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Paul G. Faler
Universityof Massachusettsat Boston
Volume 28 Number 1
November 1994
@TheHistoryTeacher
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Paul G. Faler
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Paul G. Faler
E. P. ThompsonandAmericanHistory:A Retrospective
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book but, after all, not a history of the English working class. It was,
rather,a history of the radicaltraditionwithin the English workingclass.
Class and class conflict, struggle and strikes, oppositionalculture,these
were the featuresof history thatThompsonemphasized.
In retrospect,Thompson's Marxismwas both a strengthand a weakness, as it has been, too, for many of us who write labor and social
history.Like Thompsonwe tendedto neglect workerswho were not class
conscious, who remained aloof from unions or who, in strikes, either
stayed at work or, God forbid,become strikebreakers.I think it of mixed
resultthatmuch laborhistoryhas been writtenby Marxistsor partisansof
laborunions. On the one hand,their ideology has createda greatinterest
in the working class. Withoutthem we would know much less than we
do. But, at the same time, we have a distortedhistory that emphasizes
conflict and omits or gives slight attention to unity and cooperation
across class lines. Politically, for example, we know a good deal more
aboutthe few workersin Americanhistorywho were socialist or communists thanaboutthe much largernumberwho were Republicans.We give
disproportionateattentionto people like ourselves to people who speak
and act as we believe we would have done. Ultimatelyour motive should
be to understandthe people we study and not, by our inquiry,to approve
their actions.
So Thompson's legacy was a mixed one. With his notion of class as a
social term he inspired and stimulatedthe study of working people in
America in a new way. But, in the end, his definition of class made the
term untenable.The merging of class and cultureproved the undoing of
class. His interest in class made for inclusiveness, bringing in working
people from beyond the trade societies. In America, the applicationof
this mandatebroughtwithin the purview of labor historiansgroups that
earlierhistoriansignored.In thatrespect,Thompson'sexample enhanced
the field and gave us a fuller pictureof Americanworkingpeople. But it
was precisely in the non-economicareasthata common culturalidentity
or class consciousness was lacking.
Moreover,just as John Harrisonobserved in his comment on the bias
in Thompson's work, there was a limit to the inclusiveness of our own
histories of workers. We extended class beyond organized workers to
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