ABSTRACT
One theoretical problem that classical revolutionary theory, whether Marxist or Syndicalist, had had no difficulty in facing was that of 'agency'; who would make the revolution. Both libertarian and authoritarian streams of socialist thought and action had agreed with Marx it must be the army of producers, the working class. Both leading theoreticians of the English New Left (NL) found their grounds for admiration in working-class culture; they both stress the revolutionary implications for capitalism of the collectivist and communalist strains surviving in proletarian life and work. The NL in its populist adulation of the life-styles and culture of the under-class in America ultimately fantasizes about alliances with the under-classes and lumpen-proletariat of the Third World 'who have nothing to lose and everything to gain'. A quite different perspective on the agency of radical change emerged that was in deep tension with the strategy of organizing either the poor, or black people, or the 'working class'.
