Of Multitudes and Moral Sympathy: E. P. Thompson, Althusser, and Adam Smith

Abstract

The author focuses on E. P. Thompson's The Poverty of Theory, especially Thompson's criticism of Louis Althusser. The author begins with a critique of Thompson's interpretation of the 18th-century English crowd & questions whether the crowd's moral economy was resistant to the assent of capitalist market relations as codified in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. He then demonstrates that Smith's legacy haunts Thompson's concept of the crowd. Finally, he looks at Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, especially the connection between the early 18th-century food rioters & the more enlightened crowd of the 1790s. 46 References. A. Funderburg