"The working class did not rise like the sun at an
appointed time. It was present in its own making." E. P.Thompson.
Despite having the word class in the title of Selina Todd's
new book does not mean that Todd favours a Marxist theory of the proletariat.
One only needs to look at a growing number of statements such as the one
from Andre Gortz who bid his Farewell to the Working Class or John Major
that Britain was a "classless society" and Tony Blair trumpeted we
are "all middle class now," to see that class is "a fiercely
contested concept and is not merely a descriptive taxonomy." Given the
tile on Todd's book, it appears that she has adapted to the sentiment expressed
in Gortz's book Farewell to the Working Class.
But things are beginning to change throughout the world, a
rising tide of social struggle provoked in part by the COVID 19 crisis has
blown apart the proclamations by anti-Marxist intellectuals that the
"grand narratives" of working-class struggle and socialist revolution
have finished.
The most striking aspect of Todd's book is her adoption of
the genre history from below " In fact, the book could almost be seen as a
sequel to E P Thompson's classic of the genre The Making of the English Working
Class. Selina Todd describes the period covered by the book as a
"working-class century, and in 1910, people "who worked with their
hands constituted the vast majority of Britons."
Given that the title of the book indicates that she believes
that the working class has fallen a premise that is not at all accurate, and
implies that nowadays the political and numerical weight of the working class
is less. Of course, it is safe to say
that the working class of 1910 is not the same as the working class of 2014,
but according to an orthodox Marxist position, it still holds the same
fundamental relationship to the means of production. Also, it is in many ways
larger now given the fact that many middle-class people have now been so
affected by the current economic crisis that they have been forced back into
the working class.
In her introduction, Todd claims that the motivation for the
book came from an earlier period of her academic career when she found that
little work has been done on the type of working-class family she came from.
"Eventually, I realized I would have to write this history myself".
She continues "the only working-class history on offer was general history
— which is great, but it did mean that the only working-class people you ever
heard about were those involved in. That was not the full history of
working-class life as I knew it from my peers at school and my own
family". [1]
I find this very hard to believe given that the last three
decades have seen a veritable cottage industry grow up examining different
aspects of working-class life. It is also hard to believe that an academic of
Todd's standing found it hard to find material.
However, it is not to say that the book is without merit. It
is well researched and informative. The book is part oral history, part
academic and suitable for the general history reader. Todd vividly describes
the oppression faced by the working class and its attempts to challenge
capitalist exploitation. The strongest part of the book is Todd's use of oral
history.
It is a very thorough and well-researched piece of
history. Todd said "throughout the
book, I rely heavily on personal testimonies, gained from interviews and
unpublished and published autobiographies. I combed local studies libraries
across the country to find the testimonies of over 200 people, and then I added
to these by using the archives of some social surveys of working-class life in
the 1950s and '60s".
You could say that Todd seeks to rescue the servants,
industrial workers; the unemployed and the lower middle class from the
condescension of history. According to one reviewer "the book is peppered
with anecdotes of real people, from those working in what was little more than
domestic servitude in some cases in the early part of the last century, to the
militant trade unionists of the 1960s and 1970s, to the consumers of today, is
what sets it apart. We learn about those whose lives were changed by fame,
fortune and in Vivian's case, the pools (before the greater riches of the
National Lottery), to those who became the first property owners under Margaret
Thatcher ".
It must be said however that Todd's conception of class like
her great predecessor E P Thompson has nothing to do with an orthodox Marxist
view of the class. Todd believes as did E P Thompson, that a historical materialist
position cannot sufficiently explain the origins of the working class despite
professing being influenced by it. She believes that "Class needs to be
spoken about in a less determined way".
In his essay on the 'Peculiarities of the English E.P. Thompson gave his theoretical definition
of class: "When we speak of a class we are thinking of a very loosely
defined body of people who share the same congeries of interests, social
experiences, traditions and value-system, who have the disposition to behave as
a class, to define themselves in their actions and their consciousness in
relation to other groups of people in class ways. But the class itself is not a
thing, and it is happening". [2]
It is one thing for Todd to be influenced by historians such
as Thompson it is another to be blind to their "Stalinist baggage".
Thompson, who was not a political novice, after leaving the British Communist
Party in 1956 he founded the magazine the New Reasoner, along with historian
John Saville, and Universities and Left Review, edited by Stuart Hall.
Thompson and Saville were hostile to the orthodox
Trotskyists represented by the then Socialist Labour League's international
revolutionary perspective. His magazine was imbued in what was mistakenly
called the "English Marxist" tradition.
New Reasoner was said to advocate a "socialist
humanist" version of Marxism. In reality, it had nothing to do with
Marxism and was no more than a crude cover for his support of the Stalinist
"British Road" advocated by the CPGB.
The New Left movement under the leadership of Thompson and
Saville was responsible as Paul Bond for "introducing the nationalist,
ethnic and gender-specific theories that have led to so much confusion over the
last 30 years, as well as helping the imperialists divert workers and youth
along dangerous communal lines in South East Asia, Africa and the Middle
East".
The rejection of a historical materialist understanding of
the class struggle was and still is, to a certain extent, a hallmark of several
historians who professed sympathy with Marxism. It is to be hoped that Todd
does not pick up the bad habits of Thompson who like other historians of his
generation decided to cherry-pick certain aspects of a Marxist method and leave
aside the most important parts such as the relationship between base and
superstructure and how it affects the history of the working class.
The Marxist writer Cliff Slaughter put it so well "When
we say that political ideas and movements reflect the economic base we should
remember that such reflection is a series of conscious acts. Men's
consciousness is formed in an environment of social institutions controlled by
the ruling class, institutions of repression and institutions for educational
conditioning, staffed by people trained to operate these institutions as though
they were part of a naturally or divinely ordained system. The majority of
labour's own organizations have become tied to this structure of established
institutions, and are staffed by the 'labour lieutenants of capitalism. The
proletariat's consciousness of its role has to be achieved in a struggle against
all these institutional forms and their ideological results. Without the
highest degree of centralized organization, these ideological battles cannot be
won".[3]
Todd does not see the working class through rose-tinted
spectacles, but she believes that most of the working class can do reform
capitalism not overthrow it. Also, her attitude towards the "labor
lieutenants" is at best weak at worst it borders on glossing over the
betrayals of both the Labour Party and the Unions.
Given her reformist proclivities, it is not an accident that
the book with over 450 pages does not mention Karl Marx., the Communist Party
gets only two mentions.
Perhaps most damagingly is her view of the most important
events affecting the English working class. While it is easy to agree that the
Second World War and the rise of Thatcherism are important events in the life
of the English working-class surely the most important political event of the
20th century concerning the working class did not happen in Britain but in
Russia, i.e. the 1917-The Russian revolution. If one event shaped the
modern-day English working Class, it was that event. Leaving the Russian
Revolution out is tantamount to doing a history of the bible and leaving Jesus
out.
Another strange absence is that despite professing her
admiration for E P Thompson, the Marxist History Group, which included E.P.
Thompson, Rodney Hilton and Eric Hobsbawm and Christopher Hill is completely
ignored. One does not have to accept everything this group wrote, said or did,
but I believe it is not possible to write a history of the English
working-class without examining their work.
As the Marxist writer, Ann Talbot said "Not only was
their contribution to the writing of history significant but also they
represent a particularly critical phase in British history when Britain lost
its world hegemony to the USA, and the class conflict became more intense. They
represent a layer of socialist-minded intellectuals who looked in this period
of crisis to the Soviet Union and the Russian revolution for a new model of
society".
Talbot, in her examination of these historians, especially
Christopher Hill, was mindful of their Stalinist influenced politics. She was
extremely critical of the People's history genre of which Todd adopts in her
book, and she writes "the Communist Party sponsored a form of
"People's History", which is typified by A.L. Morton's People's
History of England in which the class character of earlier rebels,
revolutionaries and popular leaders was obscured by regarding them all as
representatives of a national revolutionary tradition. This historical approach
reflected the nationalism of the bureaucracy, their hostility to
internationalism and their attempts to form an unprincipled alliance with the
supposedly democratic capitalists against the fascist Axis countries. People's
history was an attempt to give some historical foundation to the policies of
Popular Front—the subordination of the working class to supposedly progressive
sections of the bourgeoisie and the limiting of political action to the defence
of bourgeois democracy—which provided a democratic facade to the systematic
murder of thousands of genuine revolutionaries, including Trotsky. It was the
approach that Christopher Hill was trained in, along with E.P. Thompson, Rodney
Hilton and Eric Hobsbawm, who were part of the Marxist Historians Group and
came under the influence of Maurice Dobb and Dona Torr". [4]
To conclude if Todd has read this review it is hoped that
she has shifted her historiography away from the use of culture and gender to
explain class relations and bring it closer to a Marxist position on class. The
People-The Rise and Fall of the Working Class is a useful guide to certain
aspects of working-class life over the last century but should not be seen as a
Marxist analysis. It is hoped that Todd's next book attempts these difficult
processes.
[1] Interview by Joe Gill
http://dearkitty1.wordpress.com/2014/05/03/british-historian-selina-todd-interviewed/.
[2] E.P. Thompson-The Peculiarities of the
English-(1965)-From The Socialist Register 1965, pp.311-362. Marxists' Internet
Archive.
[3] Cliff Slaughter, What is
Revolutionary Leadership? From Labour Review, Vol.5 No.3, October-November
1960, pp.93-96 & 105-111. Published by Encyclopedia of Trotskyism
On-Line (ETOL).
[4] These the times ... this the man": an appraisal
of historian Christopher Hill
By Ann Talbot 25 March
2003 http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/03/hill-m25.ht
