artisans and the large employers was only part of a more general, exploitative pattern”. It is clear in the language whom Thompson sympathised with, but this bias does not subtract anything from the worth of the study once it is recognised. On the contrary, such bias and sympathy towards the poorer classes is possibly 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 would require these sympathies. Of course such bias should be kept in check by professional rigour which is certainly the case in ‘The making of the English working class’.
Of course, Thompson’s bias and sympathy for the exploitation of the artisans prior to the Industrial Revolution, highlights his position as a Marxist historian. Karl Marx’s most rudimentary observation was that labour set humans apart from the animal kingdom. As labour changed and became more productive it was no longer necessary for all to work because some individuals, or groups, could live by the work of others. After this transition, human societies divided in to rulers and ruled and exploiters and exploited. This theory is evident in ‘the making of the English working class’ as there is an entire chapter devoted to and entitled ‘exploitation’.
For Karl Marx, exploitation was literally daylight robbery by employers and merchants. Crucially the process of exploitation does not go unchallenged because whilst the ruling classes may want lower wages and increase output, the exploited want the reverse. Class conflict is therefore inherent in class society and hence the famous opening line of ‘The Communist Manifesto’, “The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle”.
The theme of class struggle runs throughout ‘The making of the English working class’. Thompson 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 to 1794, than the Whig interpretation of
History would make one believe. For instance, “It was in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution that the millenarian current, so long underground, burst in to the open with unexpected force.”
Thompson is unequivocal at condemning the capitalist apparatus that subjugated the working class. Besides the usual suspects, the merchants and factory owners, Thompson saved his utmost criticism towards the Methodist Church, dedicating an entire chapter to the Methodist failings. However, this chapter betrayed a trace of Radical Romanism and put the scholarly soundness of Thompson’s work at risk. For example, the Methodist Church split from the Church of England partly because Wesley thought the establishment was too remote from the poor and also many of the clergy in the Church group were actually from the working class. Thompson admits as much in his book, “It (Methodism) was distanced from them that its homilies had ceased to have much effect”, “but the Methodists – or many of them- were the poor. Many of their tracts were confessions of redeemed sinners from among the poor; many of their local preachers were humble men”.Therefore it is puzzling, as to how he has implied, that the influences of just a few could have transformed the entire institution in to an agent of counter revolution. His following chapter describes many other English communal organisations in a much more amicable light, whilst still being adamantly unforgiving towards the church and its doctrines. Thompson also explains away the same conformist chants found in the charters of some friendly societies. It is possible that this was to serve the role of Thompson’s attempt to revise the Marxist theory to retrofit history.For the classical Marxists envisioned extreme exploitations could only lead to a revolutionary clash of the classes. In order to explain why this did not happen, Thompson pointed his finger at the Methodist church and blamed it for corrupting the spirit of the proletariat. Sam Ashton has suggested that Thompson’s cultural definition of class can class consciousness contributed to the subsequent rise of postmodernism due to the move from traditional Marxism.
Thompson also argues that the period from the1790’s to the 1830’s saw the emergence, in the wake of the French Revolution, of a working class consciousness that was Radical, Revolutionary and Republican, hostile to the monarchy and aristocracy and committed to equal rights, representative institutions and popular democracy. For instance, “from 1830 onwards a more clearly defined consciousness, in the customary Marxist sense, was maturing, in which working people were aware of continuing both old and new battles on their own”. As Thompson himself states here, this emphasis on the formation of the working class and the subsequent development of class consciousness is indicative of Marxist theory.
‘The making of the English working class’ can also be seen as a “powerful expression of the gathering school of Marxist history which took issue with the mechanistic traditions of official communist versions of history, looking ordinary people in the face as participants and makers of history”. The book initiated much debate among the New Left over the direction of Marxist history itself. Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn criticised the exaggerations of the role of the working class and its culture. They believed that the English working class was a passive force ill-prepared for revolutionary struggles because of the distance between the working class and the English bourgeois revolution.The radical activity is now regarded by many, though not all, historians as far more limited in extent and effect. Thompson, as he has subsequently admitted, underestimated the countervailing importance of religion, loyalty to the crown and patriotic hostility to the French within the working class.
In ‘The making of the English working class’, Thompson entailed a particular and controversial vision of class. Like Marxist historian Georg Lukás, in History and Class Consciousness’ Thompson’s preface outlined the view that class was not an inert thing but a real historic process of human relationships. “The real relationship must be embodied in real people in a real context…We cannot love without lovers, nor deference without squires and labourers”.
Some of Thompson’s assertions are not beyond dispute. He claims for instance, that the position of the English working class had definitely deteriorated compared to the eighteenth century. However, it has been shown, by, H.T. Dickinson among others, that the working class position was already very dismal long before the Industrial Revolution started, and the dispute among historians over this question is still far from being concluded. Because of these points of debate, ‘The making of the English working class’ attracted much criticism, such as his underestimation of women’s role in class formation which has been challenged by J.W. Scott, an error which Thompson subsequently confessed.
Overall however the book gave a good sense of working class conditions in this period and is a valuable source for the study of class formation so long as historians note its obvious bias and counteract it with the use of several other sources.
Bibliography
Primary:
Marx, K and Engels, F., ‘The Communist Manifesto’ (1985 Reprint) Penguin – London
Secondary:
Bentley, M., ‘Companion to historiography’ (1997) Routledge – London
Dickinson, H.T., ‘British Radicalism and the French Revolution’ (1993) Blackwell - London
Jones, C., ‘Radical sensibility: Literature and ideas in the 1790’s’ (1993) Routledge – London
Perry, M., ‘Marxism and History’ (2002) Palgrave – New York
Thompson, E.P., ‘The making of the English working class’ (1991) Penguin – Harmondsworth
Thompson, E.P., ‘The poverty of history and other essays’ (1979) Merlin Press – London
Tosh, J., ‘Historians on History’ (2000) Pearson education ltd – Harlow
Wright, D.G., ‘Popular Radicalism: the working class experience 1780-1880’ (1990) Longmann – London
Wright, E. O., ‘Reconstructing Marxism’ (1992) Verso - London
Thompson, E.P., ‘The making of the English working class’ p. 218
Bentley, M., ‘Companion to historiography’ p. 95
Thompson, E.P., ‘The making of the English working class’ p.277 and 285
Perry, M., ‘Marxism and History’ p. 100
Wright, E. O., ‘Reconstructing Marxism’ p. 78
Perry, M., ‘Marxism and History’ p. 3
Thompson, E.P., ‘The making of the English working class’ p. 207
Marx, K and Engels, F., ‘The Communist Manifesto’ p. 79
Thompson, E.P., ‘The making of the English working class’ p. 54
Thompson, E.P., ‘The making of the English working class’ p. 386
Perry, M., ‘Marxism and History’ p. 102
Bentley, M., ‘Companion to historiography’ p. 156
Thompson, E.P., ‘The making of the English working class’ p. 782
Perry, M., ‘Marxism and History’ p. 97
Bentley, M., ‘Companion to historiography’ y p. 98
Thompson, E.P., ‘The making of the English working class’ p. 9
