ABSTRACT
Rarely in Edward Thompson's analysis of class struggle did he attempt to clarify the theoretical premises of his concept of historical materialism. Primarily, Thompson saw Louis Althusser's work as misinterpreting the empirical mode of enquiry as "empiricism", an ideological form erroneously applied to historical materialism, while methodologically, the conflict between the two came to focus on the question of historical evidence. Incorporating the experiences of ordinary people into theory was the secret of historical materialism. In Thompson's view Althusser's appraisals of Stalin's contribution to the "science" of Marxism ran throughout his work, notably in reference to the base and superstructure metaphor. On a political plane Thompson aligned structuralism to a tradition of anti-revolutionary thought. The growth of socialist humanism throughout the 1960s added to the panic within the Communist Parties, provoking a backlash which set out to reconstitute an orthodoxy which had lost Stalin.
