The Politics of Theory and the Concept of Class: E.P. Thompson and His Critics

E.P. Thompson has always worked from the premise that theory has implications for practice. The definition of class which begins his ground-breaking study, The Making of the English Working Class, with its emphasis on class as an active process and an historical relationship, was certainly formulated to vindicate class against social scientists and historians who deny its existence; but it was also intended to counter both intellectual traditions and political practices that suppress human agency and in particular deny the self-activity of the working class in the making of history.