E.P. Thompson’s definition of class

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  • May 18, 2020 at 7:40 am #115052
    Avatar photowv
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    Is ‘class’ an ‘identity’ that has to be consciously created/formed?
    i started this at 7 minute mark

    May 18, 2020 at 9:49 am #115058
    Avatar photozn
    Moderator

    I like this guy usually but he’s not at his best talking about Marxist concepts. One of the things you need to form a class is historically to move beyond the previous social conception, which was ranks. So for example previously smiths did not necessarily see themselves as sharing interests and identity with ordinary sailors–they occupied different ranks in the social order and did not necessarily define themselves as sharing social and economic interests. So the class concept has to emerge by braking with the traditional concept of ranks. That was part of Thompson’s main point. To quote Thompson, “in the years between 1780 and 1832 most English working people came to feel an identity of interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs.”

    So one way of thinking (ranks) gets replaced by another (class).

    Our historian here, the video guy, is often quite shaky on what Marxist historians are saying.

    …

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