Report of a talk give at the book launch of 1956 And All That on 10th November 2007

Neil Davidson placed the famous philosopher Alasdair Macintyre, well known for his After Virtue, in the context of the events of 1956 and after. In doing so he was able to show how an element of the New Left developed from that year and had an impact into the late 1960s.

MacIntyre, who had been a member of the CPGB, did nothing in 1956, and his material from this period is largely unavailable. He has been exiled from the pages of New Left Review since Robin Blackburn attacked him in the Black Dwarf in the late 1960s.

Macintyre’s significant early 1950s work Marxism and Christianity reflected his anti-Trotskyist views in this period, but by 1958 he had broadly abandoned organised religion and was associated with the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League.

However he parted company with this group and his Breaking the Chains of Reason appeared in the NLR collection Out of Apathy. Macintyre joined the International Socialists [now Socialist Workers Party] which at this time was a more ideologically open, not specifically Leninist, group.

Macintyre saw the need for a party and for self activity and looked at the contingent nature of human self-emancipation in the context of the ‘Hidden God’ of French sociologist and philosopher Lucien Goldmann.

By 1965 he was debating but agreeing with Paul Cardin (Cornelius Castoriadis) of Solidarity and in May 1968 he formally left the IS.

MacIntyre retained his hatred of capitalism and liberalism, but significantly, and very unusually, remained a contributor to the BBC magazine The Listener and to speech programmes.