Abstract

AbstractJohn D. French's stimulating article, which explores the scope for comparing working-class leaders across time and space, is considered in this contribution by reference to my biography of August Bebel and with a particular focus on the following topics: a) historical actors as shaped by their own particular time and place; b) the importance of personal relationships and networks in making people who they are; c) the importance of psychological elements and the risk in interpreting them in retrospect – recovering them depends upon the sources available; d) how charisma reflects an interdependence between attribution and individual qualities; e) the importance of political milieux for the flourishing of individual working-class leaders; and f) the relationship between political work to both civil society and existing class relations. Using these approaches allows us to write cross-border and cross-temporal “embodied social biographies”, as suggested by French.

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