In the book’s preface, Thompson declares that he hopes to “rescue” his working-class subjects from “the enormous condescension of posterity” (12). This quotation has two meanings. First, it is a comment on those who condescend: mid-20th-century scholars, for instance, who devote years to studying the past without considering the perspectives of the people who lived through it. Second, it highlights the objects of condescension: the men and women of the late-18th and early-19th century who made the English working class.

Thompson challenges economists who subscribe to a “new anti-catastrophic orthodoxy” (195) regarding the Industrial Revolution. During the Cold War Era of the mid-20th century, some scholars responded to the global threat of totalitarian communism by writing supportively about the history of industrial capitalism. Economists in particular concluded that the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century had raised the standard of living in the West and therefore, on balance, had brought great benefits to the masses. Thompson takes issue with this new orthodoxy for several reasons. First, empirical studies, such as those undertaken by data-crunching economists, cannot tell the whole story. Standards of living statistics can be useful, but they ignore so many elements of human experience that they must be treated with care.