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Comment by smitty1e | Hacker News Reader

I read his "Age of Extremes"[1], and thought his point that there was an awful lot of Socialism going on in the U.S. system was a cogent one.

Arguably he averted his gaze from some of the excesses at the other end of the argument.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Age-Extremes-History-World-1914-1991/...

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An interesting review / commentary on that book, and his worldview, by someone with a rather different one:

https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/10/brad-delong-eric-hobs...

"He is writing for readers who take the central theme of twentieth century history to be the tragical-heroic course of World Communism."

Looking at the examples Delong gave 25 years ago, history has been much kinder to Hobsbawm's bleak vision than Delong's.

> What has happened in the past decade that has so darkened his vision of our human future?

> The past decade has seen good news along a number of important dimensions: The environment is in better shape: the clean-up of the first world continues; the clean-up of the ex-Communist world has begun; and the third world is more aware of environmental degradation. Progress has been made in creating the international climate to guard against ozone depletion and global warming.

If all you take is bleakness, then perhaps. But Hobsbawm's bleakness is more specific, it's about the demise of actually existing Communism as a pole of the world order. And I would say that putting that anywhere near the top of your list of world events to feel sad about seems even stranger now than in 1995.

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