The Taliban and Trotsky

Writing in the latest issue of Standpoint Michael Burleigh laments the dominance of the left in higher education. Thinking specifically of history departments he says that the eminence reached by the likes of Karl-Dietrich Bracher, Alain Besançon and Klaus Hilbebrand, all prominent European historians, is unimaginable in a country that regards Eric Hobsbawn as the apogee of academic excellence.

Hobsbawn, for those who may not know his work, is a first-rate Stalinist hack and a third-rate scholar, so Burleigh certainly has a point though I rather think he overstates his case. Hobsbawm, you see, is rather like one of those old Soviet-era statues, banished to the margins of the city and the edges of consciousness. He is among those people, though still alive, one imagines has died years ago.

Looking at things from within the citadel I can certainly see changes, a growing impatience among people of my generation with the left-wing platitudes and shibboleths of the past. In a sense academics and intellectuals operate a little like a themomoter, taking the temperature of the age. The old Marxist ‘new’ left, people like E. P. Thomson and Christopher Hill, may have shaped the consciousness of a generation that grew to maturity in the 1960s and 1970s. But they are gone; their influence is gone. Now one would be hard pushed to name a left-wing historian of any real ststure and significance. Instead there is Andrew Roberts, Naill Fergusson (my poster boy!) and, of course, Michael Burleigh!

More generally the left, the intellectual left, is more confused, muddle-headed and lacking in direction than it has ever been. In What’s Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way Nick Cohen might be said to have written the perfect obituary for people who now see the most reactionary and fascistic forms of Islam as an ally against ‘imperialism’. They have a vague idea of what they hate but no real idea of what they love; no idea where they are going; no coherent programme and no sense of direction. Alas, the Taliban and Trotsky don’t sit well together.

Zapping Clouds

I managed to catch that tub-thumping clot Hugo Chávez doing his bit in Copenhagen, looking every bit like the cheap gangster he so clearly is. He continues to ‘do his bit’ in Venezuela, his fiefdom, looking for scapegoats to explain away the miserable failure of his socialist tyranny, to explain away the fact that this oil-rich country is plagued by power cuts and water shortages.

There is a Chávez-style solution for the latter. Venezuelans have been told to stop singing in the shower, thus cutting down the time spent there. Meanwhile, El Comandante will fly with Cuban scientists, zapping clouds to make them rain. You think I’m joking? No, I’m not! He’s also warned Venezuelans to watch out for fat people, seemingly another cause of the country’s woes. The latter I take to be an indication that resources are being unequally distributed, the fatties getting more, a fair assumption when one looks at the presidential torso.

He’s a joke; his government is a joke, though some of his attempted scapegoating carries potentially serious consequences, including his admonition for the country to prepare for war with neighbouring Colombia. But the woes of Venezuela have nothing do with showering divas, fatties or Columbians and everything to do with the promotion of ‘Chavistas’ to important posts for which they are totally unfitted. Rubbish rots in the streets and inflation is now well into double figures. The inefficient command economy has encouraged a vibrant black market in a country that already has a horrific crime rate, with Caracas being one of the most violent cities on earth.

It’s the usual story with socialists and socialism everywhere, the usual story of geese and golden eggs, creating poverty where once was riches. To do this in a place like Venezuela really is some achievement. I suspect that Chávez would even turn El Dorado into the land of dust. Not much to sing in the shower about. :-))