class

history

nationality

British

political ideology

socialist

occupation / innovator as

historian

political activist

marxist

innovator in the field of

communist party

historian of the modern age

novelist

journalist

biographer

scientific organization

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

peace activist

World War II

labor historian

is not a category already formed or available. It is not a 'category' or a 'structure' but an event, 'something which in fact happens'.

For Thompson, class is not a category already formed or available. For him, it is not a 'category' or a 'structure' but an event, 'something which in fact happens' (and can be shown to have happend), in human relationships.'

is not a structure, nor even as a category. It is something which happens in human relationships. It happens when some men feel and articulate the identity of their interests against other men whose interests are different from theirs.

I do not see class as a 'structure', nor even as a 'category', but as something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships... the notion of class entails the notion of historical relationship. ...And 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

is not a process without a subject that human agency can be evicted from.

E.P Thompson has railed aagianst theoryist (everything from Parsons to Stalinist) who treat 'history as a process without a subject' [and] concur in the eviction from history of human agency' (Ortner 'anthro 60s 144).

E.P. ThompsonThinkers

E.P. Thompson