added in parallel to vanky's reply above well that's driven me back to read the postscript it's a good read where the following apologia looks relevant ' ' it is true that in i allowed some hectoring political moralisms as well as a few stalinist pieties to intrude upon the text i had then a somewhat reverent notion of marxism as a received orthodoxy the book was published at the height of the cold war intellectual mccarthyism was not confined to the us the climate can be illustrated by the welcome afforded my book in the non socialist press this welcome was mainly silence broken by the review in tls headed 'morris marxism'' so yes the edition was coolly received in ept's opinion largely because of his unfashionable marxist viewpoint but in ' when the making of the english working class was in its th penguin reprint things had moved on jan utc