Fanning the Spark of Hope in the Past: the British Marxist Historians

Abstract

Walter Benjamin wrote in his Theses in the Philosophy of History : 'Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy [the ruling class] if he wins. And the enemy has not ceased to be victorious'. The British Marxist historians - such as Rodney Hilton, Christopher Hill, Victor Kiernan, George Rude, E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm - had that gift. Possessed with Marx's grand hypothesis that 'The history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggle', and committed to recovering the past 'from the bottom up', especially the experiences, struggles and aspirations of the working classes, the British Marxist historians refashioned the history of the making of the modern world in a critical and democratic manner. This essay reviews their collective contributions to historiography and political thought, and considers their intellectual legacy in view of the historical and political challenges of the Twenty-first century. The author recognizes that we will have to ask new questions of past and present and develop new means of connecting our labours to popular historical memory, consciousness and imagination; but he argues that - if we, too, are to 'fan the spark of hope in the past' contra those who would declare the end of history - we would do well to appreciate the gifts of the British Marxist historians.