Political crises of 1956 drew anticolonialist Hall back toward Marxism

Evidence

His own political formation within anticolonialism gave him a necessarily oblique perspective on Marxism’s putative moral and political certainties. Nonetheless, in the moment of political opportunity created by the burgeoning Non-Aligned Movement, in the wake of the Bandung Conference of Third World nations in 1955, he was, as he described it, “dragged backwards” into Marxism, against both the Russian tanks in Budapest and the Anglo-French paratroopers in Suez. Pushed through these alliances into the momentous political events of 1956, Stuart helped to found key institutions such as the Universities and Left Review and the New Left Review and went on, in later life, to play a crucial role in British academic and political life. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 23

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘dragged backwards into Marxism’ positioning parallels how the Frankfurt School’s intellectual exiles related to orthodoxy; connects to the reader’s broader interest in how intellectuals navigated Marxist commitments.
• QUESTION: Bandung 1955 creating political opportunity for a Third World-leftist perspective — an unfamiliar event worth learning about.