One of the most annoying
things about the Economist magazine is not having the authors byline on its
articles. It seems the only exception to this rule is the articles written by
Bagehot who happens to be dead and dead a long time.
A recent article by this
author called The study of history is in decline in Britain is a very right-wing
evaluation of the state of historical study in this country. The author
correctly notes that England is moving through one of its most difficult
historical moments. Bagehot bemoans the fact that England “ is losing its skill
at interpreting the past”.
I do not
agree with Bagehot’s evaluation, which looks likes a ruse to cover the
Economist’s increasingly right-wing position over Brexit. While warning against
right-wing populism, the Economist’s real fear is that the crisis will provoke
a response in the working class. It is also important to
challenge his pessimism. A more optimistic evaluation of the state of
historical study comes from the mind and pen of Margaret Macmillan in her
excellent book The Uses and Abuses of History. For the Macmillan the historian's
role no matter where they are “ must do our best to raise the public awareness
of the past in all its richness and complexity”.
The article begins with a
political summation of this situation, stating” Whatever you think about recent
events in Britain, you cannot deny that they qualify as historic. The country
is trying to make a fundamental change in its relationship with the continent.
The Conservative Party is in danger of splitting asunder and handing power to a
far-left Labour Party. All this is taking place against the backdrop of a
fracturing of the Western alliance and a resurgence of authoritarian populism”.
It is true that two and a half years after the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union
(EU), the British ruling elite “is mired in crisis”. However, I prefer a more Marxist presentation
of what is going on as Chris Marsden points out “The dominant pro-Remain
faction is desperately manoeuvring to either overturn the result or at least
secure a deal preserving tariff-free access to the Single European Market on
which it depends for 40 per cent of trade and London’s role as a centre of
financial speculation. The pro-Brexit faction, led by right-wing Tories and the
sectarian thugs of the Democratic Unionist Party, resists all entreaties to
compromise. They believe the EU can be forced to accept the UK’s terms through
an alliance with the Trump administration in Washington. Such an arrangement
would free Britain to strike unilateral trade deals internationally and
refashion Britain as a Singapore-style free trade zone in Europe based on
crushing levels of exploitation. The working class has no interest in backing
either right-wing faction.[1]
Bagehot’s somewhat
simplistic and right-wing evaluation of the political situation allows the
writer to call into question any other study of history that does not deal with
the elites of any given century. Bagehot is of the firm opinion that the study
of history should be by the elites for the elites. As he states “ A scholarship
to read history at one of the ancient universities was both a rite of passage
for established members of the elite and a ticket into the elite for clever
provincial boys, as Alan Bennett documented so touchingly in his play “The
History Boys”. Prominent historians such as A.J.P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper
were public figures who spoke to the nation about both historical and
contemporary events”.
Bagehot makes another point
that “ the study of history has shrivelled” and the number reading it at
university has declined by about a tenth in the past decade”. Even if you take
the figures cited by Bagehot at face value and some have not you have to ask
yourself what is the reason. It is not that there is a decline in the interest
in history; it is because of the severe difficulty of getting a decent job with
a history degree. As Brodie Waddell on his blog[2]
states the chance of getting a job in academia with a PhD has become extraordinarily
hard.
There is one point that I
agree with, and that is Bagehot’s
complaint about the over specialisation and that “the historical profession has
turned in on itself. Historians spend their lives learning more and more about
less and less, producing narrow PhDs and turning them into monographs and
academic articles, in the hamster-wheel pursuit of tenure and promotion. The
need to fill endless forms to access government funding adds the nightmare of
official bureaucracy to the nightmare of hyper-specialisation”.
Much as I would like to
blame the government as Bagehot does there is a much more political reason for
this slide into obscure historical study. Bagehot would not agree, but this
specialisation has occurred because of the turn away from “Grand Narratives” in
the study of history. One of the most critical “Grand Narrative” has been the
study of history using a historical materialist method or as it is sometimes
called the Marxist method. One of the by-products in the decade's prolonged
attack on Marxism has been to move away from any historical study that smacks Marxism.
Led by a large number of
revisionist historians the attack on any Marxist conception has almost become a
new genre. Like Bagehot, these revisionists bemoan “History from below” with
its studies of the "the marginal", "the poor" & "
every day". They believe that history study should be about the haves and
not the have nots.
To conclude you have to ask
yourself why has the Economist commission this article in the first place. The
reason is that there is a real fear now taking place in ruling circles that the
growing economic crisis is leading to a growing radicalisation around the
world. The universities have always been at the forefront of the attack on
Marxism. The Economist article is crude in its attempt to stifle any study of
an alternative to capitalism.
[1]
The Brexit crisis and the struggle for socialism-By Chris Marsden -23 January
2019- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/01/23/brex-j23.html
