IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rherxx/v43y2006i1p37-55.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Political Economy and the Historians: E.P. Thompson and the Moral Depletion Hypothesis

Author

Listed:
  • William Dixon
  • David Wilson

Abstract

Thompson presents the movement from moral to political economy as a stripping away of moral bonds and the emergence of impersonal political economy. In his alternative Thompson looks to the movement of a self-active subject but in doing so, we argue, he gets closer to the reality of political economy than he realised. Political economy was an important element of the radicalism, for example of Thomas Paine, in which Thompson sees the emergence of a working class voice. Political economy responded to subjectivity in the context of opposition to ‘Old Corruption’, and then necessarily looked to rely on the capacities and needs of the people.

Suggested Citation

  • William Dixon & David Wilson, 2006. "Political Economy and the Historians: E.P. Thompson and the Moral Depletion Hypothesis," History of Economics Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(1), pages 37-55, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rherxx:v:43:y:2006:i:1:p:37-55
    DOI: 10.1080/18386318.2006.11681220
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/18386318.2006.11681220
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/18386318.2006.11681220?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rherxx:v:43:y:2006:i:1:p:37-55. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rher .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.