Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Marxism of the British New Left

2006; Routledge; Volume: 11; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13569310600923949

1469-9613

Madeleine Davis,

Political and Economic history of UK and US

Abstract This article traces the development of the New Left's engagement with Marxist influences as a contribution to understanding the wider development of British political thought. It argues that the New Left 'naturalised' Marxism within the British intellectual culture to make a lasting impact in diverse fields, notably historiography, cultural critique and political analysis of the state. Understanding the dynamic of this process, however, requires a reassessment of some conventional assumptions associated with the New Left's historiography, especially the tendency to view its development in terms of two distinct 'generations'. Rather than focusing on a decisive transition from 'socialist humanism' to 'theoretical Marxism' it is suggested that the New Left's project is better viewed as a diverse, yet ultimately cumulative attempt to rethink British socialism in the wake of Stalinism. This involved brokering new Marxist ideas and reworking older ones, in a specifically British ideological and political context that also shaped the development of New Left thought. As such it was a genuinely creative and experimental ideological intervention on the British scene. Notes ∗ Place of publication is London unless stated otherwise. 1. S. Hall 'Cultural studies and its theoretical legacies' in L.Grossberg et al. (Eds), Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 279. 2. See G. Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left: a global analysis of 1968 (Boston: South End Press, 1987) p .27 for a discussion of common factors. 3. Lin Chun, The British New Left (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993) is the only synoptic study to date. M. Kenny The First New Left: British Intellectuals After Stalin (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1995) is the best source for analysis of the early New Left before 1962. 4. M. Kenny 'Interpreting the New Left: pitfalls and opportunities', NLR 219, Sept./Oct., 1996. 5. Nigel Young sees the second phase as marking a return to old left orthodoxies: An Infantile Disorder: the crisis and decline of the New Left (London: Routledge, 1977) p. 145. 6. The exchange began with E. P. Thompson's critique of a series of NLR articles on Britain by Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn, 'The Peculiarities of the English', Socialist Register, 1965. See also Anderson's reply, 'Socialism and pseudo-empiricism', NLR 35, Jan./Feb., 1966, and his more considered reassessment Arguments Within English Marxism (London: Verso, 1980). 7. D. Dworkin, Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left and the Origins of Cultural Studies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 77, says it was 'a spent force'. Lin Chun, op cit, Ref. 3, p. 64 'the original New Left as a political movement was defeated'. Kenny's account, op. cit Ref. 3 is the fullest. 8. P. Sedgwick 'The Two New Lefts' in Widgery (Ed.), The Left in Britain (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), pp. 147–150; Meiksins-Wood 'A chronology of the New Left and its successors: or, who's old fashioned now?' Socialist Register, 1995; M. Rustin 'The New Left and the present crisis', NLR 121, May/June 1981, pp. 7–9. Even Chun, op cit Ref. 3, concurs to some extent, p. 62. 9. Anderson 'The left in the fifties', NLR 29, Jan./Feb., 1965; G. Elliott, The Merciless Laboratory of History: aspects of Perry Anderson (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1998) pp. 7–12. 10. Dworkin, op cit, Ref. 7. 11. Editorial 'Why we are publishing' The Reasoner, Issue 1, July, 1956, p. 2. 12. Editorial, ULR Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 1957, p. ii. 13. Kenny, op cit, Ref. 3, p. 5, characterises the early New Left as responding to a 'representational crisis'—I would argue this was also true of later currents. 14. Initially there was no intention to leave the CP. The final issue of the New Reasoner expressed the editors' commitment to 'the rational, humane and libertarian strand within the communist tradition'; Editorial, NR 10, 1959. 15. E. P. Thompson, 'Socialist humanism', NR 1, Summer 1957, p. 108. 16. E. P. Thompson, 'Socialist humanism', NR 1, Summer 1957, p. 113. 17. E. P. Thompson, 'Socialist humanism', NR 1, Summer 1957, p. 125. 18. See H. Kaye, The British Marxist Historians: An Introductory Analysis (Cambridge: Polity, 1984) for a useful survey of the group and its approach. 19. B. Schwarz, 'The "people" in history: the Communist Party Historians Group 1946–56' in R. Johnson et al. (Eds), Making Histories, (London: Hutchinson, 1982), pp. 44–95, p. 56. 20. See Dworkin, op cit, Ref. 7, pp. 26–29. 21. Schwarz, op cit, Ref. 19, p. 69. 22. R. Johnson, 'Edward Thompson, Eugene Genovese and socialist humanist history', History Workshop Journal, 6, Autumn, 1978, p. 79. 23. Schwartz, op cit, Ref. 19, p. 69. 24. Johnson, op cit, Ref. 22. 25. See K. Soper, 'Socialist Humanism' in H. Kaye and D. McClelland (Eds), E.P. Thompson: Critical perspectives (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), pp. 204–232; also D. Kellner 'The Frankfurt school and British Cultural Studies: the missed articulation' available at http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/kell16.htm 26. E. P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1955, revised edition 1976). See Lin Chun, op cit, Ref. 3, pp. 29–32 for a discussion of Thompson's views around this time. 27. Lin Chun, op cit, Ref. 3, p. 31. 28. Anderson reconsidered some of his criticisms in P. Anderson, Arguments Within English Marxism (London: Verso, 1980). 29. The charge admitted by Anderson in the foreword to English Questions (London: Verso, 1992), pp. 4–5. 30. C. Taylor, 'Marxism and humanism', New Reasoner 2, Autumn 1957, p. 98. 31. H. Hanson, 'An open letter to Thompson', NR 2, 1957, p. 92. 32. E. P. Thompson, 'Agency and Choice 1', NR 5, Summer 1958, p. 91. 33. K. Muir, 'Marx's conversion to communism', NR 3, 1957. 34. C. Hill, 'Antonio Gramsci', NR 4, Spring 1958, p. 108. 35. Editorial, ULR 1, Spring 1957, p. 2. 36. Editorial, ULR 4, Summer 1958, p. 3. 37. S. Hall, 'A sense of classlessness', ULR 5 Autumn 1958, p. 32, note 3. 38. R. Williams, 'Working–class culture', ULR 2, Summer 1957, p. 30. 39. Hall, op cit, Ref. 37, p. 29. 40. Hall, op cit, Ref. 37, p. 30. 41. Hall, op cit, Ref. 37, p. 31. 42. Editorial, ULR 4, Summer 1958, p. 3. 43. Hall, op cit, Ref. 37, p. 32, note 3. 44. See Kenny, op cit, Ref. 3, pp. 65–66. 45. R. Williams, Culture and Society 1780–1950 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1958). 46. Williams, op cit, Ref. 45, foreword. 47. E. P. Thompson, 'The long revolution', NLR 9, May/June, 1961, and NLR 10, Jul./Aug., 1961. 48. R. Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: OUP, 1977), p. 5. 49. R. Williams, 'Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory', in Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays (London: Verso, 1980). 50. Williams, op cit, Ref. 45, p. 267. 51. See Dworkin, op cit, Ref. 19, p. 43. 52. 'Conspectus' unpublished memorandum, 7 pp., 1964, p. 1. 53. 'Conspectus' unpublished memorandum, 7 pp., 1964, p. 3. 54. Anderson, op cit, Ref. 28, pp. 147–150. 55. See Meiksins-Wood, op cit, Ref. 8, p. 41. 56. Anderson 'The Left in the Fifties', NLR 29, Jan./Feb., 1965, pp. 16–17. 57. Anderson 'The Left in the Fifties', NLR 29, Jan./Feb., 1965, p. 17. 58. See L. Althusser, For Marx, trans. B. Brewster (Harmondsworth: Allen Lane, 1965) p. 237; also the discussion in Anderson, op cit, Ref. 28, pp. 105–109. 59. 'Introduction to Althusser', NLR 41 Jan./Feb., 1967, p. 12. 60. G. Stedman-Jones, 'The Pathology of English History', NLR 46, Nov./Dec. 1967. 61. E. P. Thompson, 'The Poverty of Theory or An Orrery of Errors', in The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (London: Merlin, 1978), p. 182. 62. Johnson, op cit, Ref. 22, p. 97. 63. Johnson, op cit, Ref. 22, p. 79. 64. Thompson, op cit, Ref. 61, p. 183. 65. Thompson set out his typology of conceptions of Marxism, and his own position, in 'An open letter to Leszek Kolakowski', in The Poverty of Theory, op cit, Ref. 61, pp. 320–335. This quote p. 361. 66. Anderson, op cit, Ref. 28. See especially pp. 100–130. 67. See N. Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London: NLB, 1973), 'The problem of the capitalist state', NLR, 58, Nov./Dec., 1969. 68. R. Miliband's The State in Capitalist Society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1969) was reviewed in NLR 58 by Poulantzas, op cit, Ref. 67, and Milband replied in the next issue: 'Reply to Nicos Poulantzas', NLR 59, Jan./Feb. 1970. Miliband became increasingly critical of Poulantzas' position: see M. Newman, Ralph Miliband and the Politics of the New Left (London: Merlin, 2002), pp. 198–220. Anderson and Nairn's essays, known as the 'Nairn-Anderson theses' were published in NLR in 1964. Anderson's 'Origins of the Present Crisis' NLR 23, Jan./Feb., 1964, is the classic text. Poulantzas offered a critique in 'Marxist Political Theory in Great Britain', NLR, 43, May/Jun., 1967. 69. N. Geras, 'Althusser's Marxism: an account and assessment', NLR 71, Jan./Feb., 1972. 70. L. Marks (Ed.), The Modern Prince and Other Writings (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1957). 71. The main NLR articles on Britain were P. Anderson, 'Origins of the Present Crisis', op cit, Ref. 68; T. Nairn 'The British Political Elite' NLR 23, Jan./Feb., 1964; 'The English Working–class', NLR 24, Mar./Apr., 1964: 'The nature of the Labour Party', NLR, 27 &28, Sept./Oct. and Nov./Dec., 1964. 72. Although he did not set out to apply Gramsci's analysis in any sustained way. 73. D. Forgacs, 'Gramsci and Marxism in Britain', NLR 176, Jul./Aug, 1989, p. 74. 74. D. Forgacs, 'Gramsci and Marxism in Britain', NLR 176, Jul./Aug, 1989, p. 72. 75. D. Forgacs, 'Gramsci and Marxism in Britain', NLR 176, Jul./Aug, 1989, p. 77. 76. A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell-Smith (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971). 77. G. Turner, British Cultural Studies: An Introduction, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 194. 78. These remarks were made at a conference of cultural theorists in Illinois in 1990, published in L. Grossberg et al. (Eds), Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 289. 79. See especially D. Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Methuen, 1979). 80. Forgacs, op cit, Ref. 73, p. 84. 81. S. Hall, 'The Great Moving Right Show', Marxism Today, January 1979, p. 15. 82. Hobsbawm's thesis was first delivered as a Marx memorial lecture in 1978. The debate was published in M. Jacques and F. Mulhern (Eds), The Forward March of Labour Halted? (London: Verso, 1981). 83. E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, (London: Verso, 1985). 84. Anderson, 'The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci', NLR 100, Nov./Dec. 1976. 85. Anderson, 'The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci', NLR 100, Nov./Dec. 1976, pp. 72. See also Forgacs, op cit, Ref. 73 p.79 ff. 19. 86. P. Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism (London: NLB, 1976). 87. Several of the NLR editorial committee were members of the International Marxist Group affiliated to the Trotskyist Fourth International. On NLR's revolutionary and Trotskyist orientation, see Elliott, op cit, Ref. 9, pp. 63–92. 88. For a reassessment of the Nairn-Anderson theses see P. Anderson 'The Figures of Descent', NLR, 161, Jan./Feb, 1987, pp. 20–77. The restatement of historical materialism offered by G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx' Theory of History: a Defence (Oxford: OUP, 1978) was influential on NLR's change of tack. 89. Amongst the products of this reappraisal were: Anderson, 1980, op cit, Ref. 28; NLR's series of interviews with Raymond Williams, published as R. Williams, Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review (London: Verso, 1979), and NLR's commissioning of Raphael Samuel to write on the Communist tradition in 'The Lost World of British Communism', NLR 154, Nov./Dec, 1985 and 156, Mar./Apr., 1986. 90. Williams, op cit, Ref. 89, p. 364. 91. R. Miliband 'The new revisionism in Britain', NLR 150, Mar./Apr. 1985, pp. 5–26, p. 13. 92. This comment is made by J. Higgins, Raymond Williams: Literature, Marxism and Cultural Materialism (London: Routledge, 1999) p. 168. 93. Anderson, op cit, Ref. 86, pp. 102–103, also In the tracks of historical materialism (Verso, 1983), pp. 19–27. 94. Meiksins-Wood, op cit, Ref. 8, p. 35. 95. R. Williams, 'Notes on Marxism in Britain since 1945', NLR 100, Nov./Dec, 1976, pp. 81–94. Elliott, op cit, Ref. 9, pp. 10–11, makes the same argument in relation to NLR. 96. Hall, op cit, Ref. 1, p. 286.