Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Although the phrase “new left” was used as a shorthand for a variety of social movement phenomena of the 1960s, it refers specifically to a project in Britain and the US aimed at renovating the discourses and practices of the established lefts in both societies. The term “new left” came into use in the late 1950s, when it was adopted by British intellectuals who came together after the Khruschev revelations about Stalin, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and the British invasion of Suez. Politically, this group shared a rejection of both Stalinism and the rightward drift of social democracy and a determination to oppose the political framework defined by the Cold War. As intellectuals, they sought new directions for critical social theory, questioning economistic versions of Marxian class analysis in favor of an emphasis on culture and consciousness as frameworks of both domination and resistance. The group included many who would become seminal in historical and cultural analysis: E. P. Thompson, Stuart Hall, and Raymond Williams. The journal New Left Review , founded in 1960, gave international visibility to this intellectual/political project and to its label, and became the primary English-language periodical for articulation and dissemination of new critical theory. The main figures in the British new left were not primarily sociologists as such, but their work was both deeply ... log in or subscribe to read full text