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The English historian, EP Thompson, wrote in the Preface to his epic The Making of the English Working Class: 'I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the "obsolete" hand-loom weaver, the "utopian" artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity.' For Thompson, the English working class “made itself as much as it was made' on the basis of its communitarianism. Its culture became an important factor in the consciousness developed by that class and the nature of the resistance it forged against the excesses of capitalism.