Customer Reviews

Making of the English Working Class

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

strial revolution.

E.P. Thompson's magnum opus is a real classic. No serious student of social history should omit reading it! As a history student, I had read it more than 25 years ago. When I reread large parts of it, recently, I noticed - with the life experience acquired since that time - that the book is an even finer gem than I remembered.

It is clear that the author shows a certain bias in favour of the "losers" of the first Industrial Revolution: the English artisans in the textile trade, who in the late 18th and early 19th century were being reduced to the position of factory workers condemned to work under appalling conditions. But this bias does not substract anything from the worth of this study. On the contrary, such bias, or rather such sympathy towards the groups the author focuses on, is probably necessary to motivate a historian in examining his subject in such detail and writing such a full report about the activities of Jacobites, Luddites, Owenites, Chartists and all the other groups who did not accept the oppressing social and economic order of their time. Of course, such sympathy (or bias) should be kept in check by professional rigour, which is certainly the case in profesor Thompson's magnificent study.

The author persuasively argues that, during the generation between 1815 and 1848, England had come much closer to a Revolution of the kind France had gone through between 1789 and 1794, than the "Whig Interpretation of History" would make us believe.

Some of Thompson's assertions are not beyond dispute. He claims, for instance, that the position of the English poor had definitely deteriorated compared to the 18th century. It has been convincingly shown that their position was already dismal long before the Industrial Revolution started. The historians' dispute over this question is still far from being concluded.

Thompson also puts forward the question how so many Englishmen of that time could have been so callously insensitive towards the suffering of the poor. He blaims it for a good part on Methodism, the creed that tended "to make man his own slave driver". He approvingly cites a late 19th century historian: "A more appalling system of religious terrorism, one more fitted to unhinge a tottering intellect and to darken and embitter a sensitive nature, has seldom existed."'

Thompson's book is THE ground-breaking work of social history for our century, pioneering in the "history of everyday life" (also taken up by Foucault, de Certeau, Davis, etc.); the history of working people; and the consideration of culture in the past. Unlike most other social history it is also brilliantly written and accessible. Buy it.

Well, it took me darn near a month to finish this monster (800+ pages) of a book. Can't say I regret the experience, though. Truly , this is a masterpiece, both in terms of its substance and its approach. I could quite easily write more then a thousand words on this book, but hey, this is Amazon, right?

Before I begin, I would like to state up front that I am not a historian or a graduate student of history. Please forgive me if my review contains incorrect statements.

"The Making of the English Working Class" is precisely what its (awkward) title describes: a history of the developments leading to the emergence of the modern industrial working class in England (and Scotland, sort of. Wales and Ireland are excluded, although Irish immigrants living in England to figure in some parts of the book). The time period covered is roughly the 1790's to the 1840's. Thompson starts with a description of "Dissent", discusses the influence of the French Revolution on that tradition (Dissent), spends a good chunk of the book describing the effect of the industrial revolution on the lives and lifestyles of the workers in industrial England, and then spends an equal amount of time describing the reaction of the workers and their leaders to this adjustment in circumstances.

Along the way, Thompson takes a hatchet to historians on the left, right, and center. His section on the change in circumstances of the workers in England is most critical of writers like F.A. Hayek, i.e. those writers who try to say that the industrial revolution "wasn't that bad" or "wasn't bad at all" for the workers. He devotes a good part of Part II of the book to attacking the methods of statistical or economic history. His preference is to use documentary evidence of the time. In this way, the book (published in the 60's) is a forerunner of historical "postmodernism"(Oh, please forgive me for the term), where authors abandon "objective" evidence (economic statistics) in favor of "subjective" evidence (pamphlets, letters and newspapers).

I guess that's hardly a revolutinary arguement now-a-day, but back then, I can hardly imagine.
His section on the reaction of workers to the industrial revolution is rather more critical to historians of the left and center, who sought to discount the violence associated with the Luddite movement as somehow unrepresentative of the working class movement in England. Thompson's revisionist history of the Luddite movement is a tour de force. Really, it's breathtaking.

In my opinion, the book kind of loses steam after that section. Thompson has some harsh words for the London based "leaders" of the workers movement, and I felt his discussion of Owenism left too much to the readers imagination. I don't suppose this book was meant for someone with only a loose grounding in English history, but none the less, that's what I have, so I'm just stuck.

To the extent that I have anything critical to say about this book, it's that Thompson at times presupposes a graduate level education in English history. I haven't read AJP Taylor or Hayek or any of the other authors Thompson attacks. IN the end, though, I felt like it didn't hurt my enjoyment of this book. I would highly recommend it, although you should set aside a good chunk of time to make your way from beginning to end.

This is an extraordinary book and still hold its power to suprise and challenge the reader. Its structure would suggest that its really a series of essays each of which uses some remarkable research. However such a perspective would not do justice to its underlying thesis -that the English working class was not the sterile output of economic forces but actively engaged through aspiration and struggle in its own making. This is the essential thread of the book and as such constitutes a challenge not only to traditional top down theories, but also to mechanist or 'vulgar ' marxist accounts. Yet leaving aside its value stance it is a masterpiece of writing. The attack of Thompsons style could be a pleasure even to those who may not share his persuasions and there is no question that he makes history live in a way only the greatest of historians can. The book does suffer from considerable faults. While Thompson does an effective demolition on the quantative/systemic school of historians this does not justify the shortage of figures.As Perry Anderson has pointed out we do not know much about the size of the working class by the end of the book. Additionally Thompson is sometimes led astray by his own talent for metaphor or the telling phrase Famously he does this in the chapter 'The Redeeming Power of the Cross' with his characterisation of certain hymn texts as 'psychic masturbation'.

Whatever the limitations of the book they are overwhelmed by its originality and its capability to stimulate thought. It is well worth purchase.

I can't possibly do justice to EP Thompson is a short review - I'll just say that this is book is revolutionary and infinately influential. It is the book most cited *ever* by historians. Thompson's definition of class - that class is made within the day-to-day lives of people, and that classes only exist in relationship to one another - has become the paradigm for understanding how societies function. This book revolutionized history and social thought.

In `The Making of the English Working Class,' Thompson marked the period between 1790 and 1830 for the formation of `working class' and the development of class consciousness, `the consciousness of an identity of interests as between all these diverse groups of working people and as against the interests of other classes.' The confluence of population implosion, the Industrial Revolution and political counter revolution from 1792 - 1832 created a situation that beckoned the working people to coalesce together and adopt a collective social role to safeguard their interests.

The Industrial Revolution ushered a sea change for workers by usurping the old paternalist economy by laissez faire. The economic policies and changes in each industry coupled with the abrogation of paternalist legislations in the early 1800s united workers in common misery: `for the field laborer, the loss of his common rights, and the vestiges of village democracy; for the artisan, the loss of his craftsman's status; for the weaver, the loss of livelihood and of independence.' Collectively, the group felt `a sense of loss status as memories of their `golden age' lingered'.

The horrors of the French revolution and the fear of violent revolution at home joined landowners and manufacturers to block reforms. With the advent of Paine's `Age of Reason' and `Rights of Men,' gentry reformers such as Wyvill became alarmed by the linkage of `political with economic demands' and the demands of expropriation of the landowners. With support from both the aristocracy and the middle class, the government swiftly adopted reactionary measures, such as the Two Acts, suspension of habeas corpus, Combination Act and even planting spy as agent of provocateur to extirpate agitators. Pitt transitioned from a champion of `piecemeal reform into diplomatic architect of European counter-revolution.'

Thus, reform followed a circuitous path, though it remained `a contest of the middle class and the working class.' The reformers were generally divided among constitutionalists, like Cobbett, and Spencer's radical revolutionary. Radicalism divided the society between `useful' or `productive classes' or courtiers, sinecurists, fund-holders, speculators, parasitic middlemen.' In the face of government intransigence, such as the fruitless and expensive recourse to the Parliament between 1800 and 1812 showed, skilled men, artisans and some outworkers turned to the radical culture for reform. With each succeeding crisis, such as the Peterloo massacre, the radical's clout accreted and gained moral consensus among the general populace, culminating to the Pentridge rising, `one of the first attempts in history to mount a wholly proletarian insurrection, without any middle-class support.' In a wrestle for control, the Reform Acts 1832 was the middle class's effort to thwart a revolution were it to occur.

The changing responses to the government measures shepherded the coming of class consciousness. During the early part of the French revolution, `Church and King' mobs could be manipulated against the reformers. With the tightening of government control, a growing number of communities began to follow their own moral codes - from the transitional mobs during the food riots, the plebian jury's refusal to convict reformers and `seditionists' termed by the government, the centralized tactics of Luddism and to the support of and participation in trade unionism. From the experiences of passive and active resistance and cooperation, this new working class culture unified the mass to voice their demands and work toward their goals - a force that could not be suppressed.

Edward Thompson was arguably Britain's greatest historian--his scholarship but more importantly his history from the "bottom up" dignifies the ordinary men and women who standard historians often neglect--People know George III but Hardy or the heroic Col Despard? I doubt it.
Thompson is also a beautiful writer so welcome as a restorative after being glutted with the turgid prose of the Academy.
And he got better! His last essay (I believe) on William Blake's "London" is itself a work of art.
Happily the work of historians such as Marcus Rediker, Robin Kelly and Peter Linebaugh continue his tradition of superb scholarship and felicitous prose.
We often think of that grotesque aberration of nature Winston Churchill as a model historian --wrong Winston so mytholygized was a liar, detestable racist-- and as anyone in Ireland will tell you a murderer.
In fact there are indications he ordered the death of Thompson's brother Frank--but that is a long story. Read the book. No cliff notes here.

One of the working premises of historical materialism, simply and hopefully not too simply put, is that it is necessary to see historical phenomena not merely in immediate observable isolation but also in reference to the past events that formed the "pre-history" of the event observed, the current strands that make up the phenomena, and some future projections of what those events mean as the next stage begins to unfold. The making, and unmaking of classes, especially of the modern industrial working class where there is enough written material to make some reasonably judgments is particularly suited to an analysis using the methodology of historical materialism. And old-time British Marxist (and former British Communist Party member) did just that feat in bringing the social, political, economic, and, hell, even military strands that helped form the English working class, a class that proved to be the key catalyst and fore-running model for the industrial revolution in the West. Building off the work of Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's co-thinker, and others in the 19th century and early 20th century Thompson has looked to the other, more then current sources (1960s) to fill out a broader interpretation that Engels was able to provide.

Of course no subject as large as the making of a class in modern society is capable of being contained even in the eight hundred pages of Thompson's work, a work that moreover concentrates on the late 18th century emergence of a genuine radical tradition in England and works it way through to the great Reform Bill of 1832. Nevertheless starting with the democratic plebeian response in England to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 Thompson brings to life the first stirrings of what Marx's (and later Marxists like Lenin and Trotsky) termed the transformation of a variated, somewhat undifferentiated mass coming from many quarters of earlier rural society (farm hands, artisans, casual city laborers, lumpen elements, religious sects, etc), a class in itself, into a class for itself. A class with some class consciousness of "the other" to put it in neat sociological terms.

The key name to remember here is Thomas Paine who had his fingerprints over all kinds of plebeian political movements in Europe and America. The formation of pro-Jacobin clubs in England (the corresponding societies, of course, led by London's) , their ups and downs, especially once one got outside of the major cities and at those time when the English government was actively confronting various stages of that French revolution militarily forms the first part of the book. A modern radical plebeian tradition is firmly entrenched, if sometimes of necessity forced underground, from that period.

In the second part of the book Thompson deals with the various social, political, economic and cultural trends from the late 18th century on which form the objective basis for the creation of a distinct working class as a result of the upheavals in the nature of work. What we call the Industrial Revolution with the coming of harnessing of steam power. One key point here is the role of Methodism (Wesleyism) and other fringe religious sects in gaining adherents who would be disciplined enough for the work, and sober enough too.

Naturally Thompson also takes up the intertwined issues of the great increase in capitalist farming for the market in the war years that left many "masterless" men (women and children too) available to form the factory labor pool. And from the other end the demise of small specialty shop-ownership and craft artisanship in the face of mass production, usually cheaper mass production, under the emerging factory system is given full coverage by Thompson. I might add that he also makes a useful corrective about the Luddite movement that raged for a short period in reaction to that factory system. It was not merely a machine-smashing retrograde reaction to downward mobility by those previously respected skilled artisans and displaced farm hands but a fight to maintain quality in the face of "shoddy" as well.

The final part of the book finds Thompson patching together the various post-Napoleonic movements toward working class organization once the "victory" of the factory system was apparent, particularly the struggles for trade union recognition and simple democratic rights like freedom of expression and of the press. The various responses by reformers, and so-called reformers, like the famous socialist-industrialist Robert Owens, also are given full play. The most important aspect addressed by Thompson in the period though was the on-going (and now neglected, or "hidden") struggle between what we would today describe as "direct action" reformers (hell, revolutionaries) and "gradualists" (hell, reformers), most associated with the name of Corbett, who would leave the capitalist/monarchist system intact. Some things never change.

In any case this review is just a snapshot of all the important scholarship that E.P. Thompson provided under one cover. And since it has been some years since this work was first introduced in the 1960s I am sure that some young communist or other social activist could do some useful work bringing it even further up to date with the material uncovered since Thompson's time.

Its a MUST. as a book its one of the best you can get on Working Class studies... and As for Thompson, i just can't say anything else.. buy it.

A magnificent book about how the English working class was formed during the 19th Century and the various ways of life that defined that class persisted through time. There is no better work that builds a complete social history defining an age through examination of one strain of society.