''The Lost World of British Communism'' is a book by

Raphael Samuel Raphael Elkan Samuel (26 December 19349 December 1996) was a British Marxist historian, described by Stuart Hall as "one of the most outstanding, original intellectuals of his generation". He was professor of history at the University of East L ...

first published, posthumously, in 2006 by

Verso Books Verso Books (formerly New Left Books) is a left-wing publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of ''New Left Review''. Renaming, new brand and logo Verso Books was originally known as New Left Books. The ...

Content

The book is composed of a series of essays that were collected together to mark the ten year anniversary of Samuel's death in 1996. They describe the development of the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPG ...

in the 1940s and the experience of being a member of it from the vantage point of the 1980s. All of the three essays in the work were published by the ''

New Left Review The ''New Left Review'' is a British bimonthly journal covering world politics, economy, and culture, which was established in 1960. History Background As part of the British "New Left" a number of new journals emerged to carry commentary on m ...

'' between 1984 and 1987. The book engages with a number of different aspects of Communism in Britain, for example the way in which the party was organised on a top-down basis that was founded upon direction by the

Comintern The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet Union, Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to ...

and that had elements of the Leninist idea of a 'vanguard party' centred on a small group of professional revolutionaries. The book also examines the state of left-wing politics in the UK in the challenging environment of the

Thatcherite Thatcherism is a form of British conservative ideology named after Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher that relates to not just her political platform and particular policies but also her personal character and general style of manage ...

1980s and, in the case of the British Communist party of the time, the way in which it was divided between an 'old guard' faction and the younger forces aligned around

Marxism Today ''Marxism Today'', published between 1957 and 1991, was the theoretical magazine of the Communist Party of Great Britain. The magazine was headquartered in London. It was particularly important during the 1980s under the editorship of Martin Jacque ...

at the time. Samuel himself had left the organisation thirty years earlier. One of his overall assessments of the movement was that it embodied a "doomed, flawed but noble faith".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lost World of British Communism 2006 non-fiction books Communist Party of Great Britain Essay collections 2006 in British politics Books about communism Books about politics of the United Kingdom Verso Books books