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

William Dixon and David Wilson

History of Economics Review, 2006, vol. 43, issue 1, 37-55

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.

Date: 2006
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DOI: 10.1080/18386318.2006.11681220

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