Why E.P.

Thompson Matters: Theory, Academia, and Political Activism

Recently, while at a cultural studies academic conference, I walked past a group of striking hotel workers seeking better working conditions. The strike was three blocks from the building where the conference was being held. The conference sessions and panels concerned subjects of potential usefulness to political activism in their theorization and analysis of contemporary culture and social conditions, but there was such a stark separation between the conference and the protestors. Academics at a conference accessible only through paid registration and affiliation in the membership association. Workers on strike three blocks away. For me, the gap between academic scholarship and the picket lines of political activism was as evident as ever. The British social historian E. P. Thompson warned against this divide. He understood the problems that come with an academia encased in commercial institutions and a scholarly community obsessed with esoteric social theory divorced from its political utility. He pursued work addressing what he saw as the political crises of his times, like calling for a more humanist socialism and addressing the threat of nuclear proliferation. His scholarly work stands out from his academic contemporaries in his consistent devotion to historical research that could aid in real political activism. His words on the importance of social history and the need for theory to be politically useful remain as important today as they did during his lifetime. In a time where political crises erupt on all corners of the world, Thompsons words and warnings deserve to be revisited. Stuart Hall reminded us in the The Life and Times of the First New Left that the movement attempted to define a third political space between Western Imperialism and Soviet Stalinism. [1] The First New Left, a distinctive intellectual and political current arising in Britain in 1956, of which Thompson was heavily involved in, was an important catalyst in rethinking Labour politics and socialist theory. This rise in leftist political awareness, spurred on by writers many schooled social critics can immediately recognize by name, caused not only the creation of the New Left Review, but aided the subsequent flowering of many new areas of academia, carving important spaces for cultural, feminist, postcolonial, and queer analysis. But, the New Left was also closely connected early on with political activism, including supporting the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and university student activism through the formation and sponsoring of New Left Clubs.[2] As one historian put it, part of the movements creativity and distinctiveness flowed from their juxtaposing of creative intellectual practice and engagement with hard political realities.[3] The First New Left was connected from the beginning to both intellectually studying society and contemporary politics. Yet, somehow todays scholars seem to be content that reading and discussing Prison Notebooks or Discipline and Punish in the classroom is enough. Their currency in political struggles of the present too often seems to fall down the list of priorities; too busy competing with each other publishing enough to earn tenure, while radical social theory becomes washed in esoteric jargon and discussed in circles disconnected from public discourse. In this context, we must return to the scholars that emphasized the political utility of their writings and academic work. We must

return to scholars like Thompson who pointed toward the growing fissure between theory and activism that pervades academia today. Thompson was one of the prominent social historians of his time. His 1963 book The Making of the English Working Class is credited as helping spur the movement for social history. When discussing academic work directly, Thompson advocated the pursuit of scholarly work infused with Marxist theorization to contribute at the ground level of protest, activism, and social change. His Notes on Exterminism, the Last Stage of Civilization, written during his association with the CND in the 1980s, called for a cogent theoretical and class analysis of the present war crisis.[4] This perspective was fueled by Thompsons work being unified by a sense of political crisis, and evidenced in his early experience working as a tutor for the Workers Educational Association.[5] His work in social history revealed the political awareness and struggles of the lower classes, an important point on human agency vital to the political utility of scholarship. Thompsons help in the drafting of the 1968 May Day Manifesto (with Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall) while at Warwick exemplified his balancing of academic work with political activism.[6] The Manifesto sought to extend the third way of the First New Left, critiquing the current Labour Party government while reinvigorating the political issues that fueled the New Lefts genesis. The Manifesto led to a short-lived New Left bid to enter into the upcoming government elections, but was the kind of direct attempt to enter into British politics that Thompson advocated.[7] When student activists at Warwick in 1970 discovered the university had been keeping files on radical lecturers, Thompson, while head of Warwicks Social History Centre, worked with the protesters. He became a leading spokesman for the group of students angry over the universitys allegiance with business interests, and edited a volume of student writings on the protests titled Warwick University Ltd.. [8] Like the student activists, Thompson saw the growing commercial influence pervading Warwick and institutions, and his involvement in the protests showcases his recognition of the scholars role in such resistance. Thompson would subsequently resign from his position at Warwick over the universitys increasing commercialization and a desire to do free-lance writing, and devoted time to reengaging and working with the CND. His work with the CND stands as a poignant example of a scholar foregoing academia for political activism. A strong supporter since the organizations founding in 1957, Thompson devoted more time to the cause after his exit from a permanent academic position. In 1980, he wrote the prominent pamphlet Protest and Survive, a damning critique of the British Civil Defences pamphlet on nuclear conflict titled Protect and Survive. His pamphlet was paramount in reigniting the CNDs cause and foray back into the public discourse on nuclear proliferation. Thompson himself served as a leading spokesman for the organization, while also helping to found and draft the mobilizing documents for the organization European Nuclear Disarmament (END).[9] For Thompson, the threat of nuclear war was too significant not to engage and counter. Thompsons influence in academia extended beyond social history. The Making of the English Working Class, with its revealing of working class struggles and culture, is considered one of the

books influencing the development of British Cultural Studies (BCS). BCS has often been described by scholars like Hall as the academic response to the socialist project the New Left reinvigorated, but as Cultural Studies grew as an academic field, the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser became popular and by 1981 the emerging fields attachment to postmodern theory set in motion a separation from previous work like Thompsons that has persisted to this day.[10] Read only a few Cultural Studies articles detailing its British tradition to see a caricaturing of Thompson within the fields memory. The fields treatment of its historical roots is unfortunate as it imparts a condescending label upon peoples histories in the name of nuanced theorys ascending ivory tower while neglecting the significance of scholarship from academic movements like History Workshop. Moreover, Thompsons disappearance from Cultural Studies is symptomatic of the gap between the fields theoretical rigor and their works isolation from the public debates in need of their insight, emblematic of the divide separating much of academia from the public debates today. To understand the Thompsons legacy, it is important to reinsert his significance into the theoretical debates that occurred within BCS. Thompson played a key role in the divisive discourse over oppositional Marxist theorizations in the 1970s, culminating in a debate at the 1979 History Workshop Conference in Oxford. The oppositional theories in BCS comprised of two approaches they labeled culturalist and structuralist. Structuralism was the cutting edge theorization of Marxism of the 70's, intending to cure the naive humanism of culturalists. Influenced by the French philosopher Louis Althusser and his book For Marx, structuralists, like Stuart Hall, sought a return to the writings of Marx in order to scientifically study the structures of ideology and power in society and be able to theoretically understand the historical process without a subject. Culturalists, an umbrella term which Thompson rejected without reservation, were seen as unified in their dedication to humanism and the historical process, and their allegiance to experience and social transformation as categories of analysis.[11] Thompsons debate speech, The Politics of Theory, decried the psycho-drama he found within the enclosed ghetto of the theoretical left. On the subject of the usefulness of structuralist theory and criticism of his polemical style, Thompson said, It is easy to be respectful, sisterly and brotherly, if ones theory can never do so much as bend a pin in the real political world: if one never has to be called to account for ones theories, since the gap between theory and actuality is so rarely crossed.[12] It was clear that Thompson was not so much concerned about the theoretical approaches in question, but how useful they could be for the politics and crises of the times. By the next year, while Hall and others in BCS solidified their positions in academia, Thompson turned his focus back to political activism and protesting nuclear proliferation. Thompson was not opposing the emphasis and value of theory itself, for his own work was theoretical in its interpretation of Marxism. The crux of the 1979 debate concerned competing critiques of classical Marxism, and The Poverty of Theorys attack on structuralisms inability to conceptualize experience and how people can become aware of their conditions and work to resist them. But, Thompson also emphasized the parallel need for intellectual activism outside the walls of academia. The theories students learn from authors like Marx, Althusser, Foucault,

and Derrida, in other words, should not be used as metaphorical devices to help students sound more intelligent at conferences and in academic publications. They must also be useful in contemporary politics. The utility of social theory lies in its ability to embolden the living political activist through the recovery of the historical articulations of previous struggles. History carries signs and evidences also of creative resources, Thompson argued, which can sustain the present and prefigure possibility.[13] This important point needs to be revisited. To substitute political utility with internal theoretical debates and critique risks separating the theoretician from the people already experiencing and struggling in real social conditions. Academic teaching and publications are not self-evident in their contribution to political discourse. While his debate opponents argued for an increased emphasis on theoretical rigor, Thompson warned that they were risking removing themselves and their work from the people and struggles where it is needed. It was the politics of that moment in the birth of the First New Left which directed all of us, from different traditions, to certain common problems, Thompson argued. To study those moments, Thompson said the scholar must commence, not within theory, but within the political world.[14] Today, the links between academia, theory, and activism are too often lost in the hypersplintering of academic fields. The looming political crises of our times mean pedagogy cannot suffice as a form practically applying social theory within itself. Humanities scholars cannot allow devotion to pedagogy to outweigh recognizing its own contextual limitations. Critiquing neoliberalism while employed by a commercial educational institution itself married neoliberal tenets requires more than a few paragraphs of self-reflexivity in an academic journal article. The political utility of social theory can be reinvigorated, but only when accompanied by an understanding that pedagogy is only one method in politicizing social and cultural conditions. Here, more than ever, Thompsons work and warnings remain vital, and warrant re-examination. With 2013 marking the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Making of the English Working Class, and twenty years since Thompsons untimely passing, the time has come for a conversation about how academic research and theorization can be politically utilized. Thompsons prolific work provided invaluable insight into the historical struggles and experience and struggles of the working classes, but he also reminded us through his own activism of the need for academia to be engaged with the political crises of their times. Its time for us to revisit Thompsons words and warnings. Its time for the theorists to meet the strikers three blocks away from their academic conferences. Sam Clevenger is a Ph.D. student in Physical Cultural Studies at the University of Maryland. You can email him at scleveng@umd.edu.

[1] Stuart Hall, Life and Times of the First New Left, New Left Review 61 (2010): 177-80.

[2]A Brief History of New Left Review: 1960-2010, New Left Review; Dennis Dworkin, Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 68-9. [3] Michael Kenny, The First New Left: British Intellectuals After Stalin (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1995), 4. [4] Edward Thompson, Notes on Exterminism, the Last Stage of Civilization, in Exterminism and Cold War, ed. New Left Review (London: New Left Books, 1982), 1. [5] See Scott Hamilton, The Crisis of Theory: EP Thompson, the New Left and postwar British politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011). [6] Harvey J. Kaye, The British Marxist Historians: An Introductory Analysis (Oxford: Polity Press, 1984), 170. [7] Dworkin, Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain, 149-50. [8] Dworkin, Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain, 208-9. [9] Mary Kaldor, Obituary: E. P. Thompson, The Independent, August 30, 1993 [10] See Perry Anderson, Arguments Within English Marxism (London: Verso, 1980); E. P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory & Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978); Richard Johnson, Edward Thompson, Eugene Genovese, and Socialist-Humanist History, History Workshop 6 (1978): 79-100. [11] See Stuart Hall, Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms, Media, Culture & Society 1(1980): 5775; E. P. Thompson, The Politics of Theory, in Peoples History and Socialist Theory, ed. Raphael Samuel (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 396. [12] Thompson, The Politics of Theory, 400. [13] Thompson, The Politics of Theory, 402-8. [14] Thompson, The Politics of Theory, 400.

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Published on 02 July, 2013 By Sam Clevenger