How to Change the World Reflections on Marx and Marxism - Eric Hobsbawm

Release date: October 8, 2012
In the 144 years since Karl Marx's Das Kapital was published, the doctrine that bears his name has been embraced by millions in the name of equality, and just as dramatically has fallen from grace with the retreat of communism from the western world. But as the free market reaches its extreme limits in the economic and environmental fallout, a reassessment of capitalism's most vigorous and eloquent enemy has never been more timely. Eric Hobsbawm provides a fascinating and insightful overview of Marxism. He investigates its influences and analyses the spectacular reversal of Marxism's fortunes over the past thirty years.


Hobsbawm has lived through so much of the political turbulence he portrays that it is easy to fantasize that History itself is speaking here, in its wry, all-seeing, dispassionate wisdom. It is hard to think of a critic of Marxism who can address his or her own beliefs with such honesty and equipoise."—Terry Eagleton, London Review of Books
(Terry Eagleton London Review of Books 20110303)

"[T]his collection shows [Hobsbawm] is a brilliant writer, erudite critic and, as he approaches his 94th birthday, a joyfully unrepentant communist. . . . [How to Change the World] is a book anyone interested in politics could and should devour. It is charmingly optimistic and constantly lucid, and contains the distilled wisdom of a great thinker, thinking about a great thinker." Amol Rajan, Independent
(Amol Rajan Independent 20110220)

"This is a book of serious ideas, not of politics."— Ben Wilson, Daily Telegraph
(Ben Wilson Daily Telegraph 20110114)

“Hobsbawm… is as clear and trenchant as ever in How to Change the World.”—Bookforum
(Bookforum )


About the Author
Eric Hobsbawm is professor emeritus, department of history, classics and archaeology, and president, Birkbeck University of London. He lives in London.