Thinkers on he left have naturally had to accommodate those developments. 1–2 Thinkers of the New Left was published before the collapse of the Soviet Union, before the emergence of the European Union as an imperialist power, and before the transformation of China into an aggressive exponent of gangland capitalism. My hope is that the result can be read with profit by people of all political persuasions… However, I make every effort to explain what is good in the authors I review as well as what is bad. I would describe it rather as a provocation. The reader will understand from the above paragraphs that this is not a word-mincing book. It is now common to accept that not everything said, thought or done in the name of socialism has been intellectually respectable or morally right… Gradually, however, in the wake of 1989, a measure of hesitation has entered the left-wing vision. I have naturally been reluctant to return to the scene of such a disaster. One academic philosopher wrote to Longman, the original publisher, saying, “I may tell you with dismay that many colleagues here feel that the Longman imprint - a respected one - had been tarnished by association with Scruton’s work.” He went on in a menacing manner… My previous book was published at the height of the Margaret Thatcher’s reign of terror, at a time when I was still teaching in a university and known among British left-wing intellectuals as a prominent opponent of their cause, which was the cause of decent people everywhere… In a previous book published in 1995 as Thinkers of the New Left, I brought together a series of articles of The Salisbury Review… Thinkers of the New Left (Bloomsbury, 2015)
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