ers’movementsand the socialist and communist parties of the late nineteenth
and earlytwentieth centuries.
Thesedynamics are especiallyapparent in light of the profound social and
culturaltransformations set into motion in the wake of“1968.”Their resonances
in the scholarship, includingchanges in academic disciplines and intellectual
cultures, maybeused productively to understand the initial enthusiasticrecla-
mation(and gradual marginalization) of working-class history and culture
since the 1970s. This might include the following questions: Can the rediscovery
of the workingclass, inside and outside academia,alsobeseen asaform of
mourning for the demise of traditionalclass society and the changingnature
of work in postindustrial society?Inwhatways are the subsequent wavesof
scholarlyinterest and disinterest alsoamanifestation of the changingfortunes
of Marxism afterthe death of communism?And to what degree are these reread-
ingsmotivated by the continuingsearch for new models of social movements
and counterpublics?
As this book has shown, from the early1870s to the early1930s, the prole-
tarian dream emergedasthe product of extensive textual productivity and inten-
sive cultural activity focused on empowering the workingclass and establishing
their active role in dramatic social and economic transformations and major
world historical events. The stories,images, figures, symbols, and rituals created
under these conditions conjured the vision ofarevolutionary class united in the
fight against oppression and injusticeand emboldened by dreams ofabetter,
happier future. The extensive,but short-lived scholarlyengagement with work-
ing-class cultureduring the 1970sand 1980s and its resonances in the new social
and culturalhistories can be read in similarterms, asaprocess of identification
and projection. Lookingback, it would be easyto disqualify manyearlystudies
because of their Marxist orthodoxies, New Left pieties, and social romantic fan-
tasies of class and revolution. Especiallythe more dogmatic and polemicalcon-
tributions have not stood upto the test of time, with their predictions about the
imminent demise of capitalism invalidated by later political developments and
their evaluation of socialist writers and thinkers marredbyfealty to some“cor-
rect”version of communism or“better”Marxist theory.Arecurringargument
made in these studies can be summarized as follows: political mistakes were
made;ifpartieshad onlypursued the right course of action, if theorists had
onlyanalyzed the situation correctly, if workers had onlybeen better organized,
or if intellectuals had onlybeen more supportive.Inthese scenarios,symbolic
practices bear much of the blame–if artists and writers had onlyrejected the
bourgeois heritage, returned to the classical forms and models, fullyembraced
avant-garde techniques,orjoined the workers in the factories and on the streets.
340 Afterword