Presentation

Abstract

In 2023, 60 years passed since the first edition of Edward P. Thompson's book The Making of the English Working Class. Both in the Anglo-Saxon world and in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and other European countries, there is probably no other book that has had as much impact on social history in the last fifty years. This work not only revisited the concept of the working class in traditional Marxism, but also built an ambitious narrative about the experience, struggles, and culture of British workers between 1780 and 1840.

On December 1, 2023, at the Torcuato Di Tella University campus, CeDInCI and the Department of Historical Studies of the UTDT organized a seminar that examined this work by E.P. Thompson in the social history of Argentina, aiming to assess how productive its concepts and interpretative outcomes have been. We invited recognized scholars to recall from their memories and notes a series of topics and problems related to Thompson's work. But we also asked them to share personal aspects of their experiences reading Thompson’s works and using them in their research and teaching. The call was successful. The presentations collected some impressions and memories that allow us to recreate the political conditions in which the first readings and dissemination of Thompson’s work took place.

I

In Latin America, The Making of the English Working Class captured the interest of various groups of historians. Initially, it was those historians focused on labor movement history who took an interest, but soon the work’s appeal expanded to studies of immigration, women, and, of course, the new field of labor history and working-class culture. Even areas seemingly distant from this issue, such as peasant studies and Andean studies, were influenced by concepts like "moral economy," “class struggle before classes,” or the interaction between traditions, customs, and collective action that E.P. Thompson introduced or revived.

Although some of Thompson’s texts were known in Argentina in their original language in the late 1960s and 1970s, the greatest impact of his work came in the 1980s through Spanish translations. Indeed, as noted by several thinkers and activists of the time, the reading of The Making during the Military Dictatorship (1976-1983) was limited to a small number of study groups and social and historical research institutes. Of course, the early reception of Antonio Gramsci in Argentina (more than a decade earlier) had already sparked interest and debate within local Marxism about concepts like historical bloc, subaltern classes, hegemony, and cultural politics, paving the way for a more attentive reading of E.P. Thompson’s work.

If we look today at the growth of research programs in Social and Labor History in Argentina and the numerous high-quality publications that deal with concepts and issues addressed by E.P. Thompson, we must conclude that the importance of his work was both widespread and lasting.

At the time, there was hardly anyone who had read The Making of the English Working Class and not been captivated by its narrative, conceptual apparatus, and groundbreaking sources. Each reader, in their own way, sought to adapt this perspective—which would later be called “history from below”—to a variety of historical issues in Argentina, particularly in the field of social and cultural history of the so-called "world of labor." Thus, E.P. Thompson found his way into various social, cultural, and political history research projects in Argentina, from Peronism to gender studies; from post-independence history to the study of caudillismo, rural banditry to elections; from the analysis of immigrants' political actions to new approaches to anarchism, socialism, and revolutionary syndicalism.

The long list of works and themes suggests that a group of historians tried to renew Argentine social and cultural history by questioning the post-independence plebs, laborers, peasants, women, immigrants, factory workers, and criminals, as well as organizational forms and types of collective actions, workers' press, anarchist propaganda, and popular libraries, all through a Thompsonian lens. The common denominator of these works and the research projects behind them was the desire to explore the world of marginalized and subaltern groups in the past to better understand the present.

II

The essays in this dossier cover several issues related to readings of E.P. Thompson and his book The Making of the English Working Class. As suggested by many of the compiled texts—particularly the contributions by Hilda Sábato and Mirta Lobato—Thompson’s works were a “breath of fresh air” that opened new ways of thinking about relationships between traditions and class formation, collective action and consciousness, ideology and politics. Above all, the concept of experience served as an amalgamation of customs and traditions, cultural practices, collective action dynamics, and the formation of new subjects. These conceptual novelties strongly stimulated the search for new sources and perspectives that revitalized our social history regarding workers and the various forms of social protest.

The dossier opens with a communication from Hilda Sábato, who emphasizes the disruption caused by Thompson’s work within a group of intellectuals in the 1970s who were seeking new answers. Made up of historians with Marxist backgrounds, the group gathered at PEHESA felt uneasy with the historical determinism and the modes of production model advocated by traditional Marxism. Thompson, Sábato states, challenged almost sacred concepts, raised new questions about the past, and suggested new methods and sources. The concept of social experience rooted in customs and traditions was motivating and prompted the exploration of issues that had not been addressed, such as the plebs, the marginalized, and the Argentine working classes. Finally, Sábato shows us how Thompson acted as a turning point in her own work. She moved from studying immigrants and workers with a social perspective to questioning how those same subjects made politics in their own way. As we know, in her acclaimed book Politics in the Streets, she focuses on street demonstrations, the use of the press, political clubs, and rallies as channels for political action by immigrant and Creole workers who opposed various components of elite politics.

Horacio Tarcus’ contribution highlights the different ways in which Thompson’s work was received in the Spanish-speaking world. He points out that the inability to translate and publish his works in Argentina during the military dictatorship facilitated the editorial work of a new generation of Spanish social historians, who took the lead from the late 1970s. Editions by Crítica publishing house and journals like Zona Abierta and Historia Social began to be imported into Argentina in the mid-1980s, causing a delay of about a decade in the reception of Thompson’s work in Argentina. He also notes that this temporal lag had decisive consequences in how Argentine historians appropriated his work.

Dora Barrancos revisits the presence of women in Thompson’s work, suggesting that there are indeed mentions of working women, millenarian agitators, and women associated with radical leaders, and that the author did not minimize their participation in social protests. For instance, Barrancos points out that Thompson saw women as central figures in the "bread riots" and other collective protests. She also examines the social, political, and affective relationships of a small number of feminist or leftist women who had close ties with the author. In this regard, she highlights the camaraderie, respect, and equal treatment Thompson showed to these women (his wife Dorothy, historian Natalie Zemon Davies, feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham, and communist militant Donna Torr). In the 1960s, Barrancos notes, few women supported the more radical vision of feminism. Some directly rejected it: his wife Dorothy, in particular, believed that "second-wave feminism" reflected a middle-class view, while she and Edward defended the sensibilities and struggles of working-class women.

In his essay, Gabriel Di Meglio recalls the early 1990s, when he, as a student at UBA, read The Making of the English Working Class and other works by Thompson, emphasizing how these early readings were valuable for "learning to work historically." These young university students were drawn to the debates Thompson’s work stirred within Marxism, as well as his ability to combine local histories with large historical processes. Over time, Thompson’s work faced numerous critiques, social history lost its centrality, and new approaches (cultural history, gender history, postcolonial history, and new political history) emerged, pushing Thompson out of the center of historiographical interest. Regarding the reception of Thompson’s work in Argentina, Di Meglio introduces an interesting hypothesis: that the early diffusion of Antonio Gramsci’s ideas in Argentina facilitated the acceptance of a “culturalist” or Thompsonian view in the study of class formation. He also adds that, perhaps more than The Making…, it was Thompson’s work on law and justice that most impacted the historiography of the late-colonial and post-independence Río de la Plata.

Meanwhile, Klaus Gallo takes us into the world of British academia, reviewing how some historians of “radicalism” and “popular protest” received Thompson’s work. His essay focuses on the question of the "English radical tradition." Gallo suggests that these historians supported several of Thompson’s assertions about the impact of the French Revolution and the wars with France in the 1790s and early 1800s. The revolution, in particular, boosted the emergence and spread of radical political clubs with anti-monarchist and anti-privilege ideas. He emphasizes the impact of Thomas Paine, William Cobbett, Henry Hunt, and Francis Place during this early period. Fueled by French ideas and the independence revolution in the Thirteen Colonies, a radical movement emerged, which eventually led to the popular struggle for political reform (Chartism). He also shows us that after the Peterloo Massacre (1819), radical agitation declined for a time, especially due to government repression, but Thompson correctly emphasized that it was also a political outcome of the developing capitalist system.

Finally, Ricardo Salvatore notes that during the lengthy writing process of his book Wandering Paysanos, he transitioned from a perspective of “history from below” to one more aligned with “subaltern studies.” To illustrate the shared elements and differences between these approaches, Salvatore reviews the major works of E. P. Thompson and Ranajit Guha. In certain respects, the two approaches are similar: they both seek to recover the voices of those marginalized by dominant historical narratives—the “inarticulate” for Thompson and the “subaltern” for Guha—and they share a critical stance toward the elitism of traditional historiography. However, their conceptual tools, interpretative keys, and intellectual influences reveal notable differences.

Their use of the concept of “class” could not be more distinct. While Thompson sees the formation of the working class as a process of struggle, shared experiences, and forward-looking visions, Guha frames class as one of many forms of domination/subordination. These relationships are emblematic of both colonial and post-colonial societies, replacing the centrality of class in Thompson’s more totalizing view of society and culture with a multiplicity of "dyads" of domination. Similarly, their treatment of archives and language diverges: Thompson reads workers’ statements almost uncritically, while Guha instructs us to interpret judicial and police texts as influenced by state power and to approach elite documents with a different strategy—“reading against the grain.” Although in his early works (e.g., Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India), Guha offered a generalized and abstract perspective on anti-colonial peasant uprisings, he later (in Dominance Without Hegemony) argued that colonialism itself generated a “clash of languages and values.” He proposed that the same events and relationships (domination and resistance) were interpreted within different cultural and linguistic epistemes.

We hope that these essays contribute to a deeper understanding of E. P. Thompson’s legacy within Argentinian social historiography. Our gratitude goes to the colleagues who took on this challenge, and we hope readers will enjoy engaging with these reflections.