In a mixed review, Denis William Brogan wrote in The New York Times, "In The Long Revolution, he follows up his deservedly admired Culture and Society with a more contemporary, less literary diagnosis of the English social predicament.

"[1] Writing for the International Journal of Cultural Policy, Michael Volkerling said that The Long Revolution "while by no means the most coherent text, proved to be the most useful".

He praised Williams' "critical perspectives and conceptual analysis that proved to be both compelling and apposite".

[2] In a review for The New Leader, Herbert J. Gans wrote, "One wishes only that Williams had presented his argument in a more systematic fashion.

The present volume, like his earlier book, is a series of separate essays, and both suffer from the discontinuities inherent in this form.