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

Craig Calhoun's The Question of Class Struggle attempts to find reasons and remedies for the failure to formulate an adequate theory of "populist" movements. In a novel analysis of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England, Calhoun argues that popular protest was mounted by reactionary radicals whose ideology was largely a defense of the traditional values of culture and community against an emerging industrial order. He also offers through reconsiderations of several histories of class struggle, including E. P. Thompson's influential masterpiece, The making of the English Working Class. Calhoun focuses on the social foundations for collective action. In his view, English radicalism during the 1810s and early 1820s was based in local and craft communities. Rather than include this English populism within the Marxist notion of class struggle, Calhoun shows that it was rooted in the particular situation of English workers in social and economic transition. As he reassesses these populist movements, he broadens our understanding of community, class, tradition, and collective action.