Speaker 1: If you want to support the show and get the
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So if you head over to gum Road and you
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and you'll get an invite into the Telegram group. So
I really appreciate all the support everyone's giving me, and
I hope to expand the show even more than it
already has. Thank you so much. I want to welcome
everyone back to the Pekingano Show after a little bit
of a break. Thomas is back. Are you doing, Thomas,
I'm very well.
Speaker 2: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to collaborate on some
stuff before the big Portland basket weaving event. And this
is an important subject area, I mean, for just on
its own terms, but it dovetails rather splendidly and kind
of like indexes with the long form stuff I'm working on,
and it's especially timely with kind of the trajectory I've
been trying to your things, at least in our kind
of intellectual circles, like not I don't like vanity or
or just because I've got a hobbyist interest in this stuff,
but it's it's fundamentally important, and I'll get into that
as we roll out the subject.
Speaker 1: Yeah, are our buddy, uh mister Rimbo who was on
the episode where you were you guys were talking about
being on the ground as the d n C. He's
the one who recommended this, so shout out to him
and everything.
Speaker 2: So he's an essential He's an essential part of bum
Land fiction, even though he's even though he's not truly local,
and he's like an essential part of like my entourage,
Like he's he's uh, he's going to be hitting Portland
with me, which is awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what when you said how much you guys hung
out and everything, I figured he was local to and
then when he told me where he was from, I
was like, holy shit.
Speaker 2: No, he's a good dude, and he he's building firm
in a vacation time, so he trailed a fair amount,
and I'm lucky he's he likes Chicago and like a
lot of like Wallbanger and Hunger that Die Merchant. They
were in town last week and we had a great time.
But you know, they hadn't been to Shytown before, and
I think people think it's either really grimy because of
what they see on the news and all that kind
of cap about how awful it is here, or they
think it's just kind of like other things, just kind
of like New York City. He was smaller, like they
really impressed it how cool it is, and so Rimbau. I, Yeah,
we we have a lot of fun here man, and
he's he's a really good dude. I owe him a lot,
and I mean I will it fellas a lot. But
he he especially, he sends a huge amount. He's like
a research machine. And I mean, i'd like to think
guy him too, but I'm not as young as I
once was, and I'm certainly not as young as he is,
and he he's always finding like really really great sources
that I've never I've never come across.
Speaker 1: Oh well, the wife and I talked about this this
past year and it didn't happen. But we're gonna have
to drive up and hang out with you like when
the when the weather breaks, once winter breaks come up
for like the spring or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd be great, man. You'll have a lot of
fun and so well, uh, missus Q. There's a there's
a lot of there's a lot of stuff I can
show you guys that you'll really dig. Man. Everybody has
fun when they come here. And I'd like to think,
I'd like to think I'm I'm a pretty decent tour guide.
Speaker 1: Mean, all right, let's get into it. Uh, mister Eric Hobsbaum,
A lot of people probably have never heard of him,
but you mentioned him all the time, usually in passing,
usually just quoting him or something like that. So let's
do the deep dive.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm he he was a true left he Glien.
People invoked that signifier or designate rather than talk about
any any Marxist aconemic because in the public mind and
kind of in academic culture, you know, any any Marxist
historian or historical writers, you know, exiomatically a left Hegelian knight.
I take exception to that descriptor for for a few reasons.
I mean, you can't like in its own terms dialectical materialism.
It can't be Hegelian because it removes you know, providential
causation from it's uh from from from its historicism. And
you know, there's a arguably it abolishes metaphysics, you know
what I mean obviously, So I mean that's it's it's
something of as our Marxist friends themselves would say, a
fatal contradiction. But Hobsbaum, how I really was like a
left take Gaelian in the purest sense. And I think
his take on things. I mean, obviously we don't know,
and I've read Imperialism by Lenin many times, but I
mean Lenin wasn't Lenin was kind of the consummate political soldier.
You know. It's not like he was some prolific I
mean it was, he was prolific for the role he
was in in terms of his academic output. But you know,
it's not like he was It's not like he was
like angles or something and putting out you know, endless,
endless manuscripts or something. But I I see Hobbswan probably
was like the most like Lenin himself, you know, in
terms of his kind of political ontology as well as
in terms of how he characterized historical processes and you
know how outcomes they're in should be judged, you know,
whether they are whether whether they advance the evolutionary imperative
and in a progressive sense, or whether they are self defeating,
you know. And so Hobsbam he was I think of
him too, is he was really much kind of like
a counterweight to ern SONOLDI. They had a lot of similarities,
Like their background is very different. You know, Hobsbaum was
a Polish Jew whose father was an English subject. But
there's there's commonalities to their I mean they're very they're
very much opposites or were opposites, but there's sort of
a common frame of reference in terms of what they
would have viewed as authoritative and you know, what they
considered to be sort of the essential canon of political philosophy.
And Hobsbom also he got this reputation people haven't really
read him, so they view hims like this unreconstructed quote
unquote stalinist. That's not really true. But he did refuse
he had contempt for the New Left, and he refused
to abandon allegiance to the Soviet Union in fifty six
and in sixty eight. You know, he was an orthodox
in culmore terms, in orthodox Marxist Leninist, which meant he
was in the Soviet camp and in the sun of
Soviets split. He had great disdain for China for various reasons.
So these like schismatic tendencies. The fact he opposed all
these schismatic tendencies, and the fact he was so critical
a Kruse chief like that didn't make him some hardline Stalinists,
you know, like he wasn't the kind of guy who
would say, sit there and say that like Eric Honnecker
was like a great general secretary, or that like the
DDR had like a perfect system, and there were guys
who thought that way, you know. But so the key
to the key to this does kind of require like
a deep dive and I find myself, you know what,
So people might ask themselves, you know, what does this
have to do with the present? I mean a couple
of things. You know, if you want to understand the
twentieth century, you've got to understand Marxist Leninism. You understand
Marcus Leninism, but you got to understand the body of
theory and his theory of history that you know, kind
of like frame the conceptual horizon that you know, nourish
the it's it's revolutionary imperatives, you know. And if if
you understand the twenty first century, you got to understand
the twentieth century and that entire dialectical process bus today
this kind of thought, this kind of true left to
Gallian thought, it's made a comeback. Like guys think that
guy Jackson Hinkel and a lot of people needs a crank,
He's really not, you know, and like he's I think
he's partly funded by the same kinds of elements that
fund like Zuganov's like reconstituted Communist Party. I'm not saying that, sinister,
you know. I shouted out about this on social media.
But you know, these guys aren't woke. You know. That's
why when Hank Gold defines himself as like a social conservative,
that's not inconsistent, you know. And that's one of the reasons, Uh,
when people drop this bullshit calling everything they don't like Marxist.
It's like that's it's not like Kamala Harris isn't a Marxist.
You know, Obama is not a Marxist like American, Uh,
American style social engineering and all the kind of bizarre
stuff that goes into that isn't isn't Marxism, you know.
So I think I think this stuff is more timely
that a lot of people are willing to acknowledge, you know,
even if even if political theory is not really you know,
in your proverbial wheelhouse or something. But I'm gonna jump
around a bit if it's too scatter shot, or if
or or if something is not clear, like please stop me,
and I'll.
Speaker 1: I'll kind of ad just no problem, go ahead, no problem,
I'll interrupt if I have something.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, no, for sure. In nineteen ninety four, HOBSWELLM.
Hobswam had a certain degree of prominence, especially in the UK,
you know, throughout his kind of academic career, even though
he didn't really involve himself in public policy debates, with
the exception of the Thatcher era, and we'll get into
that in a minute. But in nineteen ninety four, when
a lot of kind of retrospective stuff on the Cold
War was popping up in media, you know, that's when
like Nixon was I mean, Nixon died I think in
ninety four, like ninety four, ninety five, but you know,
Nixon have been making the rounds in nineteen ninety nineteen
ninety two, there there was a lot of a lot
of a lot of color academics who were being asked,
you know, for their to render kind of their their
their diagnosis of the events the preceding half decade and stuff. Hosbaum, Uh,
he's being interviewed by Michael Ignatius, you know, an ignoctive
was very much trying to put him in the hot
seat and asking him, uh loaded questions, and Hobsbump famously
said that had the Soviet Union succeeded in realizing a
communist society, and had it been able to fulfill its
ambition of you know, facilitating a world historical revolutionary imperative,
Hobsbam said that the death to twenty million people or
however many perished in stall of his death camps, would
have been worth it so igna to have, you know,
famously like being clutching at his pearls verbially speaking. And
Hobswam's rebuttal was, you know, Marx himself said that no
rate movement has been born without you know, the shedding
of blood, and you know, has flowed it up by saying,
you know, self sacrifice isn't the only kind of sacrifice
that was in the contemplation of Marx or Lenin or
anybody else, you know, But this wasn't the standard maya
culpa or whatever. Like a lot of like a lot
of kind of like Norman Khans think, as well as
a lot of kind of do left types. This this
wasn't just Hosen being deliberately callous or something. But you
got to understand the vantage point from where he's speaking,
Like historical processes aren't They're not the result them conspiratorial
designs by like criminal actors. You know, they're not even
even if you're a true vanguardist, even if you kind
of accept Rousseau's view with a general will and uh
hobswold very much, did you know, of course the general
will doesn't speak. It's he's not. Rousseau isn't referring to
like the body politic as a whole, like it could
be just like narrow discrete elements within the political organism
who's uh, whose commitments and whose conceptual horizon like indexes
very strongly, you know, with a revolutionary leadership element, you know,
but uh, that does but these people are still what
they're doing is they're they're engaging very intimately in psychological
and political terms, with historical processes. They're not creating these conditions.
So if you ask, you know, so so trying to
try to put Nolty on the hot seat like this,
We're trying to put hous on the hot seat like this.
It's similar to what Howard Maaz and his his acolytes
and allies we'll try to do to Noulty, you know, like, oh,
you're you're justifying these monstrous crimes. You know, and always said, no,
nobody's justifying anything. But if you're talking about the historical
process and you're talking about warfare at massive scale, at
literally planetary scale, where we're not talking about decisions made
by discrete individual actors, We're not talking about people committing crimes,
you know, we're talking about events that are truly providential
or you know, if you're an atheist like Hoswo, I'm
truly providential, okay. And even if you assign a purely
material a complation of purely material causes, you know, to
these things, it's a constellation of variables, so myriad, so
complex at such scale, nobody can be said to be
like responsible as a as a as a causative agent
in approximate terms. So who was who was? Who was
Eric Hosbom? I thought it was actually born in Egypt,
you know his uh, his father was Leopold Percy Hobsbamb.
It's believed that the original surname was aps Bomb, but
a combination of deliberate anglicization of the surname and clerical
error led to it becoming hobbs Bomb. His father had
been some kind of merchant who was originally from the
East End of London. But he but he was a
Polish jew His mother, uh was a Jewish woman named
Nellie Gruen who had come from a middle class family.
And then then you know, and then what was then?
You know, the HAPs were Empire in Austria. How Dum
relayed that like he was so consciously Jewish because his
parents conveyed to him, you know, the like like to
take his though seriously. But he said he was raised
in basically like an atheist household. He's like it was
a very Jewish household, but it wasn't religious, you know,
and that that wasn't really strange for uh. Hobsum was
born in nineteen seventeen. I mean, that was that's very
much a twentieth century thing, you know, I ever size
to people again and again, like nobody thinks this way anymore.
Like the remaining the remaining self declared atheists who have
any kind of public profile, like no, nobody, nobody takes
them seriously anymore, you know. And I mean really that
kind of thing was dead by you know, by the
end of the nineteen nineties, but there were some there
was some peculiar holdouts, and it had something of it
had something of a media profile, particularly in new media
right before it's kind of final death, as as a
culturally relevant quantity. But you know, so that some one
had a fairly cause of upbringing. You know, he wasn't.
He wasn't some ghetto wise Jew who was sitting around
reading Marx and Engels and kind of like nursing these
grudges and stuff. I mean, like, don't get me wrong,
I'm sure that his ethnos and the you know, they
kind of conceptual biases and intrinsic to that sort of
household like absolutely informed his perspective. But you know, he wasn't.
He wasn't some guy from you know, the pale settlement
or something or from or from some impoverished the you know,
tenement in Poland. And I've heard people speculated the fact
who want to throw shade out of him like that,
that's just like not accurate. But he, uh, he was
a teenage he ultimately his father died when he was
when he was quite young, I think when he was
twelve or thirteen years old, he was sent to uh
he was sent to live with his aunt a couple
of years later and his sister, and when his mother
died as well, his maternal aunt and uh, they settled
in Berlin. And then when uh, when the National Socialist
Revolution kicked off or whatever, when the National Socialists got
their uh parliamentary plurality, which maybe you know became a
problematic majority after the KPD was was outlawed owing to
the the attack on the Reichs the Reichstag fire. You know,
they they they had an absolute majority. But Hobswam returned
to the United Kingdom. When I say returned, his father
was an English subject, so young hoswellm wasn't considered like
he was considered. He was also considered to be a
subject of the Empire, you know, and not subject to
laws regarding alienage and things like that. He attended King's
College at Cambridge. You know, he became UH. He joined
the Communist Party of Great Britain basically as like as
soon as he was of age. You know, I think
when he was nineteen years old. I think you got
to be eighteen to join in those days, but you know,
he got. He took his doctorate from a from Cambridge,
and I believe his thesis, his PhD thesis was on
the history of the Fabian society and Fabian socialism, you know,
and Hobsbaum's commitments as well as his his particular kind
of brand of UH of Marxist thoughts. It was very
much it was very much rive about that of the
of the English Communist Party, the Communists Party a Great Britain. Okay,
Like when I say derive it, I don't mean that
in punitive terms, But what I mean is Pabswom quite
literally identified himself as a quote red Tory, you know.
And we'll get into what they had means and the
implications that add But guys like Kim Philby in the
Cambridge five, they they were cut from the same kind
of cloth, you know, the the Communs Party a Great Britain.
They were very much a fifth column during the Cold
War in a way that other similar elements weren't on
the continent because they were they they were Orthodox Marcus
Letting this. They unconditionally supported the Soviet Union, you know.
They so they were very much in the Cold War.
You know, there's more of a bunch of trotsky Is,
you know, trying to trying to cultivate electoral respectability. Nor
they uh uh you know, nor were they know were
they like active as liberals are the kinds who find
themselves in and geocenticures who are kind of Communists in
name only, like they're they're the genuine article. They're pro Soviet.
They were loyal to Stalin subsequently, they were loyal to
his memory. But they were not uncritical, you know. They
they they very much uh viewed the situation as you know,
for all of its frailties and for all of it's
less than ideal characteristics and situatedness. You know, the Soviet
Union is what we have in this world, and this
world is all there is, you know, so it's suicidally
short sighted, you know, and and in political terms to
to divorce oneself from the ambitions and the deaths and
the of a of the Soviet system. But and interestingly, Hobsbaum, Uh,
he served as a comet engineer during World War Two,
and he caught some flack at the time and in
a decade subsequent because uh, when the Molotov Ribbon Trot
Pact was signed, Hobsbaum and and his ideological fellows and comrades,
they they'd shout down people who are critical of the
Third Reich because he said, you know, alliance of convenience,
this may be, or you know whatever, however contrived this
no aggression, packed may be. You know, this is uh,
this is the way things must be. You know, in
order for the Reel, we're gonna be consolidated in situ.
So anybody opposing the Reich or calling for its destruction
or calling for Moscow to preemptively assault it, which Moscow
is absolutely planning on doing. But people didn't know this
outside of you know, cadresproximate to the reds are Stalin,
you know. But he considered this to be like a
kind of revolutionary tendency, which was the Orthodox perspective, the
Orthodox Marc's perspective. But other than that, Hosbaum was very
much like a doc Trian anti fascist, like not not
in Nuremberg terms. But and we'll get into this probably
in the second episode. Hobswamp's take on fascism in national
socialism is interesting. It's not it's by no means, you know, dismissed,
totally dismissive and some punitive capacity. He says that the
strength of fascism was that it mastered technics and technology.
It uh, it was able to imbue people with like
a fervent kind of energy to realize its objectives. But
he considered it to be quote philosophically impoverished, and he
didn't really seem to understand, uh, he didn't really understand
the the kind of trajectory of uh Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger,
you know, to national socialism. Now that some people who
have like a punitive like thunder vague like take on
Germany and the germanis of people in the German state,
that's not that's not what Hosbon was. That's not what
I'm saying, and that's not you know, And Hoswom wasn't
prone to that the kind of motive thought either, But
like a lot of Doctair and Marxist He couldn't really
see the forest of the trees. I don't if he
understood the enduring power of continental philosophy outside of Marxist
a jacent thinkers, you know, and informing what what what
what was going on in Italy, what was going on
in Germany, you know, in the Inner Warriors. I don't
think he understood this. I think it was one of
his blind spots, owing to adherence to you know, uh
An ideology and Marxism that that that that quite literally
inundates people with like a missionary zeal that sometimes uh,
these were kind of tunnel vision. But you know at
uh and again, like I said, I believe like the
Red Tory uh Moniker. You know, they became kind of
bandied about in the UK about even a lot of
these like Labor types. You know, back when the Labor
Party was a real party. You know, there were there
were these guys who were basically like we consider them
in America to be like you know, we get centered
to be like like like right wing type type of figures.
But for the fact that you know, they uh, they
were very much socialists in there in their orientation, you know,
They believe in state socialism both as like an ethical
postulate as well as a kind of inevitability if if
if the modern state was to survive, you know, with
any kind of with any kind of legitimacy. So yeah,
how long you're going something hory communists? Uh not a
red tory, but uh that Uh and again that seems
paradoxical to people. But again it's I you know, Zuganov's
Communist Party, you know, to Jackson Hinkle. But even you know,
in in historical capacities, this this resonated with people who
had a developed understanding of political theory, the Marxism of
the Frankfurt School. People like Osloh had contempt for that.
You know, they were like, this is degenerate garbage. This
is this is uh, this is therapy for people who
uh want to strike some kind of protest pose, you know,
but are basically imbibing uh you know, the kind of
alienation uh that's deliberately engineered by by capitalist societies and
saying like, oh, but this can be mitigated if you know,
we have unrestricted acts that's the sexual hedonism, or if
we can you know, partake of these uh material rewards
or you know, if we can if the state becomes
a kind of if the state becomes kind of kind
of aersots like aristots like therapeutic mechanism or or or
a kind of rabbinic panel, or or or like a
like a or or like an aristotce like church, whereby
like the declaratory judgments, that's not how like validate these
these like contrived like post modern identities, you know. And
I mean that's that, that's anybody who's the true communist partisan.
What you know is it was disgusted by this, you know.
I mean, I'm not I'm not saying Marxism is is good.
I'm not saying it's like good qualities because it doesn't.
But they were and they are serious guys. And if
you understand, and we'll get an this is in a minute,
if you understand that kind of like mercis Lenin, it
is like view of the historical process, you know. Basically
basically they view like a lot of liberalizing tendencies to
have resulted in a kind of reactionary ethos among people
and to then their estimates. And that's where nationalism comes from.
Like nationalism isn't this really organic thing? I'm not talking
about nationalism, meaning like caring about your race or your ethnos,
I mean like nationalism in the form of, yeah, this
is the country of Poland. So like you know, according
to this artrary criteria, like whoever speaks Polish is like
part of the body politic and anybody outside of that,
you know, is not. And uh, you know, despite the
fact that you know, the existence of this government is
deleterious to you know, the kind of organic uh, the
the variables that constantly like an organic communitary in life.
You know, if we like fly the flag and you know,
make make this language the state language. You know, we're
we're somehow you know, guarding tradition or something like. That's
what they're talking about. And in their view, it's an
effort by people whose lives are totally disrupted by future
shock basically, you know, and by the advanced und a
productive processes such that you know, labor is no longer
a complete process that people partake of in order to
see through you know, the creative development of of a
of an object or a thing or a necessary activity
from start to finish. You know, it just becomes an
artifact of a mechanization. You know, the discrete aspects of
which you know, humans are still required or needed to perform.
But I mean, you're performing these activities in endless repetition
without any meaningful experience of the totality of its fruitfulness,
you know, and in the company of total strangers. You know,
who's only who's only the only affinity between you and
them is it's kind of accident of locale or whatever.
You know, that that's what they're talking about. But uh,
you know, and so people like Cosbon, even if they
didn't do things like religious observances as particularly positive or laudable,
you know, they they viewed it as a you know,
an anthropological feature of the historical process, you know, whose
time arrives and then passes. But they but they did
view you know, communitarian bonds of whatever they may be,
you know, whether they're like you know, promised on coulture,
sectarian affinity, or what have you. You know, like in the
historical moment in which those things are relevant, they consider
those things valuable, you know, because at the end of
the day, to a Marcius Lenini, it's like the individual
doesn't matter, you know, So whatever facilitates like the dignity
of you know, the laboring class or classes, you know,
is basically like a social good. Okay, so somebody like Cosblomavie,
you know, seeing a bunch of people saying like, uh,
you know, marriage or like pair bonding isn't important. All
that matters is like sterile sex and you know the
catharsis you get from from engaging that kind of stuff,
or you know, all that matters is you know, people
being liberated from obligations to others or obligations to history.
You know, you know, the highest good is being free,
like you know, still out wealth on yourself and cultivate
these these kinds of distractions that that that facilitated leedgend
gratification like he had contempt for that, and basically any
orthodox Marxist does, you know, they're like again, they're not
woke at all if you want to race and if
you want race too, like it's not I've just this
point again again too, Like Marxists don't think race is important,
but they're not anti racist, like there's no reason they
don't think there's anything wrong with a bunch of immigrants
like swamped like a formerly Western country, but they don't
think that should be a priority either. You know, and
this idea that this idea that they're you know, this
idea that racial identity needs to be like socially engineered
out of existence, like they have no like truck with that,
you know. Like Stalin did try to like uh, what
he called the nationalities problem. That definitely tracks you know
with like ethnic cleansing under us because the civil rights
in America. But that's because the nant the quote nationalities
were causing problems for the party and for the Central Committee,
you know, and if they weren't causing problems, like it
wasn't so much a priority, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Because the like the the nationalities that he had a
problem with he considered to be the aspara person nationalities
that could possibly collude with their home countries.
Speaker 2: That was part of it. Yeah, definitely, that's part of it, definitely,
and that's why that's one of the reasons why, uh,
one of the reasons the Soviets assaulted Poland. I mean
it was it was obviously because you know, there was
a geostrategic imperative to be able to deploy in depth
and things like that, but also there was like an
active like Ruthenian minority there that Stalin was convinced we're
going to try and like reinforce the Ukrainians like an
event of open war. Yeah, it was all that stuff.
And don't get me wrong. Also like I'm not I'm not,
I'm not sitting here defending the concept of like new
Soviet man like eventually like identitarian characteristics relating to historical memory,
like weren't we're slayd for annihilation under like a communist system.
And Hobsam would have absolutely agreed with that. But my
point is guys like Hobbham weren't sitting around saying, like,
you know, we need to settle like African people in
Ireland because it's not right that it's one hundred percent Irish.
Like they view that as like it's nonsensical, you know,
just like people like Hobsbamb. When Nuremberg kicked off the proceedings,
you know, the view from Moscow was why are we gonna,
why are we gonna like declared Jews? Maybe this like
murdered population. You know, we lost twenty five million people
fighting the Fascis, you know, like you're not there. And
plus there are no Jews in the Soviet Union. You know,
there's like Soviet citizens. You know, there's the body politic
and there's like our ops, and there's the most people
outside of that at you know, and then there and
then there's like the Zionists and other like other vanguard
tendencies trying to exploit you know, grieven since the nationality
used to undermine socialism like that was their view of it,
you know, and even today, like that's why this carries
over into today, like the way the Russian Federation views things,
like the Russians are always always, always gonna view their
enemies as Nazis and fascists. How would they not, Okay,
But when they talk about that, they're not. They're not
they're not saying it like the way like like like
the way Chuck Schumer uses you're that, or they're not
saying that, you know, these people are like anti gay
or they're or these people don't respect, you know, the
heerent dignity of all people. And they're not into diversity.
That's not what they're saying at all, Like they mean
something very specific by it, and you know that's that.
It's it's uh, it's both with the ah it both
alost you know, the ancestral memory of the Great patriotic
war as well as there's still like a lot of
there's still a lot of like left tag alien thought
like in Russia. You know, even somebody like Dugan, and
I like Dugan, I I mean a lot of Russian
academic culture I find kind of alien just because I'm
like very much an Anglophone person. And that's not I'm
not putting shade on like the Eastern Slavic people's or something,
but uh, I don't find it. I mean, they're very
much like a different people. Okay, but even a guy
like Dugan, there's very much like left take alien strains
of like Leninist thought like and stuff that he postulates.
And he's like very much like a I mean, he's
he's very much a committed Christian, you know, like Eastern Christian.
You know that's a bit of a tangent. Forgive me
if that was a kind of outside the scope. But
but I mean this most important, uh you know, not
just to clarify what we're talking about, and my my
kind of primary wheelius is political theory, but you know,
just structuring the kind of conceptual landscape and which were
remired just declaring anybody on the left be a Marxist
like that that doesn't make any sense. That's like that
that says that's just that's just fucking retarded as saying
that like Donald Trump is a fascist or like the
p there is like people who avidly like follow his
you know, media and political career and and and support him,
you know, are like fascists. Like it's it's just as
ridiculous and and at odds and the reality is as
saying that. But yeah, I'll try to I'll try to
pick it up a little bit tangents, but uh, it's
kind of magnum opus. There's a four volume UH study
called the Age Revolution Age Revolution seventeen eighty nine to
eighteen forty eight, and the first volume dropped in nineteen
sixty two. This is a seminal work of historicism, in
my opinion. You can find the abridged UH this version
of it in a series of PDF files if you
dig around if there, if people are really interested, I'll
i'll I'll throw it up on my on my substack.
But you know, basically, it's, uh the cosbomb, like modernity
really arrived with the French Revolution, Okay, And what do
you what I mean by that? And like what he
conveys in the first volume of this Age of Age
of Revolution, is that, you know, the overlong majority of
people in Europe in seventeen eighty nine, they still lived
like people did in the medieval period. You know, there
was you had this kind of very very slim minority
of dedicated urbanites, you know, and people who were close
to technology and productive processes facilitated by technology. But almost
everybody they were living, you know, basically as subsistence farmers
or as people you know, laboring with the household as
the local production, you know, and essentially bartering and trading
on things they could make, you know, within the household.
You know, this wasn't I think with this idea that
you know, after like upon the ansen of the Age
of Discovery or whatever, like suddenly things became moderate and
everybody lived in a city or like a town, but
it just things were low tech compared to today. Like
that wasn't Most people in seventeen eighty nine lived not
much different than they did in thirteen eighty nine. Okay,
And this is fundamentally important, and that's kind of where
hobsbamb It's subtle, but it's very much there. And I
consider it's a set. I consider it essential to understanding
something of his political something of his ontological claims about politics.
As I said a minute ago in a slightly vent context,
you know when Rousseau talks about the General Will, and
I highly recommend Rousseau to anybody on the right. He's
very important. I first read him when I was about sixteen,
and that completely changed my perspective on political theory. But
you know, part of it's uh, part of it's because
things are lost in translation, particularly French to English. There's
a lot of there's a lot of subtle concepts intrinsic
to the French language, particularly if you're talking about metaphysics
or politics or anything conceptual that really that really doesn't translate.
But the General Will, like Russell again, Rousseau's not talking
about some majoritarian consensus of like the whole body politic
describing it as general. The way to understand that ad
is to mean something bigger than like a discrete individual
actor or actors. You've got to think about it as
inextricably bound up to zeitgeist, like as a concept. Okay,
so the General Will, it might only be like one
hundred guys out of a population of like five million people.
But for whatever reason, they astride the zeitgeist. They've got
like the gumption sort of the intelligence in political terms,
and the motivation and the balls to see through purely
historical and irrevolutionary imperatives, you know, in a way that
has a formative effect, you know, either as like a
reformist tendency or alternatively it can be a tendency towards
creative destruction and oblivion. But basically the general will describes
this like intangib will tendency or sensibility that animates this uh,
this cadre at uh in deeply psychological terms, and animates
and motivates them to realize a revolutionary imperative. Okay, Often too,
this dovetails and peculiar ways with whoever the leadership element
is of the state as it exists you know in
situ Okay. But that's so Hazma makes a lot of
that in Age of Revolution, Okay, because a lot of
court history that is now for that's the jaguin revolution.
It's a combination like goofy stuff. I think people filled
from stuff like like like late mews or something where
it's like, oh, everybody who was living in poverty and
the crushing misery of these slums. So there was like
this uprising, like that's not that's not what happened. And again,
you know, the material conditions of seventeen eighty nine, the
purely material conditions weren't radically different than centuries past. Okay,
conceptually they were totally different. And that's that's what I
mean when I point out that Hosbaum was a was
a true left to Galien. Psychological variables stand in for
providential ones. Okay. But people are familiar with the subject
area in general terms understand exactly what I'm talking about
and why that's important eating valume. In this four volume
study was was Age of Capital, you know, and Age
of Capital I think it's kind of it's kind of
a counterpart to the Stupiter's business cycles, okay. And it's
interesting to me that this kind of simpleton's stuff like Keenes,
even people who are pretty outside the main stream and
pretty far left, they still cite that kind of stuff.
You know, I would think that Age of Capital would
be their kind of go to, you know. And it's
highly it was it was a highly respected UH treaties
because it it showcased a genuine understanding of economics, you know,
and I I generally agree with Burnham. There's not a
quote Marxist economic because Marxism isn't a science. It's not
a theory of economics, you know. It's uh, it's a
series of sociological postulates and claims about the historical process,
you know. But there's not quoting Marxist economics. You know,
like like a Marxist economist, you know, he arbitrarily way
inputs you know, based on his own conceptual biases about what,
in particular concrete terms, is like driving this, you know,
the stage of the historical process, you know that he
finds himself in or that was the you know, epoch
in which the the data being coded and interpreted occurred.
You know. It's uh. It begins with the conclusion about
the human condition as it relates to historical and political phenomena,
and then and and then and then seeks out variables
that that can substantiate it in uh, in partisan terms,
you know. And there's some of that and a lot
of Hoswald's writing. But he but again, he understands puer
economics of such a thing that we said to exist
better than most people I mean including uh. I don't
think academics are any great shakes, but I mean including
people who were you know, were in you know, his
his peer group as a as a as a political
uh partisan and as a uh as a political theorist.
Uh and you know what can it And this also
is what explains Hosmon's like lifelong dedication to communism, because
it's a total theory of history. You know, It's not
something you take on for because you're alienated and and
like want some protest identity. I mean, yeah, I'm sure
some people do that, but they they're not serious people
and they're certainly not they're certainly not writing stuff, you know,
like on a par with the age Revolution in the
Age of Capital. And Hosmon've never hid that, you know it.
But he also one of one of Hoswe's collaborators on
a on a lot of scholarship and a lot of
his work product was this guy Eric Forearner Foreigner was
was known. He becames like firebrand who was like constantly
bashing gormat show off and you know, and and issuing
these these these punitive declarations about a garbage show off,
is is forsaking the revolution? And he's a trader the
Sovietism and you know into and of the Socialist Community
of Nations as well as the UH. It's both the
political parties that are you know, behind you know who
exists in in in in the capitalist world as well,
like Cosmon ever did that. And it's not it's not
because he was worried about his public image. I mean,
he would defend Nolin publicly. It's because if you are
a true Mercus Leninist like he was, like the failure
of the Soviet Union was ordained by that same process,
you know, in Hosboon's his unconditional loyalty to the Soviet
Union contrary to enemies that didn't entail some like slavish
like uncritical view of it. You know when when Cruse
Chief was assailing Stalin's memory and you know by name,
attempting to impeach the personality cult, you know, obviously after
after nineteen sixty, after after nineteen fifty four, fifty six
there and you know how hos Mom said to his comrades,
you know at cadre level, you know, we we we
we need to we need to take a hard look
at at at Stalin's tenure and you know, what what
what was laudable and what went wrong, and what you
know was in fact a kind of revolutionary tendency, because otherwise,
you know, the the revolution won't survive. And and how's
was honest to Osmam obviously had a lot of respect
for the Russians as a people, but he you know,
he was always he was a Soviet partisan, but with
with with reservations, because he was the first to make
the point, you know, uh, the revolutionary imperative didn't spark
in the most hyper advanced capitalist country. It didn't happen
in Germany, it didn't happen in the UK. It happened
in Russia, where the capitalist class was on very tenuous ground,
you know. And were they the opponent's revolution? Were really
the Tsarist elements, So we're incredibly hard guys. They were
god hearing people, They were patriots, but they were thrown
in altered reactionaries. I don't mean that putatively at all,
but that's what they were, you know, they weren't they
weren't some capitalist element that you know, could draw upon
this great power available to them by you know, the
productive processes that can literally extract wealth out of the dirt.
You know, that's not that's not of the Bolsheviks were
facing down and murdering, you know, so they they kind
of knocked down a house of cards in what became
the Soviet Union, you know, and Hosbo never lost sight
of that. See. On the one hand, you know, you
must stand with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is
the it's the beating heart of the socialist community and
nations and of the revolution, you know, but that doesn't
mean that, you know, one mustn critically accept every feature
of uh of the Soviet state. And uh oswell was
critical of state socialism from day one, like he considered
it a necessary stage. But he wasn't. That's what the
reasons I object to people saying, oh he was like
the Stalinist, like a true Stalinist, was uh was? Or
is uh you know somebody who looks at the Soviet
state as like the zenith of stay craft and then
and and they do that as like a positive thing,
you know, basically uh, you know, based basically uh, basically
this this this this mighty empire of uh. You know
that like leads the world in in in in terms
of how like you know, the industrial proletariat is valued.
You know, it's a superpower because of its military might
and it's mastery of technics including nuclear weapons and the
ability to deploy into orbital space and things like that.
You know, like these and these guys do exist, you know,
I mean like that is now like Cosmon was not
at all one of those guys. Okay, to be clear,
let me see in my outline, like I'm not I'm
not an F A G, G O T. Who Like
you know, I gotta stick to the outline. But I
but it doesn't me like a like a conceptual map,
so I know where we're at. They don't want to Yeah,
let's uh, hoss I, Well, I wanted to get this
biographical sort of info out of the way to lay foundation.
We'll get into the substance of Hobsbomb's you know, intellectual
canon in episode two. But I want to I want
to get and we need to get into the dual Revolution,
which is a it's it's a it's a political theoretical
and a sociological postulating concept that was coined, Uh that
was coined by Hosbomb and now in scholarship on the
French Revolution. It's it's just kind of taken. It's just
kind of accepted. It's accepted as like an essential aspect
of of that body of scholarship. But if I, but
if I, that's going to take an hour to dive into.
So let's let's hold off on that. And I think
we're coming on about an hour anyway. So yeah, I
think this would be a natural stopping point if that's acceptable.
Speaker 1: Perfect, All right, Uh, do plugs and we'll talk about
the next episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Man, I strongly advise, or I mean not advise,
I suggest. It would make me happy if people would
check out my substack. And it's in addition to there
being like my podcast there and like some longer form
stuff and a pretty active like chat platform that's where
when I shout out stuff, like you know, events and
inactivities were up on it, it shows up there. It's
a real Thomas seven seven seven dot substack dot com.
This Saturday, we're meeting at Rosewood Cemetery for our Halloween
Cemetery Walk and we're gonna lay some flowers at Confederate
Mound to like honor our forebears and their sacrifice and
for the Orthodox guys and girls. Mercia Eliotti is buried
at the same uh cemetery, and we're gonna pay respects
to him and Eliatti has had a huge effect on
impact on my intellectual development. So we're uh, it's it's
it's gonna be a very positive day, you know. Uh
if somber. But last last year we went to Graceland
Cemetery up on the North Side and it was it
was fantastic and a lot of people showed up. But uh,
you find me on social media. I'm at Capital r
e A L underscore number seven hm as seven seven seven,
and I'm there just like check the pinned Uh like
post I you can find like mers that like my
dear friend here Kreig produces, you can find it like
my instagram and my t gram, my website, like all
kinds of stuff. So just uh and if you if
you include some of this stuff in the description, man,
that would be a great help.
Speaker 1: I got it all ready to go. I just copy
and paste from the last episode and uh, I put
it right it over so links to your merch and
uh links to the gum Roads. So yep, that's it
until the next time. Thank you very much, Thomas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. Wade