Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012)

Submitted by AWL on 1 October, 2012 - 9:00

Historian Eric Hobsbawm has died. We send our condolences to his family and friends, but Hobsbawm was a political figure — he deserves to be judged and commented on politically.

Unfortunately, Hobsbawm was not the "Marxist historian" he is usually described as, but a Stalinist, through many twists and turns, to the very end. He was also one of the Communist Party intellectuals who provided the Labour right with a theoretical justification for their retreat from anything resembling class politics during the 1980s.

We will print an obituary soon [we did - see here]. Meanwhile:

Comment on Eric Hobsbawm's 2007 Guardian article on the Spanish revolution

Article on the 1956 Hungarian revolution, discussing Hobsbawm's role in creating myths about criticism of Stalin within the Stalinist movement

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