For Lefties too Stubborn to Quit
I don’t know if people are interested but GA Cohen, author of Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence has died. His Guardian obituary is here. I’ve never read his book myself to be honest, but I imagine some of the readership here will have done so.
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I’d never heard of him previously,but his work sounds
interesting. RIP.
On the subject of Marxist historians, I have enjoyed reading
sections of G. E. M. de Ste. Croix’s “Class Struggle in the
Ancient Greek World” but never finished the whole book.
Never read that either Starkadder. Really showing my ignorance with this thread!
Ive just read the famous ‘theoretical’ chapter on defining class in de Ste Croix’s book. It is a very clear exposition of his take the Marxist view of class. Since Im not that interested in classical history, like Strakadder I didn’t read the rest of the book!
As for the works of Marxist or Marxisante historians, naturally E.P. Thompson’s ‘The Making of the English Working Class’ and C.L.R. James’s ‘The Black Jacobins’ rank right up at the top but my own favourites are ‘The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century’ by Peter Linebaugh and ‘The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic’ by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker. Both are great reads and classic examples of history from below.
Ive never read Cohen’s work, Ive an irrational aversion to ‘analytical marxists’ perhaps because some of them turned out to be not very marxist, or even socialist, at all in the long run (Cohen obviously does not fit that trajectory) and their work did not seem to be connected in any way to real struggle. Still I might have a read of Cohen’s work, now that Ive read his obituary.
I read an essay of Cohen’s in a collection on Analytic Marxism – it’s such a beautifully English idea: you grew up with logical positivism, but you’re attracted to Marxism, so you try and fudge a compromise between the two, despite the fact that the latter is rooted in an entirely different way of doing philosophy. It’s a very C of E kind of approach…
No Hobsbawm in your list Colm? Surely the best?
Surely the best? Only if you’re a Stalinist.
Cohen made two important contributions to the left, broadly defined.
First, he refuted, comprehensively enough, the most important elements of Robert Nozick’s libertarian philosophy. Secondly, he punctured much of the self-regard of the centre/soft-left liberalism of the various followers of John Rawls. To the latter end, Cohen’s recently published “Rescuing Justice and Equality (from the Rawlsians)” is, apparently, a decisive contribution.
For an altogether more hostile view of Cohen, and analytical Marxism, look up Louis Proyect’s “An Unrepentant Marxist” blog.
It’s easy to dismiss analytical Marxism, given that it was largely detached from political struggle and eschewed class politics and rarely mentioned or discussed class. But without it academic political philosophy would be even more comprehensively dominated by John Rawls groupies. Now, that many overstate drammatically the degree of influence debates in political philosophy have on how we understand current events. But there’s enough half-undertood, half-baked juvenile libertarianism in our right wing commentariat and bloggers to convince me that Nozick, for one, has had an influence. And, enough half-baked Rawlsianism in our Labour Party as well.
Finally, Cohen’s “If Your and Egalitarian How Come You’re So Rich” is worth a look at for anyone seeking a soft-ish intro into his thought and for the autobiographical sections dealing with his upbrining in a Yiddish speaking Marxist community in Montreal. Though apparently he’ll have a short book arguing for socialism, out later this month.
Crooked Timber held a great reading group on Rescuing Justice and Equality earlier in the year.
One of the most important critiques of the Rawlsian approach? Absolutely. Decisive? I wouldn’t be so sure about that.
RIP.
Fuck. That’s sad news. Gerry was one of my lecturers at university in the early 80s (Marxism, obviously). I didn’t pay enough attention at the time to appreciate his arguments – I thouhgt I knew it all then and haven’t changed much since – but with the benefit of hindsight and lots of reading in the intervening years I can understand exactly why the Analytical Marxist school took off and why its proponents tried to salvage something from the decimation of Marxist theory by a slew of economists right back to Joan Robinson and through to Sraffa, Steedman, Kolakowski, and my old mate Castoriadis.
Colm B., you have great taste in historians.
Marcus Rediker has a new book out, The Slave Ship, which is up there with Linebaugh’s, as you’d expect.
http://counago-and-spaves.blogspot.com/2009/02/everywhere-in-chains.html
Cheers.
Sad news.
I tend to agree with CMK that Cohen’s more significant contributions were his critiques of Nozick and Rawls rather than his more famous “Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence”. I was very interested in and influenced by that book as an undergraduate, but in retrospect it was a very sophisticated version of “vulgar Marxism”, if you will excuse the seeming contradiction..
Dr. X on Hobsbawm above
“Surely the best? Only if you’re a Stalinist.”
That’s an extremely reductionist approach to one of the greatest historians of the last century. Uncharacteristically so if I may say so. He has a range and an influence that no other Marxist historian from Britain has come close to matching.
You may find Thompson’s politics more appealing, but his work romanticises the working class much more than Hobsbawm’s, fantastic book though The Making of the English Working Class may be. I’ve read part of that Many-Headed Hydra book Colm refers to. I think it is guilty of the same.
Always nice when the trollees rise to the bait.
Well I have such a low opinion of you Euros that I believed it :p
John, I havent managed to get my hands on The Slave Ship but its definitely on my ‘to read’ list.
Garibaldy, Hobsbawm is definitely one of the greats in terms of the breadth and readability of his books. ‘The Age of …’ series are incredible sweeping pictures of the development of global capitalism. Ive just re-read ‘Bandits’, a highly entertaining read. Needless to say, his politics is not my cup of tea: I’d characterise it as somthing like ‘social-democratic popular-frontism’ but thats another days row!
I forgot to mention another fantastic read: the American marxist geographer Mike Davis’s ‘Late Victorian Holocausts’ (or indeed any of his works including his magesterial ‘City of Quartz’ on LA): among other things a comprehensive debunking of the notion that British Imperialism was in some way progressive, though it doesn’t deal with the Irish Great Famine as it is focussed on the ‘third world’. ‘Britains Gulag’ by Caroline Elkin, written by a traditional rather than a marxist historian, does the same job via a fine-grained study of British state’s genocidal campaign in pre-independence Kenya.
Didn’t enjoy Many-Headed Hydra myself, but mainly because of the structure. I just this week managed to get hold of Customs in Common, apparently the companion piece to Making of the English Working Class, but obviously haven’t read it yet. Anyone know it?
Davis’s Planet of Slums is slight, ugly, and compelling, too, Colm. I’ve had City of Quartz on my shelf for years and still haven’t got round to it. Late Victorian Holocausts will go on the list. Cheers.
Federici’s Caliban and the Witch is another non-Marxist materialist history worth seeking out.
Colm,
The Age of series is great. I don’t think Hobsbawm as anyone close to an equal. I’ve never read any of those other books. As an aside, I don’t think the famine belongs in a discussion with Africa and Asia, but that’s another day’s row as well. Nor any of those John mentions either.
Pure schadenfreude, I admit, but I did allow myself a wry smile when I read in Hobsbawm’s autobiography how annoyed he was when his holiday cottage was burned down by Welsh nationalists.
Most amusing. It’s another one of those books sitting unopened on the shelf so I never heard that story. Proof that Hobsbawm was right about the evils of nationalism though
He was very keen on the evils of little-nation nationalism methinks but not so much from Eric H. on the evils of big-power nationalism.
And while we’re on the subject there’s a good succinct critique of Hobsbawm take on nationalism in Jim Mac Laughlin’s ‘Reimagining the Nation-State’. McL is a lefty Geographer based in UCC. Sorry comrades, really pushing the old map-nerds today!
John, ‘Customs in Common’ is really a collection of articles by Thompson. I love the one on ‘Rough Music’, fascinating stuff.
I’d have thought Colm that he was very harsh on big power nationalism from what I remember of Age of Empire and Age of Extremes. And his stuff about the danger of nationalism in the contemporary and future period is about more than little nation nationalism I’d have thought too.
“Many Headed Hydra” was a terrible example of great material ruined by soon- to- be dated theoretical apparatus.
I very much like the idea of sophisticated vulgar Marxism…
He may well be a critic of imperialism but its connection with ‘big-nation’ nationalism largely eludes him. He seems to reserve his greatest hostility to the nationalism of small nations, especially in Europe. Not that I’m into a scriptural approach to Marx but Hobsbawm position contrasts markedly with Marx’s mature view on the struggles of the Irish, Poles etc.
Chapters 1 and 4 of Mac Laughlin’s book is well-worth a read: he summarises and critiques various approaches by leftists to small-nation nationalism, including Anderson, Hobsbawm, Gramsci etc.
BTW While I don’t buy the whole package, Andersons ‘Imagined Communities’ is a must-read for anyone interested in theories of nationalism.
I’m very fond of Anderson. I agree, it’s not the final word, or anywhere near it, but… it makes a lot of sense.
I agree with Dr. X on Hobsbawm. He was good on economic and political stuff but much less so on culture. ‘Primitive rebels’ and ‘Bandits’ continually get mixed up between literature or folklore and actual bandits, and are a bit condescending about what he calls ‘pre-modern’ protest. His stuff on nationalism is also condescending – his work on ‘invented traditions’, which had a major influence on Irish historians, assumes that most people will accept any old crap that elites or states present to them. In Garibaldy’s terms, that means I romanticise the working class. Fair enough.
‘Customs in Common’ is a great book and a very handy way of getting EP Thompson’s two most influential historical essays, ‘The moral economy of the crowd’ and ‘Time, work discipline and industrial capitalism’ (unfortunately it doesn’t have his essay on anonymous threatening letters in the 18th century which is also wonderful). Thompson was far from being condescending to ordinary people in the past, but could be pretty condescending to people in the present when he should have known better – I’m thinking of Leszek Kolakowski who is also worth an RIP here since he died in July.
Hi Bartholomew–
Thanks for that re: Customs in Common. I’m very disappointed about the omission, mind you. It sounds great.
There’s a riposte to Thompson by Kolakowski in his book “My Correct Views on Everything,” a book almost worth seeking out for the title alone, but sadly not for much else.
[...] and have been spurred into action by the discussion of his and other historians’ works on the G A Cohen thread. Overy’s book is an examination of the fear in British intellectual life that the end of [...]
Colm,
I’d say he sees big power nationalism as a fundamental part of imperialism from what I remember of those books. Imagined Communities I agree is fundamental to all this, though like you I have problems with it.
Bartholomew,
I’m not sure that invented traditions did make that assumption. I think it’s not unreasonable to say that the C19th and early C20th saw a concerted effort by the elites in many societies to use nationalism to gain popular support for conservative governments. And that this involved a great deal of constructing historical pasts that suited those efforts. I don’t think that nations suddenly popped up in that period as some might argue, but I think there is definitely a historical phenomenon that needs to be explained.
To explain my Thompson remark. The Making of the English Working Class was a superb and ground-breaking book. But it saw revolution and radicalism in many places where it did not exist, and ignored popular conservatism. That’s what I meant by romanticising the working class.
If the jibe fits Garibaldy, not only is Hobsbawm a stalinist but he is a mockney English bourgeois elitist to, which explains his stalinism perfectly, how can a man who prattles on about the evils of imperialism/capitalism take one of Betsy’s trinkets, a women who sits comfortably at the pinnacle of the English class system.
Does he write well yes, I have two of his books on my shelf, as a man he is a piece of shit, come on, he is a historian, yet he refuses to explain adequately his acquiescence to mass murder and the forced labour of millions of workers
I often wonder if he has even read Marx let alone understood a word of what the old beard wrote. To me he epitomizes far to many of these middle class intellectuals who pat us workers on the head patronizingly; and then go on about how Marx arms them for the class struggle; and then, on almost all the big issues they fuck up badly. Some armory me thinks.
Christ you do not need to be clever to understand the evil that is stalinism, or the wretched history of capitalism, you just need a decent heart, an average brain and a good pair of eyes.
Didn’t Orwell say something about there being some things so daft only an intellectual could believe them?
Off the top of my head I seem to recall that he actually did explain his remaining with the CP during the period you mention.
Now that I think about it, and after Mick’s comment, there is of course the fact that Hobsbawm was connected to the Marxism Today crowd, which really drives home the uselessness of the term stalinist as an political label when it applies to say both Martin Jacques and Chairman Mao.
Anyway, Mick, regardless of his personal politics (which aren’t of course mine), the man is an immensely talented historian, which was the point I was making. I think his strength lies not only in his appreciation of the wretched history of capitalism, but in his understanding of popular movements, and in his ability to write history that stretches across not only countries but continennts.
What I meant about Hobsbawm’s use of invented tradition is that as an approach it assumes that popular political consciousness is highly malleable and that entirely new traditions are easy to establish. But I would say that to be successful, a myth or a ritual has to correspond to something real and already established in the lives of those who participate in it, at least at the point where it is being introduced, or ‘invented’. But Hobsbawm doesn’t really consider the reception of these new rituals.
About small-state nationalism – Hobsbawm’s autobiography, which John Green referred to, is very sneering about Welsh nationalists and Welsh speakers in general. When he’s describing his holidays in Wales, he lists every other English/Cambridge academic or artist holidaying in the same area but not the name of a single local Welsh person. Very colonial.
By the way, I half-remember reading something by Brendan Clifford a few years ago which criticised Hobsbawm for never having anything at all to say on Northern Ireland during the whole period of the troubles. Is this true?
Garibaldy,
I agree he wrote well, but I wonder why he has been given such prominence at a time when we lack a prominent revolutionary historian. It seems to me he is defeatist to the core, could that be why he seems to have had his own revolving door into the USA through out the Bush years and before.
You failed to mention his willingness to accept Betsy’s gongs, which is something I am certain you would not overlook were it almost anyone else. For it discredits him totally as a radical voice and you must know that comrade. I ask you how could such a thing not influence what he writes?
Your mistaken about the uselessness of the Stalinist tag when it is applied to such diverse individuals as Hobsbawn, Jacques and Mao, For what all three, [and others] have in common is they allowed their views of Stalin to be benchmarked by the Trotsky-Stalin controversy; and especially by Leon Trotsky and his heirs, and by doing this willingly placed themselves in the camp of Stalin.
Bartholomew
It is probably true as it would have either pitted him against his English establishment sponsors or exposed him as, well what?
Mick,
I forgot to respond to the gong thing earlier, rather than deliberately overlooking it. I didn’t know about it until you mentioned it. I certainly think that he should not have taken it. Whether it completely discredits him or not I’m not so sure. It would discredit him politically if he were still calling himself a communist, but he isn’t.
It certainly wouldn’t in and of itself discredit his history books in my view; and certainly not those he wrote before he got it. I’m making a distinction between the historian on the one hand and the political thinker or public intellectual on the other that perhaps you aren’t.
As for why he is given such prominence. I think that the power of his work is such that he has been incredibly prominent since the 1960s, and as other people his age have died off his longevity has given him even more prominence. Think about that quote from the Observer that is on the back of the Age of Revolution – part of the mental furniture of educated Englishmen; that’s from the 1960s. The wiki page on him quotes a review of the Age of Capital in the Spectator calling him possibly the world’s greatest historians in the 1970s. It’s hardly like he appeared from nowhere recently. He was feted as one of the great historians during the Cold War as well, when he was clearly on the opposite side to the establishment.
As for America. Again, I think his intellectual distinction is and was such that it would have made them look foolish to keep him out for his politics. They would have in the McCarthy era, but he rose to prominence after it. He’s not the only British intellectual of the left who has had free access to American. People like Terry Eagleton who never shared Hobsbawm’s attitude have too. Does it discredit them in your eyes too?
Where I think you and I would differ on the question of ‘Stalinism’ as a term is that I think you think that deciding it was a good thing on balance that one won the power struggle and not the other – or even that the Soviet Union after Stalin was a good rather than a bad thing on balance – is a poison that pollutes everything else when it comes to politics. Obviously I don’t. I’m not convinced it actually matters all that much.
Bartholomew,
I think it’s fair to say that the history of the invented tradition idea is very much a top-down one. I think that one of the criticisms that could be made of Hobsbawm is a very strong belief in the power of modernity, and a willingness to dismiss anything that can be viewed as backward. That of course was typical of his generation, and reminds me a great deal of Marx and Engels.
I think that helps dictate his attitude to Welsh nationalism too. I think in the CPGB as a whole both Scottish and Welsh nationalism were – and among the circles that grew from it to an extent are – viewed as an obscanturist ideology that dented the propsects for class consciousness and united action against the elite. In fact, they probably saw it as something that objectively served the interests of the bourgeoisie. I take your point about the Welsh people, but whether that is colonial or cultural might be up for debate.
Hobsbawm does make infrequent allusions to Ireland in his work (in fact there’s one in the review I linked to the free state) but as far as I know he never wrote anything specifically on it. Again, this wouldn’t be untypical of large segments of the British left.
Garibaldy,
Even in that limited sense Stalinism matters. Not because its adherents think that the Soviet Union had some positive characteristics or that its existence was on balance a good thing – that is after all the mainstream Trotskyist view – but because its adherents present the Stalinist dictatorship as socialist and as a type of society to aspire to. If you think that democracy is a key part of any future society worth having this tends to both discredit socialism as a political goal and to discredit the particular organisations which have a new Albania or wherever as their goal.
Stalinism of course actually means more than that. It is a distinct political movement adhering to a set of distinctive political positions.
“Stalinism of course actually means more than that. It is a distinct political movement adhering to a set of distinctive political positions.”
Mark P.
Exactly; and the democratic rights of the working classes is not one of those distinctive political positions and this absence means in the long run as history has proved, any ‘socialist’ state set up along Stalinist lines will not only end up being a disaster for the workers, but it will also end in failure. To suggest it does not matter is to fail to understand why millions of workers are apprehensive about throwing in their lot with us socialists.
Unless we understand clearly our task, nay our duty, is to widen the democratic envelope, we are doomed to continuing impotence and rightly so.
This is why it is so important to understand the history of Stalinism, the very future of our movement depends upon it, and to wash away the Stalinist years as if they were some kind of aberration can only have disastrous consequences for the future of socialism. For comrades may deny the facts before their very eyes, but the mass of working class people will not, and unless we decisively reject Stalinism, we will never gain the masses support.
Garibaldy
Your argument about why the western media gives such prominence to Hobsbawn simply does not hold water, academia perhaps, by the mainstream media no. I read only the other day, the BBC gives on average 5% coverage to progressive voices. Something which I am sure you would agree is a deliberate decision on the part of senior management to deny the airwaves to left wingers, not some, dare I say it, a mistake or ‘aberration.’
You say Hobsbawn is no longer a communist, not sure why you say this, he seems to have much the same top down views as he has always proclaimed, but in any case he is positioned as being on the left by the mainstream media, just as Nick Cohen, Hitchen’s and there ilk are, can you see where I am heading here?
I have no wish to divert this thread further, so I intend to answer you more fully in a piece for my blog. I have a lot of time for you, but I have a major problem reconciling your position on Stalinism with much of the excellent stuff you write.
Mark and Mick,
I think the three of us can agree to differ on us, especially as Mark and I have been around these houses before. All I will say is that I would differ with you two in so far as I don’t believe that the set of political positions you identify with the term have much relevance today because the historical conditions in which they emerged are gone forever and can never – and should never – be recreated. It’s about as relevant in my view as believing that Robespierre was correct as opposed to say Danton or Hebert during the French Revolution. In terms of democracy, in a localised context, I’ll just point to the record of pushing for democratic rights and the creation of a democratic culture north and south of those people sometimes termed Stalinists, when many others were condemning this as useless reformism.
Mick,
I’ll happily agree with you about the deliberate marginalising of progressive voices in the media, and that what tends to happen is that the media alight on certain people, and turn to them consistently. More often than not it’s people like Ganley, but sometimes its people like Joe Higgins. As often as not, especially in the British media, it’s got to do with personal connections from school and university. I definitely do think there are some people promoted for the political reasons of the media and their masters – say Anthony McIntyre – but that doesn’t necessarily discredit the individuals so chosen, or that they are deliberately tailoring their message to what the media wants.
Hobsbawm no longer describes himself as a communist. I can see where you’re heading, and as you’ll see from the above I agree with you to an extent.
Garibaldy,
Tell the people of North Korea that this discussion is as relevant as discussions over the relative merits of the political programmes of Robespierre and Danton. You know, the people who live in the dictatorial shit hole the currently existing Stalinist parties, including your own, suck up to the ruling party of. Did the Workers Party send fraternal greetings to the Workers Party of Korea this year?
A considerable number of people still live under the boot of various Stalinist dictatorships. Any adult anywhere in the world can remember when even more of the world was in such a situation. Any child over the age of literacy has access to countless books on the subject. This stuff is relevant and will continue to be relevant for as long as the countless crimes of Stalinism effect the popular understanding of socialism.
We maintain fraternal relations with the WPK,. Like I say, we clearly take fundamentally different views on all this. I’m sure we can reconvene on Organized Rage when Mick puts his post up there.
Sonofstan #4 has Cohen exactly backwards – Cohen grew up in Marxism and was attracted to analytic philosophy. And he wasn’t English.
You can hear an obituary of GA Cohen on BBC Radio 4′s Last Word here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00lywv8 (7 min 40 seconds in)
Thanks to Ciarán and Tim for those links. Very interesting.