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Society: New and Old
How far did Britain’s class structure alter in the sixties, with the onset of the ‘affluent society’? As counterpoint to prevalent myths and pieties, Hobsbawm supplies a mordant panorama of shifting habits and customs against a backdrop of polarized class and cultural divergence.
History and Illusion
“My comments on François Furet’s book are sceptical. It therefore seems just to note at the outset that there is much in Le passé d’une illusion which I admire, notably the brilliant and beautifully written first chapter on la passion révolutionnaire, and much with which I agree, having . . .” read more
Identity Politics and the Left
“My lecture is about a surprisingly new subject. We have become so used to terms like ‘collective identity’, ‘identity groups, ‘identity politics’, or, for that matter ‘ethnicity’, that it is hard to remember how recently they have surfaced as part of the current vocabulary, or jargon, of political . . .” read more
Barbarism: A User’s Guide
“I have called my lecture ‘Barbarism, A User’s Guide’, not because I wish to give you instructions in how to be barbarians. None of us, unfortunately, need it. Barbarism is not something like ice-dancing, a technique that has to be learned—at least not unless you wish to become . . .” read more
The Crisis of Today’s Ideologies
“I have been asked to speak on ‘the crisis of ideology, culture and civilization’ today—an enormous subject, and one not easy to define. Yet very few people will doubt that there is today such a crisis, even if they cannot say precisely in what it consists. So let . . .” read more
Farewell to the Classic Labour Movement?
“A hundred and twenty-five years after Lassalle, and a hundred years after the founding of the Second International, the socialist and labour parties are at a loss as to where they are going. Wherever socialists meet they ask one another gloomily about the future of our movements. I . . .” read more
Labour in the Great City
“The giant city was a new phenomenon in Western capitalism, and a type of human settlement virtually unprecedented in the non-oriental world before the eighteenth century: that is to say, the city whose population was measured in several hundreds of thousands, and very soon in millions. Until the . . .” read more
Marx and History
“We are here to discuss themes and problems of the Marxist conception of history a hundred years after the death of Marx. This is not a ritual of centenary celebration, but it is important to begin by reminding ourselves of the unique role of Marx in historiography. I . . .” read more
Looking Forward: History and the Future
“The annual lectures of which this is the first are intended to commemorate David Glass. He was my friend, and the friend of others in this room who don’t need this occasion to recall him in the presence of his inseparable partner, Ruth Glass. He was also one . . .” read more
Some Reflections on 'The Break-up of Britain'
“Nationalism has been a great puzzle to (non-nationalist) politicians and theorists ever since its invention, not only because it is both powerful and devoid of any discernible rational theory, but also because its shape and function are constantly changing. Like the cloud with which Hamlet taunted Polonius, it . . .” read more
Confronting Defeat: The German Communist Party
“Hermann Weber has added about nine hundred pages to the already long bibliography of German Communist history, with his massive work Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus. The first question prospective readers will ask is: did he have to? The answer, on the whole, is yes. These two volumes . . .” read more
Problems of Communist History
“We are today at the end of that historical epoch in the development of socialism which began with the collapse of the Second International in 1914 and the victory of the Bolsheviks in October 1917. This is therefore a suitable time to survey the history of the Communist . . .” read more
The Spanish Background
“The Iberian peninsula has problems but no solutions, a state of affairs which is common or even normal in the ‘third world’, but extremely rare in Europe. For better or worse most states on our continent have a stable and potentially permanent economic and social structure, an established . . .” read more
Vietnam and the Dynamics of Guerrilla War
“Three things have won conventional wars in this century; greater reserves of manpower, greater industrial potential and a reasonably functioning system of civilian administration. The strategy of the United States in the past two decades has been based on the hope that the second of these (in which . . .” read more
French Communism
“The history of Communism in the developed economies of the west has been the history of revolutionary parties in countries without insurrectionary prospects. Such countries may be, and at various times in our century have been, involved in revolutionary activities arising out of the international contradictions of capitalism . . .” read more
Hyndman and the SDF
“the social democratic federation has long been the problem-child of labour historians, especially marxist ones or those anxious to “place“ it rather than merely to chronicle its erratic development. It cannot simply be approved. It cannot be simply condemned. It certainly cannot be dismissed. The least subtle . . .” read more