Historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market.
Eric HobsbawmRead
Impotence therefore faces both those who believe in what amounts to a pure, stateless, market capitalism, a sort of international bourgeois anarchism, and those who believe in a planned socialism uncontaminated by private profit-seeking. Both are bankrupt. The future, like the present and the past, belongs to mixed economies in which public and private are braided together in one way or another. But how? That is the problem for everybody today, but especially for people on the left.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote discusses the failures of both pure capitalism and socialism, advocating for mixed economies.
Eric Hobsbawm highlights the inadequacies of both extreme political-economic systems: pure capitalism and planned socialism. He argues that neither can effectively address society's needs, suggesting instead the necessity for mixed economies that blend public and private sectors. This complex interplay is a challenge that society must navigate moving forward, particularly for those who lean towards leftist ideals.
Themes
EconomyCapitalismSocialismMixed EconomiesPublicPrivate
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on economic policies, one might use this quote to emphasize the need for compromise between different economic systems.
More from Eric Hobsbawm
All quotes →It is one of the ironies of this strange century that the most lasting results of the October revolution, whose object was the global overthrow of capitalism, was to save its antagonist, both in war and in peace - that is to say, by providing it with the incentive, fear, to reform itself after the Second World War, and, by establishing the popularity of economic planning, furnishing it with some of the procedures for its reform
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It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans.
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As the global expansion of Indian and Chinese restaurants suggests, xenophobia is directed against foreign people, not foreign cultural imports.
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Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.
Eric HobsbawmRead
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