Donald Sassoon's choice to include Hobsbawm's views on
nationalism mirrors his own political perspective. His book, One Hundred Years
of Socialism, promotes social-democratic ideals and provides a detailed history
of European leftist parties. Although information-rich, it endorses reformism
as the correct socialist method, considering revolutionary ideas extreme. Like
Hobsbawm, Sassoon is part of an intellectual faction within a tradition that
has focused on managing capitalism rather than overthrowing it for over a
century. Quoting Hobsbawm on nationalism indicates a shared political stance:
both are products of the post-war European left consensus, which accepted the
nation-state, NATO (initially with some reservations), and capitalist
democracy. Neither offers an analysis of how nationalism supports ruling
classes in the imperialist era, as both lack a perspective rooted in
working-class political independence.
To grasp Hobsbawm's perspective on nationalism, the insights
he offers and the limitations he maintains, it's essential to consider his
political background. Hobsbawm was a lifelong member of the British Communist
Party, remaining in it even after the 1956 revelations about Stalin's crimes,
when many other intellectuals resigned in horror. As Ann Talbot's analysis,
"Eric Hobsbawm on the Spanish Civil War: an anti-historical tirade,"
shows, this loyalty was more than mere organisational allegiance; it revealed a
deep-seated hostility to revolutionary politics. In his autobiography, Hobsbawm
admits to having the "instincts of a Tory communist," drawn to
authority, order, and subordinating working-class spontaneity to party
discipline. He expressed satisfaction at the expulsion of Militant from the
Labour Party under Kinnock, and his theoretical journal, Marxism Today, played
a key role in shifting Labour to the right, leading to Tony Blair's New Labour.
Hobsbawm's view on nationalism is closely linked to the
political framework of Stalinism's Popular Front. When Stalin introduced the
Popular Front strategy in 1935, it signified that Communist Parties had stopped
pursuing socialist revolution. Instead, it focused on the "national
defence" of bourgeois-democratic governments against fascism. This shift
replaced the core Marxist principle of internationalism with an alignment to
bourgeois nationalism, falsely portrayed as anti-fascism. As Talbot notes, this
approach involved defending private property, quelling working-class
revolutions, such as in Spain (1936-37), and subordinating workers' interests
to Soviet foreign policy objectives.
Hobsbawm's political development was profoundly shaped by
this tradition, influencing his perspective on nations and nationalism. His
scholarly work on nationalism is highly detailed, exploring the "invention
of tradition," the constructed nature of national identity, and the
historically dependent emergence of modern nations. However, his framework does
not view nationalism as a class phenomenon requiring a class-based explanation.
While he documents these elements and provides valuable insights, he does not
reach the revolutionary conclusion that, during imperialism, nationalism
primarily functions to subordinate the working class to the bourgeoisie of its
own nation.
The Marxist perspective on nationalism was first introduced
by Marx and Engels, later refined by Lenin in his critique of imperialism, and
defended by Trotsky against nationalist distortions. The phrase from the
Communist Manifesto stating "workingmen have no fatherland" is more
than just a slogan; it signifies a strategic position: the working class is
an international group whose interests unite across borders to oppose
capitalism. Lenin recognised that, under imperialism, the national question is
closely tied to which imperialist power a particular nationalism supports.
Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution took this further, arguing that in
countries where the bourgeoisie failed to complete their own
democratic-national tasks, the working class must seize power and pursue
socialist revolution connected to the international struggle. There is no
singular "national road" to liberation.
David North's essay Leon Trotsky and the Fate of
Socialism in the Twentieth Century: A Reply to Professor Eric
Hobsbawm takes direct aim at the theoretical core of Hobsbawm's method:
his fatalism. Hobsbawm reduces history to "what happened,"
dismissing the role of political alternatives, parties, and programs. For him,
Stalinism, "socialism in one country," the very foundation of
nationalist distortion within the workers' movement, was essentially inevitable
once the German revolution failed. North shows this is not a materialist
analysis but an apology for Stalinism: it retrospectively validates every
Stalinist betrayal by arguing there was no alternative.[1]
One of the contradictions at the heart of Hobsbawm's
historiography is that, despite his Stalinist politics, he could produce
stunning pieces of history. The Invention of Tradition (1983), edited by
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, is among the most frequently cited works in
modern history studies. Its core message is deceptively straightforward yet
truly insightful: many traditions that appear ancient and organic, such as
Highland Scots tartan and bagpipe customs, elaborate British royal ceremonies,
Zulu political rituals, and nationalist mass events, are actually fairly recent
constructs, intentionally created for political aims. These traditions aim to
foster a timeless sense of national or communal identity, legitimise authority,
and generate public support for the ruling elite’s institutions.
Hobsbawm differentiates between "genuine
traditions," which develop gradually and naturally, and "invented
traditions," which are deliberately created, often quickly, to address
emerging social needs, especially those caused by industrialisation and the
growth of mass democratic politics in the 19th and 20th centuries. He points
out that the Scottish Highland tradition celebrated by Romantics like Walter
Scott was mainly a late 18th and early 19th-century invention, enforced by the
Lowland and English-educated Scottish elite on a Gaelic-speaking population
they had largely marginalised. Similarly, the elaborate ceremonies of the
British monarchy, such as the state openings of Parliament and coronation
rituals, presented as timeless constitutional traditions, were mainly fictionalised
between 1870 and 1914, at a time when the British ruling class feared losing
deference amid the rise of mass enfranchisement.
This is genuinely valuable scholarship. Hobsbawm correctly
identify’s the functional character of nationalist mythology:
it serves ruling-class interests by binding the working class to a cross-class
"national community" that papers over the real divisions of
capitalist society. In this sense, this chapter makes a real contribution by
stripping away the ideological veil from some of the most powerful instruments
of bourgeois political manipulation.
Ann Talbot's article, 'History in the service of ideology,'
clarifies Hobsbawm's book on the same subject, 'Nations and Nationalism since
1780,' which shares the same intellectual background and has become a key
reference point in a significant historiographical debate. This debate
contrasts 'modernists who argue that nations and nationalism emerged from
modern capitalist conditions, with "primordialists," who claim that
national identity is rooted in long-standing ethnic, religious, or cultural
traditions that existed before the medieval era. Hobsbawm was a notable
supporter of the modernist view.[2]
This debate goes beyond academia. Adrian Hastings'
primordialist view in The Construction of Nationhood has an ideological
purpose: to tie the nation-state to nature and eternity, framing nationalism as
an almost innate biological drive. This perspective seeks to subordinate class
consciousness to national identity, viewing it as a persistent element of human
psychology. As Talbot mentions, Hastings' lectures were a political strategy,
timed to coincide with the rise of Scottish and English nationalisms in the
1990s, aimed at lending intellectual weight to the idea that English national
identity is ancient and therefore inherently legitimate. Hobsbawm's modernist
critique rightly identified this as mythmaking.
While Hobsbawm's descriptive work offers valuable
insights, his theoretical framework remains significantly lacking. He
can identify that traditions are socially constructed by bourgeois elites,
colonial administrators, or nationalist intellectuals, but cannot fully explain
why the working class accepts and internalises these invented nationalist
traditions. This gap exists because he lacks a solid Marxist theory of ideology
and class consciousness, a shortcoming rooted in his Stalinist background. The
concept of "invention" functions mainly as a sociology of deception:
elites create false memories, and populations accept them. Although this
perspective sheds some light, it falls short theoretically for three main
reasons.
Marx and Engels argue that ideology isn't just a set of
ideas that can be debunked; rather, it is materially reproduced through
institutions like the state, schools, media, churches, and political parties,
and interwoven with tangible social relations. The working class doesn't simply
believe in the nation because they've been deceived; they perceive nationalism
as a genuine force because the capitalist state organises social life around
national lines. Workers participate in national labour markets, and social
welfare, democratic rights, and legal protections are all mediated through the
nation-state. This "invention" endures because real social relations
lend it material substance. Although Hobsbawm's framework powerfully debunks
these notions, it cannot fully explain why nationalism persists so strongly
once its constructed nature is revealed.
If elites create traditions, it suggests that more educated
populations may recognise the invention and disregard it. However, ruling-class
ideology does not operate as a simple cognitive mistake driven by false beliefs
that can be fixed with better information. Instead, it functions as a form of
social consciousness that mirrors the real fragmentation and subjugation of the
working class under capitalism. Overcoming this requires organised political
effort and the development of a revolutionary party that offers the working
class an alternative way of understanding its interests. Hobsbawm fails to
provide such a perspective because, throughout his career, he was committed to
suppressing revolutionary politics.
The most disastrous "invention of tradition" in
the twentieth century was Stalinist nationalism itself. This included the
doctrine of "socialism in one country," the creation of a distinct
Russian or Soviet national tradition as the legacy of October 1917, and the
alignment of communist parties worldwide with the Soviet bureaucracy's foreign
policy interests. This was a massive, historically destructive fabricated
tradition, and Hobsbawm remained a loyal supporter throughout his life. While
he wrote insightfully about Highland chiefs crafting tartans to foster Scottish
nationalism, he was completely silent about Stalin constructing a Great Russian
nationalist mythology to strengthen the bureaucratic caste's hold on power.
This silence is not an oversight but a fundamental limitation of the entire
project.
Ann Talbot highlights an important point that goes beyond
Hobsbawm's perspective. The debate between primordialists and modernists,
despite its academic focus, conceals a fundamental issue: the nation-state is
more than just a cultural or political entity; it also operates as a system of
class dominance. As Talbot states, "The nation-state did not fulfil the
ideals of the revolutions that created it because the state could not transcend
the social relations of its time, those being capitalist relations founded on
private property." The bourgeois revolutions in England, France, and the
US, which established the modern nation-state, contained real revolutionary
elements—advancing citizen equality, ending feudal privileges, and securing
rights. Yet, these revolutions did not eliminate or seek to abolish the class
relations underlying bourgeois society.
Hobsbawm can debunk specific invented traditions with great
skill. But he cannot draw the socialist conclusion from his own evidence: that
the nation-state itself, as a form of class organisation, must ultimately be
transcended by a higher form of international social organization — socialism.
He cannot draw this conclusion because he spent his political career defending
various forms of national-reformist politics, from the Popular Front to Kinnockite
Labour.
Hobsbawm's Invention of Tradition deserves
to be read for what it genuinely shows: that the supposedly eternal and organic
character of national feeling is a historical, humanly constructed phenomenon,
and therefore capable of being superseded. But it must be read critically, with
clear awareness of what its author could not say and would not do. The
debunking of invented traditions, without a revolutionary socialist
perspective, is merely an academic exercise.
"The Jews and
Germany"
A Stalinist historian discussing Jews and Germany raises
fundamental questions of historical and political significance. Among all
topics Eric Hobsbawm could address, the issue of Jews and Germany most clearly
exposes the limitations and political crimes of the Stalinist intellectual
tradition he embodied. The destruction of Jewish communities in Germany and
Europe during the Holocaust was not a mere natural disaster; it resulted from
identifiable, analysable historical and political forces. Foremost among these
was the failure of the German Communist Party, under Stalinist leadership, to
build a united front of the working class against Hitler. Hobsbawm cannot
honestly face this reality because doing so would be to condemn the political
movement he dedicated his entire life to.
The Class Roots of
Modern Antisemitism
A genuine Marxist analysis of Jews and Germany must recognise
that class interests drove the emergence of modern political antisemitism in
the late 1800s. As David North's "The Myth of 'Ordinary Germans'
illustrates, this form of antisemitism was not just a medieval religious legacy
but a strategic ideological weapon used by the ruling class. Its target was destabilised
sections of the petty bourgeoisie, such as failed shopkeepers, disillusioned
artisans, heavily indebted peasants, and worried professionals, whose social
positions were being threatened by the rise of industrial capitalism from the
1870s onwards.[3]
The 1873 stock market crash in Germany, along with the
high-profile presence of Jewish financiers, bankers, and professionals during a
period of rapid capitalist expansion, provided reactionary ideologues with
material for demagogic scapegoating. Charles Maurras, a prominent reactionary,
plainly explained that antisemitism "enables everything to be arranged,
smoothed over, and simplified" suggesting that directing the anger of the
dispossessed at Jewish people instead of capitalism was a more effective way to
suppress class awareness and reintegrate the proletariat into a "national
community" under bourgeois dominance.
The critical point that Hobsbawm, wedded as he is to a
culturalist rather than class-based analysis, consistently underweights is
this: the most powerful and consistent opposition to antisemitism throughout
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came not from liberal
bourgeois opinion but from the revolutionary socialist workers' movement. As
Clara Weiss's analysis of Mario Kessler's historical scholarship, The Marxist
movement and the fight against antisemitism and Zionism, demonstrates,
"the most powerful and consistent critique of both antisemitism and
Zionism emanated from the revolutionary internationalist wing in the workers'
movement."[4]
August Bebel famously called antisemitism "the
socialism of fools," emphasising that it was a misguided form of
anti-capitalism. It redirected genuine popular anger away from the capitalist
system and onto a Jewish scapegoat. This benefited the ruling class by
preventing the working class from gaining a socialist consciousness. Hobsbawm
inherited this tradition at least in theory. However, his Stalinist beliefs
stopped him from recognising the crucial lesson.
Any thorough analysis of Jews and Germany must address how
Hitler rose to power. An honest answer also involves examining Stalinism's
influence. By 1933, the German working class was highly organised, with the
Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Communist Party (KPD) commanding millions
of loyal workers and supported by armed paramilitary groups prepared for
conflict. Despite this, Hitler ascended to power without confronting
significant, organised resistance from the working class. Why did this happen?
Peter Schwarz's lecture, "The Rise of Fascism in
Germany and the Collapse of the Communist International," offers a clear
Marxist perspective. The SPD betrayed the working class twice: first in 1914 by
endorsing imperialist war, and again in 1919 by aiding in quelling the German
revolution and orchestrating the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
The KPD, the supposed revolutionary alternative, committed an even more
significant betrayal under Stalinist influence. Following the Comintern's
"Third Period" policy that labelled "social fascism"
(meaning the SPD) as the primary enemy, the KPD refused to form a united front
with Social Democratic workers against Nazism. It absurdly equated the
reformist SPD with Hitler's movement and sometimes even collaborated with the
Nazis against the Social Democrats. Their shocking slogan — Nach Hitler kommen
wir ("After Hitler, it's our turn") — reflected not revolutionary
conviction but a disastrous passivity driven by Stalinist sectarianism.
Trotsky was the only major left leader who clearly
understood what was at stake and what actions were needed. He consistently
wrote, warned, and urged the KPD and its workers to form a united front against
fascism. There was still time—because he recognised that Hitler's victory would
not only topple a government but also lead to the physical destruction of the
organised workers' movement and, as history showed, the genocide of European
Jews. Unfortunately, his warnings went unheeded, and his followers were
persecuted as "social fascists" and
"counter-revolutionaries" by the very Stalinist machinery that
Hobsbawm faithfully supported.
Hobsbawm was a young man in Berlin when Hitler rose to power
in 1933. He saw these events firsthand and joined the Communist Party that same
year. Because of this, he was directly part of the organisation whose 'social
fascism' line bears significant blame for the political disaster that ensued.
Throughout his historical writings, he never addressed this responsibility
seriously or honestly. His autobiography, Interesting Times, covers his years
in Berlin with typical eloquence and memoir-style charm. Still, it lacks a
genuine reflection on what the Stalinist KPD's failure meant for the millions
who perished as a consequence.
After 1935, Stalin shifted his approach by implementing the
Popular Front strategy: Communist Parties were directed to form broad
coalitions with liberal and social-democratic groups to defend 'democracy'
against fascism, abandoning any independent revolutionary goals. This was
justified as the lesson learned from Germany. However, as Ann Talbot's analysis
of Eric Hobsbawm's work on the Spanish Civil War reveals, the Popular Front was
not a genuine attempt to address the root causes of fascism. Instead, it was a
cynical adjustment to Soviet foreign policy, in which workers' revolutionary
interests were sacrificed to the diplomatic priorities of the Kremlin
bureaucracy.
Hobsbawm's entire political career, from his time in Paris
in 1936 to his contributions to Marxism Today in the 1980s, was rooted in the Popular
Front framework. This context shaped how he approached topics like "the
Jews and Germany." The Popular Front analysis of fascism, introduced by
Georgi Dimitrov at the Seventh Comintern Congress in 1935, characterised
fascism as a reactionary, chauvinistic, and imperialist force driven by finance
capital, rather than, as Trotsky argued, a mass movement of the petty bourgeoisie
mobilised by the ruling class against the revolutionary working class. By
separating fascism from its class roots—particularly its emergence from the
crisis of bourgeois democracy and the failure of reformism—this definition
hindered the ability to derive truly revolutionary lessons from Germany.
The authentic Marxist tradition regarding the Jewish
question is much more extensive and rooted in political principle than what
either Hobsbawm's Stalinist perspective or the liberal and Zionist alternatives
suggest. As Weiss's analysis demonstrates, Marx's 1843 essay 'On the Jewish
Question'—often misunderstood and misrepresented—actually advocates for Jewish
political emancipation against the idealist Bruno Bauer, who opposed granting
Jews equal rights on pseudo-philosophical grounds. Marx argued that Jewish
emancipation is inherently linked to the broader issues of social revolution
and human liberation. The socialist movement that arose afterwards—highlighted
by Bebel's anti-antisemitism stance, the Second International's mass protests
during the Dreyfus Affair, and the Bolsheviks' abolition of the Pale of
Settlement and tsarist anti-Jewish laws in 1917—embodied the most potent
practical effort for Jewish emancipation in modern history.
The Goldhagen
Problem and the Alternative
A helpful way to analyse the gaps in a Hobsbawm-style
approach to Jews and Germany is to consider his subtle similarity to the
culturalist-essentialist analysis found (in a simplified form) in Daniel Jonah
Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners." David North's powerful
critique demonstrates that Goldhagen's portrayal of an undifferentiated
"ordinary German" as the bearer of an enduring, eliminationist
antisemitism — like the broader liberal Holocaust historiography — frames
fascism as a manifestation of a specific German national pathology, rather than
as a consequence of identifiable capitalist social forces during a particular
historical crisis. Despite expressing horror over the Holocaust, this view
ultimately undermines the working class, because if fascism stems from German
national character instead of class contradictions within capitalism during a
crisis, then the only political lessons are "eternal vigilance" and
safeguarding liberal democratic institutions.
Identity Politics
and the Left
This 1996 lecture, delivered just before Tony Blair's
landslide election victory, is not primarily a work of historical scholarship.
It is a political intervention, a contribution by one of Britain's most
prestigious "Marxist" intellectuals to the British Labour Party's
internal strategic debate on the eve of a general election. As Ann Talbot's
analysis of Hobsbawm established, his interventions were always "timed and
targeted with precision." This one is no exception. Its purpose is to
argue that Labour should drop identity politics, embrace a broader
"citizen nationalism," and present itself as the voice of "the
nation." It is, in short, intellectual cover for the New Labour project.
Hobsbawm concludes the essay by lamenting that Labour speaks
with a "muffled voice" regarding Britain and the nation. He
approvingly cites Thatcher for having had the "strength" to recognise
the importance of offering "hope and action to a puzzled and demoralised
people" and questions whether New Labour will "make the same effort
to restore and transform Britain." This represents the ultimate goal and
the core insight of Hobsbawm's observations on identity politics, which contain
significant substance worth acknowledging before addressing where his framework
may fall short.
He rightly states that identity politics arose as a
historically specific phenomenon, primarily in the 1960s, rather than being an
inherent aspect of human society. He also correctly notes that collective
identities are shaped negatively—by opposition to "others"—and are
fluid, contextual, and socially constructed, rather than based on fixed,
inherent traits. His insight regarding the Orlando Patterson paradox—where
people choose their identity groups yet feel as if they had no real choice—is
particularly enlightening. These observations are significant, as they
foreshadow many issues caused by the rise of identity politics since the 1990s,
such as the fragmentation of the left into conflicting "oppressed
groups," the difficulty in addressing the working class as a whole, and
the fostering of resentments among different groups of workers.
Hobsbawm's primary and most critical flaw in his analysis is
his explanation for when identity politics arose. He claims it resulted from
the "extraordinarily rapid and profound upheavals and transformations of
human society in the third quarter of this century,' describing it as a
"cultural revolution' and a "dissolution of traditional social
norms.' According to him, these changes left people feeling "orphaned and
bereft,' prompting a search for new group identities to replace fractured
communities. He endorses sociologist Daniel Bell's view that the "breakup
of traditional authority structures and the previous affective social
units—namely, nation and class—made ethnic attachment more prominent."
This is a sociological account rather than a Marxist
analysis. It describes what occurred without explaining why, meaning it cannot
suggest solutions other than restoring a "common identity" through
(citizen) nationalism. A truly Marxist explanation points to a more precise
cause: identity politics arose as a political phenomenon in direct
relation to the defeats of the working class — especially the betrayals by
the very Stalinist and social-democratic groups that Hobsbawm’s tradition
embodies. The working class was fractured not by abstract "cultural
revolutions," but by the Stalinist murders of revolutionary leftists in
the 1930s, the alignment of communist parties with Popular Front politics that
suppressed revolutionary ideas, the integration of labour bureaucracies into
corporate management, and ultimately the rightward shift and capitulation of
these parties in the 1970s and 1980s.
When the working class loses its revolutionary political
voice—due to betrayals by its parties, trade union bureaucracies becoming tools
of class collaboration, or when "socialism" is associated with either
Stalinist tyranny or Blairite managerialism—workers, especially petty-bourgeois
intellectuals who might otherwise engage in socialist politics, look for
alternative ways to express grievances and organise. Identity politics emerges
to fill this gap. It is not an inevitable sociological trend; rather, it is
a political outcome resulting from the failure of the revolutionary
socialist movement. Hobsbawm cannot acknowledge this, as his entire career was
spent within organisations responsible for those defeats. Instead, he offers a
passive, culturalist explanation: society changed, people became confused, and
they gravitated toward identity groups.
I concur with Hobsbawm that the left must adopt a
universalist stance. However, true Marxist universalism differs from the
nationalistic version; it embodies the internationalism of the working class as
a global entity, with interests beyond national borders. The working class is
not a mere "identity group" like gender, racial, or sexual
orientation groups. It is the only class in capitalism whose social
position—producing all wealth while owning none of the means of production—gives
it both the interest and the ability to eliminate all class exploitation.
Any arguments Hobsbawm presented in this book should be
assessed in this context. The key criterion is not whether his historical
research is erudite and well-sourced — which it usually is — but whether it
genuinely addresses the crucial political issue: the Stalinist KPD's
"social fascism" stance and its impact on disarming the German
working class before Hitler. Ignoring this question in any discussion of Jews
and Germany, regardless of other qualities, results in a fundamentally
distorted political view. The real solution is not found in detailed academic
histories of national development, but in the creation of a revolutionary
internationalist party the very kind of
party Hobsbawm dedicated his career to undermining.
[1]
Leon Trotsky and the Fate of Socialism in the Twentieth Century: A Reply to
Professor Eric Hobsbawm-www.wsws.org/en/special/library/russian-revolution-unfinished-twentieth-century/04.html
[2]
'History in the service of ideology-Review of The Construction of Nationhood:
Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism, by Adrian Hastings
[3]
The Myth of 'Ordinary Germans,'", A Marxist critique of Daniel Goldhagen's
1996 book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.
[4]
The Marxist movement and the fight against antisemitism and Zionism-
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/07/03/ajbz-j03.html
