Network of reading groups to foster debate about ideas ‘vital for progressive politics in Britain’ – fed by classics and new titles the club will publish

The Left Book Club has launched a crowdfunding appeal backed by Noam Chomsky to find aspiring new writers from all branches of the left, and create a network of left-leaning reading groups around Britain.

Organisers are looking for £25,000 to develop its website as a hub for radical writers and book groups, and have raised more than £1,000 in 24 hours. The not-for-profit collective, which has produced a series of books on welfare, housing and Greece since launching in 2015, argues that “publishing great radical books – and facilitating conversation about the ideas they contain – [is] vital for the development of progressive politics in Britain”.

This is our contribution to the struggle against exploitation, oppression, war, and climate catastrophe

Founded by a group of writers, activists, publishers, booksellers and trade unionists, in partnership with Pluto Press, the initiative is modelled on Victor Gollancz’s subscription-based literary and social movement of the same name, which once boasted a membership of 57,000. The original Left Book Club published a book a month between 1936 and 1948, including George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier and Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China. It also held an annual rally and encouraged subscribers to set up their own local book clubs, with 1,200 groups meeting around the UK by 1939.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The original Left Book Club published George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier. Photograph: Ullstein Bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images

As well as aiming to set up reading groups in communities across Britain for people to “engage in the ideas and arguments being formed as part of the latest explosion in interest in left-wing ideas”, the new Left Book Club is also hoping to find “aspiring writers from all branches of the left and progressive movements, and those involved in activism and struggle”, which it will publish under its imprint with Pluto Press.

“We want to publish books from new authors about world-changing ideas,” said director Neil Faulkner. “We will create a network of reading groups to debate them and a digital hub to sustain and broaden that debate. This is our contribution to the struggle against exploitation, oppression, war, and climate catastrophe.” Upcoming titles include Here We Stand: Women Changing The World, Faulkner’s own A People’s History of the Russian Revolution, and Sound System: The Political Power of Music by Dave Randall.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Video: Noam Chomsky on the search for new voices on the left

Noam Chomsky called the Left Book Club, which is independent of any political party, vital for “laying the groundwork for effective practice”, and urged readers “to join in these very promising and critically important efforts”.

Jeremy Corbyn said the club’s relaunch was “a terrific and timely idea, [which] will give intellectual ballast to the wave of political change sweeping Britain and beyond, encouraging informed and compassionate debate”.