Early essay written by historian Peter Linebaugh in 1968, published in Ripsaw, the radical student journal of the Graduate Union of Columbia University.
An early piece by Peter Linebaugh – editorial member of Zerowork and collective member of Midnight Notes – who would go on to write the seminal work The London Hanged (1991).
The essay is very much a work of its time. Couched within the historiography of the period, its targets are the “New History,” with its move toward quantification, its use of specific jargon, and its positivism. He gets some digs in at Staughton Lynd and the historicans associated with Radical America, which was interesting. The influence of EP Thompson, Linebaugh’s mentor, is clear.
Ripsaw published a total of 5 issues, the first two with the tagline “published by the graduate student union of Columbia University,” and then after that by the “graduate students at Columbia University.” As we understand it the journal ceased publication in 1970.
Interestingly, few copies of Ripsaw are held by institutions. We locate a complete set of 1-5 at NYU, but even Columbia only seems to have 1-4. Number two is held by just a handful of schools, per OCLC.
The Linebaugh article is of interest for our project, but the other pieces less so. Accordingly, we have scanned his article and placed it on Libcom, here.
New York Archives of Autonomist Marxism 