Brian Simon and the National Cultural Committee of the Great Britain Communist Party
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1344/segleXX2023.16.5Keywords:
comunisme, intel-lectuals, política cultural, Partit Comunista de Gran Bretanya, Brian SimonAbstract
This article studies the activity of the renowned education historian Brian Simon as chairman of the National Cultural Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Following the crisis provoked by the 1956 URSS invasion of Hungary, Simon put himself at the service of the party to counteract the effects of the birth of the New Left. In 1957 he joined the National Cultural Committee alongside James Klugmann and Arnold Kettle, and led it from 1962. At the head of the intellectual group known as the “Socialist Humanists”, Simon led the ideological renewal of British communism throughout the 1960s, from Stalinist orthodoxy to positions close to Eurocommunism. A milestone in this ideological evolution was the publication in 1967 of Questions of Ideology and Culture.
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