Eric Hobsbawm RIP

[paul secor]

If this statement - "In 1994, he shocked viewers when, in an interview with Michael Ignatieff on the BBC, he said that the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens under Stalin would have been worth it if a genuine Communist society had been the result." - from The New York Times obit -is accurate - he was either crazy, senile, or someone completely lacking basic humanity.

[Dave Garrett]

Teen vigil at Hobsbawm house

[Dan Gould]

If this statement - "In 1994, he shocked viewers when, in an interview with Michael Ignatieff on the BBC, he said that the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens under Stalin would have been worth it if a genuine Communist society had been the result." - from The New York Times obit -is accurate - he was either crazy, senile, or someone completely lacking basic humanity.

Well he was a committed Marxist. And they find ways to excuse the most appalling mass murderers in history when they are on their side ... Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Fidel.

[AllenLowe]

actually, most Marxists I've known - those with any real understanding of the theory - distance themselves significantly from Lenin, Stalin, et al. We (meaning me and friends of mind on the Left who cite Marx) argue over certain material interpretations of history - and I do think, btw, that they have been too slow to deal with totalitarian manifestations of the system - but in my post-60s NYC experience there is a distinct difference between the old un-changing Stalinists and the newer Left. Though certainly I encountered plenty of stupidity in the New Left's somtimes naively charitable attitudes toward both Fidel and Ho Chi Minh. But even Marxism can be a more nuanced theory, accepted in part by sharp politicos like Irving Howe and Michael Harrington, who were committed and actively anti-communists (unlike, say, Lillian Hellman, a complete and utter hypocrite who went to the grave without ever disavowing her old Stalinist leanings. Or ex-Communists like Elia Kazan or Max Easton or Irving Kristol, who just took their old left-fascist-anti-democratic leanings and brought them into alignment with the Republican party).

Edited October 4, 2012 by AllenLowe