Summary: This episode of the Zero Books podcast features a conversation with Harvey Kaye about the British Marxist Historians. It is also a holiday special and you can hear the Lain family reacting to the annual endurance of the Star Wars Holiday Special in this week's introductory remarks. From the book jacket of Harvey Kaye's book The British Marxist Historians: The British Marxist Historians remains the first and most complete study of the founders of one of the most influential contemporary academic traditions in history and social theory. In this classic text, Kaye looks at Maurice Dobb and the debate on the transition to capitalism; Rodney Hilton on feudalism and the English peasantry; Christopher Hill on the English Revolution; Eric Hobsbawm on workers, peasants and world history; and E.P. Thompson on the making of the English working class. Kaye compares their perspective on history with other approaches, such as that of the French Annales school, and concludes with a discussion of the contribution of the British Marxist historians to the formation of a democratic historical consciousness. The British Marxist Historians is an indispensable book for anyone interested in the intellectual history of the late twentieth century.
