'Unrepentant Communist' Historian Eric Hobsbawm Dies Aged 95

[Dwyer]

He faced criticism in later years for continuing to promote communism long after it had been discredited in Russia and Eastern Europe . . .

Labour Party leader Ed Miliband yesterday led the tributes to a man he said had ‘brought history out of the ivory tower and into people’s lives’.

Despite his communist sympathies he was made a Companion of Honour in 1998, placing him in the ranks of luminaries such as Stephen Hawking, Doris Lessing and Sir Ian McKellen.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2211379/Leading-Marxist-historian-author-Eric-Hobsbawm-dies-aged-95-battle-pneumonia.html

I really surprised that both former Prime Minister Tony Blair and Ed Miliband, Labour Party leader, would publicly pay tribute to such a man who supported the Soviet model of Communism and the Soviet Union (even if Eric Hobsbawm was a family friend of Miliband).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hobsbawm

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Companions_of_Honour :dts:

 

[austenbosten]

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2211379/Leading-Marxist-historian-author-Eric-Hobsbawm-dies-aged-95-battle-pneumonia.html

I really surprised that both former Prime Minister Tony Blair and Ed Miliband, Labour Party leader, would publicly pay tribute to such a man who supported the Soviet model of Communism and the Soviet Union (even if Eric Hobsbawm was a family friend of Miliband).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hobsbawm

You’re surprised that Left-wing Social Democrats (which is a fancy term for a democratic slow-boat to Communism) are paying tribute to a Communist?
It doesn’t shock me in the least. Social Democrats are of the same feather as their revolutionary Socialist counterparts.

 

[EmperorNapoleon]

I really surprised that both former Prime Minister Tony Blair and Ed Miliband, Labour Party leader, would publicly pay tribute to such a man who supported the Soviet model of Communism and the Soviet Union (even if Eric Hobsbawm was a family friend of Miliband).

Eric Hobsbawm wasn’t a supporter of the USSR; which he characterized as a “pseudo-communist political system.” No true communist would have supported the USSR since it was not a communist country.

 

[jeannetherese]

It is possible to disapprove of some of the practices of the Soviet Union ( or any country for that matter) and still appreciate the work of Hobsbawm.
It is also possible to appreciate some of an author’s work or ideas awhile not being in agreement with every idea put forth.
I also, will miss Eric Hobsbawm. He was a brilliant man, a wonderful writer, and an important part of the community of historians (which encompasses a broad spectrum of political leanings and utilizes a multiplicity of analytical lenses.)
May God bless Eric Hobsbawm and all who grapple with the challenge of historical analysis.
Eternal rest grant him O Lord,
And may perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace.
Amen.

 

[MJE]

Interviewed on the BBC in 1994, Hobsbawn was asked whether he would have shunned the Communist Party had he known in 1934 that Stalin was butchering innocent human beings by the millions. “Probably not,” he answered — after all, at the time he believed he was signing up for world revolution. Taken aback by such indifference to carnage, the interviewer pressed the point. Was Hobsbawm saying that if a communist paradise had actually been created, “the loss of 15, 20 million people might have been justified?” Hobsbawm’s answer: “Yes.”
articles.boston.com/2012-10-14/opinion/34427409_1_eric-hobsbawm-communist-party-liu-xiaobo

 

[ringil]

Some people look for the positive in Ayn Rand so how’s that any different?

 

[Dwyer]

Eric Hobsbawm wasn’t a supporter of the USSR; which he characterized as a “pseudo-communist political system.” No true communist would have supported the USSR since it was not a communist country.

All right, it would have been more correct to say Mr. Hobsbawm publicly defended major actions taken by the Soviet Union: e.g., Mr. Hobsbawn as a Communist intellectual in 1939 publicly defending the Nazi-Soviet pact to carve up Poland in 1939 in a published pamphlet, reluctantly but publicly approving the Soviet Union’s violent suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and, in his work as a Historian, choosing to minimize or omit instances of the Soviet Unions use of mass violence (e.g. the Katyn Massacre in Poland under Soviet Occupation) to achieve its political ends.

Mr. Hobsbawm may have been brilliant and a great writer, but I personally draw the line when a person publicly states they would support the mass murder or killing of 20 million people as necessary to achieve their political ends and I wouldn’t admire them (yes, for the record, later in 1994, Hobsbawm stated he disapproved of the mass butchery that occurred in the Soviet Union in one of his books but this was after he had been criticized) but condemn them for making such an outrageous statement.

I also do not want to fall under the spell of Moral Relativism; Bolshevist Communism (as it manifested itself in the Soviet Union) and Communism in general was / is an enemy of Catholicism.

Bolshevist Communism wanted to wipe Catholicism out (and Orthodox Christianity and all other forms of traditional religion and did so violently killing clergy and destroying cathedrals) and replace it with the “religion” or ideology of (“worshipping”) the State.

 

[estesbob]

Eric Hobsbawm wasn’t a supporter of the USSR; which he characterized as a “pseudo-communist political system.” No true communist would have supported the USSR since it was not a communist country.

Can you give us an example of a "true " Communist Country?

 

[austenbosten]

Can you give us an example of a "true " Communist Country?

No such example if you know your Marx and Engles. However if you do know your Marx and Engles you know that all Socialists are Communists and all Communists are Socialists. Communism is nothing more than the end-result of Socialism…or at least that what’s supposed to happen.

 

[EmperorNapoleon]

Can you give us an example of a "true " Communist Country?

Austen is correct; there has never been a Communist country. The USSR had a Totalitarian system of government and it was never at any time a Communist nation.

 

[Holly3278]

How very sad. I hope and pray that he is now resting in the Lord. I do want to make it clear, however, that I am adamantly opposed to Communism.

 

[jeannetherese]

Austen is correct; there has never been a Communist country. The USSR had a Totalitarian system of government and it was never at any time a Communist nation.

Agreed. If our thread was focused on a discussion of the former Soviet Union, we might even wish to discuss it as an example of State Capitalism.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism
I pray that Mr. Hobsbawm, and all of us, might find peace in the mercy of Our Savior.

 

[didymus]

Austen is correct; there has never been a Communist country. The USSR had a Totalitarian system of government and it was never at any time a Communist nation.

Exactly.
Just the way that the Third Reich was never at any time a Nazi nation.

 

[EmperorNapoleon]

Just the way that the Third Reich was never at any time a Nazi nation.

The Third Reich was a Nazi nation. Hitler’s government was precisely what Nazism, a political ideology which predated the Third Reich by over 100 years, called for.