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Writer's pictureAnton Higgins

Review: E.P. Thompson's Customs in Common


"The [Bread] Riot Or half a loaf is better than no bread." From a "collection of wood prints ... used to illustrate stories that warned of involvement in crime and unvirtuous pastimes" (Source: Bristol Radical History Group)

Customs in Common consolidated E. P. Thompson’s renown as a brilliantly original historian, provocative and passionate though always heavily evidence-based. Poised alongside The Making of the English Working Class, this volume of essays sought to redress historical perception of the 18th century as a time of declining customary usages[1], instead emphasising the robustness of the customs of working people in spite of advancing capitalism. This challenge provoked controversy, shifting the nexus of debate from workers’ living standards, to capitalism’s culturally disruptive power[2]. The shift was led by the essays ‘Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’ and ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’[3]. The latter acquired a new buttress of defence in this volume, in the form of ‘The Moral Economy Reviewed’, having been challenged since its original publication[4]. These essays are the focus of this review, in recognition of their exceptional contributions to the study of 18th-century English working life and customs.


‘The Moral Economy’ is perhaps the most consequential essay of the volume. Thompson riles against reductionism from previous historians who explained away, instead of sufficiently analysing, causes of food riots as compulsive responses to economic stimuli. Instead, he shows that while economic factors could trigger insurrection, crowds had rational, “legitimising notions”, informed by a “moral economy” – encompassing customary social and economic norms and responsibilities. The paternalist tradition of market regulation in times of dearth declined in the face of a new laissez-faire political economy and repression from authorities. Nevertheless, working people defended this paternalism, resisting free-market capitalism as a crowd[5], enforcing their customary protection, including price setting, generally, Thompson claims, non-violently.


The essay provoked much criticism, to which Thompson relatively comprehensively responded in ‘Moral Economy Revisited’. He covers historians’ views from those he labels ‘positivists’ to ‘modernisation theorists’ to those who fundamentally misunderstood his writing. In his rebuke, however, Thompson’s wit at times strays into discourtesy, using needlessly colourful retorts, drifting into the personal[6]. Nonetheless, this does not detract from his engaging writing nor the impressive defence of his argument. Thompson dedicates much time to undermining economic historians, some of whom propose a notion of exclusive and direct causality between economic factors and riot[7]. He utilises his breadth of reading, neatly employing international comparisons (such as Ireland and India) to underline the importance of contextual and cultural considerations[8]. Thompson also dismantles economic arguments he believes too theoretical, which defend the logic and morality of Adam Smith’s laissez-faire. Rather, he emphasises laissez-faire’s deficiencies in solving scarcity, instead showing its role in deepening these crises.


Nevertheless, Thompson’s response to criticism is not faultless. He fails to adequately address disagreements over the nature of the food riots. Many have argued that rather than embodying a rejection of free-market capitalism, the riots represent retaliation for perceived exploitation. Thompson does not address the time-lag between the implementation of market mechanisms, declining paternalism, and outbreaks of rioting[9]. Nor does he address the persuasive claim that price setting was symptomatic of a battle fought within the capitalist structure, not against it[10]. Price rioters were not, regardless of economic context, demanding customary prices. They considered and accepted changes dictated by harvest conditions and inflation[11]. Thompson’s static representation of the demands of workers is at odds with his own definition of custom being “in continuous flux”[12]. He provides description only of complete customary shift in the moral economy as pressure upon wages increased in the 19th century[13]. Thompson’s depiction of food riots as non-violent is also problematic. There is evidence that riots were as often disorderly as orderly. One sample of 128 food riots in England (1790-1810) shows 93 cases of foodstuff being seized or damaged, 83 cases in which it was sold or negotiated and 43 cases which contained both[14]. In portraying capitalism as largely destructive, apathetic to customs and opposed by non-violent workers he underplays violence and overplays the degree of system rejection.


‘Time, Work Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’ was less controversial[15], though just as consequential, revising historical understanding about the nature of work and how workers were acclimatised to the capitalist work system. Thompson details the shift from task-orientated to more regimented work patterns resulting from the development of industrialisation, new technologies (particularly the clock) and theologies, schooling and the suppression of fairs and sports[16]. The result was the transformation of human perception of time: “Time is now currency: it is not passed but spent”[17]. Though this process met resistance, it was gradually directed not against the new work-time but about it, pressing for reductions in hours, rather than abandonment of hourly regimentation. The essay has not been without criticism, particularly from Glennie and Thrift who argue that Thompson’s conceptualisation of time as unitary ignores temporal complexity[18], evident in differences in perception between communities and cultures. However, they overstate Thompson’s specificity. Thompson did not argue that everyone perceived time and experienced the shift in work-time in the same manner. He details general perceptions of time concerning work and its general shift. While Thompson argued the centrality of factors including industrialisation, he did not argue that others could not affect time-structure. Glennie and Thrift also misunderstand Thompson’s stance on religion. To state that he believed that religion had a ‘narrow influence’ simply affecting intellectual culture rather than working people[19] is to misinterpret the essay and to presume a complete shift from his earlier work on Methodism[20], which powerfully explain the psychologically formative role of religion in shifting work-ethos. Furthermore, they do not attempt to critique Thompson’s explanatory factors, they simply add others thus posing more questions than they answer. Thompson’s work on time and work discipline thus retains its explanatory power and contemporary relevancy, despite challenges.


Customs in Common is highly significant, revising the historical understanding of 18th-century society – despite disagreements over extent, it engendered an enduring consideration for cultural complexities. While Thompson’s arguments are not always entirely defensible, one can rely on them being incredibly well-supported and engagingly written.


 

Anonymous


Notes: [1] E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (London, 1991), p. 1. [2] Nicholas Rogers, ‘Plebians and Proletarians in 18th-Century Britain’, Labour/Le Travail, Vol. 33 (Spring 1994), p. 254. [3] Henceforth, ‘The Moral Economy’. [4] Thompson, Customs in Common, pp. ix-x. [5] Thompson, Customs in Common, p. 9. [6] For Example: Thompson, Customs in Common, p. 272 (“fat-headed notions”) and p. 260 (“thick-headed”). [7] Thompson, Customs in Common, p. 262. [8] Ibid., p. 269. [9] John Stevenson, ‘The ‘Moral Economy’ of the English Crowd: Myth and Reality’ in Anthony Fletcher (ed.), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985), p. 237. [10] John Stevenson, ‘Review of Customs in Common by E. P. Thompson’, The English Historical Review, Vol. 108 (April 1993), p. 408-409. [11] Ibid. [12] Thompson, Customs in Common, p. 6. [13] Ibid., p. 249. [14] John Bohstedt, ‘The Myth of the Feminine Food Riot: Women as Proto-Citizens in English Community Politics, 1790-1910’, in Harriet B. Applewhite and Darlie G. Levy (eds.), Women and Politics in the Age of Democratic Revolution (1990), p.59 cited in John Bohstedt, ‘The Moral Economy and the Discipline of Historical Context’, Journal of Social History, Vol. 26 (Oxford, 1992), p. 274. [15] Paul Glennie and Nigel Thrift, ‘Reworking E. P. Thompson’s “Time, Work-discipline and Industrial Capitalism”’, Time & Society(October 1996), p. 277. [16] Thompson, Customs in Common, p. 394. [17] Ibid., p. 359. [18] Glennie and Thrift, ‘Reworking Thompson’s “Time, Work-discipline and Industrial Capitalism”’, p. 276. [19] Ibid., p. 283. [20] E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London, 2013), Chapter 11.


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