New Left Review

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New Left Review
Cover
DisciplinePolitics
LanguageEnglish
Edited bySusan Watkins
Publication details
History1960–present
Publisher
New Left Review Ltd (United Kingdom)
FrequencyBimonthly
1.967 (2018)
Standard abbreviations
ISO 4New Left Rev.
Indexing
ISSN0028-6060
LCCN63028333
OCLC no.1605213
Links

The New Left Review is a British bimonthly journal covering world politics, economy, and culture, which was established in 1960.

History[edit]

Background[edit]

As part of the British "New Left" a number of new journals emerged to carry commentary on matters of Marxist theory. One of these was The Reasoner, a magazine established by historians E. P. Thompson and John Saville in July 1956.[1] A total of three quarterly issues was produced.[1] This publication was expanded and further developed from 1957 to 1959 as The New Reasoner, with an additional ten issues being produced.[1]

Another radical journal of the period was the Universities and Left Review, a publication established in 1957 with less of a sense of allegiance to the British communist tradition.[1] This publication was more youth-oriented and pacifist in orientation, expressing opposition to the militaristic rhetoric of the Cold War, voicing strong opposition to the 1956 Suez War, and support for the emerging 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 publication's style, featuring illustrations on the cover and in the interior layout, was more irreverent and free-flowing than later issues of the publication, which tended to be of a more somber, academic bent.[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 cited financial sustainability of the journal as an issue. It comprised Perry Anderson, his brother Benedict Anderson, and Ronald Fraser.[3] The journal was again relaunched in 2000, and Perry Anderson returned as editor until 2003.[2]

Since 2008[edit]

New Left Review has followed the economic crisis as well as its global political repercussions. An essay by Wolfgang Streeck (issue 71) was called "the most powerful description of what has gone wrong in western societies" by the Financial Times's contributor Christopher Caldwell.[4]

Writer Benjamin Kunkel is a member of the editorial committee of New Left Review.[5]

Abstracting and indexing[edit]

In 2003, the magazine ranked 12th by impact factor on a list of the top-20 political science journals in the world.[6] By 2018, however, the Journal Citation Reports ranked New Left Review's impact factor at 1.967, ranking it 51st out of 176 journals in the category "Political Science".[7] In 2021, the alternative index Scopus placed the journal as 99/556 Political Science and International Relations journals, with a citation score of 2.4.[citation needed]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f 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. ^ Christopher Caldwell, "The protests failed but capitalism is still in the dock", The Financial Times, 19 November 2011.
  5. ^ "Benjamin Kunkel". The Artists Institute. Retrieved 2023-03-03.
  6. ^ 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.
  7. ^ "Journals Ranked by Impact: Political Science". 2018 Journal Citation Reports. Web of Science (Social Sciences ed.). Thomson Reuters. 2019.

Further reading[edit]

"], n+1, October 6, 2009.

  • Thompson, Duncan (2007). Pessimism of the Intellect? A History of New Left Review, Merlin Press.
  • Wiener, Jon (2010-03-22). "New Left Review at 50". Nation. 290 (11): 7–8. ISSN 0027-8378. EBSCOhost 48386356.

External links[edit]