way that he always retains a considerable degree of freedom in choosing which interests to further and which to suppress or weaken. The behaviour of most historical figures in relation to political and social issues can be explained in terms of the interests that speak through them. But them are individuals in history who not only talk back but react in such a way as to modify the original relations of social interest in a radical way.
The particular role that any historical character plays in relation to social interests may not be apparent from what he says about himself. He may claim to be serving the interests of a class when he is actually doing something quite different, or he may regard himself as completely independent of all social pressures when in fact he is merely a servant, sometimes even a contemptible tool, of special privilege.
This raises the question of individual consciousness and historical action. ••••• Many leading historical figures have little consciousness, or a false consciousness, of the eventful place they hold in history. What they do seems to them to be exacted by the necessities of the situation, working through them to a fore-ordained result, rather than achieved by voluntary action and intelligent planning in whose absence affairs would turn out quite differently. Even genuine event-making men, like Cromwell and Lenin, regarded themselves respectively as instruments of divine and dialectical necessity.
On the other hand, there are historical characters, borne along on the tide of events, who feel that they are controlling the direction of the wave. Or they make claims of having influenced events in one field whereas their real influence is in another. A particularly instructive example of this was the pathetic illusion of Neville Chamberlain that it was he alone who was settling the destiny of our century.
Immediately after the Munich Pact in 1938, Chamberlain was widely regarded as an event-making man, admired by those who approved of his policy and condemned by those who did not. The former agreed with his conviction that he had snatched “peace for our time” from the very jaws of the Moloch of war. The latter were convinced that after Munich no Western power would or could dispute Hitler’s march to the East. A few made a more sober estimate of the situation.
