Origins of the English Proletariat
October 2, 2007
E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class is one of the most important works of labor history ever written. It, along with writings from other British labor historians, dramatically changed the direction of labor history for the better. It influenced a generation of historians, changing how labor history was written around the world, and encouraging a dramatic expansion of the field. Compared to more recent labor histories the work has numerous flaws including sexist language, a failure to adequately take into account gender and female workers, and a flawed concept of class. However, its strengths outweigh its weaknesses, especially when put in the context of when it was written. Everyone interested in labor history should read this book.
Thompson argues that workers were active agents in the creation of their own class. He regards his book as a “biography” of the early years of the English working class. Part one of the book covers popular traditions in the eighteenth century that influenced the Jacobin activities of the 1790s. Part two covers the experience of workers during the industrial revolution, and part three focuses on popular radical movements through the end of the Napoleonic wars. [1] Thompson's sources include magazines, autobiographies, newspapers, political writings, secondary sources, committee reports, poems, union documents, and cooperative records.
Though flawed, Thompson’s work still made major contributions to labor history. Perhaps the greatest contribution is his portrayal of workers as active agents in their own lives, not mere things to be acted on by material forces or data series in an economist's study. Workers are actors in his story, not scenery or objects manipulated by others. Workers drew on local concepts and culture (such as the “rights of freeborn Englishmen”) to inform and justify their actions. This is an important improvement over most previous works of labor history, which tended to portray workers as passive victims or to focus solely on unions and union leaders.
Thompson also does an excellent job avoiding presentism by respectfully covering the working class movements of the period even if they were not precursors to later developments. As he points out, many of the movements that seem like “lost causes” in hindsight did not seem so at the time. To focus only on the movements that succeeded is to project the present into the past – at the time these events occurred it wasn't know which movements would succeed and which would fail.
Perhaps the best example of his respectful treatment of otherwise marginalized movements is the Luddites. Prior to Thompson's work, and sometimes even after its publication, the Luddites were commonly portrayed as crazed anti-technology zealots who wanted to turn back the clock to the dark ages. Thompson shows that the Luddites were actually a working class movement that used sabotage to fight against the use of machinery by capitalists against workers.
Although still a quality work, Thompson’s study has more than a few flaws, especially when compared to more recent labor histories. Perhaps The Making’s most obvious flaw is in how it handles (or fails to handle) gender. Thompson uses “men” as a synonym for “people” - a sexist and inappropriate usage. As Joan Scott points out, although women are not entirely absent in his work they fit in awkwardly at best. [2] He conceives of the working class as male, stating, “This book can be seen as a biography of the English working class from its adolescence until its early manhood.” [3] He considers the working class to have grown into “manhood” not “womanhood” even though women constitute at least half the working class. With such a gendered conception of the working class, it should not be surprising that women tend to be marginalized in Thompson's work.
As Scott points out, regarding the working class as unitary enough so as to be considered a single (male) individual about which one can write a biography risks overlooking divisions within the working class. Thompson convincingly makes the case that workers had enough in common to be considered a single class rather than multiple classes, but to go from that to regarding them as a single individual about which one could write a biography is too large a leap. Workers are, at minimum, divided by gender, age, and skill and in other contexts may also be divided by race, ethnicity, caste, nationality, migration status, marital status and a host of other potential factors. These divisions can make an important difference in workers’ lives and behavior. His neglect of divisions within the working class is probably part of the reason for the gendered problems within Thompson's work – he groups all workers together, glossing over gender divisions.
In addition to problems with gender, Thompson's conception of class, while probably better than those he critiques, is problematic because it places too much emphasis on identity and consciousness. He claims “class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs.” [4] While Thompson is clearly correct that class is a relationship, his statement neglects the possibility that the participants in that relationship, may have an inaccurate understanding of that relationship, may not even realize they’re in that relationship, and/or may feel and articulate their class identity in a way that is not antagonistic to other classes. For example, most workers in the contemporary United States think of themselves as “middle class,” not as workers. Thompson's statement implies that class is not happening in the US because most American workers do not “feel and articulate the identity of their interests … against other men whose interests are” opposed to theirs. Thompson's conception of class does not adequately take into account the possibility of ideological hegemony or false consciousness.
Thompson's conception of class also fails to leave room for the possibility of class collaboration. Working class compliance with orders from our bosses is at least as common as rebellion against them. In some instances the different classes involved may not even perceive there is a conflict between them, or they may ally against a common enemy. For example, in Colombia during much of the mid-19th century slaves and then former slaves allied with elite Liberals against a common Conservative foe. [5] If class happens when some men articulate their interests against other men with different interests, then it implies that class is not happening in cases where classes submit to or ally with one another. Class happens when some people exert power over other people in economic matters. The participants in the relationship may or may not develop identities around their part in the relationship, and they may or may not believe their interests contradict the interests of other participants in the relationship, but the relationship exists whether they develop those beliefs or not.
Despite these flaws, Thompson’s work is still a masterpiece. Given the year it was published these criticisms are almost unfair. At the time the usage of “man” as a synonym for people was almost universal, so Thompson was merely repeating the same error everyone else was making. Similarly, many of his errors with regard to gender were widespread at the time and remained so for decades after the publication of The Making. His conception of class, although flawed, was still an improvement over the older conceptions he critiqued. Thompson’s work dramatically changed the direction of labor history for the better and that alone is sufficient to make the work a classic.
Endnotes
1 Thompson, 12.
2 Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 68-92.
3 Thompson, 11.
4 Thompson, 9.
5 James E. Sanders, “Citizens of a Free People,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 84:2 (2004), 277-313.