A century after his birth, EP Thompson’s empathy with those facing scorn and condescension is more relevant than ever. The first paragraph starts: “The working class did not rise like the sun at an appointed time. It was present at its own making.”
E. P. Thompson a leader among British youth in constructing a Yugoslav railway in 1947. The reviewer faults the book, for boosting the communist regime while exaggerating the role played by the nation’s workers, even as he lauds Thompson’s later work
Historians of the bourgeois persuasion tend to focus on the doings of major figures in history. Less emphasis is placed by them on the role of working people, often nameless and ill-remembered. Edward Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class was a methodological breakthrough in showing how a working class made itself. The book under review follows that precedent, charting how ordinary Europeans from the Middle Ages to post-Soviet Europe made their own history.
Reader Comments - Songs of Immigration; Fruitvale Station; Blow the Whistle, Face Life in Jail; Bradley Manning; On Vultures and Red Wings: Billionaire Gets New Sports Arena in Bankrupt Detroit; U.S. Prison Population; North Carolina Worst Voter Suppression Law;
Shorts - You Helped Cut the Pentagon Budget; Justice Department's Bold Voting Rights Move;
Conference - The Global E. P. Thompson: Reflections on Making of the English Working Class after Fifty Years Oct. 3-5
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