Interview with British historian Eric Hobsbawm

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From British daily The Morning Star:

The big questions

(Monday 28 April 2008)

INTERVIEW: Eric Hobsbawm
by DAN GLAZEBROOK

INTERVIEW: Marxist historian ERIC HOBSBAWM considers what’s in store for the British economy, US global power and socialism.

ERIC Hobsbawm is possibly the world’s most famous living historian. His series on the industrial revolution and its aftermath are widely seen as the definitive texts on the subject and, more recently, his magnum opus of 20th century history Age of Extremes has been widely revered across the political spectrum.

Now aged 92, he is still writing and lecturing, with his latest work Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism analysing the effects and prospects of free market globalisation, while comprehensively demolishing Bush and Blair’s wars of aggression.

A committed anti-imperialist, his recent lectures to Western audiences have largely focused on the lunacy and arrogance of supporting mass slaughter in the name of humanitarian intervention.

I caught up with him at the Bath literary festival.

You have said that the capitalist world economy has been in a state of crisis since 1997-8. How do you see the current economic crisis unfolding and what are the likely results of this? Do you see any parallels with earlier economic downturns in, for example, the 1930s or 1970s?

“The capitalists themselves now say that the present economic crisis is the most serious since the war, since the 1930s.

“In one form or another, it will probably affect Britain, since this country has followed the US more closely than any other, adopting the economic policy which has led to the present problems, namely the deregulated globalised free market.

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