New Left Review I/161, January-February 1987

Victor Kiernan

Problems of Marxist History

1. Five British Contributions

Harvey Kaye is an American professor of Social Change and Development, an enviable title probably not yet adopted anywhere in conservative Britain. It must come more naturally to the American mind, in a country where things are always changing, even if as a rule circularly. One thing that has changed is that students and other readers are not at present so firmly discouraged from studying Marxism as they used to be. American scholars are making contributions of their own to Marxist theory; Kaye’s book reflects a new current of interest in it. By undertaking a survey of Marxist history-writing in Britain he has done good service to readers on both sides of the Atlantic. [*] Harvey J. Kaye, The British Marxist Historians, Polity Press, Oxford 1984, 316pp. In the foreground he puts a sequence of five noted practitioners: Dobb, Hilton, Hill, Hobsbawm, Thompson—as judicious a choice as could have been made. He disclaims any purpose of deciding the rights or wrongs of controversial issues they have been concerned with; his own preferences emerge here and there, but for the most part he is content to report, classify, compare. He is always clear, in spite of the countless complexities he has to make his way through, and almost always accurate. (Past and Present was not founded by four historians alone, and the leading spirit was John Morris.) Here and there a well-turned phrase meets the eye, as when he speaks of Thompson discussing his ‘moral consensus’ as if it were ‘a map of liberated territory’. Each of his quintet is introduced with a brief biographical sketch. In each case their writings are considered in such a way as to display their own ‘change and development’; all of them are authors of works spread over many years.

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