E. P. Thompson, full name (seldom used) Edward Palmer Thompson (1924-1993). British historian and intellectual. He decisively influenced British Marxist thought, distinguishing it from European Marxism and giving it a unique character, within what is known as humanist socialism. Born in Oxford to Methodist missionary parents. Fought in World War II, in a tank company in Italy. Studied at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Politically committed to the left and pacifism, in 1946 he formed the Communist Party Historians Group or Cambridge Group, with Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawn, Rodney Hilton, Dona Torr, and others. In 1948 he married Dorothy Towers, also a historian of the same trend. The group was centered around the journal Past and Present from 1952, and survived his departure from the Communist Party (1956, following the Soviet invasion of Hungary). Played a key role in the early days of the movement known as the New Left in the late 1950s. He was noted for his critical stance from the left against the Labour governments of 1964-1970 and 1974-1979. During the 1980s he led the movement of intellectuals against nuclear weapons in Europe. He intervened in opening dialogue between the Western European pacifist movement and dissidents from Eastern Europe dominated by the Soviet Union, for which he was accused by the latter of acting in the service of American imperialism. Professor at various universities in England and the United States, his loud departure from the University of Warwick in protest against its commercialization (which he recounts in his book Warwick University Limited, 1971) was notable. He attacked the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser and his British followers from the New Left Review (a magazine and movement from which Thompson had distanced himself from its second period, which included elements close to Trotskyism). This episode sparked a juicy historiographical debate, with cross-contributions between himself (The Poverty of Theory, 1978) and New Left, with Perry Anderson at the forefront (Discussions/arguments within English Marxism, playing with the word Arguments). His historiographical production focuses on social history, especially on the working-class movement of industrial revolution England. Prolific essayist and columnist, he also published influential biographies of William Morris and William Blake. His essential work is The Making of the English Working Class (1963), where he revises the traditional Marxist interpretation from a non-dogmatic historical materialism.
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