New Left Review

British bimonthly journal (founded 1960)

Academic journal

New Left Review

Discipline| Politics
Language| English
Edited by| Susan Watkins
Publication details
History| 1960–present
Publisher|

New Left Review Ltd (United Kingdom)

Frequency| Bimonthly

Impact factor

| 1.967 (2018)
Standard abbreviations
ISO 4 (alt) · Bluebook (alt)
NLM (alt) · MathSciNet (alt )
ISO 4| New Left Rev.
Indexing
CODEN (alt · alt2) · JSTOR (alt) · LCCN (alt)
MIAR · NLM (alt) · Scopus · W&L
ISSN| 0028-6060

LCCN| 63028333
OCLC no.| 1605213
Links

* Journal homepage
* Online archive

The New Left Review is a British bimonthly journal, established in 1960, which analyses international politics, the global economy, social theory, and cultural topics from a leftist perspective.

## History

[edit]

### Background

[edit]

As part of the emerging British "New Left" in the late 1950s, a number of journals were launched to carry commentary on matters of Marxist theory. One of these was The Reasoner, founded by historians E. P. Thompson and John Saville in July 1956.[1] Three quarterly issues were produced.[1] The publication was expanded and further developed from 1957 to 1959 as The New Reasoner, with an additional ten issues produced.[1] The New Reasoner distanced itself from the British Communist Party and USSR in the wake of Nikita Khrushchev's February 1956 "Secret Speech" on the Stalinist cult of personality, and the Soviet repression of the Hungarian Uprising in November 1956.[1]

Another radical journal of the period was the Universities and Left Review, a publication started in 1957 with less allegiance to the British communist tradition.[1] This journal was youth-oriented and pacifist in nature, expressing opposition to the militaristic rhetoric of the Cold War, voicing strong disagreement with the 1956 Suez War, and supporting the burgeoning Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).[1]

### Establishment

[edit]

New Left Review was established in January 1960 when The New Reasoner and Universities and Left Review merged their Boards.[2] The first editor-in-chief of the merged publication was Stuart Hall.[2] The early New Left Review style, featuring illustrations on the cover and in the interior layout, was more irreverent and free-flowing than the publication's later issues, which tended to be more sombre and academic.[1] Hall was succeeded as editor in 1962 by Perry Anderson.[2]

In 1993, nineteen of the members of the editorial committee resigned, citing a loss of control over content by the Editorial Board/Committee in favour of a Shareholders' Trust, which they argued was undemocratic. The Trust—composed of Perry Anderson, his brother Benedict Anderson, and Ronald Fraser—said that a change was necessary for the financial sustainability of New Left Review.[3] The journal was relaunched in 2000, and Perry Anderson returned as editor until 2003.[2]

### Since 2008

[edit]

New Left Review closely followed the 2008 financial crisis as well as its aftermath and its global political repercussions. A 2011 essay by Wolfgang Streeck, titled "The Crises of Democratic Capitalism",[4] was called "the most powerful description of what has gone wrong in western societies" by the Financial Times's contributor Christopher Caldwell.[5]

In recent years, writer Benjamin Kunkel has served as a member of the New Left Review editorial committee,[6] while Oliver Eagleton is on the editorial staff.[7]

## Abstracting and indexing

[edit]

In 2003, New Left Review was ranked 12th by impact factor on a list of the top 20 political science journals in the world.[8] By 2018, however, the Journal Citation Reports rated it 51st out of 176 journals in the category "Political Science", with an impact factor of 1.967.[9] In 2023, the citation database Scopus placed New Left Review in the 69th percentile, 214th out of 706 "Political Science and International Relations" journals, with a citation score of 2.2.[10]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c d e f g Ian Birchall. "The autonomy of theory—A short history of New Left Review (Autumn 1980)". Marxists.org. Retrieved 29 June 2014.
2. ^ a b c d "A Brief History Of New Left Review 1960–2010". New Left Review. Retrieved 15 December 2023.
3. ^ "Resignations from the Editorial Board of New Left Review(1993)|万象视野 - 中国文革研究网". www.wengewang.org. Archived from the original on 23 February 2014. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
4. ^ Streeck, Wolfgang (September–October 2011). "The Crises of Democratic Capitalism". New Left Review (71).
5. ^ Caldwell, Christopher (19 November 2011). "The protests failed but capitalism is still in the dock". The Financial Times.
6. ^ "Benjamin Kunkel". The Artists Institute. Archived from the original on 21 March 2023.
7. ^ "Oliver Eagleton profile". Substack. 30 January 2024. Retrieved 17 May 2024.
8. ^ Erne, Roland (2007). "On the use and abuse of bibliometric performance indicators: A critique of Hix's 'global ranking of political science departments'". European Political Science. 6 (3): 306. doi:10.1057/palgrave.eps.2210136. hdl:10197/12877. S2CID 143994719.
9. ^ "Journals Ranked by Impact: Political Science". 2018 Journal Citation Reports. Web of Science (Social Sciences ed.). Thomson Reuters. 2019.
10. ^ "Scopus preview - New Left Review". Scopus. Retrieved 7 February 2025.

## Further reading

[edit]

* Birchall, Ian, "New Left Review: The Search for Theory", International Socialism, Issue 115, 2 July 2007
* Blackledge, Paul (2004). Perry Anderson, Marxism and the New Left, Merlin Press.
* Collini, Stefan. "A Life in Politics: The New Left Review at 50", The Guardian, 13 February 2010.
* Derbyshire, Jonathan (15 February 2010). "New Left Review 61". New Statesman. 139 (4988): 50. ISSN 1364-7431. EBSCOhost 48028651.
* Harding, Jeremy, "On 'NLR'", London Review of Books, Vol. 47, No. 3, 20 February 2025.
* Kagarlitsky, Boris (2000). "The suicide of {New Left Review}". International Socialism (88): 127–133\. ISSN 0020-8736. EBSCOhost ALTP252882.
* Lin, Chun (1993). The British New Left. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-0422-7.
* Saval, Nikil. "New Left Review, 1962–Present", n+1, 6 October 2009.
* Thompson, Duncan (2007). Pessimism of the Intellect? A History of New Left Review, Merlin Press.
* Wiener, Jon (22 March 2010). "New Left Review at 50". Nation. 290 (11): 7–8\. ISSN 0027-8378. EBSCOhost 48386356.

## External links

[edit]

* Official website
* Website of Spanish Issue
* The New Reasoner Archive of Contents, Amiel Melburn Trust Internet Archive
* The Reasoner Archive of Contents, Amiel Melburn Trust Internet Archive
* Universities & Left Review Archive of Contents, Amiel Melburn Trust Internet Archive
* Text of the March 1993 resignation of the majority of the editorial committee.

* v
* t
* e

British New Left

General|

* Communist Party Historians Group (Communist Party of Great Britain)
* Hungarian Revolution of 1956
* Revisionism
* Marxist humanism
* Cultural studies
* Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
* Partisan Coffee House
* Socialist Society
* Socialist Movement

Figures|

* E. P. Thompson
* John Saville
* Stuart Hall
* Raymond Williams
* Richard Hoggart
* Perry Anderson
* Tom Nairn
* Peter Worsley
* Ralph Miliband
* Raphael Samuel
* Rodney Hilton
* Robin Blackburn
* Tariq Ali
* Catherine Hall
* Sheila Rowbotham
* Dick Hebdige
* Jeffrey Weeks

Organisations|

* The Angry Brigade
* Big Flame
* British Black Panthers
* Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
* Gay Left
* International Marxist Group
* International Socialists (UK)
* King Mob

Major influences|

* Antonio Gramsci
* Louis Althusser
* Frankfurt School
* Isaac Deutscher
* Harold Laski
* C. Wright Mills
* Talcott Parsons
* Iris Murdoch

Publications|

* New Reasoner
* Universities and Left Review
* New Left Review
* Socialist Register
* Radical Philosophy
* Soundings

Related articles|

* Far-left politics in the United Kingdom
* Anti-Stalinist left
* Eurocommunism
* UK underground
* Counterculture

Authority control databases

International|

* VIAF

National|

* Germany
* Australia
* Norway

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