I. Introduction: The ULR as a Historical and Political Problem
The Universities and Left Review (ULR), established in 1957 by Raphael Samuel, Stuart Hall, Gabriel Pearson, and Charles Taylor, has long been viewed within British historiography as the origin of the “first New Left.” Its editors are praised for their cultural innovation, rejection of Stalinism, and their perceived renewal of socialist ideas. However, the historiography of the ULR is predominantly written by those sharing its assumptions, environment, and political boundaries. What remains lacking is a historical-materialist perspective on the ULR as a political entity: an analysis that places it within the class dynamics of post-war Britain, the 1956 Stalinism crisis, and the broader development of petty-bourgeois radicalism during the second half of the twentieth century.
This chapter addresses that task directly. Its core argument is simple: the ULR should be evaluated not by its rhetoric of renewal but by the social content of its politics, the forces it represents, and the tangible impacts of its actions on the working class. From this perspective, the ULR is seen not as a revolutionary departure from Stalinism but as a petty-bourgeois reaction to Stalinism’s crisis. It replaced class struggle with cultural critique and moral protest for political organisation, and contributed to the ideological groundwork for the subsequent pseudo-left.
Raphael Samuel’s role in this formation is crucial. (1934–1996) would later become a leading British historian, pioneering “history from below” and founding the History Workshop movement. His research illuminated working-class life, popular culture, and daily experience, making it essential to socialist historiography. However, his outlook often favoured cultural memory over class struggle, local activism over revolutionary tactics, and moral critique over clear programs. Samuel’s time at the ULR exemplified these tendencies.
The ULR’s politics did not happen by chance. They openly expressed the beliefs of a specific social group: university intellectuals, former Communist Party members, and radical students who were neither proletarian nor bourgeois but petty-bourgeois and professionally dependent. This group, which emerged after 1956, aimed at a politics that preserved the moral intensity of Stalinist radicalism while rejecting its organisational discipline and its often distorted ties to the working class. The outcome was a form of cultural radicalism lacking a class-based strategy, a trend that later evolved into Cultural Studies, identity politics, and the academic left.
This chapter contends that the ULR was a dead end for socialist politics. Its dismissal of Marxism was not a move towards clearer revolutionary thinking but a fallback into culturalism, moralism, and academic radicalism. Its antagonism towards Trotskyism—shown in its handling of the Socialist Labour League (SLL) and the Labour Review—was the clearest sign that its editors had not genuinely broken away from Stalinism, at least conceptually. As Brian Pearce noted at the time, the ULR’s failure to critically examine Stalinism left it “unconsciously open to influence by false ideas absorbed during their period in the Stalinist camp.” That prediction proved to be accurate.
A historical-materialist approach should steer clear of idealising the Trotskyist movement. Gerry Healy’s influence in the late 1950s was both politically crucial and progressive: the SLL aimed to attract the thousands shifting from the CPGB to the Fourth International’s program. However, Healy’s later decline—culminating in the 1980s with the collapse of the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP)—must also be recognised. The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) acknowledged and opposed this degeneration. A dialectical perspective must, therefore, place both the ULR and Healy within the conflicting pressures of their historical context.
This chapter argues that the ULR’s politics were petty-bourgeois in class origin, anti-Marxist in theory, and ultimately conservative historically. Its cultural innovations are tied to its political shortcomings. The focus on “new readers and new writers” concealed a decline in support for the working class. Its incorporation of Gramsci and the Frankfurt School offered a theoretical framework that facilitated the abandonment of revolutionary politics. The resulting legacy—Cultural Studies, identity politics, and the academic left—demonstrates the long-term effects of this retreat.
Marxist historiography’s goal is not to dismiss Samuel or the ULR, but to situate them in their historical context, understand the social forces they represented, and extract key political lessons. Only by doing so can the authentic accomplishments of “history from below” be incorporated into a revolutionary approach, rather than being co-opted by capitalism’s ideological framework.
II. The Class Basis and Social Composition of the ULR
Any Marxist analysis of the Universities and Left Review should start with its class roots. The ULR did not develop naturally from the working class nor from the industrial struggles that characterised post-war Britain. Instead, it was created by a specific petty-bourgeois intellectual layer—comprising university lecturers, postgraduate students, cultural workers, and ex-Communist Party intellectuals—whose material situation influenced both their political approach and content.
This layer held a paradoxical role within British capitalism. While it became more proletarianised through the post-war expansion of higher education, the casualisation of academic jobs, and increased managerial oversight of universities, it also preserved access to cultural capital, professional connections, and institutional prestige. These conflicting influences led to a politics that was oppositional in rhetoric but conciliatory in practice: it criticised capitalism’s cultural aspects without challenging its economic base.
The ULR’s editors exemplified this intellectual community. Raphael Samuel, Stuart Hall, Charles Taylor, and Gabriel Pearson were all influenced by the post-1956 Stalinism crisis. Their departure from the Communist Party was motivated more by emotional and organisational concerns than by theoretical shifts. They opposed the CPGB’s bureaucratic authoritarianism while still maintaining its core ideas: replacing class struggle with cultural analysis, distrust of revolutionary organisation, and the belief that socialism could be renewed through moral critique rather than through political mobilisation of workers.
The ULR’s stance aligned with its social class position. Instead of focusing on the industrial working class—whose struggles were growing more urgent in the pits, docks, and factories during the 1950s—the ULR targeted students, ex-CP intellectuals, fellow travellers, radicalised middle-class youth, and cultural critics searching for a new ideological base.
This was not an accidental choice. It expressed the editors’ belief that the working class was no longer the central agent of revolutionary change. As Samuel himself later admitted, even during his time in the CP, he did not view the working class as a revolutionary force; he saw it as a repository of radical traditions, not as the subject of socialist transformation. This distinction is crucial. It explains why Samuel’s later “history from below” celebrated working‑class culture while avoiding the strategic questions of class power, political organisation, and revolutionary leadership.
The ULR’s class basis also shaped its political method. Its analyses tended to elevate questions of culture, identity, representation, curriculum, “democratisation” of institutions, and moral critique over the Marxist categories of production, class struggle, and the state. This was not simply a theoretical preference; it was the ideological expression of a social layer whose own position was rooted in the institutions of bourgeois civil society—universities, publishing houses, cultural organisations—and whose political horizon rarely extended beyond reforming those institutions.
The outcome was a politics that replaced class-based interests with cultural radicalism. The ULR’s editors criticised the CPGB’s limited perspective, the Labour Party’s traditionalism, and the complacency of post-war British society. However, they expressed these critiques from a viewpoint still confined within the ideological limits of the petty-bourgeois intellectual class. Their form of radicalism leaned more towards moral and cultural aspects than towards strategic or political change, and was more reformist than revolutionary.
This also clarifies the ULR’s hostility towards Trotskyism. The Socialist Labour League (SLL), led by Gerry Healy, embodied a different tradition—one grounded in the industrial working class, dedicated to the principles of the Fourth International, and focused on building a disciplined revolutionary party. For the ULR’s editors—who rejected the organisational discipline of the CP but remained wary of revolutionary Marxism—the SLL symbolised what they sought to avoid: politics centred on class struggle, clear programmatic aims, and internationalism.
Samuel’s dismissive comment about the increasing number of inner-party groups and the dozen ‘vanguard’ parties vying to lead a “non-existent revolutionary working class” was not just a rhetorical flourish. It reflected the ULR’s core political stance: rejecting the working class as the driver of socialist change and turning inward to the cultural politics favoured by the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia.
The URL’s class background thus influenced its political path. Its editors aimed to foster a new socialist culture, but from within bourgeois institutions. They opposed Stalinism but did not fully adopt Marxism. While criticising capitalism, they refrained from questioning its core principles. Their political stance was influenced by the contradictions inherent in their social position, which ultimately shaped the direction of the British New Left.
III. 1956 and the Crisis of Stalinism: The Political Conjuncture of the ULR’s Formation
The Universities and Left Review did not arise in a political vacuum. Its creation in 1957 was directly linked to the 1956 crisis of Stalinism. This year undermined the ideological bases of Communist Parties throughout Europe and triggered a significant political shift among intellectuals, students, and parts of the working class. To understand the ULR from a historical-materialist perspective, one must start with the specific historical context that led to its emergence.
1. The Shock of Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech”
In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev delivered his “Secret Speech” at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, partially acknowledging Stalin’s crimes in a self-serving manner. The speech was more a bureaucratic move than an act of political bravery: it aimed to stabilise the Soviet regime by separating the leadership from Stalin’s most extreme actions. Despite this, the speech had a profoundly explosive effect.
In Britain, the CPGB faced an unprecedented crisis, with thousands of members resigning. This included many prominent historians, such as E. P. Thompson, Christopher Hill, and John Saville, as well as a sizable group of younger intellectuals. Raphael Samuel, who had joined the CP in his teens and was active in the Communist Party Historians Group, was among those who departed.
Samuel later looked back on his years in the CP with a sense of romanticism, recalling a “powerful sense of apartness” alongside a desire for acceptance. Yet, this nostalgia masked a deeper political truth: he had never thoroughly critiqued Stalinism nor engaged with Trotskyist perspectives on the Soviet bureaucracy. His departure from the CP was motivated by moral outrage over Stalin’s atrocities, not a major ideological break from Stalinism. This point is important because it clarifies why Samuel and his colleagues later reproduced many of the Stalinist ideological assumptions in new cultural forms, despite believing they had left that world behind.
2. The Hungarian Revolution and the Collapse of Stalinist Legitimacy
If Khrushchev’s speech began to unravel the illusion of Stalinist authority, the Hungarian Revolution of October–November 1956 broke it down entirely. The uprising—organised by workers’ councils, students, and intellectuals—represented the most significant challenge to the Soviet bureaucracy since the 1920s. The brutal suppression by Soviet tanks revealed the counter-revolutionary nature of Stalinism with stark clarity.
For many CP members, the Hungarian events were a turning point. The CPGB leadership supported the Soviet invasion, condemning the revolution as a “fascist counter-revolution.” This stance was morally unjustifiable and politically disastrous. It hastened members’ leaving and left a void among disillusioned intellectuals and students.
The ULR arose directly from this vacuum. Its founders aimed to develop a new socialist politics that rejected Stalinism’s authoritarianism while maintaining the moral passion and cultural radicalism that initially attracted them to the CP. However, because they did not view Stalinism as a bureaucratic counter-revolution against October 1917, they struggled to abandon its fundamental theoretical foundations.
3. The Missed Opportunity: Trotskyism and the Labour Review
The 1956 crisis provided a historic chance for the Trotskyist movement. Under Gerry Healy’s leadership, the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) started the Labour Review in January 1957 to address the political confusion among former Communist Party members and to attract them to revolutionary Marxism.
The Labour Review had a vastly different political stance compared to the ULR. It was centred on the industrial working class, aimed to develop a disciplined revolutionary party, and was based on Trotsky’s theoretical fight against Stalinism. Its goal was to transform the spontaneous split from the Communist Party into a deliberate political shift toward the Fourth International.
The ULR rejected this stance, with its editors dismissing the SLL as one of the “mushrooming” vanguard groups vying to lead a “non-existent revolutionary working class.” While this comment is often cited to highlight the ULR’s realism, it actually reveals its petty-bourgeois pessimism and its refusal to recognise the working class as the driving force of socialist change.
Brian Pearce, a former CP historian who later joined the SLL, warned that the ULR’s hostility to Trotskyism clearly indicated that its editors had not conceptually distanced themselves from Stalinism. They had abandoned the CP’s organisational structure but still harboured the same ideological distrust of revolutionary Marxism. Pearce’s warning proved to be insightful. The ULR’s refusal of the SLL set in motion a path that, via the New Left Review, eventually led to Cultural Studies, identity politics, and the academic left—a shift characterised by the replacement of class politics with cultural critique.
4. The ULR’s Interpretation of 1956: Stalinism as Marxism
A key insight into the ULR’s politics was its view on Stalinism. Charles Taylor, writing in the ULR, claimed that Stalinism “grew out of Communism” rather than being a separate deviation. This view—common among many former CP intellectuals—was a serious theoretical error. It blurred the line between Marxism and its bureaucratic distortion, offering an ideological excuse to abandon revolutionary politics entirely.
Eric Hobsbawm, who stayed in the CPGB, made a similar argument. The editors of ULR, despite splitting from the CP, shared this perspective. Their opposition to Marxism was not because of Stalinism but because they disavowed the revolutionary tradition that Stalinism had compromised.
This interpretation of 1956 had significant implications. It enabled the ULR to frame its cultural shift as a needed reaction to the perceived “failure” of Marxism, rather than as a step back from the working class’s strategic goals. This perspective justified replacing class analysis with cultural studies, favouring moral critique over political organisation, and abandoning the proletariat as the central subject of history.
5. The Political Conjuncture and the ULR’s Formation
The ULR originated from a particular historical background: the 1956 Stalinism crisis, confusion among petty-bourgeois intellectuals, absence of a mass revolutionary party, rising managerial control over universities, and the prevailing ideological influence of cultural radicalism. These conflicting factors shaped its political position. It sought to create a new socialist culture but within bourgeois institutions. While criticising Stalinism, it did not fully embrace Marxism. Likewise, it critiqued capitalism but did not challenge its fundamental principles. Therefore, the ULR was both a reflection and a catalyst of the larger political change associated with the British New Left—a move from class-based politics to cultural issues, from political economy to identity, and from revolutionary tactics to moral protest.
IV. Culturalism, the Frankfurt School, and the Theoretical Foundations of the ULR
If the Universities and Left Review was influenced by its editors’ class background and the political climate of 1956, its intellectual focus shifted toward culturalism. This change replaced traditional Marxist concepts of class, production, and political economy with an emphasis on culture, identity, and ideology. This shift was deliberate, reflecting the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia’s search for a new political stance following the decline of Stalinist authority. Its theoretical basis draws from two related traditions: the Frankfurt School and a selective adaptation of Gramsci.
1. The Frankfurt School: Pessimism as Theory
The Frankfurt School, associated with figures such as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, arose from the setbacks faced by the European working class during the interwar years, the ascent of fascism, and the strengthening of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Its strong sense of intellectual pessimism was not just philosophical but also reflected the beliefs of a group of exiled intellectuals who had lost faith in the revolutionary potential of the proletariat.
The Frankfurt School argued that advanced capitalism had incorporated the working class into a system of mass consumption and ideological control, directly opposing the Marxist view of the proletariat as the revolutionary agent. Marcuse clarified this in his later writings, claiming that the working class in developed capitalist societies had developed a “proto-fascist syndrome,” which made it incapable of revolutionary awareness. He believed that liberation would instead stem from students, intellectuals, and marginalised groups.
This was not just a theoretical mistake; it reflected a specific class stance. It revealed the disdain of a confused petty-bourgeois intelligentsia for the working class and its shift toward cultural radicalism as a replacement for political activism. The ULR adopted this pessimism, with its editors supporting the Frankfurt School’s critique of mass culture, distrust of economic determinism, and focus on ideology and consciousness. However, they failed to recognise the class roots of these ideas. Consequently, their politics viewed culture as the main battleground and the working class as a passive subject of analysis rather than as a revolutionary agent.
2. Gramsci and the New Left: A Selective Appropriation
While the Frankfurt School offered the ULR a theoretical framework rooted in cultural pessimism, Antonio Gramsci supplied it with a vocabulary centred on cultural activism. The ULR’s editors adopted Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony, civil society, and the war of position as strategic tools to reframe socialist approaches within cultural contexts.
However, the version of Gramsci they adopted was not the one from the early Communist International, where he supported the dictatorship of the proletariat and the need for a revolutionary party. Instead, it was the Gramsci of the Prison Notebooks, selectively interpreted from the perspective of post-war Western Marxism. This view highlighted cultural struggle, ideological leadership, and gradual changes within civil society. He was portrayed as an alternative to Leninism, rather than as its continuation.
The ULR’s use of Gramsci fulfilled several political purposes: it justified replacing class struggle with cultural struggle, offered a theoretical basis for concentrating on universities, media, and civil society instead of workplaces and unions, enabled the editors to dismiss the Leninist idea of a vanguard party while keeping a radical language, and connected the ULR with the wider New Left’s rejection of the working class as the primary agent of socialist change.
Gramsci’s limitations—such as his critique of “economism,” his opposition to Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution, and his acceptance of Stalinism’s nationalist framework—made him especially appealing to the ULR’s editors. As Gramsci stated, “the point of departure is national,” a phrase that aligned well with the ULR’s focus on cultural nationalism.
3. Culturalism as a Political Project
The ULR’s shift towards culturalism was not just an intellectual change; it was a political initiative. It aimed to forge a new socialist culture that would go beyond the “dogmatism” of the CPGB and the “economism” of traditional Marxism. However, by rejecting the Marxist analysis of class and the strategic importance of the proletariat, this project was fundamentally limited. Culturalism provided critique without a plan of action, radicalism without organisation, moral protest without a political agenda, identity without class consciousness, and culture without the aim of revolution.
This enabled the ULR’s editors to uphold a sense of radical identity without engaging in the challenging tasks of creating a revolutionary movement—such as confronting trade-union bureaucracies, organising workplaces, and fighting for the political independence of the working class. The cultural shift also set the stage for the emergence of Cultural Studies in the 1960s and 1970s, which became a key academic discipline of the British New Left. More than just a neutral scholarly field, Cultural Studies embodied the political goals of the ULR, shifting focus from class analysis to identity politics, replacing political economy with discourse analysis, and turning socialist critique into a form of academic radicalism.
4. The ULR’s Cultural Politics in Practice.
The early issues of the ULR featured articles on youth culture, literature, film, popular music, education, and the “democratisation” of cultural institutions. While these topics were significant, they were treated as separate spheres, isolated from the influences of capitalist production and class conflict. The ULR’s editors criticised British society’s cultural conservatism but did not examine the capitalist relations behind it. They praised youth culture’s creativity but failed to link it to the material realities of working-class life.
The outcome was a politics that seemed radical in appearance but was actually conservative in its impact. It questioned the cultural aspects of capitalism while maintaining its economic base. It targeted the symptoms of capitalist society without addressing the underlying causes.
5. Culturalism and the Retreat from Marxism
The ULR’s cultural shift was both a sign and a driver of the wider decline of Marxism on the British left. It indicated the confusion of a petty-bourgeois intellectual class that had lost faith in the working class and was searching for new sources of radical identity. Additionally, it played a role in the ideological shift that shaped the New Left: replacing class with culture, political economy with identity, and revolutionary tactics with moral critique.
This retreat had enduring impacts. It influenced the development of Cultural Studies, identity politics, and the academic left. It laid the ideological groundwork for the rise of New Labour and the managerial politics of the 1990s. Additionally, it left the working class politically powerless in the face of neoliberal restructuring. The ULR’s focus on culturalism was thus not a renewal of socialism but a retreat from it. It embodied the ideological stance of a social class that had abandoned the working class’s strategic tasks and instead sought refuge in the cultural institutions of bourgeois society.
V. Raphael Samuel, “History from Below,” and the Limits of Cultural Radicalism
Raphael Samuel’s later legacy is primarily built on his pioneering role in ‘history from below” and as a founding figure of the History Workshop movement. These efforts were meaningful, challenging the elitist tendencies of traditional historiography, uncovering the experiences of working people, and broadening the scope of socialist historical awareness. However, from a Marxist perspective, Samuel’s historiographical innovations are intertwined with certain political constraints. His “history from below” was not aimed at revolutionary change but served as a cultural-democratic initiative, rooted in the same petty-bourgeois environment that gave rise to the Universities and Left Review.
1. Samuel’s CP Background and the Persistence of Stalinist Assumptions
Samuel’s involvement with the Communist Party Historians Group (CPHG) significantly influenced his subsequent work. This group was responsible for nurturing notable British Marxist historians of the twentieth century, such as E. P. Thompson, Christopher Hill, and Rodney Hilton. However, their work was rooted in Stalinist ideology. Their historiography focused on themes such as national traditions, popular radical movements, moral heroism, and the enduring nature of “progressive” struggles over centuries.
This approach echoed the CPGB’s Popular Front strategy, which placed the working class under the influence of ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie factions and replaced internationalist ideals with national-popular narratives. Samuel internalised this framework thoroughly. His later nostalgia for the CP—shown in The Lost World of British Communism—was not just sentimental; it also exposed his difficulty in breaking away from the Stalinist view of history.
Samuel’s memoirs of the CP are notable for their omissions. He notably “stays silent on Stalin’s murderous purges of the 1930s” and does not discuss the conflict between Trotsky’s Left Opposition and Stalin’s bureaucracy. His narrative leans more toward cultural memory than political analysis. This omission is deliberate, reflecting the enduring influence of Stalinist ideas in Samuel’s later work: replacing class struggle with cultural tradition, favouring national radicalism over international socialism, and steering clear of strategic debates about revolutionary leadership.
2. “History from Below” as Cultural Recovery, Not Revolutionary Strategy
Samuel’s approach of “history from below” aimed to democratize history by highlighting the experiences of ordinary people—workers, artisans, women, migrants, and local communities. This methodology expanded historical understanding and questioned the elitist tendencies of academic historiography. However, it did not address the underlying material relations of capitalist society. While it celebrated working-class culture, it stopped short of challenging the political systems that oppress the working class.
From a Marxist view, the problem isn’t just documenting working-class experiences—an important step—but rather the absence of a clear strategic plan. Samuel’s work recorded the lives of workers, celebrated their agency, and critiqued elite narratives. However, it failed to link these histories to revolutionary objectives. It treated the working class as a cultural entity rather than a political force. Although it offered a detailed mosaic of popular memory, it did not connect that memory to capitalist production dynamics, class struggle, or the need for a revolutionary party. Thus, Samuel’s “history from below” was the historiographical equivalent of the ULR’s cultural politics: seemingly radical but ultimately politically conservative.
3. The History Workshop: Institutionalisation and Absorption
The History Workshop movement, established in the late 1960s, aimed to democratise the practice of history by engaging workers, activists, and community organisations in the creation of history. Its core principle—“history from below, for the people, by the people”—embodied a truly democratic spirit. However, the movement’s institutional development highlights the boundaries of cultural radicalism within a capitalist framework.
By the 1980s, the History Workshop had become part of the mainstream academic system. It served as a credential for advancing careers in universities, a space for cultural radicalism within bourgeois institutions, and a training ground for the academic left. Its radical spirit was tamed, and its democratic principles were turned into a participatory teaching approach. Its critique of elite historiography was absorbed into the very institutions it aimed to challenge. This transformation was not unique to the History Workshop but reflected a broader pattern where universities, NGOs, and cultural institutions incorporated the cultural innovations of the New Left.
From a Marxist perspective, this absorption was unavoidable. Without a revolutionary approach, cultural radicalism remains subject to the influence of bourgeois institutions. It essentially becomes a type of institutional dissent, accepted because it doesn’t challenge the core structures of capitalist power.
4. Samuel’s Critique of Classlessness and His Theoretical Limits
Samuel’s essay “Class and Classlessness” is often cited as evidence of his commitment to class analysis. In it, he criticises Stuart Hall’s claim that class was becoming obsolete in post‑war Britain. Yet Samuel’s own conception of class was shaped by the CPGB’s cultural‑nationalist framework. He recognised the historical radicalism of the working class but did not view it as a revolutionary force in the present.
This restriction was not just theoretical but also political. Samuel’s work consistently sidestepped crucial Marxist questions: the working class’s role in overthrowing capitalism, the need for a revolutionary party, the international scope of socialist revolution, and the importance of political economy in historical analysis. Instead, he concentrated on culture, memory, and daily life, creating a detailed historical record but leaving the working class politically passive.
5. The Political Consequences of Samuel’s Historiography
Samuel’s historiographical project had significant long-term effects. While it helped shape British leftist intellectual culture, it also inadvertently supported the shift away from Marxism. It played a role in the emergence of Cultural Studies, the move from class to identity politics, the academic focus of radical politics, and the division of socialist consciousness. Although Samuel wasn’t solely responsible for these trends, his work contributed to the ideological environment that enabled them. His “history from below” offered cultural material for a left that had abandoned core strategies of the working class and instead relied on bourgeois civil society institutions.
VI. The ULR, the New Left, and the Historical Verdict: A Marxist Conclusion
The Universities and Left Review holds a central position in post-war Britain’s intellectual and political history. It served as the birthplace of the first New Left, bringing together ex-Communist intellectuals, radicalized students, and cultural critics as they sought to develop a new socialist politics following the 1956 crisis. However, from a Marxist perspective, the ULR’s importance is less about its innovations and more about its limitations—limitations rooted in its class origins, theoretical approach, and political direction.
1. The ULR as a Petty‑Bourgeois Response to the Crisis of Stalinism
The ULR arose from a petty-bourgeois intelligentsia’s confusion after losing faith in the Communist Party but not adopting Marxism. Its editors denounced Stalinist authoritarianism yet kept their ideological doubts about revolutionary groups and shifted focus from class struggle to cultural analysis. Their break with the CPGB was rooted in emotional and moral reasons rather than in theory or politics.
Failing to interpret Stalinism as a bureaucratic counter-revolution against October 1917 made the ULR’s editors susceptible to the very ideological influences they aimed to avoid. Their antagonism toward Trotskyism—shown in their rejection of the Socialist Labour League and Labour Review—indicates they had not abandoned the theoretical roots of Stalinism. As Brian Pearce pointed out, they continued to be “unconsciously open to influence by false ideas absorbed during their period in the Stalinist camp.”
2. The Cultural Turn and the Retreat from Marxism
The ULR’s shift toward culturalism—guided by the Frankfurt School and a selective use of Gramsci—was not a revival of socialism but a step back from it. It replaced Marxist concepts like class, production, and political economy with an focus on culture, identity, and ideology. It favored moral critique over political tactics, cultural activism over revolutionary organization, and academic radicalism over class struggle.
This cultural turn reflected the ideological stance of a social class whose material basis was rooted in bourgeois civil society institutions such as universities, publishing houses, and cultural organizations. Their political scope was usually limited to reforming these institutions. This approach enabled the ULR’s editors to uphold a radical identity without engaging in the strategic efforts of the working class.
3. The ULR’s Legacy: From Cultural Studies to Identity Politics
The long-term impact of the ULR’s policies was significant. Its emphasis on culturalism established the groundwork for Cultural Studies, identity politics, the academic left, and the managerial politics of New Labour. These trends were not anomalies but was the natural result of the ULR’s ideological and political stance. By discarding the working class as the driving force of socialist change, the ULR contributed to a left that became more removed from workers’ material struggles and more embedded within bourgeois institutional frameworks.
The ULR’s legacy is thus dual-edged: it enhanced cultural analysis yet weakened socialist strategy. It broadened the scope of critique but restricted political possibilities. This resulted in a generation of intellectuals who were radical in rhetoric but reformist in action.
4. Raphael Samuel and the Limits of Cultural Radicalism
Raphael Samuel’s later contributions to the History Workshop movement showcased both the strengths and limitations of the ULR’s political approach. His approach of “history from below” aimed to recover the experiences of working people and challenge the elitist tendencies in academic historiography. However, it did not address strategic issues related to class power, political organization, or revolutionary leadership.
Samuel’s work was democratic, humane, and filled with empirical detail. However, it was also influenced by the cultural-nationalist outlook of the CPGB and the petty-bourgeois radicalism of the ULR. While it celebrated working-class culture, it did not connect it to the mechanisms of capitalist production or the goals of socialist revolution. This resulted in a valuable archive of popular memory but left the working class politically unarmed.
5. The Missed Opportunity of 1956
The 1956 crisis presented a significant chance for Marxism’s renewal. During this period, thousands of workers and intellectuals distanced themselves from the CPGB, looking for a new political direction. Among them, the Socialist Labour League, affiliated with the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, was the only group actively aiming to bring this segment into the fold of revolutionary Marxism.
The ULR dismissed this opportunity, shifting its focus from the working class to bourgeois cultural institutions. They rejected Leninist ideas of a vanguard party and adopted a politics of cultural radicalism. This shift contributed to the development of a New Left that was politically inconsistent, theoretically diverse, and ultimately unable to address the issues arising from the capitalist crisis.
6. The Historical Verdict
From a Marxist perspective, the historical judgment on the ULR is definitive: it was a petty-bourgeois reaction to Stalinism’s crisis, replacing class struggle with cultural critique, and favoring moral protest over revolutionary Marxism. This fostered a left that, while radical in rhetoric, was reformist in action, ultimately leading to the ongoing fragmentation of socialist consciousness.
The ULR’s accomplishments—such as its cultural innovations, critique of British conservatism, and revival of popular traditions—were genuine. However, they were overshadowed by its political shortcomings. It did not offer a clear alternative to Stalinism, nor did it focus on mobilizing the working class. Additionally, it failed to see that the 1956 crisis could only be resolved by returning to the Fourth International’s program.
The ULR was not the start of a socialist revival but rather marked a political withdrawal—moving away from Marxism, class struggle, and the revolutionary goals of the working class. Its legacy serves as a warning: lacking a solid theoretical base and a revolutionary strategy, cultural radicalism risks becoming a way to accommodate the very system it aims to critique.
A Trumpet of Sedition 