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Introduction to Gramsci 1919-1920
“The impact of the Bolshevik Revolution and the aftermath of the First World War transformed Western and Eastern Europe after 1918 into a storm-zone of unrest that has never since been equalled. A wave of political and industrial insurgency unfurled across the continent: this was the time of . . .” read more
Introduction to Glucksmann
“Engels was a military historian; in August 1917 Lenin took Clausewitz’s On War with him into hiding; Mao Tse-tung and Vo Nguyen Giap are famed for their military writings. But in the twentieth century West, Marxists have largely ignored military strategy, and have remained obstinately oblivious of recent . . .” read more
Introduction to Sartre article
“It is now no longer only liberals like Mary McCarthy who discuss the American occupation of Vietnam in terms of genocide: even such a hitherto faithful supporter of the State Department as Theodore Draper, prised loose by the war from his long-held certainties, wrote in his recent book . . .” read more
Che Guevara
“Che communicated by actions; and his words were weapons in the struggle. In the Renaissance, there were ‘universal men’, who were great in art, science and literature. In the 20th century, politics—understood as man’s mastering of his own destiny in history—is the true form of universality. Che was . . .” read more
Introduction to Malawi
“In March this year, the Republic of South Africa concluded a Trade Agreement with Malawi—its first with an independent African state. Malawi ministers were flown down, feasted and accommodated in Pretoria’s leading all-white hotel. By the terms of the agreement, Malawi granted preferential tariffs for all South African . . .” read more
The Marxism of Regis Debray
“As we go to press, Régis Debray is about to stand trial in Bolivia. The military authorities who claim to try him have announced him in advance ‘guilty’ of the fabricated charges against him. The story of his arrest, torture and imprisonment when on a journalistic mission to . . .” read more
Introduction to Poulantzas
“In this issue, we are publishing an essay by Nicos Poulantzas, a young Greek philosopher working in Paris, on the analysis of English history and society pursued by Tom Nairn and Perry Anderson in New Left Review, and contested by Edward Thompson in The Socialist Register, in the . . .” read more
El Lissitsky
“When we published the Jakobson-Tynyanov theses last year (nlr 37), we wished to draw attention to the confrontation of vanguard art and aesthetics with revolutionary politics and theory in the Soviet Union during the decade after the Bolshevik Revolution. El Lissitsky’s polemic on the future of the . . .” read more
Introduction to Brecht’s Poems
“In recent numbers of New Left Review we have presented poems by two self-avowed Marxists—Attila József and Franco Fortini. We now present some poems, hitherto untranslated, by a third, Bertolt Brecht. One of the reasons for printing work by these poets is to call attention to the problems . . .” read more
Witch-Hunt
“Not surprisingly, the Labour Government is trying to protect itself from the consequences of its own capitulations, by seeking to victimize the Left. Wilson’s McCarthyite intervention in the seamens’ strike was followed up by a Downing Street conference between the Prime Minister and Carron together with a coffle . . .” read more
Introduction to Oscar Lewis
“Over the last two years New Left Review has published a number of accounts—fictional and documentary—aiming to give the quality of life in an under-developed country: for instance Antonio Ferres’s story ‘Land of Olives’ (nlr 29) and Jan Myrdal’s description of life in a Chinese village (” read more
Introduction to Jakobson-Tynyanov Theses (on Formalism)
“The Russian Formalist school of literary criticism and linguistic studies emerged shortly before the Russian revolution. The Moscow Linguistic Circle was formed in 1915; the St. Petersburg Society for the Study of Poetic Language (Opoyaz) in 1916. These two groups launched a savage polemical attack upon existing academic . . .” read more
Introduction to Gramsci
“Antonio Gramsci’s essay on education, which we print below, was written in prison in 1926. We publish it, not out oj piety, but as a contribution to socialist discussion of education. For Gramsci’s preoccupations in this text coincide significantly with many problems which are still at the centre . . .” read more
Introduction to 'A Chinese Village'
“Exaggeration is easy. Privation is one thing, poverty to the point of wretchedness—‘la misére’—another. A sturdy self-reliant stock may grow in a stony soil. But, when due allowance has been made for the inevitable misconceptions, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that a large proportion of Chinese . . .” read more
Divide and Conquer
“For three years, Britain lived in the shadow of one dominant fact: the bankruptcy of Conservatism. This was more than a political fact. It was social, cultural, personal: the end of a way of life, a distinctive conception of the world, the end of the peculiar type . . .” read more
Women’s Wages
“In 1960, realizing that ‘National insurance had been running more and more “into the red”’, the government introduced the Graduated Pensions Scheme. Based on the accumulation of annually increasing contributions from employer and employee this provides a built-in discrimination against all women earning between £10 and £15 . . .” read more
Vanguard Culture
“‘William Burroughs—extremely gifted writer—almost a giant compared with Kerouac, etc—correctly described by the introduction as being in the tradition of Dostoievsky, Kafka and Beckett—his unbridled intellective violence and genuinely modern imagination make him a good interpreter and excellent poet of this epoch of ours: an epoch which projects . . .” read more
Censorship
“Samuel Fuller’s film Shock Corridor—described by Lee Russell in an article on Fuller in New Left Review 23—is not to be shown in England, apparently because it has been refused a certificate by the censor. Decisions like this pass alsolutely unnoticed as a rule—certainly there has been no . . .” read more
The Socialist Register
“We would like to draw the attention of our readers to the recently published Socialist Register (Merlin Press, 30s)—first of a projected series of yearly volumes. This first volume contains a wide range of articles: Deutscher on Maoism, Abdel-Malek on Egypt, Miliband on the myth of the . . .” read more
The Centre-Left Moves Right
“Fanfani’s first Centre-Left Government of 1962 promised considerable reforms as a quid pro quo for the extra-governmental support of the psi—nationalization of electricity (this was actually achieved, though in an utterly non-socialist fashion), regional autonomy, and agrarian reform. The present Moro-Nenni government came into being with more . . .” read more
Introduction to Ianni on Brazil
“Brazil is the first latin, fifth largest and eighth most populous country in the world today. It is nearly three times as vast as the aggregate area of India. Its rate of growth is three times as rapid. Yet it receives almost no attention in our parochially Anglo-Saxon . . .” read more
The Regiments of Women
“A damning indictment of our ‘social progress’ is contained in a current Daily Telegraph Gallup Poll report on women voters quoted in a recent bbc television programme. In every election since the war there has been a yawning disparity between men and women voters for the Labour . . .” read more
To Our Readers
“This issue of the Review is taken up mainly with domestic themes, with topics related—directly or indirectly—to the Labour Party and the prospects for the next Labour Government. It differs in this from what has been the prevailing pattern of nlr, leaning as it has done towards . . .” read more
Dimbleby
“The plan was obvious. The Rt. Hon. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Knight of the Thistle and starkest of aristocrats, was due to arrive for an interview in the bbc’s ‘Panorama’ studio on the evening of Monday, February 17th. For high mystagogue Richard Dimbleby, this occasion was too pregnant . . .” read more
Introduction to Attila Jozsef
“No collection of poems by Attila Jozsef has ever been published in English, although he is certainly one of the major poets of the century. He was born in Budapest in 1905. His father was a worker in a soapfactory, his mother was a scrub-woman. While he was . . .” read more
Imperialist 'Anti-Imperialism'
“Paul Johnson’s article in The New Statesman of December 13th threatens to destroy, with a torrent of unemotional logic, the illusions that we cherish: illusions about ‘peace’, about ‘socialism’ and about ‘imperialism’. Let us look at the ‘realities’ of ‘imperialism’ with Johnson. He illuminates us twice. First, about . . .” read more
Who Buries Whom?
“Six months ago, the Spectator prematurely ran an obituary of New Left Review. . . . Fittingly, the Spectator’s recent metamorphosis, after a period of declining sales, has seen the funeral of its distinctive brand of fellow-travelling Conservatism, petty-radical demagogy, and Cold War cultural klatsch. The times have . . .” read more
Introduction to 'Motifs'
“Throughout the world, art and art criticism are perplexingly fluid. It is at this moment that socialist artists and art critics can intervene decisively, staking out the arena for debate, indicating and achieving the next steps forward. In this section of New Left Review we shall publish a . . .” read more
Vatican Council
“The first session of the Vatican Council was convened by John xxiii, the second session by his successor, Paul vi. This change of leadership has been sharply felt. In both sessions the vast majority of Council fathers have shown themselves, in both debates and votes, strongly . . .” read more
Echoes of Zhdanov
“‘Broadly speaking, First Night is intended to be a ‘popular’ drama spot. By ‘popular’ I don’t mean that at the end of the play the audience should necessarily say ‘wasn’t that nice?’. What I mean is plays about people of today concerned in problems, joys and aspirations of . . .” read more
Introduction to Mandel on Belgium
“We open our series of comparative studies of the advanced capitalist countries in this issue, with Ernest Mandel’s analysis of the development of economy and society in Belgium from industrialization to the present day. The intention of the series is, in the first instance, to help overcome the . . .” read more
On Internationalism
“Socialism was born into a world whose limits were those of capitalism itself. North-Western Europe, with its American extension, was the sole, sovereign source of history; the rest of the world simply the arena of its annexations. Inevitably, socialist thought itself was influenced by this unique supremacy: the . . .” read more
Missing Signposts
“in the last issue of New Left Review, William Norman drew our attention to some significant omissions in Signposts for the Sixties—culture (especially the problems of the mass media) and “democratic control and participation in a mass industrial society” (especially the problems of bureaucracy and the trade . . .” read more
Notes for Readers
“it moves forward again. Applications to join CND come into Peggy Duff by the hundreds each day. The Committee of 100 starts to count in thousands. Quiescent Left Clubs yawn, rub their eyes, and begin to think of their programmes. The sales of NLR tip upwards again. . . .” read more
Editorial on CND
“Perhaps the only lesson to be learned from four years of campaigning for Nuclear Disarmament is that there is no simple way in which a political campaign can calculate its effect upon people and Governments. It eludes all the fixed categories of "politics". From the Central Hall meeting . . .” read more
Letter to Readers
“the scarborough venture, mentioned in this column (NLR 5) proved an unqualified success, and the New Left’s most effective intervention in the current dingdong to date. A team of 12 or more managed to get out a four-paged bulletin, This Week, for every day of the Conference, . . .” read more