Raphael Samuel and the Politics of “People’s History”: A Trotskyist Reassessment
Sophie Scott-Brown’s article on Raphael Samuel is a thoughtful, well-researched contribution to understanding postwar British left intellectual culture. It benefits from careful critical analysis, especially from a Trotskyist perspective, as it uncovers not only the contradictions within Samuel’s project but also highlights the broader political trend of the British left during the second half of the twentieth century. This trend, as the essay suggests, is one of political withdrawal, often disguised by rhetoric around democratic education, cultural diversity, and the praise of “ordinary people” as key historical actors.[1]
Scott-Brown’s essay effectively emphasises several key points. She observes the theatrical and deliberately crafted nature of Samuel’s “people’s historian” persona—his “iron resolution” hidden behind a “deliberately dozy and slightly dotty front,” as Sheila Rowbotham noted. She also examines the contradictions between Samuel’s professed egalitarian ideals and his actual behaviours: for example, overriding Ruskin students’ choices on Workshop themes, staging the 1979 confrontation between E.P. Thompson, Stuart Hall, and Richard Johnson like a theatrical director, and employing charm and tactics where his theoretical authority was lacking. These insights are important corrections to the often romanticised views of Samuel’s legacy.
She correctly traces Samuel’s organising style back to the culture of the Stalinist Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), highlighting the Popular Front approach of persuasion—prioritising "friendly persuasion over theoretical cudgelling.” However, the article stops short of extracting the essential political implications of this insight. From a Marxist and Trotskyist perspective, Samuel’s involvement with the CPGB isn’t just a biographical detail but rather the key political environment that shaped his entire intellectual path.
I. The CPGB Historians’ Group and the Popular Front Tradition
The Communist Party Historians’ Group, which educated Samuel alongside notable figures like Christopher Hill, E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, and Rodney Hilton, was deeply influenced by Stalinist politics. Ann Talbot noted that Hill's “people’s history” approach, promoted by the CPGB, was more than just an academic tradition; it served as a political tool aligned with Popular Front ideology. This approach offered a democratic facade for a political stance that placed the working class under the control of the "progressive” sections of the bourgeoisie and justified the international repression of revolutionary Marxists.
A.L. Morton’s People’s History of England, the key work of the genre that Samuel inherited, intentionally downplayed the class aspects of historical struggles, blending them into a unified national-popular story. This nationalist skew was deliberate, driven by the CPGB’s focus on forming cross-class alliances. Even after Samuel left the Party in 1956, his “people’s history” continued to reflect this distortion.
Scott-Brown observes that many in Samuel’s generation left the CPGB following the Soviet invasion of Hungary. However, she does not mention that the most ideologically committed members joined the Trotskyist movement. Those who moved towards the New Left, including Samuel, retained the core political flaw of Stalinism: their rejection of an independent working-class political agenda in favour of a broad, pluralist, cross-class cultural movement.
II. Thompson, Althusser, and the Retreat from Marxism
Scott-Brown regards the clash between Thompson’s “socialist humanism” and the Althusserian structuralism of Hall and Johnson as the key theoretical controversy of that era. From a Trotskyist perspective, this debate was essentially a retreat from Marxism.
Thompson’s *Making of the English Working Class* is a truly brilliant work, but his idea of "socialist humanism” marked a retreat into empiricism, moralism, and eventually a nationalist view of working-class history. His polemic *The Poverty of Theory* argued for English empiricism against Continental theory, not scientific Marxism against idealism. Meanwhile, Althusserianism reduced class struggle to structuralist abstraction.
Samuel’s refusal to choose between these positions—his emphasis on “plurality”—was not a genuine compromise but a political dodge. The failure of Workshop 13 in 1979, as vividly detailed by Scott-Brown, was not just bad event management. It revealed the deeper incoherence of a political movement that had forsaken clear programmatic goals and sought to unify conflicting intellectual tendencies through organisational talent and personal charisma.
III. The Democratisation of History and Its Class Content
Samuel’s main initiative—the democratisation of historical practice—aims to empower “ordinary people” to produce their own histories, reflecting a genuine emancipatory goal. He believes that workers should understand their own history, as traditional ruling-class historiography often mystifies and subjugates them. Contributions such as the Ruskin College pamphlets on pit life, narratives from rail workers, and working-class club culture are important examples of this effort.
However, democratisation lacking political clarity risks becoming empty radicalism. Samuel’s idea of a “people’s historian” served more as a cultural stand-in for revolutionary political education. The key issue is not just whether workers can write their own history, but whether they can comprehend their role within capitalist society well enough to change it.
The traditional Samuel obstructed this understanding by reducing class analysis to a sort of 'plurality' and favouring cultural populism over political action. By the 1990s, as Scott-Brown observes, he had adapted more to the Thatcherite heritage industry than challenged it. The progression from the Ruskin pamphlets to 'Theatres of Memory' (1994) illustrates this shift. By that time, Samuel had moved from encouraging workers to investigate their own exploitation to praising popular historical entertainment—such as period dramas, country houses, and ‘retrochic'—as ways of creating history. Richard Hoggart’s comment that the book was created by a “traumatised Marxist” is harsh, but it holds some truth.
IV. Memory as a Substitute for Politics
Samuel’s shift to memory studies was more a political response than an intellectual breakthrough. When history is viewed as a cultural activity rather than a scientific analysis of class society, it becomes impossible to differentiate between progressive and reactionary historical views. If all “meaning-making about the past” holds equal validity, then miners’ oral histories and the National Trust’s curated nostalgia are seen as comparable.
This marks Samuel’s conception of pluralism: a theoretical approach where the working class and the bourgeoisie are seen as equal contributors to memory, rather than as opposing classes in conflict. The working class is viewed as a remembering subject, not just a resisting one. The past transforms into a space for identity formation rather than a field for critique. History turns into a theatrical stage rather than a purely scientific discipline.
V. The Limits of Cultural Democracy
Samuel’s approach to democratizing history increased participation but narrowed political perspectives. It made archives accessible but limited avenues for revolutionary ideas. While it amplified diverse voices, it also diminished the relevance of class. Workers can document their histories, yet if the framework is influenced by Popular Front nationalism or New Left culturalism, it results in self-expression confined to bourgeois ideology rather than fostering revolutionary consciousness.
The democratisation of history is significant only if it is connected to the political self-liberation of the working class, which demands a scientific grasp of capitalism, an internationalist outlook, and a revolutionary agenda. Samuel did not provide any of these elements.
VI. The Trotskyist Alternative: History as a Weapon
While Samuel’s tradition dissolves into cultural populism, the Trotskyist tradition emphasises the importance of the unity between historical knowledge and revolutionary practice. Trotskyism regards history as a science rather than a stage, considers the working class to be a revolutionary force rather than merely a cultural identity, and views the past not as a memory resource but as a strategic guide for overthrowing capitalism.
This is the response Samuel was unable to give when asked in 1979, “What is socialist history?” His reply—“it’s an awfully big question, Brian”—was not due to modesty but evasion. A truthful answer would have involved confronting the Stalinist tradition he inherited and recognising the need for an independent working-class political program.
Postscript: The Contemporary Stakes of Reassessing Raphael Samuel
A Trotskyist re-assessment of Raphael Samuel goes beyond mere antiquarian interests; it engages directly with current political and intellectual debates. The British left's crisis in the late twentieth century—characterized by a retreat from class-based politics, an embrace of culturalism, and the shift from unified programs to pluralism—remains unresolved and has even intensified. The intellectual currents Samuel helped shape now dominate the humanities, while the working class continues to face systemic exclusion from political representation.
The modern academy, largely focused on cultural studies, memory, and identity-based histories, reflects the tendencies Samuel represented. The shift from class to culture, the prioritization of “voices” over analysis, and the celebration of diversity without political focus are now standard in historical research. Although seen as radical, these approaches serve as ideological compromises that allow a capitalist system to incorporate cultural criticism while suppressing conflicts over class.
Samuel’s legacy requires careful examination, not because of personal failings, but because his path illustrates a larger historical trend: the shift of the left from advocating revolutionary self-emancipation of workers to becoming a cultural and intellectual sphere focused on representation, identity, and memory. This shift has significant political implications. A left that neglects class struggle cannot challenge capitalism effectively. Similarly, a historical perspective that ignores class cannot reveal the true workings of exploitation. Without a clear program, politics cannot lead to genuine emancipation.
Today, Marxist historiography should focus on clarifying the structure of capitalist society and the role of the working class, rather than generating multiple narratives. It needs to reject the culturalist fragmentation legitimized by Samuel’s pluralism, reaffirm the scientific basis of historical materialism in opposition to the relativism of memory studies, and restore the connection between historical research and the political aim of socialist revolution.
This calls for a break not just from the Stalinist distortions of history but also from current culturalist distortions. It necessitates returning to the methodological clarity of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky—not treating them as icons, but as theorists of a dynamic movement. It requires a historiography that views the past not as a stage for memory but as a battleground of struggle, where their lessons are crucial for future battles.
Raphael Samuel’s work, despite its vibrancy and generosity, ultimately aligns with a political tradition that lacked clarity. His idea of a “people’s history” made the archive more accessible but stripped away the political conflict of class struggle. It highlighted the ingenuity of ordinary people but overlooked the deep structural forces influencing their lives. While it expanded the number of stories and fostered engagement with warmth and color, it lacked the theoretical tools necessary to challenge capitalism.
A Marxist revaluation of Samuel does not reject his dedication to ordinary people but instead reclaims the political scope that his tradition denied. The working class requires more than just a platform for remembrance; it needs a thorough understanding of history. It needs an actionable plan and a movement that can change society, not just analyse its history.
Only the revolutionary Marxist tradition, embodied by the International Committee of the Fourth International, provides this perspective. It uniquely maintains the continuity in the fight against Stalinism, nationalism, and the culturalist dissolution of class. Additionally, it asserts that history is not a collection of competing stories but a tool for a class poised to seize power.
Samuel's critique is not meant as a closing but as an opening gesture. It extends beyond the cultural turn, the New Left, and the Popular Front, aiming to reaffirm a Marxist historiography suitable for the twenty-first century. The goal is not merely to democratize history but to equip the working class with the historical awareness essential for its emancipation.
[1] Raphael Samuel and the Politics of the People’s Historian Sophie Scott-Brown-journal.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Socialist-History-61_Final-76-95.pdf
CHAPTER 1
The Universities and Left Review (1957–1959): A Marxist
Analysis of Class, Politics, and Intellectual Formation
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.
