"...class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs. The class experience is largely determined by the productive relations into which men are born—or enter involuntarily. Class-consciousness is the way in which these experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value-systems, ideas, and institutional forms. If the experience appears as determined, class-consciousness does not. We can see a logic in the responses of similar occupational groups undergoing similar experiences, but we cannot predicate any law. Consciousness of class arises in the same way in different times and places, but never in just the same way."
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Historians from EnglandNovelists from EnglandBiographers from the United KingdomAcademics from the United KingdomJournalists from England
Original Language: English
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The Making of the English Working Class (1963; rev. edn. 1968), pp. 8–9
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/E._P._Thompson
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E. P. Thompson
Edward Palmer Thompson (3 February 1924 – 28 August 1993), usually cited as E. P. Thompson, was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is best remembered for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class (1963).
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