Big Book- Luke

It is undeniable that The Making of the English Working Class is a really big book. At over 800 pages of thin pages and single spaced tiny type, Thompson covers a huge range of topics with sensitive attention to every possible source and counterargument. What really comes through the text for me, though, is the sheer amount of information that has to be covered in order to provide an accurate picture of a society or a class. In many ways, I feel that anyone can agree that Thompson has given us the clearest sense of a way of life for a class compared to the other writers we have read this semester. And I think that's due to his painstaking reconstruction of the social situation. One cannot be reductive when talking about social relations; society is a complex, undivided body of ideas and practices. Rather than giving the reader a simplified image of weavers as uniformly oppressed, he shows how different weavers had totally different experiences based on location and situation. By providing us with a glimpse into the lives of other classes as well as the political and economic changes in England.

Despite his broad view of history, though, I am impressed that he still manages to covey a strong argument. He revises the standard view of the Industrial Revolution as something that "just happened," pointing out that real decisions made by real people shaped the course of history. Thompson points out that history often seems logical and obvious, but actually was shaped by contentious decisions. Additionally, there were clear cultural reasons for movements divorced from the pure economic relations of traditional marxism. He points out the ways in which status influenced artisans' consciousness during the shift to capitalism in the 18th and 19th century. The rapid shift of status of weavers led to their opinionated dissent against laissez faire economic policy. By revealing the cultural shifts of the Industrial Revolution, Thompson underscores the complexity of historical movements and the creation of class.