Time, temporality and the history of capitalism

Abstract

The year 2017 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of E. P. Thompson's landmark article 'Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism' in the pages of this journal. At currently 4,298 citations on Google Scholar, it is one of the most frequently cited articles in the field of history.1 Although ostensibly about work and industrial labour in particular, the appeal of Thompson's suggestive piece has extended far beyond a more narrowly defined labour history, into cultural history and general problems concerning the period since the eighteenth century, of life under Enlightenment rationalism and capitalist modernity. In any case, E. P. Thompson's article established the centrality of time for understanding the logic of capitalism. Thanks to the broad, overarching questions it raised, even non-Marxists could safely feel compelled.