Next week I am going to be part of a panel presentation at the UU Collegium on the “The Current and Future State of Unitarian Universalist Scholarship.” To aid in preparations for my portion of the panel I am trying to collect some unscientific survey data. There are only four questions and I would appreciate it if readers of my blog could fill it out and distribute it. I will publish the results on the survey next week. The url is https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/98ZLCLK

I am starting pack for my trip to El Salvador. I have two long plane rides and so I am anticipating having a fair chunk of time to read. I have compiled a small of list texts to bring with that will either provide me with historical and political background or aid me in the theological reflection.

Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal, Aviva Chomsky
Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora, Daniel Kanstroom
Witness to War: A Doctor’s Moving and Urgent Story, Charles Clements
Ignacio Ellacuria: Essays on History, Liberation, and Salvation, ed. Michael Lee
Voice of the Voiceless: The Four Pastoral Letters and Other Statements, Oscar Romero

The first two are some of the better recent books on immigration. Clements is a Harvard professor who served as the Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee for a several. He spent his politically formative years in El Salvador. Ellacuria and Romero are both important Catholic liberation theologians. Both were assassinated by right-wing thugs during the civil war. I also plan to bring a good Spanish dictionary, I’m fond of Larousse, and Enrique Vila-Matas’s Chet Baker piensa en su arte; Relatos selectos. I realize that’s rather a lot of books for such a short trip but we’re going to be based out of a hotel and I’d like to have useful tools on hand preparing notes and, possibly, blog posts.

My paper “With Two Lamps to Guide Me; Staughton Lynd as Theologian” has been accepted by the Unitarian Universalist Collegium: An Association for Liberal Religious Studies for presentation at their November 19-22, 2014 conference. Here’s my proposal:

Staughton Lynd is an American historian, social justice activist, labor lawyer, and, I argue, theologian. He was the only significant white organizer of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, was deeply involved in protests against the Vietnam War, and has played an important role in theorizing the problems and potentials of the contemporary American labor movement. Despite his own profession of faith as a religious person, and frequent deployment of religious tropes, little scholarly attention has been paid to how he proceeds as religious thinker. In this paper I track Lynd’s development from his childhood involvement in Ethical Culture through his work as a Quaker prison abolitionist in Youngstown, Ohio.

I suggest that Lynd functions as what Sallie McFague calls a parabolic theologian. As McFague presents it, parabolic theology “is not a theory to be applied to literary genres of the Christian tradition but a kind of reflection that arises from them.” It resides primarily in works of literature, stories, poems, autobiographies and, most importantly, parables. Parabolic theology is “embodied thinking, thought which cannot finally abstract from the person who is doing the thinking.” Parabolic theologians are not known, primarily, by what they say but rather how they live and what they do. Lynd is a parabolic theologian exemplar. Throughout his career his consistent emphasis has been on pairing what he terms “exemplary action” with theoretical reflection.

Lynd’s own theological interests center on the Latin American tradition of liberation theology. He pays particular attention to the liberation theology concepts of the preferential option for the poor and accompaniment. He has found these two concepts to be essential for his own work as an activist and has theorized how they can help other activists engage in more authentic and effective work.

The paper is built around the discussion of some of Lynd’s key parables, how they relate to his activism and what they suggest about an important religious concern of his, the kingdom of God. In sharing it at Collegium I hope to prompt Unitarian Universalists to see the work of this religious humanist as a resource in our own strivings to create a justice filled world.

Carl Schmitt, Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of any Political Theology, trans. Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2008 [1970])

This text is Schmitt’s sequel to Political Theology I and began as a response to Erik Peterson’s “Monotheism as a Political Problem: A Contribution to the History of Political Theology in the Roman Empire.” In his book Peterson sought to argue for the “annulment of any belief in God being politically relevant, or of any socially relevant theology at all” (35). Schmitt wants to reject closure. He divides his text into three chapters: The Myth of the Ultimate Theological Closure; The Legendary Document; and The Legendary Conclusion.

The Myth of the Ultimate Theological Closure

In this section Schmitt outlines Peterson’s thesis and the responses of three theologians who have more-or-less adopted it. He writes, Peterson claimed to bring “to an end any Christian political theology once and for all” (56). According to Schmitt, Peterson’s argument rests on a belief that theology is specifically a Christian activity and that it only occurs in the period between Christ’s death and the second coming.

The Legendary Document

An important part of Schmitt’s argument appears here as “The church of Christ is not of this world and its history, but it is in this world” (65). He also claims, “There are many political theologies because there are, on the one hand, many different religions, and, on the other, many different kinds and methods of doing politics” (66). He is especially critical of Peterson’s “placement beyond all politics, the absolute unassailability, unattainability and autonomy from the political, is denied the non-Christian, that is, the non-trinitarian, monotheism” (77). Peterson also claims that the political theology that exists within Christianity is a vestige of Judaism and paganism. “When a bishop [Eusebius] is introduced into the twentieth century as the prototype of political theology, there seems to exist a conceptual link between politics and heresy” (84).

The Legendary Conclusion

“Theology is not the same as religion or faith or numinous excitement. Theology wants to be a serious academic discipline and it will remain as (107) such, unless a completely different understanding of science is able to marginalise religion and its theology and to assimilate them into a scientific understanding of the world” (108). “A conflict is always a struggle between organisations and institutions in the sense of concrete orders. It is a struggle of institutions over stances” (114).

Postscript: On the Current Situation of the Problem: The Legitimacy of Modernity

Here he reiterates that the law and theology proceed from the same impulse. “This understanding of the state has achieved, to date, the greatest rational ‘progress’ of humanity in the definition of war as it appears in the theory of international law: namely the distinction between the enemy and the criminal, and therefore the only possible basis for the theory of the neutrality of (117) states in times of war between them” (118). “Thus de-theologisation implies de-politisation, the sense that the world has ceased being ‘politomorph’. Consequently, the distinction between friend and enemy is no longer valid as criterion of the political” (124). “One cannot get rid of the enmity between human beings by prohibiting wars between states in the traditional sense, by advocating a world revolution and by transforming world politics into world policing. Revolution, in contrast to reformation, reform, revision and evolution, is a hostile struggle. Friendship is almost impossible between the lord of a world in need of change, that is, a misconceived world… and the liberator, the creator of a transformed world. They are… by definition enemies” (125). The postscript concludes with the necessary process to create a “modern-scientific closure of any political theology:” “no theology as a subject of discussion” (128); a new human being who “is the unplanned, arbitrary product of the process–progress of himself;” the process-progress contains within it “the possibility of its own novelty–renewal;” “freedom of the human being is the highest value;” this “self-producing new human being… is not a new God;” and the distinction between friend and enemy is eliminated and the “old is not the enemy of the new” (129);

Appendix: ‘Peterson’s Conclusion and Concluding Footnote’

This is a reprint from Peterson’s essay.

“Sermon to the Princes;” “Special Exposure of False Faith;” and “Highly Provoked Defense” in Revelation and Revolution: Basic Writings of Thomas Müntzer, trans. and ed. by Michael G. Baylor (1993)

All of these texts are from 1524.

Sermon to the Princes

An exegesis of the second chapter of Daniel. It consists of four sections. The first three focus on the corrupt nature of the world and the Church. After the death of the disciples the Christian church “became and adulteress” (99). Also, “the whole world, from the beginning down to the present time, has been deceived by dreamers and interpreters of dreams” (103). In the fourth section he proclaims, “You should know that an elected person who wants to know which visions or dreams are from God and which are from nature or from the devil must be severed in his mind and heart, and also in his natural understanding, from all temporal reliance on the flesh” (106). “It is true–and I know it to be true–that the spirit of God now reveals to many elected pious people that a momentous, invincible, future reformation is very necessary and must be brought about… This text of Daniel is thus as clear as the bright sun, and the work of ending the fifth empire of the world is now in full swing.” The first empire was Babylon, the second was the Persians, the third was the Greeks, the fourth was the Roman and the fifth “is that which we have before our own eyes.” God is going to smash the old ecclesiastical order. The rulers are in danger of being seduced by it but the “poor laity and the peasants see it [the situation] much more clearly than you do” (109). God “will make your hands skillful in fighting against his enemies” (111). “Nothing on earth has a better form and mask than false goodness.” “He to whom is given all power in heaven and on earth [Christ] wants to lead the government” (114).

Special Exposure of False Faith

Muntzer begins by claiming that Luther is preaching false theology, even though they are both trying to interpret the Bible. He writes, “all knowledge contains within itself its diametrical opposite” (115). He suggests that the correction to this is “the common man, must become learned… so that you will be misled no longer. The same spirit of Christ will help you in this which will mock our learned ones to their destruction” (116).

Next he moves to an exegesis of the first chapter of Luke. He emphasis that people can read the Bible themselves, “With all their words and deeds our scribes make sure that the poor man cannot learn to read, because he is worried about his sustenance. And they shamelessly preach that the poor man should let himself be sheared and clipped by the tyrants” (119). The poor will know true scholars by the way they lead their lives.

In the second section he claims, “every person should observe most carefully, and then he will certainly find that the Christian faith is an impossible thing for a man of the flesh” and that faith is also impossible. “And all of us must have just this experience of impossibility in the beginning of faith. And we must hold to it that we carnal, earthly men shall become gods through the incarnation of Christ as man” (121). “Therefore, rulers are nothing but hangmen and corpse renders. This is their whole craft” (123).

In the third section he asserts, “the heart of a member of the elect is constantly moved to the source of his faith by the power of the Supreme Being” (126). And claims again that the learned have led the peasants astray. In the fourth he says that the people need “to wait for a new John the Baptist, for a preacher rich in grace who has experienced every aspect of the faith through his own lack of faith” (128). After this happens there will be a movement of the spirit that reprimands the people “on account of their disorderly desires” (130). The people need to turn away from their sins and towards God. “Otherwise preaching is a thief’s prattle and a war of words” (133). In the sixth he asserts that the coming of the true church is imminent, “In a short time, each will have to give an account of how he has come to the faith. The separation of the godless from the elect would indeed bring about a true Christian church” (134). In the seventh he emphasizes “Christ was a lowly person, of unimportant parents” (137). In the eighth he claims that the elect make room for God in their hearts.

Highly Provoke Defense

Here Muntzer attacks Luther at great length calling him “Doctor Liar” (143). He argues that he, Muntzer, is not preaching rebellion but, instead, preaching that the law be followed. “Behold, the basic source of usury, theft, and robbery is our lords and princes, who take all creatures for their private property” (144). In other words, Muntzer maintains that the rich are the real thieves while Luther claims that the poor are thieves whenever they don’t respect private property. After smearing Luther at great length he concludes, “The people will be free. And God alone will be lord over them” (154).

While reading the essay “On Building a Social Movement” in Myles Horton, The Myles Horton Reader: Education for Social Change, ed. Dale Jacobs (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2003), I came across this insightful passage:

It’s been my experience that, to get started, you have to have unannounced meetings or you can’t have a meeting. What you’ve got to do is to find a man back there that’ll get a few people together at his house… and talk to one or two people, when there’s not anybody around. You have to build it up, in little house meetings. You don’t have a meeting; meetings are the worst way in the world, because that’s an open invitation to politicians to come in and take over. That’s their meat, that’s their game. Don’t play their game. You know, set up your own rules of the game. You know, when you were talking about one community wanting a school? Now what you’ve got to find is somebody needs to go in to a place like that, somebody that’s preferably a native, or known to these people, or somebody that’s related to them, even better; and go in and talk to somebody until they tell you the truth of the situation. And then, you win their confidence, and say, well, you get three or four other people together, and they’ll say, maybe these people are afraid to talk to a stranger, but I’ll see. You finally get through, and you meet two or three more people, and you build up very slowly, and these people are the people you want to reach. And then they begin, and if they’re doing something, and they ask for your help, you give help to them–then you’ve got it made. But you have to keep it kind of underground, not too open, and that’s for two reasons. One was the reason you gave where they come and take over. And the other is, these people aren’t going to talk if those people are around. So you’ve got to work with the people you’re dealing with.

Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997)

In this book Tanner argues for the utility of insights from anthropology in theological work. Her main argument is that, rather than accepting H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic formulation of Christ against culture, Christians must recognize that religious community and, by extension, theology are part of culture. To construct her argument, she offers a primarily social understanding of human nature, “Human beings construct the character of their own lives through group living” (4). After tracing the historical origin of the concept of culture through its role in manufacturing the hegemony of urban elites, she defines culture as “the primacy of social influences on the lives of individuals” (13). The book is divided into two parts, the first focuses on defining the concept of culture. The second on looking at how an understanding of culture can influence the study and construction of theology.

Culture, as she understands it, has nine basic aspects: 1. “culture is understood as a human universal” (25); 2. “The fact of ‘culture’ is common to all; the particular pattern of culture differs among all;” 3. “culture varies with social group” (26); 4. “a culture tends to be conceived as… [an] entire way of life;” 5. “because cultures are group-specific they are associated with social consensus;” 6. “culture is understood to constitute or construct human nature” (27); 7. “Cultures are conventions in the sense that they are human constructions;” 8. cultures are contingent and “a particular culture can never claim inevitability;” 9. “the notion of culture suggests social determinism: society decisively shapes the character of its members” (28). Perhaps her most important insight into culture is that it is “the meaning dimension of social life” (31). Additionally, she argues that it is now “less and less plausible to presume that cultures are self-contained and clearly bounded units, internally consistent and unified wholes of beliefs and values…” (38). Culture, is not, stable. Rather it is inherently unstable.

The key question of the second section is: “How might some fundamental theological topics appear differently, what new directions for their investigation might arise, were one to experiment in theology with a postmodern view of culture” (61)? She notes, “Saying that theology is a part of culture becomes a way of talking about theology in terms of what it means to be human” (64). Armed with this insight, she makes a distinction between everyday theology and academic theology. Both have “to do… with the meaning dimension of Christian practices, the theological aspect of all socially significant Christian action.” Everyday theology is “found embedded in such matters as the way the altar and pews are arranged” (70). Academic theology, in contrast, is a critical exercise that seeks to systematize and critique Christian practice and everyday theology.

When considering theological method she writes that it has “a twofold character. First, theologians show an artisanlike inventiveness in the way they work on a variety of materials that do not dictate of themselves what theologians should do with them. Second, theologians exhibit a tactical cleverness with respect to other interpretations and organizations of such materials that are already on the ground” (87). This means that “the issue of whose theological position is most compelling is decided by judgments of an aesthetic sort, ones like those used to determine, say, the best interpretations of a poem” (91). Further, “Faced with an incredibly disparate and complex set of materials, the theologian is always ultimately making meaning rather than finding it” (93).

The balance of the book is spent arguing for Tanner’s particular theological positions. Against people like John Millbank she rejects firm boundaries between Christian communities and the wider society. She rejects the use of “logico-deductive” arguments, claiming they are insufficient and inaccurate in constructive theological work (117). Her emphasis on everyday theology leads her to argue that “Christian identity, at this most basic level… is more a matter of form than substance” (124). Tradition is important in maintaining form across time. And that this tradition and form are a matter of discipleship, “One only comes to know the character of one’s own discipleship by listening to them… One remains the disciple of God, and not the disciple of God’s witnesses” (138).

Her concluding chapter’s argument is summarized in this sentence from its first paragraph: “My conclusions in the last chapter about Christian identity–that it is constituted most fundamentally by a community of argument concerning the meaning of true discipleship–suggested that Christian identity need not be jeopardized by ongoing disagreement about what Christians should say, feel, and do” (156).

My major criticism of Tanner is that she grossly underestimates the role of violence in maintaining theological consensus and establishing the boundaries of identity. While she amply engages with other theologians, references to Schleiermacher, Lindbeck, Millbank and Kaufman abound, she does not discuss particular religious communities, historical events or traditions. This makes her argument feel somewhat disassociated from the everyday theology that she sees as the subject of study of academic theologians. This disconnect undercuts her argument.

John Woolman, The Journal of John Woolman in The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman, ed. Philips Moulton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 21-192

In his journal John Woolman accounts for his growing belief that slavery is wrong, his transformation into an abolitionist and his efforts to convince Quakers in both America and England to stop practicing the slave trade. His concern with slavery is that it is a moral sin and he is working to end moral sins, be they slavery or wanton behavior (see, for instance, his discussion of his rebuke of the “sleights-of-hand” performer in 1763 (138)). The journal spans 1720 to 1772 and was revised and rewritten between 1770 and 1772.

The years 1720 to 1742 constitute his childhood and early adulthood and contain Augustine like accounts of how his understanding of human nature is rooted in his own early experiences. For instance, after killing a bird and her babies and then feeling guilty about his action he writes, “he whose tender mercies are over all his works hath placed a principle in the human mind which incites to exercise goodness toward every living creature” (25). As a Quaker he believes “true religion consisted in an inward life” and his journal can be seen as an attempt to practice that religion (28).

His conversion to abolition takes place when he participates in the sale of an African American slave he knows. Shortly afterwards he stops working as a merchant and becomes a tailor observing, “I saw that a humble man with the blessing of the Lord might live on a little, and that where the heart was set on greatness, success in business did not satisfy the craving, but that in common with an increase of wealth the desire of wealth increased” (35).

The majority of the journal consists of Woolman’s account of visiting various Quaker meetings and trying to convince them to stop participating in the slave trade. He recognizes that this is a difficult task, “Deep-rooted customs, though wrong, are not easily altered, but it is the duty of everyone to be firm in that which they certainly know is right for them” (50). At the core of his organizing methodology is the conviction that, “Conduct is more convincing than language” (60).

Of Woolman’s several journeys two in particular worth mention are his visit to the Native Americans in 1763 and his trip to England, where he ultimately died, in 1772. In England he tried to convince the London Quaker meeting that slavery was wrong.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated Terence Irwin (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999)

Aristotle’s major ethical work is the primary source for the tradition of virtue ethics. It is notable, amongst other things, for his teleology, definition of virtue, doctrine of human nature and discussion on friendship.

Aristotle believes that, “Every craft and every line of inquiry, and likewise every action and decision, seems to seek some good” (1). The good he thinks that humans seek is what he calls happiness. He identifies three kinds of happiness: pleasure, honor and study. Aristotle is hierarchical in his thinking and he ranks all of his typologies. For him, study is the highest good. Likewise, political science is the highest science because it is about the happiness of many and not just one.

The good that is sought can also be understood as a function. And just as a horse has a function, so too with a human being “activity of the soul in accord with reason or requiring reason” (9). Philosophy can be understood as the craft to best realize this function. Goods can be divided into three types: external, of the soul and of the body.

A person can only be said to be truly happy at the end of life because reversals of fortune can reveal that what was thought to be happiness earlier was illusory. Happiness is defined as “a certain sort of activity of the soul in accord with complete virtue” and virtue is defined as “virtue of the soul, not of the body” (16). Aristotle divides the virtues into virtues of thought and virtues of character. Some of the virtues of thought are wisdom, comprehension, and prudence. Some of the virtues of character are generosity and temperance.

This is an act based ethics, ones becomes virtuous by doing things, by acquiring the habits of virtue, rather than believing things. Virtues, furthermore, are understood as the mean between two extremes. Generosity, for instance, is the mean between being a miser and being a spendthrift.

Justice in this system is what allows us to become virtuous. An unjust social system is one that cultivates unvirtuous behavior. Law is useful and just when it aims to cultivate virtuous behavior. One reason why political science is the highest science is that it tries to pass the correct laws that will cultivate the correct behavior in the citizens of a city.

Aristotle, incidentally, understands human beings as social creatures. We are people who live in communities, cities, and are parts of families. Seeking virtue is never an individual act.

Also, Aristotle believes that there are both voluntary and involuntary actions. Only adults, and possibly men, are capable of voluntary actions.

Throughout the book Aristotle makes reference to incontinent people as opposed to virtuous people. The incontinent are those who are “prone to be overcome by pleasures” which the lowest kind of happiness (109).

Two books (VIII and IX) of the ethics are concerned with friendship which “is most necessary for our life” and is what “hold cities together.” It is so important that most “legislators would seem to be more concerned about it than justice” (119). The good that friendship seeks is love and “friendship is said to be reciprocated goodwill.” Friendships has “three species, corresponding to three objects of love” (121). These are: utility, pleasure and character. The most enduring, and rarest, kind of friendship is that of character.

The book closes with a discussion of education and the disconnect between theory and practice. Aristotle attacks “the sophists who advertise that they teach politics but none of them practices it” while praising those who both teach and practice politics.

E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1966 [1963])

Thompson’s book, like the title suggests, chronicles the making of the English working class. In the Preface he lays out his methodology and argument. “Making, because it is a study in active process, which owes as much to agency as to conditioning.” “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” (9). “Class-consciousness is the way in which these experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value-systems, ideas, and institutional forms… Consciousness of class arises in the same way in different times and places, but never in just the same way” (10). “Class is defined by men as they live their own history, and, in the end, this is its only definition” (11).

He also describes the aim and structure of the book, “This book can be seen as a biography of the English working class from its adolescence until its early manhood” (11). Part One of the book looks at “the continuing popular traditions in the 18th century which influenced the crucial Jacobin agitation of the 1790s.” Part Two traces the experiences of workers during the Industrial Revolution and attempts to “estimate… the character of the new industrial work discipline, and the bearing upon this of the Methodist Church.” Part Three picks “up the story of plebeian Radicalism… through Luddism to the heroic age at the close of the Napoleonic Wars.” The book concludes by look at the evolution of political theory and class consciousness in the 1820s and 1830s. Thompson admits to have a particular democratic communist agenda in writing his book, “Causes which were lost in England might, in Asia or Africa, yet be won” (13).

The work is broken into three parts. The first part “The Liberty Tree” covers chapters one to five, the second part “The Curse of Adam” covers chapters six to twelve, and the third part “The Working Class Presence” covers chapters thirteen through sixteen.

Part I: The Liberty Tree

In the first chapter, he defines a working-class organization as “There is the working man as Secretary. There is the low weekly subscription. There is the intermingling of economic and political themes… There is the function of the meeting, both as a social occasion and as a centre for political activity. There is the realistic attention to procedural formalities. Above all, there is the determination to propagate opinions and to organise the converted, embodied in the leading rule: ‘That the number of our Members be unlimited’” (21).

In the second chapter, he sees religious dissent as a space for preserving radical ideas by keeping them “in the imagery of sermons and tracts and in democratic forms of organization” (30). Additionally, “The tension between the kingdoms ‘without’ and ‘within’ implied a rejection of the ruling powers except at points where co-existence was inevitable” (31) or throughout “the Industrial Revolution we can see this tension…. in the Dissent of the poor, with chiliasm at one pole, and quietism at the other” (50). He summarizes this argument, “The intellectual history of Dissent is made up of collisions, schisms, mutations; and one feels often that the dormant seeds of political Radicalism lay within it, ready to germinate whenever planted in a beneficent and hopeful social context” (36). On a side note, in this section he also traces the origin of “a ‘calling’” to Puritan culture and argues that it was “particularly well adapted to the experience of prospering and industrious middle class or petty bourgeois groups” (37). He pays particular attention to Methodism throughout the book, arguing that it had both a conservative aspect and “was indirectly responsible for a growth in the self-confidence and capacity for organisation of working people” (42).

In the third chapter Thompson lays out his famous argument about moral economy and describes his method: “If we are concerned with historical change we must attend to the articulate minorities. But these minorities arise from a less articulate majority whose consciousness may be described as being, at this time, ‘sub-political’… The inarticulate, by definition, leave few records of their thoughts. We catch glimpses in moments of crisis… and yet crisis is not a typical condition” (55). Further, “We may isolate two ways in which these ‘sub-political’ traditions affect the early working-class movement: the phenomena of riot and of the mob, and the popular notions of an Englishman’s ‘birthright’” (59). As he summarizes this, “Hence the final years of the 18th century saw a last desperate effort by the people to reimpose the older moral economy as against the economy of the free market” (67) and in “considering only this one form of ‘mob’ action we have come upon unsuspected complexities, for behind every such form of popular direct action some legitimising notion of right is to be found” (68).

In chapter four Thompson takes up the task of describing how the Englishman’s “birthright” of freedom formed a basis for the moral economy and working class resistance. He writes, “they felt themselves, in some obscure way, to be defending the ‘Constitution’ against alien elements who threatened their ‘birthright.’ …Patriotism, nationalism, even bigotry and repression, were all clothed in the rhetoric of liberty” (78). Mostly, this manifested as a desire to be left alone and understanding that the “profession of a soldier was held to be dishonourable” (81). However, Thompson also notes, “This defensive ideology nourished… far larger claims to positive rights” (83).

In chapter five Thompson tries to show how the traditions of the 18th century laid the way for the emergence of working class radicalism in the early 19th century. He summarizes the chapter thusly: “In the 1790s something like an ‘English Revolution’ took place, of profound importance in shaping the consciousness of the post-war working class. It is true that the revolutionary impulse was strangled in its infancy; and the first consequence was that of bitterness and despair. The counter-revolutionary panic of the ruling classes expressed itself in every part of social life; in attitudes of trade unionism, to the education of the people, to their sports and manners, to their publications and societies, and their political rights. And the reflex of despair among the common people can be seen, during the war years, in the inverted chiliasm of the Southcottians and the new Methodist revival” (177).

Part II: The Curse of Adam

Chapter six lays out a theoretical framework for the next few chapters that deal specifically with the impact of the Industrial Revolution on particular groups in society. He argues, “steam power and the cotton-mill = new working class” (191) and claims the “working class made itself as much as it was made.” He sees a working class and not classes because “first… the growth of class-consciousness: the consciousness of an identity of interests as between all these diverse groups of working people and as against the interests of other classes. And, second, in the growth of corresponding forms of political and industrial organizations” (194). At the heart of these differences in interests lie an exploitative relationship which “is depersonalised, in the sense that no lingering obligations of mutuality… are admitted” (203). Furthermore, the “process of industrialisation must, in any conceivable social context, entail suffering and the destruction of older and valued ways of life” (204). He writes, “People may consume more goods and become less happy or less free at the same time” (211).

Chapters seven, eight, and nine look at how the process of class formation impacted field labourers, artisans, and weavers. In all three cases he argues that the conflict between the groups and the emerging industrial class can be understood as a “conflict… between two cultural modes or ways of life” (305).

Chapter ten is dedicated to arguing that the above groups did not fare better under the Industrial Revolution, “In the fifty years of the Industrial Revolution the working-class share of the national product had almost certainly fallen relative to the share of the property-owning and professional classes” (318). He pays particular attention to child labor and argues against those who note that it took some time for the movement against it to arise after the advent of the Industrial Revolution by claiming, “We forget how long abuses can continue ‘unknown’ until they are articulated: how people can look at misery and not notice it, until misery itself rebels” (342). Setting up the next chapter he claims, “We shall return to the Methodists, and see why it was their peculiar mission to act as apologists of child labour” (348).

Chapter eleven focuses on the role of Methodism in forming, taming and disciplining  the working class. During this period he sees Methodism as making great gains among the working class and consolidating “a new bureaucracy of ministers” (351). He also claims, the “factory system demands a transformation of human nature” (362). Further, he lays out a variety reasons why Methodism accommodated child labor.

Chapter twelve looks at the impact of the Industrial Revolution on community, “In the industrial areas it can be seen in the extension of discipline of the factory or clock from working to leisure hours, from the working-day to the Sabbath, and in the assault upon… traditional holidays and fairs” (403). He summarizes the chapter “together with that of the loss of any felt cohesion in the community, save that which the working people, in antagonism to their labour and to their masters, built for themselves” (447).

Part Three: The Working-Class Presence

Chapter thirteen looks at how popular radicalism survived into the 19th century, the “laws outlawing corresponding societies and open political meetings had atomised the movement, so that the individualistic and quarrelsome behaviour of its leaders was a function of their situation as ‘voices’ rather than as organisers” (469).

Chapter fourteen traces this popular radicalism in “the Industrial Revolution, [and how] new institutions, new attitudes, new community-patterns, were emerging which were, consciously and unconsciously, designed to resist the intrusion of the magistrate, the employer, the parson or the spy” (487). Additionally, we “find some the sharpest conflicts involving men with special skills who attempted to attain to, or to hold to, a privileged position” (506). The major form of working-class organization that Thompson focuses on here in Luddism, “We have attempted to draw closer to the Luddite movement from three directions: the shadowy tradition of some political ‘underground’: the opacity of historical sources: and the vigorous traditions of illicit trade unionism” (521). For the Luddites, “What was at issue was the ‘freedom’ of the capitalist to destroy the customs of the trade, whether by new machinery, by the factory-system, or by unrestricted competition, beating-down wages” (549). He sees the Luddites looking forward to “a democratic community, in which industrial growth should be regulated according to ethical priorities” (552). He traces its demise to various factors. In the Midlands: where they were partially successful, the government deployed massive force against them, and it made their practices illegal. The Luddites also had the impact of bringing about greater unity amongst the ruling classes.

Chapter fifteen traces the development of political radicalism, as opposed to the workplace-based radicalism of the previous chapter. Thompson holds that it “was a generalized libertarian rhetoric, a running battle between the people and the unreformed House of Commons within which one issue after another was thrown to the fore” (604). He sees radicalism as having born “a direct relationship to the structure of each community” (611). He also treats the problem of leadership in this (these) movements: “the democratic movement looked to the aristocratic or gentlemanly leader;” “there was… [a] demagogic element;” there was no political organization to provide “self-discipline” (623); there was a tension between a resort to force and electoral reform. The “true heroes” of this movement were its local leadership, not its national leadership (631). Finally, he traces the influence of the Peterloo massacre on both the development of the working class and its enemies.

Chapter sixteen provides the conclusion and traces the emergence of class consciousness which occurred when “working men formed a picture of the organisation of society, out of their own experience and with the help of their hard-won and erratic experience, which was above all a political picture” (712). The development of a free press played an important role in this because “Persecution cannot easily stand up in the face of ridicule” (722). William Cobbett was crucial here. The Owenites mark the emergence of the first working-class movement and marks the end of older forms of revolt because they learned “to see capitalism, not as a collection of discrete events, but as a system” (806). Throughout this period there was also the emergence of middle class consciousness.