Saturday, February 12, 2022

Class Classic Continued, Part 5 - Conscious and Made Men

 “The Making of the English Working Class”by E.P. Thompson, 1963 Part 5 Sketch: (pgs. 781 to 939 w/ Afterword)

Thompson comes to the culmination of working class consciousness, which he dates in May 1832, during the passing of the Reform Bill by the House of Lords in a situation of revolutionary crisis throughout England.  To Thompson, this consciousness consists of 1, an awareness of the identity of interests of every working class strata, 2, subsequent class opposition to the landlords and capitalists and 3, a vision of a new cooperative society.  The Reform Bill events occurred during or prior to the European revolutions of 1830, 1832, 1848, 1870, 1917, 1919, the formation of the British Labour Party, the 1926 English General Strike or the creation of the NHS in 1948.  He thinks it continued into the 1960s when he published this book.

Education has its Benefits

Thompson looks into the intellectual culture of popular Radicalism at this time, which was mostly made up of auto-didacts.  In 1825 the Combination Acts were repealed and an open ferment of ideas percolated through society - reading aloud to the illiterate, study groups, ballads, theater performances, cartoons, satire and parody, articles, books, discussions and speeches.  Jargon had to be explained or avoided, as technical phrases like “universal suffrage” might mean to the uninitiated “that all must suffer if any suffer.”  Or calling for a “provisional government” might mean “a government that provides provisions.”  (We still have this problem today on the left … archaic language, symbols or odd historical usages that do not communicate.)  2 of 3 working people might be able to read a bit at this point. Through these methods radical ideas permeated into the smallest rural village. 

The Government raised the price of transfer stamps through the 1891 Stamp Act in order to inhibit the mailing or approval of radical publications, so an underground movement of ‘unstamped’ publications was created.  Punishment under the “Vagrant Act” led to instances like this, where 2 workers were tied to the ‘whipping post’ for distributing unstamped Radical publications.  (Sound familiar?) Eventually parody and satire were legalized in 1820 when the Government’s Crown prosecutors failed to prove its case in a jury trial.  A chuckling crowd of ‘mechaniks’ might congregate around a London print shop showing the latest lampoon of the ruling elite by Cruikshank. This period resulted in ‘freedom of the press’ becoming widespread throughout England, at least in practice, a direct result of the labor ferment in the country.

Thompson identifies two Radical publics in 1832 – the working class one and the middle class one.  At all times they fought for dominance and this situation still exists. Thompson goes into a long analysis of Cobbett, whose journalism and speeches had a major impact on workers for years, but who never actually came up with a consistent theory.  He really harked back to a time of small producers, of sturdy, individual ‘free-born Englishmen,’ of rural life.  Yet Thompson considers him a representative of the working classes.  Cobbett spoke directly to the working class, sometimes using his own experience.  He avoided flowery language, impressive diction and high-flown illusions, perhaps an early example for Orwell.  This is unlike more academic Radical writers like Hazlitt, who peppered his writings with literary references, really directing his blows in the language of the middle and upper classes.

Yet auto-didacticism has its limits, as it sometimes, in Thompson’s words, allows for ‘wide swings of opinion, given its partial nature.’  Some autodidacts are only able to grasp part of a situation due to their spotty understanding and lack of consistency, and can go completely off-road in their pursuit of 'the truth.' 

5 INTELLECTUAL CURRENTS

Thompson identifies 5 currents that eventually came together to form a working class consciousness, a class 'for itself.'  These were based on the material effects of the industrial revolution that were occurring at the same time, which created a working class 'in itself.'  1, the afore-mentioned Corbett; 2, Paine-Carlile tradition; 3, Utilitarianism; 4, trade unionism; 5; Owenism.

Carlile, one of the leading London activists, put his emphasis on the French Revolutionary past, invoking the ‘Bastilles’, excoriating clerics and Kings, celebrating individualist, libertarian rebellion, scorning organization, pushing ‘cheap’ government.  His narrative was somewhat out of step in a time of creeping industrialization that was changing the cultural landscape.  Thompson considers him a ‘petit-bourgeois individualist.’  Carlile ran one of the largest speech venues in London, the Rotunda, which became a center of Radicalism.  In a way, this libertarianism can be seen as a crude, initial stage of rebellion and understanding.

Utilitarianism focuses on what is ‘useful.’  Their leading journal was London’s “The Gorgon,” edited by J Wade, influenced by the middle-class reformer Place. They understood that focusing on ‘the good ‘ol days’ - when Radicalism thundered against the evil Norman Conquest and mythologized ‘free-born Englishmen’ via Alfred - were archaic references.  Wade published practical information on present working class trades, embracing Ricardo’s 1821‘labor theory of value’, seeing there was a ‘productive’ class and a parasitic one.  Wade was also influenced by middle-class political economy like the myth of ‘supply and demand.’  The Utilitarians never went so far as to see the difference between the use value of a thing and the exchange value of a thing.  

The trade union forces were represented by leaders like Henson, Doughtery and Gast.  Gast was a long-time London shipwright who eventually led the London Trades Council and established a Trade Union newspaper.  The trade unionists opposed the Utilitarian idea that unemployment was ‘natural’ due to a surplus population – Malthus’ theory.  Instead of seeing the key issue related to unemployment was between a man and woman and contraception, the unionists saw it as a conflict between workers and employers. They, through Hodgeskins, also embraced the labor theory of value.  However, capitalists were included in the productive class if they actually worked, as the unionists still had no consistent social theory.  Eventually they concluded that every labor organization should be in one national union coalition, a great step forward.

A Cooperative Community

OWENISM

The most well-known current was Owenism, based on a politically clueless, kind and philanthropic Scottish mill owner, Robert Owen.  He wanted to ‘re-moralize’ lazy and careless Scottish workers into collective producers. He developed a theory and plan of a cooperative society, in which cooperative living, villages, farms, trading, work, mutual aid, capital and exchange were the basis of society, uniting all classes in a heaven-on-earth. Many of his practical projects were put into effect all over England, perhaps 500 projects involving 20,000 people. As part of this, bazaars where workers traded goods to each other through barter came into existence across the country. 

Thompson calls him “politically vacant” and a bit utopian, as he ignored England’s classes, repressive state and the issue of large property in his appeals.  Owen was no “Leveler”, as he believed this cooperative society would painlessly produce ‘new wealth, not expropriate old wealth.  In a way, the U.S. counter-culture of the 1960s-1970s worked quite the same stream, as does the exclusive promotion of cooperatives by Marxists like Richard Wolff. 

Owen was against religion, pecuniary marriage, celibacy and supported the unity of physical and intellectual labor. He believed that machinery should not compete with labor but cooperate with it – quite a different approach from the capitalist method.   

The labor leaders feared Owen’s plan would turn villages into workhouses for the poor, but gradually the labor movement adopted the view of organizing society on a cooperative basis as a real goal.  Instead of looking nostalgically to the past  - as even many U.S. social-democrats still do, re-running the New Deal of 1933-1939 - Owenism gave to the labor movement a picture of a different future.

During this period of labor ferment, millenarian and messianic instability continued among more backward rural laborers and workers.  A crippled shoemaker, Zion Ward, took up Southcott’s mantle, claiming to be Christ, while denouncing the official Church.  Another, T.N. Tom, claimed God would take his vengeance on the rich and society.  12 of his armed followers were killed in a forest battle with police when they tried to arrest him. 

The Revolutionary Crisis of 1832

Thompson considers 1832, like 1819, to be another point of potential revolution, as the Reform Bill was being heard in Parliament.  The ‘bunker’ reactionaries were against any concessions – Wellington, the Bishops, many Peers, the King. It would give the right to vote in England and Wales to male householders who paid £10 rent, to small landowners, to tenant farmers and to shopkeepers.  Note it excluded men without property, all women and also all of Scotland and Ireland, which were still colonies or being treated as such.  The Bill was roundly opposed by the working-class movement of the day, as it was not even for full male suffrage.  But the middle-class preferred this ‘half a loaf’ as Cobbett called it, which actually looked more like crumbs.

Huge demonstrations of 100K workers happened in London and Birmingham for a better bill.  In Leeds the suggestion was made in a mass rally that the banks be attacked, that the Political Unions should arm themselves and that no one should pay taxes. The poorest, most desperate sectors of the working class rioted in Derby, Nottingham and Bristol.  The proletarian Poor People’s Guardian published a guide to street fighting. The middle-class reformers waved the threat of revolution in the face of the reactionary elite, who finally, after 11 days of debate in the House of Lords, passed the measure. Compromise saved the system.  This was the intention of the middle-class ‘reformers’ (we can now put them in quote marks) - to bind the population to the State and property via this compromise.     

This seems somewhat similar to Obama telling Wall Street’s executives in 2009 that he was the only thing between them and “the pitchforks.”  Similarly we did not get any kind of real Wall Street ‘reform’ bill except the toothless Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill. The trillions pumped into the coffers of the banks by the government only confirmed the fact that the Kings of Finance in the U.S. were still in control.

The details of the Reform Bill are even worse.  The sponsors found out through surveys that barely 1 in 50 workers paid £10 rent and qualified to vote.  In the town of Holbeck of 11,000, only 150 would get the vote. In Leeds, (pop. 124,000) 355 workers could vote.  And so on.  The middle-class Whig ‘reformers’ had their way, as one of them put it – “the high and middling orders are the natural representatives of the human race.”

The MIDDLE-CLASS VICTORY

As noted by the Irish editor of the Poor Man’s Guardian, James O’Brien, the idea that the middle-class ‘Radicals’ cared about the proletariat was dashed, based on this and their later support for the Irish Coercion Bill, opposition to the 10 Hour Bill, attack on the trade unions and support for a backward revision of the Poor Laws. Another examples is that in 1834 Dorchester laborers were sent to Australia as punishment for a strike by this ‘reform’ Parliament.  Deporting ‘criminals’ to Australia or Tasmania was delicately called ‘transportation,’ based on an old Elizabethan law.  Instead, O’Brien advocated a peaceful political revolution, expropriation of the rich and the promulgation of Owenite communities.  Yet Thompson gives him a bit of a hard time for sectarianism towards possible future allies in the middle classes. 

The Reform Bill was denounced by labor as ‘the shopocrat franchise’ or a ‘rag merchant monarchy.’  180k gathered on Newell Hill in Birmingham for a festival and protest, which is estimated by Thompson as including people from half of the city and surrounding areas.  This ‘crumby’ Bill led directly to Chartist activity from 1838 to 1857, which called for votes for all men; secret ballot; no property qualifications for members of Parliament; paid leave to vote; equal voting districts; annual elections.  In other words, an actual representative, though still bourgeois, democracy.

In this period ‘the vote’ meant far more than what it means today, almost 200 years of manipulation and shenanigans later.  It meant that workers could be taken seriously, had some avenue for power and social control.  But like today, there was also a reaction to this real lack of a franchise in 1832, which resulted in purely labor syndicalism and a rejection of politics by some Radicals. 

Thompson ends the book with a 1968 Afterword regarding criticisms of the book, some his own.  They are:  He did not have enough new research about living standards. He was too hard on the Methodists.  He ignored for the most part coal miners, factory workers, transport, iron and building trades.  He had little focus on the right-wing nuttery found among working people during this same period.  He exaggerated underground activity or crowd sizes.  Thompson deals with all these objections in a detailed way, some of which he agrees with.   

APPLICABLE?

The inference I draw from this whole book is … has the existing U.S. working class achieved consciousness as a class for itself? I think not, certainly not now and even in the early part of the 20th century.  The three characteristics that Thompson chose – 1, an awareness of the identity of interests of every working class strata, 2, subsequent class opposition to the landlords and capitalists and 3, a vision of a new cooperative society  - have not been achieved.  

Re 1, many still don’t know they are in the working class, though that understanding is changing.  The lowest strata of the working class made up of people of color, Latinos and light-skinned working poor (our modern Irish or Scots) – are still looked down upon by some workers, especially white collars. Additionally, unionization rates are weak.  Re 2, a good number of working class people look up to the rich, thinking they too will be rich someday, or that they need their leadership. They don’t have a material grasp of what a ‘ruling class’ is, or what rich class actually is.  The Democrats and Republican are clearly run by capitalists, with legislators that are mostly millionaires, but many still vote for those parties. Class understandings is obscured by pure identity understandings cultivated by capital.  3, there is almost no vision of a new society, at best just an amelioration – ‘capitalism with a human face’ as I put it.  Single Payer might be the closest thing to the British NHS, but even that a distant goal.

There is definitely mass hostility to government, an explosion in libertarianism, opposition to various failed ‘pillars’ of society, to Wall Street, to billionaires and corporations, along with diffuse anti-war sentiment.  But this has not congealed into a left-wing movement of any size or organization.  That is one reason among many why this book is valuable, as a way to track the growth in class consciousness in the U.S. or other countries – or its opposite, its deterioration. 

P.S. - An analysis of Thompson's later work from a dialectical materialist point of view.  Much of the debate after the book was about Thompson becoming someone who thought 'culture' made a class, not its material role in production:  

https://www.marxists.org/archive/fryer/1957/09/lenin-phil.html?fbclid=IwAR2MmipedYN7rVeL1FkjgLHnN0RAPhxTfV3V1QfN_QQWgQMCfe6Bs6nPxmE

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive, using titles or words like this:  “The Making of the English Working Class” (Parts 1,2,3 and 4);“Class – the New Critical Idiom,” “Chavs – the Demonization of the Working Class,” “Class Against Class – the Miner’s Strike” (Matgamna); “Left Confusion on Brexit,” “The City” (Norfield); “Pride,” “Mr. Turner” (Leigh); “Coming Up For Air”(Orwell); “Monsters of the Market” (McNally); “The Football Factory” (King); "The North Water,” “The Young Karl Marx,” “The Peaky Blinders.”

Red Frog

February 12, 2022

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