Carr, E. H. (1892–1992)

Edward Hallett (E. H.) Carr was one of the most brilliant British international relations scholars of the 20th century, and his strident views caused much controversy. He began his career as a diplomat in 1916, resigning in 1936 to become Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Relations at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Carr became interested in the Soviet Union as a diplomat, having been assigned in 1917 to the Northern desk that included dealings with Russia. He became convinced in 1919 that the Bolsheviks would win the Russian civil war and believed that for reasons of realpolitik Britain should not support anti-Bolshevik forces. At this time, he had little sympathy with Marxism or the Bolsheviks. One of his early books, Karl Marx: A Study in Fanaticism (1931), was, as its title suggests, so far from being an apologia for Marxism as to cause him some later embarrassment; though from the depths of the 1930s Depression he thought it difficult to completely dismiss Marx's view that capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction. Also during the early 1930s, Carr started to sympathize with the Soviet Union, largely because he admired Soviet efforts to industrialize and become a modern civilization.

Carr started writing about Soviet and other international affairs in the 1930s, reviewing books and contributing articles to various journals. He argued that the Nazi regime was caused by the Treaty of Versailles and the intractable attitude of France and the other Western powers. His book The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939 (1939) defended appeasement as the only realistic policy. He attacked utopians who believed the League of Nations could provide a new international order. For these views, Carr became known as a realist thinker, though he also recognized that realism lacks goals and grounds for action.

In Carr's work, we can discern three important differences between realism and utopianism. First, utopians want a world of peace but do not consider the constraints on action properly. The realists understand that the world we live in is the product of a long chain of causation. Second, utopians derive their conclusions about what should be done from theory; realists from practice. For the realists, theory is derived from reality. Third, utopians tend to be intellectuals with book learning; realists tend to be diplomats and those who actually operate in the world of international relations. Finally, the utopian believes that ethics should guide policy, the realist that ethics is derived from power relations as they currently stand. [Page 89]Making these distinctions, one can see how Marxism came to appeal to Carr, given his views on realism.

Carr argued that the troubled times of the mid-20th century were caused by structural political-economic problems and should not be blamed on individual people who lacked morals. He believed that differences between nations were best traced to the “haves” and “have-nots,” those with power in international affairs and those without, and not to democracies and nondemocracies.

During World War II, Carr's ideological views shifted to the left and his interest in the Soviet Union became admiration, reflected in leader columns he wrote for The Times. Immediately after the war, he argued that Western civilization was a sham and that totalitarian societies were more likely to succeed. Communist totalitarianism was the most successful and had the most progressive social and economic policies. His interest in communism and the Soviet Union led him to start his monumental 14-volume history of the Soviet Union, the first volume of which appeared in 1950 and the last in 1978. It still stands as an important work in Sovietology, though many commentators argue that Carr takes at face value far too many claims from Soviet sources that do not bear closer empirical scrutiny.

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