The fiftieth anniversary of The Making of the English
Working Class has triggered many commemorations, most earnest and uncritical, that
avoid direct confrontation with the political implications of E.P. Thompson’s
historical approach. Scott Hamilton’s The Crisis of Theory fits into this
pattern. It is a thorough, often sympathetic, sometimes insightful book, but
ultimately avoids addressing key issues. Its main argument that Thompson’s
separation from the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1956 marked a “crisis
of theory” from which he never fully recovered functions more as a storytelling
device than a rigorous historical analysis, dramatising a rupture that Hamilton
does not deeply explore.
The issue isn't that Hamilton misreads Thompson, but that he
declines to engage with the political tradition that shaped him. Thompson
didn't come from a Marxist movement nor break away from one. He was formed in
the Stalinist environment of the CPGB in the 1940s, a Stalinism that had
already lost its revolutionary essence, become nationalist, and aligned with
the Popular Front’s strategy of subordinating the working class to
“progressive" bourgeois sectors. Mentioning a “crisis of theory” in 1956 suggests
Thompson had a revolutionary theory beforehand, which isn't true. Hamilton’s
book, by neglecting this crucial context, unintentionally reveals the
limitations of its preferred historiographical tradition.
The Politics Hamilton Cannot Confront
Hamilton’s early chapters stand out as some of his best, yet
even they show signs of evasion. He details Thompson’s political apprenticeship
in the CPGB thoughtfully, but he downplays its significance, showing leniency
towards the brothers’ patriotic enthusiasm. Frank Thompson’s wartime complaint
that it was “humiliating” to sit by while other nationalities fought for
Britain conflicts with any notion of genuine internationalism.
This detail matters: it reflects the CPGB's political
climate in the 1940s, where nationalism disguised as Marxism, Popular Frontism
appeared as internationalism, and Stalinism claimed to represent revolutionary
continuity. Thompson emerged from the war as a staunch Stalinist, and his
subsequent record shows no indication that he confronted the Moscow Trials or
the purge of the Bolshevik Old Guard.
Hamilton’s silence regarding the Trotsky–Stalin conflict is
intentional, not accidental. It reflects a fundamental structural choice.
Addressing this conflict would mean challenging the core ideas of Stalinism:
the rejection of perpetual revolution, the promotion of “socialism in one
country,” and the shift of Marxism from a scientific theory of global
revolution to a nationalist, gradualist ideology. Thompson embraced this
framework completely, influencing his political views, his approach to history,
and his opposition to theory. Hamilton cannot openly recognise this without
undermining his entire argument.
The Communist Party Historians’ Group: The Missing
Foundation
The most noticeable omission in Hamilton’s book is the
absence of the Communist Party Historians’ Group and, most importantly, Dona
Torr. It is difficult to credit an account of Thompson’s formation that omits
the person most responsible for it. Torr was not merely a mentor. She was the
architect of the CPHG’s national‑radical historiography, the intellectual
bridge between Popular Front politics and “history from below.” Her biography
of Tom Mann, situating him as “a late representative in a story of England’s
long-running struggle,” is the template for The Making of the English
Working Class. The working class appears not as a class defined by its
objective position in capitalist production, but as the bearer of an instinctively
radical national tradition. This is not Marxism. It is Popular Frontism
translated into historiography.
Thompson’s later rejection of the CPHG’s approach as
“quaintly empirical" was more of a stylistic critique than a fundamental
disagreement. The core assumptions, such as nationalism, empiricism, scepticism
of theory, and opposition to internationalism, remained consistent in his work.
Hamilton’s lack of comment on Torr is therefore deliberate. Addressing her
would mean challenging the entire Popular Front.
1956 and the New Left: A Break Without a Rupture
Hamilton’s most compelling chapters explore Thompson’s exit
from the CPGB and the establishment of The New Reasoner. However, even here,
the key question remains unasked: was Thompson’s departure a move toward
revolutionary Marxism, or just a change within a non-revolutionary political
context? At the Wortley Hall Conference in April 1957, John Saville stated that
the goal was to develop a body of Marxist ideas relevant to the British working
class, which involved examining “our own working-class movement and its
history.” David North’s response is particularly impactful: The real problem
was not insufficient knowledge of Manchester or Liverpool in the 1820s, “but
what had happened inside the Russian Communist Party in the 1920s.”
Thompson and Saville shifted their focus from the
international class struggle to the national radical tradition. However, this
was not a departure from Stalinism but a continuation of it. Thompson’s
antagonism toward Trotskyism further supports this, as he told The Newsletter
that Trotskyist views “tend toward the petrification and perpetuation of
sectarian division.” Slaughter remembered Thompson describing Trotskyism as
“sectarian, ultra-left and anti-revolutionary," indicating that he was
still embedded within Stalinist ideas rather than emerging from them.
Hamilton’s interpretation of the Thompson–Anderson dispute
is proficient yet lacks depth. Your review observes that neither party framed
their arguments within an internationalist Marxist perspective. The entire
debate centred on nationalist ideas. Anderson’s claim of an ‘epochal bourgeois
revolution’ spanning from the twelfth to the nineteenth century was a Ptolemaic
construct, a theoretical framework designed to uphold English exceptionalism.
While Thompson’s counterargument, backed by stronger archival research, also
remained confined to national boundaries, neither addressed the crucial
question: how the English Revolution integrates into the global development of
capitalism and international class struggles. The conflict did not reflect
lively theory; rather, it reflected fatigue within theoretical approaches.
The Making of the English Working Class: Achievement and
Limit
The Making remains a significant work, yet its focus on
subjective experience comes at the expense of downplaying the objective,
international, and scientific aspects of Marxism. This tension is at the core
of Thompson’s approach. While his effort to preserve the stories of “the poor
stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ‘obsolete’ hand-loom weaver” from “the
enormous condescension of posterity” is compelling, it results in portraying
the working class as a moral subject rather than a revolutionary force. Their
radicalism appears instinctive rather than rooted in theory, their history
remains national instead of international, and their struggle is cultural
rather than political. This is not Marxism. It is radical liberalism with a
working‑class accent.
Hamilton’s The Crisis of Theory is an important yet
ultimately vague book, often enlightening but evasive in key areas. By
excluding the Historians’ Group, Dona Torr, and the Socialist Labour League’s
critique, it omits the crucial material needed to evaluate what Thompson’s 1956
“crisis” actually addressed or left unresolved. The reality, which is simpler
and more uncomfortable, is that Thompson did not face a theoretical crisis
because he never truly had a revolutionary theory to start with. His split from
the CPGB was organisational rather than ideological. His politics stayed
nationalist, empiricist, and opposed to the internationalist Marxism he knew
only through Stalinist distortions. This essay aims to contribute to the view
of Thompson not as a tragic figure who lost a theory, but as a symbol of a
political tradition that never actually held one.
