Book Review Globalization, Democracy and Terrorism by Eric Hobsbawm published in 2007 by Little, Brown

Eric Hobsbawm has been described as the greatest living historian in the world. An early convert to Marxism – he had participated in left wing socialist politics while still at School in Berlin – Eric Hobsbawm had been a card-holding member of the Communist Party of Great Briton (CPGB) till the party dissolved itself in the early 90s of the last century. Eric has been famous for the Quartet, The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, The Age of Empire and The Age of Extremes, his historical journey of 19^th and 20^th Century Europe.

This little volume is a collection of ten lectures delivered by Eric Hobsbawm on various occasions around the world. His erudition is revealed in the preface itself when he sums up the focus of these lectures as follows: the general question of war and peace in the 21^st century; the past and future of world empires; the nature and the changing context of nationalism; the prospects of liberal democracy; and the question of political violence and terror. He points out that no clear understanding of these problems is possible without understanding the contexts in which they take place, technological advancement and globalisation. While the first had been utilised mostly for maximising economic growth in a handful of countries without any effective steps being taken to tackle problems such as global warming, globalisation - engineered mostly by the United States – itself has had a profound political and cultural effect on the vast regions situated outside international and national elites. Contrary to the claims being made by its advocates, globalisation has not improved general levels of prosperity, but has only introduced heightened economic and social inequalities, both within states and between them in spite of general diminution of extreme poverty. Secondly, the impact of globalisation has been felt the most by those who benefit from it the least. Thirdly, as pointed out above, the enormous political and cultural impact on the vast regions despite the limited scale of globalisation. While the problem areas outlined by Eric Hobsbawm cannot be comprehended fully within the context of technological advancement and globalisation alone – questions of religious ideology and historical memory also matter to a great extent – they are, nevertheless useful starting points to dig deeper into these problems.

Of the ten lectures, on the whole, two each deal with the five problem areas outlined by Hobsbawm in his preface. “War, Peace and Hegemony at the beginning of the 21^st Century” is a logical corollary to the one on “War and Peace in the 20^th Century.” There are three lectures on empire and hegemony viz. “Why American Hegemony Differs from Britain’s Empire”, “On the end of empires” and “The Empire expands wider still and wider”, two on democracy, “The prospects of democracy” & “Spreading Democracy”, two on terrorism, “Terror” and “Public Order in an Age of Violence” and only one on Nationalism, “Nations and Nationalism in the New Century”.

The 20^th Century has been an almost unbroken century of wars, essentially comprising of two World Wars. The author says that the period from 1914 to 1945 could be termed as “Thirty Years War”. There was also another kind of war, Cold War between the two Super Powers between 1945 to 1989 which centred around global influence and global domination of US and USSR. Even though there was no direct confrontation between the two, they chose to fight through their proxies, one country against another, supporting factions within countries and fomenting civil wars within societies. Because of the two WWs and Cold War, the 20^th Century was the most murderous in recorded history with the number of dead in wars estimated to be around 187 million (18.7 crore). There were whole sale massacres and displacement of civilian population resulting in refugees, both internal and transnational. Even such colossal destruction has not made the contestants realise the futility of global domination. It is in this context that Eric laments the absence of any effective global institution to control and settle international disputes.

For Hobsbawm, the 21^st Century does not bring cheers as far as lessening the extent of war and violence, as he predicts, “War in the 21^st Century is not likely to be as murderous as it was in the 20^th. But armed violence, creating disproportionate suffering and loss will remain omnipresent and endemic – occasionally epidemic – in large parts of the world. The prospects of a century of peace is remote.” Much of what he states in the second chapter is not really new as others like Tariq Ali have spoken and written about foreign occupation of national territories and the opposition it generates. But, Eric brings to our attention a new danger, the manipulation of life forms, the attempt to create lives in laboratories and the inevitability of our loosening control over this attempt. In his view the actual danger to world stability from the sum total of all terrorists is minimal, unless these terrorists gain access to nuclear weapons. He points out how countries such as Briton, Spain, India and Columbia have learned to live with effectively indestructible bodies of armed militant groups. Therefore, his counsel to world governments in dealing with terrorism is cool heads, not war hysteria.

The most engrossing of these has been the Chapter titled, “Why American Hegemony Differs from Britain’s Empire?” As the author observes, US hegemony pre-9/11 was because of its wealth, industry and the liberal institutions. The size of its economy allowed it to play a big role in the international arena. The non-communist states saw the presence of US as a protector against the might of the USSR. However, its direct military intervention post 9/11 is informed by thoughts of the kind of hegemony exercised by Briton in the 20^th Century. Eric Hobsbawm extricates four developments which have fuelled US domination. Firstly, acceleration of globalisation with its economic, technological and social consequences which have spilled over into what Eric calls, “the one branch of human activity that has proved quite impermeable to it, namely politics”. This claim is not outrageous as it may sound at first, as countries which have been at the receiving end of US intervention have often followed free market economic policies encouraging import substitution instead of establishing domestic industries, foreign direct investment and so on. Successive US governments have flexed their muscles whenever they saw dangers, often imaginary, emanating from popular governments trying to set the balance right in favour of vast majority of people. The second was the collapse of the Soviet Union, which removed all of a sudden of the only countervailing force which acted as a check. The third has been the inability of a large number of countries to control what happened within their territories resulting in large chunks of territories gaining a semi-autonomous status beyond the reach of national governments. The fourth is the off-shoot of the third, namely the whole sale expulsion, killing and genocide by some governments of its own people on ethnic and racial grounds.

Along the way, Hobsbawm points out how Briton realised its limitations even at the heights of its hegemony over large territories of the globe and how quickly it adjusted to the loss of these territories. Unlike Briton, America never colonised any country – except perhaps Philippines in the 20^th Century. However for this reason alone, it has set up military bases all over the world. Again because of its revolutionary tradition, American hegemony – like the French and Russian - rests on the belief that anyone opposed to its way of life must be conquered.

An acclaimed expert on nations and nationalism, Eric is at ease while dealing with this subject. He had seen in his life time the collapse of two multinational and multicultural societies, namely, the Hapsburgs and the Soviet Union. Two major problems afflicting modern nations have been, again globalisation and mass migration of different nationalities into alien geographical locations. The third problem is concomitant to the second, that is the rise of xenophobia. Eric takes recourse to a study of football clubs to highlight the relations between globalisation, national identity and xenophobia. His study is not entirely new as issues such as weakening national identities of footballers playing for premier clubs in Europe and rising levels of intolerance of these foreigners by local supporters have been highlighted by others. But Eric comes to his original self when he dissects the nature of xenophobia, which must be quoted extensively, “Xenophobia also reflects the crisis of a culturally defined national identity in nation-states under conditions of universal education and access to the media and at a time when the politics of exclusive collective identity, whether ethnic, religious or of gender and lifestyle, seek a factitious regeneration of Gemeinschaft (community) in an increasingly remote Geselschaft (individuals). The process which turned peasants into Frenchmen and immigrants into American citizens is reversing and it crumbles larger nation-state identities into self-regarding group identities, or even into the a-national private identities of ubi bene ibi patria.” These words would sound familiar to a lot of modern Indians as they battle with linguistic, caste and communal identities.

Hobsbawm takes on the holy cow of liberalism, namely democracy. He recalls Churchill’s classical saying, “Democracy is the worst of all governments, except for all the others” (Churchill later on said more comprehensibly, “Democracy is not the best form of government, it is the least evil some!) and reminds us that this was more a call for improvement of democratic societies than wallowing in assumptions of superiority. Eric also questions whether democracy is really representative at all considering the diminishing voter turn-outs all over the liberal world. In his opinion, the major dilemma facing democracy is the replacement of popular sovereignty by market sovereignty. Market sovereignty denies the need for political decisions, promoting group welfare and places too much premium on individuals preferring private interests. It is this preference for “marketisation of politics” which is at the heart of the liberal dilemma in contemporary capitalist societies.

Lastly, to those enthusiasts who want to export democracy and “western values”, Hobsbawm, the historian sounds the following words of warning: “The 20^th century demonstrated that states could not simply remake the world or abbreviate historical transformations. Nor can they easily effect social change by transferring institutions across borders.” He enunciates the three basic requisites for democratic governance: an existing state enjoying legitimacy, consent, and the ability to mediate conflicts between domestic groups. Without such consent, mere arithmetical majorities carry no legitimacy.

These words must be taken as warning by the ruling elites in India who wallow in the curative potential of democracy, bestowing it with magical powers to solve many a problem which require targeted political action. No institution can stand the test of time – even if it is based on such an exalted idea as representative democracy – if it does not carry the consent of the people.