The rise of the English working class
The emergence of the English working class ( The Making of the English Working Class ) is an influential work on the English social history , written by Edward P. Thompson , a historian of the British " New Left ". The book was published in 1963 (improved in 1968) by Victor Gollancz Verlag and later reprinted by Pelican . It was also one of the Open University's early books . The German edition was published in 1987 by Suhrkamp-Verlag in two volumes with over 1000 pages. It focuses on the English artisan and working class from 1780 to 1832.
In the German book title, the ambiguity of the English original is not achieved:
- “It's called making , because what is being examined here is an active process, the result of human action and historical conditions. The working class did not appear at any predictable time like the sun; it was involved in its own creation. "
Story from below
Thompson seeks to add a humanistic element to social history and is critical of those who turn the working class people into an inhuman statistical bloc. These people are not just the balls of history: Thompson shows them as actors who control their own history. He also discusses the popular movements that have often been forgotten in history, such as B. the incomprehensible Jacobean societies . Thompson went to great lengths to recreate the life experience of the working class - that perspective made the work influential.
The emergence of the English working class is considered to be the forerunner of a " story from below ". Thompson uses the term " working class " to put the main emphasis of work on the growth of working class consciousness. He claims in the introduction that "in the years between 1780 and 1832 most members of the English working class felt an identity of interests among themselves and against their leaders and employers". For him, class was based on direct experience:
- "By living their own story, people define class, and that is ultimately the only definition."
He was concerned with the continuing traditions of plebeian radicalism and with remembrance work to contribute to the reactivation of such traditions.
Luddism
The book also contributed to a new understanding of Luddism among the wider public . Thompson showed that the Luddites were mainly not opponents of the new technology, but opponents of the new economic relationships (such as the abolition of fixed prices) that were to be enforced in the course of their introduction. The destruction of the machines was an organized and targeted form of action directed against certain owners who were to be persuaded to comply with the old regulations, while machines from other owners were often spared. The high efficiency, purposefulness and organization of the luddist actions with up to 100 participants is also seen by Thompson as a sign of the great acceptance of the Luddites in their communities.
literature
- Edward P. Thompson: The Origin of the English Working Class . From the English by Lotte Eidenbenz et al. Two volumes. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a. Main 1987, ISBN 3-518-02687-9 .
swell
- ↑ Christoph Jünke : The tears of Edward P. Thompson . In: Christoph Jünke: Forays through the red 20th century. Laika-Verlag, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-94423-300-0 , pp. 151-186. On-line