The Pete Quiñones Show The Thought of Eric Hobsbawm - Complete w/ Thomas777
Nov 7, 2025
Thomas777, a revisionist historian and fiction writer, delves into Eric Hobsbawm's influential ideas and his unique Marxist-Leninist perspective. The discussion covers Hobsbawm's biography, the significance of the French Revolution, and his critique of modern nationalism and conservatism. Thomas explains Hobsbawm's concept of the 'Short Century' and contrasts his analysis with 1968's New Left currents. They explore capitalism's global impact, the rise of class consciousness, and how historical events like World War I shaped modernity.
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Hobsbawm's Left‑Hegelian Historicism
- Hobsbawm was a genuine Left Hegelian who fused Marxist historicism with a providential sense of large-scale historical forces.
- He treated historical processes as collective phenomena where outcomes aren't reducible to single criminal actors or conspiracies.
Judging the Soviet Experiment Contextually
- Hobsbawm argued the Soviet experiment, despite its crimes, was historically aimed at a world-historical transformation and must be judged in that context.
- He insisted large-scale violent outcomes are part of complex historical constellations, not solely individual moral culpability.
Hobsbawm's Cosmopolitan Early Life
- Hobsbawm was born in Egypt to a Polish-Jewish father and Austrian-Jewish mother and raised in a culturally Jewish but atheist household.
- He moved to Berlin, then returned to Britain and later attended King's College, Cambridge, joining the Communist Party young.