Talk:E. P. Thompson on Luddites

''The article below is in dire need of rewriting so as to cohere with the neutral point of view. If it can't be rendered unbiased, it should be removed to Wikipedia commentary.''

This article is a fairly accurate representation of the arguments put forward in what is widely recognised as a classic work on the period in question. It is therefore a reasonably unbiased retelling of a book which was designed to reflect an opinion. Given the importance of this book within history it seems to me that a discussion of one part of it is an entirely proper entry for encyclopedia. The title of the piece clearly identifies the article as a reflection of a specific book, by a specific author.

The discussion over "neutrality" or "unbias" is of course an old one in history. Indeed one of the chapters of this book is a sustained polemic against what he characterises as statistical history, and he argues strongly that the reflections of the people of the time are as important to understanding history as demographics. If you seek to remove this sort of history from an encyclopedia than you are yourself enforcing a strongly ideological position, and recapitulating an argument that took place within historical study 50 years previously.

If you feel that this article however is biased you are free to move it as you feel fit of course and I shall not restore it. There are however large sections of wikipedia which could be considered to be biased depending of course on your point of view and it would reduce the utility to move all of those sections to the commentary section. Alternatively if you wish you may go through the piece adding "in the book", and "according to Thompson" where I have not done so. This will reduce the readability of the piece of course, and is I feel unnecessary given the title of the article. The choice is yours.


 * If you think that the sort of conversations that historians have had about the possibility of writing history objectively bear directly on the Wikipedia's nonbias policy, you probably don't understand the policy. Please see neutral point of view, and feel free to advance any arguments you feel might be persuasive. I'll be happy to reply.


 * I have very slightly reworded some claims in the article. Now, if you think this was an unbiased article, I recommend you have a look at the neutral point of view, as it might change your mind. For one thing, all the many places in which you (i.e., the author) imply that Thompson is correct in his views can easily be changed.


 * The other thing that is needed to make this a fully unbiased article is to provide all perspectives on E. P. Thompson on Luddites--not just E. P. Thompson's. Therefore, some words from his critics are in order. --LMS

I'm with (Phillip?) on this one: Accurately and neutrally reporting someone's bias is not itself bias. I think an article about someone's point of view is entirely appropriate for an encyclopedia, especially when it is of some historical significance. Just as I might imagine an article on "Mark Twain's Misanthropy" would be interesting and valuable. Such an article would clearly not be expressing the misanthropic point of view itself, merely reporting the fact that Twain held such views and how that affected his work (or didn't).

I don't think it's necessary to overly litter the article with "Thompson says..." in every paragraph. It might be appropriate here and in some other places to add a section on opposing views of the time (or a pointer to another article on those opposing views). -- Lee Daniel Crocker - I'm concerned about wikipedia entries for single works by scholars who work for decades. This is a book review. And Thompson (more widely known as a premiere Marxist historian than as the author of this one book) was certainly not neutral. Let me recommend the corpus of work on the Mill Girls of Lowell for a rather different idea of what industrialization meant to workers lives and incomes.

I totally agree that this was essentially a favorable book review. It can be made into something better, which is why I didn't just move it to Wikipedia commentary. --LMS