Perspective

Eric Hobsbawm, the main editor and author of The Invention of Tradition, is a famed British Marxist historian. One of the prominent features of Marxist historiography is to see social history in terms of class conflict. Economic interests dominate history and the most powerful groups that can secure the most benefits tend to dominate the other classes. One of the points of invented traditions is that they are a social tool through which dominant economic classes produce in order to secure legitimacy and get the lower classes to submit, even willingly. Most invented traditions discussed in the book were created by some elite group to benefit themselves.

There are exceptions, however, as Hobsbawm admits that not all traditions are invented deliberately to serve the needs of a few. Some traditions arise spontaneously without dishonesty and others arise to benefit a society as a whole and not merely a...