Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes: Hoisted from the Archives

Hoisted from the Archives. I wrote this back in 1995: Low Marx: A Review of Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes:

Eric Hobsbawm (1994), The Age of Extremes (New York: Vintage: 0679730052) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0679730052/braddelong00

Planet Hobsbawm

In the beginning was Karl Marx, with his vision of how the Industrial Revolution would transform everything and wash us up on the shores of Utopia. Marx saw the economy as the key to history: every forecast and historical interpretation must be based on the economy's logic of development. Sometimes--as in much of Eric Hobsbawm's previous work on the history of the nineteenth century--this functioned relatively well.

But sometimes it led to very bad results indeed. And when Marx and Engels's writings became sacred texts for a world religion called Communism, things passed beyond the absurd: the belief that the logic of development of the economy was the most important thing about society became entangled in the belief that Joe Stalin was our benevolent master and ever-wise guide.

Now it is over. The red stars of the Soviet Union no longer shine from the tops of the Kremlin towers at night. Radicals still seek Utopia, but they no longer think the road leads through the economy. Instead, they study culture--as if to change the world just by understanding it. It is difficult to see a future in which authors with the intelligence, industriousness, and audience of Eric Hobsbawm are disciples of Karl Marx in anything like the sense that Eric Hobsbawm is a disciple of Marx.

Now Eric Hobsbawm has written a history of the twentieth century, The Age of Extremes. It has by and large received good reviews: Stanley Hoffman in the New York Times Book Review; Eugene Genovese in the New Republic; Edward Said in the London Review of Books. But my reaction to The Age of Extremes was different. It struck me as history gone awry: a sketch of the twentieth century not as it has been lived here on earth but as it might have been lived somewhere else, on some "planet Hobsbawm" that might be found in one of those parallel universes often visited in Star Trek episodes, where what looks familiar at first glance turns out on close examination to be alien indeed.

Let me give an example: the last word of the book is darkness: it ends "one thing is plain. If humanity is to have a recognizable future, it cannot be by prolonging the past or the present. If we try to build the third millennium on that basis, we shall fail. And the price of failure, that is to say, the alternative to a changed society, is darkness." But a decade ago, when Hobsbawm finished an earlier book, Hobsbawm was optimistic: looking forward to a twenty-first century much better than the twentieth if nuclear war were successfully avoided.

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. Nuclear war is much less likely. China and India, more than one-third the human race, had their best economic growth decades in the 1980s.

In addition, many of the Communist régimes that ruled more than half the human race have fallen. Awful tyrannies have passed into history. Hundreds of millions have a chance for a more normal life--not spending six hours a day waiting in some commodity distribution line, not being spied on by one out of every ten of their eighbors, not seeing one out of every fifteen neighbors killed by the state's bullet, labor camp, or political famine.

Good news on the environment, on the danger of nuclear war, on Asian and Latin American (albeit not African) development, on the spread of democracy, and on the end of tyrannies have been the major developments of the past decade. If you were optimistic about the human future before the mid-1980s, you should be ecstatic today.

Yet Eric Hobsbawm is much gloomier than he was a decade ago.

There is no doubt that his gloominess is due to the end of European Communism. This is not to say that Hobsbawm still worships the post-1917 pre-1991 Soviet Union. The days are gone when he saw directives from Moscow as the logos of History speaking through the Party. He no longer judges "heroic" communists' obedience to Stalin's instructions to undermine Britain's World War II effort against Hitler (before June 22, 1941, that is), or claims "my International right or wrong."

Yet traces remain of the Eric Hobsbawm who was once a fanatic acolyte of the despotically-governed world religion of Communism. Judgments made then remain unexamined, or unsuccessfully reexamined, parts of the structure of his thought. It is as if a star--belief in the world religion of Communism--died, but light emitted before its death continues to reflect off planets and moons. The remains of Hobsbawm's commitment to the religion of World Communism get in the way of his judgment, and twist his vision.

On planet Hobsbawm, for example, the fall of the Soviet Union was a disaster, and the Revolutions of 1989 a defeat for humanity. On planet Hobsbawm, Stalin planned multi-party democracies and mixed economies for Eastern Europe after World War II, and reconsidered only after the United States launched the Cold War. On planet Hobsbawm, Hungarian--collectivized--agriculture is more productive than modern French agriculture.

Perhaps worst of all, on planet Hobsbawm modern democracy is not a good thing: elections are "contests in fiscal perjury" among voters with "no qualifications to express an opinion," that create governments that work only when they "did not have to do much governing." If there is a good word about really existing democracy--as a check upon official paranoia, as way of ensuring that people can lead a quiet life, or as a way of ascertaining the public interest--I missed it.

Cold-War Polemics

Let me briefly note one more belief that is false, but that was once part of the worldview of Stalin's acolytes:

The book has one single substantive sentence about the Korean War: "Shaken by the communist victory in China, the U.S. and its allies (disguised as the United Nations) intervened in Korea in 1950 to prevent the communist régime in the North of that divided country from spreading to the South." (p. 237). Now this simply will not do. It is not fair to tuck Kim Il Sung's army and Stalin's tanks into that little word, "spreading." The only other mention of Kim Il Sung's rule--264 pages later, in a discussion of the arts--calls it a "megalomaniac tyranny."

I find it odd that Hobsbawm chooses to describe North Korea's government by the colorless word "régime" in the context of the Korean War: If Kim Il Sung is a megalomaniac tyrant when talking about the arts, he should also be a megalomaniac tyrant when talking about the Korean War.

And it matters: a war undertaken to stop military conquest by a megalomaniac tyranny is a different thing from a war undertaken to oppose the "spread of a régime."

Hobsbawm's Cold-War polemics would not, by themselves, necessarily greatly harm the book: Readers could speculate whether the change in description of Kim Il Sung's government is Hobsbawm's delieberate and conscious avoidance of any hint that the Cold War might have been a struggle between bad guys and less-bad guys. They would argue over whether the change of Kim Il Sung's government from a "megalomaniac tyranny" to a "régime" as it enters the context of the Cold War is the result of unbreakable habits of doublethink created by decades of Communist Party membership.

But Hobsbawm's past as a Communist acolyte does much more additional damage to his book. It warps its themes. Hobsbawm's history has one major theme that takes up nearly forty percent of available space: Communism as the Tragic Hero of the twentieth century. Too many other aspects of the century are crammed into the corners left over, with the positive aspects of the terrible and glorious twentieth century--the rise of political democracy, the technologically-driven explosion of material wealth, and the creation of social democracy with its mixed economies and welfare states--allowed less than one-tenth of available space.

And this is the wrong focus for anyone's history. The proportions should be reversed.

The fundamental source of the distortion is that, for Eric Hobsbawm, World Communism was the Tragic Hero of the twentieth century. It was born in unfavorable circumstances in a backward agricultural country. Lagging behind historians' judgments, Hobsbawm believes that it by and large succeeded in its historical task of industrialization. And before its death, according to Hobsbawm Communism saved the west and what little there is of good in the twentieth century twice:

The victory of the Soviet Union over Hitler was the achievement of the regime... [of] the October Revolution.... Without [Communism] the Western world today would probably consist (outside the USA) of a set of variations on authoritarian and fascist themes.... It is one of the ironies of this strange century that the most lasting result of the October Revolution... was to save its antagonist, both in war and in peace--that is to say, by providing it with the incentive, fear, to reform itself after the Second World War.

There is some here that is true, but much here that is false. There is an enormous and eternal debt for the defeats of Hitler's armies at Stalingrad (1942), Kursk (1943), 2nd Kiev (1944), the Beresina (1944), the Vistula (1945), and Berlin (1945) that collectively broke the back of the Nazi war machine. But this debt owed to Stalin and Stalin's régime? No. It is owed to the people of the Soviet Union.

Before Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, Stalin decimated his army through purges, attacked Finland and adding it to Hitler's allies, and fed the Nazi war machine with raw materials it could not get through the British naval blockade. Had Stalin joined the allies in September 1939, he would have had three allied armies--Polish, French, and British--fighting on the continent of Europe, and a neutral Italy. Add in the role played by the Comintern in gleefully helping to destroy the democratic center that lay between Hitler and Weimar Communists in Germany, add in what Hobsbawm calls "Stalin's... extraordinarily inept interventions into military strategy," and conclude that Stalin made the Soviet people's task in 1941-1945 more difficult.

One of the major themes of twentieth century history must be barbarism and mass murder. This is a century in which perhaps 160 million civilians have been killed by governments--through execution, overwork in prison camps, terror-bombing with no proportional military effect, and mass famine induced as an aim of policy. Perhaps three quarters of these civilians have been killed by their own governments. Thomas Hobbes wrote that people pledged allegiance to governments to protect them from the fear of violent death. In the context of the twentieth century Hobbes was a utopian optimist: governments--Communist governments above all--have been the principal source of violent death.

Hobsbawm's book contains some eloquent passages describing the tyrannies of Stalin and Mao. But they are oddly disconnected from the narrative of the "Age of Catastrophe" that was the first half of this century. For Hobsbawm, this disconnectedness serves a purpose: it allows him to write as if Stalin's Soviet Union was part of the solution in the struggle against tyranny in the twentieth century, rather than a large part of the problem.

As odd--and indefensible--is Hobsbawm's attempt to find roots of what he calls the post-World War II "Golden Age" in the October Revolution. It is even harder to see post-war success--prosperity, democracy, the welfare state, and greater economic equality--as due to World Communism. Hobsbawm wants the October Revolution to have provided "[Capitalism] with the incentive, fear, to reform itself after the Second World War." But "capitalism" is not a live, breathing, intelligent creature that feels fear and thus undertakes to reform itself. Concepts like "capitalism" do not make history. Humans make history--even if not just as they please, but under circumstances dictated by the past.

The post-World War II order in the industrial west was made by the voters who chose the Trumans, the Adenauers, and the Attlees, and who set the parameters of the politically possible within which politicians seeking to maintain public support and provide for the general welfare could operate. A secondary role in making the post-World War II order belongs to the politicians themseles, who drafted, negotiated, and enforced the laws that created the mixed economies, welfare states, and social democracies of the post-World War II industrial and democratic west.

They did a good job.

In the United States, they would have done a better job had Communism not existed; Stalin's presence brooding offstage was not helpful. In western Europe as well, the subservience of national Communists to Stalin meant that social democracy could only assemble majorities by taking several steps to the right, and thus limiting the coverage and scope of the welfare state. In the developing world, countries that adopted the Soviet model did so at an enormous price.

Hobsbawm half-recognizes that he has misused his space. He muses on "the changes in human life... brought about [by economic growth in the twentieth century] all over the globe" and calls them "as profound as they were irreversible." He notes that the twentieth "century marked the end of the seven or eight millennia of human history that began with the invention of agriculture." He concludes that "[c]ompared to this, the history of the confrontation between 'capitalism' and 'socialism'"--the major theme of his book--"will probably seem of more limited historical interest."

Yet he has only eleven pages--257 to 268--for the century's economic revolution, and only two chapters--10 and 11--for the consequences of the end of the ten thousand year era in which most humans worked growing or making things with their bare hands.

Hobsbawm would have served himself and his readers infinitely better if he had cut by three-quarters the space devoted to Communism and its struggles, and devoted it to the central theme of twentieth century history. Call it the "elevator to modernity," the explosion in productivity seen in the economies of the industrial core. A first corollary is the "escalator to modernity": the third world today is far from levels of prosperity found in the industrial core, but for more than three billion people this century has seen the beginnings of the industrial, urban, educational, and communications revolutions. And a second corollary is the triumph of social democracy: the combination of political democracy, the mixed economy, and the welfare state.

The Elevator to Modernity

This year--1995--the U.S. Commerce Department will report that the gross value produced in the United States by the average employed worker is about $56,970. A century ago--1895--historical statistics tell us that the gross value produced, divided by the number of workers, is some $14,150 measured at 1995 prices (and $408 when measured at 1895 prices). The average American worker produces some four times as much as a century ago according to this set of numbers, which roughly answer the question: "What would 1895's production be worth if we had it to sell today?"

But we are most interested in a different question: roughly, how much better is today's economy than that of a century ago in making what humans need and want? And simply valuing last century's goods at today's prices leaves out the important fact that we, today, produce a much wider range and quality of goods than a century ago. Anyone taken back in time to 1895 would feel cramped and harassed by the absence of so many of the goods and services we take for granted: no airplanes, limited telephones, no communications media or compact-disk players, limited prepared foods, no automobiles and no asphalt or concrete roads, no electrically-powered consumer durables.

How much does the expanded range of choice made possible by the inventions--new goods and new categories of goods--of the past century matter? If you try to duplicate in the past the capabilities we have today in the past, you fail. The capability of your compact-disk player--that of listening to, say, Don Giovanni in the evening in your home at whim--could not have been provided two centuries ago at any price.

Let me use Alan Greenspan's guess that the invention of new goods, new kinds of goods, and new features for old goods boosts our true standard of living by one-half to one and one-half percent per year: combining the fourfold multiplication in measured output per worker with the one-fifth decline in hours and the increase in the scope and range of goods and products, America as a society today is at least eight and perhaps as much as twenty-three times as wealthy as America a century ago. The average American today has a "real standard of living" higher than 999 out of every thousand Americans alive in 1895.

Perhaps the nineteenth century saw a doubling of real standards of living in the industrial core. Perhaps there was some progress not just in technology but in standards of living in the previous eighteen centuries of the Christian era--although I would not place high odds that the median Frenchman in the age of Louis XIV had a higher standard of living than the median Athenian at the birth of Christ.

Nevertheless, the difference between economic growth in any previous century and economic growth in the twentieth century is a large enough quantitative to invoke not just one, but several qualitative transformations. It is like the difference between climbing a ramp, and riding up the World Trade Center in an elevator.

Why has the twentieth century been so different from all previous centuries? Market economies have the standard advantages of giving manufacturers and traders every incentive to use resources most efficiently, and which have the additional advantage of providing that "sunset" for relatively inefficient organizations. Enterprises that are relatively inefficient cannot pay their bills, and vanish. This automatic weeding-out of inefficient organizations that fail the test of the market is so lacking where state enterprises draw on the general taxation or money-printing power of the state.

But markets alone do not generate the tenfold multiplication of human productive potential that the twentieth century has seen. Previous mercantile capitalisms, like Classical Athens, Sung dynasty China, Mediterranean Islam circa 1000, northern Italy in the late middle ages, or Augustan Britain have been relatively bright spots in human history. But they are only pale shadows of what we have seen this century.

If I had to lay odds on the necessary additional factors, I would bet on two: first, democracy; second, technological density.

Before our century, a productive mercantile economy was a goose that laid golden eggs--but there was always the temptation to squeeze the goose a little tighter to pay for a slightly greater degree of courtly splendor or a slightly higher military effort on whatever was the current active conquest frontier. History is littered with the corpses of golden geese. The loss of control by a mercantile aristocracy to a military one, or to a despot, meant that the best days of the local mercantile economy were past.

Successful democracy changes the calculus. Courtly splendor and an overmighty military become of less interest and less urgency than keeping real wages, employment, and profits rising--for political parties that are either unlucky to catch an unfavorable wave of the business cycle or unskillful enough to disrupt economic growth vanish rapidly. Economic growth and market institutions certainly coexist with political despotism for a while, but there is good reason to doubt their long-term compatibility.

But we need "technological density" as well: research and development has to become an industry in itself, rather than an avocation of a few learned gentlemen reading papers before a Royal Society, to maintain the pace of invention and innovation that we now take for granted. Only the confluence of all three, market institutions, political democracy, and high technological density, could generate the economic revolutions of the twentieth century.

This is the proper central theme of twentieth century history: the pace of economic transformation--its causes, its implications for productivity, for the structure of employment, for the use of education, for the value of capital, for society and social order, for cultural events, for politics. This is where a truly Marxist analysis could have been extremely powerful. For if there was ever an age in which changes in the material conditions by which humans produce and reproduce the necessities and conveniences of their life dominate every other sphere of human activity, it is the twentieth century.

The upward jump of productivity and wealth is not confined to the core of the world economy. In 1987, 97 percent of households in Greece, not usually considered one of the world's industrial leaders, owned a television set. In Mexico there was one automobile for every sixteen people, one television for every eight, one telephone for every ten.

On our low estimate of the pace of growth in the twentieth century, some 44 countries today--from South Africa and Estonia to Botswana and Brazil, from Slovenia and South Korea to Japan and Switzerland--are as rich as or richer than the United States was a century ago. And the United States a century ago was a society with a level of wealth previously unseen in world history. On our high estimate of growth, not 44 but 76 countries are wealthier today than the U.S. was at the turn of the cneuty.

The world's distribution of wealth, today, is probably more unequal than at any time in the past: the explosion of wealth in the industrial core carried them far above the four-plus billion below. But when future historians look back at the third world in the second half of the twentieth century, they will say that this was a period in which three billion humans climbed onto the escalator to modernity.

Social Democracy

A second theme of any history of the twentieth century should be the triumph of democracy over a large chunk of the globe, and the consequent arrival of the developed welfare state with its web of support services and social insurance programs.

A look back at human history can be read to suggest that, unless the extraordinary wealth generated by the twentieth century has had some subtle impact on political dynamics, that our current democracies may not survive for even half a millenium. Those writing history four or five centuries from now might live under imperial régimes: emperors whose dynastic titles are based on keeping relative peace, ruling through aristocracies that negotiate semi-consent with the ruled. Imperial aristocracy may be in the future, as it has been in the past, the canonical form of human government.

Nevertheless, just as the Classical experience with semi-democractic and republican forms of government has always been of great interest to Europe's historians and politicians, so our experience with democracy in the industrial west--even if it ultimately ends--will be of as great interest to historians and politicians in the future. As Thucydides, Plutarch, Livy, and Sallust spoke to Niccolo Machiavelli as he tried to preserve the Florentine and to James Madison as he tried to establish the American Republic, so we should try to speak to our possible successors perhaps a millennium hence.

The rise of stable democratic governments has transformed not only how governments work but what they do. The industrial, democratic west has for the past half century been the realm of the social insurance state. Whether called "mixed economy," "social democracy," or "social market economy," the major business of government has become social insurance: progressive tax systems, income support, and benefit provision programs to partially counterbalance the extremes of economic inequality produced by the market distribution of income, and to create countries that are more middle-class societies.

Thus the past fifty years in the industrial, democratic west marks one of the few eras in history in which the distribution of wealth and economic power is to a degree the result of political choice, instead of the distribution of economic power largely determining political organization. Opposing pressures have balanced: populist calls for taking "unearned increment" from the rich balanced by an admiration for entrepreneurs and savers, and a realization that economic life is a positive sum game; compassion toward the poor balanced by resentment of those seen as trying to get something for nothing--even if the something is pitifully small by middle-class standards.

But the political and economic balancing act of social democracy appears possible only if economic growth continues. And the record of the twentieth century is that modern mixed economies are not stable, and require the most delicate management to avoid economic chaos.

Go to Wall Street. Look around. Wall Street is, in a very real sense, the investment planning department of the human race. Power to purchase commodities that owners of property have earmarked for savings flow into Wall Street and, in a complicated social and economic dance, are distributed to enterprisers and bureaucracies seeking permission to invest, develop new enterprises, or expand old ones.

The future becomes visible only slowly: one day at a time. Our technological capabilities, individuals' preferences for spending and saving, and natural resources change very slowly. Thus Wall Street should be a quiet place. Financial prices are the shorthand that Wall Street-considered-as-investment-planning-department uses to assess the desirability of investment projects. They should move glacially, as an extra day's information causes forecasters to revise so very slightly their image of the economy's bottlenecks twenty years down the road.

But this is not how Wall Street works. Today Mexico is fifty percent off--the valuation of all things Mexican, whether the cost of employing a worker, the value of a house, the worth of Mexico's currency, or the long-term profits to be gained from investment in a Mexican enterprise, is today fifty percent less than what it was in the late summer of 1994. If you had wanted to buy insurance against a fall in the peso in the late summer of 1994, you could have done so extremely cheaply. Few saw a peso collapse of the magnitude seen in the winter of 1994-1995 as possible; no one saw it as likely.

What has caused such a change? In part, financiers now believe that they were overoptimistic about the economic future of. In large part, however, financiers concluded that other financiers' downgrading of Mexico meant that Mexico would be starved of capital and short of international means of payment, and that as a result of this shift in mood the Mexican economy would perform more poorly.

This is an old story: a régime that bet a large chunk of its chips on rapid industrial development financed by capital inflow from world financial markets finds itself suddenly subject to a panic. In the United States, 1873 saw British investors lose confidence that American railroads and infrastructure were that day's equivalent of investments in the Pacific Rim. The largest investment house in the United States--that of Jay Cooke, politically well-connected industrial visionary who financed Abraham Lincoln's armies, and whose picture the Treasury Department's antique custodians will not release for me to hang in my office--went bankrupt.

Then there was no International Monetary Fund, no Bank for International Settlements, no Exchange Stabilization Fund, no one willing to guarantee the liquidity of the financial system that had funneled capital to America from Europe. As a result of the collapse of Jay Cooke and Company the City of London sneezed. The U.S. economy caught pneumonia. The share of America's non-agricultural labor force building railroads fell from perhaps one in ten in 1872 to perhaps one in forty by 1877--a seven percentage point boost to non-agricultural sector unemployment from this source alone.

Now we have a keen awareness of what is lost when a crisis of confidence is allowed to lead to the unraveling of a financial network. We have governments and institutions willing to take action. Unlike the United States in the 1870s, Mexico in the 1990s will not undergo anything near to a great depression.

Nevertheless, for at least three centuries capitalist financial markets have been working their erratic will. No one has a preferable alternative to allowing financial markets to do our collective investment planning: Wall Street's vision of where investment capital should be directed is infinitely better than the vision any group of planners. All would agree that financial markets require the most delicate political regulation and management. But it is rare that you find any two agreeing on exactly what form that political regulation and management should take.

There are a number of rules-of-thumb for economic management: Run a government surplus to keep the government's hunger for resources from draining the pool of resources for society's non-governmental investments. Use "automatic stabilizers"--decreases in tax collections and increases in social welfare spending in recessions--to cushion declines in employment and increases in poverty that occur when financial market shifts trigger depressions. Guarantee the safety and soundness of the credit system as a whole in emergencies, even though it rescues many who made overrash bets and provides some encouragement for future overrash. Guarantee not just the domestic but the international credit system.

Governments balance conflicting goals: high investment to boost productivity growth, stable prices so that private economic planning decisions focus on productivity rather than on exploiting quirks in the price-adjustment process, and high employment. The terms of the tradeoff are lousy. Election cycles tend to emphasize short-term as opposed to long-term performance.

And even good macroeconomic management is no guarantee that the average over the business cycle will produce the levels of employment or of income distribution that you want. Structural policies to level out the income distribution and maintain a high average level of employment face their own tradeoffs. Structural labor market policies are expensive; if you try to do them on the cheap you wind up with an unfavorable distribution of income, or a high level of employment; if you commit the appropriate level of resources to education and training, to job search assistance and employment subsidies, you will surely hear complaints--sometimes justified--that taxes are too high to sustain growth and investment.

Moreover, the entire system can lose forward motion completely. It is possible to mismanage a capitalist economy so badly as to bring a halt to essentially all economic growth. Consider Argentina, on a par with France and ahead of Italy in GDP per worker, agricultural productivity, and some areas of industry in 1950. Yet Argentina today may have no higher a standard of living than it had in the aftermath of World War II.

Given the importance of the issue, for the world economic system is more fragile than anyone would wish and has gone completely off its rails once in this century, government management of the business cycle and the economy would seem worth an extended and thoughtful treatment. It should, say, receive more space than a discussion of the policy dilemmas facing Soviet planners trying to build authoritarian socialism-in-one-country in the 1920s and 1930s.

But Hobsbawm is not equipped to provide such a treatment, and shows no sign of wishing to equip himself. Perhaps I feel the flatness and ineptness of his narrative more because of my own particular training. But I would have expected at least a little curiosity about, say, why the Great Depression was so much larger than any previous or subsequent depression. It was more than three times as deep and more than twice as long as any other. Yet all Hobsbawm has to say to account for the Greatness of the Depression is to chant words--speculation, over-production, credit boom--that have equal force applied to earlier and later recessions and depressions, of one-tenth the size of the Great Depression.

Conclusion

Eric Hobsbawm might complain that I have been unfair: that my real gripe is that I wish that he had written another, different book. He might say that I want a Book Written for the Ages, that reflects what historians in future centuries will find of greatest interest. And he is right, I do. By contrast, he might say, his book is "written by a twentieth-century writer for late-twentieth-century readers," to whom "the history of the confrontation between capitalism' andsocialism'...[s]ocial revolutions, the Cold War, the nature, limits, and fatal flaws of `really existing socialism' and its breakdown" are worth discussing at length. He is writing for readers who take the central theme of twentieth century history to be the tragical-heroic course of World Communism.

But the tragical-heroic course of World Communism is simply not the central theme of twentieth century history. For what audience is Hobsbawm writing his book? To what "late twentieth century readers" can we recommend The Age of Extremes as covering the pieces of twentieth century history they want and need to learn?

For new students seeking a genuine overview, the flaws, euphemisms, and silences arising from Hobsbawm's past political commitments are too mischievous. Hobsbawm's past political commitments lead him to believe both that (a) Kim Il Sung was a megalomaniac tyrant, and that (b) U.S. intervention to stop his extending his empire by conquest was a backward step for humanity. You cannot understand the twentieth century without finding an answer to the question of how as keen-eyed an analyst as Eric Hobsbawm can have held both these beliefs--without apparent strain--for more than forty years.

Yet Hobsbawm's book is constructed as if he wants to make it as hard as possible for a new student to figure out that this is an important question to ask.

For informed and experienced students seeking an overview of how the twentieth century changed the world, its focus is awry. Forty percent of space on the world religion of Communism and ten percent on the triple successes of social democracy--material prosperity, political democracy, and successful creation of middle-class societies--is the wrong balance. Ten percent on the world religion of Communism and forty percent on social democracy would be infinitely preferable

For students of Communism who believe that on balance it--a social movement that has, after all, contributed two of the twentieth century's three members of the I-killed-thirty-million club (Hitler, Mao, and Stalin), and at least four members of the I-killed-one-million club (Kim Il Sung, Pol Pot, Vladimir Lenin, Mengistu)--was not one of the brighter lights on humanity's tree of good ideas, the book will be profitable. But it will be profitable as an index of the impact decades of doublethink can leave on a good mind, as well as as an interpretation of history.

How many potential readers are left?

Comments

[tom s.]

11 years on, what would you change?

[Barry]

Brad, a suggestion - on many blogs, long articles are abbreviated, with a link to the full article.

This post was 46 screens long, which made finding the next post on your blog a bit difficult.

It's purely a favor to your readers, but you'd have my gratitude. And with that, and $5, you can get the latte of your choice!

[Carlos]

"Unlike the United States in the 1870s, Mexico in the 1990s will not undergo anything near to a great depression." That was a good prediction, Brad.

[hari]

Brad, what a tour de force! I remember being asked to speak to members of USSR School of Historical Materialism ( during Kruschev's transition regime). Title of my talk,"Moscow-Peking: Two Schools of Catholicism."

You can imagine the silence in the seminar room. Historicism, as known to Marxists, was leveraged in favour of their vision of proletarian revolution.

Of course, your analysis is not easy for unitiated to follow - in historical context.
However, your comparative analysis is dispassionate (for its value in reading) and perhaps tells us what's wrong with today's educational system.

Students will always argue why should they've to dwell on such esoteric historical details, if their primary objective is a decent life and employment.

In my view, our Profs were fantastic students of Marxist teachings and they taught us to appreciate/understand the dialectics of materialism.

[DILBERT DOGBERT]

Re: Length of the post
Prof deLong is an Academic and this is what teachers and Academics do and the damm blog is his. We will just have to put up with it or leave. I also get peeved at Anne's multiple and sometimes long posts but try to learn something when I have the patience, which is not always. I even sometimes learn something to think about when Movie Guy posts. I just wish MG and Anne would just take one whack at each other and move on. Maybe that should be a blog rule: take one or two whacks and move on.

[Colin Danby]

I'll have to start finding my old comments and reposting them too.

Nothing against long posts, though.

Anyone read Hobsbawn's autobiography? The first half was great.

[Matt]

I've nothing of substance to add, but would like to point out that in fact the "red stars of the soviet union" do still stand over the towers of the Kremlin. I suppose you meant that metaphorically, but the actual red stars are still there. (I agree w/ those who think the "more below the fold" format would be better, too.)

[sm]

Haven't read Hobsbawm's autobiography. I have consitently found in autobiographies of famous people that all the really good -- that is unexpected stuff -- is in the childhood and early youth of the subject. After that it's just more detail about the person you already know about. Earlier, there can be many surprises.

So maybe you don't want to read the rest of H's bio.

[Sean Matthews]

> Economic growth and market institutions
> certainly coexist with political despotism
> for a while, but there is good reason to
> doubt their long-term compatibility.

Yes indeed. A core question of the 21C is whether this is really true, and what will be the consequences if it is.

Sean Matthews

ps, I have long been amazed that Hobsbawm is still received in bien-pensant intellectual circles (esp. in the UK). I would not break bread with Carl Schmitt, why would I do so with Eric Hobsbawm?

pps. the remark about Hobbes I really liked.

[andres]

I don't have time now to post anything as long as I would like to, but here goes:

I would not be particularly happy living on Planet Hobsbawm, and Brad's post has some good reasons why Hobsbawm's perspective is in many ways distorted.

Having said that, I am at least as unhappy living on Planet DeLong as described in this long review. The tremendous productivity growth and increased wealth that corporate market capitalism is capable of is yesterday's news (yesterday = 19th century), and the 20th century has only added variations on that old song. To say that the growth of material wealth is _the_ narrative of the 20th century also tends to distort things.

Brad seems incapable of asking _why_ Communism became not so much Tragic Hero of the 20th Century as a type of violent Christianity that nearly succeeded in taking over the Corporate Washingtonian World Empire. And I see little in his review about the failure of the huge wealth created by capitalism to be properly distributed both across the globe and even within those countries that do not have rigorous social democratic policies (and the political culture to support them).

When reading about the 20th century, I do not want to read either (a) communism as tragic hero of the 20th century (Djilas and Medvedev are already on my bookshelves), (b) 20th century capitalism as a utopian march towards social equality (Keynes, De Soto, and both Friedmans are there too).

What I do want to read in 20th century history is an analysis fo the causes of human folly, especially the folly which has wasted so much of the potential of capitalism's material progress. For example, I want an analysis of fascism in its various forms that is as comprehensive as the study of communism and explains the causes and severity of the world crisis of 1914-1945. I want a study of the unholy combination of corruption, tribalism, and cultural dependency that prevents so many developing countries from emulating the US and Europe. And I'd like a study of how corporate elites take advantage of both fascism and third world pathologies to push their own self-interested agendas, with the Republican Party in the US having top priority.

Only something like this can comfortably (for me) avoid the extremes of Hobsbawm's unwarranted gloom and Brad's irritating naivete. A dire threat, because I'm no writer: if I can't find the damn thing, I may have to write it myself.

[D-Slam]

"A dire threat, because I'm no writer: if I can't find the damn thing, I may have to write it myself."

Andres, please do. I'd buy it! :)

[dale]

Hopefully the story of the 21st Century will be that of turning away from things and turning towards our relationships with other people and to the earth that sustains us.

Of course a productive and efficient economy is a vital part of any good society. But many of us are suspicious about the meaning of "productive" and "efficient" as currently praticed.

I know people who are still quit naive about Soviet and Chinese communism- so essays like this one still serve a good purpose. But like Andres above says, we need a good guide to all the pathologies of the 20th century. Brad hints at it but much more still needs to be said.

[Michael Carey]

Hey Andres, I, also, would buy that book you are talking about.

Although I haven't read Hobsbawm, It seems to me that Communism is to the 20th C as the Investiture Controversy was to the 12th. Very important ideologically, and an undercurrent to much/ most of the politics. Therefore, if a 24th C person wants to understand the 20th, the Hobsbawm book would be an example of the type of mental distortion that is/was not uncommon.

Now, in the 21C, there is a different, but not less pernicious type of ("religious") mental distortion, that will need to be overcome.

[RKKA]

“There is some here that is true, but much here that is false. There is an enormous and eternal debt for the defeats of Hitler's armies at Stalingrad (1942), Kursk (1943), 2nd Kiev (1944), the Beresina (1944), the Vistula (1945), and Berlin (1945) that collectively broke the back of the Nazi war machine. But this debt owed to Stalin and Stalin's régime? No. It is owed to the people of the Soviet Union.”
“Before Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, Stalin decimated his army through purges, attacked Finland and adding it to Hitler's allies, and fed the Nazi war machine with raw materials it could not get through the British naval blockade. Had Stalin joined the allies in September 1939, he would have had three allied armies--Polish, French, and British--fighting on the continent of Europe, and a neutral Italy.”

Indeed. And that was the point of the alliance Stalin offered Great Britain and France, in April 1939.

Unfortunately, the Polish government did not want it, and the Chamberlain government had other plans: “…Germany and England as two pillars of European peace and buttresses against Communism.”

“Add in the role played by the Comintern in gleefully helping to destroy the democratic center that lay between Hitler and Weimar Communists in Germany,”

Take the Social Democrat votes against the Enabling Act. Add the votes of KPD deputies not present for the vote because the KPD had been banned. The Enabling Act still has a 70% majority. And maybe sooner. If the Social Democrats and KPD are cooperating, please explain why this dosen’t drive the (Catholic) Center Party into Hitler’s arms even earlier.

“…add in what Hobsbawm calls "Stalin's... extraordinarily inept interventions into military strategy," and conclude that Stalin made the Soviet people's task in 1941-1945 more difficult.”

In 1940, the Wehrmacht defeated Western armies numbering about 4 million men in six weeks, losing 27,000 KIA in the process.

In 1941, the Wehrmacht defeated Soviet armies numbering 2.7 million men in about seven weeks, losing 83,000 KIA in the process.

And because somebody had built huge new industrial complexes at Magnitogorsk, the Kuzbass, and a number of other places, there were soon new Soviet armies, to take the place of those that had been destroyed.

There would be no Swastikas over the ruins of the Kremlin, but there would be Red banners over the Reichstag.

[piotr]

Just a thought: while XX century clearly had its share of terrible wars and tyrants, one should also remember XVII century. Between 30-year war and civil wars + Manchu invasion in China, it is fair to guess that wars consumed at least as big share of the world population, if not more than in XX century.

As Catholics were battling with Protestants (and sometimes with Orthodox), and Taoists with Confucianists, (one should not forget Muslim and Hindu), this was the age of spiritual values.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

Hunh? Lemme get this straight: the suggestion is that Hoffman, Genovese and Said aren't permanently on autopilot?

[radek]

"And I see little in his review about the failure of the huge wealth created by capitalism to be properly distributed... within those countries that do not have rigorous social democratic policies (and the political culture to support them)."

Huh? The biggest winners from the rise of capitalism in the West were workers. Proportionally much more so then capital owners. And of course, land owners pretty much lost. I seriously doubt that the income distribution in pre 1800 England, or rest of Europe, or US (not even counting in slavery) was much more "just" or equitable then it is today.

"Indeed. And that was the point of the alliance Stalin offered Great Britain and France, in April 1939.

Unfortunately, the Polish government did not want it, and the Chamberlain government had other plans..."

Hhhhuuuuuuuhhhhhhh? Yeah, and Stalin also offered to foster democracy in Eastern Europe after WWII. That's some really stupid naivete. A part of the alliance that Stalin "offered" Britain and France was the provision for the Soviet Union to have a right to interfere in the internal politics of its neighbors, up to establishing Soviet military bases inside Poland. I have a slight suspicion that this is why the Polish government, which had just 10 year prior fought a war against SU, did not "want it". Not to mention the fact that the Soviets were already negotiating with Hitler before the collapse of the Franco-British talks. What kind of history are you reading?

"In 1940, the Wehrmacht defeated Western armies numbering about 4 million men in six weeks, losing 27,000 KIA in the process.

In 1941, the Wehrmacht defeated Soviet armies numbering 2.7 million men in about seven weeks, losing 83,000 KIA in the process."

Yeah, well, these kind of things are not just a function of menpower but also of...wait for it...wait for it...distance! Again, not to mention the fact that in 1941 a portion of the German forces were tied up elsewhere. You might have heard of a guy named Rommel. (To be fair the number of German troops involved in the Battle of France was roughly the same as the number in Operation Barbarossa)

[azurite]

The environment has gotten in "better" shape in the past decade? Eastern Europe is getting cleaned up and the 3rd world is "more aware" of environmental degradation?

Last time I found an article about the hole in the ozone (probably a year or more ago), it was still expanding. There's a "dead zone" appearing every summer off the coast of Oregon (I live on the coast) that's getting bigger every summer. As far as I know, it didn't even exist a decade ago. The "dead zone" in the Gulf Coast area has been increasing in size annually, not decreasing over the past decade. Fisheries are still declining for the most part, Atlantic and Pacific. Try fishing in the Mississippi and many other rivers in the US, and if you can catch something that isn't a hemaphrodite or doesn't have tumors growing on it, make sure you get it checked for TCDD levels and other toxins (such as PCBs) before eating it. The Great Lakes are once more on the downswing (in terms of pollution) and I believe a major river in Oregon (the Willamette) is again approaching Superfund status (got cleaned up once, it's polluted again). Various frog species ( frogs are considered to be a "canary" species in terms of the health of a given ecosystem) are disappearing. Rate of species extinction is believed to be accelerating. Honey bee populations are dwindling rapidly in the US, for unknown reasons. Lack of honey bees could substantially decrease the production of a significant number of food crops. In some parts of Oregon, there are still at least 5-6 types of native bees to pollinate crops--but increasing development and insistence upon ever larger houses and planting of grass (instead of native species that provide nectar and shelter for bees) and resulting habitat loss has led to the decline and disappearance of native bees in some parts of OR as well as the rest of the US.

Check out what's been happening in much of W.VA, ever since the Bushies decided it was ok to take off the top of mountains and dump the dirt into streams while mining for coal.

Ask 3rd world shipbreakers if they're feeling less at risk or people in India and elsewhere who are having to drill ever deeper to reach potable water--if they can find it at all.

The computers ,cellphones and other electronic gizmos people purchase and discard so readily may contain lead, arsenic, Palladium and other toxics (not to mention plastic)--and much of that "e-waste" ends up in landfills. There's the now ubiquitous bisphenol-A, originally developed (I believe) as a kind of hormone replacement, until that possible use was discarded in favor of its plastic hardening capabilities. Only problem is, it's showing up everywhere (including inside of humans) and seems to be behaving as a hormone on or in people (including children) who don't need any extra hormones. I'll stop although there's plenty more to be said.

So I disagree, I don't think things have improved environmentally in the last decade. I think there was some progress for a time, but a variety of factors, among them Reagan and the Shrub, have resulted at least the US (the biggest consumer of oil, biggest producer of various types of pollution) move backwards. China has seen some environmental problems, such as polluted air and water and drought, substantially increase in the past decade. Some of China's air pollution ends up in the Pacific Northwest and CA.

I don't think western culture or economic systems can claim that accomplishment (not that the Soviets did any better). I think the Inuits and quite a few nations or cultures that live on islands (who are having to face abandoning their homelands-in the next 10-20 years--if not sooner) would disagree with you as well.

[RKKA]

Actually Radek, it is you whose head is filled with erroneous history.

"Hhhhuuuuuuuhhhhhhh? Yeah, and Stalin also offered to foster democracy in Eastern Europe after WWII."

The stuff I wrote has the advantage of being factually true.

"That's some really stupid naivete. A part of the alliance that Stalin "offered" Britain and France was the provision for the Soviet Union to have a right to interfere in the internal politics of its neighbors, up to establishing Soviet military bases inside Poland."

Actually Radek, Soviet troops in Poland was a requirement for anything more than very brief Polish resistance to a German attack, as the British military delegation in Moscow and the Deputy Chiefs of Staff in London fully recognized. Here's an excerpt from a paper from the British Deputy Chiefs of Staff, of 16 August 1939:

"It is perfectly clear that without early and effective Russian assistance, the Poles cannot hope to stand up to a German attack for more than a limited time... The supply of arms and war material is not enough. If the Russians are to collaborate in resisting German aggression against Poland or Roumania they can only do so effectively on Polish or Roumanian soil; and... if permission for this were withheld till war breaks out, it would then be too late. The most the Allies could then hope for would be to avenge Poland and Roumania and perhaps restore their independence as a result of the defeat of
Germany in a long war.

Without immediate and effective Russian assistance the longer that war would be, and the less chance there would be of either Poland or Roumania emerging at the end of it as independent states in anything like their present form.
We suggest that it is now necessary to present this unpalatable truth with absolute frankness to both the Poles and to the Roumanians. To the Poles especially it ought to be pointed out that they have obligations to us as well as we to them; and that it is unreasonable for them to expect us blindly to implement our guarantee to them if, at the same time, they will not co-operate in measures designed for a common purpose."

The Polish government's refusal to consider accepting military assistance from the one place geograpically in a position to give it caused big problems for British, French, and Soviet military staffs looking for ways to assist Poland against the coming German attack.

"I have a slight suspicion that this is why the Polish government, which had just 10 year prior fought a war against SU,"

Nope. Almost 20.

"did not "want it."

The Polish government had a choice. Prompt and decisive defeat by Germany, or accepting Soviet aid. They chose the first. Not a smart choice.

"Not to mention the fact that the Soviets were already negotiating with Hitler before the collapse of the Franco-British talks."

I will show you two German diplomatic cables from mid-summer 1939, the first from Ambassador Dirksen in London showing the cordial and forthcoming attitude His Majesty's Government was showing him and the second from Ambassador Schulenberg in Moscow showing the difficulties he was having getting Molotov to agree to anything:

Ambassador von Dirksen's cable from London to Berlin of 24 July 1939, summarizing discussions with Cabinet members Sir Horace Wilson and Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax:

"General ideas as to how a peaceful adjustment with Germany could be
undertaken seem to have crystallized... On the basis of political
appeasement, which in to ensure the principle of non-aggression and to
achieve a delimitation of political spheres of interest by means of a
comprehensive formula, a broad economic program is being worked out...
About these plans entertained by leading circles, State Advisor
Wohlthat, who, on British initiative, had long talks about them during
his stay in London last week, will be able to give more detailed
information. The problem that is puzzling the sponsors of these
plans most is how to start the negotiations. Public opinion is so
inflamed, that if these plans of negotiations with Germany were to
bedcome public they would immediately be torpoedoed by Churchill and
others with the cry 'No second Munich!' or 'No return to appeasement!'

The persons engaged in drawing up a list of points for negotiation
therefore realize that the preparatory steps vis-a-vis Germany must be
shrouded in the utmost secrecy. Only when Germany's willingness to
negotiate has been ascertained, and at leaset unanimity regarding the
program, perhaps regarding certain general principles, has been
attained, will the British government feel strong enough to inform the
public of its intentions and of the steps it has already taken. If it
could in this way hold out the prospect of an Anglo-German adjustment,
it is convinced that the public would greet the news with the greatest
joy, and the obstructionists would be reduced to silence. So much is
expected from the realization of this plan that it is even considered
a most effective election cry, one which would assure the government
parties a victory in the autumn elections, and with it the retention
of power for another five years.

...In conclusion, I should like to point out that the German-Polish
problem has found a place in this tendency toward an adjustment with
Germany, inasmuch as it is believed that in the event of an
Anglo-German adjustment the solution of the Polish problem will be
easier, since a calmer atmosphere will facilitate the negotiations,
and the British interest in Poland will be diminished."

Zachary Shore "What Hitler Knew" Oxford University Press, 2003, pgs
117-18, citing Dirksen's report of 24 July 1939.

In contrast to this accomodating attitude shown the Germans by the
British, Ambassador von der Schulenberg in Moscow found his discussions
with Molotov heavy going indeed:

Here's German Ambassador Schulenberg in Moscow, cabling Berlin on the
state of Soviet-German discussions:

"From M.'s whole attitude it was evident that the Soviet Government
was in fact more prepared for improvement in German-Soviet relations,
but that the old mistrust of Germany persists. My over-all impression
is that the Soviet Government is at present determined to sign with
England and France if they fulfill all Soviet wishes. Negotiations, to
be sure, might still last a long time, especially since mistrust of
England is also great. I believe that my statements made an impression
on M.; it will nevertheless take considerable effort on our part to
cause the Soviet Government to swing about.

SCHULENBURG"

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nazsov/ns029.htm

"What kind of history are you reading?"

A better sort than you, apparently.

[RKKA]

"In 1940, the Wehrmacht defeated Western armies numbering about 4 million men in six weeks, losing 27,000 KIA in the process.

In 1941, the Wehrmacht defeated Soviet armies numbering 2.7 million men in about seven weeks, losing 83,000 KIA in the process."

Yeah, well, these kind of things are not just a function of menpower but also of...wait for it...wait for it...distance!

Very true, in ways you do not mention. For Barbarossa, the Germans had the advantage of a front of about a thousand miles, which meant that the defending Soviet troops had to disperse to a much greater extent than the Anglo-French-etc Armies had the year before. This made German planner's task of choosing weak points to attack much simpler in 1941 than it had been in 1940. And note that I only compared the campaign in the West to an equivalent period of Barbarossa, so that the Soviet advantage in greater defensive depth would not distort the comparison. And I excluded the Romanians, Hungarians, Slovaks, and Finns, whose Armies also suffered significant losses fighting the Red Army.

"Again, not to mention the fact that in 1941 a portion of the German forces were tied up elsewhere."

About two divisions. Meanwhile the Italians sent a force of 60,000 to the East for Barbarossa.

As were about 800,000 Soviet troops watching the Kwangtung Army during the period we are discussing.

"You might have heard of a guy named Rommel."

A skilled Division commander whose grasp of logistical issues shows that he shouldn't have been promoted any higher.

[Jacob T. Levy]

Relatedly (to Brad's post, not to the follow-up) and more recently: see this
http://www.jewcy.com/daily_shvitz/the_spanish_prisoner_hoax_eric_hobsbawms_stalinist_homage_to_catalonia

response to this

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/history/story/0,,2014189,00.html

recent Hobsbawm piece on the Spanish Civil War.

[Adrian Smith]

"I want a study of the unholy combination of corruption, tribalism, and cultural dependency that prevents so many developing countries from emulating the US and Europe."

Jane Jacobs' views on development are interesting, though as she doesn't consider those three factors to be primary you might not be fully persuaded if you're really attached to them.

[CapitalistImperialistPig]

Nice analysis of a flawed history, but I'm less impressed with your analysis of the last century's progress.

I think the notion that our standard of living has improved by a factor of 23 is preposterous. Much of the junk produced by our economy just futhers our enslavement and stupidification - pagers, cell phones,
television. There has certainly been some real progress against disease and infant mortality, for example, but there has also been negative progress.

The invention of agriculture vastly increased economic output, but for the average individual it meant working harder for less, and physical anthropology shows that health and stature changes prove it.

Similarly, the technological revolution has had mixed results.

More importantly, economists seem to assume that technological change is an infinitely renewable resource. There is no fundamental reason to believe this, and plenty of reason to doubt it. Almost all of our twentieth century technology springs from the understanding of the atom and the forces that govern it. That well is not yet exhausted, but it's not infinite either.

[Matt]

The short Brad:

Vaccinate your society against absolutism.

[piotr]

Distance clearly helped Soviet Union.

True, Germans had easy times finding "weak spots" in the defense of very long front lines. In the same time, (a) their logistics were strained, you can't believe how much stuff a fighting army is using, (b) tanks could go only so far before replacement of engines (several hundred miles if I recall), (c) Russian military doctrine had honed the concept of fighting retreat: offer resistance, but once odds are overwhelming, retreat and offer resistance along new lines, again and again -- even victorious battles require resupplies etc. This tactic clearly makes more sense if you enjoy enormous depth of your territory.

Another element was that Blitzkrieg was not nearly as fast in the forest zone as in the open steppe country, and in Russia, forest zone means forest.

So the Blitz was slowed down in the retreat battles in the forests on the way to Moscow, and then came winter -- a non-event for the Russians, but not so much for the Germans.

Needless to say, France had only scant fraction of the territorial depth of Soviet Union --- how many immense forests are there between Belgium and Paris to make a series of retreat battles?

[andres]

radek: For someone who names himself after a Bolshevik revolutionary, you can be surprisingly revisionist. Here's your comment on my comment:

""And I see little in his review about the failure of the huge wealth created by capitalism to be properly distributed... within those countries that do not have rigorous social democratic policies (and the political culture to support them).""

"Huh? The biggest winners from the rise of capitalism in the West were workers. Proportionally much more so then capital owners. And of course, land owners pretty much lost. I seriously doubt that the income distribution in pre 1800 England, or rest of Europe, or US (not even counting in slavery) was much more "just" or equitable then it is today."

It is undeniably true that wages went up in Western Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries, although in England this only started to happen after legislation was massed in the mid-1800's addressing some of the worst labor abuses. However, this does not mean that income distribution improved. The wages of mid-19th century industrial workers in Britain were substantially larger in real terms than the income of yeoman farmers one century earlier, _but_ this was also the time when industrial profits in textiles, coal, steel, and all of their related industries created a huge class of newly wealthy capitalists, as did the virtual imprisonment of India as a supplier of raw materials for Britain and as a purchaser of British manufactured goods. It is also true that the relative incomes of the landed nobility fell during this time. Still, the probable conclusion is that the distribution of income did not improve at best and deteriorated at worst.

As for the distribution of _wealth_, well, you'd be up for the Nobel if you could show that that distribution of Britain's (and probably Europe's) land and more importantly its capital stock did _not_ become more concentrated as the 19th century wore on, thanks to the increased prominence of trusts and corporations at the industrial end and the conclusion of the enclosure movement at the agricultural end.

[radek]

"Actually Radek, Soviet troops in Poland was a requirement for anything more than very brief Polish resistance to a German attack, as the British military delegation in Moscow ...fully recognized. Here's an..."

The only thing that shows is the Pre-Churchill British government's naivete (Stalin wanted to gobble up Poland, not protect it) and their fetish for appeasing dictators.

"The Polish government's refusal to consider accepting military assistance from the one place geograpically in a position to give it caused big problems for British, French, and Soviet military staffs looking for ways to assist Poland against the coming German attack."

Come on. No soverign country's gonna let its foreign enemy's troops be stationed on its soil, be they Russian, German or Soviet. Polish history plays a role here too, as the Polish government well knew that the partitions of the 18th century started with allowing Russian troops to be stationed within Poland's borders. There was no way that Polish government was going to agree to this and Molotov knew it which is exactly why he made the (crazy) proposal. It's a standard diplomatic ruse in cases where you want to break off negotiations but don't want to be blamed for it. Make a crazy proposal that there is no way the other party can accept and when they refuse, blame them for the "collapse of the talks". In fact Stalin and Molotov were masters of this.
This would be like North Korea insisting that it will give up its nuclear weapons program only if it gets to station its troops in South Korea and Japan. The US would tell'em to shove it and they'd be right to do so.

The basic reason why Stalin allied with Hitler than England and France is very simple and has nothing to do with Polish obstinance or the West's unwillingness to compromise (the note you post above shows how far they were willing to go in fact). Hitler offered a better deal. Baltics, large chunk of Poland and a go at the Finns. B/F couldn't come close to matching this even if they did agree to Soviet demands.
Pretending otherwise is the historical equivalent of saying that the rape victim deserved it because she didn't give it up willingly.

"Nope. Almost 20."

Sorry, typo.

"I will show you two German diplomatic cables from mid-summer 1939, the first from Ambassador Dirksen in London showing the cordial and forthcoming attitude His Majesty's Government was showing him and the second from Ambassador Schulenberg in Moscow showing the difficulties he was having getting Molotov to agree to anything:"

I don't know what this is supposed to show other than to prove that you've read something else beside Chomsky. The first note shows, again, the British penchant for appeasement. The second shows that Molotov was a tough and skillful negotiator (which he was). But it's mostly irrelevant.

[radek]

"Very true, in ways you do not mention. For Barbarossa, the Germans had the advantage of a front of about a thousand miles, which meant that the defending Soviet troops had to disperse to a much greater extent than the"

Ok, so maybe length offset depth though Army Group Center's supply lines were stretched to a breaking point when they got within sight of Moscow...

Actually on this I don't disagree all that much. The Soviets did fight the Germans hard, even early on. One can still say, as Brad does above, that this was more due to the Russian/Soviet people rather than Stalin.

But I also don't think Stalin was as incompetent as Brad (and some historians) make him sound. I don't think it's disputable that many of his actions prior to and during 1941 (purges, executing Tukaczewski, not listening to Zhukov, insisting on static defense, planning for an offensive rather than a defensive war against Germany) were detrimental and that the Russians paid a heavy price for them during OB. But Stalin was if nothing else pragmatic and quickly learned from his mistakes. A more sentimental dictator would've kept Zhukov sidelined and Rokossovsky in the Gulags but Stalin quickly reversed himself when the need arose. And moving the factories over the Urals was a very timely thing.
So I'm willing to mostly concede this point.

On the other hand sometimes the Allies of 1940 are given short shrift, particularly the French. The French were actually very succesful in the north, stopping and even pushing back the Werhmacht (Battle of Gamblieux Gap - biggest tank battle before Kursk). It was only when the Germans broke through in the South that the British and French politicians panicked, the British ordered a retreat, which caused the Dutch (who were still holding out) to surrender and then the French followed as the British prepared to evacuate at Dunkirk. Perhaps what made the difference is simply Stalin's unwillingness to surrender before everything was really decided.

[ilsm]

Did Stalin confront a military like the current US before WW II?

"Before Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, Stalin decimated his army through purges,"

Stalin kept fellows such as Zhukov and Chuikov.

I suspect an armed force can decay and a purge could be necessary.

Not that they culture in our pentagon should be sacked, but at times it makes sense.

Rumsfled enriched the military industrial complex rather than fix the pentagon.

The defense of the Ardennes in 1940 was not less successful than in 1914.

Nor was it less successful than in 1870.

The difference was the French taxicabs could not keep up with Guderian's tactics.

[radek]

"radek: For someone who names himself after a Bolshevik revolutionary"

I name myself after what it says on my birth certificate. And it's a first name, not a pseudonym (apparantly Karl got it from his favorite book). And this isn't revisionism, it's fairly well established Economic History.

"It is undeniably true that wages went up in Western Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries, although in England this only started to happen after legislation was massed in the mid-1800's addressing some of the worst labor abuses."

The wages went up independently of the labor legislation. Or at the very least the cause and effect here is much harder to seperate out.

"However, this does not mean that income distribution improved. "

No, by itself it doesn't. But it did.

"The wages of mid-19th century industrial workers in Britain were substantially larger in real terms than the income of yeoman farmers one century earlier, _but_ this was also the time when industrial profits in textiles, coal, steel, and all of their related industries created a huge class of newly wealthy capitalists"

Yes but workers' wages rose faster than profits and land rents. It seems otherwise because the few newly super rich capitalists were very conspicous whereas the masses of better off workers anonymous. The labor share as % of national output/income went up significantly during this time mostly at the expense of land's share. Capital's share stayed roughly constant or even fell a bit. On this see work by Greg Clark (I don't have the exact referance handy).

"as did the virtual imprisonment of India as a supplier of raw materials for Britain and as a purchaser of British manufactured goods. "

Colonialism and imperialism is somewhat of a seperate issue which is why I didn't address it originally.

"Still, the probable conclusion is that the distribution of income did not improve at best and deteriorated at worst."

It's not probable, it's wrong. The major beneficiaries of the Industrial Revolution were unskilled workers.

"As for the distribution of _wealth_, well, you'd be up for the Nobel if you could show that that distribution of Britain's (and probably Europe's) land and more importantly its capital stock did _not_ become more concentrated as the 19th century wore on,"

Maybe, but what also matters is the relative return to that capital and land. The relative return to land certainly fell during this period. The return to capital relative to wages did as well.

[radek]

ilsm (always wanna call you islm)

The depth of German penetration in the Ardennes and in the south generally was no greater in 1940 at the time of the British decision to bail (sparked partially by panic on the part of French politicians) than it was in 1914. I know this is anathema to military historians (both amateur and professional) who are big fans of the Wehrmacht but I don't think it's unconceivable that they could've been stopped in 1940 as they were in 1941.

[wkwillis]

When it comes to the Poles vs the French, British, Canadian, Dutch, Belgian, Norwegian, and Danish vs the Russian forces in effectiveness in fighting the Germans, keep in mind that the Germans were becoming steadily more experienced, more numerous, and better armed in every campaign.

[piotr]

It is debatable if Poland should accept Soviet offer of help. Polish government was assuming expansionists designs on the part of Stalin based on history (Russian Empire), ethnicity (easter part of Poland had regions with Ukrainian and Belorus majorities) and ideology, and in the hindsight, it is hard to blame it.

What was an inexcusable show of stupidity, myopia and craveness was that rather than offer an aliance to Czechs, Poland took advantage of Munich to annex a small sliver of Czech lands and four tiny Slovak villages with Polish majorities.

PS. I kind of doubt if "Radek" is from the birth certificate. It is a popular nickname.

[andres]

radek: Apologies--it's an uncommon enough name that I assumed it was a nom de plume. My bad.

But I'm still skeptical. Though a substantial portion of the profits created in the 19th century came from applying new technologies to old production and marketing problems, a substantial amount came from the looting of newly colonized regions in Asia and Africa, as well as by the quasi-colonization of Latin America by British and US corporations. In view of the international character of the world economy as early as the mid-19th century, I still have a hard time believing British or European income distribution improved during the pre-1914 century.

Also, it should be pointed out that the changes which had the greatest effects on industrial workers' life expectancies (as opposed to their living standards) were advances in medicine, eg immunization, that had little to do with the profit motive. And that a substantial portion of the increase in workers' wages in the 19th century happened because of political pressure generated by both political parties and labor unions. For workers, there's no such thing as a free wage increase.

[radek]

Piotrusiu,
It doesn't say Radek just like usually if your name's Robert it doesn't say Bob.

Totally right about Ceski Tesin though.

[radek]

Andres, no problem about the name.

"Though a substantial portion of the profits created in the 19th century came from applying new technologies... a substantial amount came from the looting of newly colonized regions in Asia and

I'm not sure what you mean by substantial. Certainly some individuals got rich off the plunder (King Leopold etc.). But I doubt that it was a significant factor in increasing AVERAGE incomes in England and other European countries. There was certainly a large cost of running the empire. From the stuff I read (and it's been awhile) the cost and benefits were close to a wash. It was essentially a transfer to colonial administrators and such from others. And British workers possibly shared in the spoils since they were the ones turning the empire's raw materials into manufactured final products. In any case most, maybe almost all, of the growth in wages post 1850 in UK and US was due to increases in productivity not due to transfers from the colonies. The colonial powers certainly screwed up their colonies and the effects can be seen to this day. But they didn't get rich off of it - they got rich through productivity growth and technological innovation (i.e. imperialism was, as it often is, a negative sum game)

It's certainly true that the industrial revolution ushered in profound increases in GLOBAL inequality. Within the industrialized countries though it's a pretty good bet that inequality fell from the levels of pre 1800.

"Also, it should be pointed out that the changes which had the greatest effects on industrial workers' life expectancies (as opposed to their living standards) were advances in medicine, eg immunization, that had little to do with the profit motive."

Well, first of all, it's not clear why life expectancy is a better measure here than living standards. Is a long impoverished life better then a shorter but richer one?

More importantly the reason why the medical advances could actually WORK to increase life expectancies was because of the industrial revolution itself. If it hadn't been for the IR those medical advances would've just translated into more people, which, given diminishing returns to labor, would've meant lower incomes. There certainly were medical advances prior to 19th century (if you don't like medieval Europe, then think historical Japan, or older Europe) but they didn't put a dent in the standards of living. In a world of Malthus (the pre 1800 world) all decreases in the mortality rate (such as ones caused by medical advances) just result in more people and fairly stable populations. And in a stable population, by definition, life expectancy is just the inverse of the mortality rate, hence of the fertility rate. So independent of level of income. So you get essentially no changes in life expectancies pre 1800. The situation changed after the IR but not because the innovations in medicine were so unprecedented (which they were) but because the economy was no longer constrained by the Malthusian forces of the past.
(It's even been argued that the reason 16th century England was richer than 16th century Japan or China, despite the latter's higher level of technology, was essentially, bad personal hygiene on the part of the British which resulted in higher mortality rates among them).

"And that a substantial portion of the increase in workers' wages in the 19th century happened because of political pressure generated by both political parties and labor unions. For workers, there's no such thing as a free wage increase."

Well, like I said, you at the very least have to disentangle the nature of causation there. It seems like wages began rising before the labor movement really became powerful. And given that wages tend to track productivity pretty well (as far as we can tell) it's pretty likely that most (but not all) of the increases in wages were due to increases in worker's productivity rather than due to the pressure mounted by the labor unions and political parties. Add to that the fact that the skilled workers tended to be better organized then the unskilled workers but saw relatively lesser gains.
So if productivity growth and technological progress is free, then so are the rises in the worker's wages.