Reply: Class and the politics of history

Our principal anxiety about the responses to "Farewell to the Working Class ?" concerns their strangely private character. In the main-the response of Barbara Weinstein excepted-the respondents seem to use the opportunity our article has provided simply to restate some of their own previous positions . Often they engage neither with the substance of our article nor, equally importantly, with its conciliatory tone. As a result, the chance further to depolemicize these important debates has been lost or otherwise evaded in a variety of reiterations.