New Left Review
Encyclopedia
New Left Review is a 160-page journal
, published every two months from London
, devoted to world politics, economy and culture. Often compared to the French-language Les Temps modernes
, it is associated with Verso Books
(formerly New Left Books), and regularly features the essays of authorities on contemporary social theory, history and philosophy.
Published without interruption since 1960, New Left Review is widely held to be as The Guardian
put it in 1993 the "flagship of the Western intellectual Left." In 2003, the Institute for Scientific Information
conducted an impact factor
analysis which ranked New Left Review 12th on a list of the top 20 political science journals in the world.
" lay in the 1956 political crisis of the Communist Party of Great Britain
, during which the so-called "Secret Speech
" of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev
and the Soviet invasion of Hungary prompted a flight of nearly 10,000 members from the party. Passionate debate sprung up among British leftists over matters of Marxist theory
and contemporary history and new journals emerged to carry commentary on such matters to a waiting audience.
One such publication was The Reasoner, a magazine launched by historians E. P. Thompson
and John Saville
in July 1956. A total of three quarterly issues were produced.
This publication was expanded and further developed from 1957 through 1959 as The New Reasoner, with an additional ten numbers being produced under that moniker. Contributors to this journal included historian Ralph Miliband
, philosopher Charles Taylor
, cultural theorist Stuart Hall
, and novelist Doris Lessing
.
Another radical journal of the period was Universities and Left Review, a publication established in 1957 with less of a sense of allegiance to the British communist tradition. This publication was more youth-oriented and pacifist
in orientation, expressing opposition to the militaristic rhetoric of the Cold War
, voicing strong opposition to the Suez War of 1956, and supportive of the emerging Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
.
as a viable force in British politics.
The journal was initially edited by Stuart Hall and was marked by a preoccupation with popular culture and advancing a Marxist critique of contemporary consumer capitalism. It debated the perspectives of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and explored alternatives to the false choices of Cold War politics, taking an interest in both Sweden and Cuba.
The first issue of the publication was issued in a press run of 9,000. The early publication's style, featuring illustrations on the cover and in the interior layout, was more irreverent and free-flowing than later issues of the publication, which tended to be of a more somber, academic bent.
Stuart Hall was succeeded as editor in 1962 by Perry Anderson
, who introduced a book-like format with longer articles, footnotes, fewer topical comments and at least 96 pages per issue.
and broadened its international coverage. It published work by Walter Benjamin
, Jacques Lacan
, El Lissitsky, Hans Magnus Enzensberger
, Herbert Marcuse
, Theodor Adorno, Antonio Gramsci
, and Louis Althusser
, and interviewed Jean-Paul Sartre
, Georg Lukács
, and Lucio Colletti
. Translations and presentations by Quintin Hoare, Ben Brewster
, and others introduced these important thinkers to the English language public.
A distinctive feature of the journal was a series of 'country studies' with Perry Anderson
and Tom Nairn
supplying an account of the peculiar formation of capitalism and the state in Britain (E. P. Thompson disagreed in an essay published in the annual Socialist Register
, 1965). The journal has also specialized in sweeping global surveys. In 1966 the journal published Juliet Mitchell
's essay 'Women, the Longest Revolution', a founding text of second wave feminism. Nearly every issue from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s carried an account by a worker of their experience at work.
Texts of the aesthetic avant-garde were published and a series of articles on film by Peter Wollen
. The journal covered third world anti-imperial movements. It reflected the concerns of the student movements of the 1960s and 1970s and documented the crises of the Communist regimes in Russia and eastern Europe. Isaac Deutscher
, Raymond Williams
, Raphael Samuel
, and Ralph Miliband
published in the journal and their work gave rise to important exchanges.
In the 1970s and 1980s a debate between Ernest Mandel
, Alec Nove and Diane Elson
focussed on the respective weight of plan, market and worker or community control in socialist economics.
In the 1990s and after the journal published major studies of the growing evidence of global capitalist disorder by Robert Brenner
, Giovanni Arrighi
, David Harvey
, Peter Gowan
and Andrew Glyn
. Benedict Anderson
, Mike Davis
, Fredric Jameson
, Terry Eagleton
, Ellen Wood
, Tariq Ali
and Nancy Davis
published some of their most important texts in the review. Notable studies included Robert Brenner
on the origins of capitalism, Erik Olin Wright
on class, Göran Therborn
on the advent of democracy, Raymond Williams
on the materialism of Sebastiano Timpanaro
, Julian Stallabrass
on Sebastiao Salgado
, Ellen Dubois on how women won the vote, Kate Soper on consumerism and David Fernbach on the surprising history of gay liberation. Joan Martinez Alier, Ted Benton and Rainer Grundman addressed the need for a "green" political economy.
Robin Blackburn
took over from Anderson in 1982, and continued in this role until a redesign and relaunch in 2000. The period of Blackburn's editorship was marked by a major rift on the editorial committee which culminated in the resignation of the majority of its members in 1993. Perry Anderson
became the editor again, briefly, before Susan Watkins took over the role of editor in 2003.
Although there has been turnover on the editorial committee over the decades, with several editors withdrawing in 1983 and 1993, these departures — unlike the debate between Thompson and Anderson in the 1960s — were not accompanied by political disagreements (though some former editors have not shared the review's unrelenting opposition to Western military interventions).
In fact there has been continuity as well as change in the journal's stable of regular contributors and in its preoccupations, including anti-militarism. In the early 1980s it led debate on 'exterminism and the 'Second Cold War' with contributions by Thompson, Fred Halliday, Mike Davis and Rudolf Bahro. In a special issue Anthony Barnett mounted a critique of Margaret Thatcher and the Malvinas (Falklands) war.
The implications of the Soviet collapse and China's surge were extensively covered. Post-modernism, post-Marxism, the fate of feminism and the real configurations of the "New World Order" were plotted and assessed. In every decade since the mid-1970s the journal has wrestled with the historical meaning of nationalism with essays by Tom Nairn
, Eric Hobsbawm
, Miroslav Hroch
, Benedict Anderson
, Stuart Hall
, Ernest Gellner
, Ronald Suny, Régis Debray
, Michael Lowy
, and Gopal Balakrishnan
.
, China
, Japan
, Turkey
, Europe
, Britain, Indonesia
, Cuba
, Iraq
, Mexico
, India
and Palestine
. It has published work by Alain Badiou
, Slavoj Žižek
, David Graeber
and Michael Hardt
and featured analysis of global imbalances, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the credit crunch, the Egyptian Revolution and Arab Spring
, prospects for nuclear disarmament, the scope of anti-corporate activism, the prospect of a "planet of slums," and discussions of world literature and cinema, cultural criticism and the continuing exploits of the avant-garde.
Since 2008, the Review has followed the economic crisis as well as its global political repercussions, with in-depth country studies of Iceland, Ireland and Spain, an ongoing debate on US-China economic imbalances (and their political consequences), as well as on the crisis's toll on California and the US health-care debate. An essay by Wolfgang Streeck in NLR 71 was called "most powerful description of what has gone wrong in western societies" by the Financial Times's columnist Christopher Caldwell
.
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
, published every two months from London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, devoted to world politics, economy and culture. Often compared to the French-language Les Temps modernes
Les Temps modernes
The first issue of Les Temps modernes , the most important cultural review of the period after World War II, appeared in October 1945. It was known as the review of Jean-Paul Sartre. It was named for a film by Charlie Chaplin...
, it is associated with Verso Books
Verso Books
Verso Books is a publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of New Left Review. The company claims "global sales approaching $3 million per year and over 350 titles in print," possibly making it "the largest radical publisher in the English-language...
(formerly New Left Books), and regularly features the essays of authorities on contemporary social theory, history and philosophy.
Published without interruption since 1960, New Left Review is widely held to be as The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
put it in 1993 the "flagship of the Western intellectual Left." In 2003, the Institute for Scientific Information
Institute for Scientific Information
The Institute for Scientific Information was founded by Eugene Garfield in 1960. It was acquired by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare in 1992, became known as Thomson ISI and now is part of the Healthcare & Science business of the multi-billion dollar Thomson Reuters Corporation.ISI offered...
conducted an impact factor
Impact factor
The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed...
analysis which ranked New Left Review 12th on a list of the top 20 political science journals in the world.
Background
The roots of the British "New LeftNew Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
" lay in the 1956 political crisis of the Communist Party of Great Britain
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
, during which the so-called "Secret Speech
On the Personality Cult and its Consequences
On the Personality Cult and its Consequences was a report, critical of Joseph Stalin, made to the Twentieth Party Congress on February 25, 1956 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. It is more commonly known as the Secret Speech or the Khrushchev Report...
" of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
and the Soviet invasion of Hungary prompted a flight of nearly 10,000 members from the party. Passionate debate sprung up among British leftists over matters of Marxist theory
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and contemporary history and new journals emerged to carry commentary on such matters to a waiting audience.
One such publication was The Reasoner, a magazine launched by historians E. P. Thompson
E. P. Thompson
Edward Palmer Thompson was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class...
and John Saville
John Saville
John Saville was a Greek-British Marxist historian, long associated with Hull University. He was one of the most influential writers on British Labour History in the second half of the twentieth century.- Life and career :...
in July 1956. A total of three quarterly issues were produced.
This publication was expanded and further developed from 1957 through 1959 as The New Reasoner, with an additional ten numbers being produced under that moniker. Contributors to this journal included historian Ralph Miliband
Ralph Miliband
Ralph Miliband , born Adolphe Miliband, was a Belgian-born British sociologist known as a prominent Marxist thinker...
, philosopher Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor (philosopher)
Charles Margrave Taylor, is a Canadian philosopher from Montreal, Quebec best known for his contributions in political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, and in the history of philosophy. His contributions to these fields have earned him both the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the...
, cultural theorist Stuart Hall
Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)
Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist and sociologist who has lived and worked in the United Kingdom since 1951. Hall, along with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School of...
, and novelist Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
.
Another radical journal of the period was Universities and Left Review, a publication established in 1957 with less of a sense of allegiance to the British communist tradition. This publication was more youth-oriented and pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
in orientation, expressing opposition to the militaristic rhetoric of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, voicing strong opposition to the Suez War of 1956, and supportive of the emerging Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
.
Establishment
New Left Review was launched in January 1960 when the editors of The New Reasoner and Universities and Left Review merged their boards. The founders of the new journal hoped that it would provide the motive force for a new round of political organisation in Britain, inspiring the creation of "New Left Clubs" and helping to reinvent socialismSocialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
as a viable force in British politics.
The journal was initially edited by Stuart Hall and was marked by a preoccupation with popular culture and advancing a Marxist critique of contemporary consumer capitalism. It debated the perspectives of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and explored alternatives to the false choices of Cold War politics, taking an interest in both Sweden and Cuba.
The first issue of the publication was issued in a press run of 9,000. The early publication's style, featuring illustrations on the cover and in the interior layout, was more irreverent and free-flowing than later issues of the publication, which tended to be of a more somber, academic bent.
Stuart Hall was succeeded as editor in 1962 by Perry Anderson
Perry Anderson
Perry Anderson is a British Leftist intellectual, historian, and political essayist. He is often identified with the post-1956 Western Marxism of the New Left in Europe. He is Professor of History and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and an editor of the New Left Review. He...
, who introduced a book-like format with longer articles, footnotes, fewer topical comments and at least 96 pages per issue.
Development
The NLR — as it came to be known — drew on debates within Western MarxismWestern Marxism
Western Marxism is a term used to describe a wide variety of Marxist theoreticians based in Western and Central Europe, in contrast with philosophy in the Soviet Union...
and broadened its international coverage. It published work by Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
, Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
, El Lissitsky, Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Hans Magnus Enzensberger , is a German author, poet, translator, and editor. He has also written under the pseudonym Andreas Thalmayr. He lives in Munich.- Life :...
, Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
, Theodor Adorno, Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...
, and Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
, and interviewed Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, Georg Lukács
Georg Lukács
György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic. He is a founder of the tradition of Western Marxism. He contributed the concept of reification to Marxist philosophy and theory and expanded Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. Lukács' was also an influential literary...
, and Lucio Colletti
Lucio Colletti
Lucio Colletti was one of the most important Italian philosophers of the twentieth century, and one of a select few to be known also outside Italy...
. Translations and presentations by Quintin Hoare, Ben Brewster
Ben Brewster
Benjamin "Ben or Benny" Brewster is a former U.S. soccer forward who earned one caps, scoring a single goal, as a member of the U.S. national team in 1973. He played three seasons in the North American Soccer League and at least two in the American Soccer League.-Youth and college:Brewster did not...
, and others introduced these important thinkers to the English language public.
A distinctive feature of the journal was a series of 'country studies' with Perry Anderson
Perry Anderson
Perry Anderson is a British Leftist intellectual, historian, and political essayist. He is often identified with the post-1956 Western Marxism of the New Left in Europe. He is Professor of History and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and an editor of the New Left Review. He...
and Tom Nairn
Tom Nairn
Tom Nairn Born in born 2 June 1932 in Freuchie, Fife) is a Scottish theorist of nationalism.Prof Tom Nairn is a Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University...
supplying an account of the peculiar formation of capitalism and the state in Britain (E. P. Thompson disagreed in an essay published in the annual Socialist Register
Socialist Register
Socialist Register is an annual journal. It was founded in 1964 by Ralph Miliband and John Saville. They had criticisms of the New Left Review after Perry Anderson assumed leadership of the NLR. Miliband and Saville sought to bring about a journal in the orientation of The New Reasoner....
, 1965). The journal has also specialized in sweeping global surveys. In 1966 the journal published Juliet Mitchell
Juliet Mitchell
Juliet Mitchell is a British Psychoanalyst and socialist feminist, who was a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge and Professor of Psychoanalysis and Gender Studies at Cambridge University. In 2010, she's appointed to be the Director of the Expanded Doctoral School in Psychoanalytic Studies at...
's essay 'Women, the Longest Revolution', a founding text of second wave feminism. Nearly every issue from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s carried an account by a worker of their experience at work.
Texts of the aesthetic avant-garde were published and a series of articles on film by Peter Wollen
Peter Wollen
Peter Wollen is a film theorist and writer. He studied English at Christ Church, Oxford. Both political journalist and film theorist, Wollen's Signs and Meaning in the Cinema , helped to transform the discipline of film studies by incorporating the methodology of structuralism and...
. The journal covered third world anti-imperial movements. It reflected the concerns of the student movements of the 1960s and 1970s and documented the crises of the Communist regimes in Russia and eastern Europe. Isaac Deutscher
Isaac Deutscher
Isaac Deutscher was a Polish-born Jewish Marxist writer, journalist and political activist who moved to the United Kingdom at the outbreak of World War II. He is best known as a biographer of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin and as a commentator on Soviet affairs...
, Raymond Williams
Raymond Williams
Raymond Henry Williams was a Welsh academic, novelist and critic. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts...
, Raphael Samuel
Raphael Samuel
Raphael Elkan Samuel was a British Marxist historian, described by Stuart Hall as "one of the most outstanding, original intellectuals of his generation" . He was professor of history at the University of East London at the time of his death and also taught at Ruskin College from 1962 until his...
, and Ralph Miliband
Ralph Miliband
Ralph Miliband , born Adolphe Miliband, was a Belgian-born British sociologist known as a prominent Marxist thinker...
published in the journal and their work gave rise to important exchanges.
In the 1970s and 1980s a debate between Ernest Mandel
Ernest Mandel
Ernest Ezra Mandel, also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter , was a revolutionary Marxist theorist.-Life:...
, Alec Nove and Diane Elson
Diane Elson
Diane Elson is a Gender and Development social scientist.Elson is currently a professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. She was previously employed by Manchester University as a lecturer in Economics and later, as chairman in Development Studies....
focussed on the respective weight of plan, market and worker or community control in socialist economics.
In the 1990s and after the journal published major studies of the growing evidence of global capitalist disorder by Robert Brenner
Robert Brenner
Robert P. Brenner is a professor of history and director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UCLA, editor of the socialist journal Against the Current, and editorial committee member of New Left Review...
, Giovanni Arrighi
Giovanni Arrighi
Giovanni Arrighi was a scholar of political economy and sociology, and as of 1998 a Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. His work has been translated into over fifteen languages....
, David Harvey
David Harvey (geographer)
David Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York . A leading social theorist of international standing, he received his PhD in Geography from University of Cambridge in 1961. Widely influential, he is among the top 20 most cited...
, Peter Gowan
Peter Gowan
Peter Gowan was a Professor of International Relations at London Metropolitan University, activist, published author and public speaker...
and Andrew Glyn
Andrew Glyn
Andrew John Glyn, was a United Kingdom-based economist, University Lecturer in Economics at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor in Economics in Corpus Christi College. A Marxist economist, his research interests focussed on issues of unemployment and inequality.He was Associate Editor:...
. Benedict Anderson
Benedict Anderson
Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson is Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor Emeritus of International Studies, Government & Asian Studies at Cornell University, and is best known for his celebrated book Imagined Communities, first published in 1983...
, Mike Davis
Mike Davis (scholar)
Mike Davis is an American Marxist social commentator, urban theorist, historian, and political activist. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California.-Life:...
, Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends—he once described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organized capitalism...
, Terry Eagleton
Terry Eagleton
Terence Francis Eagleton FBA is a British literary theorist and critic, who is regarded as one of Britain's most influential living literary critics...
, Ellen Wood
Ellen Meiksins Wood
-Biography:Wood was born Ellen Meiksins one year after her parents, Latvian Jews active in the Bund, arrived in New York from Europe as political refugees. She was raised in the United States and Europe.Wood received a B.A...
, Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali , , is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator...
and Nancy Davis
Nancy Davis
Nancy Davis may refer to:*Nancy Reagan used the stage name Nancy Davis when she was an actress*Jan Davis, full name Nancy Jan Davis, U.S. astronaut*Nancy Davis Griffeth, U.S. professor of mathematics and computer science...
published some of their most important texts in the review. Notable studies included Robert Brenner
Robert Brenner
Robert P. Brenner is a professor of history and director of the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UCLA, editor of the socialist journal Against the Current, and editorial committee member of New Left Review...
on the origins of capitalism, Erik Olin Wright
Erik Olin Wright
Erik Olin Wright is an American analytical Marxist sociologist, specializing in social stratification, and in egalitarian alternative futures to capitalism.-Biography:...
on class, Göran Therborn
Göran Therborn
Göran Therborn is a professor of sociology at Cambridge University and is amongst the most highly cited contemporary Marxian-influenced sociologists. He has published widely in journals such as the New Left Review, and is notable for his writing on topics that fall within the general political and...
on the advent of democracy, Raymond Williams
Raymond Williams
Raymond Henry Williams was a Welsh academic, novelist and critic. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts...
on the materialism of Sebastiano Timpanaro
Sebastiano Timpanaro
Sebastiano Timpanaro was an Italian classical philologist, essayist, and literary critic...
, Julian Stallabrass
Julian Stallabrass
Julian Stallabrass is a British art historian, photographer and curator. A Marxist, he has written extensively on contemporary art , photography and the history of twentieth century British art.-High Art Lite:...
on Sebastiao Salgado
Sebastião Salgado
Sebastião Salgado is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist.-Biography:Salgado was born on February 8, 1944 in Aimorés, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. After a somewhat itinerant childhood, Salgado initially trained as an economist, earning a master’s degree in...
, Ellen Dubois on how women won the vote, Kate Soper on consumerism and David Fernbach on the surprising history of gay liberation. Joan Martinez Alier, Ted Benton and Rainer Grundman addressed the need for a "green" political economy.
Robin Blackburn
Robin Blackburn
Robin Blackburn is a British socialist historian, a former editor of New Left Review , an author of essays on Marx, capitalism and socialism, and of books on the history of slavery and on social policy...
took over from Anderson in 1982, and continued in this role until a redesign and relaunch in 2000. The period of Blackburn's editorship was marked by a major rift on the editorial committee which culminated in the resignation of the majority of its members in 1993. Perry Anderson
Perry Anderson
Perry Anderson is a British Leftist intellectual, historian, and political essayist. He is often identified with the post-1956 Western Marxism of the New Left in Europe. He is Professor of History and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and an editor of the New Left Review. He...
became the editor again, briefly, before Susan Watkins took over the role of editor in 2003.
Although there has been turnover on the editorial committee over the decades, with several editors withdrawing in 1983 and 1993, these departures — unlike the debate between Thompson and Anderson in the 1960s — were not accompanied by political disagreements (though some former editors have not shared the review's unrelenting opposition to Western military interventions).
In fact there has been continuity as well as change in the journal's stable of regular contributors and in its preoccupations, including anti-militarism. In the early 1980s it led debate on 'exterminism and the 'Second Cold War' with contributions by Thompson, Fred Halliday, Mike Davis and Rudolf Bahro. In a special issue Anthony Barnett mounted a critique of Margaret Thatcher and the Malvinas (Falklands) war.
The implications of the Soviet collapse and China's surge were extensively covered. Post-modernism, post-Marxism, the fate of feminism and the real configurations of the "New World Order" were plotted and assessed. In every decade since the mid-1970s the journal has wrestled with the historical meaning of nationalism with essays by Tom Nairn
Tom Nairn
Tom Nairn Born in born 2 June 1932 in Freuchie, Fife) is a Scottish theorist of nationalism.Prof Tom Nairn is a Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University...
, Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...
, Miroslav Hroch
Miroslav Hroch
Prof. Miroslav Hroch is a Czech historian and political theorist and a professor at the Charles University in Prague....
, Benedict Anderson
Benedict Anderson
Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson is Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor Emeritus of International Studies, Government & Asian Studies at Cornell University, and is best known for his celebrated book Imagined Communities, first published in 1983...
, Stuart Hall
Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)
Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist and sociologist who has lived and worked in the United Kingdom since 1951. Hall, along with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School of...
, Ernest Gellner
Ernest Gellner
Ernest André Gellner was a philosopher and social anthropologist, described by The Daily Telegraph when he died as one of the world's most vigorous intellectuals and by The Independent as a "one-man crusade for critical rationalism."His first book, Words and Things —famously, and uniquely...
, Ronald Suny, Régis Debray
Régis Debray
Jules Régis Debray is a French intellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He is known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society; and for having fought in 1967 with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in...
, Michael Lowy
Michael Löwy
Michael Löwy is a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is presently the emeritus research director in social sciences at the CNRS and lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales...
, and Gopal Balakrishnan
Gopal Balakrishnan
Gopal Balakrishnan is associate professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, working on political thought, intellectual history, and critical theory. Balakrishnan studied European intellectual history and historical sociology at UCLA during the...
.
Current status
In its new form, NLR has led with controversial editorials on the direction of world politics and major articles on the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, Britain, Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
. It has published work by Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou is a French philosopher, professor at European Graduate School, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure . Along with Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek, Badiou is a prominent figure in an anti-postmodern strand of continental philosophy...
, Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
, David Graeber
David Graeber
David Rolfe Graeber is an American anthropologist and anarchist who currently holds the position of Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, although Yale controversially declined to rehire him, and his...
and Michael Hardt
Michael Hardt
Michael Hardt is an American literary theorist and political philosopher perhaps best known for Empire, written with Antonio Negri and published in 2000...
and featured analysis of global imbalances, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the credit crunch, the Egyptian Revolution and Arab Spring
Arab Spring
The Arab Spring , otherwise known as the Arab Awakening, is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began on Saturday, 18 December 2010...
, prospects for nuclear disarmament, the scope of anti-corporate activism, the prospect of a "planet of slums," and discussions of world literature and cinema, cultural criticism and the continuing exploits of the avant-garde.
Since 2008, the Review has followed the economic crisis as well as its global political repercussions, with in-depth country studies of Iceland, Ireland and Spain, an ongoing debate on US-China economic imbalances (and their political consequences), as well as on the crisis's toll on California and the US health-care debate. An essay by Wolfgang Streeck in NLR 71 was called "most powerful description of what has gone wrong in western societies" by the Financial Times's columnist Christopher Caldwell
Christopher Caldwell
Christopher Caldwell is an American journalist and senior editor at The Weekly Standard, as well as a regular contributor to the Financial Times and Slate. His writing also frequently appears in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, where he is a contributing editor to the paper's magazine,...
.
Further reading
- Birchall, IanIan BirchallIan Birchall is a British Marxist historian and translator, a member of the Socialist Workers Party and author of numerous articles and books, particularly relating to the French Left...
, "New Left Review: The Search for Theory", International Socialism, 2007 - Collini, Stefan. "A Life in Politics: The New Left Review at 50" The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, February 13, 2010. - Saval, Nikil. "On The New Left Review" n+1N+1n+1 is a New York–based American literary magazine that publishes social criticism, political commentary, essays, art, poetry, book reviews, and short fiction. It is published three times each year, and content is published on several times each week...
, October 6, 2009. - Thompson, Duncan (2007). Pessimism of the Intellect? A History of New Left Review. Merlin Press.
- Weiner, Jon. "New Left Review at 50" The NationThe NationThe Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, March 22, 2010.
External links
- New Left Review website Articles, interviews and book reviews, with an archive going back to 1960.
- The New Reasoner Archive of Contents, Amiel Melburn Trust Internet Archive, www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/
- Text of the March 1993 resignation of the majority of the editorial committee.
- Universities & Left Review Archive of Contents, Amiel Melburn Trust Internet Archive, www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/