0:00:09 > 0:00:13HOBSBSAWM: We've all been engaged, for most of the 20th century,
0:00:13 > 0:00:15in a sort of war of religion.
0:00:15 > 0:00:17All of us.
0:00:17 > 0:00:20PATRIOTIC ANTHEM
0:00:20 > 0:00:24We didn't believe in radiant tomorrows.
0:00:24 > 0:00:27If you believe you are living in a world
0:00:27 > 0:00:32which is crashing about your ears, your choice is a future or no future.
0:00:32 > 0:00:35CHEERING
0:00:36 > 0:00:40I am not the only person who ends the 20th century
0:00:40 > 0:00:44with a feeling that things could have been different and better.
0:00:44 > 0:00:48I think that very few people who end the 20th century
0:00:48 > 0:00:53are not looking back with a certain amount of...
0:00:53 > 0:00:58melancholy, and forward with a certain amount of unease.
0:00:59 > 0:01:03Eric Hobsbawm is one of our most original historians.
0:01:03 > 0:01:05His trilogy on the 19th century,
0:01:05 > 0:01:09Age of Revolution, Age Of Capital and Age Of Empire,
0:01:09 > 0:01:12has been acclaimed as one of the great achievements
0:01:12 > 0:01:15of historical writing in recent decades.
0:01:15 > 0:01:19Together with fellow Marxists E.P. Thompson and Christopher Hill,
0:01:19 > 0:01:24Hobsbawm's work changed the way we think about British history.
0:01:24 > 0:01:28Now Eric Hobsbawm has turned for the first time to the 20th century
0:01:28 > 0:01:32in his new book, Age Of Extremes The Short 20th Century,
0:01:32 > 0:01:34published this week.
0:01:34 > 0:01:39This is a history Eric Hobsbawm has not only written about, but lived.
0:01:39 > 0:01:42He was born in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution.
0:01:42 > 0:01:47He's a Jew who was forced to flee from Hitler's Germany,
0:01:47 > 0:01:50a communist through the Stalin years,
0:01:50 > 0:01:55he stayed in the party in 1956 and he lived to see 1989
0:01:55 > 0:02:02and now in the 1990's he sees the threat of a return to barbarism.
0:02:02 > 0:02:04Eric, you've written important books
0:02:04 > 0:02:07about the history of the 19th-century
0:02:07 > 0:02:09about imperialism, about labouring men.
0:02:09 > 0:02:12What are the challenges of writing the history of your own century,
0:02:12 > 0:02:15the times you yourself have lived?
0:02:15 > 0:02:19Well, one thing that makes it difficult to write
0:02:19 > 0:02:22contemporary history, is that you need, it seems to me,
0:02:22 > 0:02:24a certain amount of distance.
0:02:25 > 0:02:29Emotional distance as well as chronological distance from it.
0:02:30 > 0:02:34It's possible to do this now since the end of the '80s,
0:02:34 > 0:02:37beginning of the '90s, because you can look back
0:02:37 > 0:02:41and see the period from 1914 or thereabouts
0:02:41 > 0:02:43to 1989, '91, thereabouts,
0:02:43 > 0:02:46as something belonging together,
0:02:46 > 0:02:51as not simply a tract of time but something which has its unity.
0:02:51 > 0:02:56What then is the shape of that period, the short century?
0:02:56 > 0:02:58I think the shape is
0:02:58 > 0:03:03it begins with the breakdown of 19th-century society.
0:03:04 > 0:03:10The breakdown, the reconstitution of capitalist society
0:03:10 > 0:03:13on a different basis.
0:03:13 > 0:03:19One of the by-products of this breakdown was the October Revolution
0:03:19 > 0:03:24and the enormous effects, globally, which it had.
0:03:24 > 0:03:31Now, this period is over
0:03:31 > 0:03:36and we find ourselves in another of the...
0:03:36 > 0:03:39at another of the historic moments
0:03:39 > 0:03:43when we find the existing world system if you like,
0:03:43 > 0:03:49the world economy, the world civilisation, working up towards -
0:03:49 > 0:03:55or perhaps in the process of - a major restructuring, a major change,
0:03:55 > 0:04:01in a direction which may not be easy to predict, impossible to predict.
0:04:01 > 0:04:06What I noticed in your introduction to the book was a sense
0:04:06 > 0:04:12of historical change destroying the continuity between generations -
0:04:12 > 0:04:14erasing the past as it progresses
0:04:14 > 0:04:17so that what's truly terrible about this century
0:04:17 > 0:04:21is that people can't remember and it makes a historian's job more difficult,
0:04:21 > 0:04:24it makes a historian's job more important,
0:04:24 > 0:04:27but this there's this continual sense of the tape
0:04:27 > 0:04:29of the historical past being erased from people's memory
0:04:29 > 0:04:31by the sheer pace of change.
0:04:32 > 0:04:37I think this applies to the younger generation,
0:04:37 > 0:04:41the post-war generation, more than anything else and I think it happens
0:04:41 > 0:04:44not so much because of the pace of change
0:04:44 > 0:04:47but because of the change of character of society
0:04:47 > 0:04:54which concentrates on the individual
0:04:54 > 0:04:59rather than the individual as part of a community, a society,
0:04:59 > 0:05:04a continuum between generations, and on the now,
0:05:04 > 0:05:10namely buying things, enjoying things, here and now.
0:05:10 > 0:05:14And that's the enemy of historical continuity and historical memory.
0:05:14 > 0:05:19Yes, because for one thing, you see, the mechanisms...in the past
0:05:19 > 0:05:24there are always mechanisms by which the young generation is linked
0:05:24 > 0:05:27with the older generations.
0:05:27 > 0:05:33- For instance, Marc Bloch... - The great French historian.
0:05:33 > 0:05:37..the great French historian, once pointed out that in actual fact
0:05:37 > 0:05:44in agrarian societies continuity is maintained by jumping generations.
0:05:44 > 0:05:47Children are brought up by grandparents
0:05:47 > 0:05:50because parents go out and work in the fields
0:05:50 > 0:05:54and so consequently children immediately get introduced
0:05:54 > 0:05:59to what grandparents remember about their past and so on in turn.
0:05:59 > 0:06:01And that's been broken up in our century.
0:06:01 > 0:06:06This has been broken completely for a variety of reasons,
0:06:06 > 0:06:11for one thing, indeed, the experience of the past is quite often
0:06:11 > 0:06:15no longer relevant, or no longer seems relevant
0:06:15 > 0:06:17to the younger generation
0:06:17 > 0:06:20and consequently it becomes something different.
0:06:20 > 0:06:24The only past which people,
0:06:24 > 0:06:28very young people, really recognise, is their own personal past.
0:06:28 > 0:06:32The rest is something like olden times.
0:06:32 > 0:06:37I wanted to now shift tack and talk about the ways
0:06:37 > 0:06:43in which your own life intersects with the history
0:06:43 > 0:06:47because I think this is what makes it such an unusual book, the sense
0:06:47 > 0:06:51in which your own life is implicated in the story you are telling.
0:06:51 > 0:06:55I mean, if you begin right at the beginning - you're born
0:06:55 > 0:07:00in Egypt, your father works for the Post and Telegraph Company.
0:07:00 > 0:07:03It's a very imperial beginning, in a sense.
0:07:03 > 0:07:08Your own life begins in the British imperial twilight.
0:07:08 > 0:07:12I mean, is that how you see your own beginnings?
0:07:12 > 0:07:16I have been conscious of, as it were, living in history
0:07:16 > 0:07:21for a very long time, but that is essentially because
0:07:21 > 0:07:22at a crucial stage,
0:07:22 > 0:07:28you know, when I was, whatever it is, a young teenager,
0:07:28 > 0:07:30I was lucky...
0:07:30 > 0:07:35Yes, lucky enough, to live in Berlin just in the last years
0:07:35 > 0:07:38when Hitler came to power
0:07:38 > 0:07:42and if you don't feel that you are part of world history
0:07:42 > 0:07:44at that time, you never will.
0:07:44 > 0:07:47So you are a very odd case, in fact.
0:07:47 > 0:07:51You're an English, Jewish boy,
0:07:51 > 0:07:55growing up in the Berlin in which Hitler comes to power.
0:07:55 > 0:07:59That's where we are. Now, at 14, you do something extraordinary -
0:07:59 > 0:08:01you join the Communist Party. Why?
0:08:01 > 0:08:07It isn't extraordinary, I can assure you that in 1931, '32,
0:08:07 > 0:08:11it was not at all extraordinary for somebody to become a Communist.
0:08:11 > 0:08:13Why?
0:08:13 > 0:08:16Because you can't understand anything
0:08:16 > 0:08:18about the first half of the 20th century -
0:08:18 > 0:08:23at least from 1914 until the Second World War right in the middle -
0:08:23 > 0:08:28without grasping that most people believed
0:08:28 > 0:08:31the old world was coming to an end.
0:08:31 > 0:08:34Inevitably. The old world was crashing,
0:08:34 > 0:08:39we were living in the crashing of an old world.
0:08:39 > 0:08:42And you had to look for an alternative.
0:08:42 > 0:08:47It was either the fascist alternative or it was a socialist alternative
0:08:47 > 0:08:52which in Germany in 1931, '32, would have meant Communism.
0:08:52 > 0:08:54THEY SING PATRIOTIC ANTHEM
0:09:02 > 0:09:08But Hitler is just about to take power. This is 1933.
0:09:08 > 0:09:13Is it becoming dangerous to engage in student activity?
0:09:13 > 0:09:15Obviously we had...
0:09:16 > 0:09:23We knew that this was a major catastrophe.
0:09:23 > 0:09:26I mean, I can still remember to this day,
0:09:26 > 0:09:30the afternoon when I was walking back from school and saw the headline
0:09:30 > 0:09:34"Hitler as"... you know, "Reich Chancellor."
0:09:36 > 0:09:39Personal danger in the sense of being personally afraid,
0:09:39 > 0:09:41that's a completely different matter.
0:09:41 > 0:09:46Whether you are personally afraid or not is a private matter,
0:09:46 > 0:09:50but, as it were, that you know that what is happening
0:09:50 > 0:09:54is something dramatic and for a long period at least irreversible,
0:09:54 > 0:09:56that we knew.
0:09:56 > 0:09:59Is that a moment when you become conscious of Jewishness
0:09:59 > 0:10:01or had you always been conscious of Jewishness?
0:10:01 > 0:10:05There's no way in which you can be brought up in Central Europe
0:10:05 > 0:10:08without being conscious of Jewishness if you are a Jew,
0:10:08 > 0:10:12even though I wasn't that conscious of anti-Semitism,
0:10:12 > 0:10:16because in some ways I was being treated as a foreigner,
0:10:16 > 0:10:18an English boy, rather than anything,
0:10:18 > 0:10:21but there's no way in which you can avoid
0:10:21 > 0:10:26the consciousness of being a Jew, which I've always had.
0:10:26 > 0:10:29You leave in 1933 for England,
0:10:29 > 0:10:32but you don't leave because of thing Hitler.
0:10:32 > 0:10:37- No, not because of Hitler.- You're not Jewish refugees from Hitler.- No.
0:10:37 > 0:10:41We were really refugees from the slump, you might say.
0:10:41 > 0:10:46Do you leave behind Jewish relatives in Austria and Germany?
0:10:46 > 0:10:48- Yes, of course.- What happens to them?
0:10:48 > 0:10:52Some get out, some get into concentration camps and die.
0:10:56 > 0:11:01At about this period, '33, '34...
0:11:03 > 0:11:06..the kulak class is being liquidated
0:11:06 > 0:11:11and millions of peasants are dying, starved or being deported by Stalin.
0:11:11 > 0:11:15'33,'34, we're in the midst of the Five-Year Plan,
0:11:15 > 0:11:17or the second Five-Year Plan, I can't remember.
0:11:17 > 0:11:22But in any case millions of people are dying in the Soviet Experiment.
0:11:22 > 0:11:26If you had known that, would it have made a difference to you
0:11:26 > 0:11:29at that time? To your commitment to being a Communist?
0:11:33 > 0:11:35This is a sort of academic question
0:11:35 > 0:11:38to which an answer is simply not possible.
0:11:38 > 0:11:40Erm...
0:11:43 > 0:11:47I don't actually know that it has any bearing
0:11:47 > 0:11:50on the history that I have written.
0:11:52 > 0:11:57If I were to give you a retrospective answer,
0:11:57 > 0:11:59which is not the answer of an historian on something...
0:12:02 > 0:12:05..I would have said probably not.
0:12:05 > 0:12:06Why?
0:12:09 > 0:12:11Because...
0:12:12 > 0:12:16..in a period in which, as you might say,
0:12:16 > 0:12:24mass murder and mass suffering are absolutely universal,
0:12:24 > 0:12:29the chance of a new world being born in great suffering
0:12:29 > 0:12:32would still have been worth backing.
0:12:33 > 0:12:35Now, the point is,
0:12:35 > 0:12:37looking back as a historian...
0:12:39 > 0:12:45I would say that it was probably not.
0:12:45 > 0:12:50The sacrifices which were made by the Russian people
0:12:50 > 0:12:54were probably only marginally worthwhile.
0:12:54 > 0:12:56Their sacrifices were enormous,
0:12:56 > 0:13:02they were excessive by almost any standard, and unnecessarily great.
0:13:03 > 0:13:05But I'm looking back on it now
0:13:05 > 0:13:08and I'm saying that is because it turns out
0:13:08 > 0:13:12that the Soviet Union was not the beginning of the world revolution.
0:13:12 > 0:13:13Had it been...
0:13:15 > 0:13:17I'm not sure.
0:13:17 > 0:13:20After all, do people now say,
0:13:20 > 0:13:23"We shouldn't have had World War II
0:13:23 > 0:13:29"because more people died in World War II than died in Stalin's Terror?"
0:13:29 > 0:13:32So what that comes down to is saying
0:13:32 > 0:13:37that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created,
0:13:37 > 0:13:41the loss of 15, 20 million people might have been justified.
0:13:41 > 0:13:43Yes.
0:13:43 > 0:13:47Which is exactly what people said about World War I and World War II.
0:13:47 > 0:13:51Most people ended up by saying, "We think it was wrong in World War I."
0:13:51 > 0:13:53Very few people ended up by saying,
0:13:53 > 0:13:56"We think it was wrong in World War II."
0:13:58 > 0:14:00But isn't there some sense
0:14:00 > 0:14:06in which the radiant tomorrow can't, in principle, be built at that cost?
0:14:06 > 0:14:08Because it can't then be a radiant tomorrow,
0:14:08 > 0:14:11because human beings have memories
0:14:11 > 0:14:13and what they remember is desolation.
0:14:14 > 0:14:16In the first place, I think, you see,
0:14:16 > 0:14:19a radiant tomorrow was rhetoric.
0:14:19 > 0:14:24It was the rhetoric of the people that I believed in, too, that's true,
0:14:24 > 0:14:26but it was pure rhetoric.
0:14:26 > 0:14:29We didn't believe in radiant tomorrows.
0:14:29 > 0:14:32We believed in A world rather than NO world.
0:14:32 > 0:14:36We hoped that that would be a far better world.
0:14:36 > 0:14:41We hoped that it would be, quote-unquote, "a perfect world",
0:14:41 > 0:14:43in which, you know,
0:14:43 > 0:14:45in some of us, when you're young enough,
0:14:45 > 0:14:48you believed that there wouldn't be any unhappiness,
0:14:48 > 0:14:51there wouldn't be any unhappiness in love in this new world,
0:14:51 > 0:14:53but that isn't true,
0:14:53 > 0:14:57even if, rationally, one knew that this wouldn't be the case,
0:14:57 > 0:15:01nevertheless, the real secret of the whole business was,
0:15:01 > 0:15:05if you believe you are living in a world
0:15:05 > 0:15:07which is crashing about your ears,
0:15:07 > 0:15:09your choice is a future or no future.
0:15:11 > 0:15:13And it was that.
0:15:13 > 0:15:16If you remember, and I quote it somewhere in my book,
0:15:16 > 0:15:21the famous phrase by Walter Benjamin about the angel. Huh?
0:15:21 > 0:15:23The angel of history.
0:15:23 > 0:15:25The angel of history, you see?
0:15:25 > 0:15:32That what the angel of history sees as he moves backwards into progress
0:15:32 > 0:15:34is precisely the ruins
0:15:34 > 0:15:38that are being accumulated by the process of history.
0:15:40 > 0:15:42So, in a curious way,
0:15:42 > 0:15:48even though we, as Communists,
0:15:48 > 0:15:51and other Socialists, if you like,
0:15:51 > 0:15:56were committed to an upbeat view of the future,
0:15:56 > 0:15:59we really, living through the period in which we did,
0:15:59 > 0:16:04we knew we weren't living through a period in which all you have to do
0:16:04 > 0:16:07is to push the right kind of button
0:16:07 > 0:16:09and turn the right kind of switch,
0:16:09 > 0:16:12and everything's going to be lovely.
0:16:12 > 0:16:16I don't think any serious left-winger
0:16:16 > 0:16:19even believed that the Soviet Union,
0:16:19 > 0:16:23that everything in the Soviet Union was lovely. It was an awful place,
0:16:23 > 0:16:28even if you underestimated the number of people who were killed
0:16:28 > 0:16:31and imprisoned in it.
0:16:34 > 0:16:35You come to England in 1933.
0:16:35 > 0:16:38- By 1936, you're in Cambridge.- Mm-hm.
0:16:38 > 0:16:42Right through your Cambridge years, and then in the post-war years,
0:16:42 > 0:16:45you're very actively in the Communist Party.
0:16:45 > 0:16:48What did it mean to be a party member in those years?
0:16:51 > 0:16:56Those of us who stayed in and committed ourselves,
0:16:56 > 0:17:00I suppose the only thing to do is, it's a lifetime commitment
0:17:00 > 0:17:04and a total commitment. It was the most important thing for us,
0:17:04 > 0:17:06because...
0:17:07 > 0:17:11..again, I've got to return to what we said earlier on,
0:17:11 > 0:17:14you didn't have the option, you see?
0:17:14 > 0:17:18Either there was going to be a future or there wasn't going to be a future
0:17:18 > 0:17:22and this was the only thing that offered an acceptable future.
0:17:24 > 0:17:27- So...- When you say total commitment, I mean, how total?
0:17:30 > 0:17:33If the party told you to do something,
0:17:33 > 0:17:36it would have priority over everything else.
0:17:36 > 0:17:38I mean, if the party said,
0:17:38 > 0:17:41- "You can't be going out with that woman..."- Yes.
0:17:41 > 0:17:43- Really? That far?- Mmm.
0:17:43 > 0:17:46It dictated your personal life
0:17:46 > 0:17:49as well as your political convictions, completely?
0:17:49 > 0:17:50In theory, at any rate.
0:17:50 > 0:17:53Whether it always did so in practice, we don't know,
0:17:53 > 0:17:57but in fact, to a surprising extent,
0:17:57 > 0:17:59I mean, yes,
0:17:59 > 0:18:01you know, I mean...
0:18:03 > 0:18:07It would have complete priority.
0:18:07 > 0:18:10You see, what I find very difficult to square here is
0:18:10 > 0:18:16your obvious restless independence of mind
0:18:16 > 0:18:20with this party belief. I can't see how someone like you
0:18:20 > 0:18:25could remain within a kind of organisation of military Jesuits.
0:18:25 > 0:18:27I think if you found
0:18:27 > 0:18:32you couldn't actually hold still for what you were supposed to,
0:18:32 > 0:18:35you just kept quiet.
0:18:35 > 0:18:37You dealt with something else.
0:18:37 > 0:18:43For instance, I never professionally wrote anything or said anything
0:18:43 > 0:18:46about the Soviet Union or the Russian Revolution
0:18:46 > 0:18:48because it was perfectly clear to me
0:18:48 > 0:18:51that what you were officially supposed to say about it
0:18:51 > 0:18:55was just not so, or at any rate,
0:18:55 > 0:19:01contained large chunks which were simply not defensible.
0:19:01 > 0:19:03When did you know that to be the case?
0:19:06 > 0:19:09Oh, I mean, from the moment that
0:19:09 > 0:19:12they started saying, whatever it is,
0:19:12 > 0:19:16that Trotsky had been an agent of the British intelligence service
0:19:16 > 0:19:18going back to 1918, that kind of stuff,
0:19:18 > 0:19:20which was even before the war.
0:19:22 > 0:19:24Well, if you did that,
0:19:24 > 0:19:28the option was, either you wrote about the Soviet Union,
0:19:28 > 0:19:31in which case you couldn't be in the Communist Party,
0:19:31 > 0:19:34or you kept quiet and wrote about something else.
0:19:34 > 0:19:37Did you ever go to the Soviet Union in this early period
0:19:37 > 0:19:41and what impression did it make on you if you did?
0:19:42 > 0:19:44I went to the Soviet Union
0:19:44 > 0:19:47for the first and the only time, really,
0:19:47 > 0:19:51except for relatively short trips, which don't count,
0:19:51 > 0:19:54in the year after Stalin died,
0:19:54 > 0:19:57when they were just beginning to open up.
0:19:57 > 0:19:59It made a very poor impression on me,
0:19:59 > 0:20:01not so much because you could tell
0:20:01 > 0:20:06about all these awful things which had happened - you could merely see
0:20:06 > 0:20:09that it was an extraordinarily poor and backward country,
0:20:09 > 0:20:12but one knew that after the war and the destruction.
0:20:13 > 0:20:18It was a country in which one didn't recognise any Communists.
0:20:18 > 0:20:19Meaning?
0:20:19 > 0:20:23Meaning we knew what Communists were like
0:20:23 > 0:20:26and the only thing that one could see in Russia
0:20:26 > 0:20:28were people who lived in a Communist country
0:20:28 > 0:20:31and made their career in a Communist country.
0:20:31 > 0:20:34Now, of course, this was untypical in the early '50s
0:20:34 > 0:20:38because the guys had yet to come back from the camps
0:20:38 > 0:20:42and later on... Or from exile, and later on,
0:20:42 > 0:20:47one came across, again, people who were recognisable,
0:20:47 > 0:20:51- but whereas in...- What you're saying there is interesting -
0:20:51 > 0:20:55that is, the people who actually burned with an original faith
0:20:55 > 0:20:57had been put in prison, in fact.
0:20:57 > 0:21:01- I don't know, but you didn't come across them.- Right.
0:21:01 > 0:21:03Whereas, for instance,
0:21:03 > 0:21:06in the "People's Democracies," quote-unquote,
0:21:06 > 0:21:09you did recognise these people.
0:21:09 > 0:21:10You may have thought, you know,
0:21:10 > 0:21:13"These have now become bureaucrats" or this, that or the other
0:21:13 > 0:21:17but you could recognise how they worked, how their minds worked.
0:21:17 > 0:21:21They worked the way we worked. Not in Russia.
0:21:21 > 0:21:24What's it like to be in a church,
0:21:24 > 0:21:27assuming that Communism is a kind of secular religion,
0:21:27 > 0:21:30when you know, having seen with your own eyes,
0:21:30 > 0:21:33that the central mystery at the centre of the church,
0:21:33 > 0:21:36that is, the state of the Soviet Union, is rotten?
0:21:36 > 0:21:38How do you live with that?
0:21:39 > 0:21:43The Soviet Union...you see, for us,
0:21:43 > 0:21:45in the West, was not the central mystery.
0:21:48 > 0:21:51Socialism, Communism, were the central mystery.
0:21:51 > 0:21:53The Soviet Union is where it started
0:21:53 > 0:21:58and for practical purposes, you absolutely had to work with it
0:21:58 > 0:22:02because that was...between the wars, that was the only game in town.
0:22:02 > 0:22:05There was no other kind of socialism.
0:22:05 > 0:22:09If that had gone, there would be no chance at all.
0:22:11 > 0:22:15In effect, you couldn't get anywhere without the Soviet Union.
0:22:16 > 0:22:18And, you see, that was true.
0:22:18 > 0:22:23Without Stalin, without the Red Army,
0:22:23 > 0:22:24we wouldn't have won the war.
0:22:26 > 0:22:28A couple of months ago,
0:22:28 > 0:22:32I was at a conference in Italy about Nazi atrocities during the war,
0:22:32 > 0:22:35the memory of World War II,
0:22:35 > 0:22:38and there were people there from Russia too
0:22:38 > 0:22:42who regarded the entire subject as merely a conspiracy
0:22:42 > 0:22:47to stop people talking about the awfulness of Stalinism
0:22:47 > 0:22:52and one of the Italians got up and said, "You must realise,
0:22:52 > 0:22:54"Stalin was terrible for YOU.
0:22:54 > 0:22:58"For US, it meant liberation."
0:22:58 > 0:23:01Let me tell you... Let me tell you a story, Eric,
0:23:01 > 0:23:06- that I grew up with about Claud Cockburn, who was in the party.- Yes.
0:23:06 > 0:23:07And they asked Claud Cockburn
0:23:07 > 0:23:10what the experience was of being in the party
0:23:10 > 0:23:14and he told the following, admittedly very sexist, joke,
0:23:14 > 0:23:17about a southern belle in a rape trial
0:23:17 > 0:23:19who is asked by the judge,
0:23:19 > 0:23:25"When," he asks the southern belle, "did the rape actually occur?"
0:23:25 > 0:23:29And the belle says, "Judge, it was rape, rape, rape all summer long."
0:23:29 > 0:23:32But I mean, wasn't being in the party,
0:23:32 > 0:23:35to an intelligent intellectual like you, at a certain point,
0:23:35 > 0:23:37rape, rape, all summer long,
0:23:37 > 0:23:41in the sense that you had '56, the Hungarian invasion.
0:23:41 > 0:23:45You then had Prague, '68, the Soviet invasion again.
0:23:45 > 0:23:52You had one constant thing, that was just unjustifiable, to justify.
0:23:53 > 0:23:56'56 was the real turning point.
0:23:56 > 0:24:00This was when the international communist movement went to pieces.
0:24:01 > 0:24:04Until that time, it didn't.
0:24:05 > 0:24:10In fact, it was held together, probably by the Cold War,
0:24:10 > 0:24:13which prolonged, actually, the existence of the Soviet Union
0:24:13 > 0:24:16and the existence of the international Communist movement.
0:24:17 > 0:24:20So before that,
0:24:20 > 0:24:27you had a number of things which were increasingly implausible,
0:24:27 > 0:24:30not so much the actual terror,
0:24:30 > 0:24:33because we really did not know,
0:24:33 > 0:24:36nobody knew, how many people were killed.
0:24:36 > 0:24:38Even now, they don't know.
0:24:38 > 0:24:46Even the anti-Stalinist outsiders don't know
0:24:46 > 0:24:50because the estimates about everything in the Soviet Union
0:24:50 > 0:24:52are pure speculation. I mean...
0:24:52 > 0:24:56Are you actually seriously telling me
0:24:56 > 0:25:00that the Stalinist crimes are much exaggerated?
0:25:00 > 0:25:04No, I'm not telling you that. I'm simply saying that nobody knows.
0:25:04 > 0:25:07What we say about Stalin so far is...
0:25:07 > 0:25:10Depends very largely on
0:25:10 > 0:25:12the attitude of the people
0:25:12 > 0:25:16who are making the estimates.
0:25:16 > 0:25:19For instance, on the gulags, there is a difference.
0:25:19 > 0:25:22All the estimates are terrible and indefensible
0:25:22 > 0:25:24because they all run into millions.
0:25:24 > 0:25:27But the estimates range from between
0:25:27 > 0:25:293-4 million to between 13-14 million.
0:25:29 > 0:25:32And with a range like this,
0:25:32 > 0:25:34they are not serious estimates,
0:25:34 > 0:25:38they aren't even orders of magnitude.
0:25:38 > 0:25:42All you can say is that whatever actually turns out in the end,
0:25:42 > 0:25:44it was inhuman, indefensible,
0:25:44 > 0:25:47and there is no way in which
0:25:47 > 0:25:49you can minimise it.
0:25:49 > 0:25:52GUNSHOTS
0:25:54 > 0:25:57What happens in '56 to you?
0:25:57 > 0:26:00Do you leave the party over the Soviet invasion of Hungary, or not?
0:26:00 > 0:26:04No, we protested, all of us. I protested.
0:26:04 > 0:26:07Others did too, but I personally didn't leave,
0:26:07 > 0:26:09but most of the others did.
0:26:09 > 0:26:13Why didn't you leave? And why didn't you leave for so long after?
0:26:17 > 0:26:21It's very different for people who became
0:26:21 > 0:26:24communists in Berlin
0:26:24 > 0:26:27between 1931 and 1933.
0:26:31 > 0:26:32Even though for most of us,
0:26:32 > 0:26:36in this country and elsewhere,
0:26:36 > 0:26:40the basic historic experience is that of the 1930s.
0:26:40 > 0:26:46The broad popular front one. This is still the way I think about politics,
0:26:46 > 0:26:48effectively and politically.
0:26:48 > 0:26:53In fact, the commitment goes earlier.
0:26:54 > 0:26:56And in a way...
0:26:59 > 0:27:02..I, in the first place,
0:27:02 > 0:27:05I never wanted to belong to the people
0:27:05 > 0:27:08who had left and turned against.
0:27:08 > 0:27:10I don't want to be in that company,
0:27:10 > 0:27:13I didn't want to be in that company.
0:27:13 > 0:27:15In the second place,
0:27:15 > 0:27:19I did not want to betray the people I knew
0:27:19 > 0:27:21who had actually
0:27:21 > 0:27:26sacrificed their lives and lost.
0:27:26 > 0:27:28You see, a lot of people,
0:27:28 > 0:27:30people like myself,
0:27:30 > 0:27:33had very easy lives, by and large.
0:27:33 > 0:27:35But there were others of my friends
0:27:35 > 0:27:37and comrades who haven't.
0:27:37 > 0:27:40And, you know, I can show you
0:27:40 > 0:27:43photographs of people and say,
0:27:43 > 0:27:45"This man was killed
0:27:45 > 0:27:47"in the Resistance.
0:27:47 > 0:27:50"This man was killed..."
0:27:50 > 0:27:53These were my contemporaries.
0:27:53 > 0:27:58And I do not wish, I did not wish,
0:27:58 > 0:28:06by renouncing this past, to diminish
0:28:06 > 0:28:11the enormous commitment for the good
0:28:11 > 0:28:14which this movement represented
0:28:14 > 0:28:17and I still believe represents.
0:28:17 > 0:28:19It just so happens that those of us
0:28:19 > 0:28:22who were Communists in the West
0:28:22 > 0:28:24never had anything much to, er,
0:28:24 > 0:28:27shall we say, reproach ourselves with.
0:28:27 > 0:28:29We fortunately never became governments
0:28:29 > 0:28:31and were expected to do the things
0:28:31 > 0:28:36which Communists in government in the East were expected to do.
0:28:36 > 0:28:38We were on the right side.
0:28:38 > 0:28:42What we did was, on the whole, on the right side in this country.
0:28:42 > 0:28:44Very few...
0:28:44 > 0:28:47All we can say is that when we talked about Russia,
0:28:47 > 0:28:49which was neither here nor there
0:28:49 > 0:28:52as far as I was politically concerned,
0:28:52 > 0:28:53we were either fools,
0:28:53 > 0:28:56or liars, or naive,
0:28:56 > 0:28:58but that's quite a different thing
0:28:58 > 0:29:00from saying that God failed.
0:29:00 > 0:29:04CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
0:29:08 > 0:29:11In what sense do you still feel
0:29:11 > 0:29:14there is something left to communism as a project?
0:29:14 > 0:29:19Because it's not clear to me in the book what you think is left
0:29:19 > 0:29:22that's viable politically about the communist project.
0:29:24 > 0:29:26Communist Party - no, nothing.
0:29:29 > 0:29:33Communism as something...
0:29:33 > 0:29:34a state and society
0:29:34 > 0:29:36organised on the model
0:29:36 > 0:29:38on which it was in the Soviet Union
0:29:38 > 0:29:41and on the model of the Soviet Union -
0:29:41 > 0:29:43no, no future.
0:29:43 > 0:29:47I believe - as I try to show in the book -
0:29:47 > 0:29:53that, in a sense, this was a peculiar historical freak,
0:29:53 > 0:29:54if you like,
0:29:54 > 0:29:58that for understandable reasons,
0:29:58 > 0:30:02the revolution triumphs in a country
0:30:02 > 0:30:04in which communism...
0:30:04 > 0:30:09or socialism as Marx and other socialists conceived it,
0:30:09 > 0:30:11could not conceivably have been built.
0:30:11 > 0:30:14So what is viable? What remains?
0:30:16 > 0:30:23What remains is, in fact, that if the world is to have a future,
0:30:23 > 0:30:27it will have to be, as it were,
0:30:27 > 0:30:32it cannot rely on the spontaneous operations of the capitalist system.
0:30:33 > 0:30:37It has to rely on, to some extent,
0:30:37 > 0:30:44human communities taking conscious responsibility
0:30:44 > 0:30:48for their welfare and their future.
0:30:48 > 0:30:52Whether this implies something like...
0:30:52 > 0:30:53whether this, that,
0:30:53 > 0:30:57or all industries are to be run by the government,
0:30:57 > 0:31:00these seem to me to be second-order questions.
0:31:00 > 0:31:05But that it cannot be left to simply
0:31:05 > 0:31:10the free play of the market,
0:31:10 > 0:31:14or some equivalent. That seems to me to be absolutely basic
0:31:14 > 0:31:18and that remains absolutely basic, it seems to me.
0:31:20 > 0:31:24- Um...- But that just makes you a good left-wing social democrat.
0:31:24 > 0:31:26That doesn't make you a communist.
0:31:28 > 0:31:31That is probably true that in a sense,
0:31:31 > 0:31:35becoming a good left-wing social democrat
0:31:35 > 0:31:37is the way in which Marxism
0:31:37 > 0:31:39was clearly developing
0:31:39 > 0:31:41before the Russian Revolution.
0:31:41 > 0:31:44Marxism didn't actually have the reputation of being
0:31:44 > 0:31:46essentially a theory of
0:31:46 > 0:31:48revolution and barricades.
0:31:48 > 0:31:52It was anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists which had this.
0:31:52 > 0:31:54The idea of the revolution barricades
0:31:54 > 0:31:57came back into Marxism
0:31:57 > 0:31:59via October, you see?
0:31:59 > 0:32:01Mmm. But what we come down to
0:32:01 > 0:32:03at the end of it
0:32:03 > 0:32:05is that you made a commitment
0:32:05 > 0:32:07when you were 14 which was -
0:32:07 > 0:32:10we either have socialism or we have barbarism,
0:32:10 > 0:32:14and in a sense, you've remained true to that all your life.
0:32:14 > 0:32:16I hope so.
0:32:16 > 0:32:19And, alas, we haven't got socialism,
0:32:19 > 0:32:21but we do have an increase in barbarism.
0:32:21 > 0:32:24What exactly do you mean by barbarism?
0:32:24 > 0:32:29I mean firstly that, in some sense,
0:32:29 > 0:32:32the rules of social behaviour
0:32:32 > 0:32:36which tend to govern all societies -
0:32:36 > 0:32:38must govern them if they aren't to...
0:32:38 > 0:32:42disintegrate into some kind of
0:32:42 > 0:32:45Hobbesian anarchy - are under threat
0:32:45 > 0:32:48or under disintegration
0:32:48 > 0:32:52because of the change,
0:32:52 > 0:32:57changes in society which we have seen and through which are going?
0:32:57 > 0:32:59But, I mean...
0:32:59 > 0:33:00Which changes are producing
0:33:00 > 0:33:03barbarism within the capitalist world?
0:33:03 > 0:33:08For one thing, the growth of big cities,
0:33:08 > 0:33:13and I suppose I would say...
0:33:13 > 0:33:17the fact that the mechanisms
0:33:17 > 0:33:21for keeping these things under control in the past
0:33:21 > 0:33:25are either weakened or may possibly disappear.
0:33:25 > 0:33:27Which mechanisms do you mean?
0:33:27 > 0:33:29The state, for one thing.
0:33:31 > 0:33:34You yourself, if I may say so,
0:33:34 > 0:33:36have pointed out that
0:33:36 > 0:33:39one of the reasons why, in Yugoslavia,
0:33:39 > 0:33:43you find that there is this extraordinary
0:33:43 > 0:33:48uncontrolled outburst of almost...
0:33:48 > 0:33:52erotic, I think you say, violence
0:33:52 > 0:33:55is that these countries have got used,
0:33:55 > 0:33:58over a long period, to government and law
0:33:58 > 0:34:02having the monopoly of legitimate violence.
0:34:02 > 0:34:04This now disappears.
0:34:04 > 0:34:09There are no other rules about how to treat violence and what to do,
0:34:09 > 0:34:13and the result is indeed cruelty,
0:34:13 > 0:34:15atrocity, barbarism.
0:34:15 > 0:34:18So barbarism means, to use your own phrase,
0:34:18 > 0:34:21the democratisation of violence?
0:34:21 > 0:34:24That, I think, is one aspect of it.
0:34:24 > 0:34:28That's obviously the aspect which we mostly notice.
0:34:28 > 0:34:31But at the same time, it seems to me
0:34:31 > 0:34:35that barbarism is also much more specifically
0:34:35 > 0:34:43the gradual weakening of the standards and aspirations
0:34:43 > 0:34:46of 18th-century rationalism
0:34:46 > 0:34:49and 18th-century enlightenment.
0:34:49 > 0:34:54Finally, the last sentence of your book, as I recall, says,
0:34:54 > 0:35:00"Unless we have a changed society, we'll be going into darkness."
0:35:00 > 0:35:02A very sombre conclusion, and I wondered if
0:35:02 > 0:35:06you could put some flesh and bones on that
0:35:06 > 0:35:10very tenacious dream of a changed society
0:35:10 > 0:35:13that still obviously drives you and still obviously inspires you.
0:35:18 > 0:35:25It's difficult to imagine because we are gradually getting used,
0:35:25 > 0:35:28you see, to living under conditions
0:35:28 > 0:35:32which, in the days of our parents, my parents,
0:35:32 > 0:35:36or grandparents, would have been regarded as intolerable.
0:35:36 > 0:35:41And so what is darkness, you see?
0:35:41 > 0:35:44Everybody thinks a catastrophe
0:35:44 > 0:35:46is something which happens
0:35:46 > 0:35:52from one day to the next, like a big earthquake, or something like this.
0:35:52 > 0:35:56But what we are not easily used to is a slow-motion catastrophe,
0:35:56 > 0:36:00such as we can see happening in large parts of Africa today.
0:36:00 > 0:36:02GUNSHOTS
0:36:05 > 0:36:09GUNFIRE CONTINUES
0:36:10 > 0:36:14It is possible for human life to go on and people adjusting themselves
0:36:14 > 0:36:20to living in the sort of conditions in which people have been living
0:36:20 > 0:36:23for 20 years in Angola and Mozambique,
0:36:23 > 0:36:27for, whatever it is, ten years or more in Somalia,
0:36:27 > 0:36:31for five or six years in Liberia and a number of other places.
0:36:31 > 0:36:36No doubt, in some way or other,
0:36:36 > 0:36:38something like life,
0:36:38 > 0:36:42on the basis of being nasty, brutish and short,
0:36:42 > 0:36:46can nevertheless become regularised again.
0:36:46 > 0:36:49And yet, looking at it from where we stand
0:36:49 > 0:36:52and looking at it not only from our hopes,
0:36:52 > 0:36:55but from the experience...
0:36:55 > 0:36:59After all, living in Liberia or Mozambique
0:36:59 > 0:37:04even in the early 1970s - or Somalia - was different.
0:37:05 > 0:37:08Living in Tajikistan was different.
0:37:08 > 0:37:11It wasn't ideal, it was even bad,
0:37:11 > 0:37:15but it was better than what there is now.
0:37:15 > 0:37:17And I think when to say darkness,
0:37:17 > 0:37:21it doesn't mean that we shall all, kind of, commit suicide,
0:37:21 > 0:37:25it means we shall get used to living under conditions
0:37:25 > 0:37:27which should not be tolerated.
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