New Left Review

{{Short description|British bimonthly journal (founded 1960)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2025}}

{{Use British English|date=April 2025}}

{{Infobox journal

| title = New Left Review

| cover = New Left Review Front cover 140-141.png

| discipline = Politics

| abbreviation = New Left Rev.

| editor = Susan Watkins

| publisher = New Left Review Ltd

| country = United Kingdom

| frequency = Bimonthly

| history = 1960–present

| impact = 1.967

| impact-year = 2018

| website = https://newleftreview.org

| link1 = https://newleftreview.org/search

| link1-name = Online archive

| link2 =

| link2-name =

| ISSN = 0028-6060

| eISSN =

| OCLC = 1605213

| LCCN = 63028333

}}

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 theory. One of these was The Reasoner, founded by historians E. P. Thompson and John Saville in July 1956.{{cite web |url=http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/birchall/1980/xx/nlr.html |author=Ian Birchall|title=The autonomy of theory—A short history of New Left Review (Autumn 1980) |publisher=Marxists.org |access-date=29 June 2014}} 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, 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.{{cite web |title=A Brief History Of New Left Review 1960–2010 |url=https://newleftreview.org/pages/history |website=New Left Review |access-date=15 December 2023}} 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.{{cite web |website=www.wengewang.org |url=http://www.wengewang.org/read.php?tid=17413 |title=Resignations from the Editorial Board of New Left Review(1993)|万象视野 - 中国文革研究网 |access-date=11 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140223221743/http://www.wengewang.org/read.php?tid=17413 |archive-date=23 February 2014 |url-status=dead}} 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",{{cite journal |title=The Crises of Democratic Capitalism |last=Streeck |first=Wolfgang |author-link=Wolfgang Streeck |date=September-October 2011 |journal=New Left Review |issue=71 |url=https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii71/articles/wolfgang-streeck-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.{{cite news|first=Christopher|last=Caldwell|url=https://www.ft.com/content/1a505772-1114-11e1-a95c-00144feabdc0#axzz1e6K3NCbC |title=The protests failed but capitalism is still in the dock|newspaper=The Financial Times|date=19 November 2011}}

In recent years, writer Benjamin Kunkel has served as a member of the New Left Review editorial committee,{{cite web|url=http://theartistsinstitute.org/artists/sept-dec-2017/benjamin-kunkel/ |title=Benjamin Kunkel |publisher=The Artists Institute |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230321195454/http://theartistsinstitute.org/artists/sept-dec-2017/benjamin-kunkel/ |date= |archive-date=21 March 2023}} while Oliver Eagleton is on the editorial staff.{{cite web | title=Oliver Eagleton profile | website=Substack | date=30 January 2024 | url=https://substack.com/@olivereagleton | access-date=17 May 2024}}

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.{{cite journal |doi=10.1057/palgrave.eps.2210136 |title=On the use and abuse of bibliometric performance indicators: A critique of Hix's 'global ranking of political science departments' |journal=European Political Science |volume=6 |issue=3 |page=306 |year=2007 |last1=Erne |first1=Roland|hdl=10197/12877 |s2cid=143994719 |hdl-access=free }} 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.{{cite book |year=2019 |chapter=Journals Ranked by Impact: Political Science |title=2018 Journal Citation Reports |publisher=Thomson Reuters |edition=Social Sciences |series=Web of Science}} 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.{{cite web |url=https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/27760 |title=Scopus preview - New Left Review |publisher=Scopus |access-date=7 February 2025}}

References

{{Reflist|30em}}

Further reading

  • Birchall, Ian, [https://isj.org.uk/new-left-review-the-search-for-theory/ "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. [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/13/new-left-review-stefan-collini "A Life in Politics: The New Left Review at 50"], The Guardian, 13 February 2010.
  • {{Cite journal |last1=Derbyshire |first1=Jonathan |title=New Left Review 61 |journal=New Statesman |volume=139 |issue=4988 |page=50 |date=15 February 2010 |issn=1364-7431 |id={{EBSCOhost|48028651}} }}
  • Harding, Jeremy, [https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n03/jeremy-harding/on-nlr "On 'NLR{{'"}}], London Review of Books, Vol. 47, No. 3, 20 February 2025.
  • {{Cite journal |last1=Kagarlitsky |first1=Boris |title=The suicide of {New Left Review} |journal=International Socialism |issue=88 |pages=127–133 |date=2000 |issn=0020-8736 |id={{EBSCOhost|ALTP252882}} }}
  • {{cite book|last=Lin|first=Chun|title=The British New Left|publisher=Edinburgh University Press|year=1993|isbn=0-7486-0422-7}}
  • Saval, Nikil. [https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-8/reviews/new-left-review-1962-present/ "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.
  • {{Cite journal |last1=Wiener |first1=Jon |title=New Left Review at 50 |journal=Nation |volume=290 |issue=11 |pages=7–8 |date=22 March 2010 |issn=0027-8378 |id={{EBSCOhost|48386356}} }}