Political commitment of Eric Hobsbawm: the passion for communist politics in a transformed world (1978-2012)
View/ Open
Ciaurriz2022.pdf (1.794Mb)
Date
15/06/2022Item status
Restricted AccessEmbargo end date
15/06/2023Author
Itoiz Ciáurriz, Iker
Ciáurriz, Iker Itoiz
Metadata
Abstract
The 1970s were a decade of transition on the European Left, characterised by intellectual
ferment and ideological diversity. For Western European communists specifically, the
1970s saw the emergence of Eurocommunism, a major attempt to advance the cause of
socialism in advanced industrialised countries. This process ended abruptly in 1989-1991,
with the collapse of the Soviet Union, which represented a major and, in many ways,
terminal crisis for European communism. This thesis examines the transformation and
decline of European communism from the perspective of intellectual engagement. It looks
at the life and work of the historian Eric Hobsbawm in the period from 1978 – when he
gave his controversial lecture entitled ‘The Forward March of Labour Halted?’ – to his
death in 2012. It explores different political interventions and expressions of political
commitment, not only in relation to Hobsbawm himself, but also in relation to other left-wing intellectuals. It uses a wide range of sources – including academic books, articles,
journalistic articles and Hobsbawm’s private papers – and draws on scholarship on
emotions, intellectual history, and comparative and biographical history.
It begins by considering Hobsbawm’s political interventions on the British Left from
1978 through the 1980s. I argue that his calls for modernisation of the Labour Party were
not as a precursor to New Labour, but rather a response to the political crisis of European
communism in the 1970s. This was typified by a tension that had long been a feature of
communist involvement in left-wing “popular fronts”, namely the necessity of stymieing
the advance of the right while simultaneously promoting the cause of communism. Then,
I discuss Hobsbawm’s experience of communism after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I argue that he suffered from ‘the melancholia of the October Revolution’, where he
revalorised and idealised his communist experiences from the 1930s and 1940s. At the
same time, I compare Hobsbawm’s Age of Extremes (published in 1994) with other
similar works. This reveals different left-wing visions of the twentieth century and how
these were shaped by distinct understandings and temporalities of their respective
political projects.
Subsequently, I look at the role of autobiography, with special reference to Hobsbawm’s
memoir Interesting Times (2002). I explore the tensions faced by communists in the 1990s
and early 2000s, who had to come to terms with the failure of the political project to
which they belonged. In much of the commemorative literature about Hobsbawm, he has
been mythologised as a unique historian, while his communist commitments have been
either downplayed or sensationalised. I deconstruct this myth and show that he was no
different from other communist intellectuals at the time, all of whom had to grapple with
their lost faith. Finally, I look at the transformation of Hobsbawm’s public persona at the
very end of his life when he took on the role of an “activist historian” who opposed US
imperialism. In the process, Hobsbawm reframed his political identity as “post-communist” and adapted to the new geopolitical configurations of the 21st century.
Taken together, these different perspectives on Hobsbawm’s later career illuminate the
complex history of communism in Europe in the past half century. From
Eurocommunism, though his interventions in British politics in the eighties, to the re-imagination of antifascism in the 1990s and early 2000s, his passion for communism and
the cause it promised defined his commitment. For Hobsbawm, communism was a
morally and ethically valid cause, regardless of the fate of the Soviet Union or the success
of Communist parties in Europe and beyond.