Sir, - Brian Fallon, in his review of Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes: the Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 (January 13th), writes that "Eric Hobsbawm belongs to the generation of Marxist historians who have (sic) lived to see Marxism as a system in collapse and their prophet largely discredited". Mr Fallon may, I suspect, know what he means, but does not quite manage to say what he means.
I suspect that he means that the political aspect of the Marxist critique of society, that is the communist political system, has indeed collapsed. This is surely not to imply that the Marxist critique does not remain valid. It has become a cliche in the recent past (Francis Fukuyama: The End of History and the Last Man), to proclaim the triumph of capitalism as a world economic and political system in the defeat of Communism, while all the while ignoring the continuing rise of Islam.
Mr Fallon also says that Hobsbawm, as a corollary (my italics) to dismissing Kennedy as the most over rated American President of this century, is surprisingly kind to Reagan. Now a corollary" is a proposition which can be inferred from one already proved as quite evidently true. Once again one suspects that Mr Fallon knows what he means but does not quite manage to say what he means. Perhaps Mr Fallon merely wishes to express his own surprise at what might at first sight seem to be Hobsbawm's objectivity. - Yours, etc.,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.