SOURCE: Dworkin, Dennis. “Culture Is Ordinary.” In Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies, pp. 79-124. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Dworkin provides an overview of cultural Marxism in Britain, focusing particularly on the works of Raymond Williams.

One of the most far-reaching consequences of the New Left experience was the pivotal role it played in creating cultural Marxism in Britain. British cultural Marxism grew out of the effort to generate a socialist understanding of postwar Britain, to grasp the significance of working-class affluence, consumer capitalism, and the greatly expanded role of the mass media in contemporary life. These changes posed a threat to the traditional Marxist assumption that the working class would inevitably usher in a socialist society. They also undermined the traditional Left's exclusive reliance on political and economic categories, for postwar transformations...