The Making of the English Working Class

Edward Palmer Thompson (1924-1993) was a renowned English historian and socialist. A veteran of the Second World War, Thompson graduated from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and taught at Leeds University. By the time The Making of the English Working Class appeared in 1963, Thompson had already written a biography of the 19th-century socialist William Morris and had helped establish the Leftist journal The New Reasoner. In the late 1940s, Thompson joined the Communist Party; however, he left the Party in protest over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary in 1956.

Marxist ideology, the driving force behind international communism, at times informs Thompson’s writing. The Making of the English Working Class features periodic references to Karl Marx and his critique of industrial capitalism. In the 20th century, communist revolutionaries around the world professed belief in Marxist ideas and established new regimes on Marxists principles. However, after those regimes degenerated into totalitarianism—for instance, Communists in the Soviet Union and China starved and slaughtered tens of millions of their own people—throughout much of the West, Communism, and by extension, Marxism, fell into disrepute.

Marxism is only one of many influences on The Making of the English Working Class.