To the memory of Philip Abrams | | aM poe gM The Great Arch ys English State Formation as Cultural Revolution ¢c.§ + at : ——~ Awe PHILIP LORKIGAN asd DEREK SAYER, ‘With a Foreword by G.E. Aylmer Basil BlackwellIntroduction you choose ~ the revolution that created England's national ‘market. Lec us now put the pieces back and star the game wi ‘move. In this case we will suppose that 1832 happened sit di, government ary changes in the izing in the depths of the ‘The crunch, of cou ‘pon an feel 2 be judged E. P. Thompson (1965: 47)nse of as in how goods were produced and exchanged idely recognized, whether in sociological,” Marxist? or femi ral forms are adequately addressed in much ate formation grasped as the cul mere reflex of supposedly ‘economic’ power, 0 cr bland empiricism of institutional biography, bureaucratic lineage, cor loca imposition, Much of the recent Marxist ‘turn’, influenced by a sticular reading of Gramsci, which stresses the activity of estab- hhing-and reproducing ‘eonsensus’, remains marred by the same dichovomy:bewween theoretical or empirical paradigms. Worse still by the empi idealism in some such work which forgets the , of act