March 24, 2003
MOLE HILL:
Left in Stalin's shadow: Christopher Hill was an open Marxist apologist. That makes him an unlikely mole (Nick Cohen, March 9, 2003, The Observer)At the beginning of the Second World War, George Orwell gave the young Christopher Hill a stinking review of the sort that no author forgives or forgets. Writing in the New Statesman, Orwell tore into the historian who was to become a great and generous interpreter of seventeenth-century English radicalism - and Master of Balliol to boot. Hill's best work was to come. In 1940 Orwell's fury was provoked by his juvenilia, The English Revolution: 1640, a book with a fair claim to be the most simplistic Marxist version of history published in Britain in the twentieth century.Orwell identified a persistent fault of the far Left. Like those who give a knowing wink and insist that the war against Iraq is 'all about oil,' Hill and his comrades were too 'cocksure'. They wrote off 'religion, morality, patriotism [as] a sort of hypocritical cover-up for the pursuit of economic interest' when they insisted that the Parliamentarians' war against Charles I could be reduced to a battle between the rising class of capitalists and the dead weight of the feudal monarchy.
'A "Marxist" analysis of any historical event tends to be a hurried snap judgment based on the principle of cui bono?, something rather like the "realism" of the saloon-bar cynic who always assumes the bishop is keeping a mistress and the trade union leader is in the pay of the boss,' Orwell continued.
Such reasoning was a hopeless guide. 'Long after Hitler came to power official Marxism was declaring that Hitler was of no importance and could achieve nothing. On the other hand, people who had hardly heard of Marx but who knew the power of faith had seen Hitler coming years earlier.' [...]
Hill never gave up his Marxism, but left the Communist party in 1957. He went on to rescue the histories of the Levellers, Diggers, Ranters and Fifth
Monarchists from obscurity. More than any other historian in the twentieth century, he showed how ordinary people developed ideas of democracy, socialism, secularism and women's emancipation as soon as civil war destroyed censorship and political control and allowed them the space to think and argue.The most moderate of the radical groups were the Levellers. All they wanted was democracy.
We used several of Mr. Hill's texts in college and it always seemed absurd that we'd rely on a Marxist, but his work on groups like the Levellers is indeed worthwhile. The Levellers' Agreement of the People is an especially fascinating document as regards the rise of democracy. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 24, 2003 7:33 PM
It's a shame that I couldn't find the book on Amazon to point out to you. I read
a book a few years ago about Cromwell's Irish invasion, written by an Irishman,
that re-examined, in a less demonic light, his travails there. The thesis being
that, whatever propaganda is still taught in Ireland, and contrary to general
popular belief, Cromwell was far from the bloodthirsty murderer he is portrayed
as. A complex and even sympathetic man of his times. This era in English history
fascinates me now because it is the first time that major undercurrents of
politics,democracy and religion spring up almost wholely unhindered by
parliament and the monarchy. I have a few books by Christopher Hill, and read
them while ignorant of his politics. However, the books stand on their own
merits thankfully, and are highly readable and interesting descriptions of the
various currents then breaking the surface. This is not merely English history,
but also the start of American history. If I recall, Cromwell at one point
considered sailing to America and beginning a new life. What if he had?
I'm a huge fan of Cromwell. That's the period I studied in college. My novel, which exists only in my head, will be about a Fifth Monarchist who flees to America after trying to assassinate Cromwell.
Posted by: oj at March 24, 2003 9:21 PM