Making of the English Working Class

Rating:
Summary: The hardback of the Making
Review: Buyers beware of the hardback version of E. P Thompson's classic work The Making of the English Working Class. Firstly, note that the hardback is a 1966 edition. This means that is does not have Thompson's 1968 postscript, nor his 1980 preface (it probably also misses the author's 1968 revisions, but I have not checked this). Secondly, this is not an organically produced hardback: the picture on the cover is glued on, and the spine does not have the author's name (instead, it has the name 'Peter Smith" - so who the hell is Peter Smith?). All in all, a shocker for the purists, or any serious scholar.

Rating:
Summary: The most influential history text ever written
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: More on the Peter Smith edition of E.P. Thompson
Review: One of America's best small independent publishing houses is---Peter Smith of Gloucester, Massachusetts! The individual's name is also the name of the company, which explains the incorrect ID by the earlier reviewer.

For many years Peter Smith (man & company) has provided reprints of essential scholarly and other works in affordable hardcover editions. The only way to continue this helpful service is by keeping production costs low, which occasionally leads to the regrettable results detailed below. The resulting profit margins are too low to interest the goliaths of the book world, but scholars and other customers (not to mention libraries with tight acquisition budgets) are profoundly grateful for what is perhaps as much a public service as a business decision. Why not order their catalog and give 'em some much-needed business? You'll probably spot other worthwhile classics....For instance, my library includes James Malin, "Grassland of North America" and Wesley Frank Craven, "Soil Exhaustion as a Factor in the Agricultural History of Virginia & Maryland," two fine early environmental histories that are virtually impossible to find apart from Peter Smith's editions.

I hope this isn't being too hard on the earlier reviewer, but I thought the matter needed clarification. The earlier reviewer's disappointment surely reflects his admiration for EP Thompson's work, which I certainly share---it's arguably the greatest history of the 20th century.

Rating:
Summary: A classic full of sympathy with the losers of the first Indu
Review: 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."'

Rating:
Summary: Literary as well as historical classic
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Literary as well as historical classic
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Correction to inanity of other reviews
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Correction to inanity of other reviews
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic in the Field of Social and Labor History
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic in the Field of Social and Labor History
Review: 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.