The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1125: The Thought of Eric Hobsbawm: Part 1 - Introduction w/ Thomas777

Episode Date: October 27, 2024

61 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.Thomas begins a series in which he discusses the thought and work of Eric Hobsbawm. He begins giving an overview of his life, career, and influences.Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Financial Services Ireland Limited, trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. And now, this is over the nation-hamsira. It's leargoal to a guy and not great gree-in'an-doin'an, and leant to gaolpada to deirn. In Ergrid, we're dig tour chaw-khi in one-hae with funnive-in-voonah. Ouschrard you do do you have to do Aungo and people cariff at one taskee.

There's a lot of cooctue do agon. Full of nis more on Airgrid Ponga'i. If you want to support the show and get the episodes early and add free head on over to free man beyond the wall.com

forward slash support there's a few ways you can support me there. One, there's a direct link to my website. Two, there's subscribe star. Three, there's Patreon for their substack, and now I've introduced Gumroad, because I know that a lot of our guys are on Gumroad, and they are against censorship. So if you head over to Gumroad and you subscribe through there, you'll get the episodes early and ad-free, and you'll get an invite into the

telegram group. So I really appreciate all of the support everyone's giving me, and I hope to expand the show even more than it already has. Thank you so much. I want to welcome everyone back to the Peking Yones show. After a little bit of a break, Thomas is back. How are you doing, Thomas? I'm very well. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to collaborate on some stuff before the big Portland basket weaving event.

And this is an important subject area. I mean, just on its own terms, but it dovetails rather splendidly and kind of like indexes with the long-form stuff I'm working on. And it's especially timely with kind of the trajectory. I've been trying to steer things, at least in our kind of intellectual circles. Like, not, I don't like vanity or just because I've got a hobbyist interest in this stuff. But it's fundamentally important.

And I'll get into that as we roll out this subject. Yeah, our buddy, Mr. Rimbo, who was on the episode. where you were you guys were talking about being on the ground at the DNC he's the one who recommended this so um shout out to him and everything so um that's my whole he's an essential he's an essential part of homeland fiction even though he's even though he's not truly local and he's like an essential part of like my entourage like he's he's uh he's going to be hitting Portland with me which is awesome yeah what when you said how much you guys hung out and everything. I figured he was local to you. And then when he told me where he was from, I was like,

holy shit. No, he's a good dude. And he's built up fair amount on vacation time. So he traveled a fair amount. And I'm lucky he's he likes Chicago and like a lot of like wallbanger and hunger the die merchant. They were in town last weekend. And we had a great time. But, you know, they hadn't been to Shytown before. And I think people think it's either really grimy because of what they see on the news and all that kind of cap about how awful it is here or they think it's just kind of like or they think it's just kind of like New York City was smaller like they they were really impressed at how cool it is and so Rimbaud I yeah we we have a lot of fun here man and he's he's a really good dude I owe him a lot and um I mean I will have fellows a lot but he he especially

um he sends a huge amount he's like a a research machine and I mean I'd like to think I am too but I'm not as young as I once was and I'm surely not as young as he is and he he's always finding like really really great sources that I've never I've never come across well the wife and I talked about this this past year and it didn't happen but um we're gonna have to drive up and hang out with you like when the when the weather breaks once winter breaks come up for like the spring or something like that yeah that'd be great man you'll have a lot of fun and um so well uh Mrs. Q, there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff I can show you guys that you'll really dig, man. Everybody has fun when they come here. And I'd like to think, I'd like to think I'm a pretty

decent tour guide, man. All right, let's get into it. Mr. Eric Hobbsbom. A lot of people probably have never heard of them, but you mention him all the time, usually in passing, usually just quoting him or something like that. So, let's, to do the deep dive. Oswald. He was a true left Hegelian. People invoke that

signifier, or designation rather, to talk about any Marxist academic because in the public mind and kind of an academic culture, you know, any Marxist historian or historical writer is,

you know, axiomatically a left Higalian. I take exception to that descriptor. for a few reasons. I mean, you can't, like, on its own terms, dialectical materialism,

it can't be Hegelian, because it removes, you know, providential, um, causation from, it's, uh,

from, from, from its historicism. Um, you know, there's a, arguably, it abolishes metaphysics.

You know, I mean, obviously, so I mean, that's, it's something of, as our Marxist friends themselves, would say, a fatal contradiction. But Hobbsbom, Hobbsbom really was like a left-haglian in the purest sense. And I think his take on things, I mean, obviously we don't know. And I've read imperialism by Lenin many times. But, I mean, Lenin wasn't, Lenin was kind of the consummate political soldier. You know, it's not like he was prolific, I mean, he was prolific for the role he was in in terms of his academic output, but, you know, it's not like he was, it's not like he was like angles in, or something and, and putting out, you know, endless, endless manuscripts or something. But I, I see Hobbs, one probably was, like, the most, like, Lenin himself, you know, in terms of his kind of political ontology, as well as in terms of how he characterized historical processes.

and, you know, how outcomes they're in should be judged, you know, whether they are, whether they advance the revolutionary imperative in a progressive sense, or whether they are self-defeating. You know, and so Hobbsbom, I think of him, too, was, he was really much kind of like a counterweight to Ernst Nolte. They had a lot of similarities, like their background's very different. You know, Hobbsbomb was a Polish Jew whose father. was an English subject. But there's commonalities to their...

I mean, they're very much opposites, or were very much opposites, but there's sort of a common frame of reference in terms of what they would have viewed as authoritative and what they consider to be sort of the essential canon of political philosophy. And Haasbom also, he got this reputation, people haven't really read him.

So they do him as like this unreconstructed, quote-unquote, Stalinist. That's not really true. But he did refuse, he had contempt for the new left, and he refused to abandon allegiance to the Soviet Union in 56 and in 68. You know, he was an Orthodox, in Cold War terms, an Orthodox,

Marxist, which meant he was in the Soviet camp. And in the Senate of Soviet split, he had great disdain for China for various reasons. So these like schismatic tendencies, the fact he opposed all these schismatic tendencies and the fact he was someone critical at Khrushchev, like that didn't make him some hardline Stalinist.

You know, like he wasn't the kind of guy would say, sit there and say like Eric Hocker was like a great general secretary or that like the DDR had like a perfect system. And there were guys who thought that way. you know but so the key to the key to this does kind of require like a deep dive um and i find myself you know what so people might ask themselves you know what does this have to do with the

present i mean a couple of things you know if you want to understand the 20th century you've got to understand marxas leninism you want to understand margis leninism but you got to understand the body of theory and its theory of history that um you know kind of like frame the conceptual horizon that you know nourished the it's revolutionary imperatives you know and if if you want to understand the 21st century you got understand the 20th century and that entire dialogue of the process plus today this kind of thought this kind of true leftagalian thought it's made a comeback like guys like the guy jackson hinkle and a lot of people think he's a crank he's really not you know and like he's i think he's

partly funded by the same kinds of elements that fund like Zuganovs like reconstituted communist party um i'm not saying that's sinister you know i i shouted out about this on social media but um you know these guys aren't woke you know that's why when hankville defines himself as like a social conservative that's not inconsistent you know and um that's one of the reasons uh when people drop this bullshit calling everything they don't like Marxist it's like that's it's not like Kamala Harris isn't a Marxist you know Obama is not a mercist like American uh American style social engineering and all the kind of bizarre stuff that goes into that isn't isn't Marxism you know so I think um I think this stuff is more timely that a lot of people are willing to acknowledge you know even if even if even if uh political theory is not really, you know, in your proverbial wheelhouse or something. But I'm gonna jump around a bit, if it's too scared or shot, or if something's not clear, like please stop me and I'll,

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Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunbioghush Faragea. No problem. Go ahead. No problem. I'll interrupt if I, have something. Oh yeah, no, for sure. In 1994, Hobbsbom had a certain degree of prominence, especially in the UK, you know, throughout his kind of academic career, even though he didn't

really involve himself in public policy debates with the exception of the Thatcher era, and we'll get into that in a minute. But in 1994, when a lot of kind of retrospective stuff on the Cold War was was popping up in media you know it's one like Nixon was I mean Nixon died I think in 94 like 94 95 but you know Nixon had been making the rounds in 1990 1992 um there was a lot of a lot of a lot of colder academics who were being asked you know for their to render kind of their their their diagnosis of the events of the preceding half decade and stuff um hasbaum uh He was being interviewed by Michael Ignativ. You know, and Ignativ was very much trying to put him in the hot seat

and asking him loaded questions. And, Osmond famously said that had the Soviet Union succeeded in realizing a communist society, and had it been able to fulfill its ambitial. ambition of facilitating a world historical revolutionary imperative

Habsum said that the deaths of 20 million people or however many perished in Stalin's death camps would have been worth it so Ignatio famously like then clutching at his pearls proverbially speaking and Habswam's rebuttal

was you know Marx himself said that no great movement has been born without, you know, the shedding of blood. And, you know, how's I'm followed it up by saying, you know, self-sacrifice isn't the only kind of sacrifice that was in the contemplation of Marx or Lenin or anybody else. You know, but this wasn't the standard mea culpa or whatever, like a lot of like, a lot of kind of like Normicons think as well as a lot of kind of new left types. this wasn't just Hodgwan being deliberately callous or something but you've got to understand the

vantage point from where he's speaking like historical processes aren't they're not the result of conspiratorial designs by by criminal actors

you know they're not even if you're a true vanguardist even if you kind of accept Rousseau if you were the general will and a Havswell very much did you know of course the general

will doesn't speak he's not Rousseau wasn't referring to like the body politic as a whole like it could be just like narrow discrete elements within the political organism whose

whose commitments and his conceptual horizon like indexes very strongly you know with a revolutionary leadership element you know but that does but these people are still what they're doing

is they're engaging very intimately in psychological and political terms with historical processes. They're not creating these conditions. So if you ask, so trying to put Nolte on the Hotsie like this, or trying to put Hazzle on the Hotsie like this, it's similar to what Haramaz

and his Aege's and his Agyz would try to do to Nolte. You know, like, oh, you're justifying these monstrous crimes. You know, nobody said, no, nobody's justifying anything. But if you're talking about the historical process and you're talking about warfare at massive scale, at literally planetary scale, we're not talking about decisions made by discrete individual actors.

We're not talking about people committing crimes. You know, we're talking about events that are truly providential. Or, you know, if you're an atheist like Hasbom, truly providential. Okay. And even if you assign a purely material, that kind of leads an appealing material causes, you know, to these things it's a constellation of variables so myriad so complex at such scale nobody can be said to be like responsible as a as a as a causative agent in proximate terms so who was who was who was eric hosbaum i thought was actually born in egypt

you know his uh his father was leopold percy hobbsbaum um It's believed that the original surname was a Upsbom, but a combination of deliberate anglicization of the surname and clerical error led to it becoming Hobbsbom. His father had been some kind of merchant who was originally from the east end of London, but he was a Polish Jew. his mother was a a Jewish woman named Nelly Grun who'd come from a middle class

family and then what was then, you know, the Hapthra Empire in Austria. Tomptham relayed that like he was so consciously Jewish because his parents conveyed to him you know, to take his ethnos seriously. But he said he was

raised in basically like an atheist household. He's like it was a very Jewish household, but it wasn't religious. You know, and that that wasn't really strange for a Hobbs was born in 1917. I mean, that's very much a 20th century thing. You know, I haven't said it to people again and again, like

nobody thinks this way anymore. Like the remaining the remaining self-declared atheists who have any kind of public profile, like nobody takes them seriously anymore. You know, and I mean, really that kind of thing was dead.

by you know by the end of 1990s but um there were some there was some peculiar holdouts and it had something of a it had something of a media profile particularly in new media right before its kind of final death as it's a culturally relevant um quantity but um you know so hiontto had a fairly cosmopolitan upbringing you know it um He wasn't some ghettoized Jew who was sitting around reading Marx and Engels and kind of like nursing these grudges and stuff. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm sure that his ethnos and the kind of conceptual biases intrinsic to that sort of household, like absolutely informed his perspective. But, you know, he wasn't some guy from, you know, the pale settlement or something or from some impoverished stuff.

you know, tenement in Poland. And I've heard people speculate to the fact who want to throw shade out of him. Like, that's just like not accurate. Um, but he, uh, he was a teenage, he, uh, ultimately, um, his father died when he was,

when he was quite young. I think when he was 12 or 13 years old. Um, he was sent to, uh, he was sent to live with his aunt a couple years later. him and his sister when his mother died as well his maternal aunt

and they settled in Berlin and then when the National Socialist Revolution picked off or whenever the National Socialists got their parliamentary plurality

which became a parliamentary majority after the KPD was outlawed under the attack on the Reichstag fire you know they they had an absolute majority. But, Hodgwam returned to the United Kingdom.

When I say returned, his father was an English subject. So young Hasbom wasn't considered, he was also considered to be a subject to the empire, you know, and not subject to laws regarding alienage and things like that. He attended King's College at Cambridge. you know he became uh he joined the communist party at great britain basically as like as soon as he was of age

you know i think when he was 19 years old i think you had to be 18 to join um in those days but um you know he got he took his doctorate from uh from cambridge and i believe his thesis his PhD thesis was on the history of the phavian society and phabian socialism you know and um Hobbsbaum's commitments as well as his his particular kind of brand of a

of Marxist thoughts it was very much it was very much derivative of that of the English Communist Party or the Communist Party of Great Britain okay when I say derivative I don't mean that in punitive terms

but what I mean is Hobbsbam quite literally identified himself as a quote red troy you know um and we'll get into what they'd means and the implications of that but guys like kim philby and the cambridge five they they were cut from the same kind of cloth you know the um the comment's party of great britain um they were very much a fifth column during the cold war in a way that other similar elements weren't on the continent because they were on they they they they were Orthodox, Marxist,

a lot of this. They unconditionally supported the Soviet Union. You know, they, so they, they were very much in the Cold War. You know, these weren't a much at Trotskyists, you know, trying to to cultivate electoral respectability.

Nor are they, you know, nor are they like activist liberals are the kinds who find themselves in an NGO cynicers who were kind of communists in name only. Like, they were the genuine article. They were pro-Soviet.

They were loyal to Stalin. Subsequently, they were loyal to his memory, but they were not uncritical. You know, they very much viewed the situation as, you know, for all of its frailties, and for all of its less than ideal

characteristics and situatedness, you know, the Soviet Union is what we have in this world. And this world is all it is. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items

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distinctive by design they move you even before you drive the new cupra plug-in hybrid range for mentor leon and terramar now with flexible pcp finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2000 euro search cupra and discover our latest offers cupra design that moves finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from vows wagon financial services arland limited subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Discover five-star luxury at Trump Dunbeg. Unwind in our luxurious spa. Savour sumptuous farm-fresh dining. Relax in our exquisite accommodations. Step outside and be captivated by the wild Atlantic

surrounds. Your five-star getaway, where every detail is designed with you in mind. Give the gift of a unique experience this Christmas with vouchers from Trump Dunebeg. Search Trump Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunebiog, Kush Farage. You know, so it's suicidally short-sighted, you know, in political terms to divorce oneself from the ambitions and the destinies of the Soviet system. But, and interestingly, Hobbsbaum,

he served as a combat engineer during World War II. And he caught some flack at the time and in a decade subsequent because when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, Hobbsbom and his ideological fellows and comrades,

they'd shout down people who are critical of the Third Reich because he said, you know, alliance of convenience this may be or, you know, however contrived is non-aggression pact may be, you know, this is

the way things must be you know, in order for the revolution to be consolidated in situ. So, anybody opposing the Reich or calling for its destruction or calling for Moscow,

to preemptively assault it, which Moscow was absolutely planning on doing, but people didn't know this outside of, you know, cadres proximate to the Red Tsar Stalin. You know, he considered this to be like a counter-revolutionary tendency, which was the Orthodox perspective, the Orthodox Marxist's perspective. but um other than that um hasbom was very much like a doctrinal anti-fascist like not not in nuremberg terms but um and we'll get into this probably in the second episode hobbiz take on fascism and national socialism is interesting um it's not it's by no means you know dismiss totally dismissive in some punitive capacity um he he says that the strength of fascism was that it mastered techniques and technology. It was able to imbue people with like a fervent kind of energy to realize its objectives,

but he considered to be, quote, philosophically impoverished. And he didn't really seem to understand the kind of trajectory of Schopenhauer. Nietzsche Heidegger, you know, to national socialism. Now there's some people who have like a punitive like Sundervag take on Germany and the Germans of the people and the German state. That's not what Hotswam was. That's not what I'm saying. And that's not, you know, and Hotswam wasn't prone to that

the kind of mode of thought either. But like a lot of doctrine, Marxist, he couldn't really see the forest of the trees. I don't think he understood the enduring power of continental philosophy outside of Marxist-adjacent thinkers, you know, and informing what what was going on in Italy, what was going on in Germany, you know, in the inner warriors. I don't think he understood this. I think it was one of his blind spots owing to

adherence to, you know, an ideology and Marxism that quite literally inundates people with like a missionary zeal that sometimes

means what kind of tunnel vision but you know it's and again like I said I believe like the red Tory moniker you know they became kind of bandied

about in the UK about even a lot of these like labor types you know back when the labor party was a real party you know there were these guys who were basically uh like we'd consider them in america to be like you know we consider them to be like like like right wing type uh type of uh figures but for the fact that um you know they uh they were very much uh socialists in their in their orientation you know they believe in state socialism, both as like an ethical postulate, as well as a kind of inevitability if the modern state was to survive, you know, with any kind of, with any kind of legitimacy.

So, yeah, how long do you go into so like Tory communist? Not a red Tory, but that, and again, that seems paradoxical to people, but again, it's, I I refer to Zuginov's Communist Party, you know, to Jackson Hinkle. But even, you know, in historical capacities, this resonated with people who had a developed understanding of political theory. The Marxism of the Frankfurt School, people like Haasw had contempt for that. You know, they were like, this is degenerate garbage. This is, this is therapy for people who want to do. of strike some kind of protest pose, you know, but are basically imbibing, you know, the kind of alienation

that's deliberately engineered by capitalist societies and saying like, oh, but this can be mitigated if, you know, we have unrestricted access to the sexual hedonism or if we can, you know, partake of these material rewards or, you know, if we can, if the state becomes a kind of, if this day becomes kind of Ersach's like Ersat's like therapeutic mechanism or a or a kind of rabbinic panel

or like a or like an Ersatz like church whereby like declaratory judgments that's not how like validate these these like contrived like postmodern identities you know

and I mean that's that's anybody who's a true communist partisan was disgusted by this. I mean, I'm not saying Marxism is good. I'm not saying it's like good quality because it doesn't. But they were and they

are serious guys. And if you understand, and we'll get into this in a minute, if you understand it kind of like Marxist-Lideness view of the historical process, you know, basically they view like a lot of liberalizing tendencies

to have resulted in a kind of reactionary ethos among people and to the end of their estimation that's where nationalism comes from like nationalism isn't this really organic thing. I'm not talking about nationalism meaning like caring about your race or your ethnos. I mean like nationalism in the form

of yeah this is the country of Poland so like you know according to this arbitrary criteria like whoever speaks Polish is like part of the body politic and anybody else outside of that, you know, is not. And, you know, despite the fact that, you know,

the existence of this government is deleterious to, you know, the kind of organic, the variables that constantly like an organic community in life, you know, if we like fly the flag and, you know, make this language, the state language, you know, we're somehow, you know, guarding tradition or something. Like that's what they're talking about. And in their view, it's an effort by people whose lives are totally disrupted by future shock basically, you know, and by the advancement of productive processes such that, you know, labor is no longer a complete process that people partake of in order to see through, you know, the creative development of an object or a thing or a thing or, um, you know, the creative development of, of an object or a thing or, um,

a necessary activity from start to finish you know it just becomes an artifact of a mechanization you know the the discrete aspects of which you know humans are still required or needed to perform but I mean you're performing these activities in endless repetition without any meaningful experience of the totality of its prudfulness, you know, in the company a total strangers, you know, who's only

who's only the only affinity between you and them is, it's kind of accident of locale or whatever. You know, that's what they're talking about. But, you know, and so people like a Hossbaum,

even if they didn't do things like religious observance as particularly positive, or laudable. You know, they viewed it as, you know,

an anthropological feature of the historical process, you know, whose time arrives and then passes. But they, but they did view, you know, communitarian bonds of whatever they may be, you know,

whether they're like, you know, promise on culture or, um, sectarian affinity or what have you. You know, like in the historical moment in which those things are relevant,

they consider those things valuable. you know because at the end of the day to immerse Lenin, it's like the individual doesn't matter. You know, so whatever facilitates, like, the dignity of, you know, the laboring class or classes, you know, is basically like a social good. Okay. So somebody like Hasblam would be, you know, seeing a bunch of people saying like, you know, marriage or like pair bonding isn't important. And all that matters is like sterile sex and, you know, the catharsis you get from from engaging that kind of stuff or, you know, all that matters is, you know, people being liberated from obligations to others or obligations to history. You know, you know, the highest good is being free

to, like, you know, spill out wealth on yourself and cultivate these, these kinds of distractions that, that, um, facilitate pledging gratification. Like, he had contempt for that. And basically any Orthodox Marxist does. You know, they're, like, again, they're not woke at all. Their view on a race, and they're view on race, too, like, it's not, I've done this point again and get into, like, Marxists don't think race is important,

but they're not anti-racist. Like, there's no reason. They don't think there's anything wrong. with like a bunch of immigrants like swaps like a formerly Western country but they don't think that should be a priority either you know and this idea that this idea that there you know this idea that um racial identity needs to be like socially engineered out of existence like they'd have no like truck with that you know like Stalin did um try to like uh what he called the nationalities problem that definitely tracks you know

with like ethnic cleansing under Oz because of civil rights in America. But that's because the, quote, nationalities were causing problems for the party and for the central committee. You know, and if they weren't causing problems, like, it wasn't so much a priority. Wasn't it because the, like the nationalities that he had a problem with, he considered to be diaspora personalities that could possibly collude with their home countries? That was part of it. yeah definitely that's part of definitely and that's why um that's one of the reasons why uh one of the reasons

the soviets assaulted poland i mean it was it was obviously because you know there was a geostrategic imperative to be able to deploy in depth and things like that but also there was like an active like ruthenian minority there that uh Stalin was convinced we're going to try and like reinforce the ukrainians like an event of open war yeah it was all that stuff and don't get me wrong also like I'm not sitting here defending the concept of like new Soviet man. Like eventually like identitarian characteristics relating to historical memory. Like we're slated for annihilation under like a communist system. And Hadsbom would have absolutely agreed with that.

But my point is guys like Hotham weren't sitting around saying like, you know, we need to settle like African people in Ireland because it's not right that it's 100% Irish. Like, they view that as, like, it's nonsensical. You know, just like people like Hobbs bomb, when Nuremberg kicked off the proceedings, you know, the view from Moscow

was, why are we gonna, why are we gonna, like, declare Jews to be this like murdered population? You know, we lost 25 million people fighting the fascists. You know, like, you're not, there are, and plus there there are no Jews in the Soviet Union. You know, there's like Soviet citizens. You know, there's the body politic.

And there's like our ops. And there's the most people outside of that, you know, and then there's, like, Zionists and other, like, other vanguard tendencies, trying to exploit, you know, grievances of the nationalities to undermine socialism. Like, that was their view of it. You know, and even today, like, that's why this carries over into today, like, the way the Russian Federation views things. Like, the Russians are always, always, always going to view their enemies as Nazis and fascists. How would they not? okay but when they talk about that they're not they're not they're not saying it like the way like like like like chuck schumer means it you know that or they're not saying that you know these people

are like anti-gay or they're or these people don't respect you know um the inherent dignity of all people and they're not into diversity that's not what they're saying at all like they mean something very specific by it and um you know that's that it's a It's both a, you know, the ancestral memory, the great patriotic war, as well as there's still like a lot of, there's still a lot of like left-hagalian thought like in Russia. You know, even somebody like Dugan, and I like Dugan, I mean, a lot of Russian academic culture I find kind of alien just because I'm like very much an anglophone person. And that's not, I'm not putting shade on like the Eastern Slavic peoples or something. but uh i don't find it i mean they're very much like a different people okay but uh even a guy like dougan um there's very much like leftigalian strains of like

leninous thought like in stuff that he postulates and he's like very much like a um i mean he's very much a committed christian you know like eastern christian you know um that was a bit of a tangent forgive me if that was kind of outside the scope but um but i mean this stuff's important uh you know not just to clarify what we're talking about

and my my kind of primary wheel out is political theory but you know just structuring the kind of conceptual landscape in which were mired just declaring anybody on the left be a Marxist like that doesn't make any sense that's like

that says that's this that's this fucking retarded is saying that like Donald Trump is a fascist or like people who avidly like follow his you know media and political career and and support him

you know are like fascists like it's just as ridiculous and at odds in reality as as saying that but um yeah I'll try to

I'll try to pick it up a little bit um no worse or these the tangents but uh I was kind of magnum opus um it was a four-valium study

um called the age revolution age revolution 1789 to 1848 and the first volume dropped in 1962 um this is a seminal work of historicism

in my opinion you can find the abridged uh version of it in a series of PDF files if you dig around if people are really interested i'll i'll throw it up on my on my substack but um you know basically it's uh the housebomb like modernity really arrived with the french revolution okay and what I mean by that and like

what he conveys in the first volume of this age of age of revolution is that you know the overwhelming majority of people in Europe in 1789 they still they still live like people did in the medieval period

you know there was you had this kind of very very slim minority of dedicated urbanites you know and people who are close to technology and productive processes facilitated by technology but almost everybody they were living you know basically as subsistence farmers or as people you know laboring with the household as the locied production you know and essentially bartering and trading on things they could make, you know, within the household, you know, this wasn't, I think people with this idea

that, you know, after, like, upon the onset of the age of discovery or whatever, like, suddenly things became modern and everybody lived in a city or like a town, but it just, things were low tech compared to today. Like, that wasn't, most people in 1789 live not much different than they did in 1389, okay? And this is fundamentally important. And that's kind of where

Hobbs bomb, it's subtle, but it's very much there, and I consider it essential to understanding something of his political, something of his ontological claims about politics. As I said a minute ago

in a slightly different context, you know, when Rousseau talks about the general will and I highly recommend Rousseau to anybody on the right he's very important I first read him when I was about 16 and

that completely changed my perspective on political theory but part of it's part of it's because figures are lost in translation particularly French to English

there's a lot of There's a lot of subtle concepts intrinsic to the French language, particularly if you're talking about metaphysics or politics or anything conceptual. That really doesn't translate. But the general will, again, Rousseau's not talking about some majoritarian consensus of like the whole body politics. Describing it as general,

the way to understand that is to mean something bigger than like a discrete individual actor or actors. You've got to think about it as inexplicably bound up to zeitgeist, like as a concept. Okay. So the general will, it might only be like a hundred guys out of a population of like five million people. But for whatever reason, they restride the zeitgeist. They've got like the gumption, sort of the intelligence and political, terms and the motivation and the balls to see through purely historical and a revolutionary

imperatives, you know, in a way that has a formative effect, you know, either as like a reformist tendency or alternatively, it can be a tendency towards creative destruction and oblivion. But basically the general will describes this like intangible tendency or sensibility that animates this, this cadre in deeply psychological terms, and animates them to realize a revolutionary imperative. often too this dovetails in peculiar ways with whoever the leadership element is of the state as it exists you know in situ okay but that's um so a hogglo makes a lot of that in age of revolution okay because a lot of court history that is now if that's the jingman revolution it's a combination of like goofy stuff. I think people felt from stuff like, like late mews

or something where it's like, oh, everybody was living in poverty and the crushing misery of these slums. So there was like this uprising. Like that's not what happened. And again, you know, the material conditions

of 1789, the purely material conditions weren't radically different than centuries past. Okay. Conceptually, they were totally different. And that's what I mean when I point out that Hausbaum was a true leftagalian.

Psychological variables stand in for providential ones. Okay. But people are familiar with the subject area in general terms who understand exactly what I'm talking about and why that's important. the succeeding volume in this four-valium study was age of capital you know and um age of capital I think it's kind of a counterpart to the Schumpeter's business cycles okay and it's interesting to me that this kind of

of simpleton's stuff like Keynes even people who are pretty outside the mainstream and pretty far left, they still cite that kind of stuff. You know, I would think that age of capital would be their kind of go-to. You know, and it's highly, it was a highly respected treaties because it showcased a genuine understanding of economics. You know, and I generally agree, with Burnham, there's not a quote,

Marxist economics, because Marxism isn't a science. It's not a theory of economics. You know, it's a series of sociological postulates and claims about the historical

process. You know, but there's not, quote, Marxist economics. You know, like a Marxist economist, you know, he'll arbitrarily weigh inputs, you know, based on his own conceptual biases about what, in particular, concrete terms, is like driving the, you know, the stage of the historical process, you know, that he finds

himself in, or that was the, you know, epoch in which the data being coded and interpreted occurred. You know, um, it's, uh, it begins. answer the conclusion about the human condition as it relates to historical and political phenomena and then and then

seeks out variables that can substantiate it in partisan terms you know and there's some of that in a lot of Hodgwans writing but he but again

he understands pure economics of such a thing we said to exist better than most people. I mean, including, I don't think academics for any great shakes, but I mean, including people who were, you know, were in, you know, his peer group as a

as a political partisan and as a as a political theorist. And you know what, and This is also what explains Hasman's a lifelong dedication to communism because it's a total theory of history. You know, it's not something you take on for...

Because you're alienated and, like, want some protest identity. I mean, yeah, I'm sure some people do that, but they're not serious people, and they're certainly not... They're certainly not writing stuff, you know, like on par with the age of revolution and the age of capital. and Haswell never hid that you know but he also one of

when a Haswell's collaborators on a on a lot of scholarship and a lot of his work product was this guy Eric Forner Um Forner was known He became as like firebrand

He was like constantly bashing Gorbache and You know And he's showing these these punitive declarations about Gorbachev is forsaking the revolution and he's a traitor to the Sovietism and

you know into the socialist community of nations as well as the as well as the political parties that are you know behind you know who exists in the capitalist world as well like Hazelan never did that

and it's not because he was worried about his public image I mean he would defend Stalin publicly. It's because if you are a true Marxist Leninist like he was, like the failure of the Soviet Union was ordained by that same process.

You know, in Hasbom's his unconditional loyalty to the Soviet Union contrary to its enemies that didn't entail some, like, slavish, like uncritical view of it. You know, when when

Khrushchev was assailing Stalin's memory and you know by name attempting to impeach the personality cult

you know obviously after after um 1960 after um after um 954 to 56 they're in

you know how's mom said um to his comrades you know at cadre level you know we we we need to we need to take a hard look at at Stalin's tenure and you know what what was laudable and what went wrong and what you know was in fact a kind of revolutionary tendency because otherwise you know the revolution won't survive and and I was honest to Osbaum obviously had a lot of

respect for the Russians as a people. But he, you know, he was always, he was a Soviet partisan, but with, with, reservations. Because he was the first to make the point, you know,

the revolutionary imperative didn't spark in the most hyper-advanced capitalist country. It didn't happen in Germany. It didn't happen in the UK. It happened in a Russia. where the capitalist class was on very tenuous ground, you know, and were they, the opponents of the revolution were really these czarist elements who were incredibly hard guys.

They were God-fearing people. They were patriots. But they were thrown in alter reactionaries. I don't mean that punitively at all. But that's what they were. You know, they weren't some capitalist element. that, you know, could draw upon this great power available to them by, you know, the productive processes

that can literally extract wealth out of the dirt. You know, it's not that's not of the Bolsheviks were facing down and murdering. You know, so they kind of knocked down a house of cards in what became the Soviet Union. You know, and, um, Hasbbaugh never lost sight of that. See, on the one hand, you know,

you must stand with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is the, is the beating heart of, uh, the socialist community of nations, end of the revolution. You know, but that doesn't mean that, you know, one must uncritically accept every feature of,

of the Soviet state. And, uh, Hasbem was critical of state socialism from day one. Like, he considered it at a necessary stage. But he wasn't, that's why the reason is they object to people saying, oh, he was like the Stalinist. Like, a true Stalinist, um, was, uh, was or is, uh, you know, somebody who looks at the Soviet state as like the zenith of statecraft. And then, and they do that as, like, a positive thing. you know, basically, you know,

basically, uh, basically this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, you know, that, like, leads the world in, in, in, um, in terms of how, like, you know, the industrial proletariat is valued. You know, it's a superpower because of its military might, and its mastery of techniques, including nuclear weapons, and the ability to deploy, you know,

into orbital space and things like that. You know, like these, and these guys do exist. You know, I mean, like, then is now. Like, Hothman was not at all one of those guys, okay? To be clear. Let me see Raman my outline. Like, I'm not an F-A-G-O-T who, like, you know, I got to stick to the outline,

but it does provide me like a, like a, a conceptual map so I know where we're at. They don't want to... Yeah, let's... Hosswams, I promise... Well, I want to get this biographical sort of info out of the way to Lay Foundation.

We'll get into the substance of Hobbs' intellectual canon in episode two. But I want to... I want to get... We need to get into the dual revolution, which is a... It's a... It's a political, theoretical, and a sociological

postulating concept that was coined uh that was coined by hasbaum and now in scholarship on the french revolution it's it's just kind of taken it's just kind of accepted it's accepted as like an essential aspect of of um that uh body of scholarship but if i but if i that's going to take an hour to dive into so let's let's hold off on that and i think we're coming on about an hour anyway so yeah, I think this would be a natural stopping point if that's acceptable. Perfect. All right. Do plugs and we'll talk about the next episode. Yeah, man. I strongly advise, or I mean, not advise. I suggest it would make me happy if people would check out my substack. And in addition to there being like my podcast there and like some longer form stuff and a pretty active like chat.

platform. That's where when I shout out stuff like you know, events and activities we're up on, it shows up there. It's a Real Thomas 7777.7.com.

This Saturday, we're meeting at Rosewood Cemetery for our Halloween cemetery walk. And we're going to lay some flowers at Confederate mound to like honor our forebears and their sacrifice. and for the Orthodox guys and girls,

Marcia Eliotti is buried at the same cemetery, and we're going to pay respects to him, and Eliades had a huge effect on impact on my intellectual development. So we're, it's going to be a very positive day, you know, if somber. But last year, we went to Graceland Cemetery up on the north side, and it was fantastic. and a lot of people showed up.

But you can find me on social media. I'm at capital R-A-L-U-S-S-7-7-7. And on there, just like check the pinned post. You can find like MERS that, like, my dear friend here, Krieg produces. You can find a link to my Instagram and my T-Gram, my website, like, all kinds of stuff. just uh and if you if you include some of the stuff in the description man that would be a great help

i got it all ready to go i just copy and paste from the last episode and uh and put it right over so links to your merch and uh links to the gum roads so um yep that's it until the next time thank you very much thomas yeah thank you buddy