World History

Believe in the Movement

The young Eric Hobsbawm was intoxicated by the ‘stern discipline’ the revolutionary organisation demanded of its adherents. ‘Ground yourself in Leninism,’ he admonished himself in…

World History

Inventing the Working Class

Karl Marx, born 200 years ago this month, was ‘a true and loyal friend, but a vehement and hateful enemy’. To be in his small…

World History

Bands of Brothers

The Third International, or Comintern, maintained for many years a vast international organisation none of its left-wing rivals could match. When the purges came in…

World History

Blowing Their Winnings

There has never, in the classical sociological sense, been a more proletarian nation than Britain, and yet there has never been a time in British…