This short reflection highlights Hobsbawm's influences outside the Marxist tradition and speaks about the shared concerns and divergences with the author.
Eric Hobsbawm and I first met in the early 1970s, almost surely in Paris, where he and I were frequent visitors. I, of course, had been reading him for some time and had long been one of his many admirers. I believe that he first came into contact with my writings through the publication in 1974 of Volume I of The Modern World-System, about which he had kind words.
What brought us together intellectually were several shared appreciations. One was a view of Marxism that was no longer that of what I call “the Marxism of the parties”, although Eric remained a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain for most of his life and I never was a member. His concern with social actors other than the (skilled) industrial workers, such as peasants and brigands, and his interest in social movements outside the western world (and particularly in Latin America) resonated with my own views.
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