I would like to make a small digression today from our on going themes of what Paul Krugman has aptly dubbed “European Austerity Madness” and all its dire consequences, to pay homage to a great man of our times. A great man perhaps of the times just before ours to be exact.
Eric Hobsbawm, usually referred to as a Marxist Historian but universally accepted now as a great historian, died today at the ripe old age of 95. He was a brilliant mind, and although dubbed “Marxist” his mind was not conditioned or fogged up by anything other than his own intellect, faculty to comprehend, analyse and synthesise. Well, okay, you may say that is Marxist. And indeed Hobsbawm remained a Communist throughout his long, eventful life, even surviving the 1956 split of the British Communist party after the invasion of Hungary.
His brilliance and academic prowess was universally recognised, as was his forth rightness and wide range of knowledge. Perhaps his best known book of ours times is his “Age of Extremes” of the “short” twentieth century as it is known, 1914 – 1991. The cover portrays a picture of Charlie Chaplin in his film “The Dictator” a daring satire of Hitler, where he is depicted holding the globe Atlas like.
We bid farewell to excellence and dedication. And I would like to close with a comment of his, as a member of the legendary Cambridge Apostles, 40 years after the event: “All of us thought that the crisis of the 1930s was the final crisis of Capitalism.” to which he added, “But it was not.”
I would imagine that the same goes for this current crisis of Capitalism we are living through now. Many have declared that this is the Final Crisis of Capitalism, but like the Second Coming, it somehow doesn’t come. At least not when we expect it.
