The Making of the English Working Class — How Shared Experience Becomes Class

Crisis in Perception · Aug 2, 2026 · 46m

What turns scattered hardship into a shared political identity?

Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world.

Using The Making of the English Working Class by E. P. Thompson as our lens, this episode investigates how class becomes a historical relationship through shared experience, cultural traditions, organization, and conflict.

Thompson rejects the idea that industrialization mechanically produced a ready-made working class. Economic pressures shaped workers’ lives, but class consciousness developed through the ways artisans, weavers, labourers…