive the whole of modern industry out of the temple, steam engines, mechanical looms and the rest of the swindle, and to return to the old, respectable hand labour. That we would then lose nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our productive power, that the whole of humanity would be condemned to the worst possible labour slavery, that starvation would become the general rule - what does all that matter if only we succeed in organising exchange in such a fashion that each receives 'the full proceeds of his labour,' and that 'eternal justice' is realized?"

[@jacpratt8608]

@@IsmailofeRegime that's my man. Engels. Complex. Didn't offer simple pseudo solutions. Got his hands dirty working in the real world. He has been over looked and under rated too long. There would have been no Marx without him, which some might think no bad thing, but remember you could have got Bakunin or Proudhon, those sexist old blatherskites.

[@peterchaloner2877]

Deracinated Jew, as adrift in his thinking as was Trotsky. Hashem forgive him.

[@kescowethtys]

They were both right, but Trotsky more so.