Casualties of History: "They Came Out of a Culture"

In our final episode, we talk about the emergence of what Thompson sees as mature class consciousness in the English working class. Through the writing and agitation of figures like Cobbett and Owen in the slow 1820s and then the great reform struggle of the early 1830s, the working class moved from its ambivalent position — partly resisting proletarianization, partly looking forward — toward a more aggressive vision of its own social power. We also reflect a bit on what we've taken away from this reading and collective project.

References:

Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy

Tobias Higbie, Labor's Mind: A History of Working-Class Intellectual Life

Richard Biernacki, The Fabrication of Labor: Germany and Britain, 1640-1914