the making of the english working class 1963

Furthermore, economists and economic historians, in their haste to defend capitalism, too often downplay the Industrial Revolution’s destructive impact, which many working-class men, women, and children felt as a catastrophic change in the way they lived and especially in the way they worked. While economic statistics can be useful, Thompson argues that excessive reliance on measurable data obscures the actual experiences of people who once lived. Thompson’s emphasis on class as a “historical phenomenon” that “happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships” (9) distinguishes his approach from that of empiricists who analyze the past in quantitative terms. The book concludes with the Reform Act of 1832, by which time the English working class had been formed. This guide follows Thompson in using 1792 as the publication date. Whilst Paine published the first part of Rights of Man in 1791, the second part didn’t appear until early 1792. The book opens in 1792, a critical year in which Thomas Paine published Rights of Man and the French Revolution took a radical turn. This process occurred in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Its publication in 1963 was highly controversial in academia, but the work has become one of the most influential social commentaries every written.The Making of the English Working Class (1963) describes the historical process by which the men and women of the English working class developed a consciousness of a distinct identity with distinct interests. Thompson's magnum opus, The Making of the English Working Class defined early twentieth-century English social and economic history, leading many to consider him Britain's greatest postwar historian. Crucial to contemporary trends in all aspects of society, at the turn of the nineteenth century, these workers united into the class that we recognize all across the Western world today. Despite their lack of power and the indignity forced upon them by the upper classes, the working class emerged as England's greatest cultural and political force. But the capitalist elite did not form the working class-the workers shaped their own creations, developing a shared identity in the process. A seminal text on the history of the working class by one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century.ĭuring the formative years of the Industrial Revolution, English workers and artisans claimed a place in society that would shape the following centuries.

The making of the english working class 1963