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

Background

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 Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

theory. One of these was ''The Reasoner'', founded by historians E. P. Thompson and John Saville in July 1956. Three quarterly issues were produced. The publication was expanded and further developed from 1957 to 1959 as '' The New Reasoner'', with an additional ten issues produced. ''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. 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. This journal was youth-oriented and pacifist in nature, expressing opposition to the militaristic rhetoric of the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

, voicing strong disagreement with the 1956 Suez War, and supporting the burgeoning Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

Establishment

''New Left Review'' was established in January 1960 when ''The New Reasoner'' and ''Universities and Left Review'' merged their Boards. The first editor-in-chief of the merged publication was Stuart Hall. 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. Hall was succeeded as editor in 1962 by Perry Anderson. 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''. The journal was relaunched in 2000, and Perry Anderson returned as editor until 2003.

Since 2008

''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", was called "the most powerful description of what has gone wrong in western societies" by the '' Financial Times''s contributor Christopher Caldwell. In recent years, writer Benjamin Kunkel has served as a member of the ''New Left Review'' editorial committee, while Oliver Eagleton is on the editorial staff.

Abstracting and indexing

In 2003, ''New Left Review'' was ranked 12th by impact factor on a list of the top 20 political science journals in the world. 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. 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.

References

External links

*
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.
{{DEFAULTSORT:New Left Review 1960 establishments in the United Kingdom Bi-monthly magazines published in the United Kingdom Magazines established in 1960 Magazines published in London New Left Political magazines published in the United Kingdom Socialist magazines Political science journals Bimonthly journals Marxist journals