This piece first appeared at Newsreal Blog
It took much longer than I expected for Eric Hobsbawm, the communist propagandist disguised as an academic, to churn out some new Stalin apologia disguised as a book of essays. His last major work work was a weepy and turgid memorial to the failure of Sovietism in the 20th century called The Age of Extremes which basically claimed the Soviet Union was the closest thing to paradise on earth. Since then he has continued to make a living by slapping together introductions to The Communist Manifesto and republishing book reviews he wrote in the 1960s.
But the Left has seen opportunity in the financial crisis and Hobsbawm, with a keen eye for the markets, has sought to cash in by penning a book called How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism that he hopes will reignite the radical spirit of young revolutionaries who will rise up and fulfill his life long dream of destroying capitalism.
After paying for his new book of course. Here I should stop to explain that I think Marxism, at least the neo-Marxism you find among Western academics, is not so much an ideology or even a theory as it is a cult in the popular sense of the word. I say this as a person who has known many Marxists on university campuses, and in fact my godfather was a gay Jewish Marxist from New York. Many are smart and many are quite pleasant personally, but all are religiously devoted to nihilism and elitism. All believe that they will be the chosen elite in a new Marxist society (“elected,” to put it in religious terms) and all usually view modern society as “deformed” or immoral in some way. They use the fact that they lack power over others as evidence of society’s immorality.
And when discussing Marxism it is important to remember that the people on top don’t care for or respect the people below them. Keep that in mind.
Writing about the Marxist literary academic, John M. Ellis perfectly described every leftist college professor I’ve ever had dealings with in this passage of Literature Lost:
Oddly enough, it is the intellectual snobbery and elitism of many of the literati that politically correct egalitarianism appeals to; their partiality to literary Marxism is based not on its economic theory but on its hostility to business and the middle class. The character of this anti-bourgeois sentiment therefore has more in common with its origin in aristocratic disdain for the lower orders than with egalitarianism.
This passage is my Rosetta Stone for deciphering the true meaning of any quote I see coming from an avowed Marxist. As usual it was very helpful in understanding the series of interviews Hobsbawm has given to young “progressives” eager to help him sell books, for the cause. The Guardian’s Tristram Hunt published an interview with Hobsbawm which was so full of delusional thinking that it would be used as evidence of dementia if its subject were a Republican. While pondering the “crisis of Capitalism” which Hunt, unprompted I’m sure, claims is destroying the world economic system, Hobsbawm makes a series of blatantly false statements so outrageous that one wonders if he’s not talking about the timeline of some alternate Earth.
Marxists ARE deluded, but no more so than capitalists; both groups,like Christians and Satanists are different faces of the same tarnished coin. Neither should be given much credence, particularly today when there’s literally hundreds of years of demonstrated failure in both camps.
That said, I find it interesting that you felt the need to define as fully as you did your godfather. It unecessarily reveals something about your prejudices–which seem to darkly color your viewpoint. If your goal is to convert Marxist cultists to your faith (though it appears you’re more interested in preaching to the choir), you might want to tone that down in the future–honey versus vinegar, etc. etc.
What prejudice? I said many are fine people personally, as was my godfather. We disagreed politically but he was a great guy – who was a typical New Yorker who looked down on lots of people. It’s not prejudice to criticize world views, quite the opposite I included that section to show that I’m not “prejudiced” against Marxists, just against their goals.
My “faith” by the way is Pagan. I’m not seeking to convert anyone.
In the future, you may one to lay off the Christian/Satanist analogy. While Marxism implies an actual ideology that reacts to Capitalism the capitalist views markets as naturally occurring organic entities and aside from the belief in free markets encompasses dozens of ideologies, from Libertarianism to Republicanism to some forms of Monarchy. Marxism may be anti-capitalism ut capitalism has no unified anti-stance on anything.