20 SOCIAL SCIENTIST 73 John Foster, Class struggle and the industrial revolutions early capitalism in three English towns, London, 1974, talks of two levels of incompleteness: "There is that of the individual 'community'—never much more than an arbitrary geographical bite out of a larger political system. And there is that of the system itself—seen statically at a particular moment m time" (pp 2-3). 74 Peter Burke has in mind this reservation when he unfavourably compares "history from below' with Braudel's 'total history', "people's history and total history' in R Samuel, op cit. One also recalls Tom Nairn's extended review of EP Thompson's work recommending 'history from above' to complement 'history from below* in R Blackburn (ed). Ideology in Social Sciences, London, 1972. 75 I now realise that the problem was rather oversimplified in S Bhattacharya, "Cotton mills and spinning wheels". Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XI, November 14, 1976.