Francis Mulhern. Into the Mêlée: Culture, Politics, Intellectuals. Verso, 2024.

Fredric Jameson once confessed to a friend that he was a nihilist in his cups. Such confessions are probably more common among Marxists than their adversaries give them credit for. The New Left Review , to which the critic Francis Mulhern has been a prolific and incisive contributor for decades, has made no secret of its own uncertainties about the theory of which it nevertheless remains the foremost vehicle in the English-speaking world, in particular its lack of confidence in the revolutionary agency of the working class.…