Eric J. Hobsbawm

“Denied a Lenin and deprived of Napoleon, France retreated into the last and, we must hope, indestructible redoubt, the world of Astérix. The postwar vogue for Parisian thinkers barely concealed their collective retreat into Hexagonal introversion and into the ultimate fortress of French intellectuality, Cartesian theory and puns.”

“Economists whosimply advised leaving the economy alone, governments whose firstinstincts, apart from protecting the gold standard by deflationary policies,was to stick to financial orthodoxy, balance budgets and cut costs, werevisibly not making the situation better. Indeed, as the depression continued,it was argued with considerable force not least by J.M. Keynes whoconsequently became the most influential economist of the next fortyyears - that they were making the depression worse. Those of us wholived through the years of the Great Slump still find it almost impossibleto understand how the orthodoxies of the pure free market, then soobviously discredited, once again came to preside over a global period ofdepression in the late 1980s and 1990s, which, once again, they wereequally unable to understand or to deal with. Still, this strange phenomenonshould remind us of the major characteristic of history which itexemplifies: the incredible shortness of memory of both the theorists andpractitioners of economics. It also provides a vivid illustration of society'sneed for historians, who are the professional remembrancers of what theirfellow-citizens wish to forget.”