Question of Class Struggle: Social Foundations of Popular Radicalism During the Industrial Revolution

by Craig J. Calhoun

Genres: Labor

336 pages, Hardcover

Published April 1, 1982

Reviews

[Jeff]

holy shit--lucid as a dream

suss-ink'd-ly:
they couldn't scrub the teleology out of marxism because contrary to the way it looked it like might've gone in the ol' 19th c., proletarians mostly don't know anything about each other or feel like they owe eachother anything except through other networks of identities (neighbors, family members, coworkers in ever-shrinking & ever-relocating workplaces). Thinking a shortcut to universal brotherhood had been attained by making it an automatic byproduct of globally widespread abstract solidarity among everyone exploited by something as abstract as the whole economic system is no shortcut at all.

[Elisabeth]

I enjoyed what I read of this book for the most part. However, the author has written the book primarily as a critique of theories expressed in other books, and assumes the reader already understands the big picture of the period he's describing (artisan and tradespeople resistance to encroaching industrialism and capitalism in the early 1800's in England). I kept wishing the author had just written the book about this period, from his perspective, with his conclusions, and left the critique as a minor player in his work. Instead, The Question of Class Struggle is structured around the critique and so is difficult for someone not already steeped in this history to follow. I hope to find alternative sources for the history because it is a fascinating period to study.