biology

The Making of the English Working Class

The Making of the English Working Class is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Making of the English Working Class rather than just read about it. In short: The Making of the English Working Class is a work of English social history written by E. P.

Key takeaways

The Making of the English Working Class belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Making of the English Working Class to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Making of the English Working Class from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Making of the English Working Class is a work of English social history written by E. P. Thompson, a New Left historian. It was first published in 1963 by Victor Gollancz Ltd, and republished in revised form in 1968 by Pelican, after which it became an early Open University set book. It concentrates on English artisan and working-class society "in its formative years 1780 to 1832". It was placed 30th in the Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction books of the 20th century.

Overview In the preface, Thompson said of his aims: "I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the 'obsolete' hand-loom weaver, the 'utopian' artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity." Thompson uses a humanist approach to social history, being critical of those who turn the people of the working class into an inhuman statistical bloc. Thompson wished to disassociate Marxism from Stalinism, and added humanistic principles to the book as a way of steering the left towards democratic socialism, as opposed to totalitarianism. Thompson expounds upon his theories on working-class consciousness, which he says are manifested by values of solidarity, collectivism, mutuality, political radicalism and Methodism. Thompson uses the term "working class", rather than "classes", throughout the book to emphasize the growth of a working-class consciousness. He claims in the Preface that "in the years between 1780 and 1832 most English working people came to feel an identity of interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs". This change in consciousness is described in Thompson's 1975 book on the 1723 Waltham Black Act. In the book, Thompson discusses popular movements of the past, such as Jacobin societies like the London Corresponding Society, and attempts to recreate the life experience of the working class. Thompson also re-evaluates the Luddite movement and the influence of the early Methodist movement on working-class aspirations. (Thompson's parents were Methodist missionaries.)

Reception Sidney Pollard called the book "without a doubt, a landmark in English historiography". Robert K. Webb called it "both very important and extremely exasperating". David Eastwood argued that it "transformed the study of labour, class and political radicalism in Britain and America and is incontestably the single most influential work of history of the post-war period". Geoffrey Best called it a "valuable and exciting book" but noted Thompson's neglect of the "flag-saluting, foreigner-hating, peer-respecting side of the plebeian mind" and asked, "How large a portion of 'the working class' did those 'artisans' form from whom so much of his evidence necessarily comes, and of how many hundreds of thousands of lower-class folk do we remain so much more ignorant that we cannot speak as confidently about them?" In April 2020, Jacobin magazine launched a podcast series, Casualties of History, focusing on the book and critical receptions of Thompson’s work, by theorists such as Asad Haider and Sheila Rowbotham. In December 2023, BBC Radio 3 issued five episodes of its series The Essay "reflecting on the legacy, ideas and personal inspiration of The Making of the English Working Class" to mark sixty years since its first publication.

References

Further reading R. Currie and R. M. Hartwell, "The Making of the English Working Class?", The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 3 (1965), pp. 633–643. F. K. Donnelly, "Ideology and Early English Working-Class History: Edward Thompson and His Critics", Social History, Vol. 1, No. 2 (May 1976), pp. 219–238. David Eastwood, "E. P. Thompson, Britain, and the French Revolution", History Workshop Journal, No. 39 (Spring, 1995), pp. 79–88.

External links The Making of the English Working Class at Penguin Books. The Making of the English Working Class at Google Books The Making of the English Working Class – E.P. Thompson | libcom.org

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Making of the English Working Class

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Making of the English Working Class claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Making of the English Working Class before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Making of the English Working Class ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Making of the English Working Class

In research: The Making of the English Working Class appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Making of the English Working Class in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Making of the English Working Class is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1963 non-fiction books, 1968 non-fiction books, 20th-century history books, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Making of the English Working Class outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Making of the English Working Class in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Making of the English Working Class means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Making of the English Working Class out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Making of the English Working Class in simple terms?

The Making of the English Working Class is a work of English social history written by E. P.

Why does The Making of the English Working Class matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Making of the English Working Class?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Making of the English Working Class.