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"Thompson was arguing against both the conservative view of class relations as describing “the harmonious coexistence of groups performing different ‘social roles’” and a form of economic determinism that imagines, as he put it later in an interview, that “some kind of raw material like peasants ‘flocking to factories’” could be “processed into so many yards of class-conscious proletarians”. For Thompson, the working class “made itself as much as it was made”. This idea of agency, of people, even in the most inauspicious circumstances, possessing the capacity to act on the world was central to his life work."
