Accessing Hobsbawm’s thesis, the nineteenth century marked capitalism’s triumphant transformation rather than aristocratic persistence.

Evidence

More generally, Eric Hobsbawm argues that we should see the nineteenth century, not as that of ‘the persistence of the ancien régime’, but rather as that of ‘the triumph and transformation of capitalism in the historically specific forms of bourgeois society in its liberal version’. While the bulk of the bourgeoisie, basking in the prosperity characteristic at least in urban life of the second half of the century, developed a distinctive ‘less formal, more genuinely private and privatized lifestyle’, big capital ‘had no great difficulty in organizing itself as an elite, since it could use methods very similar to those used by aristocracies, or even - as in Great Britain - the actual mechanisms of aristocracy’. The haut-bourgeois adoption of aris­ tocratic lifestyle was not ‘simply an abdication of bourgeois before old aristocratic values’. Thus the essentially novel use of ‘socialization through elite (or any) schools … assimilated aristocratic values to a moral system designed for a bourgeois society and its public service.’ — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 189

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engaged with Jameson’s periodization of late capitalism — Hobsbawm’s stress on capitalism’s triumph undercuts the postmodern rupture Jameson posits. — connects to: Across nineteenth-century Europe the bourgeoisie integrated into aristocratic regimes rather than overturning them — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 183; Nineteenth-century struggle was redefined as civilian and economico-political, not warlike — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 240

Broader Connections

• Across nineteenth-century Europe the bourgeoisie integrated into aristocratic regimes rather than overturning them #contradicts (0.95) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 183
• Nineteenth-century struggle was redefined as civilian and economico-political, not warlike #contradicts (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 240