C.L.R.

James: His Intellectual Legacies

 C. L. R. Jam es
H is In te lle c tu a l Legacies

E d ite d b y S elw yn R. C u d jo e a n d W illia m E. C a in

U n ive rsity of Massachusetts Press Am herst

Copyright © 1995 by
The U niversity of Massachusetts Press
A ll rights reserved
Printed in the U nited States of Am erica
LC 94-4518
ISBN 0-87023-906-6 (cloth); 907-4 (pbk.)

Designed by David Ford *

Set in Trum p Mediaeval by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, Inc.

Index by Sylvia Charshoodian

Library of Congress C ataloging-in-Publication

Data
C. L. R. James: bis intellectu al legacies / edited
by Selwyn R. Cudjoe and W illiam E. Cain,
p. cm.
ISBN 0 -8 7 0 2 3 -9 0 6 -6 .-
ISBN 0-87023-907-4 (pbk.)
1. James, C. L. R. (C yril Lionel Robert),
1901 - —Knowledge and learning.
2. James, C. L. R. (C yril Lionel Robert), 1901-
—Influence. 3. Caribbean Area—Intellectual
life . I. Cudjoe, Selwyn Reginald,
n. Cain, W illiam E.
PR9272.9:J35Z64 1995
818—dc20 94-4518
CIP

B ritish Library Cataloguing in Publication data

are available.

This book is published w ith the support and

cooperation of the U niversity of Massachusetts
at Boston.
To d is p e o p le o f the Caribbean w ho,

in pioneering regions th a t Caesar never knew,

made C .L.R . James w ho and w h a t he became.

 Contents

Acknowledgments

Selw yn R. C udjoe and W illia m E. C ain

Introduction

Personal M em oirs

A nna G rim sh a w
C.L.R. James, 1901-1989: A Personal M em oir

D erek W a lco tt
A Tribute to C.L.R. James

M in ty A lle y and Early Short Stories

H elen P yne -T im o th y
Identity, Society, and Meaning: A Study of the Early Stories
of C.L.R. James

H. A d la i M urdoch
James's Literary D ialectic: Colonialism and C ultural Space
in M in ty A lle y

Barbara P aul-E m ile

Gender Dynamics in James's M in ty A lley

The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

R obin B la ckb u rn
The Black Jacobins and New World Slavery
 v iii Contents

M ic h a e l Foot
C.L.R. James 98

A le x D u p u y
Toussaint-Louverture and the H aitian Revolution:
A Reassessment of C.L.R. James's Interpretation 106

K ara M . R a b b itt
C.L.R. James's Figuring of Toussaint-Louvertufe:
The Black facobins and the Literary Hero 118

B ernard M o itt
Transcending Linguistic and C ultural Frontiers in Caribbean
Historiography: C.L.R. James, French Sources, and Slavery in
San Domingo 136

The Am erican Years, a C ollaborative Enterprise

The P o litic a l D im ension

G race Lee Boggs

C.L.R. James: Organizing in the U.S.A., 1938-1953 163

K ent W orcester
C.L.R. James and the American Century 173

The P hilosophical D im ension

Lou Turner
Epistemology, Absolutes, and the Party: A C ritica l Examination
of Philosophic Divergences w ith in the Johnson-Forest Tendency,
1948-1953 193

R ic k R o d erick
Further Adventures of the D ialetic 205

The L ite ra ry D im ension

S elw yn R. C udjoe
"As Ever Darling, A ll M y Love, N ello": The Love Letters of
C.L.R. James 215
 Contents ix

C edric J. R obinson
C.L.R. James and the World-System 244

W illia m E. C ain
The Trium ph of the W ill and the Failure of Resistance:
C.L.R. James's Readings of M oby-Dick and O thello 260

* The Theoretical D im ension

C ornelius C astoriad is
C.L.R. James and the Fate of Marxism 277

Three Letters
Raya Dunayevskaya to C.L.R. James 298
C.L.R. James to Cornelius Castoriadis and Friends 300
Cornelius Castoriadis to C.L.R. James 302

M a rtin G laberm an
The Marxism of C.L.R. James 304

Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and

A n tico lo n ia lism

G len R ichards
C.L.R. James on Black Self-Determ ination in the United States
and the Caribbean 317

James M ille tte

C.L.R. James and the Politics of Trinidad and Tobago, 1938-1970 328

A ld o n L. N ielsen
Reading James Reading 348

C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

M a rk K in g w e ll
Keeping a Straight Bat: Cricket, C iv ility , and Postcolonialism 359

P aul Idahosa
James and Fanon and the Problem of the Intelligentsia in
Popular Organizations 388
 x Contents

H orace C a m p b e ll
C.L.R. James, W alter Rodney, and the Caribbean Intellectual 405

A fterw ord

P au l B uhle
From a Biographer's Notebook: The Field of C.L.R. James
Scholarship * 435

Notes on Contributors 453

Index 459
 Acknow ledgm ents

This book is based on the proceedings of a conference on the intellectual

legacies of C.L.R. James that was held at Wellesley College in A pril 1991.
We would like to thank the adm inistration, faculty, staff, and students of
Wellesley College for their help in making the conference such a splen­
did success. And we want also to express our gratitude to the many
speakers, panelists, and participants from around the world who traveled
to Wellesley for three days of intense debate and discussion about James's
wide-ranging contributions to intellectual and p olitical life.
In addition, we appreciate very much the support of the members of
C.L.R. James Society, in particular from Paget Henry and Paul Buhle, and
the aid and encouragement that we received from Grace Lee Boggs,
M artin Glaberman, Anna Grimshaw, and Jim Murray of the C.L.R. James
Institute in New York City.
We are also grateful to Bruce W ilcox and Paul W right of the U niversity
of Massachusetts Press for their expert guidance and encouragement of
this project from beginning to end.
Selwyn R. Cudjoe and W illiam E. Cain

In tro d u ctio n

Throughout history, hum ankind has been blessed w ith persons who, by
their sheer exuberance and intellectual com m itm ent to struggle, leave
an indelible mark on their tim e. The liberation of colonial peoples
in Africa and the diaspora has been distinguished by such persons:
Toussaint-Louverture and Jacques Dessalines; Frederick Douglass and
W.E.B. Du Bois; Frantz Fanon and Aime Cesaire; George Padmore and
Ida B. Wells; Mahatma Gandhi and A li Shariati; Walter Rodney and
M alcolm X.
In this distinguished company of activist intellectuals stands the emi­
nent scholar and revolutionary, C yril Lionel Robert James. Although
Edward W. Said has called him "the father of modern Caribbean w rit­
in g ,"1 James has transcended geography and genre, contributing enor­
mously to our understanding on the colonial question, the Negro ques­
tion, the Russian question, and the role of dialectics in proletarian
struggle; and his elaboration on M arxist practice and theory in the Amer­
icas and the world has been surpassed by few. Today, James is even hailed
as one of the pioneers in such an avant-garde field as cultural studies. It is
always d iffic u lt to measure the contributions of such individuals w hile
they are alive, and the task of summing up their achievements is left to
the generations that follow, who must render a just appraisal of their
legacies. W ith this book we begin that work for James.
Although James is an im portant intellectual in the broad sweep of the
tw entieth century, one cannot analyze him outside the context of his
history and the collaborative nature of his enterprise. We regret that the
essays gathered in this volume do not emphasize enough the collabora­
tive nature of James's intellectual production. But history would treat us
unkindly if we did not at least acknowledge and pay tribute to the nature

1
 2 Introduction

of that collective enterprise as it manifested itse lf in the Johnson-Forest

Tendency—that is, in the intellectu a l contributions of Raya Dunayev-
skaya, Grace Lee Boggs, Freddy and Lyman Paine, W illia m Gorman,
M a rtin Glaberman, and countless others who contributed to the making
of James as they tried collectively to change the w orld in w hich they
lived.2
In an attem pt to examine the scope of James's intellectual contribu­
tions to contemporary life and scholarship, we organized an interna­
tional conference at W ellesley College, Massachusetts, in A p ril 1991.
Although James never received the appreciation that he deserved w hile
he lived, on this occasion many scholars and laypersons interested in his
w ork came from near and far to testify to his influence. Those who are
interested in James's w ork can furtherm ore take solace from knowing
that numerous attempts are now underway to grant James the intellec­
tual recognition he deserves.3 As Stuart H a ll has noted, however, much
of the w ritin g on James has been explanatory, descriptive, or celebratory.4
The purpose of our conference was to grant James serious attention and
to accord his w ork the critica l scrutiny to w hich it has to be subjected
before one can begin to place him in proper perspective as the individual
whom Said has claimed is "a centrally im portant 20th-century figure, a
Trinidadian black whose life as a scholar of history, p o litica l activist,
cricket player and critic , cultural maverick, restless pilg rim between the
West and its form er colonial possessions in Africa and America, is em­
blem atic of modern existence its e lf."5

To the m ajority of persons who attended the conference at Wellesley,

the basic facts of James's life and w ritings are fam iliar, indeed compel­
ling. Yet for many readers inside as w ell as outside the academy, James is
s till little known. It is sufficient to begin the story for them by sim ply
observing that this diverse, curious, exploratory Caribbean w riter, ac­
tiv is t, and intellectual loved Shakespeare and soap operas, Hegel and
calypso. He read and reread Aeschylus, Sophocles, M ilto n , Rousseau,
Thackeray, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, M elville, and W hitman, even as he
delighted in detective stories, gangster film s, and Hollywood comedies.
The breadth of James's interests was extraordinary, and he made o rig i­
nal contributions to a host of fields—literature, criticism , cultural stud­
ies, p o litica l theory, history, philosophy. To mention only the tw o most
prom inent: James's b rillia n t account of the H aitian Revolution, The
Black Jacobins (1938), is, along w ith W.E.B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruc-
 Introduction 3

tion (1935) and Eric W illiam s's Capitalism and Slavery (1944), a seminal
text in the history of slavery and abolition; and his semiautobiographical
m editation on the game of cricket, Beyond a Boundary (1963), beau-
tifu lly blending w itty recollection and shrewdly appreciative insight, is a
masterpiece of sports journalism , political analysis, and aesthetic theory.
Yet w hile James had, and continues to have, many admirers, and w hile
he has influenced and inspired readers worldwide, he is only now w in ­
ning the larger readership that his w ork m erits. He did not have an aca­
demic appointment and network through w hich to circulate his ideas,
and he traveled from one subject to another w ith a poised freedom that
cut against the modern tendency toward specialization. Those who have
encountered his books have found them provocative and empowering,
especially in their complex demonstrations of the ways in which ex­
ploited, oppressed peoples have been able to act creatively, resolutely, in
history. But the books themselves have slipped in and out of print, and a
good deal of James's finest w riting has been slow to appear, including
American C iviliza tion , w ritte n in 1950 but only recently published.6
James also wrote for sm all-circulation newspapers, magazines, and
journals, was a coauthor of short-lived pamphlets and monographs, and
maintained an elaborate correspondence.7He was a spellbinding lecturer
and orator who spoke w ith power and precision about A ristotle, Shake­
speare, Marx, Lenin, and Charlie Chaplin to varied audiences. But these
ephemeral texts and transcripts, too, have not been widely available or
else have not been published at all.
Born at the turn of the century (4 January 1901) in Tunapuna, Trinidad,
and after having received only a few years of formal education, James
began his career as a lecturer at Queen's Royal College and later at the
Teachers' Training College in Port of Spain. He also wrote for local
magazines—together w ith Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes he formed
Trinidad and The Beacon—and newspapers.8 It is striking that James,
Sylvester W illiam s (the father of Pan-Africanism), and George Padmore
(another central figure in Pan-Africanism) all came from the Tunapuna-
Arim a area of about five square miles in the northeastern part of the
island.
From his in itia l interest in the p olitical activities of such early West
Indian nationalists as Captain A rthur Cipriani, T. A. Marryshow, C. D.
Rawle, and A.R.F. Webber, James became a fierce critic of imperialism
and a pivotal spokesman for Pan-African theory and practice. Neverthe­
less, he recognized the value as w ell as the lim its of the British colonial
 4 Introduction

education that he received, and, encouraged by his mother ("She read

everything that came her way," he said), James q uickly acquired com­
mand of the classic texts of the Western tradition, particularly the Greek
philosophers and dramatists, Shakespeare, and the nineteenth-century
novelists. James seems to have harbored high aspirations as a creative
w rite r him self, making forays in to the short story and w ritin g a novel,
M in ty A lle y (1936). But upon his arrival in London in 1932, he became a
colum nist on cricket for the Manchester Guardian, he involved him self
in Pan-African politics and programs, and he enlisted in sectarian M arx­
ist struggles. W hile in England during the 1930s, James was a stalwart,
exacting foe of Stalinism , and he wrote and lectured extensively on
behalf of the Trotskyite cause.9
James was such an incisive, uncompromising radical that, according to
his astute biographer, Paul Buhle, James's B ritish comrades welcomed
his wish to v is it the United States: James's forthrigh t critiques had both
impressed them and made them uncomfortable. James arrived in Am er­
ica in 1938 and stayed u n til 1953, when he was expelled as an "undesir­
able alien" after being interned at E llis Island. W hile in the states, he
labored and wrote for two branches of the American Trotskyite move­
m ent—the Workers' Party and the Socialist Workers' Party—lived among
sharecroppers in southeast M issouri, and completed two penetrating
books, Notes on D ialectics: Hegel Marx, Lenin (1948) and Mariners,
Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman M e lville and the World
We Live In (1953). D uring this period (1941-52) James, Dunayevskaya,
and Grace Lee [Boggs] formed the Johnson-Forest Tendency, out of which
James most im portant intellectual w ritings arose.10 Even as im portant a
work as Dunayevskaya's M arxism and Freedom (1958) bears a ll of the
marks of this collective enterprise although Dunayevskaya never cred­
ited any of the members of the Johnson-Forest Tendency for th e ir co ntri­
bution to this w ork.11
A fte r his deportation to England in 1953, James spent some tim e
travelling in Europe before he was invited in A p ril 1958 to participate in
the festivities that were held to celebrate the inauguration of the West
Indian Federation. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed editor of the
PNM Weekly, the weekly newspaper of the People's N ational Movement
(pnm), whose title , by the end of the year, he changed to The Nation.
Nonetheless, James's M arxism , his in a b ility to understand the national­
ist politics taking place in Trinidad and Tobago at the tim e (James had
absented him self from Trinidad for tw enty-six years), and the jealousy
 Introduction 5

that his presence generated w ith in the pnm- a ll led to a break w ith his
former pupil Eric W illiam s, premier, chief m inister and prime m inister
of Trinidad and Tobago (1956-81) and to his subsequent resignation from
the pnm in I960.12

A fter a serious automobile accident in Jamaica in 1961, James returned

to England la ^ r that year in a somewhat in firm condition. Most of his
close colleagues attest to his reduced a ctivity and energy after this acci­
dent. Journeying back to Trinidad in 1965 as a journalist to cover the v is it
of an English cricket team for an English newspaper, James was placed
under house arrest during a period of national unrest. During that same
year James formed the Workers and Farmers Party, which was unsuccess­
fu l in the general elections that were held in 1966.13 Once more, he
returned to England.
In 1968, James was allowed to reenter the United States, and in his
later years he lectured in America and abroad, m aintaining his residence
in Brixton, England. Although he returned to Trinidad occasionally and
lived there for almost two years under the auspices of the O ilfield W ork­
ers Trade Union, his advanced age eventually confined him in the 1980s
to his Brixton home. There he read, watched television nearly nonstop
(he found it endlessly entertaining and instructive), and met w ith a
steady stream of friends and distinguished international visitors, includ­
ing E. P. Thompson, Alice Walker, Edward W. Said, George Lamming,
A m iri Baraka, and Kwame Toure (form erly Stokely Carmichael).
W hile James revered the great writers of the Western canon, he also
loved the works of Aime Cesaire, Richard W right, V. S. Naipaul, Earl
Lovelace, Wilson Harris, and contemporary African-American women
writers. He showed boundless affection and esteem for the artistry and
imagination of ordinary people, and his interest in and concern for the
w ritings and p o litica l activities of the Third World and Eastern Europe
remained equally unlim ited. He tried to understand everything he ob­
served in a ll its complexity, whether it was Picasso's "Guernica" or a
group of young men on the cricket field. And despite his horror at the
monstrosities of Stalinism and Nazism, he was unceasingly hopeful
about the movement of history, judging that the terrors of the tw entieth
century served as painful witness to the brutal extremes of force neces­
sary to hold in check the ever-growing potential of men and women for a
fu lfillin g life. James also diagnosed and decried the wrongs of American
racism, im perialism , and capitalism, yet ultim ately he celebrated Amer-
 6 Introduction

ica, honoring the democratic s p irit and inventiveness of its people. As he

noted at the conclusion of M ariners, Renegades and Castaways: "I have
spent countless hours studying American history and American lite ra ­
ture, relating the present to the past, and estim ating the American fu ­
ture. I am profoundly conscious of the deficiencies of American civ iliz a ­
tion. But they are as nothing to the fact that America is unburdened by
the weight of the past w hich hangs so heavily on Europe, that as a result
there is here not culture but a need for human relations of a size and
scope w hich w ill in the end trium ph over a ll deficiencies/'14
James struck this affirm ative note even in his w ritings on the Soviet
Union, Lenin's p o litica l thought, dialectical m aterialism , the black and
socialist revolution, and Nkrum ah's Ghana, not a ll of w hich would seem
easy to redeem. It is present, too, in his accounts of the H aitian revolu­
tionary Toussaint-Louverture in The Black Jacobins and, earlier, in a
play about Toussaint that was performed in London in 1936 w ith Paul
Robeson in the leading role. But James's optim ism is displayed most
com pellingly in his sharp scrutinies of W hitman, M elville, Shakespeare,
and Abraham Lincoln; in brisk statements of his approach to literary
criticism and cultural studies; in the masterful commentaries he offers
on D. W. G riffith , Chaplin, and Eisenstein; and in the eloquent, vivid,
intricate letters that he wrote throughout the 1940s to his beloved Con­
stance Webb (whom he married in 1946),15 and in the sim ila rly dazzling
long letters on literature, criticism , and politics that he sent to such
scholars as M axw ell Geismar, Jay Leyda, and Frank Kermode.
James is an attractive but also a challenging figure. Part of what is so
appealing in him also makes him controversial. James was a revolution­
ary whose major concerns were the organization of the w orking class and
the interpretation of working-class struggle in the decisive events of his
era, such as the Hungarian Revolution, the battle against colonialism
and apartheid in southern Africa, and the Solidarity movement in Po­
land. C ultural conservatives w ill be gratified by James's loyalty to the
Western tradition but w ill not share his tender, inquisitive regard for the
colorful panorama of popular culture, w hile canon-busting leftists w ill
echo his praise of common fo lk and factory workers yet be im patient
w ith his demand that everybody peruse Plato and A ristotle.
Scholars in Black studies w ill value James's accomplishments in A fri­
can and Caribbean history as w ell as his cordial attention to their race-
based project. For James, it was crucial to consider the intersection
between race and class when interpreting social and p o litica l events. Yet
 Introduction 7

he was opposed to compartmentalized research and teaching keyed ex­

clusively to racial and ethnic categories, and he concluded that those
who teach Black Studies must understand its emancipatory dimension
and its relation to the larger academic enterprise. More im portant, he
was concerned to demonstrate his com m itm ent to the revolutionary
potential of Black Studies by dedicating his life to reading, w riting,
organizing, aiyl exploring the possibilities for creating a better world. In
this sense, James was tru ly a Renaissance man, devoted to human libera­
tion in a ll of its manifestations.
One of the prim ary goals of the Wellesley conference was to survey the
borders and boundaries of his achievements as w ell as highlight his many
strengths. This is a necessary task, yet also a somewhat paradoxical one
in James's case. For James, after all, the aim was always to enlarge the
frame of reference and to move from specific texts, literary periods, racial
and ethnic dilemmas, and p o litica l crises to larger, universal lessons. He
was intensely curious and open-minded: he responded w ith accuracy and
energized feeling to Dante, Beethoven, a cricket match, a novel by his
friend Richard W right, a tough-guy tale by Dashiell Hammett or Ray­
mond Chandler, a complex turn in Hegelian dialectic, a calypso by the
M ighty Sparrow, the culinary delights of West Indian cooking, and a
steamy daytime serial on TV. James was heartened and intrigued by what
persons of a ll races and ethnicities had produced—evidence, for him, of
the m anifold varieties of creative human effort and expression.

Since James's death, several works about him have appeared: Paul
Buhle's C.L.R. James: The A rtis t as Revolutionary (1988), Bishnu Ragoo-
nath's Tribute to a Scholar: Appreciating C.L.R. fames (1990), Anna
Grimshaw's The C.L.R. James Reader (1992), and Paget Henry and Paul
Buhle's C.L.R. James's Caribbean (1992). S till others are forthcoming.
Chief among recent books are Kent Worcester, C.L.R. James: A P olitical
Biography; Scott McLemee and Paul Le Blanc, eds., C.L.R. James and
Revolutionary Marxism : Selected Writings of C.L.R. James, 1939-1949
(1994); and James's own American C ivilization (1993) and the reissued
Beyond a Boundary (1993). As it becomes clearer in the next few years
that James's work is central to an understanding of our world, one can be
certain that a great deal of scholarly research w ill be devoted to his work.
O nly such probing can allow us to get a better measure of the man and his
m ultiple achievements.
C.L.R. James: His Intellectual Legacies consists m ainly of pieces given
 8 Introduction

at the James conference along w ith a few additional pieces. W hether in

appreciation or in critic a l contestation, the thirty-odd scholars who
came together at Wellesley (and the hundreds of others in attendance)
had one thing in common: they a ll admired (and, indeed, many loved)
James, and they deemed his com m itm ent to scholarly in q u iry and the
revolutionary transform ation of the w orld im portant. Although the con­
ference proved that there is an ever-growing interest in James, it also
made clear that much remains to be done in uncovering and document­
ing his intellectual legacies. The C.L.R. James Society, the CLR James
Journal the C.L.R. James Institutes in New York and London, and the
many other individual and communal enterprises that have emerged
(and are s till emerging) w ill, we hope, bring C.L.R. James to w ider public
attention.
This volume begins w ith this introduction w hich is a survey of James's
achievements and the m ain themes of his intellectual activity. Next is
Anna Grimshaw's "Personal M em oir." Grimshaw, who was w ith James
for the last six years of his life, w rites about "the completeness w ith
w hich James immersed him self in areas of human experience through art
and culture" and m aintains that the synthesis of James's intellectual
achievements lay in Am erican C iviliza tion . Derek W alcott remarks
upon "the sense of achievement" that one finds in James's style—the
aesthetic balance of his prose, a sensibility that absorbed everything and
the presence of a grace that revealed itse lf in everything he did.
In taking up one facet of James's lite ra ry legacy, Helen Pyne-Timothy
treats James's lite ra ry works as paradigmatic of his later concerns and
contends that James's contribution to Caribbean literature resides in his
having given voice to the ordinary people: "the porters, prostitutes, eater-
men, washer-women, and domestic servants." H. A dlai Murdoch picks
up on the la tte r observation and states that in M in ty A lle y, James's only
novel, James articulated "the discourse of those voiceless subjects of
colonialism who had been denied the right of their own representation."
He says further that the novel can be read "as a barometer of colonial life,
a microcosmic re-presentation of the forces underlying the fragmenta­
tio n and hierarchization of a society made subject to a colonial dis­
course." Barbara Paul-Emile then examines the interplay between "the
m ythic and archetypal patterns . . . in the male/female relationship" in
M in ty A lle y and what she calls the "addict-enabler sym biotic relation­
ship" between Benoit and Mrs. Rouse.
 Introduction 9

The Black Jacobins, one of James's most illum ina tin g texts, is exam­
ined in the th ird section of this volume. Robin Blackburn places in
context "the achievements of the Black Jacobins—both the book and
the historical force w hich it named"—and demonstrates the manner in
which James integrated the "tangled conflicts of the colonial factions,
the revolutionary events in the m etropolis and the ... even more revolu­
tionary upheavals in the colonies." Michael Foot argues that The Black
Jacobins, "a M arxist masterpiece," was informed by (and bears witness
to) the high regard w ith which James held the French Revolution; Foot
quotes a letter from James to confirm his point, and, furthermore, in d i­
cates how James was influenced by Jules M ichelet's depiction of the role
of the masses in the making of history. Foot professes that "w ithout
M ichelet's combined passion and insight, James could never have w rit­
ten as he did." He also sees James's strength as orator and historian as
deriving from his a b ility to weave the past, the present, and the future
into "a single tapestry, each strand as strong as the other."
C ontinuing in this vein, Alex Dupuy observes that more than a half-
century after its publication, The Black Jacobins "retains its status as
the classic M arxist statement on the Haitian Revolution." W hile he reaf­
firm s the importance of James's work, Dupuy maintains that James's
overemphasis on Toussaint's relationship w ith the French led him to see
the revolution prim arily as a struggle for an interracial democracy rather
than as an expression of black nationalism as espoused by Dessalines and
others. In the process, James was blind to the internal class contradictions
that characterized the revolution and the resistance of the independently
organized slaves. Whatever its shortcomings, however, The Black Jaco­
bins is in Dupuy's view a significant contribution to M arxist thought: "in
its sensitivity to the colonial and race questions . . . it is an important
corrective to all that Marx had to say about modern capitalism ."
Kara Rabbitt's essay complements these others. Rabbitt sees The
Black Jacobins as a site in which many of James's diverse literary and
historical talents and interests in the structure of p olitical and philo­
sophical narrative converged. Thus Rabbitt reads The Black Jacobins as
embodying elements of fictio n rather than the facticity associated w ith a
historical textual production. Bernard M o itt, in his study of James's
archival sources, claims that although there was no active Caribbean
tradition of historiography at the tim e James wrote The Black Jacobins,
James managed to reconstruct the world of the Haitian slaves and, in the
 10 Introduction

process, "transcended lin g u istic and cu ltural frontiers in the historiogra­

phy of the Caribbean." Although James consulted only a lim ite d number
of French sources, The Black Jacobins "exposed and illum inated the
w orld of slavery and society in San D om ingo,. . . presented possibilities
for comparative analysis and sparked interest in the historical experience
of fellow Africans in the French A n tille s."
A fter examining him self many of the original sources on the H aitian
Revolution, M o itt proposes that "James's treatm ent of slavery in San
Domingo is too broad and general. It does not illustra te the com plexity of
slavery in the French A n tille s." Yet he concurs that The Black Jacobins
remains James's seminal w ork of this early, pre-United States period.
Apart from speaking about the self-activity of Caribbean peoples as they
struggled for their dignity and freedom, it also marked a point of depar­
ture for a ll subsequent analyses of Caribbean slavery. And as Horace
Campbell has pointed out in his essay in this volume, The Black Jac­
obins and A H istory of Negro Revolt (1938) shaped the thinking of "a
whole generation of Caribbean and African scholars w ith his ideas on
black rebellion."
The next section of this volume is title d "The American Years: A
Collaborative Enterprise," a period of extreme importance in James's
intellectual development. He called those years "the crucial years of my
life ... . More and more it emerges that the tim e we [Lyman and Freddie
Paine, Grace Lee, and other members of the Johnson-Forest Tendency]
spent together and the work that we did were a fundamental part of my
life ."16 As we seek to establish the nature of James's intellectual legacy,
much care must be taken to preserve his collaborative dimension, par­
ticu la rly as it was practiced during his sojourn in the U nited States.
Again, the contributions of James's active comrades and collaborators,
Grace Lee, Raya Dunayevskaya, M a rtin Glaberman, and others, need to
be acknowledged.17
"The American Years" is divided in to four subsections: p olitical, philo ­
sophical, literary, and theoretical. In "C.L.R. James: Organizing in the
U.S.A.," Grace Lee Boggs, one of James's most devoted comrades and the
philosopher of the Johnson-Forest Tendency, recaptures "the very special
magic of that period" and reiterates the sense of James as collaborator.
She alludes to the tremendous labor that James and his comrades did
among the working people, to James's method (his a b ility to pick one's
brain and then make "a whole philosophical m egillah out of it"), and to
the amount of study, especially in philosophy, that James and his col-
 Introduction 11

league engaged in. This is a point Glaberman later amplifies in "The

Marxism of C.L.R. James."
Kent Worcester next canvasses James's p olitical and intellectual ac­
tiv itie s during this period and maintains that the United States proved
piore hospitable for James than London from which he came and to
which he was forced to return. Living in the United States, Worcester
avers, brought Jiome to James the linkage between race and class, and it
led to an examination of the nature of state capitalism w ith in the Soviet
Union and to a rejection of the concept of the vanguard party. Worcester
remarks further that during the latter part of his stay in the United States
James became interested in America's popular culture and became what
he called "a neighborhood man."
James's immersion in philosophy, a product of the examination of
dialectics by the Johnson-Forest Tendency in the 1940s, culminated in
the publication of Notes on Dialectics (hereafter Notes) and a thorough
inquiry into Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks, reflected in thirty-five
unpublished letters between Dunayevskaya, James, and Lee w ritten be­
tween February 1949 and January 1951.18 In "Further Adventures of the
D ialectic," Rick Roderick queries James's treatment of dialectics w ith in
the context of proletarian struggle and argues that, according to James,
Notes was not meant to be an abstract work (although reading it makes it
seem to be), but instead was designed to "lead us into practice, into
practical p o litics."19 "From the position of the newly formulated catego­
ries based on their work on Hegel's Logic/' Roderick states, "the Johnson-
Forest Tendency moved against what it saw as the residual formation
w ith in the Fourth International: Trotskyism and its insistence on old
Leninist categories." In other words, Notes constituted a repudiation of
Trotskyism, the placing of philosophy at the service of politics or, as
Glaberman termed it, "the application of dialectics to a specific problem,
the nature of the proletarian organization."
Lou Turner, however, does not agree fu lly w ith Roderick. In "Episte­
mology, Absolutes, and the Party," he ponders the period after Notes was
w ritte n and claims that the correspondence between James, Dunayev­
skaya, and Lee was intended to rewrite Notes. He denies James any
serious role in those discussions (he claims that James entered the dis­
cussion five months after it began), and he judges that James reached the
lim it of his philosophical development when he concluded Notes. It is
Turner's view that "James's preoccupation w ith the epistemology of the
'dialects of the party' represented both his original insight and the theo-
 12 Introduction

retical lim its of his excursion in to the dialectic." According to Turner,

James's philosophical work of that period was superseded by "Dunayev-
skaya's breakthrough on Hegel's Absolutes," w hich brought "the p hilo­
sophic divergences" w ith in the Johnson-Forest Tendency to a head.
Grace Lee Boggs, an active participant in these discussions, does not
share Turner's understanding of those exchanges, and it is clear that this
issue remains to be grappled w ith in the future.20
A t the lite ra ry level, the level of the lite ra r^ c ritic in particular, James
had much to say about the works of w riters such as W alt W hitman,
Herman M elville, and W illia m Shakespeare.21 His letters to Constance
Webb, several of w hich are included in The C.L.R. fames Reader (1992),
are among other things a m agnificent example of a sustained lite ra ry c rit­
icism . In these letters James also discusses the "woman question" and
develops issues that concerned him w hile he was w ritin g Notes. Of these
letters, Webb has observed "how passionately he loved the arts and what
he gave up when he devoted him self to politics w hile he was in the
U.S."22 Of Cudjoe's analysis of James's letters, Webb has said: "The
approach would certainly have pleased [James] because, as you know,
he was giving much thought to his earlier behavior toward women (so
much more revealing than a purely theoretical attitude to the woman's
question)."23
In Cedric Robinson's "C.L.R. James and the World-System," we find a
deeply textured, p o litic a l reading of James's Mariners, Renegades and
Castaways (hereafter Mariners). Robinson situates James's interpreta­
tio n of M elville's M oby-D ick w ith in a more comprehensive understand­
ing of James's p o litic a l project of that period: James was concerned to
emancipate him self from "the dead weight of the epistemic West, and
diverting from the bourgeois conceit of orthodox M arxism ." (Cornelius
Castoriadis builds on this notion in his essay, "C.L.R. James and the Fate
of M arxism .") As Robinson indicates, James sought in Mariners to dem­
onstrate how the capitalist system had corrupted itse lf into barbarism,
how it had engineered the growth of the totalitarian system and, w ith it,
a particular type of human being:

M ad [Ahab] undoubtedly w a s ... b ut th a t w h ich was madness in a book

one hundred years ago, today is the liv in g madness of the age in w hich we
live . It has cost our contem porary c iv iliz a tio n u n to ld blood and treasure.
We shall conquer it or it w ill destroy us-----
O ut of the very heart o f W estern C iv iliz a tio n , there emerged in 1933
the H itle r regim e as m aster of Germ any. To th is day people resist accept-
 Introduction 13

ing the fundamental fact about the Nazis___They could not face H itler
yesterday w ith a clear mind and good conscience (as they cannot face
Stalin today) because the madness of both was born and nourished in the
very deepest soil of Western civilization.24

In a close analysis of Manners, almost in opposition to Robinson,

W illiam E. Cajn suggests that James misreads M oby-Dick and "m is­
leadingly bends it in to conform ity w ith his own historical optimism,
crediting M elville w ith a faith in common persons that his w riter's
masterpiece does not sustain." M oby-Dick, Cain believes, should be a
deeply disturbing book for James and those who share his faith in com­
mon people and their capacity for political resistance. James was drawn
to M oby-Dick because "in its grim, excited portrait of men in league w ith
a menacingly charismatic leader, M elville's book figures forth dark pos­
sib ilities about human nature and history that James stood steadfastly
against." Cain's oppositional reading points to James's capacity to offer
m ultiple messages and complicatedly mixed meanings for his many
publics.
Facing R eality (1958), James's next significant text after Mariners, was
w ritte n w ith Grace Lee and Cornelius Castoriadis. In "C.L.R. James and
the Fate of M arxism ," Castoriadis speaks about his relationship w ith
James, w ith whom he came into contact in 1947, the reasons why they
separately embraced Trotskyism , and the amazing coincidence by which
their groups grew from the same impulses and shared sim ilar ideological
goals even though they were continents apart and unaware of each oth­
er's existence. He says further that James, like Marx, clung to an anti­
mony in his thought: on the one hand, he recognized the self-activity of
the worker; on the other, he placed Western rationalism at the center of
human history as a kind of "fin a l tru th of human history."
In a letter to James, Dunayevskaya describes the joy she felt when she
met Castoriadis in 1947 and calls him "a find by him self. If we gain him,
we have established ourselves not only as an international tendency, we
have found a collaborator who can amount to something in the future
development of the revolutionary movement, actually and theoreti­
cally." Ten years later, in 1957, James wrote to Castoriadis and others
urging them to send their comments on Facing Reality, a pamphlet (later
it was referred to as "a manifesto") that they were preparing on the
Hungarian revolution. In a statement that reflected James's view of his
intellectual activity, he writes:
 14 Introduction

Hungary should teach us something. It [socialism] w ill come from the

workers in their plant who know quite well what they are about, though
they appear not to be making any politics at all. It w ill come from the
youth who are busy swallowing nationalistic propaganda day after day at
school in the same way that the Hungarians swallowed Stalinist propa­
ganda and in reality didn't care a good God-damn about it. And it w ill
come from thoughtful intellectuals who found the contradiction of bour­
geois and Stalinist apologetics too much for them. But in the same way
that it took tremendous mass demonstrafions marching on tanks to
make all these people aware of themselves, so the propagandists and
agitators today have to strike for the new society, to h it as powerful and
uncompromising w ith the pen as the revolutionary masses struck in
Paznan and Budapest. Nothing else w ill w in over the people. [Italics
added]

Later that year, Castoriadis brought to James's attention the need to

use the Hungarian Revolution in order to articulate a concept of social­
ism as the "self-organisation of the proletariat carried to the extreme,
say,* the universal w ith in the proletariat."
In "The M arxism of C.L.R. James," M artin Glaberman, a colleague
who s till remains fa ith fu l to James's ideals, provides an insider's glimpse
in to the Johnson-Forest Tendency, "an independent democratic and revo­
lutionary M arxist tendency" that attempted "to make M arxism relevant
to the m iddle of the tw entieth century." Glaberman pays James the
ultim ate com plim ent when he argues that James attempted to do for
M arxism during W orld War II what "Lenin had attempted during World
War I." By sketching the outlines of the Johnson-Forest Tendency, then
the Correspondence Publishing Committee, then Facing Reality, from
its inception to its demise in 1970, Glaberman furnishes a cogent synthe­
sis of the tendency and gives us a sense of its achievements.
In "C.L.R. James and the W orld System," Cedric Robinson notes that
from 1923, James's p o litica l thought was "an attem pt to navigate be­
tween the Charybdis of an international w orking class movement and
the Scylla of anticolonialism and anti-im perialism . His pilo ting device
was his critica l im agination." A fter he was deported from the United
States in 1953, James devoted more of his energy to the anti-im perialist
and anticolonial struggles in the Africana world. In this section, "Black­
ness, Self-Determ ination, and A nticolonialism ," Glen Richards analyzes
James's response to the historical legacy and meaning of blackness in
the Caribbean and the United States. Although James recognized the
autonomy of the black struggle in the United States and the Caribbean,
 Introduction 15

he always recommended that the leaders in these struggles recognize the

international im plications of their action. As Richards stresses, for
James, blacks did not merely participate in the shaping of these societies,
they were the catalyst in their transformation. Hence Richards identifies
what he considers James's major claim w ith in the context of the larger
black struggle: "Blacks were not only the agents of their own emancipa­
tion, they spearheaded po litica l and social changes in the United States."
The same, he would m aintain, was true for the Caribbean.
In "C.L.R. James and the Politics of Trinidad and Tobago," James
M ille tte relatedly argues that the period 1965-70 "was at once the nadir
and the zenith of James's p olitical involvem ent in practical politics in
the West Indies" (italics added). He outlines James's importance to the
M arxist Left in Trinidad and Tobago (and by extension, the Caribbean)
and the contribution he made to the consolidation of the M arxist forces
in the island. His defeat in Trinidadian politics exposed James's m isun­
derstanding of the practical forces at work in the island of his b irth and
his in a b ility to give persistent, accurate attention to this struggle.
"W ilson H arris—A Philosophical Approach," a lecture that James gave
w hile under house arrest and one that M ille tte refers to, is the subject of
Aldon Nielsen's "Reading James Reading." Nielsen argues that in his
lecture on Harris, James puts into play "philosophical complications in
the continuing conversation he had w ith contemporary w riting ," a task
he had commenced a year earlier on Ellis Island, at the very tim e he was
composing Mariners. For James, im p lic it in the activity of creative w rit­
ing in the Americas was the need to rename and to inscribe meanings
upon "our m ultitudinous pasts." No wonder that James was in "his
element" when he delivered his address on Harris. As M ille tte reports,
w ith in those moments he lived w ith in his own "extreme lim it boundary
situation."25 In grappling w ith a West Indian problem, Harris, for James,
"had arrived at conclusions which dealt w ith the problems of the lan­
guage as a whole in the world at large."26
"C ricket, Marxism, and the Caribbean Intellectual" attempts to sum
up the com plexity of the man. As M ark Kingwell observes, it is James's
paradoxical relationship to cricket that enables us to sense James's pro­
found com plexity and ambivalence. As Kingwell indicates, James's "life ­
long association w ith cricket is, contrary to expectation, the master-key
to his political awareness. . . . The game's place at the center of En­
glish im perial attitudes should make it a clearly antithetical element in
revolutionary movements, especially in colonial settings."27 But the
 16 Introduction

game of cricket possesses a number of m oral ambivalences and ambigu­

ities. Thus, although James, a com m itted M arxist, remained devoted to
the aristocratic game of cricket and its im perialist underpinnings, it is
the "culture of c iv ility " embedded w ith in the game and its inherently
schizophrenic nature that explain its paradoxical hold on James and that
make it possible for him to retain his hold on and to privilege this
profoundly colonialist practice. As James said in Beyond a Boundary:
"C ricket had plunged me in to politics long before I was aware of it. When
I did turn to politics I did not have much to learn."28
In "James and Fanon and the Problem of the Intelligentsia," Paul
Idahosa draws on Bauman to show that James and Fanon are "in te r­
preters" rather than "legislators": both James and Fanon seek to "assist"
rather than "authorize com m unication between participants w ith in a
com m unity." "Interpreters claim for themselves," Idahosa states, "a site
of authenticity that derives not from the traditional authority of the
sovereign individuals in liberalism or the traditional intellectual but
from the people as a co lle c tiv ity and the ir traditions. Through providing
a language they give voice to a people." Rounding off his case, Idahosa
argues that these interpreters draw on the black radical tra dition rooted
in the historical experiences of black people in the New World. Both
James and Fanon were com m itted to the elim ination of the intelligentsia
as a "d is tin c t group" and preferred to place their trust in "the good sense
inherent in much of popular organizations' own co-ordination, and self­
development."
In "C.L.R. James, W alter Rodney, and the Caribbean Intellectual,"
Horace Campbell brings us in to the present day by recalling that, above
all, James was "a p o litica l activist for freedom, social justice and a
new social order" and that "the issues of resistance, war, social change
and decolonization were questions w hich agitated the movements w ith
w hich James was associated in his life tim e ." He accents the breadth of
James's international involvem ent by highlighting how for the most part
James "combined the contradictions of the Caribbean intelligentsia in
attem pting to define the role of the peoples of the Caribbean w ith respect
to the ir own liberation . . . in a w orld where the liberation of the Carib­
bean could not be divorced from major changes in the international
p o litica l economy."
For Campbell, any contemporary m editation on James's oeuvre should
be concerned not only to im pel an academic awareness of James's work
but should reveal the manner in w hich his ideas connect to contempo-
 Introduction 17

rary anti-im perialist and anticolonial struggles. As far as Campbell is

concerned, W alter Rodney—the necessary heir and intellectual descen­
dant of James—embodied that revolutionary dimension as scholar and
activist even though he differed w ith James on several crucial matters.

The conference at Wellesley College bore ample witness to the power

and v ita lity of James's intellectual example, to the richness of his ideas,
to the scale and scope of his career, and to the challenging, intricate
interplay between his texts and those by so many others, from Plato to
Shakespeare, from Rousseau to M arx and Lenin, from Du Bois to Rodney
and Said. This collection of essays is in a sense only a beginning: much
work lies ahead, as the legacies of C.L.R. James are explored in yet greater
detail and as his influence radiates in to other settings and forums. But in
its effort to blend appreciation and analysis, understanding and critical
reflection, joy in com m unity and hope for a better world, we th in k it is a
beginning that James him self would have valued.

N o te s

1. Chronicle of Higher Education, 23 September 1992, A9.

2. "Johnson" was James's Party name, and "Forest" was Dunayevskaya's.
3. W ith the exception of M in ty A lley (1936), a work that was very unsuccess­
fu l when it was published, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint LOuverture and the
San Domingo Revolution (1938), a work that was very successful when it was
published, World Revolution (1937), w hich became the "bible of the Trotskyists,"
and Beyond a Boundary (1963), James's work was not w ell known nor did it
receive much scholarly attention.
4. See Paget Henry and Paul Buhle, eds., C.L.R. James's Caribbean (Durham:
Duke U niversity Press, 1992), 3.
5. Edward Said, quoted on the back cover of Anna Grimshaw, The C.L.R.
James Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
6. See C.L.R. James, American C iviliza tio n , ed. Anna Grimshaw and Keith
Hart (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).
7. See Scott McLemee and Paul Le Blanc, C.L.R. James and Revolutionary
M arxism : Selected W ritings of C.L.R. James, 1939-1949 (Atlantic Highlands,
N.J.: Hum anities Press, 1994), for a selection of some of James's w ritings of the
1940s.
8. See Reinhard Sander, The Trinidad Awakening (Westport, Conn.: Green­
wood Press, 1988), and A lbert Gomes, Through a Maze of Colour (Port of Spain:
Key Caribbean Publishers, 1974), for a discussion of literary a ctivity in Trinidad
during the late 1920s and early 1930s. See also Selwyn R. Cudjoe, "The Audacity
of It A ll: C.L.R. James's Trinidadian Background" in Henry and Buhle, C.L.R.
James’s Caribbean, for a discussion of the early influence on James's life.
 18 Introduction

9. See James's English translation of Boris Souvraine's S talin: A C ritic a l Sur­

vey o f Bolshevism (New York: A lliance Book Corporation, Longmans Green,
1939) and C.L.R. James, W orld Revolution, 1917-1936: The Rise and Fall o f the
Com m unist Inte rn atio na l (London: M . Seeker and Warburg, 1937).
10. See Grace Lee Boggs, "T h inking and A cting D ialectically: C. L. R. James,
The Am erican Years," M on thly Review 45, no. 5 (October 1993), 38-46, for a
discussion of these early years.
11. See Raya Dunayevskaya, M arxism and Freedom: From 1776 u n til Today
(New York: Bookman Associates, 1958). See also«McLemee and Blanc, C.L.R.
James and R evolutionary M arxism , 236, for a comment on the com position of
this w ork.
12. Eric W illiam s, w ith the active assistance of the People's Education Move­
ment, founded the pnmin 1956. For a discussion of the form ation of the pnm, see
De W ilton Rogers, The Rise o f the People's N ational Movement, vol. 1 (Port of
Spain: De W ilton Rogers, n.d.). See also C.L.R. James, Party P olitics in the West
Indies (San Juan: C.L.R. James, 1962), for his account of his break w ith the pnm
and W illiam s.
13. See "It's the Workers and Farmers Party," Trinidad Guardian, 11 August
1966, for an announcement of the form ation of the party and its objectives.
14. C.L.R. James, M ariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman
M e lville and the W orld We Live In (New York: C.L.R. James, 1953), 194.
15. Although James married Constance Webb in 1946, the marriage was not
recognized by the Im m igration and N aturalization Service because he was not
divorced from Juanita Young, whom he had married in Trinidad in 1929. In 1948
he married Webb a second tim e.
16. Letter to Lyman and Freddy Paine, 27 February 1965.
17. James makes many references to such collaboration and to the contribu­
tions of Grace Lee and Raya Dunayevskaya. See his letters to Lyman and Freddy
Paine, 3 January 1962, and to Constance Webb.
18. See Raya Dunayevskaya C ollection—M arxist-H um anism : A H a lf Century
of Its Development. M icro film . Wayne State U niversity Archives of Labor and
Urban Affairs, D etroit, 3:1595-1734.
19. C.L.R. James, Notes on D ialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin (Westport, Conn.:
Lawrence H ill, 1980).
20. Private conversations w ith Grace Lee Boggs 2 May 1992 and 3 November
1992, D etroit, M ichigan.
21. See Anna Grimshaw, The C.L.R. James Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992),
for a good selection of James's literary essays.
22. Constance Webb Pearlstien to Selwyn R. Cudjoe, 25 March 1991.
23. Constance Webb Pearlstien to Selwyn R. Cudjoe, 4 June 1992.
24. James, Mariners, Renegades and Castaways, 10.
25. James quoted in M ille tte , "C.L.R. James and the Politics of Trinidad and
Tobago, 1965-1970."
26. For a pertinent discussion of the theoretical issues that this point raises, see
Selwyn R. Cudjoe, "Eric W illiam s and the Politics of Language," in Eric W illiam s
Speaks, ed. Cudjoe (Wellesley, Mass.: Calaloux Publications, 1993; distributed by
U niversity of Massachusetts Press, Amherst), 35-110.
 Introduction 19

27. According to Kingwell, even though cricket is "the game of the people," the
"id y llic , elegant character of the game, its association w ith English public schools
and leisured amusements, cannot be shaken off. It is also, in contour, a game of
refined beauty: the w hite flannels, the Unear action, the lack of body contact.
Ironically, cricket remains aristocratic."
28. C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary [New York: Pantheon, 1983), 71.
 Personal M em oirs

It is almost an insult to the Caribbean people to see

James as prophetic because he would not have
accepted that. He would have sim ply said, "I am this
kind of person, and what I am saying is not prophecy,
but custom."
Derek Walcott, "A Tribute to C.L.R. James"
 Anna Grimshaw

C.L.R.'James, 1901-1989: A Personal M em oir

C.L.R. James died at his London home after a short illness. His home was
a room, a small cramped space that contained a bed, a television set, a
desk, and two armchairs. The walls were lined w ith books; piles of
journals and newspapers were stacked on the floor; and always, w ith in
easy reach of the bed, lay his battered volumes of Shakespeare, Thack­
eray, and Arnold Bennett. Sometimes CLR would say that he wished that
he didn't have to sleep in the same room as his books: but every morning
when I arrived to make his breakfast I picked my way over the scattered
companions that made bearable the long hours of darkness.
By day, CLR sat in an armchair and kept his eye on the drawing
propped against my desk. He was fascinated by what Margaret Glover's
portrait revealed about him . His first response had been one of relief that
he had found no traces there of his feckless brother, Eric: later he saw
resemblance to his schoolmaster father, sometimes to the puritanical
aunts who had watched over his Trinidad childhood; but more often CLR
saw his mother, a woman who at the beginning of the century in a tin y
outpost of the B ritish Empire had introduced her son to the world of
literature: "She read everything that came her way. I can see her now,
sitting very straight w ith the book held high, her pince-nez on her Cauca­
sian nose, reading t ill long after m idnight" (James to Webb, 1944, date
unknown).
From tim e to tim e CLR, his eyes bright like a child's, looked up at me
sitting behind the desk, and pointing w ith one of his long, slender fingers,
he would announce a new discovery in the drawing. This, as I learned,
was his method. He was what he called "w atching" the drawing, seeking
to go beyond its surface appearance, to penetrate to the deeper move­
ments contained w ith in the creative process and captured in the artist's

23
 24 Personal Memories

unique vision. Although CLR's im m ersion in revolutionary Marxism ,

for over three decades, led him to develop this method and to situate it
w ith in a philosophical tradition, its foundations were laid early, par­
tic u la rly in his experience of watching cricketers as a young boy from the
window of his house. One character, in particular, dominated his ch ild­
hood memories—M atthew Bondman, a figure "so crude and vulgar in
every aspect of his life , (but) w ith a bat in hand (he) was a ll grace and
style ."1 It was the contrast w ith in Bondman's personality, the a rtistic
g ift emerging so unexpectedly from an ordinary, commonplace life that
caught CLR's attention. There were other sim ilar personalities he could
recall w ith equal clarity. One of my favorites was M r. Quilden, a rather
form al Victorian gentleman who wore a frock coat to church every
Sunday and whose distin ction in life was to be the inventor of a new
word, "how-be-it-ever," w hich he inserted at awkward moments in a
conversation. The tim in g of its insertion was as im portant as the extrav­
agance of its articulation; and CLR never tired of amusing him self by
demonstrating its use to me.
I was intrigued by the developed visual quality of CLR's memory, his
close scrutiny of character, his fascination w ith the creativity of the
human personality, his feeling for the dynamics of social life; and I would
be reminded of his early am bition to become a novelist. The short stories
he published as a young man in the 1920s contained many memorable
characters who expressed the v ita lity of Trinidad's backstreet life ; and
when he sailed to England in 1932, carrying a completed novel in his
luggage, he was confident of making his way as a w rite r of fictio n . But, as
he once explained to me, "the world went p olitical; and I went w ith it."
CLR's lifelong involvem ent in revolutionary politics took him from
Europe, to the U nited States, to Africa, and back to his native Caribbean.
But as I watched over the fin a l years of this public figure, reading his
books and journalism , absorbing the p o litica l statements, the assess­
ment of historical events and movements, listening to his measured
response to the endless questions posed by those who sought him out, I
found m yself drawn into another life . It was expressed in the private
world where CLR lived w ith his favorite works of the creative imagina­
tion; and it was fu ll of surprises. There were not just the classics of Euro­
pean literature and music, but also Hollywood film s, cartoon strips, jazz,
cricket, and Trinidadian calypso. We often spent our Sundays, long un­
broken days, choosing a program of music or catching one of the old film s
on television. In this way I discovered the completeness w ith w hich CLR
 C.L.R. James, 1901-1989 25

immersed him self in areas of human experience explored through art and
culture. His absorption in watching the way Gary Cooper moved about a
film set was no different from the concentration he gave to "the strange
sounds" he identified as so unique to the late Beethoven piano works.
S itting in that sm all room, day after day, I reflected a great deal on
these two lives, the public and private, the political and the artistic.
Although I sensed their profound integration, indeed it seemed to lie at
the heart of CLR's hum anity, it was a long tim e before I found the key to
the synthesis he had achieved w ith in his complex personality. It lay, not
in the fragments of CLR's autobiography, but in a strikingly original
work called American C iviliza tion (1993) w hich he wrote in 1950.2
Like several others before me, I became CLR's assistant in order to help
him finish his autobiography. By then he was in his eighties and I soon
realized that he no longer had the stamina required for a work of such
scope. Although it was a project he continued to feel an obligation to
complete, and people frequently reminded him of its historical im por­
tance, he would say to me that he had always lacked the instinctive
desire to w rite it; that he could not see a way of going beyond just an
account of the events and personalities, of finding w ith in him self the
resources for the creation of something new. Moreover, as I later found
out, the habits of his life tim e ran contrary to such a project. The momen­
tum was forward. In responding to the challenge posed by the movement
of the modern world, CLR devoted his life to p olitical work, exploring
some of the fundamental questions that concerned the future of civiliza­
tio n —the collapse of Europe, the barbarism of Fascism and Stalinism,
questions of race and empire, of democracy and human creativity, in d i­
vidual consciousness and social life. But his energies were also signifi­
cantly devoted to narrower questions of theory and organization which
preoccupied those w ith in the M arxist movement. It was hard, relentless
work that wearied and sometimes overwhelmed him ; but, in giving
him self to it w ithout restraint, even in his old age, CLR expected others
to preserve the legacy, to take responsibility for his papers and manu­
scripts, his publications, his finances, and even his own personal welfare.
Gradually, as CLR retreated from the autobiography and buried him ­
self among his books, I became free to spend my days sorting through the
faded carbon copies, the private correspondence, the scribbled notes and
jottings which were his personal archive. It was here that I came across
copies of the letters that CLR had w ritten to a young American woman
during the 1940s. Reading through them was a moving experience, for
 26 Personal M em ories

they were the documents of a remarkable love affair. They expressed the
personal struggle of a man dedicated to revolutionary M arxism and yet
seeking to encompass a ll aspects of hum an experience w ith in his vision
of p o litic a l life . For CLR it was an intense, passionate struggle and his
courtship of Constance Webb became the focus of his desire to integrate
the tw o h ighly developed aspects of his personality—the revolutionary
leader, the ferocious in te lle ctu a l and public speaker, and the private man
w ith his great love of art and literature. But it was more than a personal
struggle. CLR believed that the m ovem ent of the modern w orld was
toward integration—"politics, art, life, love, in the modern world, all
become so closely integrated that to understand one is to understand a ll,"
he w rote in a 1944 le tte r to Constance; and the new synthesis, for h im
the key to the future of hum a n ity itself, w ould be forged w ith in the
U nited States.
I often found m yself pausing for a m om ent from the letters to glance
across the desk at CLR. It was curious, probably an in stin ctive response
to discovering something new, but I fe lt as though I wanted to catch a
glimpse of the man whose inner life was now spread before me. Some­
times I was disappointed; and I saw only a tired, w ithdraw n old man, his
frail, but once pow erful frame hidden beneath a m ountain of rugs as he
dozed in his armchair. A t other times, though, I saw the tremendous
v ita lity that fille d his whole personality, the bright eyes, the shock of
w h ite hair, the intense concentration as he held a pen poised to mark,
underline and exclaim in the w orn pages of his V anity Fair.
It wasn't hard then to imagine w hat presence CLR could command as a
public speaker; and it was this, his strik in g appearance, his fluency and
passion on the platform that first caught the attention of Constance
Webb when she attended a meeting addressed by h im in the spring of
1939. CLR had not been in Am erica long; but already he had traveled
w idely across the continent, speaking to both black and w hite audiences
on the race question and the com ing war in Europe. He was m aking his
way to M exico where he held discussions w ith Leon Trotsky,- and it was
from there that CLR wrote his first letters to Constance. They were fu ll
of CLR James, The W riter. His w itty , evocative prose, his close observa­
tion and fine depiction of character betrayed the talents of a novelist; but
the distin ctive ly personal tone of the w ritin g , at times veering close to
self-indulgence, conveyed something else. CLR felt him self to be em­
barking on a new phase in his life. He was conscious of the tremendous
possibilities for his own development w ith in the context of American
 C.L.R. James, 1901-1989 27

society; and, as the early letters clearly showed, the in itia l focus was on
the po litica l problems he faced w ith in the revolutionary movement.
CLR's correspondence of 1939 and 1940 v iv id ly conveyed this mood
of excitement and challenge; and his courtship of Constance, m ainly
through letters, became a tangible expression of the personal expansion
he experienced as the new society opened up before him .
Reading th e ia te r letters, however, after a break in the correspondence
of almost three years, I began to perceive a different man. There was now
m a tu rity and a certain kind of self-consciousness in the w riting; but,
above all, a great intensity swept through the letters, reflecting how
deeply immersed CLR was in the struggle to break free from the confines
of his European background. It was as if something powerful had been
unlocked by his experience of America. He sought to articulate this
through his exchanges w ith the woman he eventually married. I had
scant details for tryin g to construct an image of Constance Webb, the
young C alifornian beauty whose aspirations as an actress and poet he
nurtured; but I knew that for him the exploration of the differences
between them in background, race, gender and age was the creative force
behind th e ir unique relationship.
CLR's love for Constance, deepening as he penetrated more profoundly
into Am erican society, sharpened his awareness of the areas of human
experience that had become separated, shut off from each other w ith in
the modern w orld—not least w ith in the revolutionary movement. By
1944 CLR was engaged in a serious study of the Hegelian dialectic,
attem pting through philosophical w ork to establish securely the founda­
tions for his p o litica l action; but as he explained in the letters he wrote to
Constance at the tim e, such was the mental strain caused by this under­
taking that he sought relief from it by becoming a regular moviegoer.
Soon CLR found him self drawn into the American popular arts which
catered for an audience of m illions. Discovering that they offered a
fascinating insight into contemporary society, he began to follow not just
the Hollyw ood film s but also soap operas, jazz, comic strips, detective
novels. His approach was characteristic. He submerged him self com­
pletely in each medium, attem pting to uncover, through studying forms
of artistic expression, hidden forces at w ork in American society. The
distinctiveness of tw entieth-century mass art forms, particularly their
closeness to life, led h im to reflect anew on the relationship between art
and society.
His engagement in these two activities, philosophy and "entertain-
 28 Personal M em ories

m ent," was no mere coincidence, for the connection CLR was seeking to
make between Hegel and the a rtistic vision of D. W. G riffith was a
fundam ental one. It was o n ly in his private correspondence, though, that
he was free to explore the dialectical relationship between politics and
the arts, to examine the nature of hum an creativity, its historical founda­
tions and location in social life. The ideas CLR sought to develop here
not only grew out of his tremendous knowledge of the arts of Western
civiliza tio n , b u t also from his own creative w o rk —his fiction, drama and
historical biography.
The letters to Constance showed how m uch he had thought about the
a rtistic process—about how histo ry and social movements become re­
fracted through the im agination: "the poet reacts to life e m o tionally—
and w ith o u t that, though he were the wisest man in the w orld, he could
not w rite a line of verse. But the more hu m a n ity develops, the more the
em otional response depends upon a concentration of the w orld w hich
does not so m uch guide the poetry, b u t releases and expands the person­
ality, integrates it, opens horizons, and this gives the em otional response
a range and depth and power impossible otherwise. This is to live " (James
to Webb, date unknown).
For CLR all art was political, since it contained w ith in it the move­
m ent of the w orld; and the tru ly great artist, digging deeply and pro­
foundly in to social life, giving expression to its essential dynamic,
pushed at the lim its of hum an experience. In his view, the most original
w orks—The Oresteia, the frescoes of Michelangelo, King Lear, the late
compositions of Beethoven, M oby-D ick, B irth o f a N a tio n —all appeared
at periods of transition, precipitated by the momentous change as one
form of society gave way to another. A t the same tim e, though, CLR
recognized the interplay between artist and audience; and he understood
the participation in artistic forms by a popular audience, be it an ancient
Athenian or a modern Am erican one, as itself a p o litica l phenomenon.
Through works of the creative im agination, the audience explored some
of its deepest responses to questions of society and history,- but, as CLR
knew from his own experience, art and p o litics in Western civ iliz a tio n
had become discrete, specialized activities, separated from the everyday
life of the mass of ordinary people. America, in contrast w ith Europe, had
made h im aware of the relationship between art and politics; and it was
here that he had found the conditions for th e ir synthesis, for the realiza­
tio n of "an active, integrated hum anism ."
What CLR discovered through his correspondence was that those fac-
 C.L.R. James, 1901-1989 29

ets of human experience he had to w ork hard to bring into an active

relationship, Constance, a young American woman, unencumbered by
the burdens of Europe's past, grasped in tu itive ly. Her self-awareness,
vita lity , and search for integration became the symbol of CLR's new
conception of p o litica l life as he struggled to break free from the dualisms
b u ilt in to his European heritage.
Reading the#letters CLR wrote during the 1940s to Constance Webb
eventually led me back to the curious, unpublished manuscript that had
languished among his papers for almost forty years. The tone and content
of Am erican C iv iliz a tio n were distinctive, echoing the themes of the
private w ritings and animated by a prose that brimmed w ith verve and
passion as the author sought to articulate an integrated vision of great
imaginative scope and complexity. A t first I was puzzled, for it repre­
sented a significant departure from the kind of w ork w ith which CLR
was then so publicly identified.
CLR's project was to understand America as a civilization; to capture
its essential features through an exploration of history, literature, p o li­
tics and popular culture. But, at the same time, he was addressing what
he believed to be one of the central questions facing the Western world as
the m id point in the tw entieth century approached—that the growing
sophistication of human consciousness was everywhere confronted by
lim ita tio n s imposed by society in the form of centralized political and
economic powers. In CLR's view this contradiction between recognizing
the uniqueness of the human personality and needing collective associa­
tion had reached its fullest expression in the United States, where the
original ideals of freedom and equality had been sacrificed to an oppres­
sive system of mass production that paradoxically made these goals
m aterially feasible.
Placing works of the creative im agination at the center of his approach,
CLR attempted first of all to highlight, through an original reading of the
w ork of W hitm an and M elville, the developing historical forces of the
age in w hich they lived. They wrote at a critical moment, as America left
behind the early frontier sp irit phase of its development and entered the
new era of industrial capitalism marked by the C iv il War. CLR argued
that both the form and substance of their creative w ritin g expressed the
unresolved dialectic between free in d ivid u a lity and social life that lay at
the core of the new society. But in the tw entieth century, the articulation
of this conflict was to be found in the realm of the popular arts. Films,
comics, and detective novels were the cultural forms through which
 30 Personal M em ories

m illio n s of Americans sought to recapture th e ir freedom, their free in d i­

viduality, in the face of a dehumanized society.
For CLR, the popular arts were an expression of America's distinctive
co n trib u tio n to the modern world, new a rtistic media that broke down
the conventional divisions between artist and audience, art and enter­
tainm ent. He found sim ila r currents of a more directly p o litic a l nature
among those sections of the Am erican population—blacks, women, and
in d u stria l w orkers—where the contradiction* between th e ir developed
consciousness of themselves and th e ir unequal position w ith in society
was most acute. W ritin g in 1950 w ith remarkable prescience, he a n tici­
pated that th e ir struggle for basic democratic rights w ould lead to the
creation of new form s of p o litic a l association and expression that w ould
encompass a ll the elements of the modern personality.
Happiness, the central m o tif through w h ich CLR sought to grasp the
many themes running through his w o rk on Am erican civilization, was
fu ll of historical resonance. For CLR, it stood alongside the Enlighten­
ment ideas of freedom and equality as an inseparable part of the meaning
of c iv iliz a tio n itself. W ith in his 1950 m anuscript and elsewhere, he
referred to "the struggle for happiness" or "the pursuit of happiness,"
meaning by this "an active, integrated hum anism ," the fusion of being
and becoming, the expansion of the in d ivid u a l personality in harmony
w ith the development of popular democracy.
The sense of profound integration that CLR him self experienced
w ith in Am erica released a great burst of creative energy. It emerged from
his ow n intense personal struggle; but the synthesis of art and politics
and life, the wholeness of hum an experience that he realized through his
love for Constance Webb, was deeply rooted in a particular mom ent in
the tw e n tie th century. CLR fe lt it keenly. He planned Am erican C iv ili­
zation as the first w o rk in an extensive program of w ritin g —his concern
was w ith no less than the conditions of survival for modern c ivilization.
But the creative m om ent was fractured by his deportation in 1953 and
his energies were dissipated in the years that followed. Except for a
brief interlude in the Caribbean, captured in his masterpiece Beyond A
Boundary, CLR did not again experience that sense of integration or find
the conditions in w hich he could w o rk for the realization of his p o litica l
vision. In the v u ln e ra b ility of his old age, though, CLR clung to the
fragments, seeking to piece together and understand those elements that
lay at the core of hum an experience. W ith in the confines of his tin y
 C.L.R. James, 1901-1989 31

London room, he re-created the w orld—one of music, art, books, tele­

vision, the experiences of ordinary men and women—that had once
brought fo rth his most original w ork. This was the life we shared in his
last years.
I watched CLR absorbed in the portrait that rested against m y desk.
The artistic vision was central to his understanding of the world. For it
was here, in tlje w ork of artists, revolutionary leaders and other unique
historical personalities, that CLR found the refraction of fundamental
forces that lay beneath the surface of everyday life. Despite his highly
developed sense of the movement of history, CLR had never lost sight of
the distinctiveness of the individual personality; indeed his appreciation
of great artistic w ork was part and parcel of his understanding of its
rootedness in society and history. As he once explained to me—Shake­
speare was for all tim e precisely because he was so much an expression of
his own tim e.
In his final year, Margaret Glover's drawing had become the focus of
CLR's attem pt to excavate the sources of his own creative work. I knew
then that if he died w ith o u t completing the autobiography, there existed
a distinctive body of w ritin g that held the key to his remarkable life. The
letters to Constance Webb and American C iviliza tio n were the expres­
sion of his attem pt to realize an integrated vision of hum anity at a
particular moment in the history of the tw entieth century. For CLR to
recover that moment, to dissect its separate elements and examine the
nature of their fusion, was an impossible task, for he had lived it so
profoundly.
Sleep, sleep, sleep. D uring the last few months CLR, an insomniac for
most of his life, began to sleep. His books lay unopened as he slept deeply,
sometimes throughout the day, in his armchair. I slept too. On many
afternoons 1 crept across the room to nap on his bed, feeling the slow
fading of his life almost as a sapping of m y own strength. But there were
moments of happiness, such as a whole day devoted to Beethoven or to a
M ozart opera—the room filled w ith music, the scores laid out across his
lap and those bright eyes, alert and curious, as CLR found a companion
for his journey in to the w orld of the creative imagination. On the day he
died, CLR got up for an hour and sat in his armchair. Although he was
slipping in and out of sleep, I watched his eye, through force of habit,
driftin g back to the portrait. "W hy me?" he had often said, seeking
rhetorically the answer to his life's unique course.
 32 Personal M em ories

Afterword

This m em oir was w ritte n in the summer of 1990, a year after CLR's
death. A t the tim e, I was struggling to incorporate a mass of new, largely
unpublished m aterials in to m y previous knowledge of his life's work.
Increasingly, I was forced to recognize that the addition of this new
corpus did not just extend and deepen w hat was already know n about his
remarkable in te lle ctu a l legacy; rather, its indorporation in to m y own
perspective required a fundam ental break w ith the old categories that I
now fe lt fragmented and confined CLR's w ork.
This process was, at its core, a fe m in ist one. The beginnings were
personal and specific and grew out of m y reflection on tw o sources of
experience. The firs t was m y ow n situation in caring for CLR during his
last years; the second was m y attem pt to restore to history a woman who
had been central to CLR's life and yet whose presence had been excised
from the accounts of his Am erican years. Both raised the question of
integration, the relationship between the personal and p o litica l dim en­
sions of James's personality. The tension was starkly expressed by CLR
him self. W ritin g to Constance Webb in 1947, he experienced a m om ent
of profound insight as the co n flict w ith in his own life reached a peak:
"T his is the man who loves you. I took up dialectic five years ago. I knew
a lo t of things before and I was able to master it. I know a lo t of things
about loving you. I am only just beginning to apply them. I can master
that w ith the greatest ra p id ity—just give me a hand. I feel all sorts of new
powers, freedoms, etc., surging in me. You released so many of m y
constrictions. W hat are you going to do?. . . We w ill liv e . This is our new
w orld—where there is no d istin ctio n between p o litic a l and personal any
more." This statement was attached as a handw ritten note by CLR to his
dense, d iffic u lt essay, "D ialectical M aterialism and the Fate of Hum an­
ity ," a key p o litic a l document that marked the beginning of a series of
definitive statements by CLR's Am erican p o litic a l group, the Johnson-
Forest Tendency. The juxtaposition of the tw o messages is extraordi­
n arily revealing.
The a va ila b ility of the Constance Webb letters w ill transform any
interpretation of CLR's Am erican years; so too w ill the publication of
Am erican C iv iliz a tio n .3 These documents were the foundations for m y
w ork on the many unpublished drafts and jottings that make up the
James archive.4 Moreover, they cast new lig h t for me on the already
published and w e ll-know n w ritings. I believe that on the basis of these
 C.L.R. James, 1901-1989 33

new materials, future generations of scholars w ill overturn all previous

conceptions of the intellectua l and po litica l contribution made to the
tw entieth century by C.L.R. James.

Notes
1. C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 14.
2. See C.L.R. %mes, Am erican C iviliza tio n , ed. Anna Grimshaw and Keith
H art (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).
3. The James-Webb correspondence, Letters from a Revolutionary, is now being
edited for Blackwell by Anna Grimshaw.
4. See Anna Grim shaw and K eith Hart, C.L.R. fames and “The Struggle fo r
Happiness" (New York: C.L.R. James Institute, 1991); Anna Grimshaw, Popular
Democracy and the Creative Im agination: The W ritings of C.L.R. James 1950-
1963 (New York: C.L.R. James Institute, 1992); and Anna Grimshaw, The C.L.R.
fames Archive: A Reader's Guide (New York: C.L.R. James Institute, 1991). These
essays form part of a pamphlet series issued by the C.L.R. James Institute, New
York. The C.L.R. fames Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992) contains many of
the previously unpublished essays and documents discussed in the pamphlets
listed above. It also contains selections from the Constance Webb letters and an
extract from the 1950 manuscript, "The Struggle for Happiness."
 Derek W alcott

A T rib u te to C.L.R. James

The Washington Post recently reminded me that I had promised to w rite

something about C.L.R. James, w hich, as usual, I had forgotten to do. I
have already w ritte n the same review tw ice of C.L.R. James's Beyond a
Boundary. So I don't know if I can th in k of m uch new about w hat I had
thought and w ritte n about C.L.R. James.
One thing that many people do not know, and that they should not
know, is that m y one physical p o litic a l protest was over C.L.R. James. It
occurred when he had been arrested. He was under house arrest under the
government of Eric W illia m s ,1and I was outside the Queens' Park Oval.2
Ironically, there was a test m atch going on w hich James could not attend
because he was under house arrest. I remember ta lking to a friend on the
curb outside the oval and asking h im w hy James had been arrested. He
said, "Boy, I don't know. That's how these things are!" The response of
most Trinidadians to that incident was fear and bewilderment.
As I looked across the street, I saw a lim ousine or tow n car coming out
of the oval w ith , I th in k , a police escort, and I knew it was the prime
m inister, Eric W illiam s. I remember w a lkin g across the street and shout­
ing at the closed window, "Release C.L.R. James!!!" That's the only
heroic act I've ever done . . . physically.
N oth in g happened to me, and I don't know if W illiam s heard, but I
remember going right up to the w indow and shouting those words and
seeing a little man sittin g inside wearing glasses.
When I th in k of that, I th in k also of the irony that the freedom James
sought he could find perhaps only in England, w hich is a great place of ex­
iled everythings. But it is hard to believe that a native Trinidadian, who
obviously did m uch not only for his country but for W illiam s, could be
placed under house arrest. He is the only person for w hom I fe lt moved to
act so vehemently, because it infuriated me, and I was not a Trinidadian.

34
 A Tribute to C.L.R. James 35

The other memory I have of James involves astonishment because I

had attended a lecture at the Town H all in Port of Spain, and I sat for, I
don't know how long. James began to ta lk (I do not th in k I had met h im
yet), and he spoke about German philosophy in his fluent, smooth,
intim ate, yet public voice. A fter a w hile, I began to realize that if I had
taken down verbatim every sentence he had said w ith o u t any conjunc­
tions or hesitations, i t w ould be superb syntax, unmodified by any sighs
or hesitations or grunts. I have always remembered this because, as I
heard James talk, I was printing what he was saying as he said it. So I was
listening to a kin d of oral essay that u tte rly dumbfounded me. It amazed
me because i t was not virtuosity. It was not a m atter of a man showing off
his knowledge. It was not listening to a one-sided conversation in which I
could possibly participate. And that is a very permanent memory.
I got to know James through m y w ife at that time, Margaret, who was a
friend of his in London. Everybody referred to h im as Nello. On occasions
when I met him , I saw h im for short periods. But I fondly remember the
gentleness of his demeanor and the grace of his bearing. He was close to
other writers, George Lamming in particular.
In reading Beyond a Boundary, we have to go very carefully to consider
not only the subject of the book, w hich is not only about cricket, but is
also an examination of the rhythm of the sentences James writes. The
manner of rh yth m and prose, particularly in West Indian prose, has a
great deal to do w ith class, education, race, and chronology because it is
very easy for the w ritin g of a Black man or a West Indian to be admired for
the wrong reasons. In other words, if you read James's prose in Beyond a
Boundary; the one thing that you dare not presume to see is the sense of
achievement that is a balance in w riting. M uch criticism of Caribbean
achievement is based on "despite": Despite this, despite that, this hap­
pened. That is, of course, a continuation of patronage, and the one thing
that one cannot do about James's prose in that book is to consider it an
achievement despite its background. For a w rite r of James's stature to
achieve the grace of his English, which, unfortunately is a tolerable pun
because he does ta lk about grace in cricket, is to achieve a serenity and
confidence that is astonishing. It is serenity and confidence that one
finds only in a very masterful w rite r who is assured of his position, his
demeanor, and his intellect. But underneath is w arm th that has never
been lost because of the professional achievement that lies in the syntac­
tical balance of James's sentences. The only w riter who comes im m e­
diately to m ind who has done this is V. S. Naipaul. The reality of West
Indian prose in the presence of Naipaul and James is astonishing in any
 36 Personal M em ories

epoch because when we ta lk of th e ir prose, we are ta lkin g sim u lta ­

neously of the k in d of prose that one finds in Nabokov or George O rw ell.
It is that k in d of English, and i t is not w ith o u t its identity, it is not a k ind
of u n ifo rm gelatinousness, nor is i t unidentifiable. It is very particular
prose th a t comes out of a very particular ethnic background w ith its own
ethnic balances. If you read Beyond a Boundary and you th in k of Echoes,
it may be that w hat strikes you is the V ictorian w id th of James. James
was glad to be Victorian, and th is presents*ambiguities, but they are
almost w ille d or inevitable. James is someone who, for praising the
values and virtues of, say, M atthew A rn o ld or the aspects of empire that
are benign, and there are benign aspects of the B ritish Empire, could be
called an "U ncle T om " if you wish. On the other hand, you could tu rn
over the page and th in k you are reading a dated T rotskyite or a dated
M arxist. James's w o rk contains w hat w ould appear to be polar opposites.
But that is James, that is the balance. Those ideas are in h im w ith o u t any
struggle at all. So for h im to be able to praise M atthew A rnold and rugby,
to praise cricket in the way he does and yet to w rite on cricket and see in
it not o n ly a West Indian sense of elan and fury, not a sociological fury but
a furious delight in the game, is resolve of w hat was never for h im a
dichotom y of the Caribbean personality. The achievement of James is
that he did not make the elan and the fu ry a schizophrenic thing. The
example he provided for all of us and especially the younger generation,
whether it was Lam m ing or N aipaul who has w ritte n very w e ll about
James's book, was not only as a polem ical person but also as someone
who believed in elegance, in w hat was for h im em blematic in the strokes
of great West Indian cricketers, in the strokes of his sentences, the
deftness of his tu rn of phrase. He wrote as though he were bowling, as
though he were perhaps one of the finest bowlers in the world. He did not
separate the grace of his delivery from the grace of the game he liked so
much.
The scale of James as an in te lle ct again can be easily praised on an
academic level. He lived a long tim e, he read a lot, he traveled a lot, he
m et famous people, and he contributed a lot. But the w id th I refer to is
not the w id th that has to do w ith experience. It has to do w ith a sen­
s ib ility that was ready to absorb everything. I do not th in k of James
polem ically. To some of us now, his programs may appear to be a b it
passe. Some of his definitions of the West Indian future may appear a
little too oratorical. Sometimes he gets very patriarchal and makes pro­
found announcements that are a little out of fashion. His pronounce-
 A T ribute to C.L.R. James 37

ments on poetry, for instance, are not always to be taken as the absolute
truth. But what he saw in the West Indian temperament that was H el­
lenic was perhaps too perfect for certain people, too enthusiastic. But
whatever he saw there is there. And that he saw it permitted us to admit
that it existed. When he spoke of the graces of people who were playing
in the game he liked and the names of the people, those heroic names of
the batsmen, w jien he describes his own early childhood w ith his aunts
and his upbringing in Trinidad and his passion not only for politics but
for people, he gave us a direction. Very few w riters are fond of patri­
archal figures. I am not particularly fond of them either, and I hope I
never tu rn in to one though I sound lik e one right now. But I th in k that
James provided a sound and secure foundation for the younger writers
who came after him . James lived in the sunset of the British Empire. This
is a cliche, but all sunsets are benign just as all sunrises are benign. And
the benign sunset I refer to in James is related to the attitude that is
present in honor. There is a period that empires go through just as in
m a tu rity there is a period of reflection. James came at a point when the
British Empire was at a point of reflecting on what it had done, what
it owed, what it produced, and so on. Simultaneously, almost synony­
mously, the sunrise of the Caribbean was occurring. It was the same sun
to James, and he did not make the distinction between the sunrise of the
Caribbean and the sunset of the British Empire. To him they were the
same.
What made the game of cricket to h im much more than sim ply a sport
was that he saw it and, I can't avoid the word, that is a question of grace.
Beyond a Boundary celebrates grace. It celebrates the grace of James's
spinster aunts,- it celebrates the grace of the conduct of the men who play
the game. The prose also emanates a feeling of approaching dusk. Sen­
tences of a great prose w rite r contain light; they contain a natural light.
There is lig h t in Hemingway's prose, in Conrad's prose, and in James's
prose. The lig h t comes through the sentences. Whenever I th in k of
Beyond a Boundary, I th in k of a large cricket field in the horizontal light
of dusk and figures in white, black men in white, and sometimes bare­
footed, bowling. What are they bow ling at? Why are they so accurate?
W hy are they bowling w ith so gracefully? James fuses that basic charac­
teristic that is so strong in the Caribbean the African courtesies and the
tw ilig h t of a great empire. The empire he spoke about includes writers he
celebrated such as Thackeray, Macaulay, and Charles Dickens, people he
loved beyond any idea of race or even of politics.
 38 Personal M em ories

When James said things that sounded prophetic or even ecclesiastical

about the Caribbean culture, I don't th in k people understood. People
abroad certainly did not understand w hat he was talking about. The
penalty of the Caribbean in te lle c t is that it seems as though it is unique,
the result of an astonishingly contradictory background. James was not
arrogant. He knew where he came from and he praised where he came
from and the people he came from. He knew th a t physical endurance of
slaves crossing the M iddle Passage, or Indians com ing from halfway
around the w o rld from Calcutta, or redneck convicts in Barbados all
w ent in to the m aking of a Caribbean culture and that the units of the
Caribbean culture contain strength in spite of a ll the despair. The pos­
s ib ility that existed in the Caribbean w ould always rem ain a possibility
no m atter how m any tim es people are interned for saying w hat they
believe or w hat the p o litics of the Caribbean at the m om ent could be. It is
almost an in s u lt to the Caribbean people to see James as prophetic
because he w ould not have accepted that. He w ould have sim ply said, " I
am this kin d of person, and w hat I am saying is not prophecy, but
custom ."
I w ish to conclude by reading a selection of m y book, Omeros, that
tries to say the same sort of things that James said so often, so steadily,
before m y ow n generation of w riters:

I
M y lig h t was clear. I t defined the fa lle n schism
o f a starfish, its asterisk p rin te d on sand,
its homage to O m eros m y exorcism .

I was an ant on the forehead of an atlas,

the stroke of one spidery p a lm on a cloud's page,
an asterisk only. A c h ille w it h h is cutlass

ra ttlin g in to th e h o ld shared the same p riv ile g e

of an archipelago's dawn, a fresh language
sa lty and shared by the b itte rn 's caw, by a frieze

o f lo w pelicans. T he sea was m y p rivile g e .

A n d a fresh people. T he roar of fam ous citie s
entered the sea-almond's branches and th e n tig h te n e d

in to silence, and m y crab's hand came o u t to w rite —

and d ow n the January beach as i t brightened
came bent sibyls sw eeping the sand, th e n a h e rm it
 A Tribute to C.L.R. James 39

w a ist-h ig h in the e m p ty bay, s till splashing his face

in th a t im m easurable em ptiness whose w ar was between
the clouds the only. In th a t blessed space

i t was so q u ie t th a t I could hear the s p lu tte r

P hiloctete made w ith h is ablutions, and th a t deep " A h !"
fo r the N e w Year's benediction. T hen P hilo cte te

waved "M o rn in g " to m e fro m far, and I waved back;

w e shared the one w ound, the same cure. I fe lt the w e t
sand under m y soles, and the beach close lik e a book

behind me w ith every fo o tm a rk. The m o rn in g 's g ift

was enough b u t h o lie r than th a t was the crab's l i f t ­
ed p incer w ith its pen lik e the sea-dipping sw ift.

A ll the thunderous m y th s o f th a t ocean w ere b lo w n

up w ith the spray th a t dragged fro m the lacy b u lw a rks of
Cap's bracing headland. The sea had never k n o w n

any of them , n o r had the illite ra te rocks,

no r the c irc lin g frigates, n or even the w h ite mesh
th a t k n itte d the G olden Fleece. T he ocean had

no m em ory of the w anderings of Gilgam esh,

or whose sword severed whose head in the Ilia d .
I t was an epic w here every lin e was erased

yet fre sh ly w ritte n in sheets of exploding surf

in th a t b lin d violence w ith w h ic h one crest replaced
another w ith a trench and th a t heart-heaving sough

begun in G uinea to fo u n ta in exhaustion here,

how ever one read it, n o t as our defeat or
ou r vic to ry ; i t drenched every s u rv iv o r

w ith blessing. It never altered its m etre

to s u it the age, a w ide page w ith o u t metaphors.
O u r last resort as m uch as yours, Omeros.

II
W hy waste lines on A c h ille , a shade on the sea-floor?
Because strong as self-healing coral, a qu ie t cu ltu re
is b ranching fro m the w h ite ribs o f each ancestor,

deeper than i t seems on the surface; s lo w ly b u t sure,

i t w ill change us w ith the flu e n t sculpture of Tim e,
i t w ill grip lik e the polyp, soldered by the slim e
40 Personal M em ories

of the sea-slug. Below him, a parodic architecture

re-erected the earth's crusted columns, its porous
temples, stoas through which whipping eels slide,
over him the tasselled palanquins of Portuguese man-o'-wars
bobbed like Asian potentates, when ribbed dunes hide
the spiked minarets, and the waving banners of moss
are the ghosts of motionless hordes. The crabs' anabasis
scuttles under his wake, because this is the true element,
water, which commemorates nothing in its stasis.
From that coral and crystalline origin, a simply decent
race broke from its various pasts, from howling sand
to a track in a forest, torn from the farthest places
of their nameless world. W ith nothing more in his hand
than the lance of a spear-gun, fishes keep shifting
direction like schools of philosophers,
and cautious plankton, who w ait t ill darkness is liftin g
form the Antillean seabed, burst into phosphorus,
meadows of stuttering praise. History has simplified
him. Its elegies had blinded me w ith the temporal
lament for a smoky Troy, but where coral died
it feeds on its death, the bones branch into more coral,
and contradiction begins. It lies in the schism
of the starfish reversing heaven; the m irror of History
has melted and, beneath it, a patient, hybrid organism
grows in his cruciform shadow. For a city
it had coral parthenons. No needling steeple
magnetized pilgrims, but it grew a good people.
God's light ripples over them as it does the Troumasse
River in the morning, as it does over me, when
the palm-wheel threshes its spokes, and my ecstasy
of privilege lifts me w ith the man-o-war's wing
in that fear of happiness I have never shed,
pierced by a lance of sunlight flung over the sea.
O Sun, the one eye of heaven, O Force, O Light,
my heart kneels to you, my shadow has never changed
since the salt-fresh mornings of encircling delight
across whose cities the wings of the frigate ranged
freer than any republic, gliding w ith ancient
ease! I praise you not for my eyes. That other sight.
 A T ribute to C.L.R. James 41

Questions and Answers

Q: I wonder if you could speak more on the issue of generational

division. I'm th in k in g of things that you said in your long introduction. I
want you to speak more on w hat it is that defines writers of the younger
generation, especially w ith relation to the empire.
A: Prose is polemic, unless you're w ritin g a poem or fiction. Therefore,
something you may have said fixes you chronologically to a certain time.
It's very hard for me, and I am sixty-one years old, to see myself as
anything but a prom ising young w riter. But you realize that you're sixty-
one and when James was sixty-one you thought, "W ell, here's an old guy
te llin g you something about what it's like to be a w rite r." So I imagine
now that there are people who are th irty giving you that view. You never
realize that when you get to a certain age, you are a kind of faucet. So I'm
not particularly aware of that generational division except when I went
to London and I m et another group of West Indians, Englishmen, rather,
young black Englishmen in England. A very different experience is hap­
pening there than is happening to w riters in the Caribbean. I th in k the
duty that C.L.R. James felt that he had was not one that we feel we have.
D u ty has dim inished as the generations go on. I th in k that it must have
been extremely d iffic u lt and perhaps even painful for James to be seen as
a black intellectual. He didn't m ind it, but I th in k that it must have been
something that he had to fight inside himself. Again, that's what I meant
by achievement. He fought the idea that he was quite apart from his
politics, his Marxism, or his Trotskyism . It was not that he considered
him self an ordinary person. He was extraordinary, and he knew he was
extraordinary. He never gave up his le ftis t stand. So the consistency w ith
w hich he spoke about the worker of the left did not make him passe
because he continued to recognize the condition of the Caribbean people,
w hich s till exists today. The polemics change, but I th in k the biggest
problem of his generation was to have been so b rillia n t and yet to have
been thought of as a b rillia n t black man. That is how he was seen, and it
was very hard for h im to accept. I am trying to define something subtle
that sometimes led him , as it has other writers, into positions that were
defensive. But James cannot be compared w ith other writers such as
James Baldwin or Langston Hughes because the intellect is different.
In James's book, it is astonishing how he praises aspects of English
culture and yet remains a revolutionary. I don't see him as a pioneer. I
don't see h im as someone who developed or was a father figure. I resent
 42 Personal M em ories

that idea in m y own position of James. N e llo could be a very fatherly

figure. He could make pronouncements. I resented that. I did n 't want
h im p u ttin g his palm on m y head and saying, "G o forth and do w e ll." But
he did that because he fe lt benign and paternal about the development of
West Indian w ritin g . I th in k that he knew that was a role he had to
perform. Maybe necessity put h im in to a role that required h im to have
conviction and a u th o rity to in stru ct and to lead. I don't th in k that many
of us w ould have assumed that position because i t was not a given,- the
struggle d id n 't exist. The id e n tity had already been resolved by James
him self. I hope I never become someone w ho can make pronouncements
about p o litics or literature.
Q: I asked you to say som ething about generational division.
A: I am saying that we have to avoid looking at James as a figure from a
particular generation because his in te lle c t is too fierce and too bright for
it to be considered w ith in a parentheses of any kind.
Q: I w ould lik e to commend you on m entioning your age. James had
not w ritte n Beyond a Boundary when he was sixty-one. But his interest
in your generation of Caribbean w riters leads to the fact that you all
emerged at a certain historical m om ent and that you all were the most
prom inent people at that tim e, w h ich was the m om ent of decoloniza­
tion. M any people outside the Caribbean never understood w hy fames
w ent back to the Caribbean in 1958. They thought that somehow w ith
his internation al reputation and w o rk he could not sustain the p o litica l
a c tiv ity he got involved in in the Caribbean. So that it is m y understand­
ing that he saw that m om ent as unique a m om ent when people had a
chance to define th e ir future. His interest in that m om ent of decoloniza­
tio n was that he fe lt he could pose fundam ental questions about p o litica l
rights and that he could ask w ho the people were and w hat kind of
society they wanted to create for themselves. It was his understanding
that those questions were a rtis tic a lly closed to w riters and artists. And
he was so interested in your generation because he was looking in your
artistic w o rk for the signs of creation and innovation that he fe lt were
latent in the population in general. So that m om ent of decolonization
was very precious to him , and he wanted to be a part of it. Beyond a
Boundary was the w o rk that came out of that moment.
A: I have one little quibble w ith that, and that is if you look at things
from James's p o in t of view, you w ould say that it has to do w ith decolo­
nization. I do not necessarily take that p oint of view, I th in k it had to do
 A T ribute to C.L.R. James 43

w ith energy; it is not an innuendo. It is a de-innuendo. The "de" stands

for "going down," a sort of "flushing out of things." The energy is the
thing, not the decolonization. The tw o are not interconnected. If you
take a M arxist line, or a historical lin e of argument, you may say some­
thing happened because of decolonization. But bursts of energy in the
Caribbean are not over for art, are not just w riting. There may be no such
thing as a natural explosion or a natural renaissance or beginning. But I
th in k outbursts of energy occur because of the physicality of the Carib­
bean. There is a sense of exuberance on some islands more than on
others. But we are m entioning only one book of James's. Other works
preceded Beyond a Boundary. The serenity of Beyond a Boundary is
remarkable, but the other great book is The Black Jacobins.
Q: James understood that great w ork as one giving way to another, and
he said that he was thought of as part of the Victorian past, of the
beginning of a Caribbean future.
A: I don't lik e to look at things in that historical way, but I th in k a
M arxist w ould say it is a consequence of that. That is part of a historical
viewpoint. "H ow can you avoid a history?" you say. You can avoid
history by th in k in g of it as history, as having a certain inevitable pattern,
or a reaction, or a certain swaying of a consequence. Sometimes, fames is
gu ilty of seeing history that way, because as a polem icist and as someone
w ith a program, he had to use those references and counters, no matter
where they came from. I refer to something that is the exact opposite of
the idea of historical thinking, and that is creative outbursts that have
nothing to do w ith historical consequences. O r if they are thought of as
historical consequences, or historical inevitabilities, they lim it the defi­
nitions of possibility and cause that are there in the New World.
This is utter nonsense. But it is better to have nonsense than to have a
series of consequences that go in the chronological sequence by which
we are taught the inevitabilities of certain ways of th in kin g about his­
tory. And it may be the u ltim ate thing that Blake talks about. When
you're desperate you always reach out for Blake, and I am desperate. In
Blake, the is is history, not the was, or the to be. That is the strongest
reality of the Caribbean aesthetic, the is, the contradictions in the chron­
ological sequences, the irregularity, the confusion; the apparent chaos to
people outside of what the Caribbean is exactly is the symmetry that the
Caribbean has. The symmetry lies in the apparent contradictions. The
surfaces appear contradictory; whether they are racial or aesthetic. It is a
 44 Personal M em ories

vessel, and whatever it contains, the elements may be contradictions.

W hat is im portant is the u ltim a te shape of the vessel that contains these
apparent contradictions. James knew that.
Sometimes in reading James, one gets very lectured, very hectored in
terms of this-is-bound-to-happen-because-it's-happened-before. That is
the part of James that I just tu rn away from because i t is hectoring me in
the way that some historian or theologian did.
Q: W ould you lik e to p u t forward your ow n explanation as to w hy
James was an apparent outburst of that literate creative activity?
A: I resist the idea of a H arlem Renaissance. I despise that description
of anything because i t is basically a cynical description. The term H ar­
lem Renaissance im m ediately provides a date for a beginning and an
ending. The Harlem Renaissance cannot be compared w ith the Italian
Renaissance because they were very different. One involves painting, the
other w ritin g , for instance. It is saying the blacks had th e ir renaissance
and i t was black, and i t wasn't as big, but it was p retty good. That is what
I resent m ost about terms lik e that, even if they are used by black w riters
because they te ll the generation fo llo w in g the Harlem Renaissance that
w riters such as me, Lam m ing, [V.S.] Naipaul, and [Victor] Reid came out
of a particular tim e, X to Y, and i t was amazing and it was good. There­
fore, you young guys have to do something. That is the chronology that I
resent. I do not th in k West Indian cre a tivity has begun to show itself.
Tomorrow's West Indian could be a Chinese from Tunapuna. So when I
see things categorized in some chronology between tw o brackets and a
date, i t irritates me because you can't predict and I th in k that criticism is
based on prediction and I don't trust it.
Q: Isn't it fair to say that there is something to be explained? Do you
th in k there is something to be explained?
A: No, there is nothing to be explained because I don't th in k it's a
phenomenon. I th in k it's inevitable. It was inevitable that w riters w ould
come out of the Caribbean. It was inevitable that they were Indian or
Chinese or w hite. It was not phenomenal and yet it was looked at as
phenomenal. It was astonishing and intolerable because of being inevita­
ble, not phenomenal. It was as inevitable as flowers, as something grow­
ing out in Caribbean. It was a flowering. It was inevitable. So I do not lik e
to put it w ith in seasons. We don't have seasons in the Caribbean, and I
don't th in k we should th in k in terms of seasons.
Q: Is i t your sense that Caribbean w riters in the postcolonial period are
not feared by regimes as they m ight be in other parts of the T h ird W orld
 A T ribute to C.L.R. James 45

or to the same extent as they w ould be suspicious of people from depart­

ments of social science?
A: There are forms of censorship in the Caribbean. There is oblique
censorship in the press. The Caribbean is not a place of free self-
expression. The censorship is an oblique thing in that a story would be
kille d or not put on the air. Wherever there is censorship, there is fear.
Fear of journalism exists in the Caribbean. It is not as free a place as it
sounds or appears to be in the newspapers or in the press or on television.
There is a lo t of control, subtle m anipulation in the Caribbean press and
on Caribbean broadcasting and television. If it is not direct, it is in tim id a ­
tion. I w ish someone w ould support me because what I say is true. Maybe
it is a result of in tim id a tio n no one supports me. A friend of mine said
that w riters have a longing to be jailed so they can say they are getting
attention. Neglect is perhaps a greater insult than being put in prison. A t
the beginning of m y anecdote about James, I felt good about the fact that
he had been arrested but ambiguous because I felt that a w rite r had been
arrested for his opinions. Maybe the society is a little serious. W illiam s
was serious. He knew James was a threat.
Q: You ta lk about "epoch" all the tim e in your poetry. Could you
comment on that?
A: I use it because it rhymes w ith rock. No, no!! This is the subject of
every Caribbean w riter. This is history. This is the idea of history as a
muse, as an example, as a fear, as a burden. The word "epoch" is a
historical word, an aspect of time, and it has an archaic sound that is
deliberate because any definition of tim e, any aspect of the definition of
time, is archaic and contains its own finish. Therefore, to use the word
"epoch" in its archaicism is to th in k of any definition of tim e that can
only exist in terms of tim e. For the Caribbean to th in k in any way that is
new and fresh is not to th in k in terms of epochs or of time. The penalty
has to do w ith guilt, abashment, fear or zealotry. A ll of these are wrong.
Zealotry is wrong as much as shame is wrong because they are insepara­
ble. The one image that is there in the Caribbean writers is the image of
dew.
It is in [Jacques] Roumain and in Aim e Cesaire and in writers who
inhabit the Caribbean. Who gives a damn about how dewy it is in the
city? If one is there in the natural world, and it is the tim e of morning that
is what the Caribbean civiliza tio n represents, that's the tim e that m at­
ters. It is not an unreal tim e, it is a tim e of sunrise, but it is the morning of
a culture. The elation that people have felt despite the Caribbean past,
 46 Personal M em ories

the vigor that is there in the elation of a Caribbean morning, is there in

the elation of the Caribbean people. A nd that is a w ord that can be
laughed at. But that is w hat James had. James and elation. People in
England thought he was enthusiastic. He was fu ll of enthusiasm. And
enthusiasm is not a decent mode of conduct for certain people. W hitm an
was enthusiastic and Tennyson thought he was outlandish. And that's
the whole idea of epoch. If I referred to it, it was done. W ell, even if it
rhymes w ith rock, the contrast between an epoch and a rock is exactly
that difference; an epoch passes and a rock doesn't.
Q: W ould you say a little more about your own views about W hitman?
A: I remember when I was m uch younger, I w ent up to stay at the
house of a friend of m y father's on a farm in the country of St. Lucia. I had
a book by W hitm an w ith me, and she saw it and said that I shouldn't read
it. I never knew w h y she said i t was dangerous.
O nly recently, I was looking at a program about W hitm an. I thought,
"O h! I know w hat she was afraid of." She thought that it was the hom o­
sexuality that w ould have disturbed me. W ell, there wasn't m uch of a
risk of it then, and there is n 't m uch o f i t now. She thought the idea of
reading of the sexual lib e rty of W h itm a n was bad for me. But I thought it
couldn't be that. N o w I realize it was the subject. Well, the scansion was
bad for me because I was too young to be w ritin g such loose lines, not
m orally loose, b u t syntactically loose lines.
W hitm an is a poet of adolescence in a sense. When you get older and
realize that the achievement had a great deal to do w ith keeping him
young. Pound said this of him , "W e ll now you've cut the wood, now it's
tim e to do the carving, right?" Pound meant that the Whitmanesque
feeling is one of exuberance and adolescence. That is superficial judge­
ment. But s till W hitm an is a poet of youth. He is a poet who can sway you
tremendously when you're young. One h o rrific experience I have had
regarding W hitm an is when one day someone got up and said, "Yes,
you're rig h t about th is man. W hat is W hitm an's feeling toward Latin
America? Have you read D em ocratic Vistasl" I said, "N o, I haven't read
it." "Have you read w hat he says about people in Latin Am erica and what
should be done to them?" I d idn't w ant to hear it. That was not the
W hitm an I knew; the prophetic W hitm an who loved all races. I never
read the polem ic of W hitm an, but evidently he wasn't too nice about
Latin America, and certainly there isn 't m uch in W hitm an about what
happened to the Indians. There are many massacres, and M anifest Des-
 A T ribute to C.L.R. James 47

tin y is not exactly completely guilt-free in W hitm an. He was a poet who
influenced me when I was a m uch younger w riter. Writers are interested
in the length of the line, and the length of the line in W hitm an is very
dangerous because it's very boring. It tends to make you th in k boring
prophetic things about yourself, and, more im portant, boring things
about old people.
Q: I want to /;o m e back to your problem w ith history. James said
history is a trip le movement. You understand where you are by learning
where you have come from in order to prepare you for where you are
going. So that trip le movement of where you are, where you come from,
and where you are going-
A: Let me just interrupt on purpose. There is a painting by Gauguin
called Who Are We and Where Are We Going. That's the answer to
history for me, Gauguin's question. The answer that is supplied by
history is, You are this, this is where you are, this is where you could get
to, or should get to, or may have gotten to.
Q: But I am is not an abstraction.
A: Who am I? Who can answer that?
Q: That is exactly the point I am coming to.
A: Oh! I am sorry. I'm just anticipating Gauguin.
Q: The problem I have w ith this discussion is that we have different
ways of understanding our development. M y point is that I don't th in k
that historical progression necessarily suggests 1450-1550, and what
not. But development has taken place, begun w ith in a certain environ­
ment, evolved beyond that environment to another, and so on.
A: Yes, but what la m saying is what language do you use that describes
what you're saying? You have to use a language that itself has a history.
Q: But I don't know the language. I am reminded of the second letter
that was read just now to Constance. I don't know the language, but if
you are aware of the w orld in w hich you live you may find the words to
express the language. Though I don't know the language, what I know is
that I have to know me. So what I am asking is how do you do that if you
don't feel.
A: I w ill answer by saying that I th in k of the emblem at the bottom of
Gauguin's painting, the continual question, "Who are we, where are
we?" The answer is right there. The answer lies in the painting.
Q: But who are we?
A: I am saying the answer lies in the question. In every w ork of art lies a
 48 Personal M em ories

question, and in th a t painting the answer lies in the question. That is the
answer th a t Gauguin gave as w ell. In th a t case, w hat is a question is w hat
she said when she was dying supposedly.
Q: W hat is Derek's answer?
A: I am afraid of th is as I am afraid of explanations of history or any
source of history, I am afraid of a nation becoming a nation of critics
rather than of artists and a nation using commentaries and references
that belong to another source, to another s6t of references that aren't
applied and that do not make sense because they do not apply. They do
not apply because they come from another source. They do not apply
because th e ir only references are in other historical references.
Q: I don't have a problem w ith that.
A: I have a problem w ith that. That's w hat I'm saying.
Q: No, I have no problem w ith w hat you're saying. So w hat I'm asking
is, Can you suggest some process?
A: A ll I have to suggest is w hat is happening. W hat happens is that you
have po in t at w h ich a country produces art. In the next stage the country
produces commentaries on that art, and then the art fades and the c rit­
icism flourishes. T his is w hat happened to France, hence deconstruction.
When you run out of artists, you produce critics. When you run out of
creation, you produce criticism . U n til that happens you have to make
France the center of attention, the center of thought, but you have
terrible poets, you have a thousand painters, so you have deconstruction.
A nd that is w hat I am afraid of. I am afraid of the Caribbean getting so
obsessed w ith defining itse lf that it forgets to make the art that asks who
it is. That is the difference between art and not only criticism but also the
in e v ita b ility of using words that do not apply to the particular culture
you are ta lkin g about. Therefore, you need creative criticism , and the
only creative c ritic is m is in art. A rt is creative criticism .

Notes
1. Eric W illiam s, James's student at Queens Royal College in T rinidad and later
James's mentee in England and the U nited States, was the prem ier and prim e
m in iste r of T rinidad and Tobago from 1956 to 1981 .—Editor's note.
2. Queen's Park oval is a famous cricket field in Port of Spain where all the
cricket test matches are played.—Editor's note.
M in ty A lle y and

Early Short Stories

 Helen Pyne-Tim othy

Id e n tity, S ociety and M eaning:

A Study of the Early Stories of C.L.R. fames

As is w e ll known, C.L.R. fames, w ritin g in 1969, declared:

[T]he origins of my work and my thoughts are to be found in Western

European literature, Western European history and Western European
thought.. . . I have had a lot to say that is valid about the underdeveloped
countries---- But what I want to make clear is that I learnt this quality in
the literature, history, and philosophy of Western Europe. I didn't have to
be a member of an underdeveloped country. . . . I didn't have to be an
exploited African.1

He goes on to quote the literary influences on his life and mentions

M atthew Arnold, the literary and intellectual magazines of the day,2 and
Rudyard Kipling. In turning to America w hile highlighting the contribu­
tions made by foreigners to the tradition of English literature, he men­
tions Henry James, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot.
In this recounting of literary m etropolitan influences on his w ritings of
the 1930s, fames does not overtly m ention the impetus given by his
interest in M arxist ideology on the tone, themes, or subjects of his early
work. But Hazel Carby3 has recently discussed the Trinidad Renaissance
as a part of the larger ideological movements of the time, claiming for
this Th ird W orld intellectual awakening an "international significance,
connected to both the Harlem Renaissance and intercontinental move­
ments to create a proletarian literature." Carby goes on to analyze the
profound effect that the (1925) Soviet's "First A ll-U nion Conference of
Proletarian W riters" would have had on the making of a colonial and
postcolonial literature in Trinidad; pointing to the symbiotic relation­
ships generated by socialist and comm unist political movements for co-

51
 52 Minty Alley and Early Short Stories

lo nial societies and to the themes and subjects of a proletarian literature.

O f course, these le ftis t movements w ould firs t m anifest themselves as
movements towards independence and the forging of national identities.
Sim ilarly, C ynthia H a m ilto n has analyzed James's lite ra ry work, espe­
cially M in ty A lle y (1936/71), as "th e firs t expression of the sensitive
social observation that form s the basis for m uch of his p o litic a l and his­
torical analysis___ He gives us a real sense of how ordinary people make
extraordinary history." Thus she refers to the crucial and resonating
symbol of the yard early evident in "T riu m p h " (1929) and later more
fin e ly developed in M in ty A lle y (1936) as "the locus of a c tivity of ordi­
nary men and wom en who rise to extraordinary trium phs as w ell as
defeat: Toussaint, Boukman, and M a tth e w Bondman. In a ll of his w ork
it is the recognition of the v ita lity and v a lid ity of the independent N e­
gro struggle that serves as James's guide."4 To Carby's perception of
the Trinidad Renaissance as part of the international proletarian move­
ment's goal to achieve a nexus between literature and politics, H a m ilto n
has added the notion of James's consciousness of the N ew W orld African
as displaying a certain specificity w ith in the proletarian movement. It is
clear that James did in fact arrive at this philosophical position at a later
stage.5 But w hat is interesting is H am ilton's observation that James's
early expression in the literature of the yard society displays the dualities
of the master/slave relationship, displays the " tw in character, . . . [in]
both the culture of Caliban and Prospero, of the colonized and the colo­
nizer, of oppression and resistance concurrently" (JBS 440), and that this
perception of d u a lity formed the basis for his larger embrace of the
Hegelian/M arxian dialectic that subsequently inform ed his life's work.
These are interesting ideas. But of particular relevance here is the fact
that the recognition of the duality, the Caliban/Prospero dilem m a as an
integral part of the experience of the N ew W orld African, had long been
recognized by the Negro in te lle ctu a l in the U nited States,6 and the overt
expression of this as a tru ism w h ich m ust reticulate w ith in the literature
had reached its height in the Harlem Renaissance. Yet w ritin g in 1969, as
we have seen, James does not acknowledge any influence from the w r it­
ers of the Harlem Renaissance on the direction of his early work; indeed
when he m entions the vibrancy of N ew W orld literature and its in flu ­
ence, he lists Eliot, Pound, and H enry James.
O f course it is understood that C.L.R. James is not merely acknowledg­
ing lite ra ry influences in the statement m entioned earlier; a deconstruc­
tio n of the argument clearly reveals that he also intends to strike a blow
 Ide n tity, Society, and M eaning 53

for equality, and even superiority, for the T h ird World intellectual.7He is
in fact claim ing the literary, cultural, and intellectual heritage of Europe
and the lin g u istic heritage of English, and he is thereby attem pting to
w in the acknowledgement of the B ritish intellectual that colonial and
postcolonial w riters do not belong to the margin, but are legitimate
creators who, w ith fu ll knowledge of tradition, are consciously and delib­
erately seeking tp decenter literary endeavor, indeed even to revitalize
the center. W hat is uncanny, however, is the total absence of reference to
the African-Am erican literary giants of the period, such as James Weldon
Johnson, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and especially W.E.B.
Du Bois and Claude McKay. Is there a problem here? Was James unaware
in the 1920s and 1930s of the tremendous impact that the w ritings of
these men and women were having on the Negro's attempt to forge an
id e n tity in the New World? Was he unaware of the attempts to create a
society of urban blacks in Harlem, w hich the intellectual w ould guide
and direct even as he reflected the "ordinary black man" in his work?
What about the attempts of a Jean Toomer to invest even the slave
experience in the rural American South w ith meaning, or the w ork of a
Paul Laurence Dunbar to rehabilitate the slave and his creative/cultural
work? D id James not feel a com m unity of interests here, did he not see
that for the New W orld African the vision of the Harlem Renaissance
would prove infectious? These are d iffic u lt questions to answer, since
the im putation of influences is, of course, d ifficu lt: but perhaps a closer
look at the three early works m ight provide some clues.
James's early stories, "La D ivina Pastora" (1927), "Turner's Prosperity"
(1929), and "T riu m p h " (1929), show the rebelliousness that we have
come to associate w ith James. They are linked by the overriding p hilo­
sophical orientation that perceived Caribbean art as necessarily defined
by the ordinary West Indian person; and that the va lid ity of the Carib­
bean experience had to be grounded in the geography, history, and culture
of the Caribbean. A rt could only be an inspired transformation of his own
experience and of his instinctive understanding of his people and his
society. For the Trinidad intellectual, these concepts, expressed in the
fictio n by members of the group that produced the "Trinidad" and "The
Beacon," were revolutionary because the society was s till struggling
w ith an outdated, literary romanticism , and the realism of modern w rit­
ing had scarcely begun to be recognized. Yet it seems fair to say that just
as in the Harlem Renaissance the intellectual Negro was searching to
define the id e n tity of the New World African by drawing on the culture of
 54 Minty Alley and Early Short Stories

the com m on man and transm uting it in to the a rtistic forms of poetry, the
short story, the novel, the drama, so too James and the Trinidad Renais­
sance group were concerned w ith the question of a T rinidadian/C arib­
bean identity. Again, as in the Harlem Renaissance, the group comprised
both black and w h ite artists exploring the p o ssibility of forging an al­
liance to integrate the separate races in to a m elding of culture and thus to
give leadership to a burgeoning new identity, new society.
H ow does "La D ivin a Pastora," James's flrSt published story (1927), fit
in to these aims? W ritin g in 1965 James articulated a tru ism about T rin ­
idad society: "[it] is the one w ith the m ost diversified past, where d if­
ferent foreign influences have been most pervasive."8 If a national iden­
tity had to be forged, then a ll cultures w ould have to be valorized,
unmarginalized, in order to achieve a whole. Thus, James tried to capture
the essence of the life of the descendants of members of the remnant
Spanish com m unity, one of the component parts of that "diversified
past." Typically James begins at the beginning of the colonial period for
this portra it of the rural c o m m u n ity—the cocoa worker. Some of the
essential elements of James's m ethod are im m ediately apparent here: the
subject of the story is the hum ble and simple A n ita Perez, a poor laborer
in the cocoa fields. The object of th is w o rk is to fa ith fu lly record cultural
practices and beliefs of the Trinidad society. Thus, he incorporates some
of the rituals of the fo lk —especially the belief in the m iraculous powers
of La D ivin a Pastora, an indigenized version of the V irgin M ary w hich
had become an im portant part of the folk-belief system in Trinidad.
James sketches in the ritu a l of the v is it not as m erely local color, but as
an integral part of the texture of the life of the folk. Indeed, the attem pt at
authenticity, at differentiatio n of a specific group id e n tity w ith in the
larger T rinidad co m m u n ity in a very short story, is quite impressive.
Some remarkable sensibilities also become overt. James deals w ith the
p light of the poor woman, who, w ith in the frame of the narrow economic
opportunity of the society and the mores inculcated by Roman Catholic
religion, has no choice but to marry; but she has no control over her fate
or condition, and she can only w a it passively for the male agent to
provide the opportunity for her to change her life. Emerging from James's
treatm ent is stagnation and s te rility in the lives of these women, A n ita
and her mother, and therefore, by im plication, in the life of this entire
com m u n ity w hich emerges from the treatm ent given by James. There is
no progress or development here, no children to provide regeneration or
transform ation w ith in the com m unity. But James im p lic itly criticizes
 Ide n tity, Society, and M eaning 55

the passivity of the woman and her dependence on religion and miracles
rather than w ill for her fate. This c riticism is formalized in the narrative
structure where the narrator divorces him self from character and situa­
tion and reveals a more sophisticated and "modern" intelligence than
those presented. Thus:

She lived one earthly aim. She considered it her duty and business to be
married as quickly as possible, first because in that retired spot it marked
the sweet perfection of a woman's existence, and secondly, because femi­
nine youth and beauty, if they exist, fade early in the hard work on the
cocoa plantation. . . . She had no thought of woman's rights nor any
Ibsenic theories of morality. ("La Divina Pastora," Spheres, 5)

There is no m istaking here the author's direction of the reader to an alter­

native view of the parameters of woman's existence, vision, and pos­
sibility. The presence of a gentle, elegiac tone in the w ritin g does not
completely mask the criticism of the unquestioned acceptance of fate, of
the poverty that leads to resignation, and also, to a certain ste rility in
rural life. There is also a strong suggestion that there is real poverty,
serious deprivation in this laboring com m unity in Trinidad; this realiza­
tion further forces the reader to confront a coherent critique of the social
situation.
In "Turner's Prosperity" (1929) also, James is experimenting w ith
im plicational relations. He attempts there a duality that pretends an
amused detachment of author and audience, w hile counterpointing this
attitude by a detailed grueling sketch of a man being strangled by his
in a b ility to survive and m aintain a middle-class lifestyle on a totally
inadequate salary. The irony of the fable is supposed to set the tone; but
the horror and h u m ilia tio n of the black man who is being exploited by
the wage earning system and who is at the mercy of his creditors really
goes beyond irony in to satire. Somehow James's sympathies seem to
overcome h im here, and he is tru ly unable to sustain the light and
humorous tone. The haunting struggle of the black man for economic
independence and the resulting necessity for h im to grovel and cringe to
the white, to ta lly unsympathetic employer, the lack of job security and
the imperiousness of the w hite upper class who hold the reigns of eco­
nomic power are inescapable. The story becomes a harrowing tale of the
emasculation of the black man, an emasculation fuelled by sheer want,
and of a tyrannical society that devalues his personality, his presence, his
dignity, and his labor.
 56 Minty Alley and Early Short Stories

The control of authorial voice is more secure in "T riu m p h " (1929),
w h ich clearly anticipates his novel M in ty A lle y in setting textual rela­
tions, context and subject. Indeed, i t m ig h t even be said to be more
acceptably integrated because there is no unresolved relationship be­
tween narration and subject such as exists in the (finally) irreconcilable
class positions of Haynes in M in ty A lle y and the other occupants of the
"yard." In "T riu m p h ," there is at firs t a certain im position of authorial
voice th a t reveals the same in te n tio n as James displays in the 1969
passage already referred to: the desire to display his knowledge and
understanding of the foundations of European literature and to p u ll Ca­
ribbean literature in to the m ainstream of m etropolitan metaphoric, im -
agistic, and thought processes. Thus:

Where people in England and America say slums, Trinidadians say

barrack-yards. Probably the word is a relic of the days when England
relied as much on garrisons of soldiers as on her fleet to protect her
valuable sugar-producing colonies___In these live and have always lived
the porters, prostitutes, carter-men, washer-women, and domestic ser­
vants of the city.
In one corner of the yard is the hopelessly inadequate water-closet,
unmistakable to the nose if not to the eye,* sometimes there is a structure
w ith the title of bathroom: a courtesy title, for he or she who would wash
in it w ith decent privacy must cover the person as if bathing on the
Lido. . . . In the centre of the yard is a heap of stones. . . . Not only to
Minerva have these stones been dedicated. Time was when they would
have had an honoured shrine in a local temple to Mars___9

T his see-sawing in tone between overblown "lite ra ry " image and the
p u ll towards realistic description of the squalid poverty-stricken lives of
the poor is fortunately not continued throughout the work. Moreover, it
is soon replaced by reference to the indigenous poetic expression of the
lower class poet, the Calypso,* so European cultural values are put aside
as the story becomes more fu lly embedded in its own cultural m ilieu.
T his development is, of course, James's major contribution to the
literature of the Caribbean; the giving of voice to the "porters, pros­
titutes, carter-men, washer-women, and domestic servants of the c ity "
in th e ir own language and surrounded by th e ir A frican cultural values,
belief systems, and cosmology. In "T riu m p h ," he makes the ordinary
African-descended wom an the subject of the discourse. He discloses
there that in these hard and deprived lives, where black women are at the
extreme end of the economic and social strata, dependent on the (himself
 Identity, Society, and M eaning 57

deprived) black male for irregular and in te rm itte n t support, there is some
coherency in th e ir lives and in their cosmologies. This coherence causes
them to transcend and transform the horrendous social and economic
position to w hich they have been reduced by the coincidences of slavery
and colonialism , exacerbated by race, color, class, and gender. James per­
ceives the importance of that sense of com m unity, of solidarity among
black women that has been empowering and has enabled them to sur­
vive. Thus, th e ^ T riu m p h " of M am itz and Celestine is obtained over
Irene who, because of jealousy, has betrayed that sustaining loyalty
among women and thus has brought real suffering to M am itz. Irene is
therefore ostracized by the group as Celestine and the others w ork to
bring M am itz back in to control of her life through its only resource, her
person as a woman.
James is at pains also to reveal the diversity of ethnicities present in
Trinidad and therefore to show the com m unity and the vibrancy engen­
dered by black people coming together from different areas, albeit in the
Caribbean, in one spot—the slums of Trinidad. So he details that M am itz
was from Demarara (Guyana), Nathan was a Barbadian (Barbados), Popo
des Vignes "a creole of creoles" that is Trinidadian, descended from the
Africans who had been brought in to Trinidad as slaves from the French
colonies Martinique/Guadaloupe and therefore considered "true T rin ­
idadian" in a perceptually unique way. Nicholas, the eventual saviour of
M am itz, is from St. Vincent, and although perfectly acceptable as a
suitor, James shows stratification w ith in the group when he says, "ne­
groes from St. Vincent, Grenada and the smaller West Indian islands are
looked down upon by the Trinidad negro as low-island people."
Whether these prejudices against subgroups are national or are ratings
given to color and type of hair, especially for women, the James typology
as revealed in "T riu m p h " does not prevent unified responses to situa­
tions, responses based on the deeply held insights retained from the
African epistemologies brought to the Caribbean, and actively engaged
w ith European overlays. The accident of b irth of M am itz and Celestine
in different Caribbean countries does not prevent them from being able
to respond in the same way to the invocation of African belief systems as
a means of controlling fate even as they respond to and enjoy some effects
of Christian religion. They both respect the notion of troublesome spirits
w hich m ight lead to uncertain fate although they could be controlled and
good fortune restored by a bath that contained the right herbs. A ll intone
Christian hymns w ith pleasure and all celebrate Easter. Of importance is
 58 Minty Alley and Early Short Stories

James's interweaving of song and story, ritual, language, and behavior

w h ich unm istakably marks the culture and the people as Caribbeans of
A frican descent.
This crucial elevation of the N ew W orld A frican from object to subject
of the discourse and the respect shown for his synthetic approach to life
was of course a seminal feature of the art of the Harlem Renaissance
(1920-30). James's w o rk and the concern w ith the ordinary and common
negro in Harlem had been anticipated by Langston Hughes, Zora Neale
Hurston, and Jean Toomer. Hughes in particular had valorized the r it ­
uals, the rhythm s, and the speech of the common black in Harlem.
H urston had shown insight in to the u nified vision of the N ew W orld
A frican in the diaspora and had included the Caribbean in her recording
and research. The w o rk of Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon John­
son, and W.E.B. D u Bois clearly sought to reveal the true internal voice of
the Negro and his co m m u n ity and helped to change the intellectual
clim ate in such a way that the artist now pictured the negro in a manner
that worked counter to the "darky-m instrel-w aterm elon-M am m y-U ncle
Tom " stereotypes. Just as th e ir w o rk was know n to Senghor and the
theorists of Negritude who have called Langston Hughes "the father of
Negritude," so too should it have been know n to any black intellectual
w orkin g w ith in a group such as the T rinidad and Beacon w riters group.
It w ould be tem pting, of course, to th in k that James and the Bea­
con group asserted the culture of the common black com m unity and
accomplished this revolution in self-assertion, valorization, and self­
esteem solely in response to European inte lle ctu a l and M arxist in flu ­
ence. But th is w ould deny, even p ro h ib it influence and leadership from
the African-Am erican inte lle ctu a l co m m u n ity on other parts of the A fr i­
can diaspora and even on A frica itself. Evidence from a ll aspects of life,
however, seems to confirm that this assessment w ould be incorrect.
Harlem itse lf was regarded, from the twenties to the fifties, as the mecca
for all black people, and the vast m a jo rity of im m igrants from the Carib­
bean lived there.10 For m any in the Caribbean, N ew York was Harlem;
and at the level of the common fo lk, H arlem styles of walk, dance, music,
dress, and speech were assiduously copied. In fact, there has always been
a continued interface between African-Am erica and African-Caribbeans,
and this sym biotic relationship has been w e ll documented in politics. It
w ould be a p ity not to allude to th is relationship in art and literature, not
only in the H arlem of Garvey and McKay, but also in the Trinidad
Renaissance; and this at a tim e when the representation of blacks in
 Identity, Society, and M eaning 59

lite ra tu re by th e ir own w riters was irrevocably changed. C ontributions

by James and by the w riters of the T rinidad Renaissance to the forging of
an indigenous lite ra tu re and to the m eaning of the id e n tity and the
societies of the N ew W orld Africans, im portant as they are, m ust be
lin ke d to the w o rk o f those other black people whose dispersal and
d ivisio n have not caused a com plete severance of a ll ties or a loss of a ll
influence. #
As the struggle continues to invest these fragmented societies w ith
coherent id e n tifyin g features and relevant meanings, the connections
among these com m unities and the understanding of collective endeav­
ours m ust clearly be acknowledged.

N o tes

1. "Discovering Literature in Trinidad: The 1930's" Spheres o f Existence

(Westport, Conn.: Lawrence H ill, 1980), 237-44. Q uotation is from 237. Subse­
quent references w ill be given in the text as Spheres.
2. "The atmosphere in w hich I came to m aturity, and w hich has developed me
along the lines that I have gone, is the atmosphere of the literature of Western
Europe. In m y youth we lived according to the tenets of M atthew Arnold; we
spread sweetness and light, and we studied the best that there was in literature in
order to transm it it to the people—as we thought, the poor, backward West Indian
people. I want to te ll you w hat journals I used to read, together w ith other writers
and some other people—there were very few of us. To m y house, on my subscrip­
tion, came The Times L iterary Supplement, The Times Educational Supplemen­
tary, The New Stateman and Nation, The Observer, The Sunday Times, The
D a ily Telegraph (when Rebecca West wrote in it), The Evening Standard (when
A rnold Bennett wrote in i t —I th in k Tuesday and Thursday), The Criterion, The
Nation; from the U nited States The New Republic; from France Mercure de
France and the Nouvelle Revue Frangaise-, also the M usical Review and the
Gramophone" (ibid., 237).
3. "Proletarian or Revolutionary Literature? C.L.R. James and the Politics of
the Trinidadian Renaissance," The South A tla n tic Q uarterly 18.1 (W inter 1988):
39-52. Quotation is from 39.
4. "A Way of Seeing: C ulture as P olitical Expression in the Works of C.L.R.
James," Journal o f Black Studies 22.3 (March 1992): 429-43. Quotation is from
432. Subsequent references w ill be given in the text as JBS.
5. See James's "The M aking of the Caribbean People" (1966) and "Black
Power" (1969) in Spheres of Existence.
6. N otably W.E.B. D u Bois The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Reprint, Three
Negro Classics (New York: Avon Books, 1965).
7. This intent is particularly apparent when he quotes V. S. Naipaul's letter to
h im on Beyond a Boundary: "I have only read half of the book so far but I want to
let you know at once I am extremely glad because it lets these English people
 60 M in ty A lle y and Early Short Stories

know w ho and w hat we West Indians are" ("Discovering Literature in T rin i­

d a d . . . / ' 243).
8. "O n W ilson H arris," in Spheres o f Existence, 172.
9. "T riu m p h ," in From T rinidad: A n A n th o lo g y o f E arly West In d ia n W ritin g,
ed. Reinhard W. Sander et al. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978), 86-87.
10. In fact A lb e rt Gomes, a leading mem ber of the T rinidad Group and the
founder of "T he T rinida d " had live d in N ew York from 1919 to 1921, and he had
actually reviewed McKay's Banana B ottom (1922). Further, he had w ritte n an
article "Black M a n " in 1931 w h ic h showed extensive knowledge of the social
situation of the Am erican negro and of the art of the com m unity. The article is of
course ambiguous in its interpretations and conclusions as one w ould expect of
A lb e rt Gomes w ho described h im se lf in his autobiography as having "th e ambigu­
ity of a swarthiness" (Through a Maze o f C olour [Port of Spain, Trinidad: Key
Caribbean Publications, 1974], 152). The tendency is rather to blame the v ic tim
and exhort h im to raise him self fro m social bondage.
 H. A d la i M urdoch

James's L ite ra ry D iale ctic: C olonialism

and C u ltu ra l Space in M in ty A lle y

The name of C.L.R. James tra d itio n a lly has been m ost closely associated
w ith his w orks of h isto ry and philosophy, particularly, perhaps, The
Black Jacobins and the Notes on D ialectics. Indeed, the form er w ork has
done m uch to codify the perception of the resistance to slavery in the
Caribbean as the genesis of a postcolonial ontology. It has also helped to
valorize the concept of a Caribbean su b je ctivity as conceived in co n flic t
and opposition and thus as the particular product of its own h istorical
and cu ltu ra l experience. S im ilarly, James's w ork on Hegel has demon­
strated his own in te lle c tu a l rigor, m arking the philosophical depth of a
body of w ork whose variety and p rofundity reflect the substance of
Caribbean history and culture. The fact that m uch of James's lite ra ry
a c tiv ity was p o litic a lly and c u ltu ra lly contextualized by the a ctuality of
colonialism and of his society's subjection to a colonial discourse serves
only to enhance his early recognition of the existence of a Caribbean
essence. T his essence is a social and c u ltu ra l force that draws on the
experience of slavery and resistance and the p lu ra lity of ethnicities and
on cultures throw n together by colonial exigency in order to produce that
paradoxical, re silie n t d iversity that arguably form s the basis of regional
subjectivity.
The overw helm ing contingency of the colonial situation in the C arib­
bean provided in large measure the prim ary sociopolitical fram ew ork for
contem porary fic tio n being produced in the region. Authors w orking in
the fledgling vineyards of early tw entieth-century Caribbean w ritin g
were irre s is tib ly drawn towards the re-presentation of th e ir cu ltu ra l and
p o litic a l context in the construction of character, theme, and plot. Such

61
 62 M in ty A lle y and Early Short Stories

decisions were inform ed not o n ly by the desire to respond to the encod­

ing of exclusion and erasure practiced by the dom inant culture, b u t also
by the more straightforw ard question of subjective fa m ilia rity . The resul­
ta n t transparency th a t w ould in fo rm th is m im e tic transposition of real­
ity did not, however, seek to inscribe an im m ediate transform ation of
referential m a te ria lity in to its representational code. Rather, it m arked
the choice of a p a rticu la r im aginative basis fo r the fic tio n a l exploration
of the construction of social hierarchies and co n flic tu a l relationships
w ith in a fa m ilia r setting. James's fic tio n a l efforts proved no exception to
th is rule, as a reading of M in ty A lle y w ill reveal a plethora of recognizable
sociocultural characteristics grounded in the construction of contem po­
rary T rinidad's colonial society.
A n exam ination of the h is to ric a l record provides adequate v e rific a tio n
of the social groundw ork operative w ith in the novel's fram ew ork. The
a rtific ia l stra tific a tio n s of color and class generated by the society's
subjection to the structures of co lonial im p o sitio n form the basis of the
social w hole as w e ll as of its m im e tic re-presentation. Both the grow th of
the black m iddle class in the early part of the century and the alm ost
sim ultaneous increase in the concentration of Creoles in the capital's
social structure played an in co n tro ve rtib le role in the developm ent of the
racial and c u ltu ra l adm ixture th a t em blem atized T rinidadian society.1
The interpenetration of these groups at the social and econom ic level
provided the basis, not o n ly fo r a new inte ra ctive configuration based
upon factors of both race and class, bu t also fo r the discursive exploration
of the construction of social relations based upon these elem ents of
p o litic a l and c u ltu ra l change. In other words, the m etastasis th a t was
occurring on the referential level in T rinidadian society became the
ground fo r the fig u ra l in te rp re ta tio n of the racial and c u ltu ra l com po­
nents underpinning how the co lonial construct functioned.
James was thus able to incorporate a concatenation of these factors
in to the characterizations, settings, and interrelation ships th a t in fo rm
the narrative of M in ty A lle y 2 The novel m ay in fact be read as a barome­
ter of colonial life , a m icrocosm ic re-presentation of the forces underly­
ing the fragm entation and hierarchization of a society made subject to a
colonial discourse. In the racial, cu ltu ra l, and econom ic d ialectic m ediat­
ing the relationships between Haynes, the protagonist, and his several
in terlocutors at N o. 2 M in ty A lle y in colonial T rinidad, James has in ­
scribed the referents of a colonial sign system, not only in the figural
space traced by the arm atures of the plo t, bu t also in the contextualiza-
 James's Literary D ia le ctic 63

tio n of the stru ctu ra l form imposed upon the narration itself. The social
fragm entation, racial and class-driven division, and the widespread pres­
ence of stereotypes and attitudes induced by the culture of colonialism
are translated as signifers that construct character and p lo t development
and whose signifieds m ediate the very paradoxes w hich are the product
of the colonial encounter.
T his question of the m im e tic re-presentation of sociocultural referen-
tia lity is of c ritic a l im portance w ith in the colonial and postcolonial lite r­
ary fram ew ork. Indeed, the issue may be read as a dual-faceted one; on
the one hand, the idea of narrative re-presentation as a form of codifica­
tio n of both real and im aginary events has been thoroughly elaborated in
the w ork of several c ritic s .3 Here, it is the c ritic a l question of form that
underlies the d istin ctio n between the arbitrary nature of events and the
im position of meaning im p lie d by th e ir m im etic narration. We w ill in
fact shortly observe that the discursive construction of M in ty A lley's
narrative, through its adherence to a particular structural form alism ,
seeks to reflect certain attributes germane to the colonial experience,
thus engendering an interesting fusion of form and ideology. On the
other hand, we are also faced w ith the sociocultural phenomenon of the
alm ost inevitable im ita tio n of the colonizer by the colonized; m im etic
re petition of the values, practices, and a ctivitie s of the colonizer by the
colonized has been a long-standing feature of the identity-form ation
process w ith in both the colonial and the postcolonial contexts, and such
rep e titio n marks the paradox of a sim ultaneous disjunction and assim ila­
tio n undergone by the colonial subject.4Indeed, both of these factors w ill
be at issue as th is reading of the story and the discourse of M in ty A lle y
proceeds. Both Haynes's increasingly paradoxical relationship to his fe l­
low colonials, as w e ll as the p a rtic u la rity of the narrative form in w hich
th e ir various encounters is encoded, provide an enabling m a trix for a
reading that seeks to engage both the discursive and the cu ltu ra l aspects
of the m im etic tendencies underlying the colonial experience.
The p lo t of the novel is fa irly straightforw ard. As the result of unex­
pected financial hardship caused by his m other's death, a young m iddle-
class black man finds him self forced to rent out his tra d itio n a l place of
abode and to move in to a cheaper boardinghouse found by his servant,
Ella. Having v is ib ly descended the social ladder by m oving in to M in ty
A lle y and its surrounding neighborhood, Haynes (we never learn his firs t
name) becomes witness to the sh iftin g relationships between his land­
lady, M rs. Rouse, her com m on-law husband, Benoit, another tenant who
 64 M in ty A lle y and Early Short Stories

w orks as a nurse, a longtim e boarder, M iss A tw e ll, and M rs. Rouse's

n u bile young niece, M aisie. As a re su lt of the deference and respect
afforded h is m iddle-class background, Haynes is drawn in to the perm uta­
tions accom panying Benoit's abandonm ent of M rs. Rouse fo r the youn­
ger and lighter-skinne d nurse: the la te r d o w nfall of th is relationship
follow ed by Benoit's sheepish attem pts to re tu rn to the household, M rs.
Rouse's receipt and eventual spurning of a proposal of com m on-law
cohabitation from a retired police inspector, her co n tin u a l fin a n cia l tro u ­
bles w ith her creditors, Benoit's sudden death, and M aisie's departure
fo r A m erica fo llo w in g the establishm ent of a lia iso n w ith Haynes and
the eventual breakdown of her relationship w ith her aunt. Throughout,
Haynes m aintains a paradoxical stance of both observer and p a rticip a n t
in the proceedings, although, im p o rta n tly, he ends up by managing M rs.
Rouse's fin a n cia l affairs u n til sh o rtly before his ow n departure from the
household. Thereupon the house is sold and the rem aining inhabita nts of
N o. 2 eventually go th e ir ow n separate ways. U ltim a te ly , after Haynes's
re tu rn to his o rig in a l place of abode, a certain nostalgia fo r th a t period of
his life rem ains.
From the p o in t of view of the novel's narrative structure, its m ost
s trik in g characteristic is the la ck of an om niscient narrator. Indeed, the
narration severely restricts the fie ld of perception, offering no in d ica tio n
of the in te rn a l thoughts, im pressions, or decisions of the m ain charac­
ters. A ll in fo rm a tio n flow s through Haynes w ho thus has to be present at
a ll the events and conversations th a t make up the in trig u e ; the reader
learns about the developing s itu a tio n at the same rate and to the same
degree th a t Haynes does. Such a re s tric tio n in the narrative focus corre­
sponds to p a rticu la r variables in narrative codification ; the fu n ctio n of
such variables in a co lonial context m ay be reasonably assim ilated to the
creation of a sign system constructed in response to those variables being
subjected to the exigencies of its p a rticu la r discourse.
The w o rk of the narrative th e o rist Gerard Genette provides a strong
resource fo r the analysis and co d ifica tio n of narrative form , and we may
tu rn to his w ork at th is p o in t as we seek to contextualize the Jamesian
narrative technique. Genette defines the fo rm of narration w ith w hich
we have issue as "narrative w ith in te rn a l fo c a liz a tio n where the focal-
iza tio n its e lf is "fix e d ."5 Use of th is form thus im plies a s tric t lim ita tio n
in the am ount of narrative in fo rm a tio n to be transm itted through the
p lo t; both characters and events undergo a lim ite d form of developm ent
w hich is even fu rth e r restricted by being filte re d through a single narra-
 James's Literary D ia le ctic 65

tive focalizer. These dual constraints serve to m u tu a lly reinforce each

other, generating a narrative constructed and, indeed, v irtu a lly depen­
dent upon the representation of a s tric tly u n ita ry subjectivity. However,
since the fu n ctio n of an alienated (post)colonial su b je ctivity subsists in
d ivisio n and displacem ent, James's narrative m ust diverge from the re­
strictio n s of its ow n m odel in order to address the form specifically
mandated by its ^o ciocultural context.
Genette fu rth e r goes on to p o in t out th a t "the very p rinciple of th is
narrative mode im plies in a ll strictness th a t the focal character never be
described or even referred to from the outside, and th a t his thoughts or
perceptions never be analyzed objectively by the narrator___ The narra­
to r alm ost always 'know s' m ore than the hero . .. and therefore fo r the
narrator focalization through the hero is a re strictio n of fie ld just as
a rtific ia l in the firs t person as in the th ird ."6 In the case of M in ty A lle y ,
w h ile reference to the m ain character does indeed occur, one sim ulta­
neously notes th a t the thoughts and conflicts of Haynes are never re­
ferred to directly. The re strictio n of fie ld at w ork in the transm ission of
narrative in fo rm a tio n carries over in to the re-presentation of Haynes's
development, rendering him a character whose presence mediates that of
others w h ile sim ultaneously lim itin g his capacities as focalizer. Such an
apparent contradiction in conceptualization is in fact of c ritic a l im por­
tance to the lim ita tio n s th a t figure the novel's re-presentation both of the
colonial paradigm and of the subjects who in h a b it it. Indeed, Haynes's
thought processes at several decisive m oments are represented, not d i­
rectly, but through free ind ire ct discourse, a form that, embodying as it
does "a m ixture or m erging of narrator and character,"7 functions in
narrative term s as a sign of division, the m ark of a subject unable to
enunciate its e lf on its own as " I." 8 The im plications of this subjective
d ivision w ith in a colonial context suggest that subjection to the dis­
course of colonialism has been inscribed in the text. T his in scrip tio n
is represented through the character of Haynes who, by virtu e of his
paradoxical position as a member of both the ru lin g and the oppressed
classes, may be said to m ediate a sim ultaneous id e n tifica tio n w ith the
ideological position of the colonizer as w e ll as participation in the frag­
m entation and dislocation of the colonized. Fixed internal focalization,
functionin g here as a re strictio n on the fie ld of narration, m ay thus be
read as a deliberate construct, a narrative device inserted in to the struc­
ture of the novel by the narrator as a sign of the am biguity imposed upon
the colonial subject through its subordination to the contradictions in-
 66 M in ty A lle y and E arly Short Stories

herent in the discourse. A nd in the case of M in ty A lle y, the e lucidatio n of

th is effect is largely dependent upon the so cio p o litica l conte xtu a liza tio n
of the in trig u e in the co lo n ia l Caribbean of the early tw e n tie th century.
How, we m ay ask, does th is fusion of fo rm and context fu n c tio n as a
figure of the co lo n ia l dilem m a? Let me suggest, as a basis fo r discussion,
th a t the re s tric tio n of fie ld w orks in th is context to replicate the im posi­
tio n s of the co lo n ia l discourse its e lf; the resultant lim ita tio n s placed
upon the characters and the in trig u e , the fact th a t Haynes is the novel's
sole focalizer, or m ediator, of in fo rm a tio n , recuperate the im p o s s ib ility
of expression im posed upon the colo n ia l subject. The absence of a place
of enunciation fo r the discourse of the colonized, and the consequent
erasure of the very p o s s ib ility of its being, is reflected in the extent to
w h ich the re-presentation of co lo n ia l su b je c tiv ity is reduced and circu m ­
scribed here. A t the same tim e, the fact th a t the re-presentation of the
larger to ta lity of colonized subjects can occur o n ly through the sentience
of one of th e ir num ber, indeed the one w ho appears to approxim ate m ost
closely the m odel of colo n ia l assim ilation, o n ly serves to co n firm the
im pression th a t the u ltim a te product of colonialism is the in a b ility of
the colonized to speak th e ir ow n su b je ctivity. The creation of privilege
w ith in the co lo n ia l w hole, a paradoxical privilege w h ich furthers the
subjection of both in d iv id u a l and group, provides an addition al instance
of the dram atically successful colo n ia l p o licy of divide and rule, in w hich
the so-called privileged subject is sim ultaneously the m ost assim ilated
category.
But of even deeper significance in th is context is the re s tric tio n of the
physical space described by the in trig u e . A ll the prim ary events of the
novel take place at N o. 2, M in ty A lley, and those th a t occur outside it
m ay arguably be said to involve characters whose ontology draws m et-
o n ym ica lly upon th a t space. The boardinghouse thus tends to fu n ctio n
as a figure fo r the space of the co lonial p o lity , the fe rvid iso la tio n and
protean tensions of its inhabita nts the result of the divisions operated by
the co lonial discourse its e lf. Fragm entation and plura lism come to figure
the subjective and the physical configuratio n of the colonial space; both
the m anifold representational strata of the boardinghouse and those who
in h a b it it are subject to the subversive depredations of the co lo n ia l dis­
course th a t circum scribes them . The s p e cificity of th is space, however,
draws upon even more ingrained inscrip tio n s of the form of colonial rule.
The rooms to rent at No. 2 appear to open out in sem icircular form
upon the yard outside, w h ich seems to be the focal po in t of the building's
 James's L iterary D ia le ctic 67

a c tiv ity . M ore to the point, however, is the relation of Haynes's room to
th is space; he is able, through a crack in the boards, to observe the
a c tiv itie s taking place in the yard w ith o u t being observed, to see w ith o u t
being seen. In fact, th is is how he becomes aware, early in the novel, of
the in fid e lity of Benoit, M rs. Rouse's com m on-law husband, w ith the
nurse w ho is one of the tenants, and th is occurrence provides the en­
abling ground fo* subsequent events in the novel. The secret nature of
th is vantage p oint, coupled w ith the respectful distance accorded Haynes
by the other tenants due to his education and social position, com bine to
render the surveillance of Haynes's gaze as a re-presentation of the power
to define and to deny; such power is an integral part of colonial dom ina­
tio n . Indeed, the re-presentation of colonial tensions and dichotom ies is
inscribed w ith in the elaboration and developm ent of the p lo t by the
physical re strictio n of p lo t events to the yard, by the re strictio n of the
narrative fie ld to Haynes as focalizer, and by his social, in te lle ctu a l, and
spatial separation from the other tenants as he observes the ebb and flo w
of th e ir relationships unseen from his eyrie. The extent to w hich the
defining power of Haynes's gaze and the superiority of his social and
in te lle ctu a l attainm ents u ltim a te ly colonize the other inhabitants of
No. 2 becomes the underlying trope of the novel's re-presentation of a
colonial context; the paradoxes of the relationships tend to refigure its
discursive im positions. The codification and contextualization of char­
acter and p lo t relationships, engendering as they do dialectics of contra­
d ictio n and reversal, thus fu n ctio n to reinforce the paradoxes and d i­
chotom ies inherent in the subjection to a colonial discourse.
T his disjunction between Haynes and the other inhabitants of No. 2
reach th e ir clim ax w ith an act of overt recognition of his social and
in te lle c tu a l superiority. A fte r m onths of confiding more and more of her
financial woes to him , M rs. Rouse eventually cedes to ta l control of her
affairs, w ith especial significance given to his m astery of w ritin g and of
m athem atical calculations. S kills such as these, long the bane of the
colonial population, represent in the colonized a level of attainm ent that
can draw the holder in to an am bit recuperative of colonial superiority. As
a result, the im plica tio n s of his new role go beyond sim ple accountancy
and correspondence: "A fte r that he was the master of the house. N othing
was ever done w ith o u t consulting him . He made up M rs. Rouse's ac­
counts, to ld her w hat to pay, and w rote letters to the more d iffic u lt
creditors, endorsed a note for her . . . and as M rs. Rouse to ld him one day
was of far more help to her than Benoit had ever been in his life " (173).
 68 M in ty A lle y and Early Short Stories

T his in s c rip tio n of patriarchal ascendancy reinforces the co d ifica tio n of

Haynes as the em bodim ent of the m aster's discourse, his appropriation
of those functions ty p ic a lly restricted to the c o lo n ia lis t fig u rin g his
separation from and d e fin itio n of those around h im . W ith patriarchy the
overriding trope governing relations between Haynes and his fe llo w
colonials, the assim ila tio n of his role to one th a t replicates the colo n ia l
paradigm is made a m ore inte g ra l part of the novel's structure.
But fu rth e r to the p o in t concerning the in s c rip tio n of tropes fo r colo­
n ia l d ivisio n is th a t the novel's characterizations are perm eated w ith
references to race and to racial difference. Such references begin from the
m om ent Haynes arrives at No. 2, and th e ir presentation through the
filte r of h is consciousness suggests the interpene tration of th is arbiter of
the co lo n ia l paradigm . Indeed, our in tro d u c tio n to the inhabita nts of
No. 2 takes place under the sign of racial perception: "a long, bony, black
g irl came out of the k itch e n . . . and no t long after, a little boy, nearly
w hite , came from inside the house" (29). We are fu rth e r inform ed th a t it
is indeed racial difference th a t is of prim ary m om ent here: " It was his
colour, however, w h ich rather startled Haynes. He wondered at the
presence of so fa ir a skin among a ll those dark people" (29). S im ilarly,
Haynes's in tro d u c tio n to Benoit draws a tte n tio n to his racial characteris­
tics: "T he very dark skin and cu rly ha ir showed traces of Indian blood"
(30); and his firs t true awareness of the nurse occurs in s im ila r term s:
"She was to a ll appearances w h ite , but the te ll-ta le finger-nails showed
the coloured blood" (48). It w ould seem reasonable to conclude, from
these early in scrip tio n s of racial tropes, th a t the oppositions com m on to
a colo n ia l society w ith hierarchies based p rim a rily on racial s tra tific a ­
tio n are o ve rtly at w o rk in the in trig u e of M in ty A lle y , and th a t the
assim ila tio n of these gradations to issues of class and character are the
product of colo n ia l subjection. They play a role in the operation and
developm ent of the narrative discourse by v irtu e of th e ir very presence,*
and they form the basis of the relationships th a t underlie the plo t, in th a t
the previously noted restrictions and lim ita tio n s imposed upon the nar­
rative form are fu rth e r undercut through the encoding of a basic social
fragm entation p rio r to th e ir singular filtra tio n through the character of
Haynes. By thus layering the forces of dislocation at w ork in the narra­
tiv e discourse, James succeeds in assim ilating narrative form to the
pluralism s underlying regional su b jectivity.
The prim ary construct among the novel's characters is thus the ten­
dency to view the colonial counterpart from the perspective of the colo-
 James's Literary D ia le ctic 69

n ia lis t him self. T his subjective dislocation is the result of am biguities

and displacem ents generated in the alienation produced by the colonial
paradigm .9 These elements, playing a c ritic a l role in the fun ctio n in g of
the colonial signifier, in e vita b ly came to be reflected in the behavioral
attitudes of the colonized. On the one hand, the colonized subject feels
nurtured and protected by the colonizing (m)Other, m isreading assim ila­
tio n as the achievem ent of equality between colonizer and colonized. But
the concom itant alienating structure of sub je ctivity posits the subject as
view ing its e lf from an external position, regarding and constructing self­
hood from the very place of the (m (Other. The resultant s p lit produces
the drive tow ard m im e tic replication of the colonizing Other, as the
colonial subject, desirous of recognition from th is alien e n tity, seeks to
im ita te h im .10 T his recuperative drive tends to displace subjective in ­
scription, such that the colonizing O ther comes to reflect the subject's
ideal image, and the colonial counterpart assumes the position of a lte rity
w hich is the role and fu n ctio n of the Other. In th is way, issues of racial
difference can supersede the recognition of colonial oppression, reducing
the scope of subjection and replacing it by the a rtific ia l structures of
racial perception and cu ltu ra l difference. As the racialized O ther takes
the place of the colonizer in the hierarchy of recognition, the very tra d i­
tions and values in trin s ic to cu ltu ra l id e n tity are progressively perceived
as w orthless, as prejudicial to the achievem ent of parity between colo­
nizer and colonized.
R eflecting the particular social structure of the Caribbean region,
w hich is its e lf the product of econom ic strictures, racial co n flict in the
novel occurs not only between blacks and w hites but between blacks and
Indians. M aisie consistently refers to M rs. Rouse's m aid Philom en as
"the coolie," and at one m om ent, she pronounces the stereotype that
" A ll coolie head have lic e " (114). The narrator's subsequent pains to
poin t out the error of such an im pression only serves, paradoxically, to
exacerbate the c u ltu ra l differences he is attem pting to assuage. The
inexplicable separation of M rs. Rouse and Philom en comes down to a
concatenation of racial prejudice and local superstition: M rs. Rouse's
actions tu rn out to have been precipitated by a v is it fo r advice to a local
obeah m an, or voodoo priest, who inform ed her that "m y blood and
coolie blood don't take. .. . He say I have nothing to expect from coolie
blood but treachery. . . . And he w arn me against having any coolies
around m e" (240). The m anner of the dissolution of the relationship be­
tween these tw o women, previously so close and m u tu a lly supportive as
 70 M in ty A lle y and E arly Short Stories

to have been thought inseparable, prefigures the larger separations th a t

culm inate the novel; it also functions, through the racial d iv is io n under­
ly in g the proffered advice and through M rs. Rouse's unquestioning ac­
ceptance of it, as a sign of the pervasive penetration of the d ivisive tropes
of a co lo n ia l discourse. The acceptance o f a fo rm of colo n ia l s tra tific a tio n
th a t is produced fro m the recognition of racial difference becomes the
u ltim a te sign of a discursive hegemony th a t builds its tropes by e x p lo it­
ing c u ltu ra l disjunction s among those it seeks*to repress.
U ltim a te ly , the p rim a ry accom plishm ent of James's novel is the m edi­
ation of the discourses of both lite ra tu re and cultu re . O n the one hand, he
has successfully turned narrative form to the service of c u ltu ra l re­
presentation by using sp e cificities of structure to figure ideological con-
te xtu a liza tio n . By fig u rin g the discursive circu m scrip tio n w hich is the
co ro lla ry of a co lonial discourse through the deliberate re s tric tio n of the
narrative fie ld , he conveys the im positions to w h ich the colonial id e n tity
was subjected. H is use of in te rn a l lo ca liza tio n and of a single character as
narrative filte r thus makes effective use of the colonial context, dem on­
stra tin g the im p o s s ib ility o f discourse and the paradoxes and p lu ra litie s
th a t inform ed the society at large as w e ll as those w ho purported to be its
chosen few. A t the same tim e, the absence of an overarching teleology to
the novel underscores w ritin g its e lf as a s ty lis tic construction, and it
places fu n ctio n upperm ost in the tropologies of discourse. Further, by
inscribing these re strictio n s as the re fle ctio n of c u ltu ra l hegemony, the
narrative its e lf comes to figure the re strictio n s im posed upon colo n ia l
subjects, the im p o s s ib ility of speaking or representing the self w ith in a
context of social dislocation and p o litic a l dispossession. In these term s,
M in ty A lle y stands in the annals of Caribbean lite ra tu re as a landm ark
achievem ent, in w hich, to use Edward Said's words, the p rim ary accom­
plishm ent is to have "id e n tifie d the cultu re of resistance as a cu ltu ra l
enterprise possessing a long tra d itio n of in te g rity and power in its own
rig h t, one not sim ply grasped as a belated reactive response to W estern
im p e ria lis m ."11 In other words, the d ia lectic of James's lite ra ry produc­
tio n m ediates lite ra tu re and culture, colonialism and history, to produce
a w o rk in w h ich the underlying tropes serve to reinscribe both the
fragm entation in trin s ic to the co lonial context and the c u ltu ra l id e n tity
that lies la te n t w ith in th is structure.
Paul Buhle, in his biography of James e n title d The A rtis t as R evolution­
ary, makes a s trik in g observation on James's a ssim ilation of a rtis tic pro­
duction to p o litic a l and ideological resistance: "Lacking the form al appa-
 James's Literary D ia le ctic 71

ratus of sem iotics or the concept of the post-m odern, James . . . detached
the aesthetic object from its apparent roots in productivist society and
thereby plucked details out of a narrow h is to ric is m ."12By placing the l i t ­
erary, the cu ltu ra l, and the ideological on an equal narrative plane, James
succeeded in a rtic u la tin g the discourse of those voiceless subjects of
colonialism who had been denied the rig h t of th e ir own re-presentation.
H is refle ctio n of^the d u a lity beneath colonialism 's sociocultural frag­
m entation through a judicious displacem ent of narrative form consti­
tutes the essential dislocation th a t embodies the Caribbean experience.

N o tes

1. See for example Bridget Brereton, A H istory of Modern Trinidad 1783-1962

(London: Heinemann, 1981), esp. 127-35.
2. C.L.R. James, M in ty A lle y (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1936; London:
New Beacon Books, 1971). A ll subsequent page references w ill be made paren­
thetically in the text.
3. See for example Hayden W hite, "The Value of N a rra tivity in the Represen­
tation of Reality," in On N arrative, ed. W.J.T. M itc h e ll (Chicago: U niversity of
Chicago Press, 1981), 1-23.
4. For documentation of the phenomenon of colonial repetition and discus­
sion of its cultural and psychological im plications, see Edouard Glissant, Le
Discours a n tilla is (Paris: Seuil, 1981), 28-36. See also A lbert Mem mi, The Colo-
nizer and the Colonized, trans. Howard Greenfeld (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967),
esp. 119-41.
5. Gerard Genette, N arrative Discourse: A n Essay in Method, trans. Jane
Lewin (Ithaca: Cornell U niversity Press, 1980), 189.
6. Genette, N arrative Discourse, 193-94.
7. Wallace M artin, Recent Theories of N arrative (Ithaca: Cornell U niversity
Press, 1986), 138.
8. S hlom ith Rimmon-Kenan discusses the linguistic features and the struc­
tural and subjective im plications of free indirect discourse (f i d ) in her w ork
N arrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London: Methuen, 1983). See espe­
cially 110-16.
9. See Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics (New York: Oxford U niver­
sity Press, 1983), 158, for a discussion of alienation in subjectivity and the resul­
tant possibility of sim ultaneously holding m u tu a lly opposed positions.
10. Lacan discusses the role of desire in recognition of the subject in Ecrits: A
Selection, trans. A lan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977), 311.
11. Edward Said, "Yeats and Decolonization," in Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jame­
son, and Edward W. Said, N ationalism , Colonialism , and Literature (Minneapo­
lis: U niversity of Minnesota Press, 1990), 73.
12. Paul Buhle, C.L.R. fames: The A rtis t as R evolutionary (London: Verso,
1988), 101.
 Barbara Paul-Em ile

Gender D ynam ics in James's M in ty A lle y

W hat is it about M in ty A lle y th a t sets it apart from other novels? I read

th is w o rk ten years ago, and yet when I returned to reread it, the p lo t was
fresh in m y m ind. One cannot forget the strength and v ita lity of the char­
acters, the richness of the language, the layered structure of the p lo t;
a ll re fle ctin g the color and rhythm s of Caribbean life played out on
the sparse stage of "th e yard." In his c ritic a l exam ination of th is text,
D. E llio t Parris states th a t had James "w ritte n nothing else, had he not
established h im se lf as a m ajor h isto ria n and p o litic a l theorist, th is novel,
w ritte n in his youth before he departed T rinidad in the m id-1930's to
establish h im self in Europe as one of the m ost celebrated of West Indian
exiles, w ould have earned h im a lasting reputation as a lite ra ry a rtis t."1
M in ty A lle y as an outstanding w o rk of fic tio n can be analyzed and
discussed from several d iffe re n t p oints of view . One could take a M a rxist
approach and exam ine the relationship between Haynes, a m em ber of
the pe tite bourgeoisie, and the residents of the yard. O r one could look at
color and exam ine the influence of th is factor on the in te ra ctio n of the
characters. Race could also provide an interesting study exem plified by
the relationship between M rs. Rouse and Philom ena. T h is paper w ill not
focus d ire c tly on any of the above b u t on yet another aspect, the inte rp la y
between the m y th ic and archetypal patterns to be found in the m ale/fe-
m ale relationships in th is classic w ork.
One of the characters around w hom m uch of the action of the novel
revolves is Benoit. He is described as a "rather big m an w ith a slig h t
paunch. . . . [H is] very dark skin and cu rly ha ir showed traces of Indian
blood." He is also described as "undistinguished-looking neither hand­
some nor ugly," and his age is given as being "anyw here between th irty -
five and fifty , perhaps somewhere in the fo rtie s ."2 He like s to present

72
 Gender Dynam ics in M in ty A lle y 73

him self as a man of the w orld and enjoys m aking pointed references to
his knowledge of various m ysterious "sciences." A superstitious man, he
claim s to be able to tu rn people's lu c k around and boasts of his a b ility to
determ ine the rig h t day to start any business.
Benoit is portrayed as a sensualist, a man of strong physical appetites.
He prides h im self on know ing how to handle women, a ll women. On the
occasion of his firs t m eeting w ith M r. Haynes, the new tenant at No. 2
M in ty A lley, he says jokingly, w h ile shelling and chewing the nuts he
usually carries in his pocket, "You have a nice, fat cook, man. The firs t
day she come here to ask about the room I lik e her, though I d id n 't know
who she was. M rs. Rouse te ll me you say she does everything for you, and
you w o u ld n 't le t her go-----Anyw ay guard your property. I am a man girls
lik e , you know. If she falls in m y garden I w o u ld n 't have to lock the gate
to keep her in " (31). Satisfied that Haynes has been duly warned on that
score, he turns to the subject of education and says that u n like Haynes he
had no tim e fo r reading: "Since I leave school I a in 't open a book." Benoit
also offers Haynes advice on diet; "N u ts is good things for men to eat, he
observed.. . . I not going to eat t i l l near tw o but I w ill eat four cents nuts
and roast corn, I 'll suck orange, eat fig, mango anything, the whole
m orning; and that w o u ld n 't prevent me eating m y regular" (30-31).
T his conversation sets the tone fo r the relationship Benoit is to have
w ith Haynes fo r whom he assumes the role of m entor, teaching among
other things the art of seduction. It also establishes the character of
th is central figure whose exploits w ill rock No. 2. Benoit has been the
com m on-law husband of M rs. Rouse for eighteen years. D uring th is tim e
M rs. Rouse worked at her bakery business to support the household,
w h ile Benoit's c o n trib u tio n to the general upkeep has been negligible.
M ostly, he dresses up, eats his nuts, and brags about his sexual appeal.
R om antically, he has know n great success w ith the nurse, an attractive
woman, who is a tenant in the yard and M rs. Rouse's dear friend.
To Benoit, life m ust always be undem anding and pleasurable. He
shows very little interest in supporting him self fin a n cia lly or in obtain­
ing steady w ork. The positions he is interested in are usually out of reach.
C ontent to have the women in his life support him , Benoit makes the
fo llo w in g com m ent to Haynes concerning his prospects: "Yes, man . . .
the nurse told me that a man of m y appearance have no rig h t m aking
cakes. She says she w ill help me to get a good job" (83).
Benoit enacts the role of the w illfu l innocent in "an unfallen w orld; a
green Eden where life is sweet and one's needs are m e t.. . . To innocents,
 74 M in ty A lle y and E arly Short Stories

other people, the natural w orld, everything exists to serve and satisfy
th e m ."3 Hence Benoit refuses to take re sp o n sib ility fo r h im se lf and his
actions and cannot understand w hy any one should object to his plea­
sures. In the w o rld of N o. 2, he is the person around w hom a ll revolves,
and he enjoys behaving as though a ll exists fo r h is benefit. M rs. Rouse's
role is to care for, support, and indulge him . Nurse's role is to titilla te and
th r ill h im . He is the w illfu l innocent w ho refuses to take "th e m y th ic
journey" in to responsible adulthood.
By refusing to grow o r "to becom e," Benoit rem ains trapped in his ow n
narcissism , a sta tic figure w ho takes from the w o rld w hat it offers b u t
gives little back. He is untouched by the pain his self-indulgence in flic ts
on others. U ltim a te ly , his selfishness results in breaking the bonds th a t
hold the people in the yard together. N o one escapes the consequences of
his actions. W hen M rs. Rouse discovers the a ffa ir between nurse and
Benoit, the entire household is destabilized. The response th a t the re su lt­
ing confusion generates from the w om en in the yard reveals th e ir under­
standing of the significance of Benoit's actions and th e ir self-concept.
A ll except M aisie in te rp re t B enoit's treatm ent of M rs. Rouse as de­
m eaning, devaluing, and threatening in a very personal way. T h is results
in strong support fo r M rs. Rouse's role as v ic tim . The emphasis M rs.
Rouse herself places on suffering and pain as redem ptive factors supports
the general response and points to her archetypal role as m artyr. Ever
forgiving of Benoit's actions, M rs. Rouse labors ceaselessly at her stove
and is by tu rn s e ith e r angry or in despair over revelations of Benoit's
faithlessness.
The lin e between generosity and kindness, on the one hand, and un­
healthy enabling, on the other, is very th in . M rs. Rouse crosses th a t lin e
when, as the m a rtyr archetype, she persists in givin g to someone w ho
uses her g ifts to continue in destructive patterns. In th is addict-enabler
sym biotic relationship, it is the selflessness of the enabler-m artyr th a t
perm its the negative behavior of the w illfu l innocent to continue. As
Benoit becomes m ore irresponsible and selfish, M rs. Rouse becomes
more devoted, and giving. Even w hen he leaves her fo r the nurse, M rs.
Rouse refuses to come to grips w ith Benoit's true character. S till hoping
fo r a reunion, "three tim es a day the scent of incense and asafoedtida
burning in her bedroom poisoned the atmosphere. She was using a ll the
science she knew to w in back B enoit" (100).
M rs. Rouse grieves over Benoit's going because his absence means th a t
 Gender Dynam ics in M in ty A lle y 75

the center of her w orld has shifted, her raison d'etre weakened. She
remarks to Haynes:

God w ill punish him , M r. Haynes. He can't escape. I am going to see him
suffer. I am going to see M r. Benoit suffer. You can see the wrong he have
done me. I can see it. Everybody can see it. You don't th in k God can see it,
too. He watching, He seeing, He saying nothing, but He not sleeping___
[T]ears of blood going to run from Mr. Benoit's eyes for the misery he have
caused me. (125)

Selfless sacrifices can give m artyrs deeper knowledge of themselves,

encourage connections between them selves and others, and eventually
b u ild com m unity; but sacrifices such as M rs. Rouse's that are inappropri­
ate or are those carried out fo r personal m otives destroy self-esteem, bind
others, and lim it freedom. Inevitably, such sacrifices demand dividends.
M rs. Rouse describes her relationship w ith Benoit as follow s: " I have
been more than a w ife to him , I have been a m other. I nurse him in
sickness. I shield him from harm , and he gone and leave m e" (126). It is
not only because Benoit has broken fa ith w ith her as a lover that M rs.
Rouse is enraged but also because he has been ungrateful to her as a
m other. The n u rtu rin g aspects of the m artyr archetype found expression
in M rs. Rouse's obsessive desire to lavish her devotion on Benoit and
bind him to her through gratitude.
M aisie, M rs. Rouse's nemesis and one of the leading female characters
in the novel, rejects the m artyr's role played so w e ll by M rs. Rouse. She
offers a different response to Benoit's exploits and the dynam ics of the
yard. She sees through the man's antics from the beginning and dismisses
him . She is amused by him but never is she taken in by him . M aisie sees
Benoit for w hat he is and understands the essence of the relationship
between Benoit and M rs. Rouse: M iss A tw e ll, another lodger, consoles
M rs. Rouse by te llin g her to "tru s t in G od" and goes on to im p ly that the
nurse had placed "som ething" in Benoit's food to take him away, an
opinion w ith w hich M rs. Rouse concurs because of a dream she had; but
M aisie rem arks dism issingly, "In God we tru s', but in man we bus'. A ll
you s till ta lk in g about that w orthless Benoit?" (108).
M aisie had previously rejected several of Benoit's advances, among
them his offer to give her a private m edicinal bath to im prove her chances
of succeeding in the w ork w orld. H er fa m ilia rity w ith his exploits is
im p lic it because as the facts unfold, it becomes clear that she was aware
 76 M in ty A lle y and E arly Short Stories

of Benoit's assignations w ith the nurse. M aisie says th a t, at the tim e, she
fe lt the a ffa ir was none of her business. W hat she finds rid icu lo u s is her
A unt's passionate and m isguided attachm ent to the m an and her refusal
to be honest w ith herself about his character. M aisie w ill not aid M rs.
Rouse in her struggle, neith e r w ill she become a w illin g accessory to her
m artyrdom . For th is, she is ostracized and accused of in g ra titu d e by her
aunt.
Barely seventeen, M aisie's assessment o i situations reflects k n o w l­
edge q uite beyond her years. She has a clearer and in m any ways m ore
accurate understanding of the w o rld she lives in than any other m em ber
of the yard. H er relationship w ith Haynes, an in te lle c tu a l and a m em ber
of the m iddle class, is a case in p o in t. Even though she cares deeply for
him , ever a realist, M aisie realizes th a t because of class issues they w ill
no t have a fu tu re together. W ith acute perceptiveness, M aisie grasps the
essentials of Haynes's character and recognizes his fundam ental pas­
s iv ity . She understands th a t he has ne ith e r the in te rn a l strength nor the
courage to defy social mores and act on his feelings fo r her. T h is kn o w l­
edge brings w ith it h u rt, bu t not self-rejection or self-negation. M aisie
does not liv e in hope of having things come ou t rig h t or o f being rescued
from the s itu a tio n . She does not indulge in se lf-p ity and w ill not take the
orphan's role as does M iss A tw e ll, a wom an abandoned by her lover who
now hides in her room re lyin g on re lig io n and tra d itio n to ease her
bitterness. M aisie w ould rather rely on her in telligen ce and her w it. She
does not take the passive role and give the active role to others; M aisie
acts. M anifesting aspects o f the W arrior ethos, she claim s her power and
asserts her id e n tity in the w orld. Showing little of the anxiety about
the future th a t m ust plague her and dem onstrating incredible courage,
M aisie strikes out on her ow n to face the dragon of her unknow n future.
Fearlessly, she undertakes "th e journey" to "kn o w in g " shunned by the
archetypal figures: the innocent, the m artyr, and the orphan.
Before leaving the yard, M aisie responds to events by m odeling w a rrior-
attrib u te s and by teaching others to fin d th e ir ow n strengths. In the case
of Haynes, she helps h im emerge as a m ore courageous and assertive
hum an being in im p o rta n t ways. She encourages h im to speak up for
h im self at w ork, resu ltin g in his receiving a raise and a vacation. Further,
she accepts h im as a lover, in tro d u cin g h im to the rom antic w o rld of love
and sexuality. It can be said th a t she leads h im o u t of the narrow and
s tiflin g cocoon of his predictable life in to a w orld ric h w ith possibilities.
Despising weakness and in e ffe ctu a lity, M aisie refuses to be dom inated
 Gender Dynam ics in M in ty A lle y 77

by her aunt and refuses to be defeated by the status quo. W hen she is
accused of th e ft and treachery by M rs. Rouse, she goes out in to the yard
fo r the last great confrontation before leaving fo r the U nited States. She
says to Haynes, who tries in vain to prevent the face-off, "O h, C h ris t. . . I
am not afraid of any damned body, M an. She can't frighten m e" (216).
M rs. Rouse responds by saying, "W hen I ready fo r you, young woman, I
am going to see after you." To th is M aisie says, "W hy don't you see after
nurse and M r. Benoit? They do you worse than me. And to besides,
w o m a n ,. . . the days of slavery past. M y tongue is m y own to say w hat I
lik e " (217). M aisie w ill not give ground.
She meets the "dragon" and has the fin a l confrontation. As insults are
hurled between the combatants, M aisie reveals that M rs. Rouse had
accepted Benoit back clandestinely only to have h im leave her a second
tim e. Stung by M aisie's words, M rs. Rouse rushes out of the house and
grabs her. They struggle and are fin a lly separated. Retreating to the
house, M rs. Rouse throw s M aisie's clothes in to the yard. Shaking w ith
rage, M aisie replies in kind. She refuses to be broken.
Courage, self-confidence, and a w illingness to face the odds are some of
the dom inant features of the W arrior ethos. It is true that these attributes
when exaggerated and m isdirected can be needlessly com bative, nega­
tive, and destructive. In its positive representation such as its m anifesta­
tio n in the character of M aisie, the w arrior s p irit, innate to all, helps us to
claim our power, stand our ground, and set healthy boundaries.
Women, p a rtic u la rly those in the upper strata of society, are not en­
couraged to express the attributes of th is archetype. Reticence and pas­
s iv ity are the preferred virtues. To M aisie, a w orking-class young woman
w ith little interest in upward m o b ility , the w ill to assert her id e n tity
comes naturally. Effortlessly, she m anifests her powers through-out the
novel and faces her challenges. W hile particular figures in M in ty A lle y
m ight draw empathy, it is M aisie who w ins respect. In many ways, it is
M aisie w ith her ribald hum or and her m ocking irreverence who is the
source of the surging life and v ita lity in the novel.
As an em bodim ent of the fem ale/w arrior archetype, M aisie asserts
one's rig h t to be alive. She demonstrates that those "w ho have proven
th e ir a b ility to defend themselves and fig h t for w hat they w ant tend to be
respected and to respect them selves" (Pearson 1986, 97). To th is end, she
calls on her aunt to move away from her obsession, gather her strength,
and move on w ith her life . In a sum m ary com m ent on M rs. Rouse's
situation, she says, " A ll old women, stupid when it comes to a man, I
 78 M in ty A lle y and E arly Short Stories

notice t h a t . . . . Perhaps if she did handle the m an d iffe re n tly from early
a ll th is w o u ld n 't have happened. C atch me crying after any man. I te ll
you" (James 1971, 93). In having to face M aisie's taunts and challenges,
M rs. Rouse is forced to rouse herself and vent the anger she has repressed.
She is called upon to sum m on up the feelings of pride and to face her
needs fo r self-esteem w h ich u ltim a te ly give her the strength to face her
fears and begin her journey.
M in ty A lle y, James's m asterpiece, is a ric h gold m ine fo r analysis. The
levels of m eaning in th is novel are m an ifo ld and are ju st beginning to be
explored. As a study in the c o n flic t of archetypes, James's characters give
ric h dividends because they echo patterns th a t in fo rm hum an life and
society. Both m ale and fem ale characters reflect m anifestations of the
hum an psyche in stages c ritic a l to the in d iv id u a tio n process. It is M aisie,
however, w ho is the novel's m ost absorbing character and the m ain
catalyst fo r grow th and change. She m anifests the dynam ic p o te n tia l of
the hum an s p irit. In his journal, C.L.R. James says of her: "She ce rta in ly
was a wom an w ho stood fo r no nonsense from anybody and although she
did n o t categorize her actions and aim s as any k in d of fem inism , she was
w ith o u t any doubt a fe m in is t of the o rig in a l classic type."4

N o te s

1. Paul Buhle, ed., C.L.R. fames: H is Life and Work (London: A lison and Busby,
1986), 200.
2. C.L.R. James, M in ty A lle y (London: N ew Beacon, 1971), 30. A ll subsequent
page references w ill be made parenthetically in the text.
3. Carol Pearson, The Hero W ith in (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986), 25.
4. Anna Grimshaw, The C.L.R. fames A rchive: A Reader's Guide (New York:
C.L.R. James Institute, 1991), 52.
The Black Jacobins: A n Assessment
 Robin Blackburn

The BlacR Jacobins and N ew W orld Slavery

In August 1991 we com m em orated the bicentenary of the m om entous

uprising of slaves in San Dom ingo, prelude to the overthrow of slavery
in the French Caribbean in 1794 and of the H aitia n R evolution of 1804.
The French R evolution has som etim es been commended fo r abolishing
French colonial slavery. N ot infrequently, slave em ancipation is tagged
on to a lis t of other consequences thought to flo w from the proclam ation
of the principles of 1789 and of the Rights of Man and the C itizen. In a
natural association of ideas, it is apparently thought that the slogan of
liberty, equality, and fra te rn ity spelt the end for slavery.
Such casual claim s do the French R evolution both too m uch and too
little honor. They do too m uch because the R evolution of 1789, or for
that m atter of 1791, actually did nothing about slavery—indeed, neither
the N ational Assem bly nor the C onstituent Assem bly even staged a
debate on colonial slavery as such. It was developments in the Caribbean
that put em ancipation on the agenda. But such claim s also do too little
honor because it is rare indeed that the significance of eventual French
Republican conversion to revolutionary em ancipationism or the epic
achievements of the black Jacobins, as C.L.R. James called them , are
properly acknowledged. Simon Schama's best-selling w ork on the French
R evolution—C itizens—achieves the feat of w h o lly ignoring the belated
French revolutionary conversion to em ancipation and the "new citizens"
who were to break the chain of New W orld slavery at w hat had been its
strongest lin k . The French em ancipationist co ntribution and the erup­
tio n of the "black Jacobins" is, of course, usually ignored in general
histories of abolitionism . But even specialist scholarly debate—such as
that w hich raged in the Am erican H is to ric a l Review between 1985 and
the end of 1987—treats antislavery as an exclusively w hite, Anglo-Saxon,

81
 82 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

and Protestant affair. The m ain protagonist in th is dispute was Thomas

H askell w ho argued th a t slavery was challenged thanks to the spread of
the m arket in the A tla n tic zone; in three lengthy co ntribution s, each
weighed down by hundreds of cita tio n s, there was no single m ention of
Toussaint-Louverture, or Dessalines, or Sonthonax, or V ic to r Hugues, or
Julien Fedon, or any of those associated w ith French Republican eman-
cipationism or black Jacobinism . Yet w ith o u t black rebellion, we can be
sure th a t there w ould have been no French revo lu tio n a ry em ancipation-
ism . A m ore forgivable lapse is som etim es made of sim ply saluting the
great black revo lu tio n a ry Toussaint-Louverture and seeing in h im the
very figure of an irre s is tib le re v o lt against cruel tyranny. Such a rom antic
approach does no t ask how it is th a t the slave rebellion in San D om ingo
came to triu m p h —it is one of the very few successful large-scale slave
revolts in history, some w ould say the only one. W hile C.L.R. James gave
pride of place to Toussaint, he offers us a b rillia n t vignette of colonial
society and of the com plex antagonism s on w h ich it rested. He never
forgets the presence of the anonym ous black rebels and partisans w ho in
the end play a m ore decisive part than the famous generals and p o liti­
cians, w hether w h ite or black or m u la tto . James's w ritin g of h is to ry here
has a clear a ffin ity w ith th a t of T rotsky in his H is to ry o f the Russian
R evolution and w ith D aniel G uerin's H is to ry o f the French R evolution,
firs t published in 1945. The M arxism espoused in these w ritin g s is one
alive to the ways in w h ich the explosion of p o litic a l and social contradic­
tions allow s the masses to emerge as makers of h istory. A nd despite the
use of th is term "masses," these te x t attend to the action of individ u a ls
w ho help to make up these masses. James's w o rk also takes pains to
establish a narrative based on a careful assessment of sources and w ith
James's ow n ana lytica l conclusions speaking through the narrative its e lf.
Here one m ig h t suggest a parallel, on the one hand, w ith Isaac D eutscher
and, on the other, w ith Eric W illia m s, w rite rs w ho also display James's
com bination of passionate engagement w ith scrupulous scholarship. As
a T rinidadian, James was him self, lik e W illia m s, aware th a t the C arib­
bean id e n tity reflected a confluence and conjuncture of A frican, Euro­
pean, and A m erican ingredients. The title James chose fo r his book
specified one such conjunction.
James insists on bringing w ith in a single focus the tangled co n flicts of
the co lo n ia l factions, the revolutiona ry events in the m etropolis, and as
it turned o u t the even m ore revolutiona ry upheavals in the colonies.
W hile foregrounding the vodun cerem ony that, according to legend,
 The Black Jacobins and New W orld Slavery 83

sanctified the conspiracy in the Bois Caim an on 14 August 1791, he also

chronicles the appropriation and transform ation of Jacobin ideology by
the half-proletarian, half-peasant descendants of A frica, as they resisted
the c a p tiv ity th ru st upon them . In w hat follow s, I w ould lik e to look
again at the rem arkable events in the A tla n tic w orld of that epoch,
seeking to put in context the achievem ents of the Black Jacobins—both
the book and the h isto rica l force th a t it named.
P

In order to do justice to the French revolutionary co ntribution , it is

im portant not to exaggerate or m isconstrue it. Slavery was indeed depre­
cated by leaders of French opinion in the early phase of the R evolution,
M irabeau and Lafayette were supporters of the a b o litio n ist society—the
"A m is des N o irs "—founded in 1788; its secretary was Brissot de W arville
and its president Condorcet, so abolitionism did not lack fo r prom inent
supporters in the m iddle or pre-Jacobin phase of the R evolution, But for
reasons to be explored below, these men chose to take th e ir stand on ad­
vocacy of the c iv ic rights of free men of color w ith o u t launching direct
attacks on colonial slavery. Moreover, in deploring slavery Brissot and
Condorcet were not boldly espousing a new and unacceptable doctrine
b u t rather echoing som ething lik e a consensus in enlightened circles in
the A tla n tic w orld. It is true that slavery only began to be questioned by
m oralists and philosophers as late as the m id-eighteenth century—w ith
M ontesquieu's E sprit des Lois being a pivo ta l w ork. But subsequent to
this, the case against slavery had been endorsed or developed by many
thinkers, in cluding Scottish econom ists and jurists, contributors to the
Encyclopedic, religious leaders lik e Wesley, and by the w idely read
French colonial expert Abbe Raynal in his best-selling w ork, H is to iie des
Deux M ondes.
By the year 1789, several m ajor p o litic a l figures had already declared a
sym pathy fo r antislavery thought—not only W illia m P itt, the prim e
m in iste r of B ritain, and Benjam in Franklin, but also the slave owners
Thomas Jefferson and George W ashington. In France itse lf, the form ation
of the A m is des N oirs belongs as m uch to the last reform ing spasm of the
Ancien Regime as it does to the revolutionary im pulse of 1789. One
quarter of the members of the A m is des N oirs were in fact high o fficials
of state, m ainly in the financial departments. Louis XVI him self gra­
ciously received an a b o litio n is t deputation; Necker and other senior
 84 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

m inisters or advisers were know n to be sym pathetic. To someone in flu ­

enced by Condorcet, antislavery was sym bolic of a new ideal order and a
new in te g rity , w ith o u t odious d is tin c tio n s and privileges. As the A ncien
Regime trie d to jum p out of its ow n skin, it was a w id e ly appealing
visio n .
Just as rem arkable as th is consensus was the paucity of action flo w in g
from it. H ow ever lam entable N ew W orld slavery was thought to be, it
was nevertheless protected by interests and doctrines capable of neu­
tra liz in g and b lo cking it. The slave plantations m ig h t embody great in ­
hum anity, b u t they also constituted a crucial source of nationa l w ealth,
above a ll in the U n ite d States, B rita in , and France—in these countries
national commerce largely depended upon an intercourse w ith the slave
plantations. The k n o t of N ew W orld slavery had been tied by national
interest, an intense respect fo r private property, and racial oppression of
those of A frica n descent. The fo rm of capitalism th a t th rive d in the
A tla n tic zone in th is epoch s till entailed extensive exchanges w ith the
slave plantations, w h ich were the chief or o n ly suppliers of such coveted
produce as sugar, tobacco, coffee, and cotton. Those statesm en w ho
deplored slavery m ig h t be ashamed of th e ir states' involvem ent in slav­
ery and fin d it d iffic u lt openly to ju s tify denying A fricans the a ttributes
of men; but they refused to countenance u n ila te ra l actions hostile to
national interests or tending to p ut property rights in question. Thus, the
B ritis h a b o litio n is t m ovem ent chose to attack the slave trade rather than
slave ow ners' property in the firs t instance, and they found them selves
blocked, nevertheless, by the argum ent th a t if B rita in abandoned the
slave trade, such a p o licy w ould sim ply provide new openings fo r th e ir
com m ercial rivals.
The protective com plex to w h ich I have referred, e ffectively defended
French co lonial slavery for three or four years after 1789. The French
colonies were the richest and m ost dynam ic in the Am ericas, and thanks
to th e ir m onopoly of French co lonial trade, the m erchants of Bordeaux
and Nantes were continen tal Europe's chief suppliers of p lantatio n pro­
duce. As it happened the organization of both G irondins and Jacobins
drew upon the com m ercial netw orks radiating out from the A tla n tic
seaboard. In the Assem bly itse lf, as m any as a tenth of the deputies
owned property in the colonies. Thus, it is scarcely surprising th a t it was
not thought possible to m ake any head-on challenge to colonial slavery.
Brissot and other supporters of the A m is des N oirs did, however, even­
tu a lly bring them selves to press fo r a modest quasi-abo litionist measure
 The B lack Jacobins and New W orld Slavery 85

when they undertook to campaign fo r c iv ic rights to be given to qua li­

fied—th a t is propertied—free m en of color in the colonies. R estricting
the vote to men of property had its e lf been contentious—denying it to
w ealthy and respectable colored proprietors w ould be more d iffic u lt s till
to ju s tify . And beyond questions of ju s tific a tio n was also the im portant
consideration th a t the free men of color were in clined to be m uch more
loyal to the m etropplis then were the resident planters of the A n tille s .
W hile the w h ite planters dream t of autonom y, or even independence on
the N o rth Am erican m odel, the free people of color were open to an
alliance w ith the Paris governm ent. G irondin attem pts to construct a
new p o litic a l order in the colonies did not harm com m ercial interests,
w h ile hum anistic rhetoric actually reinforced them in the given circum ­
stances. But th is s till did not mean a challenge to slavery as such—indeed
m any m ulattoes were slave owners themselves.

II

In The Black Jacobins you w ill fin d a patient account of the ragged
c o n flic t between m etropolis and colonies, and w ith in the colonies be­
tween w hites and free m ulattoes, royalists and Patriots in the French
Caribbean w hich occupied the years 1788-91. Weakening the apparatus
of slave dom ination, th is set the scene fo r the celebrated slave uprising of
August 1791 in San Dom ingo. Deservedly famous as it is, th is trem en­
dous re vo lt of the slaves of San Dom ingo's northern plain did not im m e­
diately lead to a general assault on slavery as is sometimes supposed.
T his slave rebellion was rem arkable for its scale and stam ina, but it did
not set its e lf w ider objectives than those that characterized other slave
revolts—the lib e rty of those im m ediately involved. The rebel chiefs did
not aim at lib e rty fo r a ll slaves and they chose to call themselves soldiers
of the king, eventually reaching an arrangement w ith the Spanish m on­
arch. The mass of slave rebels—num bering several tens of thousand—
were inspired by the quite specific objective of themselves escaping from
underneath an extraordinarily oppressive system. To begin w ith , they
were scarcely concerned at a struggle articulated in term s of French
ju rid ic a l categories. They hoped for lib e rty for themselves, th e ir fam ilies,
and those they knew. In areas the rebellion had not reached, or where it
had been contained, there were calls for changes in the plantation re­
gim e—fo r example fo r the slaves' free days to be increased from one, or
one and a half, to tw o or three days per week. They also asked for larger
 86 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

garden plots on w h ich they could w o rk during th e ir free days or, more
exceptionally, they m ig h t ask for the dism issal of a specially hated over­
seer. Even those slaves w ho escaped in to the h ills and forests w ould be
more lik e ly to be inspired by A frican m em ories or ideals than by the
D eclaration of the R ights of M an.
By December 1791, the m ain rebel chiefs were engaging in a negotia­
tio n w ith the French com m issioner according to w h ich o n ly fo u r hun­
dred of th e ir num ber w ould have received o u trig h t freedom w h ile others
w ould have to rest content w ith piecem eal am elioration. The black
generals thus adopted a stance tow ard slavery th a t m ig h t be compared
w ith the m odern trade union leaders approach to wage labor: negotiate
fo r better term s and conditions, n o t fo r a b o litio n . In the event, the
leaders of the black rebels reached a deal w ith the Spanish kin g rather
than the French R epublic. Some French ro ya list o fficia ls and proprietors
seem to have been w illin g to help the black soldiers, so long as they
fought the R epublic and le n t them selves to no generalized attack on
slavery. There are occasional reports of black rebel bands accompanied
by w h ite cures or even w h ite officers. A num ber of the black rebels
believed th a t o n ly the kin g was com petent to confer a v a lid emancipa-
tio n and th a t the increasingly bold proposals o f Sonthonax, the R epubli­
can com m issioner, were a species of tric k e ry w ith o u t legitim a te p o litic a l
sanction. One could even compare the slave uprising in San D om ingo of
1791- 93 w ith the re v o lt in the Vendee in th a t it was anti-R epublican in
character and eschewed alignm ent w ith general em ancipationist goals.
T his having been said, in the long run the re v o lt did greatly weaken
slaveholder power and co n stitu te a co ntinuin g pressure on the R epubli­
can authorities.
Though the la tte r managed to pacify m uch of the northern p la in in
1792- 93, the rebels m aintained them selves in the m ountains and border
d istricts. M oreover, revolts broke o u t repeatedly in different parts of the
colony. The fa ctional struggles between royalists and republicans or
between w h ite and colored proprietors weakened the apparatus of slave
con tro l and even led to riv a l groups arm ing th e ir own slaves. The exis­
tence of local m arkets in slave produce did fu rn ish an o pportun ity for
slaves from d ifferent plantations to m eet. Vodun ceremonies also some­
tim es perform ed th is role. For some slave rebels, sim ply d rivin g out
the w hites and claim ing w hat they saw as th e ir land was a quite self-
su fficie n t program. T his seems to have been the stance o f the rebels from
the Les Platons d is tric t of the South. In other cases, the demand for larger
 The B lack Jacobins and N ew W orld Slavery 87

garden plots or more free tim e was le n t force by the planters' knowledge
that there was a maroon band in the v ic in ity . But the rebel leaders did use
the w ord lib e rty, and some w ould ce rta in ly have seen the p e ril and
offense of a selective and p a rtia l lib e rty that le ft vengeful slave owners in
place. The French Republic belatedly adopted em ancipation in February
1794 w ith the decrees of Pluviose A n II, tw o and a h a lf years after the
slave rebellion in San D om ingo had made black rebels crucial protago­
nists in the struggle fo r the N ew W orld.

Ill

James's Black Jacobins rem ains the m ost com pelling account of th is
pivo ta l m om ent in the h isto ry of N ew W orld slavery, stressing as it does
the overdeterm ination of the revolutiona ry process—by antagonisms
rooted in the colonial system, the racial caste system, and the system of
slave property and subjection. T his w ork also draws out the intersection
and reciprocal radicalization of the tw o revolutions, that of the C arib­
bean and that of the m etropolis. First published in 1938, its analysis is
confirm ed by the m ost recent research of scholars lik e D avid Geggus and
Yves Benot. James's thesis is not that the rebels were "black Jacobins"
from the outset, but rather that Black Jacobinism eventually emerged as
the cement for a precariously negotiated alliance between the m ost
farseeing of the black rebels—notably Toussaint-Louverture—and the
most consistent and antiracist of the Jacobins, notably Sonthonax. For a
tim e, these tw o men competed w ith one another in the lib e ra tio n ist
appeals they directed at the mass of blacks though neither was really in a
position to proclaim general em ancipation—Toussaint because he was a
Spanish general and Sonthonax because he was a representative of the
C onvention. From the end of 1793, Toussaint began to distance him self
from the Spanish authorities, so m uch so th a t ro ya list planters allied to
Spain com plained that he could not be trusted; they accused the black
general of harboring slave runaways. Sonthonax found that he needed
black allies in his struggle against moderate and racist Republicans. He
offered freedom and arms to a ll those who w ould help him in June 1793,
to be follow ed up w ith in tw o m onths by a local decree of general eman­
cipation; these appeals were issued in Kreyole, the language spoken by
the great m a jo rity of blacks, instead of in the French that had h ith e rto
been the sole m edium of o ffic ia l com m unication. Sonthonax offered
arms to the independent black partisans of the N o rth if they w ould help
 88 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

h im recapture Le Cap from Galbaud, a republican comm ander w ho had

been w on over by the w h ite planters. Sonthonax's ow n forces now in ­
cluded a high proportion of colored officers and men.
The great m a jo rity of slaveholding w hites now abandoned any hope in
seeing th e ir interests secured by the Republic, and they looked instead to
B rita in fo r th e ir salvation. The French R epublic had declared w ar on
B rita in in February 1793, so th is was an appeal heeded by the B ritis h gov­
ernm ent—it fo rth w ith dispatched a huge expedition to seize the French
A n tille s and to rescue the French planters from th e ir ow n slaves. Both in
San D om ingo and in the Lesser A n tille s , planters and w h ite m ilitia
prepared to welcom e the B ritish . As m ig h t be supposed, the London
governm ent lo st interest in a b o lition ism . Edm und Burke, an erstw hile
opponent of the slave trade, declared th a t he w ould far rather see a
properly regulated slave trade and system of slavery than the abrupt
suppression of both or either.
In San D om ingo, the Jacobin com m issioner knew th a t the menaced
Republican bridgehead could best be defended by his p o licy of lib e ra tin g
and arm ing the blacks w ith in his ju ris d ic tio n . But to give th is policy
c re d ib ility , it had to be endorsed by the N a tio n a l C onvention. A t the end
of 1793, Sonthonax sent a delegation of three m en—one of w hom was a
black soldier, fo rm e rly the com m ander of Le Cap, another a m u la tto —
from San D om ingo to the N a tio n a l C onvention to demand general
em ancipation. T h is proposal was approved by acclam ation in the decree
of Pluviose A n E. By th is tim e, the com plex of interests and ideas protec­
tiv e of slavery had broken down. The kn o t of race, property, and national
interest had been undone. Under the pressure of the sansculottes, private
property was no longer sacred—indeed the ric h were now held to be
suspect in th e ir p atrio tism . The em ancipation decree was taken up w ith
vigor by the H erbertists and other socially radical currents. T his period
also w itnessed attacks on m erchants, seizure of the property belonging to
real or supposed traitors, and vigorous attem pts to co n tro l the m arket. As
B rita in moved to capture France's slave colonies w ith the active c o llu ­
sion of the colonial slave owners, the argum ent from national interest no
longer m ilita te d against em ancipation. As fo r ethnic id e n tific a tio n , the
un ive rsa listic elem ents in revolutiona ry ideology had led to widespread
rejection of the n o tio n of an "aristocracy of s k in ." In th e ir ow n way, the
G irondin agitations on behalf of the rights of colored proprietors had also
underm ined racial disregard fo r blacks. Racist Jacobins were discredited
by the u n p a trio tic behavior of m any w h ite colons. The breakthrough
 The Black Jacobins and N ew W orld Slavery 89

made by the C onvention coincided w ith Toussaint's abandonment of the

Spanish king and his realignm ent w ith the French Republic. In San
Dom ingo, revolutionary em ancipationism and black power became a
form idable, indeed unconquerable, force,- the B ritis h were forced to give
up th e ir ignom inious attem pt to grab San D om ingo and to defend slavery
w ith in it. The firs t B ritish forces had landed in December 1793; despite
more than fo rty thousand reinforcem ents, they w ould be obliged to
evacuate in 1798.
Those who rh e to rica lly invoke the antislavery action of the French
R evolution to explain the a b o litio n of French colonial slavery do not
usually make it clear that the alliance of Jacobinism and black power
effected the firs t m ajor breach in the N ew W orld slave systems. N or do
they make it clear that th is alliance dealt a blow to colonial slavery from
w hich it w ould never recover. A llie d to the resources of a great power and
of a revolutionary state, slave insurgence and em ancipationism were
given a v ita l breathing space and was harnessed to a program of general
em ancipation.
San D om ingo in the early 1790s was the richest and m ost dynam ic
slave colony in the Am ericas. It contained about a h a lf m illio n slaves;
adding in the slave populations of Guadeloupe and M artinique, French
colonial slaves totaled nearly three-quarter m illio n . P rior to this tim e,
the antislavery m ovem ent had had no im pact on the plantatio n zone
where the large slave populations were to be found. In B ritain, the cele­
brated M ansfield decision of 1772 had prevented an Am erican slave
owner from returning his slave to the colonies,- but there were only a few
thousand slaves in England at this tim e, and the decision did not deny
that those slaves owed some service to th e ir masters. In 1780, the state of
Pennsylvania had passed an Em ancipation A ct, w hich seems to have
been drafted by Thomas Paine. T his was a m om ent of d iffic u lty and of
social radicalization, but even so, the em ancipation measure was a m od­
est one. Under its term s, no existing slave had to be freed. Instead,
freedom was to be conferred on children to be born to slave m others and
on them only after they reached the age of tw enty-five. Against the
extreme modesty and circum spection of measures such as these, the
boldness and radicalism of the decree of Pluviose A n II stands out unm is­
takably. N o t u n til th irty -n in e years later, in the afterm ath of the Reform
C risis and pressed by slave revolt in Jamaica and a new ly radical w orking
class, w ould the B ritish governm ent introduce its own measure of slave
em ancipation.
 90 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

IV

The story w ould, of course, be sim pler and more acceptable if the French
R evolution had attacked slavery during its innocent and generous phase.
But u n fo rtu n a te ly the record shows th a t vested interests prevented the
great orators of the R evolution from forcing the Assem bly to attend to
the m atter. T h e ir fig h t fo r the c iv ic rights of the free colored proprietors
had a value of its own insofar as it weakened racism and w on over colored
partisans to the R epublic. It should also be m entioned th a t D anton
im m ediately welcom ed the Pluviose decree w h ile some Jacobins had
sought to prevent the Saint D om ingue delegation from addressing the
C onvention.
The pro-em ancipation p o licy of the French R epublic m ust be credited
firs t to the persistence of the black rebellio n —m aking it a p o te n tia l a lly
against the B ritish . The p o licy can be credited second to the m ore radical
French Jacobins, w ho accepted the decree of Pluviose A n II, and to the
D irectory, w hich upheld the results of the p o licy in the Caribbean. It is
odd th a t pro-Jacobin historians have not, on the w hole, made more of th is
hugely redeeming act of the period of the Terror. Perhaps it is no t so odd
th a t generations of radical historians have failed to register the audacious
revolutiona ry deeds of the degenerate T herm idorian D ire cto ry in the
Caribbean.
U nfortunately, m uch s till needs to be found out about th is fascinating
episode in the m aking of the m odern w orld. Indeed, it is to a novelist,
A lejo C arpentier, th a t we m ust tu rn fo r the m ost v iv id account of the
extraordinary developments in the Eastern Caribbean during the period
after the decree of Pluviose. In E l Siglo de las Luces (Paris, 1959; pub­
lished in English &s Explosion in the C athedral [London, 1972]), Carpen­
tie r attem pted a narrative of the life and tim es of V ic to r Hugues, the
Jacobin com m issioner w ho brought the decree of Pluviose to the N ew
W orld. W hile th is novel yields in sig h t in to the m e n ta lity of the tropical
p a trio t, it does not do justice to the grandeur of Hugues's achievem ent.
C arpentier w rote th is fic tio n as a C om m unist s till reeling under the
im pact of Khrushchev's secret speech to the T w entieth Congress of the
c p s u ; he also seems to have placed too m uch reliance on a biography of

Hugues—the only one there is —w ritte n in the 1930s by a French naval

historian. The result is a p o rtra it th a t points up the sinister and seamy
side of th is a dm ittedly flaw ed revolutiona ry w h ile underplaying the
im pact the R evolution had on the Caribbean.
 The Black Jacobins and New W orld Slavery 91

In A p ril 1794, Hugues set out from Brest w ith a tin y flo tilla of tw o
frigates, five transports, and a brigantine carrying w ith h im to the N ew
W orld the em ancipation decree, a p rin tin g press, and a g u illo tin e . He
arrived in the Eastern Caribbean to face a B ritish force about six tim es as
large as his own th a t had occupied the French colonies of Guadeloupe,
Desiderade, and M artin iq u e at the specific in v ita tio n of local slave ow n­
ers. The subsequent exploits of the Jacobin were o n ly made possible by
the em ancipation decree and the associated m ilita ry policy.
Hugues established a bridgehead on Guadeloupe and landed a part of
his force of tw elve hundred troops. The B ritish occupation forces on th is
island alone numbered over four thousand and were w e ll supplied w ith
war m ateriel; Benedict A rnold, the Am erican renegade and counter­
revolutionary, had set up shop in Basse Terre and was deep in negotia­
tions w ith local planters. In eight m onths of fig h tin g Hugues drove out
the B ritish, th e ir Am erican camp follow er, and his clients. T his triu m p h
over the B ritish and the royalists was achieved thanks to the re vo lu tio n ­
ary em ancipation measure w hich enabled the Jacobin leader to arm
thousands of blacks and to sow confusion in the British-occupied areas.
Once the B ritish had been driven out, Guadeloupe was converted in to a
springboard for the libera tio n of Desiderade and a num ber of sm aller
islands. The em ancipation decree was translated and printed in a ll the
m ajor Caribbean languages. Support was given to slave revolts in St.
Vincent, D om inica, and Grenada. A t one p oint the revolutionary forces
of Julien Fedon, a colored proprietor who led the revolt in Grenada, held
the w hole island save its capital. Recent research shows that the so-
called War of the Brigands waged by Hugues and the black re volution­
aries of the Eastern Caribbean tied up more B ritish troops and warships
than the campaign in San D om ingo. French propaganda of word and deed
inspired slave revolts in Venezuela, Cuba, Jamaica, and Brazil.
In the years 1794-99, the French D irectory sent substantial supplies to
the Caribbean—thousands of troops and im pressive quantities of fire ­
arms and am m unition. The consolidation of a revolutionary black power
in San Dom ingo was decisively assisted by th is help and by the diversion
of counterrevolutionary forces to the Eastern Caribbean. The "W ar of the
Brigands" accounted for tw o thirds of the ninety thousand or so B ritish
casualities in the Caribbean theater. B ritish losses in th is Caribbean
"sideshow" were greater than in the European theater.
The tru ly heroic stature of Toussaint-Louverture, the m ain leader of
the black revolutionaries of San Dom ingo, was w idely acknowledged,
 92 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

both at the tim e and subsequently. Toussaint's acceptance as an a b o li­

tio n is t sym bol in England dates from the tim e he became firs t Napo­
leon's opponent and then his v ic tim . W ith o u t in any w ay challenging the
preem inence given to Toussaint, we should p o in t out th a t the overthrow
of slavery in San D om ingo was owed to the courage and tenacity of m any
thousands of black rebels w ho carried the torch of lib e rty both in the
earlier period before Toussaint's role was clear and also fo llo w in g his
arrest on Napoleon's orders in 1802. Thus, p rio r to A p ril 1794, Toussaint
as an officer of the Spanish kin g found his room fo r m aneuvering severely
constricted. Recent research by the Canadian h isto ria n Robert Stein has
shown th a t the Jacobin com m issioner sent to Saint D om ingue in July
1792, Leger F elicite Sonthonax, w orked his way q uite speedily to a pro­
em ancipation p o licy and in the process attracted black allies and a black
fo llo w in g . W hen Sonthonax offered arms as w e ll as lib e rty to those who
w ould support h im against moderate Republicans, amongst those who
responded were the follow ers of the independent black partisan P ierrot, a
m an w ho la te r proved one of Napoleon's m ost irreconcilable foes. O ther
black soldiers were given im p o rta n t commands by Sonthonax, in clu d in g
Belley, a m em ber of the delegation to the N a tio n a l C onvention in Feb­
ruary 1794, and m any w ho la te r fought w ith Toussaint, lik e H enri C hris-
tophe and Pierre M ichel. Sonthonax's o rie n ta tio n tow ard em ancipation
was a factor draw ing Toussaint to republicanism ; like w ise the la tte r's
breach w ith the Spanish was encouraged by a new and independent slave
re vo lt in the early m onths of 1794. In Guadeloupe, there were also black
Jacobins lik e Louis Delgres and C aptain Vulcan. Because of the sm all size
of th is island, Napoleon did succeed in breaking black pow er and restor­
ing slavery there in 1802—though the struggle th a t ensued helped to raise
the alarm in the larger and m ore populous island.
The black rebels p u t Jacobin ideology to a decisive test. W hile not a few
Jacobins revealed them selves as racists and tools of the w h ite proprie­
tors, both the C om m ittee of P ublic Safety and the D ire cto ry made com ­
m on cause w ith black em ancipation during the crucial years 1794-98.
S im ilarly, the p o licy of revolutiona ry em ancipationism helped to lend a
new scope and d e fin itio n to black resistance, though several of the fo r­
m er leaders of the 1791 re v o lt refused to break w ith Spain. The maroons
or com m unities of escaped slaves had th e ir hands fu ll defending th e ir
ow n freedom. Some seem to have recognized tra d itio n a l form s of bond­
age, w h ile m any made agreements w ith the slave owners to discourage or
 The Black Jacobins and New W orld Slavery 93

return fu rth e r runaways. A fte r the v ic to ry of the slaves in San Dom ingo,
the revolts of Am erican slaves could and often did have a general a n ti­
slavery character, as in Jamaica in 1831 or M a rtinique in 1848 or Brazil
in 1887. Genovese's argum ent is a b it schem atic but fundam entally
accurate.
French Republican antislavery p olicy w ent far beyond anything w it­
nessed in the ASnerican R evolution and far beyond anything envisaged
by B ritish abolitio n ists during the firs t wave of antislavery sentim ent in
B ritain in the years 1788 to 1792. It perm itted the consolidation of a
black arm y com m itted to em ancipationism and capable of defending
this even against France its e lf. W hen Laveaux, the senior Republican
commander, was recalled to France in 1795 he appointed Toussaint as his
successor. By th is tim e the French Republican forces numbered at least
tw enty thousand, the great m a jo rity of them form er slaves. Toussaint
not only commanded the largest arm y but had also shown th a t he could
w eld an arm y of form er slaves in to a h ig h ly disciplined and effective
force. W ith rather less success, Toussaint also sought to urge black
laborers to resume w ork on the export crops. As is w e ll know n, Tous­
saint never renounced allegiance to France though as governor of San
Dom ingo he had exercised great autonom y.
When Napoleon sought to destroy the black power in San Dom ingo,
the prestige of the French Republic was such that he found m any colored
soldiers w illin g to collaborate w ith him . But black resistance neverthe­
less w elled up and eventually engulfed the occupying force. Indeed Napo­
leon lost more soldiers in San D om ingo than were to fa ll at W aterloo, just
as the B ritish suffered more casualties in San D om ingo than in th e ir
hard-fought fin a l battle against the French emperor. One of Napoleon's
generals recounts in his m em oirs the dism ay and shame he saw on his
soldiers faces one evening during the siege of Crete a Pierrot. From the
c liffto p stronghold of th is indom itable black leader could be heard the
strains of La M arseillaise and the £a Ira. C uriously enough, the black
resistance did not adopt the name H a iti u n til the French had already been
defeated.
The Republic of H a iti established in 1804 was not the firs t indepen­
dent state in the N ew W orld, but it could proudly claim to be the firs t to
ban slavery throughout its te rrito ry . T his was to be a source of inspira­
tio n for later partisans of em ancipation. In 1816 Petion, then president of
the H aitian Republic, made sure that the torch of slave libe ra tio n w ould
 94 The Black Jacobins: A n Assessment

be carried fu rth e r w hen he gave succor and support to Sim on B olivar in

return fo r a prom ise th a t the Spanish Am erican lib e ra to r w ould h im self
com bine the struggle fo r independence w ith the struggle against slavery.

I w ould lik e to conclude by considering aspects of the French and H a itia n

revolutions th a t m ig h t explain the m odest role accorded to th e ir m om en­
tous conjuncture in the h is to ric a l lite ra tu re . Like James, I a ttrib u te some
positive antislavery significance to the actions of the French republic in
1794-98. But the decree of Pluviose m ig h t be thought to have been
nothing m ore than crude re a lp o litik , a sort of desperate last th ro w by
French co lonialism in the Caribbean. I have m yself acknowledged th a t
the outbreak of w ar w ith B rita in and the dispatch of a large B ritis h
expedition to the West Indies m eant th a t French n a tiona l interest found
it easier to accept an em ancipation p o licy th a t w ould a llo w them to
re c ru it black soldiers. However, I w ould not accept th a t the course of
events le ft the French Republicans w ith no other choice nor th a t they did
not have to accept a price fo r th e ir com m itm ent to em ancipationism in
1794-99. On various occasions, the B ritish , Spanish, and Portuguese
governm ents fe lt the need fo r black soldiers because they were in a tig h t
spot. W hat they then did was to prom ise freedom o n ly to those who
fought fo r them : the Portuguese did th is in B razil in the seventeenth
century in th e ir w ar against the D utch; the B ritis h did it during the
Am erican W ar of Independence; the Spanish king, and some French
royalists, had done th is in San D om ingo its e lf. The decree of Pluviose
w ent decisively fu rth e r than such lim ite d and o pportun istic measures. It
also entailed risks and costs. By declaring em ancipation, the Paris gov­
ernm ent knew th a t it risked alienating some of its rem aining w h ite
partisans in the Caribbean as indeed it did—Sonthonax's p o licy led num ­
bers of w h ite patrio ts to defect to the royalists or to seek exile. A nother
significa n t cost of revolutiona ry em ancipationism was worsening rela­
tions w ith an im p o rta n t p o te n tia l a lly of the isolated and em battled
French R epublic—the U n ite d States, w ith its in flu e n tia l slaveholding
class. The French revolutiona ry agents in the Caribbean sought to en­
courage slave insurgency in other parts of the Am ericas—as soon became
apparent, w h ile they did not d ire c tly target the V irginians, th is eman­
cip a tio n ist p o licy could not possibly be acceptable to the U nited States
governm ent. M oreover, V ic to r Hugues unloosed a flo tilla of privateers
 The Black Jacobins and N ew W orld Slavery 95

on the trading, inclu d in g slave trading, vessels of a ll other nations—these

practiced a sort of buccaneering Jacobinism. Indeed it was largely in con­
sequence that the so-called Quasi-W ar broke out between France and the
U nited States in w hich h o s tilitie s were confined to the N ew W orld. The
D irectory stuck by Hugues and em ancipationism despite these costs.
From a national interest po in t of view there were, of course, gains—the
large casualties in flic te d on the B ritish . Nevertheless it is generally true
that alternative p o licy options themselves help to construct riv a l sets of
interests and risks. T hat the path of Republican virtu e also had advan­
tages does not discredit it.
Napoleon's moves to restore slavery in 1802, w hich m et little m etro­
politan resistance, m ight be thought to detract from the grandeur of the
French revolutionary co n trib u tio n . As it happens, m ost of those associ­
ated w ith the em ancipationist p o licy did n a tu ra lly oppose slavery's res­
toration, though disgracefully these did not include Hugues who by th is
tim e was governor of Guiana. By th is tim e, Napoleon had constructed a
form idable power and was soon dem olishing other revolutionary gains.
Aristocracy was to be re-created and French laborers required to carry a
carnet to show they were g a in fu lly employed. The reasons for Napo­
leon's move to restore slavery are not always properly appreciated. Under
the term s of the Treaty of Am iens, the B ritish returned to France the
captured colony of M a rtinique where the slave plantations were in a
flourishing condition. Napoleon could not refuse the return of M ar­
tinique, and he had no desire to see slavery overturned there. The d ip lo ­
m atic record shows th a t both the U nited States and B rita in were happy to
see Napoleon attem pt to restore black subordination in the Caribbean.
W hether he succeeded or not, they were going to benefit. P ointing out
Anglo-Am erican co m p licity does not absolve Napoleon, but it does help
explain how he was drawn in to such a dangerous venture. In the event,
slavery was restored in Guadeloupe though only after a fierce struggle.
R eturning to the revolutionary period, it seems to me th a t subsequent
events do not cancel out the significance of the decree of Pluviose any
more than the restoration of Charles II cancels out the significance of the
Putney Debates. Moreover, slavery its e lf was not in fact to be restored in
San Dom ingo, or H a iti as it became in 1804.
A fin a l p o ssib ility to consider is that the record of H a iti in the post­
revolutionary period should be seen as somehow dim in ish in g the s ig n ifi­
cance of the em ancipation that had been defended at such cost. Thus the
B ritish w rite r Terry Coleman, w ritin g in the London G uardian, has
 96 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

suggested th a t the subsequent poverty and in s ta b ility of H a iti detracts

from the achievem ent of the "B lack Jacobins." Some even allege th a t
the mass of H a itia n blacks were soon no better o ff than under slavery.
However, anyone at a ll acquainted w ith the co n d itio n of Caribbean
slaves in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries w ill know th a t the post­
em ancipation co n d itio n of the citizens of H a iti was quite transform ed.
W hile the Caribbean slave populations in va ria b ly had a negative grow th
rate, w ith deaths outnum bering b irth s by a considerable m argin, H a iti's
population recovered and grew. Though the H a itia n peasants were poor,
they did not spend six days a week w orking fo r someone else; they b u ilt
them selves sim ple b u t attra ctive dw ellings, enjoyed freedom of m ove­
m ent, and developed a ric h fo lklo re . H a itia n wom en were not at the
m ercy of overseers or planters; rather, they furnished m uch of the com ­
m ercial infra stru ctu re of the peasant economy. The developm ent of
H a iti was greatly hampered by tw o circum stances. First, the A tla n tic
powers w ould extend n either d iplom atic recognition nor norm al trade
fa c ilitie s to the black state. Second, the sm all free state faced the danger
of some new attack by the French or Spanish and was obliged to devote
large resources to its armed forces. It may fin a lly be said th a t the H a itia n
people them selves do not seem to have shared the view th a t the post­
em ancipation order was comparable to slavery—they could always be
m obilized by any threat of slavery's re tu rn as they had been in 1802-1804
when they defeated Napoleon's arm y.
I w ould lik e to conclude, therefore, th a t the black rebellion radicalized
the French R evolution just as the eventual republican conversion to
em ancipationism was to have an enabling force, attra ctin g black par­
tisans w ho triu m p h a n tly defended its em ancipationist legacy against the
m etropolis its e lf. In saluting the im pact of a species of Jacobinism in the
Caribbean, therefore, we salute its appropriation by form er slaves few of
w hom even spoke French b u t who found in it both oppo rtu n ity and
in sp ira tio n fo r the firs t m ajor blow to be dealt to the N ew W orld slave
systems. It may even be th a t the blacks of San D o m in g o /H a iti gained
more from the R evolution, albeit at huge cost, than did m ost of the poor
or oppressed in France its e lf. Perhaps th is draws our a tte n tio n to a more
general tru th . There was a unive rsa listic em ancipatory elem ent in the
French R evolution, b u t those w ho issued the D eclaration of the R ights of
M an were by no means always aware of it or w illin g to fo llo w through its
logic,- here, indeed, we m ay see the lim ita tio n s as w e ll as the achieve­
m ents of a form al, abstract mode of reasoning characteristic of increas-
 The Black Jacobins and New W orld Slavery 97

ing ly m arketized social relations. F u lfillm e n t of the em ancipatory prom ­

ise needed the independent action of fo rm e rly excluded, oppressed, and
exploited social layers—radicalized sansculottes and slave rebels who
understood th a t there should be no peace w ith slavery or slaveholders.
James w rites in The Black Jacobins that there should be "room for
everybody at the rendez-vous of v ic to ry ." James happily in h e rits and
renews the Enlightenm ent s p irit of universalism at the same tim e as he
vigorously contests and corrects the founding m yth its e lf—nam ely, the
universal claim s of eighteenth-century republicanism w hich were so
crassly contradicted by exclusions based on race, property, and gender.
James's enthusiasm for a n tis ta tis t socialism , fo r Pan-Africanism , for the
variety of liberation m ovem ents of later years testifie d to a generosity of
m ind and s p irit th a t is perhaps the essential elem ent in his legacy to us.

Works Consulted
In m y book The O verthrow o f C o lo n ia l Slavery (London, 1988), I give sources for
much of the argument used in this paper. See also Yves Benot, La re vo lu tio n
frangaise et la fin des colonies (Paris, 1989), and David Geggus, Slavery, War, and
R evolution: The B ritish O ccupation o f Saint D om ingue (Oxford, 1982); Jean-
Pierre Biondi and Francois Zuccarelll, 16 Pluvidse A n I I (Paris, 1989); M ichel
M artin et A lain Yacou, De la re vo lu tio n frangaise aux re vo lu tio n s creoles et
negres (Paris, 1989); Lambert Felix Prudent, "Les langues creoles en gestation,"
N ouvelle Revue des A n tille s No. 2 (1988); H enri Bangou, "L'epopee Delgres," in
La re vo lu tio n frangaise et les colonies, ed. Jean Tarrade (Paris, 1989).
 M ichael Foot

C.L.R. James

Anyone who ever heard C.L.R. James speak, either in private conversa­
tio n or on the p u b lic p latform , w ould be m ost impressed by his inex­
haustible power of h is to ric a l im agination. He did not m erely make h is ­
to ry live , although he could certa in ly do that; b u t w ith h im , the past, the
present, and the fu tu re were w oven in to a single tapestry, each strand as
strong as the other.
Thanks to his natural m odesty and his true respect fo r scholarship, he
was always eager to acknowledge those w ho had taught h im . He was a
M a rxist and proud of it. He was a T ro tskyite , and proud of it. He had the
same kin d of respect fo r w orld lite ra tu re th a t had helped to shape the
p o litic s of both M arx and Trotsky. But he w ould never w orship at these
tw o shrines, or anywhere else fo r th a t m atter, as if they offered some
exclusive, in fa llib le doctrine. He had drawn special sustenance from
some other ric h sources, some of them q uite unexpected.
I w ent to see h im at his house in B rixton, crowded w ith books and
friends, in M ay 1989. A new e d itio n of The B lack Jacobins had just
appeared, and of course th a t was part of the reason w hy our discussion
turned to the subject of the French R evolution. Maybe his ta lk through­
out th is com m em orative year w ould always tu rn back to th a t theme. He
w rote me, a few days later, a le tte r w h ich I n a tu ra lly treasure (im m od­
estly in clu d in g the reference to m y ow n book of Byron w hich may seem
to have some better relevance later):

M y dear M ich a e l,
I t was a great pleasure to m eet M ic h a e l Foot in person. C onversation
w ith you was n o t o n ly p ro fita b le (not good), b u t excitin g . A fte r f ift y years
the French R e v o lu tio n means m ore to m e th a n i t d id a t th e beginning of
m y serious studies. I was glad to have the o p p o rtu n ity to exchange
thoughts w ith you on th is great h is to ric a l event.

98
 C.L.R. James 99

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book on Byron. I am having a

rare old tim e w ith its title page. The Politics of Paradise, to be w ritte n as
a title , at once becomes the paradise of po litics—w ith the prospect of
many other such transformations, ins and outs, legitim ate wasters of
tim e. But Grafton Street restores me to the severity and dedication of half
a century ago.
Yours etc etc.
' C.L.R.
C.L.R. James

Thus I should underline th a t our ta lk turned alm ost as m uch on the h is­
torians as h isto ry itse lf. He recalled again, as he does in the new e d ition of
The Black Jacobins, how he learned his trade. The French R evolution, he
insisted, was "one of the greatest h is to ric a l schools of W estern c iv ilis a ­
tio n ."1The book had of course the necessary respect for the R evolution
its e lf w ith o u t w hich the h isto ry of the period could not be w ritte n . W hat
James, him self such a great and im penitent respecter of the historian's
craft, w ould have made of the grotesque R evisionist m ockeries w hich
appeared on both sides of the A tla n tic to greet 1989, it is hard to estim ate.
Indeed, he m ight have brushed them a ll aside w ith his fin a l encom ium
to "the greatest h istorian of them a ll," Jules M ichelet, who understood
and proclaim ed the role of the people in the R evolution better than
anyone else. "H e has very little to say of the colonial question," James
s till asserts, "b u t I believe that many pages in M ichelet are the best
preparation for understanding w hat actually happened in San D om ingo."
W ithout M ichelet's com bined passion and insight, James could never
have w ritte n as he did, b u t the rule applies to m any others less w illin g to
recognize his precedence.
English readers or students have a special need to m ark th is judgm ent.
For generations, Jules M ichelet was regarded as a French p a trio t too
strong for English stomachs; not as a h istorian in the proper sense at a ll,
but as a revolutionary propagandist soaked in the "M arseillaise." A new
biography about h im published in London a few m onths ago was greeted
as if French scholarship was up to its old knavish tric k s of m ocking or
deceiving John B ull. N othing was allow ed fo r w hat M ichelet does to
probe the m om ents when history is silent; to give voice to the people,
very often women, w ho were denied any voice at a ll.
To read M ichelet is to renew the s p irit of those revolutionary tim es
and in p articular the earliest years of the greatest promise. He te lls of the
fa ll of the Bastille as no one had to ld it before or since. A few sentences
offer only a h in t:
 100 The Black Jacobins: A n Assessment

The attack on the Bastille was by no means reasonable. It was an act of

faith. Nobody proposed: but a ll believed, and a ll acted.. . . Then le t that
grand day remain ever one of the eternal fetes of the human race, not
only, as having been the firs t of deliverance, but as having been super­
lative ly the day of concord. What happened during that short night on
w hich nobody slept, for every difference of opinion to disappear w ith the
shades of darkness, and a ll to have the same thoughts in the morning?
What took place at the Palaise Royal and the H otel de V ille is w ell
known; but what w ould be far more im portant to know, is, what took
place on the domestic hearth of the people.2

The people played the leading role in M ichelet's beloved Paris, and as he
described th e ir achievem ents, the c ity assumed a m ig h tie r proportionate
part in events than ever before: "w hen I reflect on w hat Paris has done fo r
the lib e rtie s of our hum an race, I feel im pelled to kiss the stones of its
m onum ents and the pavements of its streets." H ow m any travelers in
Paris, how m any readers of M ichelet, have been swept along by his
passionate reconstruction of the scene.
One more m odern name to figure on James's lis t was George Lefebvre.
He was even m ore closely associated w ith the re w ritin g of the h isto ry of
the R evolution than M ich e le t him self. However, th is example illu stra te s
how the flam ing torch of h is to ric a l revision could be handed on from one
m aster to another. Lefebvre died in 1959 at the age of eighty-six. In the art
of exposition, he had made h im self at least the equal o f tw o of his famous
predecessors at the Sorbonne, Alphonse A ulard and A lb e rt M athiez.
However, he regarded h im self rather as a direct p u p il of Jean Jaures, the
Socialist leader and h isto ria n w ho was m artyred by an assassin in 1914.
Like Jaures, Lefebvre was a ra tio n a list hum anitarian in the tra d itio n of
the E nlightenm ent w ho believed th a t his ow n age, in allegiance to th a t
same tra d itio n , called fo r a great adventure in dem ocratic socialism : " I
saw and heard Jaures only tw o tim es, lo st in the crowd, but if anyone
cares to assign me a m aitre, I recognise o n ly h im ."3 And, of course, both
Lefebvre and Jaures had been pow e rfu lly influenced in th e ir view of
h isto ry by K arl M arx, and they had no w ish to conceal the debt.
Thanks p a rtly to Lefebvre's persisting influence, M a rxist or near-
M a rxist interpretations became p o sitive ly fashionable. The achieve­
m ent was celebrated in the appropriate year, 1968, when an avowed fe l­
low M arxist on th is side of the Channel, G w yn W illiam s, surveyed the
latest developments in French R evolutionary scholarship in his A r ti­
sans and Sans-Culottes. H is new edition, published tw e n ty years later,
brought the survey up to date and showed how substantial efforts had
 C.L.R. James 101

been made to f ill some of the gaps. He noted how the words B rita in or
B ritish were sometimes clu m sily used to conceal the c o n trib u tio n from
the Welsh, the Scots, or the Iris h accompanying those of th e ir English
comrades, and he noted even m ore fo rc ib ly the change in role accorded to
women.
W ith G w yn W illiam s's safe hand to guide us, we m ay return more
confidently to fchat women's question. "M y 1968 te x t," he w rote, "could
not fa il to note the role of wom en in m any of the journees in France and
the quite spectacular leadership they exercised in the last revolts of
G erm inal and P ra iria l. Tw enty years on, however, I cannot fa il to note, in
pain and shame, the barely concealed surprise w hich inform s m y w ritin g
at that point. It is certainly the advance of wom en's h isto ry w hich is
beginning to transform our understanding of the popular m ovem ent in
France."4
It m ay now be recalled in wonder that the historian w hom James had
hailed m ost notably had w ritte n alm ost in the same sense nearly 150
years before. M ichelet saw "th e s p irit of the R evolution" as his teacher:
" it knows; and the others do not know . It possesses the secret of a ll the
preceding ages." The epic of the lib e ra tio n of the French people, nay, the
liberation of the hum an m ind its e lf—that was w hat his histo ry of the
R evolution was to be. And maybe because he saw its comprehensive
character, M ichelet before any other historian always searched for the
role w hich the wom en—or th e ir chosen cham pions—had played.
The house of M arquis de Condorcet had been the place in pre-
R evolutionary tim es where the rights and claim s of wom en were firs t
elaborated. H is salon in Paris became, w ith his w ife's association, "the
hearth of the republic." Some other famous wom en, notably O lym pe de
Courges, joined w ith them in drafting a D eclaration of the Rights of
Women. She, the notorious O lym pe—notorious fo r her seductions as
w e ll as her D eclarations—established the rights of women, according to
M ichelet, "by one just and sublim e saying: 'They have as good a rig h t to
m ount the tribune as they have of ascending the scaffo ld .'"
The English have usually lik e d to pretend that Jules M ichelet w rote
only fo r the French. H is c ritic s w ould have been w iser to note how he
strove to make a ll causes, including the women's cause, part of the same
liberation. M any of his w ritin g s are s till unobtainable in any English
translation. N ow that he has been prom oted to the head of the demo­
cratic corner by James, the great h istorian of Toussaint-Louverture, the
deficiency in English culture should be remedied.
However, le t us tu rn to The Black Jacobins its e lf. I firs t read it in the
 102 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

year of publicatio n, 1938, and was swept along, lik e m ost other readers,
by the excitem ent and the passion, the sheer narrative drive.
Rereading the book today, w ith the m odern additions, I believe it is
greater s till; a M a rxist m asterpiece w ith constant, reverberating im p lic a ­
tions fo r the w hole of our ow n tu rb u le n t century, le t alone the one in
w hich Toussaint-Louverture led his San D om ingo revolu tio n .
Let us glance firs t at those additions. James contributes a forew ord and
an appendix in w h ich the references to m odern tim es are specific. He
recalls w ith pride and m odesty how young A fricans found copies of The
Black Jacobins in th e ir libraries, and then he recites, w ith even greater
pride, how his West Indian in te lle c tu a l forbears—M arcus Garvey, George
Padmore, and A im e Cesaire—set the spacious pattern fo r the w hole
tw entie th -ce n tu ry process of A frica n lib e ra tio n . H is own name m ust
surely be added to th a t lis t of honor.
But how can such large claim s be considered adm issible at all? H ow
could such m ig h ty consequences ever be traced to developments in one
faraway, forgotten West Indian island, one whose affairs today are m uch
less sig n ifica n t than those, say, of Cuba or Jamaica or neighboring A m e ri­
can territories?
One part of the answer to those questions came to dom inate James's
orig in a l volum e. San D om ingo, he asserted, was "th e greatest colony in
the w orld, the pride of France, and the envy of every other im p e ria list
n a tio n ."5 The huge p ro fits beyond the calculations of any M a rxist invec­
tiv e rested on the labor of a h a lf m illio n slaves, and how they got there
was an essential part of the story. H ow the slave trade operated, how the
rulers of England and France—even revolutiona ry France—competed to
keep th e ir bloodstained hands upon it supplied the prologue. Nowhere
else, I believe, has it been to ld w ith such p itiless, conclusive economy.
However, if th is huge hum an and econom ic convulsion so often dis­
missed to the sidelines of h isto ry provides one background to the unique
events in San D om ingo, the revolutiona ry achievem ents in France pro­
vide the other. The in tim a te , day-by-day in te ra ctio n of events and per­
sonalities on both sides of the A tla n tic m ust be unraveled to make the
record convincing and to display the role of the leading characters, m ost
notably Toussaint him self. Three m en in th a t age of great men, the
author records, seemed to astonish th e ir contem poraries by th e ir com ­
b ination of qu a litie s—Napoleon, Nelson, and Toussaint him self.
N o t th a t these were the on ly great men of the period. There were
others w ho had equal claim s to preem inence. Even the statesmen in
 C.L.R. James 103

London who sent a great B ritish arm y to its destruction in San Dom ingo
swamps were hailed, at the tim e, as th e ir country's saviours. And the
men w ho moved s w iftly across the revolutiona ry stage in Paris have le ft
th e ir names and accom plishm ents im p rin te d forever on the records.
M u ltitu d e s of people in revolutiona ry Europe believed w hat they said
when they voted fo r lib e rty, equality, and fra te rn ity. They did mean the
end of the race w ar too: "Let us proclaim the lib e rty of the Negroes. M r.
President, do not suffer the convention to dishonour its e lf by discussion"
(140).
H ow those highest hopes were betrayed, how Bonaparte w ho "hated
black people" (268) prepared the revenge, how even Toussaint faltered,
a ll th is is fa ith fu lly recited too.
And the contrast may be properly made w ith tw o books th a t presumed
to te ll the story of the a b o litio n of the slave trade from England's view ­
point: R. P. Coupland's supposedly auth o rita tive W ilberforce or his The
B ritish A nti-S lavery M ovem ent w hich held the fie ld when James was
starting upon his task. "Both these books," he w rote "are typ ica l for,
among other vices, th e ir smug se n tim e n ta lity of the o ffic ia l approach of
O xford to ab o litio n . As the o ffic ia l view, they can be recommended for
th e ir thorough m isunderstanding of the question" (380). Let me reiterate
m y own judgm ent: The Black Jacobins is not only the best book about
the San D om ingo revolution; it is also the best book about the slave trade
itself. It needed a new Jules M ichelet to te ll that story.
It may be thought that no other name could be m entioned w ith in
James's presence in the same breath as Jules M ichelet. But there was one,
and I can recall the fresh radiance that spread across his face and renewed
vigor in his voice when I raised the name of W illia m H a z litt. It was
H a z litt who had introduced h im to the England he m ost loved and
honored, and he never forgot to pay th a t debt, as he defined it, to "the
England of the early D ickens and of W illia m H a z litt."6 H is own words of
trib u te are so good th a t no one should tam per w ith them :

It was an England s till unconquered by the Industrial Revolution. It

travelled by saddle and carriage. Whenever it could it ate and drank
prodigiously. It was not fin icky in morals. It enjoyed life. It prized the
virtues of frankness, independence, individuality, conviviality.
There were rulers and ruled, the educated and the uneducated. If the
two groupings could be described as two nations they were neither of
them conscious of the division as a state of things which ought not to be.
You can see that clearly in the finest prose-writer of the tim e. H a zlitt was
 104 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

an intellectua l to his fingertips, and a m ilita n t, an extreme democrat who

suffered m artyrdom for his opinions. Yet he is not a divided man, he has
an acute consciousness either of class or of divided culture. He discusses
w ith equal verve the virtues of a classical education and the ignorance
of the learned. It is impossible to distinguish any change in his style
whether he w rites on W illia m Cobbett, on his First Acquaintance w ith
Poets, on John Cavanagh, the Fives Player, or on the Fight between B ill
Neate and the Gasman. It w ould be com paratively sim ple to m aintain
that his essay on The Fight is his finest piece. It is what he called "a
complete th in g /' giving such a picture of the England of his tim e as can
nowhere else be found in such a narrow compass. Wide as is his range,
unlike the late Robert Lynd or A. G. Gardiner (to m ention tw o at ran­
dom), he does not fit his subject in to a practised pattern. He takes his
whole self wherever he goes; he is ready to go everywhere; every new
experience renews and expands him . He w rites as freely and as publicly of
a most degrading love-affair as of Elizabethan literature. The possibility
of such completeness of expression ended w ith him and has not yet
returned.
H azlitt's strength and comprehensiveness were the fin a l culm ination
of one age fertilized by the new. In prose, in poetry, in criticism , in
painting his age was more creative than the country had been for two
centuries before and would be for a century after. This was the age that
among its other creations produced the game of cricket. (157-58)

I realize I cannot decently conclude an a rtic le on th is side of the A tla n tic

w ith the w ord cricket, although H a z litt ce rta in ly helped to introduce
C.L.R. James him se lf to these English m ysteries and thereby opened up
fo r h im a fresh vista of excitem ent and enjoym ent where the people,
black and w hite , w hom he tru ly honored, could ru n th e ir ow n affairs and
y ie ld to no one w ho refused to accept th e ir equal rig h ts and com m on
hum anity. These were some of the qualities he w ould recognize in M arx
or Trotsky, bu t he had learned them even better before from M ich e le t or
H a z litt.

Notes

1. C.L.R. James, The B lack Jacobins: Toussaint U O uverture and the San D o­
m ingo R evolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1989).
2. Jules M ichelet, H is to ry o f the French R e vo lu tio n , trans. Charles Cooks, ed.
Gordon W right (Chicago: U n ive rsity of Chicago Press, 1967).
3. Quoted in the Foreword by Paul H. Beik to Georges Lefebvre, The French
R evolution, 2 vols., trans. Elizabeth Moss Evanson (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1962-64), l: x .
 C.L.R. James 105

4. G w yn A. W illiam s, A rtisa n s and Sans-C ulottes: P opular M ovem ents in

France and B rita in D u rin g the French R evolution (London: Edward Arnold,
1988).
5. James, The B lack Jacobins, x.
6. C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 157.
 A le x D upuy

Toussaint-Louverture and th e H a itia n

R evolution: A Reassessment of C.L.R. James's

Inte rp re ta tio n

Summary of James's A rgum ent

In m y view , there is no doubt th a t today, more than fifty years after its
firs t pu b lica tio n in 1938, C.L.R. James's The B lack Jacobins: Toussaint
L’O uverture and the San D om ingo R evolution (1963) retains its status
as the classic M a rxist statem ent on the H a itia n R evolution and as one
of the m ost a u th o rita tive interpretatio ns of that m om entous h is to ri­
cal event from any perspective. I w ill reassess here James's analysis of
Toussaint-Louverture's view s, policies, and objectives during the b rie f
period when he was in co n tro l of the French colony of San D om ingo
(renamed H a iti after independence in 1804) from 1794 to 1802. The
paper, therefore, is n o t intended as a com prehensive analysis of a ll as­
pects of James's argum ents in the book, b u t rather as an analysis of how
he understood the m ain protagonist of the revolution.
The paper makes three related argum ents: (1) th a t in his appraisal of
Louverture's attem pt to transform and develop the French colony, James
focused p rim a rily on Louverture's relationship w ith France and the fo r­
m er French planter class; (2) th a t overem phasizing Louverture's re la tio n ­
ship w ith the French led James to pose the c o n flic t between Louverture
and Jean-Jacques Dessalines—Louverture's successor w ho led the colony
to its independence—p rim a rily in term s of the national question, that is,
w hat to do vis-a-vis France and the French planters; and (3) th a t con­
sequently James overlooked other im p o rta n t class contradictions that
characterized th is h is to ric a l juncture, nam ely those among different
factions of the new ly em erging black bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and
between the black bourgeoisie and the form er slaves on the other.

106
 Toussaint-Louverture and the H a itia n R evolution 107

Perhaps a good place to begin to understand James's th in k in g on and

adm iration fo r Louverture is w ith the analogies he drew between Louver-
ture and Lenin and between the H a itia n and the Russian revolutions* Just
as Lenin thought th a t because of its backwardness the Russian pro­
le ta ria t needed bourgeois culture to advance, so James argued th a t Lou­
verture was correct to w ant to retain French cultu re and its bourgeois
virtues for San'Dom ingo as the only means to u p lift the form er slave
masses and overcome th e ir backwardness. Just as Lenin and the Bolshe­
v ik Party understood the necessity to retain the skille d , educated, and
m anagerial strata of the czarist regime in the new revolutiona ry state, so
d id James approve of Louverture's ca llin g on the know -how of the French
and offering them posts w ith in his new adm inistration. A nd just as
James saw the Bolshevik R evolution being u ltim a te ly defeated because
of the fa ilu re of the socialist revo lu tio n to occur in W estern Europe, so he
largely blam ed the fa ilu re of Louverture's program to keep San D om ingo
as a self-governed and prosperous French colony on the defeat of the
Jacobins and th e ir in a b ility to consolidate the dem ocratic revolution in
France (James, Black Jacobins 283, 245).
For James, the progressive aspect of Louverture's project was that he
sought to preserve the best that the French had to offer w h ile rejecting
the w orst. Louverture is seen as a visionary w ho was ahead of his tim e
and its possibilities. For w hat he wanted was to make French citizens
of the form er slaves of San D om ingo, to keep San D om ingo as a French
colony but as one th a t was self-governed, and to preserve the plantation
system w ith trade and fina n cia l ties to France. Sim ply put, Louverture
believed that San Dom ingo could not go it alone and that consequently
the connections w ith France had to be m aintained. For Louverture,
James argues, "the France of the R evolution, the France of liberty, equal­
ity , fra te rn ity and the a b o litio n of slavery w ith o u t a debate, should be
m aintained. France represented the highest stage of social existence he
could im agine." It was the racism of the French, th e ir in a b ility to con­
ceive of th e ir form er A frican slaves as French citizens, and th e ir determ i­
nation to restore the status quo ante, that made Louverture's project
im possible and u ltim a te ly led to his undoing. But if Louverture's a ttitu d e
tow ard his form er masters was unrealistic, James pursues, th is was "n o t
from any abstract hum anitarianism or lo y a lty [on Louverture's part],
but from a recognition th a t they alone had w hat San Dom ingo society
needed" (B lack Jacobins 290).1
For Louverture's project to w ork, then, it was necessary that the form er
French planters be allow ed to resume control of th e ir plantations and for
 108 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

the form er slaves to be com pelled to re tu rn to w o rk on them . The

difference between th is new regim e and the old was th a t now the w o rk ­
ers w ould be paid fo r th e ir labor and be treated w ith the d ig n ity and
respect th a t they deserved as citizens and as laborers (Black Jacobins
242).
For Louverture, therefore, the prosperity and the freedom of the colony
was tie d to the developm ent of a g ricu ltu ra l production. As James put it,
Louverture "was b a ttlin g w ith the colossal task of transform ing a slave
population, after years of license, in to a com m unity of free labourers, and
he was doing it in the o n ly way he could" (B lack Jacobins 242). He
therefore opposed the breakup of the plantations and the creation of a
system of subsistence farm ing th a t was desired by the form er slaves. To
m ain ta in order and the production system, Louverture im posed harsh
disciplines on the laborers and made his generals in charge of the various
d is tric ts responsible fo r running the plantations and regulating the labor
system. James recognized th a t th is system am ounted to a "new despo­
tis m ," b u t one th a t was nonetheless "va stly different from the o ld "
because the laborers were now free and rem unerated fo r th e ir labor.
"[T jhough there m ig h t be dissatisfaction w ith the new regim e, there was
no regret fo r the old. W here fo rm e rly the labourers had w orked from
dawn u n til far in to the night, now w o rk began at five and ended at five.
N o em ployer dared to beat them " (Black Jacobins 242).
But if, on the one hand, he im posed harsh disciplines on the laborers
and confined them to th e ir plantations, on the other hand Louverture did
a ll he could to co n ciliate the French planters. Louverture, James argues,
knew th a t he could n o t tru s t the French planters because they were
w ith o u t principles and were o n ly interested in th e ir properties. But he
needed them because they had "the knowledge, education, and experi­
ence w h ich the colony needed if it was to be restored to prosperity."
Louverture offered the w hites protection from the laborers w ho were
"ready to massacre them at the slightest h in t of any re tu rn to slavery,"
and he appointed m any w hites to adm inistrative positions in his govern­
m ent. In general, the w hites came to realize th a t Louverture could be
trusted to protect th e ir interests, and m any returned to the colony to
regain co n tro l of th e ir properties [B lack Jacobins 157, 261).
James is quick to p o in t out, however, th a t Louverture was no naive
p o litic ia n . As the unchallenged m aster of the colony fo r the tim e being
(1800-1802), Louverture was w e ll aware th a t the w hites had no choice
but to accept his regime,- th a t the planters hated the laborers; and that
 Toussaint-Louverture and the H a itia n R evolution 109

they and the m aritim e bourgeoisie in France were anxious for a re tu rn to

the old regime. Nonetheless, James m aintains, Louverture "set his face
sternly against racial d iscrim ination. He guarded his powers and the
rights of the labourers by an arm y overw helm ingly black. But w ith in that
w a ll he encouraged a ll to come back, m ulattoes and w hites. The policy
was both wise and workable, and if his relations w ith France had been
regularized he \0ould have done a ll he hoped to do" {Black Jacobins 261).
For James, then, Louverture's governm ent, though organized as a dic­
tatorship, was the best one could expect under the circum stances (Black
Jacobins 247). By stressing the virtues of personal industry, social m oral­
ity , pub lic education, religious toleration, free trade, civ ic pride, and
racial equality, Louverture was striv in g to " lif t the people to some under­
standing of the duties and responsibilities of freedom and citize n sh ip ." If
th is sounded lik e "the propaganda of a d ictatorship," James adds, th is was
not "fo r base personal ends or the narrow interests of one class oppressing
another. H is governm ent, lik e the absolute m onarchy in its progressive
days, balanced between the classes, but his was rooted in the preserva­
tio n of the interests of the labouring poor" {Black Jacobins 247).
James realized, however, that the laborers did not see things that way.
They opposed Louverture's policies tow ard the French planters because
they believed that he favored them more than the laborers and because
they feared th a t the French wanted to return to the old regime where they
ruled unchallenged {Black Jacobins 261-62). So deep was the resentm ent
of the laborers against Louverture that they rebelled against him in the
N o rth Province under the leadership of M oise who was also com m an­
dant of the Province. The aim of these laborers was not only to massacre
the w hites in the Province, but to overthrow Louverture's governm ent
and replace him w ith Moise. Understanding w hat was at stake, Louver­
ture attacked and defeated the rebellion, arrested M oise, and had him
executed (Black Jacobins 275-77).
Louverture's opposition to M oise was not only that he sided w ith the
laborers in the insurrection. M oise also favored breaking up the planta­
tions and parceling them in to sm all farm s that w ould be redistributed to
ju n io r officers and the rank and file . Thus, M oise was not so m uch
a n tiw h ite as he was opposed to th e ir continued explo ita tio n of the la ­
borers and Louverture's support fo r them . A t issue here, therefore, was
the fundam ental class question that was being decided, namely, who
w ould dom inate the colony and in whose interests it w ould be reorga­
nized. James understood th is to be the case, even though he observed that
 110 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

the laborers them selves thought of the c o n flic t between Louverture's

policies tow ard the w hites and M oise's opposition in term s of color.
They sim p ly could not understand w hy Louverture had M oise shot, and
they never could forgive h im th is crim e despite Louverture's recognition
of his error and his attem pts to explain it away (Black Jacobins 275-78).
James understood the c o n flic t between Louverture and M oise in class
term s, then, though overdeterm ined by the race question. But he did not
pursue the same lin e of reasoning to depict the r ift between Louverture
and Dessalines—one of the top-ranking generals in Louverture's arm y—
w hen Bonaparte sent an expedition to San D om ingo to recapture the
colony from Louverture in 1802 and restore the slave regim e. Instead,
James focuses a tte n tio n on the race question, and specifically on the
different attitudes of these tw o leaders tow ard the w hites in San D o­
m ingo w hen everyone knew the purpose of the French expedition.
From James's standpoint, Louverture should have acted decisively to ­
ward the French once he learned o f the expedition. Independence should
have been declared at once, the population should have been called to
arms to resist the expedition, and the French should have been given a
clear choice: either leave the colony or accept the new order and defend
it. The properties of a ll those w ho refused to side w ith the black regime
against the French arm y should have been seized, and those French w ho
showed any sign of treason should have been sum m arily executed. M ore­
over, instead of try in g to reassure the w hites th a t they and th e ir property
were safe, Louverture should have spoken to the masses to explain to
them w hat was happening and w hat needed to be done. For it was w hat
they thought th a t m attered then, and not w hat the im perialists thought.
And, James adds, " if to make m atters clear to them —[the masses]—
Toussaint had to condone a massacre of the w hites, so m uch the worse
for the w hites. He had done everything possible fo r them , and if the race
question occupied the place th a t it did in San D om ingo, it was not the
fa u lt of the blacks" (B lack Jacobins 286-87).
As things were, however, Louverture explained nothing to the masses
or even to his generals, and by ignoring the masses w hen he needed them
m ost, he le ft them in the dark and drove them fu rth e r away from him .
For James, th is was a regrettable and fa ta l error, a tragedy th a t could have
been easily avoided, especially because he believed th a t "between Tous­
saint and his people there was no fundam ental difference of outlo o k or of
a im " (Black Jacobins 286-87).
Louverture's error, then, stemmed from his m isunderstanding of the
 Toussaint-Louverture and the H a itia n R evolution 111

significance of the race question at th is specific juncture in the co n flict.

As James's frequently quoted, but m isunderstood, passage put it: "The
race question is subsidiary to the class question in p o litics, and to th in k
of im perialism in term s of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial
factor as m erely incid e n ta l is an error on ly less grave than to make it
fundam ental" (Black Jacobins 283). Though James believed th a t Louver-
ture understood th is to be the case, nam ely that the race question is
above a ll a p o litic a l and social question, Louverture's m istake was to deal
w ith it in those term s and to ignore the fears and feelings of the masses
w h ile at the same tim e appearing to be taking the side of the w hites.
The black masses knew w e ll, as did Louverture, that though the old
slave-owning w hites m ight accept the new order, they w ould never fig h t
for it against the French expedition sent to restore slavery. Yet by not
explaining anything to the masses, Louverture allow ed them "to th in k
that th e ir old enemies were being favored at th e ir expense. In allow ing
him self to be looked upon as taking the side of the w hites against the
blacks, Toussaint com m itted the unpardonable crim e in the eyes of a
com m unity where the w hites stood fo r so m uch evil. T hat they should
get back th e ir property was bad enough. That they should be privileged
was intolerable " (Black Jacobins 284).
James drives the same po in t home when he contrasts Dessalines's
response to the French w ith Louverture's, and when he contrasts th is
response w ith Dessalines's attitude tow ard Louverture when the French
troops arrived in San D om ingo. U n lik e Louverture, Dessalines did not
have the slightest desire to accommodate or reassure the French; he
sim ply wanted them out of the colony. Dessalines's a ttitu d e was the
exact opposite of Louverture's. He did not care w hat the w hites thought.
"The black laborers had to do the fig h tin g —and it was they who needed
reassurance." Dessalines also had no hesitation as to w hat to do once the
expedition arrived. He called on everyone, m ulattoes and blacks, men
and women, to rise together to oppose the French and drive them out of
San D om ingo (Black Jacobins 287-88). For James, Dessalines could see
w hat had to be done so clearly "because the ties that bound th is unedu­
cated soldier to French c iv ilis a tio n were of the slenderest. He saw w hat
was under his nose so w e ll because he saw no further. Toussaint's failure
was the failure of enlightenm ent, not of darkness" (Black Jacobins 288).
U n like Louverture, therefore, Dessalines desired nothing more than
bare freedom, fo r perhaps to have "expected more than [this] was too
m uch fo r the tim e ." Moreover, "the proof th a t freedom alone was possi-
 112 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

ble lies in the fact th a t to ensure it, Dessalines, th a t fa ith fu l adjutant, had
to see th a t Toussaint was rem oved from the scene" (B lack Jacobins 291).
Dessalines came to believe th a t San D om ingo w ould have peace o nly
after Louverture and everything French in the colony were gotten rid of.
U n lik e Louverture, James m aintains, Dessalines had his plan fo r na­
tio n a l independence ready long before the French expedition, and he was
sim ply w a itin g fo r the rig h t m om ent to take action. A fte r Louverture
agreed to capitulate to the French in 180l, Dessalines p lotted w ith Gen­
eral Leclerc, the French commander, fo r Louverture's arrest and deporta­
tio n [Black Jacobins 333-34). W ith Louverture out of the way, Des­
salines was now in a positio n to reorganize the revolutiona ry arm y, u n ite
w ith the m ulattoes, and prepare to drive the French out of San D om ingo
perm anently.

A Reappraisal

By overem phasizing the need to m a in ta in the p la n ta tio n system as w e ll

as econom ic and trade ties to France as the o n ly way to restore the
prosperity of the colony, James underemphasized the significance of an
em erging new class of property owners w ith in the ranks of Louverture's
arm y by appropriating properties from form er w h ite planters w ho em i­
grated from the colony.2 It could be argued th a t insofar as Louverture's
regim e opposed the restoration o f slavery and sought to prom ote the
general w elfare of the population, it defended the interests of the masses.
But these are not incom patible w ith the emergence of contradictory class
interests th a t u ltim a te ly opposed the tw o sectors of the new society
being form ed in the m idst of the revolutiona ry tu rm o il.
T his new class of m ilita ry officers and property owners had its own
interests th a t opposed those of the form er slaves w ho wanted a more
radical land reform program to become subsistent peasants. If a more
radical land re d is trib u tio n had occurred, the emerging black landow ning
class in control of the colonial state w ould have been deprived of an
exploitable labor force. T his is w hy Louverture opposed the breakdown
of the plantations and imposed a rig id m ilita ry -lik e regim e on them .
Thus, the c o n flic t between M oise and Louverture, as representatives of
different social interests w ith in the population o f form er slaves and freed
blacks, was not only a c o n flic t over Louverture's policies tow ard the
French, b u t was also a c o n flic t over the land and class questions in San
D om ingo in term s of w hich class w ould dom inate and in whose interests
w ould the colony be reorganized. James made clear his belief th a t the
 Toussaint-Louverture and the H a itia n R evolution 113

plantation system was the best means to develop the productive forces of
the colony and his consequent support fo r Louverture. But it does not
fo llo w th a t th is system was also serving the interests of the masses, even
if they were now treated as free citizens rather than as slaves. The
universalization of bourgeois rights does not elim inate the exploitative
relations on w h ich those rights are predicated.
In addition tp the c o n flic tin g interests between the emerging black
landed class, the form er class of m u la tto property owners, and the slave
masses, there also surfaced d ifferent factions w ith in Louverture's revolu­
tionary arm y in term s of the policies to be adopted tow ard France and the
French planters. By overlooking the nature of the class c o n flic t that was
unfolding between the new ly emerging black landow ning class and the
form er slaves because it was overdeterm ined fo r him by the race ques­
tio n between the French planters and the new revolutionary order, James
also m isunderstood the c o n flic t between the tw o factions of the revolu­
tionary arm y represented by Louverture and Dessalines, respectively.
True, Dessalines wanted the French out of San D om ingo and Louverture
did not. But th is was so not because Dessalines was more radical than
Louverture in term s of the system of production or the class question
w ith regards to the form er slaves. Both Louverture and Dessalines fa­
vored the system of large scale plantatio n production and the transfor­
m ation of the form er slaves in to a proletarianized labor force. Both,
therefore, opposed the interests of the form er slaves to become a land­
ow ning peasantry. Louverture, however, favored a nonracial solution to
th is problem by m aintaining ties w ith France and by form ing an alliance
w ith the form er French planters. Dessalines, on the other hand, repre­
sented the interests of the black n a tio n a list faction of the new ly emerg­
ing black propertied class, and he therefore opposed the alliance w ith the
French planters who w ould have rem ained hegemonic in the reorganized
colony if Louverture's plan had succeeded.
Moreover, the c o n flic t between the tw o factions was not only between
the new black propertied class and the French planters, bu t also between
the form er and the old class of free black and m u la tto property owners.
Whereas Louverture, after having defeated the attem pt by the m ulattoes
to overthrow him and gain con tro l over the colony, favored an alliance
w ith the m ulattoes and the French, Dessalines sought to make the black
property owners dom inant. H erein lies the o rig in of the "co lo r question"
and the internecine co n flicts between the tw o factions of the dom inant
class th a t characterized H a iti's postindependence history.
Because he overlooked or underestim ated these factors, James m is-
 114 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

understood in some fundam ental ways the com plexity of the contradic­
tions and the co n flicts u n foldin g in the colony during the reign of Lou­
verture. He placed too m uch emphasis on the race question and its
overdeterm ination of the class question in his analysis of the co n flicts
among the form er French planters, Louverture and Dessalines, and the
re volutiona ry leaders and the form er slave masses. M y p o in t is th a t
neither Louverture nor Dessalines defended the fundam ental interests of
the form er slaves beyond the fact th a t tKey opposed the reim position of
the system of slavery. Both Louverture and Dessalines represented the
aspirations of a ne w ly em erging black propertied class; both w anted to
m ain ta in power through m ilita ry dictatorships; both w anted to preserve
the system established by the French of p la n ta tio n production fo r export
by fo rc e fu lly coercing the form er slaves to become a proletarian labor
force on the plantations; both used th e ir co n tro l of the state to prom ote
the grow th of a landed bourgeoisie by re d is trib u tin g confiscated lands to
functionaries and m ilita ry officers; and both opposed the fo rm a tio n of an
independent and landed peasantry.
B ut the tw o leaders also differed in some im p o rta n t ways. Louverture
trie d to create a black landed e lite by avoiding the nationa l question and
by dealing w ith the race question through an alliance w ith the form er
m aster class. By prom oting a black landed bourgeoisie equal in power to
the w hites and m ulattoes, Louverture hoped that slavery and the system
of racial s tra tific a tio n characteristic of the old regim e could be dis­
m antled w ith o u t breaking the ties w ith French capital and the French
economy deemed essential fo r San D om ingo's developm ent. A lthough
he did not take the fin a l step tow ard independence, Louverture's program
offered the p o s s ib ility of a n o n racially based bourgeois n a tio n a list solu­
tio n to the colonial question. H is program offered instead a solution
based on an alliance among those old French planters who w ould have
accepted the new social order, the old m u la tto bourgeoisie, and the
new ly form ed black bourgeoisie.
Louverture's refusal to break w ith France, coupled w ith the recalci­
trance and racism of the French colonialists and the opposition of the
black n a tio n a list faction, made th a t so lu tio n unw orkable and led to the
adoption of a ra c ia lly based n a tio n a list alternative by Dessalines and his
supporters. Dessalines's nationalism was no less bourgeois than Louver­
ture's because it did not question the d e sira b ility of the system of private
property and of production fo r a m arket fo r p ro fit. The difference was
th a t whereas Louverture wanted to form an alliance w ith French plant-
 Toussaint-Louverture and the H a itia n R evolution 115

ers to m aintain ties w ith France, Dessalines did not. He reduced the
contradictions of the colonial regim e to the d ivisio n between w hites and
blacks—i.e., to the race question—rather than between property owners
and laborers, w hich Louverture understood. Though he opposed ties
w ith the French planters, Dessalines did not seek to break ties w ith
foreign capital per se. He sought to have com m ercial relations w ith
B rita in and the Ignited States. But u n lik e Louverture, he was u n w illin g to
grant foreigners the concessions Louverture consented to. Dessalines's
objective was to make the black e lite the uncontested leaders of H a iti.
Opposite the nonracial bourgeois nationalism suggested (but not actu­
alized) by Louverture's alliance w ith the form er planter class against
colonial France and opposite the racial but equally bourgeois n ationa l­
ism of the co a litio n led by Dessalines stood the latent nationalism of the
form er slaves. Led by M oise and the independent g u e rrilla leaders so w e ll
depicted in C arolyn Fick's recent book (1990), th is nationalism called fo r
the expulsion of the French, the a b o litio n of the econom ic system estab­
lished by the French and m aintained by the m u la tto and the new ly
form ed black bourgeoisie, and the form ation of a decentralized peasant
economy. It was the m u ltip le and com plex co n flicts unleashed by these
three tendencies that w ould characterize H a iti's tu rb u le n t histo ry in the
postindependence era.
In short, then, though James overlooked the contradictions and con­
flic ts emerging both w ith in the revolutionary leadership and between
them and the form er slave masses, his m ethodology rem ains the m ost
useful in analyzing them . James understood the fundam ental causes of
the revolutionary upheaval and the changes they brought about in class
term s, though at tim es overdeterm ined by the contradictions of race and
color. T his perspective is an essential p o in t of departure to discover and
explain other aspects of the revolutionary process, since, as James shows
throughout the book, the relations and conflicts between classes, over­
determ ined as they may be by other social cleavages, determ ine the
fundam ental structures of society and the patterns of th e ir h isto rica l
development and transform ation.

Notes

1. Im p lic it in these passages, as in many others throughout the book, are

James's attacks against those who insist on reducing culture to phenotype or to
geographic origin. For James, the fact that the slaves came from Africa did not
 116 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

preclude them from becoming westernized. A t the same tim e, however, James
was redefining the meaning of Western culture away from its Eurocentric under­
standing. For him , West Indians were a modern and Western people, though they
were not European, a p oint he made in m any of his other w ritings, e.g., his
semiautobiography, Beyond a B oundary (1963). In this sense, James did not share
the view of the proponents of N egritude or black nationalism that the black
peoples of the N ew W orld remained essentially Africans despite centuries of
existence there. T his is not because James sought to reject A frican culture in favor
of Western culture, but sim p ly because he*had a historical m aterialist under­
standing of culture and argued that the predom inant influences in the Caribbean
were those of Western Europe. To be sure, James, along w ith M arx, believed
modern bourgeois society to be the m ost h isto rica lly progressive because of its
potential for universal hum an freedom. But James was quite w e ll aware of the
contradictions of modern capitalism in the colonialism and racism that its de­
velopment occasioned. The B lack Jacobins remains, in m y view, one of the most
succinct critiques of the barbarism of Western European im perialism but also of
the promise of bourgeois civiliza tio n . In its se n sitivity to the colonial and race
questions, the book is an im portant corrective to a ll that M arx had to say about
modern capitalism.
2. The argument that follow s is developed more fu lly in m y book (Dupuy 5 1 -
83). M ore recently, Carolyn Fick, in her ric h ly documented and well-argued book
(1990), shows how at every stage of the revolution it was the independently
organized slave and form er slave masses, rather than the leadership of the revolu­
tionary arm y formed by Toussaint-Louverture, who in itia te d the struggles that
paved the way for the successes of the revolution, including the fin a l war of
independence. She captures w e ll the contradictions and conflicting interests
between Louverture and the masses, b ut she overlooks those between Louverture
and other leaders of the revolutionary arm y lik e Dessalines and Christophe.
Robin Blackburn (1988) also provides an excellent synthesis of the San Dom ingo
R evolution by placing i t in the context of the p o litic a l changes occurring in
France and the riva lry between France and England. He, too, understands the
contradictory objectives of the new ly emerging black ru lin g class and the form er
slave masses, but, lik e Fick, does not explore the internecine conflicts among the
factions of the black ru lin g class. I consider this to be one of the m ain contribu­
tions of m y argument. The works of Brutus (n.d.), Cabon (1929), Madiou (1847),
Pluchon (1979), and T ro u illo t (1977) provided im portant insights and data fo r m y
own argument.

W orks C ited

Blackburn, Robin. The O ve rth ro w o f C o lo n ia l Slavery, 1776-1848. London:

Verso, 1988.
Brutus, Edner. R evolution dans Saint-D om ingue. 2 volumes. Brussels: Les Edi­
tions du Pantheon, n.d.
Cabon, Adolphe. H isto ire d ’H a iti. 4 volumes. Paris: Congregation des Freres de
Saint-Jacques, 1929.
Dupuy, Alex. H a iti in the W orld Econom y: Class, Race, and U nderdevelopm ent
since 1700. Boulder: Westview, 1989.
 Toussaint-Louverture and the H a itia n R evolution 117

Fick, Carolyn E. The M aking o f H a iti: The S aint D om ingue R evolution from
Below. Knoxville: U of Tennessee, 1990.
James, C.L.R. Beyond a Boundary. Kingston: Sangster's Book Stores, and London:
H utchinson, 1963.
-------. The B lack Jacobins: Toussaint L O u ve rtu re and the San D om ingo R evolu­
tio n . N ew York: Random, 1963.
Madiou, Thomas. H is to iie d ’H a iti. 3 vol. Port-au-Prince: Im prim erie J. Courtois,
1847. Port-au-Prince: Editions Fardin, 1981.
Pluchon, Pierre. Tbussaint L o u v e itu ie : de Tesclavage au p o u vo ii. Paris: Editions
de l'Ecole, 1979.
T ro u illo t, M ichel-Rolph. T i d ife boule sou istoua A y ti. Brooklyn: Koleksion
Lakansiel, 1977.
 Kara M. R a b b itt

C.L.R. James's Figuring of Toussaint-Louverture:

The B la ck Jacobins and the L ite ra ry Hero

So m uch that is purely legendary has been w ritte n

about Toussaint Louverture and so little tru stw o r­
th y "source m aterial" exists that i t is extrem ely d if­
fic u lt for one w ith no g ift for fic tio n to attem pt a
complete story of his life.
—Percy Waxman, The Black Napoleon1

As the extensive am ount of recent w ork on C.L.R. James shows, the

richness and variety of James's oeuvre s o lic it c ritic a l in q u iry at m any
d ifferent levels of analysis. Yet the length of James's career, the in te lle c ­
tu a l and p o litic a l developm ent apparent in his w ritin g s, his a b ility to
respond to the actua litie s o f the day (to "face re a lity"), the very dialectical
nature of his w ork, a ll in v ite diachronic analyses of th e ir significance and
problem atize any synchronic reading of a given text. The num erous and
excellent overviews of James's life and w orks th a t have appeared in
recent years, however, a llo w m ore p a rticu la r a tte n tio n to be given now to
the unique strengths and contradictions of in d iv id u a l w orks, and C.L.R.
James's The B lack Jacobins is one w ork that benefits greatly from such
in d iv id u a l atte n tio n . W hile the rapport among The B lack Jacobins and
m any of James's later w orks is h ig h ly sig n ifica n t and w ill be touched
upon in th is study, the h isto rica l study stands alone as a site fo r the
intersection of m any of James's diverse lite ra ry capacities and interests—
narrative, p o litic a l, philosophical.2 O rig in a lly published in 1938, just
a few years after James's o nly novel, M in ty A lle y , and reissued by James
in 1963 w ith new notes, preface, and appendix, th is h isto rica l account

18
 James's Figuring of Toussaint-Louverture 119

of the H a itia n R evolution offers a unique glim pse in to a m ultifaceted

James, as the layered nature of the w ork (the tw o editions)3 offers us a
different view of the figure of James the w rite r than we fin d in later
works: a view not only of his perceptions of the figure of Toussaint, but
also of his perceptions of h isto ry and of w ritin g itse lf.
James's focus on Toussaint-Louverture in his w o rk on the H a itia n
R evolution is perhaps a prim e factor in the intersection of genres in d i­
cated above. Over the tw o past centuries, Toussaint-Louverture, leader
of the H a itia n R evolution, has become an allegorical figure, the focus of
m yth, legend, and m oral. As Percy Waxman noted, it requires a "g ift fo r
fic tio n " to w rite th is figure in to history, a q u a lity that C.L.R. James
appears to seek consciously in w ritin g th is epic story of a form er slave
who created a free nation. Indeed, James firs t addressed the subject of
Toussaint and the H a itia n R evolution in the form of a play, produced in
1936 under the title Toussaint L’O uverture and revised by James in the
1970s as The Black Jacobins (see Sander 278). James's awareness of the
narrative and dram atic aspects of a h isto rica l w ork seems to create a
tension of purpose in his exhaustive study of the figure of Toussaint-
Louverture as he freely com bines a self-conscious lite ra ry style w ith the
h isto rica l account of the R evolution. T his potentia l c o n flic t is one that
James e x p lic itly introduced in his preface to the firs t ed itio n of The Black
Jacobins (1938) as the intersection of lite ra tu re and h is to ry —"a rt" and
"science"—for the w rite r:

T he w rite r [James] believes, and is co n fid e n t the n a rra tive w ill prove, th a t
between 1789 and 1815, w ith the single exception of Bonaparte h im se lf,
no single figure appeared on the h is to ric a l stage m ore greatly g ifted than
th is Negro, a slave t i l l he was 45. Yet T oussaint did n o t m ake the re v o lu ­
tio n . I t was the re v o lu tio n th a t made Toussaint. A n d even th a t is n o t the
w hole tru th .
The w ritin g o f h is to ry becomes ever m ore d iffic u lt. The pow er of God
or the weakness of man, C h ris tia n ity o r the d iv in e rig h t of kings to
govern w rong, can easily be made responsible fo r the d o w n fa ll of states
and the b irth o f new societies. Such elem entary conceptions lend th e m ­
selves w illin g ly to n a rra tive tre a tm e n t and fro m Tacitus to Macaulay,
fro m T hucydides to Green, the tra d itio n a lly fam ous histo ria n s have been
m ore a rtis t than scie n tist: th e y w ro te so w e ll because they saw so little .
To-day by a n a tu ra l reaction we tend to a p e rso n ifica tio n of the social
forces, great m en being m e re ly or nearly in s tru m e n ts in the hands of
econom ic destiny. As so often the tru th does n o t lie in between. Great
 120 The B lack facobins: A n Assessment

men make history, but only such history as it is possible for them to
make. T heir freedom of achievement is lim ite d by the necessities of their
environm ent. To portray the lim its of those necessities and the realisa­
tion, complete or partial, of a ll possibilities, that is the true business of
the historian, (x)

The "tra d itio n a lly famous historians have been m ore a rtis t than scien­
tis t: they w rote so w e ll because they «aw so little ." How, then, does
one m ain ta in h is to ric a l perspective, refrain from re lyin g on the cliched
tropes of "th e weakness of man, C h ris tia n ity or the divine rig h t of kings
to govern w rong," and yet no t reduce great figures to "m e re []. . . in s tru ­
m ents in the hands of econom ic destiny"? James is engaged in a tenuous,
genre-challenging enterprise: "G reat m en make history, bu t o n ly such
h isto ry as it is possible fo r them to make. T h e ir freedom of achievem ent
is lim ite d by the necessities of th e ir environm ent." W orking w ith in a
M a rxist paradigm, he cannot reduce Toussaint-Louverture to "elem en­
tary conceptions" of grandeur, to an idealized figure w ho "made h isto ry."
Yet in creating a h is to ric a l narrative, James is also "m aking h is to ry ": the
lite ra ry dim ension of such an endeavor disallow s the m ore "s c ie n tific "
reduction of Toussaint to the product of an econom ic system, w h ile his
own "freedom of achievem ent is lim ite d by the necessities" of addressing
th a t system in a m ore profound fashion th a t did those "tra d itio n a lly
fam ous" and m ethodologically in dicted historians. James appears h ig h ly
conscious of th is tension throughout the te x t and alm ost apologizes fo r it
at various m om ents in his "n a rra tive ":

Toussaint was attem pting the im possible—the impossible that was for
him the only reality that mattered. The realities to w hich the historian is
condemned w ill at times sim p lify the tragic alternatives w ith w hich he
was faced. But these factual statements and the judgments they demand
m ust not be allowed to obscure or m inim ise the tru ly tragic character of
[Toussaint-Louverture's] dilemma, one of the most remarkable of w hich
there is an authentic historical record. (291)

The tensions between a m a te ria list analysis of h isto ry and a p ortraiture

of a pow erful in d iv id u a l are readily apparent in James's endeavor,- th is
study proposes, then, to exam ine the m ethods by w h ich James creates a
dram atic figure of the h isto rica l one of Toussaint-Louverture in The
Black Jacobins and to explore the tensions and the strengths th a t such a
choice creates w ith in the text.
 James's Figuring of Toussaint-Louverture 121

n
In the passage from his preface cited above, James states that "between
1789 and 1 8 1 5 ,... no single figure appeared on the h isto rica l stage more
greatly gifted than th is Negro, a slave t ill he was 45." Toward the end of
his narrative James states that, "There is no drama lik e the drama of
histo ry" (365), 2hd it is indeed a drama—and, we w ill argue here, a
classical A ris to te lia n one at th a t—that he unfolds before us on "the
histo rica l stage." Reinhard Sander has stated in regard to the play The
Black Jacobins that fames essentially used the "characters" of the h is to r­
ical figures in order to present "p a rticu la r ideological p o s itio n s ]," w ith
little attem pt to create of them dram atic individua ls (279). The same
observation could not be made as accurately of the h isto rica l study.
W hile Napoleon and the H a itia n leaders do serve therein as fo ils for
the figure of Toussaint, or as em bodim ents of contrasting p o litic a l posi­
tions, the "characters" of V incent, of Leclerc, and m ost p a rtic u la rly of
Toussaint are rendered in fu ll dram atic detail and given fu ll voice by
James,4 m aking th e ir positions and tactical choices u ltim a te ly a ll the
more tragic. Indeed, James appears to make fu ll and conscious use of
A risto te lia n tragic structure, allow ing a m im esis of the h isto rica l events
of the H a itia n R evolution to p oint tow ard the universals regarding the
fa ll of colonialism and repressive hegemonic systems that he w ill under­
lin e in his 1938 conclusion and the 1963 appendix. A t a more mundane
level, th is move also allow s James to assume, m uch lik e the classical
dram aturgists, that the drama that took place on the "h is to ric a l stage" of
eighteenth-century San D om ingo is one in tim a te ly know n to his read­
ers,5 his task thus being to f ill in the im portant details and to offer
analyses of events rather than to provide a h isto rica l tim e lin e .
James e x p lic itly refers to the underlying structure of classical m yth of
w hich he has been m aking use at several m om ents in the text. On the
same page on w hich he makes reference to the m ythological and lite ra ry
figures of "Prom etheus, H am let, Lear, Phedre, [and] Ahab," fo r example,
he refers d ire ctly to his characterization of Toussaint as the "tra g ica lly
flaw ed" hero:

The hamartia, the tragic flaw, which we have constructed from A ristotle,
was in Toussaint not a moral weakness. It was a specific error, a total
m iscalculation of the constituent events. Yet what is lost by the imagina­
tive freedom and creative logic of great dramatists is to some degree
 122 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

atoned for by the historical actuality of his dilemma. It would therefore

be a mistake to see him merely as a p o litica l figure in a remote West
Indian island. If his story does not approach the greater dram atic cre­
ations, in its social significance and human appeal it far exceeds the last
days at St. Helena and that apotheosis of accum ulation and degradation,
the suicide in the W ilheimstrasse. The Greek tragedians could always go
to their gods for a dramatic embodiment of fate, the dike w hich rules over
a w orld neither they nor we ever made. But not Shakespeare him self
could have found such a dram atic embodiment of fate as Toussaint
struggled against, Bonaparte him self; nor could the furthest im agination
have envisaged the entry of the chorus, of the ex-slaves themselves, as
the arbiters of their own fate. Toussaint's certainty of this as the ultim ate
and irresistible resolution of the problem to w hich he refused to lim it
him self, that explains his mistakes and atones for them. (291-92)

As James him se lf notes, such a characterization clearly corresponds to

A ris to tle 's ideal tragic hero as "a m an w ho is neither a paragon of v irtu e
and justice nor undergoes the change to m isfortune through any real bad­
ness or wickedness b u t because o f some m istake . . . of great w eight and
consequence" (A risto tle 38).6 However, th is self-referential passage, in
w h ich James makes clear both the strategy of his narrative and its lim ita ­
tions, points to a paradoxically re a lis tic m ythography b u ild in g upon the
"re co g n itio n " A ris to tle deemed requisite fo r id e n tific a tio n and catharsis
and for com prehension of the universals at play. The p o rtra it James
develops fo r us of Toussaint-Louverture is tru ly th a t of a m ythological
hero w ith a "tra g ic fla w "7—the hubris th a t makes h im b lin d to the need
to com m unicate w ith his people—and thus of a real, hum an-size, leader
in a crisis th a t we can comprehend and w ith w h ich we can sym pathize.
James builds on th is m ythological structure throughout the h isto rica l
study as he dram atically develops Toussaint's ham artia by w arning us
repeatedly of the hero's inevitable fa ll:

H is error was his neglect of his own people. They did not understand
what he was doing or where he was going. He took no trouble to explain.
It was dangerous to explain, but s till more dangerous not to explain---- it
is no accident that Dessalines and not Toussaint fin a lly led the island to
independence. Toussaint, shut up w ith in him self, immersed in diplo­
macy, went his tortuous way, overconfident that he had only to speak and
the masses w ould follow . (240)

From these repeated references to Toussaint's errors and his em inent

dow nfall, James creates, m uch as Sophocles does in Oedipus Rex, a
 James's Figuring of Toussaint-Louverture 123

m ounting tension fo r the "spectator" of the drama. We already know the

h isto ric events th a t took place, b u t we are made to feel in James's w ork
the in e v ita b ility of th e ir occurrence, th e ir tragic nature. Moreover, James
underlines Toussaint's error th a t w ill lead h im to th a t inevitable end by
dem onstrating to us th a t Toussaint's blindness to the necessity of com-
m unicating w ith his people is iro n ic a lly emphasized by his paradoxical
overconsciousness of the French. H is concern fo r the support of the
w hite settlers and of France offers a b itte rly iro n ic contrast:

[Toussaint] s till con tin u e d to favour the w h ite s. Every w h ite w om an was
e n title d to come to a ll "c irc le s ." O n ly the w ives of the h ighest b lack o ffi­
cials could come. A w h ite w om an was called madame, the b lack w om an
was citize n . Losing sight of his mass support, ta k in g i t fo r granted, he
sought o n ly to c o n c ilia te the w h ite s at hom e and abroad. (262)

As always now, he was th in k in g of the effect in France, and n o t of the

effect on his o w n masses, fe eling too sure of th e m . (263)

T oussaint did n o t tru s t the French G o ve rn m e n t as C hristophe says. He

w o u ld not have arm ed to the e xte n t and in the m anner he did i f he had.
B ut he allow ed the people to th in k th a t he trusted the French. (fn297)

James lin k s th is "weakness" on Toussaint's part to a m oral ("Alw ays, but

particu la rly at the m om ent of struggle, a leader m ust th in k of his own
masses" [286]) for revolutiona ry leaders, a m oral m arked even more
strongly by "good" examples:

[W]hereas Lenin kept the p a rty and the masses th o ro u g h ly aware of every
step, and explained c a re fu lly the exact p o sitio n o f the bourgeois servants
o f the W orkers' State, Toussaint explained n o thin g , and allow ed the
masses to th in k th a t th e ir old enemies were being favoured at th e ir
expense. (284)

M oise's b itte r c o m p la in t about T oussaint and the w h ite s came o b vio usly
fro m a m an to w h o m T oussaint had never explained the m o tive s of his
policy. T hey w o u ld n o t have needed m u ch persuasion to fo llo w a bold
lead. M o ’ise was feeling his w ay tow ards it, and we can p o in t o u t Tous­
saint's weakness a ll the m ore clearly because Dessalines had a ctu a lly
found the correct m ethod. (287)

Toussaint's m isplaced concern, the inevitable fa ll tow ard w hich such

an error in judgm ent was leading him , the contrasting examples of other
leaders, James paints w ith them a ll a clear picture fo r us of Toussaint's
m istake and its consequences, b u ild in g upon th is classic dram atic ten-
 124 The B lack facobins: A n Assessment

sion tow ard a clear analysis of "w hat Toussaint should have done" (282-
88): having clearly mapped the path of Toussaint's error, James is able to
enunciate a ll the m ore clearly the w arning to be drawn from it. Yet James
portrays fo r us a Toussaint w ho, again lik e a tra g ica lly flaw ed Greek hero,
though fa lle n is im m ensely heroic, m uch m ore so in James's narrative
than the m ore pragm atic leaders w ho w ill fo llo w h im , and m ore so than a
q u a n tita tive analysis of Toussaint's career m ig h t indicate.8
Paradoxically, James argues fo r th is singular im portance of Toussaint-
Louverture by lin k in g h im w ith other sig n ifica n t figures. In his preface
James states th a t, "w ith the single exception of Bonaparte him self, no
single figure appeared on the h is to ric a l stage m ore greatly gifted than th is
N egro" (x), and he continues to m ythologize and universalize the figure
of Toussaint throughout the te x t by id e n tify in g h im w ith other m y th ­
icized figures, h is to ric a l or fic tio n a l.9 "N o t Shakespeare h im self could
have found such a dram atic em bodim ent of fate as Toussaint struggled
against, Bonaparte h im s e lf" (292), and James p a rtic u la rly exploits th is
dram atic figure, repeatedly com paring Toussaint w ith N apoleon,10 as
apparently did Toussaint him self. (A t one p o in t, James cites a le tte r of
Toussaint-Louverture in w hich the la tte r declared, " If Bonaparte is the
firs t m an in France, Toussaint is the firs t m an of the Archipelago of the
A n tille s " [281].) James ensures th a t th is co nflation is not u n id ire ctio n a l
("Like Toussaint, Bonaparte did everything h im se lf and he w rote out the
plan of campaign w ith his ow n hand" [292]) and e x p lic itly lin k s th e ir con­
nection, m oreover, to Toussaint-Louverture's "h a m a rtia "—the intensely
so lita ry nature th a t both gave h im strength and brought about his dow n­
fa ll: "H e had th a t curious detachm ent and inw ard scorn of men w hich
distinguished Bonaparte" (254). The fin a l effect of the com parison of
these tw o h is to ric figures is thus equally as equivocal: both pow erful and
dynam ic leaders, Toussaint-Louverture and Napoleon Bonaparte pur­
sued unre a listic dreams at the expense of th e ir subjects, w ith th e ir fin a l
days in exile form ing a far too iro n ic parallel; yet the figure of Toussaint
could be seen as suffering in the equation w ith such a personally am­
b itio u s demagogue.
James also compares Toussaint to Lin co ln (290), Pericles, Paine, M arx,
and Engels (197), and centuries of epic heroes (the "black Spartacus"
[250]; or a Roland-esque hero whose devotion gives h im strength [143]).
And he rem inds us th a t Toussaint-Louverture, in being compared to
these great figures, is made a ll the greater in th a t these others "w ere m en
of a lib e ra l education, form ed in the tra d itio n s of ethics, philosophy and
 James's Figuring of Toussaint-Louverture 125

history. [Whereas] Toussaint was a slave, n o t six years out of slavery,

bearing alone the unaccustomed burden of wars and governm ent, d ic ta t­
ing his thoughts in the crude words of a broken d ialect" (197). W hile the
Eurocentric biases im p lic it and unproblem atized in th is description do
both p o in t to James's own c u ltu ra l tensions and underm ine somewhat
the glory of the portraiture, James's p o in t is clear. Toussaint's actions are
the more significant fo r the d iffic u ltie s of his circum stances; the M arxist
stage defines the classical character.
James, moreover, appears c o n tin u a lly conscious of the com plexity of
real heroes: the Toussaint he portrays does hold back from those he
is fig h tin g for and does appear too co n cilia to ry tow ard those w hom he
is fig h tin g against (262, 263, 297, and elsewhere); in the name of free­
dom, he is forced to reinstate a form of slavery (242, 248, 265); he be­
comes, indeed, "afraid of the contact between the revolutionary arm y
and the people, an in fa llib le sign of revolutiona ry degeneration" (279).
("H is splendid powers do not rise but decline. Where form erly he was
distinguished above a ll fo r his prom pt and fearless estim ate of whatever
faced him , we shall see him , we have already seen him , m isjudging
events and people, v a c illa tin g in principle, and losing both the fear of his
enemies and the confidence of his own supporters" [291].) If Toussaint
the man, though a heroic fig h te r and an amazing diplom at, was as fa lli­
ble, as com plex, as hum an as any other, however, the figure of Toussaint
stands alone—lite ra lly w ith in the te xt and fig u ra tive ly beyond it.

I ll
It is also clear that the poet's job is not to report what has happened
but what is lik e ly to happen: that is, what is capable of happening accord­
ing to the rule of probability or necessity. Thus the difference between
the historian and the poet is not in their utterances being in verse or
prose . . . ; the difference lies in the fact that the historian speaks of what
has happened, the poet of the kind of thing that can happen. Hence poetry
is a more philosophical and serious business than history; for poetry
speaks of universals, history of particulars. (A ristotle 32-33)

In creating a universal figure of Toussaint-Louverture through the use of

dram atic character developm ent and comparisons w ith other legendary
figures, James seems to be attem pting to move from a p o te n tia lly lim it­
ing h isto ric paradigm to a more "p o e tic" one11—to create of a h isto rica l
situation a more general w arning. Indeed, his emphasis on the tragedy
 126 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

inherent in the h is to ric a l account of Toussaint's life allow s h im to de­

velop one of the strongest argum ents fo r hegem onic accou n ta b ility and
re volutiona ry p lu ra lism possible out of a pow erful trib u te to a h isto rica l
leader.12 H is 1938 conclusion underlines th is argum ent and its "u n iv e r­
sal" application, and his 1963 appendix develops its relevance fo r con­
tem porary Caribbean p o litic s ; in these parts of James's te xt we can see
the attem pts to draw "th e k in d of thing^that can happen" out of "w hat
has happened."
The m ost im m ediate dem onstration of James's argum ent against an
e lite pow er can be found in the v io le n t and repressive afterm ath of the
H a itia n R evolution, as he makes clear in his conclusion. The actions of
the leaders w ho follow ed Toussaint, w hen not in accordance w ith the
wishes and needs of the masses, also had counterrevolutionary and tragic
consequences fo r the H a itia n people. James sees Dessalines's moves
tow ard e litis m and subm ission to B ritis h and A m erican interests,13 fo r
example, as having created a "tragedy" fo r the H a itia n populace:

The massacre of the w hites [called for by the B ritish (371) and carried
out by Dessalines' new H aitian government] was a tragedy,* not for the
whites. For these old slave-owners, those who burnt a little powder in the
arse of a Negro, who buried him alive for insects to eat, who were w ell
treated by Toussaint, and who, as soon as they got the chance, began their
old cruelties again,* for these there is no need to waste one tear or one drop
of ink. The tragedy was for the blacks and the M ulattoes. It was not
policy but revenge, and revenge has no place in politics. The whites were
no longer to be feared, and such purposeless massacres degrade and
brutalise a population, especially one w hich was just beginning as a
nation and had had so b itte r a past. The people d id not want i t —a ll they
wanted was freedom, and independence seemed to promise that. Chris-
tophe and other generals strongly disapproved. Had the B ritish and the
Americans throw n th e ir w eight on the side of hum anity, Dessalines
m ight have been curbed. As it was H a iti suffered terribly from the result­
ing isolation. . . . [T]he unfortunate country, ruined economically, its
population lacking in social culture, had its inevitable d ifficulties dou­
bled by this massacre. That the new nation survived at a ll is forever to its
credit for if the Haitians thought that im perialism was finished w ith
them, they were m istaken. (373-74; italics added)14

The tragedy was fo r the people whose needs were not addressed and
opinions not listened to: "the masses had shown greater p o litic a l under­
standing than th e ir leaders" (339). The "tragic fla w " th a t James has devel­
oped in his p o rtra it of Toussaint can now be seen am plified in later lead-
 James's Figuring of Toussaint-Louverture 127

ers: whereas Toussaint was b lin d to the need to com m unicate w ith the
masses, Dessalines was b lin d to the need to consider them , and the cycle
became only m ore vicious. "T h a t the new nation survived at a ll is forever
to its credit," fo r the seeds of fu rth e r betrayal (see Singham 86) are to be
found even in the heroic figure of Toussaint-Louverture, whose vision for
the nation blinded h im to the power of the people w ho form ed it . 15
James (and his colleagues) w ould reiterate the im p lic it w arnings that
he develops in The Black Jacobins later in M ariners, Renegades and
Castaways and in the astute analysis of the Hungarian R evolution found
in Facing R eality. The la tte r study's collective of w rite rs saw in the
Hungarian tragedy a "tru e " re vo lu tio n being crushed by an in s titu tio n a l­
ized revolutionary party—m uch the same divisio n created between the
leaders of the H aitia n R evolution and the revolutionary people. In the
form er, the W orkers Party could have been "the p o litic a l form in w hich
the great masses of the people w ould be able to bring th e ir energies to
fu lfill th e ir destiny, in accordance w ith th e ir econom ic structure, th e ir
past history, and th e ir consciousness of them selves" (Facing R eality 19;
ita lics added). Likew ise, the H a itian R evolution could perhaps have de­
veloped in to a true revolution, rather than a reproduction of the systems
of oppression, had the people been allow ed to pursue th a t same dream.
This is a lesson that James underlines when he predicts in his 1938
conclusion and reiterates in his 1963 preface the m anifestation of A fri­
can independence m ovem ents and calls for leadership arising from the
masses:

F in a lly those black H a itia n labourers and the M u la tto e s have given us an
exam ple to study. . . . The im p e ria lis ts envisage an e te rn ity of A fric a n
e x p lo ita tio n .. . . T h e y dream dreams. (375-76)

From the people heaving in actio n w ill come the leaders; n o t the isolated
blacks at Guy's H o sp ita l or the Sorbonne, the dabblers in surrealisme or
the lawyers, b u t the q u ie t re c ru its in a black police force, the sergeant in
the French n ative a rm y or B ritis h police, fa m ilia ris in g h im s e lf w ith m ili­
tary tactics and strategy, reading a stray p am phlet of L e n in or T ro ts k y as
Toussaint read the Abbe Raynal. (377)

The arguments that James w ill later b u ild against the concept of a van­
guard party, against that of an educated elite leading a passive mass, are
thus already apparent here: "From the people heaving in action w ill come
the leaders." From the exploited w ill come the call for the end of oppres­
sion: a ca ll from the people that has too often been ignored by its leaders.
 128 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

Yet it should be noted th a t James's poetic and dram atic rendering of

Toussaint in The Black Jacobins iro n ic a lly seems occasionally to efface
th a t very elem ent: the people. References to the im pressive force of slave
resistance, fo r example, so strongly underlined in Fick's The M aking o f
H a iti: The S aint D om ingue R evolution from Below, though present, par­
tic u la rly early in James's study (for example, chap. 4), are occasionally
underplayed. As Consuelo Lopez Springfield has stated in reference to
some of James's la te r w ork, "in the drama of hum an history, . . . [the
'com m on fo lk '] were its leading protagonists" (86). James's stated focus
on the figure of Toussaint in The B lack Jacobins, however, seems to
create in the w ork the same problem th a t he underlines in the leader.
H is fig u rin g of Toussaint in to a tragic archetype, im p o rta n t fo r his de­
velopm ent of the m orals to be learned from the "sto ry," precludes an in -
depth analysis of the "lesser figures"—the v ita l "chorus" (292)—w ho
surrounded and defined h im . (It is occasionally sta rtlin g to read in his
te xt, fo r example, such casual com m ents as, "N o doubt the poor sweated
and were backward so th a t the new ru lin g class m ig h t th rive . But at least
they too were better o ff than they had been" [248].) W hile one could
hardly accuse even early James of being b lin d to the com plex issues of
class and oppression or of being an apologist fo r repression on the part of
otherw ise adm irable figures or systems, there is a clear tension between
a "lite ra ry " p o rtra it o f a pow erful in d iv id u a l and an analysis of h isto rica l
m aterialism th a t rem ains unresolved in th is w ork. In his preface to The
Invading S ocialist Society (1972), James quotes M arx's preface to The
C ritiq u e o f P o litic a l Econom y in order to p o in t out the significance of
the social fo r the in d iv id u a l: "T he mode of production of m aterial life
conditions the social, p o litic a l and in te lle c tu a l life process in general. It
is not the consciousness of m en that determ ines th e ir being, but, on the
contrary, th e ir social being th a t determ ines th e ir consciousness" (Preface
to The Inva d in g S ocialist Society, ii). W hile such an analysis of the
re la tio n of the in d iv id u a l to society is no t a n tith e tic a l to the figure of
Toussaint-Louverture as developed by James in The Black Jacobins,
neither is it fu lly developed: the tensions pointed to in the original
preface of th a t w ork rem ain throughout the text. Thus, James's emphasis
on the figure of Toussaint in The Black Jacobins m ay obscure the im por­
tance of the elem ents of resistance James him se lf w ill later celebrate in
Facing R e a lity—the workers (the slaves) themselves and th e ir repeated
dem onstrations of the capacity fo r self-governm ent (the maroons, plan­
ta tio n survival, etc.).
 James's Figuring of Toussaint-Louverture 129

T his tension between a dram atic b u ild in g up of a single h isto ric fig ­
ure—that of the com plex and courageous hero w ho led the w orld's only
successful slave re vo lt and one of the firs t successful antico lo n ia l revolu­
tions—and a more "s c ie n tific " account of a h isto ric period and a people
does not, however, deter James from developing some im portant "u n i­
versal" arguments. In the 1963 appendix to The Black Jacobins, he steps
outside of the narrative he has developed to elucidate its significance.
James sees the H a itia n R evolution, as embodied by the figure of Tous-
saint, as a pivo ta l poin t in West Indian history: "W est Indians firs t be­
came aware of themselves as a people in the H aitia n R evolution" (391).
James's view is that the "people," again as exem plified by the figure of
Toussaint-Louverture, is a very m odern—and "W estern"—one.16 He fo­
cuses the appendix on the developm ent of a West Indian id e n tity from
the period of the H aitia n R evolution to his present: a portrayal of the
struggle against an "o ld colonial system . . . [that] was not a dem ocratic
system, was not born as such . . . [and that] cannot liv e w ith dem ocracy"
(406) . T his struggle becomes "an inherent antagonism between the con­
sciousness of the black masses and the re a lity of th e ir liv e s ... constantly
produced and reproduced . . . by the very conditions of the society its e lf"
(407) . Each of the stages of id e n tity that he portrays is in e xtrica b ly lin ke d
w ith the figure of Toussaint-Louverture, the m odern hero b a ttlin g an
"ancien regim e," "the firs t and greatest of West Indians" (418). For James
posits e x p lic itly , both in his original conclusion in reference to A frica
and in th is appendix concerning the West Indies, that the H a itia n Revo­
lu tio n serves as an example: p u llin g from w hat has happened "the kin d of
thing that can happen," he offers of H a iti a sym bol of the revolt of
a people oppressed. T his is a theme that James had already touched on
im p lic itly in his earlier (1932) essay "The Case fo r W est-Indian Self-
G overnm ent" w herein he refers to West Indians as "m odern wage-
slaves" (Future in the Present 39), thereby lin k in g contem porary cap­
ita lis tic colonialism to the earlier slave structures that led to the H aitian
R evolution. But he renders th is them e more "p o e tica lly" pow erful here
through the figure of Toussaint-Louverture who becomes, in such analo­
gies, an epic figure of liberation.
In 1939 (one year after the original publicatio n of The Black Jacobins),
Aim e Cesaire w rote of H a iti in his Cahier d'un retour au pays n a ta l
{Notebook o f a Return to the N ative Land): "H a iti ou la negritude se m it
debout pour la prem iere fois et d it qu'elle croyait a son hum anite" ("H a iti
where negritude rose fo r the firs t tim e and stated that it believed in its
 130 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

hum anity") (C ollected Poetry 46-47). H a iti, site of "th e on ly successful

slave re vo lt in h is to ry " (B lack Jacobins ix), becomes in fames's w o rk as in
Cesaire's the figure of the possible, the necessary. It is where a successful
"subaltern" re vo lu tio n occurred "fo r the firs t tim e " and as such can be
m ythologized as the prom ise th a t it w ill not be fo r the last. The dram atic
sym bol th a t the figure o f Toussaint-Louverture becomes in The Black
Jacobins, w h ile obscuring some of the force of the people, does allow
James to p u ll from his narrative of the H a itia n R evolution accurate
predictions regarding A frica n independence (375-77) and to analyze the
p o ssib ilitie s fo r econom ic and p o litic a l independence for the West Indies
(391-418). Like Cesaire's d rivin g image in N otebook o f a R eturn to the
N a tive Land of the "la negraille . . . inattendum ent debout" ("the . . .
nigger scum unexpectedly standing" [C ollected Poetry 80-81]—in refer­
ence to the re v o lt against slavery and the slave trade as w e ll as to the
concept of N egritude), James finishes his 1938 study of the figure of
Toussaint-Louverture w ith the image of the colonized standing up to
systems of e xp lo ita tio n and carrying h im /h e rs e lf beyond them :

Im perialism vaunts its exploitation of the w ealth of A frica for the benefit
of civilisation. In reality, from the very nature of its system of production
for p ro fit it strangles the real w ealth of the continent—the creative capac­
ity of the African people. The African faces a long and d iffic u lt road and
he w ill need guidance. But he w ill tread it fast because he w ill w alk
upright. (377)

Such, perhaps, is the lesson of The B lack Jacobins: the risin g up of a

creative capacity of the people, overlooked by, yet epitom ized in , the
figure of Toussaint-Louverture.17

IV

"G reat m en m ake history, but on ly such h isto ry as it is possible fo r them

to make. T h e ir freedom of achievem ent is lim ite d by the necessities of
th e ir environm ent" (Black Jacobins x). Toussaint's u ltim a te fa ilu re of
"obstinately persisting in [his] ow n reasons," of not "confront[ing] the
issues of [his] own s e lf-lim ita tio n ," was a tragedy fo r democracy and
arguably a direct result of "th e necessities of [his] environm ent." Tous­
saint's vision, whose breadth did no t include a true appreciation of the
potentia l of his ow n people, was not a dem ocratic one; his nation, though
liberated, did not become a dem ocratic one. As James emphasizes in his
appendix to The Black Jacobins, "w ith in a West Indian island the old
 James's Figuring of Toussaint-Louverture 131

colonial system and democracy are incom patible. One has to go" (406).
Toussaint was a product of the old colonial system that is s till in place, in
economic if not in p o litic a l structures, in m any areas of the Caribbean.
Perhaps, then, Toussaint's tragic flaw was both the lim it and the fu ll
im port of his significance, his hubris being the hubris th a t m ust be
addressed for democracy to succeed. H is tragedy, just as m uch as his
heroic stance, is the legacy th a t he has le ft the H aitia n people.
In focusing on the "poetic" characters more than on the "s c ie n tific "
stage of the drama of the H a itia n R evolution, James does succeed in
taking his w ork beyond the lim its of the s tric tly h isto rica l genre to lead
us to understand the power of the lite ra ry im agination of h isto rica l
figures. T his choice seems to have required th a t the "stage," the M arxist
analysis of the econom ic and p o litic a l re a lity of the H a itian re vo lu tio n ­
aries that underpines the w hole text, not be as fu lly articulated in this
w ork as it w ill be later in James's oeuvre (the James of Facing R eality
m ight not have w ritte n The Black Jacobins in the same fashion). W hile
James thus does not confine him self to his own vision of the "tru e
business of the h isto ria n " ("to portray the lim its of those necessities and
the realisation, com plete or p artial, of a ll po ssib ilitie s" [x]), his narrative
does show how a more "n o n scie n tific" approach can create of a h isto ric
figure a tragic and epic hero whose fa ll then carries as many lessons as
does his glory. The presentation of a dram atic narrative such as The
Black Jacobins, if it does not provide a com plete and accurate portrayal of
the H aitian R evolution, does make pow erfully clear w hy one of the
greatest Caribbean poets m ight proclaim in his m anifesto of N egritude
identity,

Ce qui est a m oi aussi: une petite [What is mine also: a little

cellule dans le Jura, cell in the Jura,
une petite cellule, a little cell, the snow lines
la neige la double de barreaux blancs it w ith w hite bars
la neige est un geolier blanc qui monte the snow is a jailer m ounting
la garde devant une prison guard before a prison

Ce qui est a moi What is mine

c'est un homme seul emprisonne de a lonely man imprisoned in
blanc whiteness
c'est un homme seul qui defie les cris a lonely man defying the
blancs de la m ort blanche w hite screams of w hite death
(TOUSSAINT, TOUSSAINT (TOUSSAINT, TOUSSAINT
LOUVERTURE) LOUVERTURE)]
(Aime Cesaire, Collected Poetry 46-47)
 132 The B la ck Jacobins: A n Assessm ent

N o te s

1. This text has been accurately characterized by James as a "superficial book"

(B lack Jacobins 388), but its title and thesis are in some ways linked to those of
his study.
2. See A. W. Singham, "C.L.R. James on the Black Jacobin Revolution in San
Domingo: Notes Toward a Theory of Black Polities," for an excellent, passionate
study of the power of James's B lack Jacobins and its significance for Caribbean
politics and for a concise explanation of the fo rk 's context. This study w ill have a
much narrower focus on James's figuring of Toussaint-Lou verture, examining its
textual strengths and weaknesses and does not claim to address fu lly the issues
raised by Singham.
3. A m ultiple presence glimpsed not only through the double preface, the
added appendix, and updated bibliography, but also at odd moments in the text:
see, for example, "This statement has been criticised. I standby it. C.L.R.J." (88)—
a footnote to a statement regarding the relatively moderate nature of the slave
revolts.
4. James most frequently relies on the letters of these figures to convey to us
the development of their positions, their character strengths or weaknesses, their
tragic errors. Toussaint he views, indeed, as a "bom w riter" (159) [in direct
contrast w ith the characterization of Dessalines as a "born soldier" [130]), prais­
ing his (dictated) eloquence even as he underlines the fact that the leader, like
most former slaves, "could hardly speak French,... literally could not w rite three
words w ithout the grossest errors in spelling and grammar" (104). Leclerc is also
quoted at great length, even poignantly: his voice, his pleas, and his errors in
judgment ("It is not enough to have taken away Toussaint, there are 2,000 leaders
to be taken away" [346]; "We have in Europe a false idea of the country in which
we fight and the men whom we fight against" [356]) indeed dominate the last
chapter of James's work. The portrait they paint is that of the epitome of Euro­
centric blindness recognized too late and for naught. "Before [Leclerc] died he
confessed his grief over an enterprise undertaken on men and by men worthy of a
better fate. . . . We owe him no thanks for the admission. It did not in any way
mitigate the blood that would yet be shed and the suffering s till to be borne before
the people of San Domingo freed themselves from this abomination of murder,
greed, cruelty, sadism, inhumanity, let loose upon them by Napoleon and his
government, in the name of a superior civilisation" (355-56).
5. A contrasting example of a historical analysis of the Haitian Revolution can
be found in Carolyn E. Fick's The M aking o f H a iti: The S aint D om ingue R evolu­
tio n fro m B elow . Fick credits James's seminal work on the subject, but both her
approach (more clearly sociological and "scientific") and her focus (on the self-led
"subalternes"—the unsung heroes who carried the revolution forward regardless
of the actions of the "leaders") are different from his and, in many ways, both
complement The B lack Jacobins and correspond more closely w ith some of
James's later works, specifically Facing R e a lity and M odern P o litic s .
6. James did later question any simple acceptance of such categories. In
James's 1948 study of Hegel's D ia le ctics, republished in 1971, he challenges
unquestioning use of Aristotle's categorizations of genres: "You must know cate­
gorization in general, movement in general, changes in categories in general, and
 James's Figuring of Toussaint-Louverture 133

then you can examine an object, e.g., the labor movement, or French drama, and
w ork out its categories, its form of movement, its method of change, etc., con­
scious always of the general laws as exemplified in the particular concrete. Thus
there is a Universal logic of any drama, w hich is expressed in Greek, Eliza-
bethean, classical or Shavian drama, i.e., in a particular form or classification,- a
concrete, an individual example of it at a particular tim e is Aeschylus, or Racine,
or Shaw. Alas! A ristotle studies Sophocles & Co. and laid down certain categories
w hich he drew fr«m them. These he called the 'Poetics/ And, oh! the rivers of
sweat and the conflicts of centuries in w hich men said that drama was to be fitte d
in to those. A clear case of Understanding. Clear? N o t clear to a good dialectician.
What objective impulses in society m a in ta in e d them as valid? And there a
serious philosophical cognition can begin" (Notes on D ia le ctics 19).
7. It should be noted that there is m uch scholarly debate concerning the term
"ham artia." This study w ill sim ply use the phrase "tragic flaw ," follow ing James's
use as cited above, though James him self appears to focus on its sense of "error" or
"missed aim " in his characterization of Toussaint. C ertainly the cause of the error
is not as significant as its effect in this context.
8. Singham points out that this dilem m a for Toussaint presaged the co n flic t­
ing pluralism of post-independence T h ird W orld societies (89-90). He also sees
James's sympathetic, and ambivalent, treatment of this dilemm a as preventing
h im from "explaining] adequately the failure of the H aitian revolution" (93).
9. Consuelo Lopez Springfield has said of James's "rhetoric of h isto ry" that
"James's speeches, like the b rillia n t orations of Burke and Disraeli, abound in
messianic images. As a M arxist M ilto n or a modern Moses, he embraces a roman­
ticized past" (89). (See also Consuelo Lopez (Springfield], "C.L.R. James: The
Rhetoric of a Defiant W arrior," Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana U, 1983.)
10. James is not alone, of course, in this comparison: the title alone of Percy
Waxman's The B lack Napoleon: The S tory o f Toussaint Louvertuie, published in
1931, indicates the trend certainly w ith in this century to dram atically compare
the two. There is one additional element in James's work, however: in an in te r­
esting play on the significance of naming, James always refers to Toussaint-
Louverture by his first name and, in contrast, to Napoleon Bonaparte I—com­
m only referred to as "N apoleon"—by his last name. There are several highly rea­
sonable hypotheses for such a choice, given the problematic naming of slaves by
their masters, and the fact that Toussaint-Louverture did have tw o successive last
names, but James never explains the significance of his choice. The effect in
James's narrative is to create an in tim a cy w ith the first figure and a distance
from the second. Ironically, however, at one point he lists calling Toussaint-
Louverture by his first name as one of the degrading techniques of his French
jailors, though this may sim ply be his translation of the French "tu to ie ": "O n
Bonaparte's strict instructions his gaolers h um iliated him , called h im Toussaint,
gave h im convict's clothes to wear, cut down his food" (363, italics added). James
also guards, against tradition, the original spelling of "L'O uverture"—emphasiz­
ing the meaning of "opening"—even though he him self explains that Toussaint
q uickly dropped the apostrophe (n. 126).
11. It is not w ith o u t significance that one of the more famous poets of another
French colony, A im e Cesaire, also saw fit to treat the subject of Toussaint-
Louverture's life in both verse and prose. Though James dismisses Cesaire's
 134 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

biography Toussaint Louverture as lacking "the fire and constant illu m in a tio n
w hich distinguish most of the other [poetic, theatrical, literary, p o litica l] w o rk of
CSsaire" (Black Jacobins 389), the latter's text echoes both the focus and certain
approaches of James's study.
12. "C ritic is m is not enough. W hat should Toussaint have done? A hundred and
fifty years of history and the scientific study of revolution begun by M arx and
Engels, and am plified by Lenin and Trotsky, ju s tify us in p o in ting to an alterna­
tive course" (282).
" It was in method, not in principle, that Toifssaint failed" (283).
"He should have declared that a pow erful expedition could have no other aim
than the restoration of slavery, summoned the population to resist, declared
independence, confiscated the property of a ll w ho refused to accept and dis­
tributed i t among his supporters" (284).
13. "O n October 1804 [sic] he had h im se lf crowned Emperor [a la Napoleon)___
the Negro monarch entered in to his inheritance, tailored and valeted by English
and Am erican capitalists, supported on one side by the King of England and on the
other by the President of the U n ite d States" (370).
14. See A lex Dupuy, "Toussaint-Louverture and the H a itia n R evolution" (in
this text) for a different reading of this incident.
15. "The sansculottes, of Paris in particular, saw very clearly w hat was required
at each stage of the revolution at least u n til it reached its highest peak. T h e ir
d iffic u lty was that they had neither the education, experience nor the resources to
organise a modern state i f only tem porarily. This was pretty much the position of
the revolutionaries of Plaisance, Lim b i and Dondon in relation to Toussaint
Events were soon to show how right they were and that in not listening to them
Toussaint made the greatest mistake of his career" (n. 276, James's italics).
16. See Black Jacobins 392 and "The Case for West-Indian Self-Government,"
Future in the Present 25. James's argum entation of th is p o in t is often challenged,
but one could claim that he is indeed p ointing toward a challenge to and expan­
sion of the very term "W estern"—a term for h im based upon the Greeks, but also
inclusive of more recent evolutions in the "N e w W orld," and d e fin ite ly not
lim ite d to its N o rth Am erican (United States) manifestations.
17. Lopez Springfield touches on this p o in t at the end of "Through the People's
Eyes," in a somewhat different interpretation of the book. She argues that Black
Jacobins functions as the h istorical valorization of the power of the common
people: "In James's historical narrative, The Black Jacobins, m yth and national
history assume persuasive force. A product of its tim e, it fu lfille d tw o purposes: it
not only was the firs t m ajor historical study to popularize a T h ird W orld revolu­
tionary hero of epic stature but also showed the v ita l role of mass populations in
the process of national lib e ra tio n " (93).

W o rks C ite d

A ristotle. Poetics. Trans. Gerald F. Else. A nn Arbor: U of M ichigan P, 1967.

Cesaire, A im i. The Collected Poetry. Ed. and trans. C layton Eshleman and A n ­
nette Smith. Berkeley: U of C alifornia P, 1983.
------ . Toussaint Louverture. Paris: Presence Africaine, 1981.
 James's Figuring of Toussaint-Louverture 135

Fick, Carolyn E. The Making of H aiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from
Below. K noxville: U of Tennessee P, 1990.
James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo
Revolution. N ew York: Random, 1963.
------. The Future in the Present: Selected Writings. London: A lliso n and Busby,
1977.
------. Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman M elville and
the World yfe Live In. D etroit: Bewick, 1978.
------ . Modern Politics. D etroit: Bewick, 1973.
------- . Notes on Dialectics: Hegel and Marxism. D etroit: Friends of Facing Reality,
1971.
James, C.L.R., F. Forest, and Ria Stone. The Invading Socialist Society. D etroit:
Bewick, 1972.
James, C.L.R., Grace C. Lee, and Pierre Chaulieu. Facing Reality. D e tro it: Bewick,
1974.
Lopez Springfield, Consuelo. "Through the People's Eyes: C.L.R. James's Rhetoric
of H istory." Caribbean Quarterly 36.1-2 (1990): 85-97.
Sander, Reinhard W. "C.L.R. James and the H a itia n R evolution." World Litera­
ture in English 26.2 (1986): 277-90.
Singham, A. W. "C.L.R. James on the Black Jacobin R evolution in San Domingo:
Notes Toward a Theory of Black Polities." Savacou 1.1 (1970): 82-96.
Waxman, Percy. The Black Napoleon: The Story of Toussaint Louverture. New
York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931.
 Bernard M o itt

Transcending L in g u is tic and C u ltu ra l Frontiers

in Caribbean H istoriography: C.L.R. James,

French Sources, and Slavery in San D om ingo

A lthough the treatm ent of slaves on Caribbean plantations was not

u n ifo rm , C.L.R. James's depiction of slavery in the French colony of San
D om ingo as harsh and b ru ta l is va lid and based on adequate if lim ite d
research and on good in te lle c tu a l judgm ent. In The B lack Jacobins,1
James's central concern is the re v o lt led by Toussaint-Louverture and
other slaves from 1791 to the end of 1803, and not the in s titu tio n of
slavery its e lf. But slavery nevertheless constitutes a fundam ental and
underlying them e in the w ork. A fte r a ll, the re vo lt was, at the core, a
re vo lt of slaves against slave owners. In reconstructing the w orld th a t the
slaves inhabited, James transcended lin g u is tic and cu ltu ra l frontiers in
the historiography of the Caribbean. He could hardly have done other­
wise as he had no precedent to fo llo w in a region where in s u la rity has
always reigned supreme. T h is reconstruction is of cru cia l im portance as
it exposed and illu m in a te d the w o rld of slavery and society in San D o­
m ingo, h ith e rto unknow n to m ost in the B ritis h Caribbean. It presented
p o ssibilities fo r com parative analyses and sparked interest in the h is to r­
ica l experience o^ fe llo w A fricans in the French A n tille s . For these rea­
sons, James's c o n trib u tio n to the historiography of the Caribbean is
h ig h ly significant.
T h is co n trib u tio n should not be taken lig h tly . In the early 1930s, a
tim e when few in the B ritish Caribbean could boast of proficiency in
French, and w hen knowledge of the French A n tille s was lim ite d alm ost
solely to recognition of the name "Toussaint Louverture," if that, James

136
 Transcending L in g u istic and C u ltu ra l Frontiers 137

was able to s ift through a large body of French archival data and second­
ary sources w ith efficiency and great s k ill. Anyone who has w orked w ith
French sources knows how d iffic u lt it is to decipher the penm anship in
many of the correspondences between the French colonies and the M in ­
is try of M arine and C olonies in Paris; and to translate correctly, m uch of
the aw kward and unusual phraseology, especially those w ritte n in O ld
French. James deserves credit both fo r his pioneering w ork and fo r his lin ­
guistic a b ilitie s, but there are shortcom ings in his treatm ent of slavery.
These shortcom ings may, in part, be due to James's h ig h ly selective
reading of French sources on slavery. In describing the slave condition, he
drew largely on the w orks of tw o authors: G irod-C hantrans and Pierre de
Vaissiere. G irod-Chantrans, a native of Sw itzerland, traveled through the
French A n tille s in the eighteenth century, resided on a plantation, and
w rote about his observations in 1782. In 1909, Pierre de Vaissiere pub­
lished his account of life and society in San D om ingo under the Ancien
Regime.2As James points out, de Vaissiere drew on French colonial archi­
val reports and other documents, m any of them letters w ritte n from as
early as 1699 by adm inistrators and c iv il servants in San D om ingo. Thus,
de Vaissiere's assessment of slavery is based on a w ide range of relevant
and valuable data in cluding travelers' accounts. It is clear, fo r example,
that his description of women m ill-feeders at w ork3 is pirated from Pere
Labat's m u ltivo lu m e w ork on the French A n tille s ,4 although he did not
acknowledge this. De Vaissiere was not c ritic a l of his sources, however.
G irod-C hantrans based his w ork on personal experiences. But he also
read some of the lite ra tu re on slavery as evidenced by his knowledge
about the scholarship on herbal m edicine and slavery.5 He appears to
have been a keen observer, although it is d iffic u lt to say how m uch
contact he actually had w ith the slaves. It is lik e ly th a t w hatever con­
tacts he had were m in im a l judging by some of his conclusions about
slave life . It seems obvious that he understood little about slave women
and reproduction when he remarked, w ith some degree of certainty, that
because slave unions were tenuous, there were few children on the
plantations.6Even so, his general findings about the slave condition have
been corroborated by later scholars.
Both G irod-C hantrans and de Vaissiere dealt w ith many of the same
themes, in cluding labor, discipline, disease, and reproduction among
slaves. W hatever th e ir m otives, both authors can be said to have been
liberal in th e ir view s on slavery in th a t they were hig h ly c ritic a l of the
slave system and slave owners when m ost European w riters were not.
 138 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

The authors view ed slave owners as absolute despots who acted w ith
im p u n ity and perpetrated violence upon slaves, punishable o n ly by fines.
Both pictured slaves as helpless beings, w hich is understandable since
slaves could not prosecute th e ir owners in either c iv il or crim in a l m at­
ters, bu t ignored the fact th a t slaves had ways of resisting slavery, both
openly and subtly. There is no doubt th a t San D om ingo used up slaves at
a rapid rate and th a t the excesses of m ai\y planters came to be seen as
the norm . B ut neither G irod-C hantrans nor de Vaissiere made reference
to variations w ith in the slave system or to the underlife of slavery that
can be culled from a study of m any of the w orks on the French A n tille s .
To be sure, the h isto ry of the French A n tille s m ust, of necessity, be
viewed in a com prehensive m anner as French policies and custom s were
applicable to a ll the Caribbean colonies and the slave system operated
s im ila rly throughout. For example, the Code N o ir7 of 1685—a body of
French laws governing sla ve ry-a p p lie d to a ll the colonies, as did m any
of the royal and local ordinances th a t were introduced down to the end of
slavery in 1848.
James w rote The B lack Jacobins before G abriel Debien, a French Ca­
ribbean historian, made his m onum ental c o n trib u tio n to the h isto ry of
the French A n tille s w ith p a rticu la r emphasis on San D om ingo.8 James
could not benefit from the w orks of Gaston M a rtin and A ntoine G isler,
French scholars w ho published im p o rta n t slave studies on the French
A n tille s in the 1940s and the 1960s respectively,9 after the appearance of
James's w ork. A reading of the B lack Jacobins suggests, however, that
James either ignored or disregarded w orks w ritte n at a m uch earlier tim e
by Pere D utertre, Pere Labat, P ierre-V ictor M alouet, M alenfant, France,
Lucien Peytraud,10 and others, w hich m ay w e ll have given h im valuable
insights in to slavery. One m ay therefore take James to task fo r not
reading more of the general lite ra tu re that w ould have sharpened his
understanding of the nuances o f slavery in the French A n tille s . Even if he
had scrutinized these w orks, however, his perspective on slavery in w hat
Gordon K. Lew is refers to as the "Babylon of the A n tille s ," whose "cor­
ru p tio n , venality, b ru ta lity , and rascality w ould have taken the genius of
a M oliere or a Balzac fu lly to describe,"11 w ould lik e ly have rem ained the
same, given the negative portrayal of A fricans in the overw helm ing
m a jo rity of French sources on slavery. Lewis's com parison of the percep­
tio n of the A frican slave held by D utertre and Labat w ould m erely have
reinforced James's assessment of slavery, and thus his com parison pro­
vides a s trik in g example. Lewis notes that
 Transcending L in g u istic and C u ltu ra l Frontiers 139

w hile D utertre prays, masters, in the am eliorative fashion, to be m erciful

to their slaves, Labat suggests that slavery is a legitim ate means of
redeeming Negroes from superstition; indeed, Labat regards the Negro as
a natural child of the devil, a born sorcerer, an evil spirit w ielding occult
power. He is remarkably free from religious bigotry, as his attitude to
employing heretics on his ecclesiastical plantation shows. But he is the
epitome of racial bigotry.12

In spite of James's foresight on slavery in San D om ingo w hich th is

example illustrates, he has le ft im portant gaps that historians m ust now
fill. To do so requires a detailed exam ination of James and the question of
slavery. James's treatm ent of slavery in San D om ingo is too broad and
general. It does not illu s tra te the com plexity of slavery in the French
A n tille s . Like G irod-C hantrans and de Vaissiere, his description of the
in s titu tio n is also static; it does not suggest that changes occurred in the
in s titu tio n over tim e. N or is there any in d ica tio n that there were varia­
tions w ith in the slave regime. James dedicated only a sm all chapter—a
mere tw enty pages—to slavery, but he touched on and assessed several
fundam ental aspects of the in s titu tio n . Am ong them are the deplorable
conditions of slave accom m odation; the arduous conditions under w hich
slaves labored on the plantations; the d u p lic ity of the slave laws govern­
ing the feeding of slaves as outlined in the Code N o il; and the cruel and
barbaric punishm ent to w hich m ale and female slaves were subjected in
defiance of the laws. T his article w ill examine James's treatm ent of these
aspects of slavery.

Accom m odation

Slaves in San D om ingo were accommodated in the same manner as

slaves in other parts of the French A n tille s , in cluding Guadeloupe and
M artinique. Because suitable accom m odation was not a p rio rity of slave
owners, slave huts were generally in poor shape w ith broken w alls and
leaking roofs rent by the w ind. This, in addition to the length of the
w orkday w hich lasted up to eighteen hours during the sugar harvest,
explains w hy m any slaves spent as little tim e as possible in th e ir d w e ll­
ings. According to James,

the slaves were housed like animals, in huts b u ilt around a square
planted w ith provisions and fruits. These huts were about 20 to 25 feet
long, 12 feet wide and about 15 feet in height, divided by partitions into
two or three rooms. They were windowless and lig h t entered only by the
 140 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

door. The floor was beaten earth; the bed was straw, hides or a rude
contrivance or cords tied on posts.13

Some of the earliest descriptions o f slave life in the French A n tille s

support James's claim , b u t there were some changes in accom m odation
through tim e. The pictu re th a t emerges from French sources indicates
th a t at the outset, huts were b u ilt in sim ila r styles; th a t the size of
huts varied depending on variables such as types of plantations and rank
of slaves; and th a t in the late eighteenth century, com m unal housing
largely replaced com pound huts and had a negative im pact on slave life .
In the French Caribbean, slaves attem pted to duplicate A frica n archi­
te ctu ra l designs and to re-create the A frica n fa m ily com pound. In the
seventeenth century, huts were b u ilt in a circu la r fashion, leaving a
com m unal space in the center. D ebien surm ises th a t the architectural
design of and setting around the huts were A frican. Some huts were
round w ith a conical roof in the M andingo fashion; others were rectangu­
lar, and lik e the round hu ts,14 had o n ly one opening—the door. The
absence of w indow s caused Frangois-Xavier C harlevoix to describe such
huts as "dens b u ilt to house bears."15 Large tracks separated groups of
huts th a t were them selves surrounded by fences designed to keep out
anim als or by trees or banana groves to shield them against the spread of
fire . Trees also protected huts against w in d storm s.16
In the seventeenth and m uch of the eighteenth centuries, slaves b u ilt
th e ir ow n huts, a process in w hich m ost slaves lik e ly invested personal
com m itm ent. Others, probably carpenters w ho possessed the required
artisanal s k ills , were com m issioned by masters to do so. T his means th a t
slaves had some autonom y in term s of design and personal preferences.
They used local m aterial, m a in ly palm iste, a soft wood, along w ith dried
trash and m ud to b u ild m ost of the h u t, and wood to make the door
lo c k .17 Solid wood was som etim es used to make the doors, but this,
according to Debien, was a sign of slave owners w ho cared about slave
accom m odation.18 On the p lantatio n Fleuriau in the parish Croix-des-
Bouquets in the d is tric t of Bellevue in San D om ingo, there were three
carpenters in 1777. Am ong them was a head carpenter w ho taught other
slaves carpentry and "w ho cut wood, beams and large planks to make
slave h u ts ."19 As housing was essential to the w ell-being of the slaves,
carpenters m ust have been valued fo r th e ir craft.
The q u a lity of accom m odation depended p a rtly on the geographic
location of plantations and on the type of crop cultiva te d there. On coffee
 Transcending L in g u istic and C u ltu ra l Frontiers 141

estates, w hich were usually located in the h ills of San D om ingo where
ra in fa ll was more frequent and the clim ate cooler than in the plains,20
huts were sometimes constructed w ith m asonry and designed to pre­
serve the A frican com pound effect. Since coffee planters believed th a t
such huts were less susceptible to fires, w h ich m ay w e ll have been more
prevalent in the h ills than in the plains, the decision to b u ild m asonry
huts was made fey slave owners. There was a difference in philosophy
between planters in the h ills and those in plains where m ost of the sugar
was grown. The greater space and low er slave population in the h ills
allow ed those planters to m aintain a more authentic form of the A frican
com pound system; b u t planters in the plains found such a system to be
p rim itiv e and inadequate protection against the cold. Shielding them ­
selves against the cold was a m ajor concern of the slaves to w h ich some
planters in the h ills responded by providing blankets. But the death rate
among slaves on coffee estates was always very high.21
W hether in the h ills or on the plains, slave fam ilies and unm arried
slaves, male and female, inhabited the A frica n com pound-style huts
w hich in general were sparsely furnished w ith beds, three feet o ff the
ground, made from branches of trees woven together and tied to four
large posts. D utertre noted th a t men and wom en shared th e ir huts w ith
th e ir young children. Once the children were older—sixteen years in the
case of Guadeloupe, as Satineau observed22—fathers b u ilt them a hut
nearby.23 T his suggests th a t slaves attem pted to create some semblance
of n o rm a lity in term s of preserving the structure of the fa m ily in spite of
the constraints placed on the process by slavery.
W hat little in fo rm a tio n there is in the lite ra tu re of the seventeenth
and firs t decades of the eighteenth centuries about the exact size of
com pound-style huts indicates that they varied in dim ension depending
on when they were b u ilt or repaired, on the type of plantations on w hich
they were located, and on the rank and status of slaves. D utertre, who
w rote in the seventeenth century, spoke of huts m easuring nine to ten
feet long, six feet wide and ten to tw elve feet high.24 One of the few
early eighteenth-century descriptions we have suggests that the size of
huts began to increase w ith the developm ent of large sugar plantations
w e ll before the end of the seventeenth century, but they were s till not
very large "and housed no more than three or four fa m ilie s."25 In 1730,
the sugar plantatio n C anivet k Vallieres, in the north of San Dom ingo,
housed tw enty slave huts measuring th irty feet long by tw enty feet wide.
T his type of accom m odation became popular and appears to be the type
 142 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

th a t James described. In the early eighteenth century, huts were divided

in to three or four rooms. On some estates, however, larger huts were
divided in to four to six room s.26
The huts of "e lite " slaves—dom estics, artisans, and other slaves w ho
form ed part of the upper echelons of the slave hierarchy—were larger
than those of fie ld slaves w ho occupied the b ottom rung. Some dom estic
slaves slept in the Great House—the slave owner's m ain dw elling. But
m ost were housed in slave compounds b u ilt some distance away from
those of fie ld slaves but close enough to the Great House so th a t they
could be summoned by slave owners at w ill.27 It need hardly be stressed
th a t th is distance was not o n ly physical but psychological in th a t it was
an in d ica tio n of social ranking th a t fostered divisions among slaves. On
some plantations, there were separate quarters fo r m ale and fem ale do­
m estics. On the large sugar p la n ta tio n Paquet de Luge in M ontrouis, a
large b u ild in g served as a storeroom and as a d w elling fo r fem ale domes­
tics. Close by, tw o huts fo r m ale dom estics were valued at three th o u ­
sand livres each w h ile the tw o room s th a t housed the w h ite bookkeepers
had less costly roofing m aterial and were valued at an estim ated tw o
thousand livres in 1788.28
The huts o f slave drivers were larger than other slave huts and were
b u ilt w ith stronger m a te ria l—in clu d in g wood—in the eighteenth cen­
tu ry. Like huts fo r dom estics, they were also b u ilt away from the other
pla n ta tio n huts. There were tw o such huts on the coffee plantatio n
M aulevrier in M atheux th a t measured tw e n ty-five feet by tw elve feet
and had tw o w indow s. In the words of Debien, "The w indow was often
the o n ly com fort w h ich distinguished these huts from other plantatio n
h u ts ."29 The liv in g arrangem ent on the sugar p lantatio n Fleuriau, w hich
had a slave population o f tw o hundred fifty to three hundred slaves,
strongly supports the argum ent fo r accom m odation according to rank.
Here, around 1788, "dom estics were housed near the Great House; ar­
tisans, boilers, d is tille rs set apart a little fu rth e r away in 12 huts; fie ld
slaves in a slave com pound consisting of 28 huts and w e ll proportioned
streets w ith the slave driver's h u t some distance away at the entrance;
sick and new slaves in 15 huts s till fu rth e r away in the h ills ."30
In the late eighteenth century, planters in the French A n tille s brought
significant changes to slave life by adopting barrack-style housing. Some
com pound huts rem ained, however, and were interspersed w ith large
barrack-style huts. Indeed, between 1796 and 1797, an inventory of 170
sugar, coffee, and indigo plantations in San D om ingo showed d ive rsity in
 Transcending L in g u istic and C u ltu ra l Frontiers 143

the size of huts.31 In 1796, the sugar plantatio n Seguin in Queue Espag-
nole in Croix-des-Bouquets had tw enty-seven huts, but o n ly a few mea­
sured six ty feet by tw elve feet. A t the same tim e, the sugar plantatio n
F ortin in Petits-Bois in Croix-des-Bouquets had thirty-seven huts fo r 216
slaves, bu t only one barrack-style h u t measured 120 feet by eighty-four
feet.32 There were tw enty-one barrack-style huts divided between 300
slaves on Pasquet de Lugbe's sugar pla n ta tio n in M ontrouis, about fo u r­
teen slaves per h u t.33
Sugar planters b u ilt larger barracks than other planters, but the trend
in housing applied to coffee estates as w e ll. On the coffee estate Daudoin
in Croix-de-Bouquets, there was a barrack consisting of four double huts
divided in to six rooms each in 1796. Located in the M atheux h ills of San
D om ingo, the coffee estate Sabourin owned by the D elices had only one
h u t divided in to seven rooms in 1791.34
In a ll sectors, large numbers of slaves made intensified production
possible but created pressures on accom m odation. To resolve the prob­
lem , planters opted for a system that could provide additional housing
w h ile m in im iz in g space. In the new system, space was organized d if­
ferently. Planters used up the space in courtyards and between com ­
pound huts to b u ild geom etrically designed row huts w ith one m ain
pathway leading in to the slave compound. These huts were more akin to
m ilita ry barracks and accommodated more slaves in less space. T his was
accom plished pa rtly by p u ttin g more m ale slaves together in the same
huts and fam ilies in others.
Besides the reduction of space and more cramped quarters, slaves also
suffered a loss of autonom y as they no longer b u ilt th e ir ow n huts;
entrepreneurs did. A t an earlier tim e, planters "alw ays avoided h irin g
external labourers at exorbitant salaries."35 Debien argues convincingly,
however, that after 1780, the cost of b u ild in g huts dropped, an economic
incentive that fostered barrack housing.36 Carpenters were able to keep
costs down by using cheap, prefabricated m aterial im ported from and
patterned after designs in Louisiana. H uts were henceforth easily assem­
bled and could be moved from one part of a plantation to another by
planters in search of more fe rtile soil and greater profits. A nother advan­
tage was that they could be reused. In 1788, the Fleuriau plan ta tio n was
able to purchase three prefabricated slave huts consisting of three rooms
each from Pascal, a trader, fo r 330 livres.37 T his shows that the trend to
such housing began before 1780.
As a result of the new style of accom m odation, slaves no doubt lost a
 144 The B lack facobins: A n Assessment

measure of co n tro l over th e ir private lives. There were p a rtitio n s in the

barracks, b u t they were no substitute fo r in d iv id u a l huts. Intruders could
be seen com ing in to a com pound fashioned in the A frica n way, but they
could not necessarily be seen com ing in to the pathw ay leading to the
barracks. In addition, the danger of fires spreading from h u t to h u t in ­
creased. In spite of the changes, Debien and others in s is t th a t in the
French A n tille s , slave huts were not overcrowded. Even so, the changes
led to a deterioration in the q u a lity of life and to greater e xp lo ita tio n of
slave labor through tig h te r control.

Labor

James did not exaggerate when he indicated th a t slaves in San D om ingo

labored from daybreak u n til evening, often u n til 10:00 or 11:00 p .m . w ith
breaks fo r breakfast and lunch.38 A t about 5:00 a .m ., slaves were awak­
ened by the slave d rive r w ho w histled, blew a "Ia m b i"—a large conch
shell—or cracked his w h ip repeatedly. On large plantations (certainly
those w ith a hundred slaves and more), slaves were summoned by a b e ll
m ounted on a tree. M oreau de Saint-M ery noted th a t in the south of San
D om ingo, a conch shell was used. A fte r attending prayers, w hich was
obligatory b u t n o t always follow ed, ro ll c a ll was taken, a measure th a t
perm itted the econome (overseer) to record absent slaves, v is it the huts
of allegedly sick slaves, and make arrangements fo r them to see the
doctor or go to the hospital. Before the w ork day began (or about 8:00 a .m .
after a few hours of w ork), the slaves ate breakfast in the fields depending
on how far they were located from the slave huts. The com m andeur
(slave driver) directed the convoy of slaves leaving fo r breakfast, d isci­
p lin in g the late. A t m idday, slaves received a break of one to one and a
h a lf hours w hich p erm itted them to retu rn to th e ir huts if they were
located nearby. If not, an old wom an slave brought them food prepared in
the slave compound. As was the case on the F leuriau estate, slaves often
w orked on d ifferent fields in the afternoons depending on labor needs.
W hatever the case, at sun set (about 5:30 p .m .) the w ork day ended.39
Before leaving, each slave gathered anim al feed or firew ood. "N o one,"
according to Cauna, "le ft w ith em pty hands."40 A fte r the evening meal,
prayers, and the taking of a head count, slaves were free to return to th e ir
huts. The o n ly exception to th is routine was at harvesttim e when slaves
were required to w ork at night.
In describing slave labor, James cited d ire c tly from G irod-C hantrans
w ho described a gang of slaves at w ork thus:
 Transcending L in g u istic and C u ltu ra l Frontiers 145

They were about a hundred men and women of different ages, a ll oc­
cupied in digging ditches in a cane-field, the m ajority of them naked or
covered w ith rags. The sun shone down w ith fu ll force on their heads.
Sweat rolled from all parts of their bodies. Their lim bs, weighed down by
the heat, fatigued w ith the w eight of their picks and by the resistance of
the clayey soil baked hard enough to break their implements, strained
themselves to overcome every obstacle. A m ournful silence reigned.
Exhaustion wSs stamped on every face, but the hour of rest had not yet
come. The pitiless eye of the Manager patrolled the gang of several
foremen armed w ith long whips moved periodically between them, giv­
ing stinging blows to a ll who, worn out by fatigue, were compelled to
take a rest—men or women—young or old.41

G irod-Chantrans's observations are not out of lin e w ith w hat is know n

about slave labor in the French A n tille s . For example, he noted th a t in
San D om ingo, a ll w ork was done m anually, and hands had to be replaced
often.42 He also pointed out th a t neither the allocation of arduous tasks
on the plantation nor the inhum ane punishm ent of slaves was gender-
specific. In reference to slaves, he indicated th a t "there was no domes­
tic anim al from w hich one requires as m uch w o rk and to w hich one gives
as little care."43 He observed that on Sundays and during break peri­
ods, slaves cultivated kitchen gardens, grow ing m anioc, potatoes, yams,
Congo-peas, pineapples, and other crops. He w rote about the constant
a c tiv ity around the sugar m ill at nig h t during the harvest period, never
o m ittin g to m ention the cracks of the slave driver's w hip that was used
"in d iscrim in a te ly on anim als and blacks."44

Field Labor

On plantations in the French A n tille s , the num ber of fie ld slave gangs
was not fixed and depended on the needs of the plantation. Some planta­
tions had one m ain gang some of whose members were separated and
drawn upon periodically to perform special tasks. In such cases, they
constituted a second gang. Though a single, prim ary gang was the choice
of some planters, on m ost plantations slaves were divided in to tw o
gangs, occasionally three. The firs t gang—the Great Gang—consisted of
the strongest male and female slaves who perform ed the m ost arduous
tasks including preparation of the soil, weeding, cu ttin g canes, and w o rk­
ing in the m anufacturing end of the sugar w orks. Men in th is gang also
perform ed other heavy tasks such as cu ttin g down trees, breaking stones,
and transporting heavy m aterial.45
 146 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

It seems certain th a t the gang of slaves to w h ich James referred was the
firs t gang, given the w o rk in w hich its members (women included) were
engaged. G irod-C hantrans's m ention of wom en is crucial as it confirm s
the im portance of th e ir econom ic role in sugar production during slavery.
A lthough the sugar p la n ta tio n was associated w ith hard, intensive labor
th a t became synonym ous w ith m ale labor, wom en n o rm a lly predom i­
nated in fie ld labor. In m ost cases, they outnum bered males in the firs t
gang. W hat th is means is that, as in the B ntish Caribbean,46fem ale slaves
in the French A n tille s did proportion ately m ore fie ld labor than men.
Two examples from San D om ingo should suffice. On the p lantatio n
Beaulieu, there were 141 slaves in 1768 of w hom eighty-seven were
males and fifty -fo u r females. But o n ly nine males w orked in the fields as
opposed to tw e n ty females. A s im ila r labor pattern existed on the Gal-
baud du Fort plan ta tio n where female slaves s lig h tly outnum bered male
slaves b u t perform ed alm ost a ll the fie ld w ork. O f the fifty -fo u r males on
the p la ntatio n, o n ly nine were in the fields. But fo rty -fo u r of the fifty -
eight females were fie ld w orkers.47
V ic to r Schoelcher a ttrib u te d the larger presence of wom en in fie ld
labor to the system atic prom otion of young m ale slaves from fie ld w ork
to artisanal and other types of specialized labor.48 T his explanation has
become v irtu a lly in s titu tio n a liz e d . It is true th a t wom en were m uch less
upw ardly m obile than men and spent m ost of th e ir w o rkin g lives in the
fields as a result. But slave wom en's p lig h t, in th is instance, resulted
largely from patriarchy and the sexist orie n ta tio n of Caribbean slave
plantatio n society w h ich put them in to stru ctu ra l slots th a t had no
bearing on th e ir a b ilitie s . T his is a ll the m ore iro n ic because planters
disregarded the sex of slaves, treating them as labor u n its rather than
individua ls.
Less robust slaves, new ly arrived slaves w ho had to be acclim atized,
pregnant slaves, and nursing m others made up the second gang whose
im portance varied according to the a g ricu ltu ra l calendar, the health of
the slaves, and the interest of the planters. The tasks th a t slaves per­
form ed in th is gang were lig h te r and m ore varied than those o f the firs t
gang and included the c u ltiv a tio n of m ille t, corn, and other food crops;
the spreading of m anure in the cane and coffee fields; the transporting of
ashes from the furnaces to the fields; the gathering o f weeds fo r anim al
feed; and the bundling of bagasse—sugar cane residue—to be used as
firew ood for the m ill furnaces.
Some plantations organized a th ird slave gang made up of children
 Transcending L in g u istic and C u ltu ra l Frontiers 147

(where numbers warranted) between the ages of eight and th irte e n years
w ho w orked under the supervision of an older fem ale slave perform ing
w hat was considered to be sm all tasks—pickin g weeds and gathering
cane trash and bagasse from around the m ill. Each c h ild carried a basket,
hence the term "basket children." A t age th irte e n or fourteen, young
slaves moved up to the Great Gang.49 The existence of a c h ild gang of
slaves depended pot only on the num ber of c h ild slaves on a plantation
but also on th e ir health and on the social and econom ic background of
slave owners and th e ir overseers. According to Debien, if a slave owner
"came from a poor background, or had been an a rtis a n ,. .. [he] did w hat
was done in France where a ll children from w orking class backgrounds,
however young, were put to w ork. As such planters usually had modest
plantations—coffee or indigo estates—where they resided, they tended to
gather the slave children and m o n ito r them despite th e ir sm all num ­
bers."50

The Code N o ir and the Feeding of Slaves

The hard labor perform ed in the slave gangs was not rewarded w ith
adequate food supplies. A lthough slave owners in San D om ingo were
obliged by law to provide slaves w ith prescribed am ounts of food, the
vast m a jo rity were negligent. Slaves were not e n tire ly "Defenceless
against th e ir m asters," as James alleges, but they "struggled w ith over­
w ork and its usual com plem ent—underfeeding."51 James w rites,

The Negro Code, Louis X IV 's a tte m p t to ensure th e m hum ane treatm ent,
ordered that they should be given, every week, tw o pots and a h a lf of
m anioc, three cassavas, tw o pounds of salted fish-about food enough to
last a h e a lth y m an fo r three days. Instead th e ir masters gave th e m half-
a-dozen p in ts of course flo u r, rice, or pease, and half-a-dozen herrings.
W orn o u t by th e ir labours a ll th ro u g h the day and far in to the n ig h t, m any
neglected to cook and ate the food raw. The ra tio n was so sm a ll and given
to them so irre g u la rly th a t often the last h a lf of the w eek found th e m
w ith n o th in g .52

The practice of reneging on obligations to feed slaves predated the

Code N oir. W ell before form al slave laws came in to being in the French
A n tille s , ordinances were drafted by local adm inistrators and local coun­
cils that operated m uch lik e courts, hearing cases and passing judgments.
M ost of the early ordinances were drafted in M a rtin iq u e —the m other
 148 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

colony of the French A n tille s —bu t they were usually adopted by other
French colonies. Some of these ordinances governed the feeding of slaves
w h ich was lik e ly an early and im p o rta n t consideration. U nder a 1648
regulation in M artinique, slave owners were required to p la n t and c u lti­
vate provisions to ensure the proper feeding of slaves.53 A lm o st tw o
decades later, it was specified th a t a ll inhabitants had to p la n t m anioc.54
The disregard fo r laws governing the feeding of slaves was widespread,
however, even w hen the laws became form alized.55
Prom ulgated under C olbert, Louis XIV's M in is te r of M arine and C olo­
nies, the edict of 1685, better know n as the Code N o il, ou tlin e d the rules
governing the relationship between masters and slaves in s ix ty articles.
A rtic le 22, to w hich James referred, deals w ith the feeding of slaves.
James highligh ted the essential features of the law, b u t he ignored or
m issed other im p o rta n t elem ents. The law specified th a t slaves over ten
years of age were to be given tw o and a h a lf measures of m anioc flo u r, or
three cassavas w eighing at least tw o and a h a lf pounds each, or the
equivalent in other food. They were not to be given both m anioc flo u r
and cassava, as James indicated. In addition, slave owners were obliged to
provide tw o pounds of salted beef, or three pounds of salted fish, or the
equivalent. C h ild slaves under ten years were to receive h a lf of the ration
a llo tte d to ad u lt slaves.56
The im portance of ensuring a guaranteed food supply was reflected in
the French A n tille s from the early eighteenth century. In M arch 1703, an
ordinance of the C onseil de la M a rtin iq u e ordered a ll planters in the
French A n tille s to p lant fiv e hundred slips of m anioc per person, in c lu d ­
ing slaves. W hen harvested, plants were to be replaced.57T his shows th a t
local food production was deemed to be im p o rta n t in supplying the
colony and the specific needs of slaves. In 1706, a detailed com m unique
by the local C ouncil of Leogane (San Dom ingo) stressed th a t it was im ­
perative th a t masters have su fficie n t supplies to feed slaves and enough
surplus fo r emergencies. It noted th a t some hungry slaves resorted to
running away and th a t others were m altreated or k ille d when caught
stealing from neighbors of th e ir owners. The C ouncil gave a ll planters
tw o m onths to plant 150 feet of m anioc and ten feet of banana fo r each
slave between age tw elve and s ix ty years. In addition, slave owners had
to furn ish , once a year or in tw o harvests each year, a barrel of g ra in -
peas, m ille t, or com —per head of slave over and above other staples such
as sweet potatoes and yams whose c u ltiv a tio n was not to be jeopardized
by the new requirem ents. A penalty of fifty livres per head of slave and
 Transcending L in g u istic and C u ltu ra l Frontiers 149

100 livres fo r repeat offenses was to be imposed on planters w ho failed to

com ply.58 Since the ru lin g had to be repeated three m onths later, on
5 August 1706,59 it is lik e ly th a t the law was disregarded.
Slave owners, a ll of w hom had to im provise due to the u n p re d icta b ility
of im ports, distributed w eekly rations on Sunday evenings or M onday
m ornings. Provisions came from collective gardens th a t slaves c u lti­
vated fo r th e ir owners.60 Planters som etim es substituted potatoes, a
m ajor staple in providing for slaves, in place of some of the food item s
prescribed by the law. Potatoes could be cultivated year round and were
easy to conserve and prepare. M ille t was more d iffic u lt both to conserve
and cook. C orn was rare in San D om ingo, and rice was expensive and
reserved fo r the sick.
In spite of the w eekly d is trib u tio n , some observers noted that the food
provided was "n o th in g to speak o f." In reference to the food provisions in
the Code N oir, Labat noted that "slaves who received w hat the King's
Ordinance authorized were lu c k y ."61 Some slave owners claim to have
supplemented the w eekly rations given to slaves w ith special food gifts.
In 1696, Labat boasted that he provided d aily lunchtim e gifts of m anioc
flour, sweet potatoes, yams, and liq u o r to dem onstrate his concern for
the w ell-being of the slaves and to ensure that they were able to support
hard w ork "w h ic h I do not w ish to see slacken, even among the female
slaves."62
Some planters attem pted to circum vent th e ir legal obligations by forc­
ing slaves to provide fo r themselves w ith produce grown in th e ir own
gardens; by supplying them w ith quantities of rum ; and by giving them
tim e o ff instead of food. Slaves always cultiva te d th e ir own plots. They
were given land, usually at the extrem ities of the plantations far from
th e ir huts, on w hich they could cu ltiva te food crops during the tw o-hour
lunch break starting either at m idday or late afternoon, in the evening, on
Sundays—th e ir day o ff—and holidays. A rtic le 6 of the Code N o ir forbade
slave owners from w orking or m aking th e ir slaves w ork on Sundays and
holidays,63 but planters m anipulated th is law by reducing the num ber of
fete days and changing the date of others, especially those that fe ll during
the sugar harvest.64
Slave gardens rem ained im portant throughout slavery and were a
means by w hich slaves inadvertently supplem ented the owners' costs. In
1698, Pere Labat w rote about the practice of a llo ttin g slaves land.65 T his
practice was s till im portant a century after Labat w rote. In 1785, a local
ordinance was introduced aim ed at forcing planters in San D om ingo to
 150 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

d istrib u te a sm all parcel o f land to m ale and fem ale slaves to cu ltiv a te fo r
them selves.66 Four years la te r in July 1789, adm inistrators V incent and
Barbe de M arbois appealed to slave owners to abide by the regulation of
10 A ugust 1776 governing the a llo tm e n t of slave gardens. T hat the
a uthorities had to cudgel them in to com plying w ith the regulations
suggests th a t the laws were ignored, and th a t as sugar economy devel­
oped in the eighteenth century and brought more land in to production,
slaves found it d iffic u lt to sustain the practice. French sources also show
th a t in s u ffic ie n t spare tim e and the distance between slave gardens and
slave dw ellings made it d iffic u lt fo r slaves to feed them selves by w orking
th e ir ow n plots. G isler notes th a t i t was often sunset when the slaves
began w o rk in th e ir fields, and by the tim e they arrived home, it was
already dark.67
The practice of giving slaves liq u o r in place of food was also prevalent
and lasting. A rtic le 23 o f the Code N o il prohibited slave owners from
giving slaves rum in place o f the food rations ou tlin e d in A rtic le 22.68 By
v io la tin g th is law, planters in the French A n tille s forced slaves who were
deprived o f food

to roam about on Sundays trying to trade their liquor for flo u r and other
essentials. This they use as a pretext for arriving very late and tired for
w ork on Mondays. Those who drink their supplies are forced to steal
from th e ir masters at the risk of being k ille d or imprisoned.69

But planters m ust also have considered the p o te n tia l dangers posed by
slaves w ho had greater access to ta fia —lo c a lly brewed rum . On 20 June
1772, the local council in Port-au-Prince introduced a law th a t prohibited
slaves from selling w ine or ta fia .70 In 1777, adm inistrators in San D o­
m ingo introduced a m ore com prehensive measure th a t banned the sale of
tafia in taverns and on plantations except when it was sold in barrels and
quantities of tw elve bottles or m ore.71 The in tro d u ctio n of another such
law in 178572 suggests th a t slaves were s till engaged in selling rum ; th is
continued practice probably indicates that the food situ a tio n rem ained
tenuous.
Rather than giving slaves th e ir w eekly rations as the law required,
some planters gave them Saturdays off, thus m aking them e n tire ly re­
sponsible fo r th e ir ow n subsistence. A rtic le 24 of the Code N o ir forbade
slave owners from giving slaves a free day during the week to w ork fo r
themselves in place of the w eekly rations.73 Those who engaged in th is
practice n o rm a lly gave slaves Saturdays or every other Saturday off,
 Transcending L in g u istic and C u ltu ra l Frontiers 151

hence the term "sam edi negre," but the law applied to any day of the
week. Some slaves used th is situ a tio n to th e ir advantage by renting or
h irin g themselves out on Saturdays. T his arrangement benefited slave
owners as it freed them from th e ir obligations to the slaves. Even so, they
did not always reward the ingenu ity of the slaves b u t instead sometimes
used Saturdays as a weapon against them . They did so by depriving select
slaves of Saturdays, a punishm ent th a t was som etim es extended to the
whole p la n ta tio n .74 Tom ich has argued th a t slaves "fe lt that they had a
rig h t to such 'free' tim e and resisted any encroachm ent upon it." 75 But it
is clear th a t the allocation of such tim e was at the w him of slave owners.
The practice of giving slaves tim e instead of food lasted u n til em ancipa­
tio n in 1848,76 but there were some im provem ents in the food situ a tio n
from the late eighteenth century, at least for some categories of slaves.
French archival sources for the early eighteenth century indicate that
more than half, perhaps even three-quarters, of the masters in the French
A n tille s disregarded A rtic le 24. One of these sources, a m anuscript w r it­
ten by religious authorities in the French colonies on 20 September 1722,
pointed out th a t even after a fam ine, masters gave slaves "nothing or
little or nothing thus placing them in such a vulnerable position that it is
d iffic u lt for them to acquire th e ir m ost urgent needs except by stealing,
and by forced and continuous labor on Sundays and holidays."77
A fte r 1760, more food was provided fo r slave wom en and children
under incentives introduced to increase the b irth rate and preserve the
young. These incentives were thus designed to serve the needs of the
plantation. In 1765, planters in San Dom ingo adopted comprehensive
measures including lig h te r workloads, more free tim e from plantation
labor, and allotm ents of larger plots for slave gardening. The more c h il­
dren a slave woman had, the greater were the rewards. Presumably, more
tim e o ff from regular plantatio n labor m eant that women could produce
more food in th e ir slave gardens. A fte r 1780, wom en were given sm aller
hoes than men fo r preparation of the terrain and weeding, but they
continued to w ork alongside m ale slaves.
Debien notes that the incentives of 1765 were in s titu te d in a sporadic
manner. Planters were no doubt caught between the need to im prove
slave conditions and the pressure to raise sugar production. The la tte r
lessened the lik e lih o o d th a t the average planter w ould be w illin g to a llo t
more land to slaves in order to grow th e ir own food or be w illin g to give
them more tim e off. It seems certain that on plantations th a t were w e ll
managed, the chances of im plem entation were greater. In a le tte r w ritte n
 152 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

in the late eighteenth century, the overseer of the Fleuriau plan ta tio n
assured the absentee ow ner th a t he was paying p a rticu la r a tte n tio n to
nourishing the children. He w rote:

Feeding the children is something w hich I have established since I have

been in charge of running your estate. The children are brought to the
Great House every day at mid-day to be fed and are given potatoes or
bananas. N ursing slave mothers whose children can take other foods
besides m ilk come at two o'clock in the afternoon for soup from my table
before going back to the fields. Women whose children are sufficiently
robust come to fetch rice w hich they m ust cook to feed their children.
When the children are weaned, th e ir mothers bring them to the Great
House every day where I provide them w ith soup, bread and meat___ 78

Punishm ent

Such incentives were seldom m aintained and had no dram atic effects on
the q u a lity of slave life , because m uch depended on the in te g rity of
planters and because the overall conditions of slavery rem ained h o rrific .
Now here is th is m ore evident than in the area of discipline; masters in
San D om ingo punished slaves in inhum ane, barbaric ways. Excessive
w hippings, branding w ith hot irons, m u tila tio n s , the "to rtu re of the
co lla r" fo r wom en suspected of abortions, and the rubbing of salt and
pepper in to fresh wounds were com m on form s of punishm ent in the
French A n tille s . T his should not be taken to mean th a t the severity of
punishm ent was u n ifo rm and constant, as James suggests. As in every
other aspect of slavery, there was a certain am ount of va ria tio n in disci­
pline, but punishm ent was n o rm a lly harsh. James hinted at the nature of
such punishm ent when he w rote th a t "th e stranger in San D om ingo was
awakened by the cracks of the w hip, the stifle d cries, and the heavy
groans of the Negroes w ho saw the sun rise o n ly to curse it fo r its renewal
of th e ir labours and th e ir pains."79
W hipping was both com m on and frequent on plantations in the French
A n tille s . Indeed, Fouchard, a H a itia n scholar, has indicated th a t "For the
least in fra ctio n , the slave was w hipped to satisfy the sadistic pleasure of
the [slave] d riv e r."80 In a le tte r of A p ril 1769, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, a
vis ito r, registered the same sentim ents w hen he said th a t slaves were fre­
q uently attached (hands and feet) to ladders and whipped u n til th e ir skin
was rented. " I have seen," he w rote, "m ale and fem ale slaves w hipped
d a ily fo r breaking a b it of earthenware or forgetting to close a door."81
 Transcending L in g u istic and C u ltu ra l Frontiers 153

A nother com m entator, the author of a h isto rica l w o rk on San Dom ingo,
remarked that in the French A n tille s , one spoke not in term s of "w h ip ­
ping" the slave but in term s of "trim m in g " the slave.82 fames correctly
asserts that w hipping was authorized by law in the Code N o ir and that
the num ber of lashes planters could adm inister varied over tim e .83 In the
eighteenth century, reports of slaves receiving fifty , one hundred, and
even tw o hundred lashes surfaced.84 F ollow ing com plaints about u n lim ­
ited w hipping of slaves, the C onseil Superieur of Cayenne in French G u i­
ana lim ite d the num ber of lashes a slave could receive in that colony to
tw enty-five in 1777.85T hat a royal in ju n c tio n backed the council's action
m ight suggest th a t tw enty-five lashes became the norm throughout the
French A n tille s ; but in M artinique, the num ber was set at tw enty-nine
from 1783.86 M ore restrictions on w hipping were introduced in the firs t
h alf of the nineteenth century. In French Guiana, local ordinances in
1820 and 1825 lim ite d the num ber of lashes a slave in prison could
receive to tw enty-nine. A m ajor ru lin g on the treatm ent of slaves came
in to being on 4 June 1846 and applied to a ll the French colonies. Am ong
its several provisions was one that restricted the num ber of strokes a
male could receive to fifteen. The ru lin g also prohibited the w hipping of
women, children, and the elderly.87 As in form er tim es, however, slave
owners continued to disregard the law.
U nder A rtic le 42 of the Code N oir, slave owners could chain and
beat slaves w ith cords when they "m erited" such punishm ent.88 French
sources corroborate James's assertion that rather than being beaten w ith
ordinary cane or woven cords as the Code N o ir authorized, slaves were
often whipped w ith w hat James aptly translates as the " rigoise or th ic k
thong of cow-hide, or by the laines—local grow th of reeds, supple and
p lia n t lik e w halebone."89 But slave owners could not tortu re or m u tila te
th e ir slaves as th is was considered an offense that could result in the
confiscation by the state of the slaves in question and in charges against
slave owners.90Also, slave owners and slave drivers w ho m urdered slaves
were to be pursued in the c rim in a l court and judged according to the
"a tro c ity of the circum stances,"91 an ambiguous clause. These laws were
not enforced since the ow ners' w ell-being always prevailed over that of
the slaves. Besides, those who were in a position to enforce the laws were
also the perpetrators of crim es against slaves. The need to keep the mass
of black slaves in check made law and order the preoccupation of the
planter class. In spite of the laws, slave owners could, in reality, k ill
w ith im p u n ity —an aspect of slavery that made slave owners treat slaves
 154 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

harshly.92 Thus, slaves in San D om ingo were legally defenseless93 and,

according to James, "w ere not in fre q u e n tly whipped to death."94
Slave resistance in San D om ingo notw ithstan ding, the im p u n ity of
slave owners had to be reckoned w ith . T h is im p u n ity was brought out as
early as 1697 when Belin, a slave ow ner in Petit-G oave in San D om ingo,
beat one of his slaves to death. A fte r prom ising to im prove his treatm ent
of the slaves, he was fined th irty livre s tournois. In 1712, one Phelypeaux
w rote a le tte r to the M in is try of Colonies in Paris in w h ich he indicated
th a t planters applied hot irons, w h ich were reheated and used hour after
hour, to the soles of the feet of m ale and fem ale slaves some of whom , six
m onths later, could s till not put th e ir feet on the ground.95
A lso in s tru c tiv e is the case of Saint M a rtin , a w ealthy planter from San
D om ingo whose "w ealth w ould have been even greater had he not d im in ­
ished it by his ow n in h u m a n ity ."96 M a rtin is alleged to have k ille d more
than 200 of his slaves b u t possessed another 300 to 400 w ho w orked on
three profitable plantations th a t he owned. N otorious fo r his m ethod of
torture, w h ich he adopted from other planters in the v ic in ity , M a rtin
engaged in com plete m u tila tio n of fiv e of his slave., in September 1740.
The act led adm inistrators in San D om ingo to conclude that "one could
not, in re a lity, punish the blacks m ore severely than th a t." In spite of
th e ir opinion, the adm inistrators upheld the supreme rights of slave
owners over slaves. In M arch 1741, six m onths after the incident, they
w rote to the M in is try of M arine and Colonies in Paris to say th a t they
had accepted a donation of 150,000 livres from M a rtin w ho thereby
extricated him se lf from the m atter. As they explained,

If it is necessary to reprimand the abuses that inhumane masters can

engage in because of their authority, it is also necessary, however ex­
treme it may appear, not to do anything that may give the slaves the
wrong impression and allow them to move away from the confines of
dependence and submission in w hich they must be kept. The challenge is
certainly to balance this necessity and the maintenance of authority
against human rights. And we m ust consider this in a ll that we do in this
case.97

The M a rtin case made the M in is te r of Colonies realize that com ­

p laints about the b ru ta lity o f slaveowners were not exaggerated. He was
perturbed about the event and believed that the adm inistrators had erred
in not charging M a rtin , given the severity of the punishm ent he had
in flic te d upon the slaves. Even so, the M in iste r's c o m p licity w ith adm in-
 Transcending L in g u istic and C u ltu ra l Frontiers 155

istrators emerged when he expressed the view th a t M a rtin 's financial

con trib u tio n w ould be useful in b u ild in g fo rtific a tio n in the tow n of
Saint-M arc. H is own an ticip a tio n of a new law th a t the adm inistrators
promised to draft in order to curb abuses98 shows th a t the protective
regulations in the Code N o ir were ignored. D ow n to the overthrow of
slavery in San D om ingo and its a b o litio n in the rest of the French A n til­
les, local adm inistrations continued to draft new protective laws but
seldom convicted slave owners fo r crim es com m itted against slaves, if
they were prosecuted at a ll. They consciously decided not to police slave
owners against w hom evidence of abuse was often quite strong. Thus,
the law was usually circum vented and m ost slave owners escaped w ith a
fine.

Gender-Specific Punishm ent

Some types of punishm ent were gender-specific even though m ale and
female slaves were generally subjected to the same laws and treatm ent
under slavery. The Code N o ir made no gender d is tin c tio n in relation to
the adm inistration of punishm ent. James has referred to the "to rtu re of
the collar," a reference to the iro n collars that wom en suspected of self-
induced abortions were made to wear. A lthough he did not elaborate, he
m entioned that "the collar never le ft th e ir necks u n til they had produced
a c h ild ."99 To be sure, slave wom en were valued more for th e ir a b ility to
w ork than th e ir reproductive capacities, but planters nevertheless ex­
pected them to reproduce.100
One of the planters who became associated w ith gender-specific pun­
ishm ent was Stanislas Foache, the owner of several plantations in San
Dom ingo who le ft specific instru ctio n s w ith his overseers before he
became an absentee planter in 1778. The in structions pertained to his
sugar plantatio n at Jean-Rabel but were m eant to be adopted generally.
Foache instructed his overseer to ensure that a ll women w ho became
pregnant be made to register w ith the m idw ife and surgeon on the planta­
tion. Those who did not com ply were to be subjected to w hippings.
Overseers were also required to m on ito r pregnant wom en and to com ­
pensate m others who produced live birth s as w e ll as m idw ives who
assisted the delivery w ith money and fabric. If the infants died, how ­
ever, both women were to be whipped. In addition, the m other was to
be placed in an iron collar " u n til such tim e as she became pregnant
again."101
 156 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

Besides being placed in iro n collars, w om en suspected of self-induced

abortions were also made to wear a wooden, hum an-like figure about one
foot long, around th e ir necks. In the eighteenth century, M oreau de
S aint-M ery witnessed th is punishm ent being imposed on an eighteen-
year-old slave wom an in San D om ingo. The wom an insisted th a t she was
innocent,102b u t slaves had no recourse to the law because they could n o t
testify, e ith e r in c rim in a l or c iv il cases, against th e ir owners. M oreover,
the burden of proof rested upon the slaves.

C onclusion

As hum an beings w ho were conscious of th e ir social condition, slaves

responded to th e ir oppression by resisting slavery in a variety of ways
ranging from o u trig h t re v o lt to subtle form s of day-to-day resistance
such as m alingering, adm inistering poison, and engaging in insolence.
Slave resistance did not jo lt slave owners in to honoring th e ir obligations
to slaves or softening th e ir stance on punishm ent; it o n ly hardened th e ir
resolve. D ow n to the San D om ingo R evolution w h ich broke out in 1791
w hen slaves took up arms against th e ir owners and fought a w ar of
lib e ra tio n , there was chronic disregard fo r the laws. T his was possible
because of w hat Gordon K. Lew is rig h tly calls w hite , racial suprem acy103
w h ich colonists—slave owners and non-slave owners a lik e —view ed as a
v ita l strategy to m a in ta in con tro l over the slaves. As such, the slave laws
could not be enforced, and efforts to curb widespread abuses generally
failed as the slave ow ners' rights in the slave usually prevailed above a ll
else. In v iv id and im aginative language, C.L.R. James captured the essen­
tia l elem ents of slavery in San D om ingo by tapping French sources and
in te rp re tin g the data from them in a creative and dynam ic way. The
w o rld of slavery he exposed in The B lack Jacobins was largely a w orld of
cruelty, inhum anity, and incredible b ru ta lity , h ith e rto unknow n to m ost
English readers. But it was also a w o rld in w hich slaves used th e ir
in g e n u ity to carve out th e ir ow n spheres of influence and to m aintain
th e ir A frican tra d itio n s as best they could. In depicting the in s titu tio n of
slavery, James chose to stress one w o rld —the form er over the la tte r. And
yet, in the rest of The B lack Jacobins, he chronicles and analyzes the
heroic struggle of slaves whose m o tiva tio n fo r resistance stemmed from
more than ju st b ru ta lity . T h is was the com plexity of slavery. James did
not set out to capture th is com plexity, b u t his pioneering c o n trib u tio n
rem ains valuable and indispensable nevertheless. Those w ho study slav-
 Transcending L in g u istic and C u ltu ra l Frontiers 157

ery in the French A n tille s , indeed, those w ho study slavery anywhere,

w ill always be indebted to h im fo r his keen foresight, fo r his rem arkable
a b ility to m arshal and analyze fragm ented data in an adopted language,
and fo r his uncom m on courage in w ritin g h isto ry as he saw it, however
unpopular it m ay have been.

Notes

1. C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint UO uverture and the San
Domingo R evolution (New York: Random House, 1963).
2. See Justin Girod-Chantrans, Voyage d ’un Suisse dans differentes colonies
d'Am erique (Paris, 1785); Pierre de Vaissiere, La societe et la vie creole sous
Vancien regime, 1629-1789 (Paris, 1909).
3. De Vaissiere, Societe, 168.
4. Jean-Baptiste (Pere) Labat, Nouveau voyage aux iles de VAmerique 6 vols.
(Paris: G uillaum e Cavelier, 1722)3: 199-209, 419.
5. Girod-Chantrans, Voyage, 178.
6. Ibid., 139.
7. Le Code n o ir ou recueil des reglements rendus jusqu'a present (Basse-
Terre: Societe d'histoire de la Guadeloupe, 1980).
8. See, for example, Gabriel Debien, Les esclaves aux A n tille s frangaises
(Basse-Terre: Societe d'histoire de la Guadeloupe, 1974); and Plantations et es­
claves d Saint-Domingue (Dakar: Publications de la section d'histoire, 1962).
9. Gaston M artin, H istoire de Vesclavage dans les colonies frangaises (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1948); Antoine Gisler, Vesclavage aux A n tille s
frangaises 11965; Paris: Karthala, 1981).
10. Jean-Baptiste (Pere) Dutertre, H istoire generale des A n tille s habitees
par les Frangais, 3 vols. (Paris, 1654-1667); Pere Labat, Nouveau voyage,-
Pierre-Victor Malouet, Memoire sur Vesclavage des negres (Paris: Neufchatel,
1788); Colonel Malenfant, Des colonies, et particulierem ent de celle de Saint-
Domingue (Paris, 1814); M . France, La verity et les fa its ou Vesclavage a nu (Paris:
Moreau, 1846); Lucien Peytraud, VEsclavage aux A n tille s frangaises avant 1789
(Paris: Hachette, 1897).
11. Gordon K. Lewis, M ain Currents in Caribbean Thought (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins U niversity Press, 1983), 124.
12. Lewis, M ain Currents, 66.
13. James, Jacobins, 10-11.
14. Debien, Les esclaves, 220.
15. Cited in Debien, Les esclaves, 220. See also Maurice Satineau, H istoire de
la Guadeloupe sous Vancien Regime (Paris: Payot, 1928), 260.
16. Debien, Les esclaves, 222.
17. Frantz Tardo-Dino, Le co llie r de servitude (Paris: Editions Caribeennes,
1985), 122.
18. Debien, Les esclaves, 228.
19. Jacques Cauna, A u temps des isles a sucre: histoire d'une p lantation de
Saint-Domingue au X V lIle siecle (Paris: Karthala, 1987), 113.
 158 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

20. Carolyn Fick, The M aking o f H a iti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from
B elow (Knoxville: U n ive rsity of Tennessee Press, 1990), 29.
21. Debien, Les esclaves, 145, 221-27.
22. Satineau, H istoire, 260.
23. D utertre, Histoire, 2: 482 cited in Debien, Les esclaves, 220.
24. D utertre, H istoire, 2: 483, cited in Debien, Les esclaves, 221.
25. See Debien, Les esclaves, 222; Satineau, H istoire, 260.
26. Debien, Les esclaves, 222-24.
27. Ibid., 227; Cauna, A u temps, 118. *
28. Debien, Les esclaves, 226-27.
29. Ibid., 227.
30. Cauna, A u temps, 118.
31. Debien, Les esclaves, 223.
32. Ibid., 224-25.
33. Ibid., 224.
34. Ibid., 224.
35. Cauna, A u temps, 113.
36. Debien, Les esclaves, 224.
37. Cauna, A u temps, 117.
38. fames, Jacobins, 10.
39. Debien, Les esclaves, 135-36; Gisler, Lesclavage, 35; Cauna, A u temps,
116; Girod-Chantrans, Voyage, 130.
40. Cauna, A u temps, 116.
41. Girod-Chantrans, Voyage, 131.
42. Ibid., 129.
43. Ibid., 142.
44. Ibid., 139.
45. Debien, Les esclaves, 135.
46. See D avid Barry Gaspar, Bondmen and Rebels: A Study o f Master-Slave
Relations in A ntigua (Baltimore: fohns H opkins U n ive rsity Press, 1985), 105;
Barry Higman, Slave Populations of the B ritish Caribbean, 1807-1834 (Bal­
tim ore: Johns H opkins U n ive rsity Press, 1984), 109; J. H arry Bennett, Bondsmen
and Bishops: Slavery and Apprenticeship on the Codrington Plantations o f Bar­
bados (Berkeley: U nive rsity of C alifornia Press, 1958), 45; H ila ry Beckles, N a tu ­
ra l Rebels: A Social H isto ry of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados (New Bruns­
w ick: Rutgers U niversity Press, 1989), 29-43; M ichael Craton, Searching fo r the
Invisible M an: Slave and P lantation Life in Jamaica (Cambridge: Harvard U n i­
versity Press, 1978), 205-19; Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society,
1650-1838 (Bloomington: Indiana U n ive rsity Press, 1990), 38.
47. Debien, Les esclaves, 138; Bernard M o itt, "Behind the Sugar Fortunes:
Women, Labour and the Development of Caribbean Plantations during Slavery,"
in A frican C ontinuities, ed. S. C hilungu and S. Niang (Toronto: Terebi Publica­
tions, 1989), 412.
48. V ictor Schoelcher, Des colonies frangaises: a b o litio n im m ediate de Tes-
clavage (Basse-Terre: Soci£t6 d'histoire de la Guadeloupe, 1976), 23.
49. Debien, Les esclaves, 136.
50. Ibid., 137.
51. James, Jacobins, 11.
 Transcending L in g u istic and C u ltu ra l Frontiers 159

52. Ibid.
53. Medic Moreau de Saint-Mery. Lois et constitutions des colonies frangaises
de VAm &ique sous le vent, 6 vols. (Paris: 1784-1790) 1: 68: Ordonnance du
Gouverneur de la M artinique, 13 July 1648.
54. Moreau de Saint-Mery, Lois, 1: 194: A rre t du Conseil de la M artinique,
14 A p ril 1670.
55. See Bernard M o itt, "Sugar, Slavery and the Law in the French Caribbean,"
unpublished a rtic le
56. Le Code noir, 40.
57. Debien, Les esclaves, 183.
58. Moreau de Saint-Mery, Lois, 2: 70; Reglement du conseil de L6ogane qui
ordonne de planter des vivres pour la nourriture des N£gres, 3 M ay 1706.
59. Moreau de Saint-Mery, Lois, 2:162.
60. Debien, Les esclaves, 154-55.
61. Labat, Nouveau voyage, 4:185.
62. Ibid., 3:211.
63. Le Code noir, 32-33; Louis Sala-Molins, Le Code n o ir ou le Calvaire de Ca­
naan (Paris: Presses U niversitaires de France, 1987), 102-3; Gisler, L’esclavage,
40-41.
64. Debien, Les esclaves, 154-55; Debien, Plantation, 106.
65. Labat, Nouveau voyage, 4: 172.
66. Fouchard, Marrons, 64.
67. Gisler, Lesclavage, 40.
68. Le Code noir, 118.
69. Labat, Nouveau voyage, 3: 442; See also Debien, Les esclaves, 177; Anne-
Marie Bruleaux et al., Deux siecles d ’esclavage en Guyane frangaise, 1652-1848
(Paris: L'Harmattan, 1986), 36.
70. Moreau de Saint-Mery, Lois, 5: 393; A rret du Conseil du Port-au-Prince,
touchant les logements loues aux Esclaves, et la vente du v in ou du Tafia par les
dits Esclaves, 20 June 1772.
71. Moreau de Saint-Mery, Lois, 5: 804; Ordonnance des A dm inistrateurs
concemant le debet du tafia, 10 December 1777.
72. Moreau de Saint-Mery, Lois, 6:700; Ordonnance du Juge de Police de Saint-
Marc touchant la vente de Tafia, 22 June 1785.
73. Le Code noir, 40-41.
74. Rouvellat de Cussac, Situation des esclaves dans les colonies frangaises,
urgence de leur emancipation (Paris, 1845) in Sala M olins, Code noir, 139.
75. Dale Tomich, Slavery in the C ircu it of Sugar: M a rtin iq u e and the World
Economy, 1830-1848 (Baltimore: Johns H opkins U niversity Press, 1990), 253.
76. Debien, Les esclaves, 182.
77. A N Colonies F3 91, "M em oire au Saint-Siege," cited in A ntoine Gisler,
Lesclavage, 34.
78. Cauna, Au temps, 100.
79. James, Jacobins, 9-10.
80. Jean Fouchard, Les marrons de la lib e rty (Paris: Edition de l'ecole, 1972),
111.
81. Cited in Gisler, Lesclavage, 41-42.
82. A. Cabon, H istoire d 'H a iti, cited in Gisler, 42.
 160 The B lack Jacobins: A n Assessment

83. fames, Jacobins, 12.

84. Gisler, Uesclavage, 41.
85. Bruleaux et. ai., Deuxsiecles, 169.
86. Tom ich, Slavery, 242.
87. Bruleaux et al.; D eux siecles, 169.
88. Le Code noir, 48-49.
89. James, Jacobins, 12.
90. Le Code n o t, 48-49.
91. Ibid., 49. *
92. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge: Harvard U n i­
versity Press, 1982), 39.
93. V ictor Schoelcher, Des colonies Frangaises, 39.
94. James, Jacobins, 12.
95. Cited in Sala-Molins, Code no t, 176-77.
96. C ited in Gisler, Uesclavage, 108.
97. Ibid.
98. Moreau de Saint-Mery, Lois, 3:674-75; Lettre a M M de Lamage et M a illa rt
sur les mauvais traitm ents des maitres pour leurs esclaves, 15 July 1741.
99. James, Jacobins, 13.
100. Bernard M o itt, " Women and Resistance in the French Caribbean during
Slavery," unpublished article.
101. Debien, Plantations, 129-30.
102. Moreau de Saint-Mery, D escription de la partie frangaise de Lisle Saint-
Domingue, 3 vols. (Paris: Societe des colonies frangaises, 1958) 3: 1272. See also,
Debien, Les esclaves, 365.
103. Lewis, M ain Currents, 127.
 The Am erican Years,

a C ollaborative Enterprise:

The PoHtical D im ension

 Grace Lee Boggs
p

C.L.R. James: O rganizing in the U.S.A.,

1938-1953

In 1962 C.L.R. James and I w ent our separate w ays,1 b u t I shall always
cherish the years we w orked together because it was during that period
th a t m y philosophy of revolution as a great leap forw ard in the evolution
of the hum an race began to take shape. M y aim here is to recapture for
others some of the special magic of th a t period.
I firs t m et CLR in 1941 in Chicago where I had gone to start life afresh
in the heart of Am erica after nine years in the ivo ry tow er of the univer­
sity. When we m et, I had already decided to become a re vo lu tio n ist,
w h ich —based on w hat had attracted me in the firs t place to the W orkers
Party—I thought w ould mean c h ie fly day-to-day organizing in the black
com m unity. However, the m om ent CLR discovered th a t I had studied
Hegel and could read German, he had me translating C apital for h im and
com paring its structure w ith Hegel's Logic. In 19421moved back to New
York, and for the next eighteen years (even after CLR le ft the U nited
States in 1953), we were constantly w orking together on one project or
another. In 1954 I spent the spring in London m ostly w orking on The
People o f Kenya Speak fo r Themselves by M biyu Koinange, and in 19571
came to England again to w ork on Facing R eality and the book on
N krum ah.
One of CLR's great gifts was th a t he could detect the special ab ilitie s
and interests of individua ls and encourage them to use these to enrich
the revolutionary struggle. T hat is one of the m ain reasons w hy the few
dozen of us in the Johnson-Forest Tendency, as we were know n, were
able to w rite so m uch on so m any subjects.
For example, Raya Dunayevskaya, or Freddie Forest as she was know n

163
 164 The Am erican Years: The P o litic a l D im ension

at the tim e, was a pow erful and determ ined wom an, born in Russia and
raised in the U n ite d States, w ith little form al education but w ith a
passion fo r theory. She had been a T ro tskyite since the early 1930s and
had learned Russian so th a t she could go to M exico and become Trotsky's
secretary. But it was not u n til CLR came along th a t she was able to
develop her theoretical powers, specializing in the analysis of Russia
in the lig h t of M arx's philosophy. In those days, m ost radical wom en
w orked at secretarial jobs so th a t th e ir m en could become fu ll-tim e party
functionaries.
Filom ena Daddario, the daughter of Ita lia n im m igrants—her father and
brothers were sanitation w orkers—sold records in a m usic shop. She had
a m arvelous ear fo r popular ly ric s and a love fo r the spoken w ord. So CLR
introduced her to Shakespeare, and before long, she was re citin g and
in te rp re tin g Shakespeare to popular audiences. Selma W einstein, la te r
Selma James, was a young m other who from her life in the plant and at
home had developed in sig h t in to the subtle form s th a t m ale dom ination
takes in the U n ite d States. She was encouraged to w rite the pam phlet A
W oman's Place w ith Filom ena. P h il Singer, a young General M otors
w orker, was always ta lk in g about the frustrations of the rank-and-file
w orker in the plant. CLR proposed th a t he keep a jou rn a l of his obser­
vations, and portions were subsequently published in The A m erican
W orker by Paul Romano and Ria Stone (as I was know n at th a t tim e). Si
Owen's stories of his life as a black w orker from the South were edited
in to the paperback In d ig n a n t H eart by Constance Webb James w ho w ent
on to w rite the firs t fu ll-le n g th study of Richard W right. W illie Gorm an,
an in te lle c tu a l w ith a T alm udic background and a fla ir fo r sweeping
h isto ric a l generalizations, was assigned to w rite and speak on the a n ti­
slavery m ovem ent and the C iv il War. Freddy and Lym an Paine were
a couple w ith w hom CLR developed an especially close association.
Freddy had been w orking and organizing in the plant since she was
fifteen; Lym an was a Harvard-educated architect, one of whose ancestors
had signed the D eclaration of Independence. Together they had a genius
fo r hosting sm all gatherings where people from m any different w alks of
life could eat, d rin k, hold far-reaching conversations, and lis te n to the
m usic of Beethoven and Louis Arm strong. So th e ir house at 629 Hudson
Street became the k in d of center th a t every p o litic a l group needs—where
revolutiona ry p o litic s and cu ltu re flow ed n a tu ra lly in to one another.
M ost of his friends and adm irers today fin d it d iffic u lt to understand
how CLR, who had already made a name fo r him self as the author of The
 O rganizing in the U.S.A. 165

Black Jacobins and as a cricke t correspondent when he came to the

U nited States in 1938, was content to spend the next fifte e n years liv in g
and w orking in obscurity inside the sm all T ro tskyite parties, w ritin g and
speaking under pseudonyms lik e J. R. Johnson and A.A.B. M y own view
is th a t these were the happiest and m ost productive years of his long and
extraordina rily productive life .
In New York ifi those days there were a lo t of radical intelle ctu a ls who
had been forced to leave Europe because of the rise of H itle r. As far as
they were concerned, Am ericans had no culture, and Am erican w orkers
were especially backward because they had never form ed a Social Dem o­
cratic or mass labor party. So m ost of them huddled together lik e exiles,
com pletely alienated from the Am erican people.
When CLR arrived in the U nited States, he had already studied and
internalized the m ost im portant achievem ents of European c iv iliz a tio n .
But as a black man, a colonial, and a M arxist, he also knew th a t European
barbarism had not just begun w ith H itle r. In the U nited States, he found
his m ind expanding as it had never been able to do in T rinidad or in
England. Like Tocqueville in the 1830s and D . H . Lawrence in the 1920s,
he was fascinated by the energy and exuberance of the Am erican people,
the disdain of the ordinary man and wom an fo r a ll authority, and the
pride of every citize n in his or her d is tin c tiv e personality w h ile con­
stantly seeking association and com m unity w ith others. As a result, he
soon came to believe, as Thomas Paine had believed in the 1770s, that an
Am erican re volution in our tim e could become a beacon to the w hole
w orld.
In the Johnson-Forest Tendency, CLR was able to w ork in tim a te ly
w ith a representative sample of the new hum an forces that were emerg­
ing in the U nited States. Black, w hite, Asian and chicano, workers and
intellectuals, liv in g on the East Coast, the West Coast, and in the M id ­
west, we embodied the rich ethnic, social, and regional diversity of the
country—except that our group did not include any N ative Am ericans or
anyone liv in g in the South at the tim e. M ost of us worked in the plant
during the w ar years. M ost of us had also joined the radical m ovem ent
because we wanted to make a second Am erican re vo lu tio n —that to us at
the tim e m eant c h ie fly encouraging the independent struggles of blacks
for first-class citizenship and the struggles of rank-and-file workers for
more hum an relationships inside the plant as the foundation of a new
mode of production. So, although the Johnson-Forest Tendency was orig­
in a lly organized around the Russian question—we took the position that
 166 The Am erican Years: The P o litic a l D im ension

Russia was state ca p ita lis t—the focus of our struggles soon shifted to
w hat in these days were called "T he Negro Q uestion" and "T he A m e ri­
can Q uestion."
CLR had the a b ility not o n ly to teach b u t also to learn from grassroots
people. A n excellent example of th is is the little pam phlet D ow n w ith
S tarvation Wages in Southeast M issouri th a t he p u t together from w hat
the sharecroppers them selves said about w hy they had decided to go on
strike .2 He could hold fo rth on a m u ltitu d e of subjects, b u t he could also
lis te n p a tie n tly to w hat people said and give it back w ith enlarged mean­
ing. As Freddy Paine used to say, "he w ould p ic k your brains and then
m ake a w hole philosophical m agillah out of it." So he learned from us
how Am ericans thought and fe lt; and in tu rn , because of his fa m ilia rity
w ith European cu ltu re and the independence m ovem ents in the West
Indies and A frica, he was able to satisfy our hunger fo r an enlarged view
of the one w o rld th a t was em erging during W orld War II.
The 1930s and 1940s were a very special period in A m erican history.
The confidence of the w orkers in the econom ic royalists had been so
shaken by the Great Depression th a t as soon as in d u s tria l production
began to p ic k up in the m iddle 1930s, w orkers in auto, steel, rubber and
m in in g created the c io (Congress of In d u stria l O rganization), a new fo rm
of organization w ith in w h ich w orkers of a ll categories and a ll races were
brought together in one union. The weapon they had forged to create the
c io was the s it-in , a new m ethod of struggle invented by A m erican
w orkers. The sit-in s were so effective because they b u ilt the w orking
force w ith in the plant in to a solid w a ll of opposition to the company. A t
the same tim e, they created inside the plant a vast p o litic a l school in
w h ich w orkers discussed and argued questions th a t had h ith e rto been
com pletely outside th e ir sphere and learned things about th e ir h isto ry
and th e ir p o te n tia l—or w hat we w ould today ca ll th e ir "id e n tity ."
W ith the founding of the c io , people a ll over the country fe lt th a t a
new day had dawned not o nly fo r the average w orking m an and woman
bu t fo r the e ntire nation. W orkers and those sym pathetic to th e ir struggle
sang "S o lid a rity Forever" w ith m ore fervor than they sang the national
anthem . The union label in one's clo th in g became a sym bol of the
brotherhood of the oppressed. Even the id e n tific a tio n badge issued by
the company became a badge of d is tin c tio n th a t w orkers wore proudly
to com m unity functions, in clu d in g church services, the way th a t you
m ig h t wear the flag of your country in your lapel. To get a job in the plant
and to jo in the union was to become a part of a new w o rld in the m aking.
 O rganizing in the U.S.A. 167

In 1940 there were s till 11 m illio n unem ployed Am ericans. But as

production expanded fo r W orld War II and as m illio n s were inducted in to
the armed forces, v irtu a lly anyone could get a job in the plant. A t firs t
blacks were excluded; but after hundreds of thousands of blacks threat­
ened to m arch on W ashington under the leadership of A. P h ilip Ran­
dolph, the Roosevelt adm inistration had been forced to issue Executive
Order 8802 m aking nondiscrim inatio n in h irin g a condition fo r getting
defense contracts.
As a result, throughout W orld War II there was a new blend of A m eri­
cans in the factories: wom en and men, blacks, w hites and chicanos,
h illb illie s , farm ers, intellectua ls and radicals, each w ith th e ir own view
of w hat was going on in the w orld. Again the plant was lik e a vast school
w ith people from a ll different backgrounds exchanging stories of where
they had come from , how they viewed th e ir lives, discussing issues,
borrow ing and lending books, going bow ling and d rin kin g together after
w ork. Because the company was guaranteed p ro fits after costs—through
w hat were know n as Cost-Plus contracts—management did not bear
down on workers to produce and was in fact n o toriously w asteful and
in e ffic ie n t. Thus, fo r example, w orkers in M ichigan w ould th in k nothing
of bringing in a deer during the h u nting season and roasting it rig h t in the
plant fo r a ll to enjoy. In the factory where I worked in New York we held
Black H istory discussions during our coffee breaks, straggling back to our
benches long after the b e ll had rung. Because the demand fo r workers was
so great, you could q u it one job in the m orning and be hired in to another
in the afternoon.
S hortly after Pearl Harbor, the labor leadership had given the Roosevelt
adm inistration a N o-S trike Pledge. But as workers began to feel the pinch
of high prices and com m odity shortages, they also became increasingly
resentful of the huge p rofits the companies were m aking. In the early
years of the war, w orkers had fe lt it was th e ir p a trio tic duty to keep
producing fo r the men at the fro n t. But as the war in Europe came to an
end and some layoffs began to take place, workers fe lt freer to act out
th e ir h o s tility to management. As a result, in 1944 and 1945 a wave of
w ildcat strikes swept the country. M arty Glaberman has w ritte n a whole
book, W artim e Strikes, about these struggles.
In 1945 and 1946 there was also a new consciousness among the men
and women returning from the armed services. D uring the w ar 14 m il­
lio n Am ericans, irrespective of th e ir form er occupations, had found
themselves assigned to a variety of functions not only in combat but in
 168 The A m erican Years: The P o litic a l D im ension

transport, ordnance, hospitals and offices. A farm boy had been trans­
form ed in to a signal corps specialist; a cle rk in a shoe store had become a
com bat m edic among whose responsibilitie s was the a d m inistration of
m orphine or plasm a to the wounded in accordance w ith his on-the-spot
judgm ent of the nature of th e ir in ju rie s and the possib ilitie s of th e ir
recovery. A ll th is had been the ro u tin e experience of every enlisted man.
And equally ro u tin e had been the expendability of any one of them .
Blacks had also been radicalized by th e ir w artim e experiences.
T hroughout the war, blacks had rem inded Am ericans of the hypocrisy of
fig h tin g fo r dem ocracy abroad w h ile denying i t at home. The issuance of
Executive O rder 8802 in response to the threat of a mass M arch on
W ashington had made blacks aware of the power of th e ir independent
struggle. By W orld War n, m ost blacks were pro-union; b u t during the
war, they had also learned th a t on the local level the u n io n tended to
accommodate its e lf to the racism of w h ite w orkers. So after the war,
black auto w orkers in D e tro it were loo kin g around fo r radical p o litic a l
organizations th a t w ould attack racism on a m ore fundam ental level. In
the South, black veterans were refusing to go to the back of the bus,
in itia tin g a process th a t w ould culm inate in the M ontgom ery Bus Boy­
c o tt of 1955-56.
A t the same tim e, in popular magazines, business consultants were
w orrying p u b lic ly —n o t o n ly w hether peacetim e capitalism could pro­
vide jobs for 60 m illio n w orkers, bu t also how w orkers w ho had shown
them selves so ho stile to any external discip lin e could be depended on to
operate the new advanced m achinery th a t w ould be introduced in to
in d u stry after the war. Some were even saying that, instead of the beasts
of burden and u n skille d m achine hands of the past, the new technology
w ould require all-round educated m en and wom en.
For those of us in the Johnson-Forest Tendency, w ho had o rig in a lly
studied M arx's C a p ita l in order to understand w hat was going on in
production w ith in Soviet Russia, i t seemed th a t everything M arx had
said in C a p ita l was now becom ing a re a lity in the U nited States. In the
creation of the c io and the wave of w artim e strikes defying the govern­
m ent, management, and the labor leadership, we were w itnessing the
re vo lt th a t M arx had anticipated of the w orking class, "a class always
increasing in num bers and disciplined, u nited and organized by the very
m echanism of the process of production its e lf."3 The anxieties of the
bourgeoisie about the p ro d u c tiv ity of the w orkers dem onstrated to us
how prophetic M arx had been w hen he w rote th a t "M odern Industry,
 O rganizing in the U.S.A. 169

indeed, compels society, under penalty of death, to replace the detail-

w orker of today, crippled by life lo n g re p e titio n of the one and same
triv ia l operation, and thus reduced to a fragm ent of a man, by the fu lly
developed in d ivid u a l, f it fo r a variety of labors, ready to face any changes
of production, and to w hom the different social functions he perform s are
but so m any modes of giving free scope to his ow n natural and acquired
powers."4 We were confident th a t in post-W orld War II Am erica a ll the
contradictions that M arx had analyzed in C a p ita l w ould explode. As we
w rote in our resolution on the Am erican Q uestion in 1946, "N o revolu­
tionary can deny the p o s s ib ility th a t tw o years from today the Am erican
proletariat could cover the nation w ith Soviets or th e ir equivalent in a
nation-w ide strike against the bourgeoisie."
To the m a jo rity w ith in the W orkers Party w hat we were saying was
rom antic idealism ; "p o litic s in the stratosphere," they called it. M ost of
the leaders of the party had been attracted to the revolutionary m ove­
m ent, not because of the Am erican struggle, bu t because of the Russian
R evolution. Socialism to them m eant ch ie fly the n a tiona lization of prop­
erty and planned production because that is w hat the w orkers' state in
Russia had established. As Hegel w ould say, they had made a particular, a
fin ite determ ination, in to a universal. O r in the more m odern language of
Thomas Kuhn, th e ir m inds were stuck in a paradigm w hich had once
been useful fo r explaining certain aspects of re a lity but w hich was now
creating more contradictions than it was resolving.5 The bureaucratic
degeneration of the Russian w orkers' state had also created in them a
deep despair w hich kept them from responding w holeheartedly to the
spontaneous co m b a tivity of rank and file workers. The result was th a t
they really fe lt more at home w ith the labor leadership.
T his was not just a theoretical question. For example, when the w ar
w ith Japan came to an end in August 1945,1was w orking in a sm all plant
in Brooklyn where the local union officers were members of the Workers
Party. When we returned to w ork fo llo w in g the two-day celebration of
V-J Day, we were to ld by management th a t we should a ll go home.
Everyone had anticipated the layoff, but th a t did not make it any more
palatable. So w orkers responded enthusiastically to the proposal made by
me and another comrade, also a Johnsonite, th a t we should refuse to
leave. For three hours we stayed in the plant, ta lk in g about how wrong it
was for management to have the power to lay us o ff after a ll the w ork we
had done for the w ar and about how we should be organizing and m o b iliz ­
ing to take over the plants and reconvert them to peacetime production.
 170 The A m erican Years: The P o litic a l D im ension

M eanw hile, the u n ion officers, w ho were supposed to be our comrades,

were nowhere to be found. Later we learned th a t they were w o rkin g out
w ith management an orderly way fo r us to p ic k up our checks so th a t we
could be persuaded to leave the plant.
It was th is k in d of contra d ictio n th a t made it increasingly d iffic u lt fo r
us to rem ain, firs t, in the W orkers Party and la te r in the Socialist W orkers
Party, and th a t led to our decision in 195 J, to set out on our ow n to pub­
lis h Correspondence, a paper w ritte n by and fo r rank-and-file w o rk­
ers, blacks, wom en, and youth. The firs t e ditor of Correspondence was
Johnny Zupan, a Ford w orker w ho was always asking philosophical
questions. In the fa ll of 1952, in order to prepare fo r the p u b licatio n of
Correspondence we organized a special school in w hich blacks, rank-
and-file w orkers, wom en, and young people were the teachers w h ile the
in te lle ctu a ls listened o r played the role of " fu ll fo u n ta in pens." T his was
a very im p o rta n t school fo r a ll of us p o litic a lly . It also m eant a lo t to me
personally because it was at th is school th a t I m et James Boggs w hom I
la te r m arried, s e ttlin g in D e tro it, w h ich has been m y home ever since.
As it turned out, the next great m ovem ent in the U n ite d States was not
the rank-and-file w orkers m ovem ent bu t the black m ovem ent. N ev­
ertheless, the theoretical w o rk we accom plished during the 1940s and
1950s w ill rem ain a ric h resource fo r fu tu re generations of revolutionists.
W hen you are confident th a t you are creating the future, you lo o k fo r
allies not on ly in the present b u t in the past. So we read and reread
p ra ctica lly everything th a t M arx ever w rote, looking fo r support fo r our
p o sitio n th a t the concern of every re v o lu tio n is t w o rth y of the name m ust
be no t property relationships or ju st higher wages or more e fficie n t plans
but the lib e ra tio n of the natural and acquired powers of hum an beings—
or, as Hegel p u t it, not Substance bu t Subject. You can im agine our joy,
therefore, when we discovered M arx's 1844 Econom ic-Philosophical es­
says w hich, I am proud to say, we were the firs t to publish in English
translation.
We did the same w ith Lenin. In the P hilosophical Notebooks, w hich
Lenin kept of his study of Hegel in 1915, we discovered why, p a rtic u la rly
in periods of deep crisis in any m ovem ent, organization, or society,
re vo lu tio n ists m ust be able to th in k d ialectically. T hat is, we m ust
recognize that things are always changing, that the contradictions inh e r­
ent to everything are bound to develop and become antagonistic, so th a t
ideas, paradigms or strategies th a t were progressive at one p o in t tu rn in to
th e ir opposite. T his means th a t in tim es of crisis, revolutionary leaders
 O rganizing in the U.S.A. 171

m ust have the audacity to create new ideas, paradigms or strategies that
represent sharp breaks w ith w hat they themselves had previously be­
lieved. It was because Lenin had in ternalized th is dialectical m ethod of
th in k in g th a t he was able in 1917 to reconceptualize Socialism as a
society in w hich "every cook can govern" and thus im bue the Russian
workers and peasants w ith the confidence necessary to take power in
October. T hat is why, also, in the last years of his life , Lenin kept
w arning the Bolsheviks that it was "C om m unist v a n ity " for them to
believe th a t the apparatus they had b u ilt to seize power and to w in the
c iv il w ar could keep the w orkers' state from being overtaken by bu­
reaucracy. The only salvation for the revolution, he insisted, was for the
party to encourage the in itia tiv e and e n lis t the p a rticip a tio n of nonparty
w orkers and peasants, especially wom en, in the day-to-day, protracted,
unglam orous w ork of managing production and inspecting and checking
the a ctivitie s of a ll governm ent officia ls. Such p a rticipation , Lenin be­
lieved, w ould begin to create in practice new social ties, a new labor
discipline, a new organization of labor, and/or a new culture.
In our studies of the great revolutions of the past we id e n tifie d w ith the
deepest layers of the society who have driven the revolution forward.
Thus, we decided that our sp iritu a l ancestors in the English revolution of
the seventeenth century were not C rom w ell and Ireton but John L il-
burne and Richard O verton who expressed the dem ocratic aspirations of
urban artisans and yeoman farm ers. In the French R evolution, we id e n ti­
fied not w ith Robespierre and the Jacobins but w ith Jacques Roux, Theo-
phile Leclerc, and Jean Varlet who lived among the sansculottes and
helped them to organize in order to fig h t for price controls and other
concrete needs of the masses. In m id-nineteenth century Am erica, we
id e n tifie d w ith the slaves whose revolts and escapes made com prom ise
im possible between the in d u stria l bourgeoisie and the Southern plan-
tocracy, thus m aking the C iv il War and th e ir own eventual em ancipation
inevitable.
We read and reread the w orks of M e lv ille , and we w ent to see again and
again the stage and m ovie versions of H am let, H enry V, and King Lear. In
the process, we developed a greater appreciation of the power of the
creative im agination to uncover contradictions of a com plexity and at a
depth w hich the logical understanding can never reach.
O ur energy was fantastic. Recently I leafed through the hundreds of
letters and docum ents that we w rote in that period and that are accessi­
ble in the Dunayevskaya and Glaberm an collections in the Labor A r-
 172 The A m erican Years: The P o litic a l D im ension

chives of Wayne State U n iv e rs ity in D e tro it. Frankly, even I was as­
tonished at the am ount th a t we w rote and the boldness w ith w h ich we
took on established historians and lite ra ry c ritic s . We w ould spend an
afternoon or evening together w o rkin g and ta lk in g and eating, and then
we w ould go home and w rite volum inous letters to one another extend­
ing or enlarging on w hat we had discussed, sending these around to
members o f our group in barely legible copies.
N o w onder th a t in those days people used to say th a t in any gathering
you could te ll a Johnsonite by the enthusiasm and energy we exuded. O ur
very eyes were stars because CLR had helped us rediscover A m erica and
the w orld, and because in the Johnson-Forest Tendency we had created a
unique p o litic a l com m unity, a fello w sh ip of re volutiona ry in te lle ctu a ls
and grassroots people u n ite d by a com m on goal, the unleashing of the
creative energies o f those at the bottom of our society.

Notes

1. For an explanation of our separation, see m y article "T h in k in g and A cting

D ialectically," M o n th ly Review, October 1993.
2. See C.L.R. James, The Future in the Present: Selected W ritings (London:
A llis o n and Busby, 1977), 89.
3. Karl M arx, C apital (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1912), 836-37.
4. Marx, C apital, 534.
5. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific R evolution (Chicago: U n ive rsity
of Chicago Press, 1970).
 Kent Worcester
p

C.L.R. James and the Am erican C entury

But in the alteration of knowledge, the object also,

in point of fact, is altered; for the knowledge w hich
existed was essentially a knowledge of the object;
w ith change in the knowledge, the object also be­
comes different, since i t belonged essentially to this
knowledge.
—Hegel, The Phenomenology of M ind

Introduction

The central task of th is paper is to flesh out an argum ent I made in a

monograph published several years ago: that during his " Am erican so­
jo u rn '' from 1938 to 1953, C.L.R. James advanced a provocative and
d istin ctive analysis of Am erican society th a t in certain respects m irrored
the grandeur of T im e-Life m ogul H enry Luce's vision of an "A m erican
C entury."1In James's hands, Luce's dream of a m oral Am erican im p e ria l­
ism guiding the w orld's peoples tow ard libe ra l dem ocratic capitalism
became transform ed in to som ething far more em ancipatory and heroic.
For James, Am erica held immense prom ise on account of its brash p o liti­
cal traditions, dynam ic popular culture, and restless and assertive peo­
ple. Independent movements of blacks, in d u stria l workers, women, and
young people enjoyed a special v ita lity in the New W orld. Am ericans had
a pivotal role to play in the struggle against class dom ination and for
a "new society." In a m etaphorical sense it is possible to speak of a
Jamesian Am erican century, a kin d of socialist and p lu ra lis tic m odel of
postcapitalist m odernity.
T his essay is divided in to three sections. The firs t section surveys cer­
tain key p o litic a l docum ents th a t focused on three specific topics: black
I wish to thank Jim Murray, Anna Grimshaw, and W illia m Shea for their
comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

173
 174 The A m erican Years: The P o litic a l D im ension

p o litic s in Am erica; the nature of the Soviet U nion; and the lim ita tio n s
of T ro tskyist and L e n in ist conception of the vanguard party. The second
section concerns James's w ork after his decisive break w ith T rotskyism
in the late 1940s and the way in w h ich his w ritin g s took up c u ltu ra l and
lite ra ry themes in an o rig in a l and perceptive manner. The .final section
b rie fly explores the connection between James's M arxian polem ics and
his w ritin g s on A m erican society and culture. M ost assuredly, the pub­
lic a tio n of James's A m erican C iv iliz a tio n (1993) and Scott McLemee and
Paul Le Blanc, eds., C.L.R. fames and R evolution ary M arxism : Selected
W ritings o f C.L.R. fam es, 1939-1949 (1994) w ill a llo w us to have a more
integrated understanding of James's life and w ork.

P o litic a l Docum ents

In 1938, James sailed to A m erica at the request of Leon T rotsky, w ho

wanted to prod the T ro tskyist S ocialist W orkers Party (s w p ) in to taking
up "th e Negro Q uestion" w ith greater urgency. In Am erica he became
enamored w ith the frankness and in te g rity of A m erican life , w ith the
culture's concern fo r the integ ra tio n of the in d iv id u a l in the com m unity,
w ith the w ay in w h ich in d iv id u a l personalities were expressed and con­
gealed through such diverse m edia as com ic strips, H ollyw ood m ovies,
genre fic tio n , radio plays, and jazz. The experience of traveling across the
U n ite d States and m eeting ordinary Am ericans made a lasting im pres­
sion on the peripatetic radical in te lle c tu a l. As Anna G rim shaw and K eith
H art w rite , "H aving already escaped from the confines of a sm all C arib­
bean island, he was now freed from the claustrophobia of a decaying
Europe."2 Despite his passion fo r m any aspects of A m erican society,
James did n o t abandon the theoretical core of M arx's c ritiq u e of capital­
ism . B ut from the outset of his Am erican sojourn, James worked to
develop a re volutiona ry M arxism th a t reflected the d ive rsity and expres­
sive q u a lity of A m erican society.
T rotskyists in the U n ite d States achieved some of th e ir greatest suc­
cesses in the late 1930s. A lan W ald has observed th a t the T rotskyists had
a m arked im pact on the circle th a t became know n as the "N ew York
In te lle ctu a ls."3 As James toured Am erica on behalf of the s w p , he seemed
impressed w ith the dedication exhibited by the party's members and
periphery. A t the same tim e, he also perceived the m ovem ent's iso la tio n
from A frican-A m erican life . As he com plained to Constance Webb in
1939:
 James and the Am erican C entury 175

I am now certain that no one in America, none in the party, has ever
seen the Negro question for the gigantic thing it is, and w ill increasingly
be. L. T. [Leon Trotsky] sees it, I was groping towards it. I begin to see it
now, everyday more clearly. The American Negroes touch on the one
side the American proletariat, on whom so much depends in the present
period; on the other they and not the B ritish or French proletariat form
the lin k w ith the African revolution; and they can form a lin k w ith the
m illions of Indians and Negroes and half-castes who form so much of the
population of Spanish-America.4

The reference to T rotsky came on the heels of Jam es-Trotsky conversa­

tions th a t were held in the spring of 1939 in Coyoacan, M exico. T heir
dialogue concerned the prospects fo r black p o litic s in the U nited States
and its relationship to the revolutiona ry project.
The capacity of the T ro tskyist m ovem ent to take advantage of James's
analysis of black p o litic s was crippled by a succession of events, among
them being T rotsky's assassination in 1940, the Second W orld War, and
the 1940 s p lit inside the Socialist W orkers Party that spawned the W ork­
ers Party (wp). W hile James was in itia lly c ritic a l of both camps, he sided
w ith the m in o rity faction centered around M ax Shachtman and was a
founding mem ber of the wp. The dispute largely concerned the progres­
sive or regressive nature of the Soviet regime. Whereas T rotsky described
the USSR as a "degenerated w orkers' state," the "Shachtm anites" viewed
the Soviet U nion as a "bureaucratic c o lle c tiv is t" e n tity that m erited
principled h o s tility from democrats and socialists. James's stance, w hich
he developed in collaboration w ith Raya Dunayevskaya (a form er secre­
tary of Trotsky's), was that the Soviet U nion was "state ca p ita lism "—no
better and no worse than W estern capitalism . T h e ir collaboration led to
the form ation of the so-called Johnson-Forest Tendency in 1941 (James's
party name was J. R. Johnson, Dunayevskaya's was F. Forest) inside the
W orkers Party. C itin g dissatisfaction w ith the party's lack of re volution­
ary zeal, the Johnson-Forest Tendency w ithdrew from the w p in 1947 and
w ith in a few m onths merged w ith the larger Socialist Workers Party. In
1951, the Tendency s p lit from the s w p fo r the fin a l tim e and form ed
an independent radical grouping, Correspondence, w ith an eponymous
newspaper.
The Johnson-Forest Tendency became know n not only for its position
on the "Russian question" but also fo r its advocacy of autonomous social
movements, for its view that the prospects for revolutionary change in
the West were quite prom ising, and for the philosophical tenor of its
 176 The A m erican Years: The P o litic a l D im ension

publications, James h im se lf concentrated on w o rkin g w ith a handful of

individua ls, in clu d in g Dunayevskaya, Grace Lee (who had a Ph.D. in
philosophy from Bryn M aw r), M a rtin Glaberm an, W illia m Gorm an, and,
through th e ir decade-long correspondence, Constance Webb. The Ten­
dency set out its perspective in a series of docum ents issued in 1947.
These included The A m erican W orker, an autobiographical account of
life on the factory floor; James's D ia le c tic a l M ate ria lism and the Fate o f
H u m a n ity; and The Inva d in g S ocialist Society, w ritte n by James, D u ­
nayevskaya, and Grace Lee. State C apitalism and W orld R evolution,
prepared by James fo r an in te rn a tio n a l T ro tskyist m eeting, appeared in
1950, and Notes on D ia le ctics: Hegel, M arx, Lenin (1948) circulated
privately. A d e fin itiv e statem ent of the Correspondence perspective was
Lee and James's Facing R e a lity (1956), whereas Every Cook Can Govern:
A Study o f D em ocracy in A n cie n t Greece (1955), w ritte n by James,
captured the group's in te lle c tu a lly sophisticated conception of p o litic s .
Correspondence was handicapped by the fact th a t James, its forem ost
member, was arrested and interned on E llis Island in Novem ber 1952. He
rem ained on the island fo r six m onths before his application fo r citiz e n ­
ship was turned down. W hen he took up residence in London, the group
was forced to re ly on transatlantic correspondence and on the occasional
report back from an Am erican v is ito r. D espite his sour experience w ith
the authorities, James regarded his Am erican sojourn as a positive expe­
rience. The U nited States represented m ore than sim ply a context fo r
in te lle c tu a l collaboration w ith a sm all circle of individua ls. From 1938
onwards he saw in Am erica the p o s s ib ility of a new, post-European
revolutiona ry m ovem ent th a t could relate in a constructive m anner to
developm ents in w hat was to become know n as the "T h ird W orld."
Furtherm ore, he became infatuated w ith the very texture of U nited
States culture, its flam boyant in d ivid u a lism and energetic popular arts.
As the prototype o f the mass society, the U nited States represented a ma­
jo r im provem ent over staid old Europe. A ll in a ll, Am erica posed a great
challenge to someone who had already established h im self as a form ida­
ble M a rxist in te lle ctu a l.
F ollow ing his expulsion, James was clearly unable to recapture the
s o lid a rity and in te lle c tu a l com m unity th a t characterized his life in the
1940s and early 1950s. For a ll of its allure, London proved less hospitable
than N ew York, D e tro it, or Los Angeles, three cities w ith w hich he had
direct experience. It is indisputable th a t the U nited States offered James a
set of relationships and challenges th a t stim ulated some of his best
 James and the Am erican C entury 177

w ritin g w h ile it also opened h im up to an e n tire ly new comprehension of

the m eaning of socialist p o litic s . From the perspective of the Correspon­
dence group and w hat was to become the N ew Left, his 1953 expulsion
was an event of tragic proportions.

B L A C K P O L IT IC S IN A M E R IC A

A lthough James did not abandon his prim ary emphasis on class rela­
tions, his experiences in the U nited States led h im to reevaluate—more
than once—his understanding of the interconnections of race, class, and
capitalism . He later said that " it was only when I w ent to the U nited
States in 1938 that I really became active in those issues."5 For a period
during the w ar he lived on 125th Street in Harlem , and he often traveled
around the country and took note of conditions facing black Am ericans.
W hile touring for the s w p in 1938, he m et w ith members of the n a a c p
and lunched w ith journalists at the P ittsburgh C ourier; re turning by bus
from N ew Orleans after the 1939 v is it w ith Trotsky, he gained a firsthand
experience of the South. For several m onths during 1941 he helped out
s trik in g sharecroppers in southeast M issouri, and fo r m any years he
w rote a w eekly colum n on black p o litic s fo r Labor A ction. W hat appears
to have struck h im m ost was the unresolved character of race relations in
Am erica and the underlying m ilita n c y of blacks.
The 1939 conversations w ith T rotsky served as a catalyst for James's
development as a student of Am erican black p o litics. "I believe that the
firs t question," T rotsky to ld his disciple,

is the a ttitu d e of the S ocialist W orkers Party tow ards the Negroes— The
characteristic th in g about A m e rica n w o rke rs' organizations is th e ir aris­
to cra tic character. It is the basis of op p o rtu n ism . The s k ille d w orkers
w h o feel set in the c a p ita lis t society help the bourgeois class to h o ld the
Negroes and u n s k ille d w orkers dow n to a very lo w scale . . . under th is
c o n d itio n o ur party cannot develop—i t w ill degenerate.6

G iven th is perspective, it is not surprising that T rotsky seriously enter­

tained James's proposals for tu rn in g the s w p around on the Negro ques­
tio n . These proposals hinged on a four-part argum ent: that "the Negro
represents p o te n tia lly the m ost revolutionary section of the population";
that "he is ready to respond to m ilita n t leadership"; that "he w ill respond
to p o litic a l situations abroad w hich concern h im "; and that "he is today
more m ilita n t than ever."7 Because of these realities, the p o ssib ility
 178 The A m erican Years: The P o litic a l D im ension

existed th a t a mass, a ll-black organization could be b u ilt and th a t the

T rotskyists could benefit greatly from th e ir association w ith any and a ll
efforts to establish such an organization. By agitating for p o litic a l and
social equality, a new organization "has the p o s s ib ility of setting the
Negro masses in m o tio n ."8 James also p u t forw ard the idea th a t the mass
organization could start o ff by fig h tin g against d iscrim in a tio n in restau­
rants: "A num ber of Negroes in any area go in to a restaurant a ll together,
ordering fo r instance some coffee and refuse to come out u n til they are
served. It w ould be possible to s it there fo r a w hole day in a very orderly
m anner and th ro w upon the police the necessity of rem oving these
Negroes. A campaign to be b u ilt around such an a ctio n ."9
The n o tio n th a t one thousand T rotskyists could in itia te a mass black
organization was, som ewhat paradoxically, prem ised on the assum ption
th a t le ftis ts had to w ork inside in s titu tio n s where blacks themselves
w ould develop appropriate strategies fo r realizing th e ir demands. The
role of the s w p w ould be to offer a socialist pole w ith in a w ider cur­
rent. T rotsky agreed th a t the swp's p o licy could not involve "s im p ly pass­
ing through fo r a few weeks. It is a question of awakening the Negro
masses,"10 b u t he was unsure as to w hether the s w p could actually
launch such an organization on its own: "T he question rem ains as to
w hether we can take upon ourselves the in itia tiv e of form in g such an
organization of Negroes fo r Negroes—not fo r the purpose of w in n in g
some elem ents to our party bu t fo r the purpose of doing system atic
educational w ork in order to elevate them p o litic a lly ."11
W hile the s w p was unable to detonate the black com m unity's explo­
sive p o tentia l, the party did take Trotsky's adm onitions seriously and
altered certain aspects of its program and p o litic a l practice. W hen the
Johnsonites joined the swp in 1947, the party in v ite d James to give a
report to its next convention. T his report, "The R evolutionary Answer to
the Negro Problem in the U SA," synthesized his conversations w ith
T rotsky, his w ork in M issouri, the 1945 debate inside the W orkers Party
(described below), and his personal relationships w ith Richard W right,
Ralph E llison, and other black Am ericans. The report argued th a t black
struggles were rooted in the fundam ental divisions of Am erican society,
enjoyed a lasting im pact on Am erican p o litic s , and could inspire, in ­
struct, and transform w orking-class p o litic s . Black protest w ould "ex­
ercise a pow erful influence upon the revolutionary proletariat and . . . is
in its e lf a constituen t part of the struggle fo r socialism ."12 The report
described a nascent c o a litio n of diverse religious, secular, local, and
 James and the Am erican C entury 179

national black forces gathering steam and preparing fo r the com ing strug­
gle. A lthough one c ritic com plained th a t " it is d iffic u lt to fin d in th is
coldly incisive analysis the sense of perm anent h u r t/'13 the reaction of a
black swp member and auto w orker was quite different:

He [C.L.R.] said the workers are the ones we must rely upon. But that
didn't mean that the Negroes must not do anything u n til the labor
movement actually came forward. The Negro struggle would help bring
the workers forward. That was complete for me. I couldn't see how I
w ould ever th in k of leaving after hearing him . I was tied and wedged into
the party.14

T im W olforth, a historian of the Am erican Left, described "The Revolu­

tionary Answ er . . ." as "the o n ly really o rig in a l co n trib u tio n to the
understanding of an Am erican question th a t the party was to produce."15
For a com bination of reasons, the swp proved more receptive to James's
emphasis on black spontaneity and se lf-a c tiv ity than the W orkers Party,
wp leaders feared that the hero of southeast M issouri pushed the "inde­
pendent organization" perspective on black struggle a b it too far. These
leaders wondered w hat the connection was between autonomous black
p o litic s and the goal of forging a m u ltira c ia l revolutionary party. Labor
A ctio n adopted the slogan "black and w hite, unite and fig h t," whereas
the Johnson-Forest Tendency said, in effect, "blacks shouldn't w ait: they
should fig h t now !" In order to address these issues, the w p sponsored
an in te rn a l debate between James and Ernest M cKinney, a black expert
on in d u stria l relations who held an inte g ra tio n ist line. M cK inney (w rit­
ing under the nom de plum e "D avid Coolidge") argued that discrim ina­
tio n against blacks w ould come to an end as soon as the U nited States
w orkforce was integrated by means of the application of ca pitalist tech­
nology. He stated that struggles for c iv il rights had no in trin s ic a lly
left-w ing or revolutionary character, and he warned: "The w p is not
unaware th a t Negroes have been indoctrinated w ith ideas of racial sepa­
ration, racial sufficiency, and racial autarchy. These dogmas have pa­
raded under a banner labeled 'race consciousness.' The m ost extrem e
form of th is is prom ulgated by the advocates of black chauvinism or
N egro-N ationalism ."16 The harsh tone of M cKinney's co n trib u tio n re­
flected his concern th a t the Johnson-Forest Tendency was g u ilty of sanc­
tio n in g reverse racism . A long w ith other w p leaders, he believed that
autonomous black struggles constituted a p articular type of threat to the
task of consolidating revolutionary forces in Am erica.
 180 The A m erican Years: The P o litic a l D im ension

In ta cklin g u n fa ir laws and d iscrim in a to ry practices, black protest

w ould alm ost in e v ita b ly challenge the very edifice of A m erican capital­
ism . The "n a tu ra l excess of the desire fo r e q u a lity" th a t James id e n tifie d
in black n a tio n a list ideology contained the seeds of a far-reaching c ri­
tique of A m erican society. If M cK inney was rig h t, then v irtu a lly any
expression of black pride hindered class u n ity ; if James was rig h t, then
even an im perfect black nationa lism could ig n ite and deepen class con­
flic t and thereby m a te ria lly contribute to the struggle fo r socialism . The
im p lic a tio n of the la tte r perspective was th a t revolutiona ry socialist
organizations w ould have to w o rk alongside an entire constellation of
groups and m ovem ents struggling fo r freedom.
The idea th a t autonom ous social m ovem ents were in them selves a
positive good seemed to anticipate a range of campaigns th a t gained
m om entum in the late 1950s and 1960s, in c lu d in g the c iv il rights m ove­
m ent, the black power m ovem ent, the student m ovem ent, and the w om ­
en's m ovem ent. In his various w ritin g s on black p o litic s , James a rtic u ­
lated a nuanced approach to the relationship between class p o litic s and
social m ovem ents under advanced capitalism . T his approach captured
the fla vo r of m uch of w hat was to come. But in the fin a l analysis, his
w o rk on black A m erica was only one aspect of the Tendency's overall
analysis of the p o litic s of Am erican, Soviet, and w o rld capitalism .

STATE C A P IT A L IS M AND T H E S O V IE T Q U E S T IO N

The Johnson-Forest p osition represented a th ird pole in the debate over

the Soviet U nion. U n lik e the orthodox T rotskyists, w ho described the
regim e's leadership as a "caste," the Johnsonites argued th a t a new ru lin g
class had usurped power inside the USSR. In contra d istin ctio n to the
Shachtm anites, the Tendency viewed the Soviet U nion's p o litic a l sociol­
ogy and p o litic a l econom y as fundam entally com patible w ith the catego­
ries of M arx's C apital. As James asked in an early co n trib u tio n to the
debate, "W hy is the to ta l national capital any less capital because it
exploits the w orkers under u n ifie d control instead of in separate c o n flic t­
ing parts?"17 The idea was th a t whereas in the West, capital existed as a
contradictory bloc of riv a l stm ctures, in the USSR capital was a u n ita ry
structure th a t com bined the p o litic a l and the econom ic. In both cases the
reproduction of capital depended on class exp lo ita tio n and was sure to
generate mass, class-based resistance.
Raya Dunayevskaya helped to anchor the state ca p ita list thesis in a de-
 James and the Am erican C entury 181

tailed analysis of Soviet p o litic a l economy, and the thesis w ent through a
fu rth e r revision in the hands of Tony C liff.18 James's co n trib u tio n to the
debate consisted in his lin k in g a class analysis of the Soviet U nion to a
w ider conception of the developm ent of m odern capitalism . The gist of
his perspective was th a t state capitalism represented a new and fin a l
stage of the developm ent of capitalism . In essence, h isto ry had entered a
phase where the decisive c o n flic t was between bureaucratic capitalism
(East and West) and "th e invading socialist society" (the phrase is En­
gels's) of the demos. For the Tendency, the in te rn a tio n a l w orking class
was the only force that could sweep away the bureaucratic encumbrances
of both Soviet-style state capitalism and W estern com petitive capital­
ism . Thus, the state ca pitalist perspective cohered w ith the fohnson-
Forest Tendency's overall fa ith in the capacity of w orkers and other sub­
ordinate groups to reorganize society along radically dem ocratic lines. As
Paul Buhle has noted: "James's circle had an alm ost unique sense of actual
optim ism w ith in or outside the Shachtman group. U n lik e C om m unists
or liberals, the 'Johnson-Forest Tendency' based its hopes not on A llie d
v ic to ry and postwar Russo-American cooperation in a state-regulated
w orld order, but rather in the in s tin c tiv e rebellion against that order."19
From a Jamesian perspective, the (orthodox T rotskyist) view th a t the
Soviet U nion was a degenerated w orkers' state w ent hand in glove w ith a
bureaucratic approach to socialist p o litics. A t the same tim e, the (Shacht-
m anite) bureaucratic c o lle c tiv is t stance reflected a loss of confidence in
the proletariat. The Shachtm anite notion that the USSR represented a
regression in com parison to W estern capitalism was rooted in a process of
dem oralization that im pelled the Johnson-Forest Tendency to reject the
W orkers Party and jo in the more rh e to rica lly m ilita n t s w p in 1947. But
neither party was prepared to recognize the m ain fa u lt lin e in interna­
tio n a l class relations—th a t d ivid in g the w orld bourgeoisie from the w orld
proletariat.

THE VAN G U ARD PARTY

In private letters w ritte n to Constance Webb in the late 1930s and early
1940s, James made clear his devotion to w hat he defined as "B olshevik"
principles—personal discipline, intensive M arxist study, the necessity of
appealing to workers in a consistent and well-organized manner, and so
on. He retained these principles even after Notes on D ialectics and State
C apitalism and W orld R evolution announced his break w ith the Lenin-
 182 The A m erican Years: The P o litic a l D im ension

is t conception of the vanguard party, in sistin g th a t the Johnson-Forest

Tendency (and later the Correspondence group) was acting in a way th a t
was consistent w ith the s p irit of Lenin's ow n w ritin g s and p o litic a l
practice. Even in the 1960s and 1970s James had nothing b u t the highest
regard for Lenin as a re volutiona ry leader, w hom he thought of as a
dem ocrat and an a lly of both the w o rkin g class and the peasantry. A
pronounced sym pathy fo r Lenin's ow n w ritin g s and practice did not, it
seems, preclude a break w ith a core proposition of Len in ist p o litics.
The Johnson-Forest c ritiq u e of the vanguard party was several years in
the m aking. In itia lly , the Tendency focused its efforts on encouraging the
W orkers Party to o rie n t its e lf to conditions in the U n ite d States. In an
in te rn a l docum ent, "Education, Propaganda, A g ita tio n : Postwar A m er­
ica and Bolshevism " (1943), James w rote fo rc e fu lly about the w p 's declin­
ing m em bership and in te rn a l divisions. F irst and forem ost he in v ite d the
party to organize its e lf around the p o s s ib ility of a postw ar upsurge in
union m ilita n c y leading to the fo rm a tio n of a labor party. To influence
th is "p o litic a l developm ent," the W orkers Party was urged to "gather a
nucleus of a few thousands, of w hom seventy-five percent w ill be A m e ri­
can w orkers, . . . in s tin c tiv e ly h ostile to bourgeois society, w ho are
workers, have been w orkers and have no other prospect in life except to
be w orkers."20 To form th is nucleus, James called on the w p to "A m e ri­
canize" its "Bolshevism " by understanding m odernity's underlying co l­
lective tendencies. The W orkers Party thus had to accommodate its e lf to
a "mass society" by publishing a d a ily newspaper, by breaking w ith a
discourse centered around European issues and controversies, and by
taking an active part in the nation's p o litic a l debate: "L ife w rites on the
free m arket? Good. We w rite the M a rxist view of the free m arket. The
Saturday Evening Post w rites about cartels and monopolies? N ext week,
we w rite one or tw o articles on m onopolies and cartels exposing th e ir
su p e rfic ia lity and preaching our own vie w ."21
By the late 1940s, the Johnsonites had im p lic itly rejected th is concep­
tio n of b u ild in g a "sm all mass p a rty" in favor of an emphasis on the
masses' capacity fo r independent m ob iliza tio n . T his emphasis did not
preclude organized groups of socialists w orking in accord w ith autono­
mous m ovem ents of w orkers, students, blacks, and others, however. As
James argued in State C apitalism and W orld R evolution, socialist group­
ings could become an im portant ingredient in w orking-class and popular
uprisings aimed against a ll form s of bureaucracy and exploitatio n. But
 James and the Am erican C entury 183

w orkers' struggles against capitalism w ould not require "in d ire c t m eth­
ods of representation" as the T rotskyists believed.22
A fte r 1951, the Johnsonites m aintained an essentially hostile attitu d e
toward T rotskyists and other groups that attem pted to forge vanguard
parties. A decade of w orking inside existing fa r-le ft organizations had
culm inated in yet another s p lit. Yet at the outset of the 1950s, the
Johnsonites seemed confident that the Am erican century could be trans­
form ed if radicals approached the problem in an appropriate manner. The
forty-plus surviving members of the Johnson-Forest Tendency set out to
prom ote th e ir perspectives and to encourage citizens to express th e ir
own opinions on a range of topics.

Am erican Society and C ulture

A t the same tim e that he was relating to m idcentury Am erica as a

subversive M arxist theorist, James was also acquainting him self w ith
the nation's history, geography, and popular culture. Abundant refer­
ences to Am erican novelists, academics, and inte lle ctu a ls in his articles
for N ew In te rn a tio n a l and Labor A ctio n only hinted at James's interest
in the country's traditions, mores, and inhabitants. In a le tte r w ritte n to
Constance Webb in the early 1940s, he explained that " I have sat for
hours in Am erica, listening to people, a ll sorts of poor w orking people,
te llin g me a ll about themselves. It is indispensable for any understanding
of anything. It m ust go side by side w ith the books."23 The fact that
the Correspondence group was established so that its members could
engage in an open-ended "correspondence" w ith the Am erican people
was hardly accidental. The group's leading in te lle c tu a l came to see h im ­
self as a latter-day A lexis de Tocqueville, m ingling w ith the populace in
an effort to comprehend the histo rica l origins and long-range prospects of
Am erican democracy.
Conversations w ith a ll types of Am ericans represented one way in
w hich James sought to become, in his words, a "neighborhood m an."
A nother was through a sym pathetic and close reading of popular art
forms. Even as c ritic a l theorists of the Frankfurt School were bemoaning
the very existence of "mass cu ltu re ," James was delving in to the subliter-
ary realms of the com ic strip, detective and gangster fic tio n , and the
B-movie. W hile the high arts in Am erica were largely derivative of Euro­
pean prototypes, the country could at least boast of possessing a vibrant
 184 The Am erican Years: The P o litic a l D im ension

popular culture. In e vita b ly he began to form ulate ideas about the m ovies
he w atched as a curious spectator. Associates became aware of James's
burgeoning interest in film and popular culture. Stan W eir, an active
m em ber o f the W orkers Party, fo n d ly remembered "a late supper in the
V illage of C onnie's Calypso Restaurant after seeing The Glass Key star­
rin g A lan Ladd. O ur table com panions had never heard cinem a analysis
used so effective ly to relate the depths of alienatio n in our society, b u t I
knew as I sw itched a tte n tio n m o m entarily from them , to m yself, and
back to James, neither had I."24
References to the "H egelian d ia le ctic" were just as characteristic of the
Johnson-Forest Tendency, w hich w ent to great lengths to relate p h ilo ­
sophical categories to contem porary concerns. Whereas Dunayevskaya
and the others m o stly confined th e ir theoretical investigations to the
sphere of p o litic s , James sought to apply H egelian m etaphysics to A m e ri­
can society and culture as a w hole. H is dialectical approach to the A m e ri­
can experience was especially evident in A m erican C iv iliz a tio n (1993).
U nfortunately, th is w ork never attained the form th a t its author envi­
sioned because by 1950 James was already em broiled in the legal c o n flic t
th a t led to his inte rn m e n t on E llis Island and subsequent deportation. Its
com pletion was fu rth e r com plicated by the fact th a t Constance and
C.L.R. had a son, Nobby, in the spring of 1949, an event th a t "exacerbated
his longstanding fin a n cia l anxieties-----" 25

AMERICAN CIVILIZATION

A m erican C iv iliz a tio n constituted som ething of a departure from the

usual polem ical intercession in le ft-w in g debates. Like The Black Jaco­
bins (but u n lik e State C apitalism and W orld R evolution), the project
was intended fo r the w idest possible audience. The book's key term s
were words lik e "personality," "u n iv e rs a lity ," "c iv iliz a tio n ," and "hap­
piness." References were made not to le ftis t tracts b u t to magazines
lik e C olliers, Fortune, and L ife; to pundits lik e Robert H utchins, Peter
D rucker, and W alter Lippm ann; and to h is to ric a l figures lik e D aniel
Webster, M ark Tw ain, Frederick Douglass, and Ernest Hem ingway.
W hile James had revealed the depth of his interest in Am erican histo ry
and cultu re in private correspondence, A m erican C iv iliz a tio n reflected a
different side of its author's personality than the one disclosed in the
Johnson-Forest Tendency's form idable texts.26
A m erican C iv iliz a tio n is divided in to tw o sections. The firs t sketches
 James and the Am erican C entury 185

"the m aking of m odern A m erica" as reflected in the w ritin g s of W alt

W hitm an, Herm an M e lv ille , and the A b o litio n is ts , w h ile the second
section stresses the radical p o tentia l embodied in w orking-class, black,
and women's m ovem ents fo r creating "a new society, new, and the chief
th in g new about it w ill be th a t thought and action w ill be u n ite d ."27 The
book's tw o-fold structure was designed to suggest how in d u s tria l capital­
ism had come to U nderm ine the nation's founding principles and how
popular social m ovem ents in the postw ar era could concretize, univer­
salize, and deepen those principles. Connecting the tw o sections is a
lengthy discussion on the role of H ollyw ood film s and other popular art
form s in m ediating the struggle for happiness.
The book's central argum ent was th a t Am erica's d is tin c tiv e co n trib u ­
tio n to w orld c iv iliz a tio n was the high value that her people and culture
placed on the in d ivid u a l's search fo r happiness. Where European p o litic a l
discourse emphasized such abstract ideals as lib e rty and equality, A m e ri­
can society le gitim atized the pursu it of personal happiness. In th is con­
text, "happiness" refers to the integration of the in d ivid u a l w ith the
society in a way that w ould allow the in d ivid u a l to express his or her
personality. T hat the pursuit of happiness was legitim ate did not in and
of its e lf guarantee satisfaction, of course, any more than egalitarian rh e t­
oric guaranteed fairness. But Am erica's v ita lity and dem ocratic ideals
made it quite prom ising from a revolutionary vantage point. Further­
more, Am erica could only be understood on its own term s:

A n y a tte m p t to show w h a t A m e rica is today w h ic h does n o t scrupu­

lo u sly define and delineate the un iq ue o rigins of the c o u n try and the
creation of the special ideas and ideals w h ic h d is tin g u is h it, any book on
A m erica w h ic h does n o t do these things, is doomed to failure. Liberty,
freedom, p u rs u it of happiness, free in d iv id u a lity had an a c tu a lity and a
m eaning in A m erica w h ic h they had now here else. The Europeans w ro te
and theorized about freedom in superb w ritin g s . A m ericans liv e d it. T h a t
tra d itio n is the m ost v ita l tra d itio n in the c o u n try today. A n y idea th a t i t
is m erely a tra d itio n , used by unscrupulous July F ourth p o litic ia n s to
deceive the people, destroys any p o s s ib ility o f understanding the crisis in
A m erica today.28

The N ew W orld had in itia lly held out great prom ise for com m on
laborers of European ancestry, but during the nineteenth century the
"heroic in d ivid u a lism " of im m igrants, slaves, and farm ers clashed w ith
the relentless march of "N o rth e rn capital" and w ith "the in d ivid u a l
in d u strialists and financiers w ho organized the vast industries of the
 186 The Am erican Years: The P o litic a l D im ension

W est/' By 1900, the system of mass production had spawned social

conditions deeply in im ic a l to the country's o rig in a l ideals. The struggle
fo r happiness—a struggle th a t had been sanctioned by the nation's con­
s titu tiv e ideology—had become thw arted by a pernicious com bination of
the bottom lin e and the assembly lin e . T his, then, was the crisis of
A m erican c iv iliz a tio n . Short of a social revolu tio n , the contradiction
between lib e ra l values and socioeconom ic realities w ould gnaw at the
society's foundations. C olle ctive action represented the on ly hope fo r
tu rn in g things around. W hile he made no prom ises about when the
masses w ould achieve v ic to ry in th e ir struggle fo r freedom, he did recog­
nize th a t the Am erican people were s triv in g to create "a to ta lly in te ­
grated hum an existence."29 T h e ir efforts w ould in e v ita b ly challenge the
very basis of capitalism and could play a v ita l part in p o in tin g h um anity
tow ard—pardon the expression—a new w o rld order.
One of the m ore s trik in g aspects o f A m erican C iv iliz a tio n is its dis­
m issive treatm ent of tw entie th -ce n tu ry in te lle ctu a ls. Fads such as exis­
te n tia lism , psychoanalysis, and C atholic hum anism were described as
diffe re n t expressions of the same m isdirected sense of discontent. A m er­
ican in te lle ctu a ls "do n o t even know w hat they w ant, and they are
d riftin g ," the author com plained; "the m a jo rity d rift along, knocking
from p illa r to post and fin d in g them selves in the strangest places."30
James argued th a t because they were wedded to th e ir p e tty privileges and
status-m arkers, they w ould make no c o n trib u tio n to the future of A m e ri­
can society.
A m erican C iv iliz a tio n devoted considerable a tte n tio n to questions of
art, entertainm ent, and culture. W ith the advent of movies, radio, and
other popular art form s, lite ra ry in te lle ctu a ls played a m uch sm aller role
in conveying the popular mood. Even novels as acute in th e ir observa­
tions as N a tive Son or The N aked and the Dead could hardly compete
w ith H ollyw ood. James's thesis was adm irably straightforw ard:

T he m odern popula r film , the m odern newspaper (The D a ily News, n o t

the Times), the c o m ic strip , the e v o lu tio n of jazz, a p opular p e riodical lik e
Life, these m irro r fro m year to year the deep social responses and e vo lu ­
tio n of the A m e rica n people in re la tio n to the fate w h ic h has overtaken
the o rig in a l concepts of freedom , free in d iv id u a lity , free association, etc.

W hile the term was n ot used, the p o in t was th a t popular culture offers an
insig h t in to the Zeitgeist:
 James and the Am erican C entury 187

To put it more harshly s till, it is in the serious study of, above all, Charles
Chaplin, D ick Tracy, Gasoline Alley, James Cagney, Edward G. Robin­
son, Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart, genuinely popular novels like
those of Frank Yerby (Foxes o f H arrow , The G olden H a w k , The Vixen,
P rided Castle), men like David Selznick, Cecil deM ille, and Henry Luce,
that you find the clearest ideological expression of the sentiments and
deepest feelings of the American people and a great window into the
future of America and the modern w orld.31

W hile th is thesis prefigured the fie ld of "c u ltu ra l studies," A m e ric a n

C iv iliz a tio n offered a perspective not on ly on culture but also on the
"crisis of A m erica." The entertainm ent in d u stry was not so m uch about
the production of signs and signifiers as it was about the way in w hich
the sym bolic m eaning of a w ider social crisis was condensed and de­
fined. T his was not to say, however, that the entertainm ent industry
had usurped the public's a b ility to determ ine its ow n views. Even as
creative artists hawked th e ir wares at the com m ercial m arketplace, th e ir
w ork was being reconfigured by a mass audience faced w ith real-w orld
problems.
O f especial im portance in th is te xt was James's discussion on the
lo w ly status of wom en. He notes th a t wom en's oppression required a
drastic overhaul of household relations. Such concerns began to map the
contours of the "new society," where the transform ation of w ork and
p o litic s w ould be accompanied by dram atic changes in the sphere of
in tim a te social relations. But James also warned that, in the absence of a
second Am erican revolution, authoritarianism (on the rig h t and on the
"le ft") w ould gain m om entum , and that the social position of women and
blacks w ould continue to deteriorate as a result.
A m e ric a n C iv iliz a tio n offers a fascinating w indow onto Am erican life
in the late 1940s. Its social vision is rooted in the c o lle c tiv is t and corpora-
tis t structures of a "F ordist" p o litic a l economy. The discreet remarks
about hom osexuality are redolent of an O ld Left m orality. References to
C atholic hum anism , Robert Lynd, and Lana Turner are suggestive of an
earlier, more innocent age. Yet it w ould be a m istake to dism iss A m e r i­
can C iv iliz a tio n as sim ply a lite ra ry tim e capsule. C ertain of its core
themes anticipated developments in the late 1950s and 1960s. And many
of its insights—concerning the g u lf between Europe and Am erica, the
subordinate position of women in society, the autonom y of new social
movements, and the contradictions of popular culture, for example—
 188 The A m erican Years: The P o litic a l D im ension

m ay s till resonate today* F inally, James expressed a great deal of co n fi­

dence in the A m erican people and argued th a t they constitute a social
force such as the w orld has never seen before.
H erm an M e lv ille occupied a special place in James's c ritic a l pantheon.
He saw M e lv ille as a m asterful in te rp re te r of Am erica's tra n s itio n to
c a p ita list m odernity. The distinguished nove list created d is tin c t charac­
ters and re a listic w orkplace settings th a t seemed to encapsulate a ll of the
tensions and contradictions inherent in A m erican society and culture. In
James's view , M e lv ille 's fic tio n became m ore valuable as tim e w ent by.
H is affection fo r M e lv ille was made p la in in M ariners, Renegades and
Castaways, w h ich appropriated and d is tille d some of the lite ra ry and
h isto rica l insights contained in A m erican C iv iliz a tio n . T h is short w ork
of lite ra ry c ritic is m offered an unconventional yet in fo rm a tive reading of
M e lv ille 's novels, concentrating in p a rticu la r on M oby-D ick. Like A m er­
ican C iv iliz a tio n , it was intended as an appreciative study of the people
w ith w hom its author had spent fifte e n long years. M ore im portant,
M ariners, Renegades and Castaways called on Am ericans to reform u­
late th e ir country's relationship to the natural and social w orld. From the
pen o f an obscure E llis Island "subversive" came a curiously sym pathetic
bu t te rrib le angry cry.

C onclusion

W ith the publica tio n of Notes on D ia le ctics and State C apitalism and
W orld R evolution, James had taken the Johnson-Forest Tendency prob­
lem atic ju st about as far as it could go. O f course, the founding of the
Correspondence group offered new possib ilitie s fo r how to intervene on a
radical basis in Am erican society. But the theoretical issues th a t had
seemed desperately urgent in the early 1940s had been largely worked
through by the end of the decade. W ith A m erican C iv iliz a tio n and M a ri­
ners, Renegades and Castaways James seemed to be saying that he was
ready to incorporate the theoretical and p o litic a l lessons of his years as a
T ro tskyist and as a Johnsonite in a way th a t w ould allow h im to move
on to a w hole new array of concerns. The collaborations th a t had charac­
terized his life in the 1940s were interesting and im portant, but they
also provided an independent M a rxist in te lle c tu a l foundation fo r w hat I
w ould argue to be an u ltim a te ly more consequential set of explorations
of the p o litic s of art, society, and culture th a t opened w ith Am erican
C iv iliz a tio n and reached th e ir apex w ith Beyond a Boundary (1963).
 James and the Am erican C entury 189

Certainly the publication of the form er w ill demonstrate James's vivid

reinterpretation of the Am erican century can achieve the recognition
that it unquestioningly deserves.

Notes

1. See Kent Worcester, C.L.R. James and the Am erican Century: 1938-1953,
c is c la, St. Germain, Inter American U niversity of Puerto Rico, 1984.
2. Anna G rim shaw and Keith Hart, C.L.R. James and “The Struggle fo r Happi­
ness" (New York: C.L.R. James Institute, 1991), 37.
3. See A lan Wald, The N ew York Intellectuals: The Rise and Dechne o f the
A n ti-S ta lin ist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel H ill: U niversity of N o rth
Carolina Press, 1987).
4. C.L.R. James to Constance Webb, 1939. These letters, available at the
Schomburg Center For Black C ulture, N ew York, w ill be published shortly by
Blackwell as Letters from a R evolutionary; ed. Anna Grimshaw.
5. Quoted in "C.L.R. James," in Visions o f History, ed. M A R H O [M id A tla n tic
Radical Historians Organization) (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 267.
6. Leon Trotsky on Black N ationalism and Self-Determ ination (New York:
Pathfinder Press, 1978), 61-62.
7. C.L.R. James, "P relim inary Notes," Harvard U niversity, Houghton vMS
Rus 13.1 16953,61-62.
8. Ibid., 10-11.
9. Ibid., 10.
10. Trotsky on Black N ationalism , 55.
11. Ibid., 50.
12. C.L.R. James, "The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the
USA." (1948; The Future in the Present: Selected W ritings (Wesport, Conn.:
Lawrence H ill, 1977), 120.
13. Tony M artin, "C.L.R. James and the Race/Class Question," Race 14, no. 2
(1972): 187.
14. Charles Denby, Indignant Heart: A Black Worker's Journal (Boston: South
End Press, 1978), 173.
15. T im W olforth, The Struggle fo r M arxism in the U.S. (New York: Labor
Publishers, 1971), 106.
16. David Coolidge, "Negroes and the R evolution," New Inte rn a tio n a l (New
York), January 1945,9-13.
17. J. R. Johnson, "Russia—a Fascist State," N ew In ternational (New York),
A p ril 1941,57.
18. See Raya Dunayevskaya, M arxism and Freedom (New York: Twayne Pub­
lishers, 1958), chapter 13; and Tony C liff, State C apitalism in Russia, rev. ed.
(London: Pluto Press, 1974).
19. Paul Buhle, "Intro d u ctio n ," to C.L.R. James, State Capitalism and World
Revolution (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1986), x v iii-x iv .
20. J. R. Johnson, "Education, Propaganda, A gitation: Postwar America and
Bolshevism" 11943), 32.
 190 The A m erican Years: The P o litic a l D im ension

21. Johnson; "Education, Propaganda, A g ita tio n ," 35.

22. M a rtin Glaberman, "In tro d u ctio n ," to C.L.R. James, State C apitalism and
W orld R evolution (D etroit: Facing Reality, 1969), 2.
23. C ited in Anna Grimshaw, Popular Democracy and the Creative Im agina­
tion: The W ritings o f C.L.R. James, 1950-1963 (New York: C.L.R. James In ­
stitute, 1991), 5.
24. Stanley Weir, "R evolutionary A rtis t," in C.L.R. James: H is Life and Work
(London: A llis o n and Busby, 1984), 184.
25. G rim shaw and Hart, C.L.R. James and 'T he Struggle fo r Happiness, ” 27.
26. A m erican C iv iliz a tio n may be read as the longest le tte r James ever w rote to
Webb, w hom he married in 1948.
27. A m erican C iv iliz a tio n (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 278.
28. Ibid., 32.
29. Ibid., 103, 277.
30. Ibid., 234, 256.
31. Ibid., 119-20.
 The Am erican Years,

a C ollaborative Enterprise:

The Philosophical D im ension

 Lou Turner
p

Epistemology, Absolutes, and the Party: A

C ritic a l E xam ination of Philosophic Divergences
w ith in the Johnson-Forest Tendency, 1948-1953

Dream cancels dream in this new realm of fact

From w hich we wake in to the dream of act
—Hart Crane

From the beginning of the State-Capitalist Tendency, fifty years ago,

Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel's Science o f Logic were held to
be the methodological scholium of the M arxian dialectic. As early as
1941, at the beginning of their association as a tendency, Raya Dunayev-
skaya had provided to C.L.R. James excerpts of on-sight translations
from the Russian of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks. Some tim e before
Dunayevskaya translated Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks in toto, James
followed Lenin in view ing Hegel's Science o f Logic as an epistemology.
W hile there is not an instance of "partinost" in Lenin's Philosophic
N otebook, from the beginning of James's 1948 Notes on D ialectics
(Notes), he held that his historic responsibility was to w ork out and
articulate a new epistemology of what he called "the dialectics of the
party." As a presumption of that historic imperative, he wrote that "we
have arrived at a stage where we feel the necessity of systematizing
knowledge. That is exactly what these notes are going to try to do"
(Notes 14). Through his politicized and synthetic exposition of Hegel's
most d iffic u lt work, the Science o f Logic, James set out to repostulate a
"m aterialist epistemology" for an advanced party cadre. As James ob­
serves in the last section of Notes, entitled "Practice": " The vanguard of

193
 194 The Am erican Years: The P hilosophical D im ension

the vanguard organizes its e lf as i t alw ays has, on the basis o f a strenuous
analysis o f the objective m ovem ent o f society That is w hat we are
doing. It forms its own propaganda group or circle or party and propagates
the destruction of the bureaucracy" (224).
The heuristic concern of the Notes lay, according to James, en fa m ille ,
that is, w ith in the sm all state-capitalist tendency in the T rotskyist
movement know n as the Johnson-ForesJ Tendency, so named for the
pseudonyms of James (Johnson) and his coleader, Raya Dunayevskaya
(Forest). James's return to the Hegelian roots of M arxism was not un­
precedented—Lenin, Luk£cs, Korsch, Marcuse, and the Frankfurt School
appeared earlier. Indeed, there is substantial indication of the influence
of Herbert Marcuse's 1941 Reason and R evolution in James's Notes.
However, th e ir difference turns on th e ir respective views of dialectical
negativity. James posits negativity as movem ent apropos of his preoc­
cupation w ith epistemology, whereas Marcuse posits i t as ontological
in-itselfness.
The problem of epistemology is that inasmuch as objective develop­
ments proceed disguised as illu so ry shows, appearances, false identities,
and so on, knowledge or cognition enables one to grasp the movement,
that is, the one w ho knows anticipates the m om ent when the actual
forces emerge in to plain view. This knowledge James attributes to the
"dialectics of the party."
In contrast to the know ing of the party, James posits the "being" of the
proletarian masses. The dialectic of th e ir being is im pulsive and sponta­
neous. "You kn o w n o thing about organization unless a t every step you
relate it to its opposite, spontaneity" (Notes 115), writes James. He
locates this im pulsive or spontaneous being of the masses in Hegel's
concept of nodal leaps, in the D octrine of Being. As the know ing of the
proletariat, the party is the means by w hich the proletariat knows itself,
knows its being, knows "progress."
James sought through his concept of the "dialectic of the party" to
transcend the bureaucratic gulf that separates the "being" of the pro­
letariat and the "kn o w in g " of the party. The synthetic cognition on
w hich this transcendence is based had to ra tio n a lize one or both of its
terms, that is, the being of the proletariat and/or the know ing of the
party. Notes on D ialectics is the narrative of this rationalization. And by
such means, positivism attached itself to the theory of state-capitalism.
As one of the tw o central categories he deduced from his reading of
Hegel's Logic, Ground became the category by w hich James sought to
posit historical facts. The other category, w hich just precedes Ground, is
 Epistemology, Absolutes, and the Party 195

Contradiction. Once Contradiction brings "essence [as] movement of

negation" (Notes 74) to its culm ination, the inner ground of the contra­
dictory movement of reflection's thought-determinations produces a
fact. Because "the fact emerges out of Ground," the emergence presup­
poses a process that is the self-mediating relation of conditions. Condi­
tion here means history. Thus, facts are conditioned by the ground from
w hich they emefge, and the u n ity of ground and condition constitutes
the historical development of the facts, objectively and subjectively.
Separated from their historical conditions and logical ground, we have
nothing more than a m u ltip lic ity of facts.
The object, the fact, for James, is bureaucratism, w ith in the labor
movement and w ith in the party and the state. It was this immediate
reality that had to be faced and explained. James's method was, thus, one
of explanation of the phenomena of state-capitalism—dynamic explana­
tion, but explanation all the same. The problem w ith the explanatory
method is that i t substitutes a synthetic result for the creative (re)cogni-
tion of new beginnings that determine the end. W hile such an explana­
tory method, as James employs in Notes, reduces the subject (proletariat)
to substance (the mass party) for the purpose (end) of displacing the
absolute substance (bureaucracy), this purpose is only further deter­
mined by the notion of the proletariat "taking over" the absolute sub­
stance of the state rather than abolishing it. Hegel distinguishes the
syllogistic or productive method of arriving at conceptual new begin­
nings from the philosophies of absolute substance constituted by Spi­
noza, Leibniz, and Kant. Against the methods of absolute substance,
which are doctrines of being and essence, Hegel presents the method of
the subject as a doctrine of logical comprehension, or doctrine of the
notion (concept).

II

When you don't have a notion of the future, you just

counterpose essence to form. Is that what all this
means?
—Johnny Zupan, production worker in the Johnson-
Forest Tendency

The "universals of 1948," as James referred to the theoretical and organi­

zational conclusions he arrived at in Notes, underwent further develop­
ment in the Tendency during the subsequent period, 1949-50, a period
 196 The A m erican Years: The P hilosophical D im ension

marked by the first labor revolts against the new stage of capitalist
production methods and technology know n as automation. In the years
1949-50, the "universals of 1948," whose raison d'etre was the new
subjective impulses of the proletariat, were revisited by James, along
w ith his coleader of the Johnson-Forest Tendency, Raya Dunayevskaya,
and the acknowledged philosopher of the Tendency, Grace Lee (Boggs).
The extraordinary record of that "trilo g u e " on the dialectic is found in
the Raya Dunayevskaya C ollection.1Dunayevskaya began supplying fu ll
translations of Lenin's Philosophic N otebooks at the beginning of 1949.
We learn from the correspondence that James had intended to rew rite his
Notes. N o doubt the correspondence of 1949-50 was preparation for that
undertaking w h ich was never accomplished by James. For that reason,
the 1949-50 correspondence provides a unique w indow onto the theoret­
ical process by w h ich the Notes were to be rew ritten, as w e ll as the
direction in w h ich James's th in k in g moved.
Interestingly, the 1949-50 correspondence actually began w ith Duna­
yevskaya and Lee sans James, w ho entered the dialogue only on 20 May
1949, five m onths after Dunayevskaya began w ritin g to Lee. What sur­
faces in the correspondence is that James had reached the lim it of his
philosophic development in his further exposition of the Notes w ith
Dunayevskaya and Lee. Early in the 1949-50 correspondence, however,
the synopses Dunayevskaya sent along w ith her fu ll translations of
Lenin's P hilosophic N otebook to James reveal, not only her in itia l c ri­
tique of James's Notes, but, as w ell, the existence of serious philosophic
divergences in the Johnson-Forest Tendency.
It is evident that Dunayevskaya and Lee are answering James's Notes
throughout th e ir correspondence. For example, Dunayevskaya's letter to
Grace Lee (10 February 1949) on the difference between lim it and bar­
rier in the D octrine of Being, is in sharp contrast to James who made
them synonymous. Key also for Dunayevskaya was her "translation" of
Hegel's abstract categories in to the determinate categories of Marx's
C apital, whereas James "applies" Hegel's terms to historical and p o liti­
cal phenomena in tu ite d by James him self.
To be sure, w hat James and Dunayevskaya did view in common was
the relationship between economic reality and ideology. In her letter
accompanying her translation of Lenin's abstract on the Doctrine of
Being, Dunayevskaya w rites that "the concrete w hich Lenin had in m ind
when he was reading Logic was both economic conditions . . . and
Ideology" (RDC #1597). And again, the letter accompanying her transla-
 Epistemology, Absolutes, and the Party 197

tion of Lenin notes in response to the Doctrine of Essence: "technology

w hich sets the ground for our mode of production, production relations
and generally the whole intellectua l development, is . . . so overpowering
that you th in k of the m ind's development as a mere reflection of the
economic relations" (RDC #1599).
Nevertheless, James's preoccupation w ith the epistemology of the
"dialectics of thfr party" represented both his original insight and the
theoretical lim its of his excursion in to the dialectic. For James, dialectic
was the theory of knowledge of the party, and the party was the "m ind,"
the know ing of the masses, w ith o u t w hich they would know nothing,
in his view (Notes 172). For Dunayevskaya, the dialectic of the party
reached its lim it in the dialectic of capitalist society, as M arx had com­
prehended it in C apital; the subject was not the party but the masses in
m otion outside the party.
W ith in the Absolute, a ll epistemologies reach their term inus and, as
Hegel held, their "absolute liberation." It is evident from his letter to
Dunayevskaya, 13 June 1949, that James had this notion of the Absolute
in view when he wrote: "W hen the masses, not a few philosophers, grasp
the dialectic, the logic, the u n ity of theoretical, practical, methodologi­
cal, we have reached the Absolute Idea of society, i.e., social man. There
begins the development of human power for its own sake" (RDC #1626).
Having the Absolute in view did not constitute w orking it out, though.
And James's announced intention of w orking out the Absolute Idea never
came to fru itio n . It was Grace Lee who first attempted a comprehensive
presentation of the Absolute Idea of Hegel's Science of Logic, in a letter to
James, 29 July 1949. This was the second of a series of four letters on
Hegel's Logic that Lee wrote over the summer of 1949.
Earlier, Lee had argued, in a letter to James, 21 May 1949, that in
contradistinction to his notion of subjective impulses, the "End be­
comes transformed from mere impulse and tendency into a c tivity" [RDC
#14676). And where James had returned to the Doctrine of Essence after
taking up only the opening and closing sections of the Doctrine of the
N otion (Concept), in Notes, Lee distinguishes Lenin as th in kin g "in
terms of a new beginning w hich w ill determine the end" because Hegel
"deals w ith the N o tio n as the beginning, after Absolute Substance"
(RDC #14678).
The in tim a tio n here is that conceptual new beginnings arise upon the
exhaustion and transcendence of explanatory or essentialist methods of
absolute substance. The disclosure of such new beginnings marks the
 198 The A m erican Years: The P hilosophical D im ension

syllogistic closure of explanatory systems of thought. In fact, the dis­

closure of such conceptual new beginnings in the philosophic discourse
of the Johnson-Forest Tendency signified the closure of James's episte­
mology and the "universals of 1948." Once opened, however, the concep­
tual movem ent quickened.

I ll

Once the realm of thought is revolutionized, re a lity

can scarcely hold out.
-G.W.F. Hegel

The 1948 Notes and the ensuing 1949-50 philosophic correspondence

produced new M arxist studies, translations, and political-philosophic
theses, as w e ll as Dunayevskaya's draft of a book, "State-Capitalism and
M arxism ," w h ich she w ould develop as M arxism and Freedom after
James broke up the Johnson-Forest Tendency. A lthough James's 1948
Notes, meant originally for a few close colleagues, had become the point
of departure for new extensive studies in to Hegelian-Marxian dialectics
in 1949-50, the philosophic breakthrough anticipated by James, Du-
nayevskaya, and Lee was never accomplished by James. Instead, the
theoretical result was the Tendency's 1950 thesis, State C apitalism and
W orld R evolution. W hile State C apitalism did break new ground w ith in
the M arxist m ovement by having a section of its p o litica l perspectives
devoted to the Hegelian dialectic proper, that result fe ll far short of the
philosophic task James fe lt history had assigned h im and the Tendency
he led.
Where that task was recognized to mean w orking out the dialectic in
every sphere—from p o litics and economics to the proletariat and the
black dimension to the party—at the advanced level of the Hegelian
Absolute, the "philosophic section" of State C apitalism relegated itself
to extrapolating the less developed category of C ontradiction.
A look at James's treatm ent of C ontradiction in the Notes discloses
w hy State C apitalism lim ite d itse lf to that category in the D octrine of
Essence, despite the fact that they had, in the 1949-50 correspondence,
reached the Absolute Idea in the D octrine of the N o tio n (Concept).
James's whole treatm ent in the Notes centers on the antinomies he
posits concerning "dialectics of the party":
 Epistemology, Absolutes, and the Party 199

I talked about organization and spontaneity, party and mass, politics and
economics- To say that each of these concepts must contain the other is
to make a profound but general statement. Much work has been done in
Bolshevism to show that politics contains economics in its concept. No
work, absolutely none, has been done on the others, except for some
marvelous beginnings by Lenin. (The subjects of organization and spon­
taneity, party ^jid mass, were not urgent in Marx's day.) (Notes 88)

In other words, the "philosophic section" of State C apitalism repre­

sents a reversion to the 1948 Notes. That is to say, the new beginning
sought in w orking out the dialectic of philosophy in the 1949-50 corre­
spondence was subsumed at its point of culm ination by the "universals
of 1948." For the conceptual movement, opened by the 1949-50 corre­
spondence, to reach the dialectic of philosophy, that is, the philosophic
breakthrough for w hich James and his coleaders labored, a sharp discon­
tin u ity w ould have to be made.
Following the period of the 1949-50 correspondence, and its political-
philosophic thesis, State C apitalism , Grace Lee and Raya Dunayevskaya
resumed the correspondence on the dialectic. In May 1953, w ritin g to
Lee directly on Hegel's Absolutes, Dunayevskaya appended a coda to the
five-year discourse that James had begun w ith his 1948 Notes. According
to Lee, the tw o letters, 12 and 20 May, that Dunayevskaya wrote on
Hegel's Absolutes represented "the equivalent of Lenin's [Philosophic]
Notebooks for our epoch." Just how James's "universals of 1948" were
superseded by Dunayevskaya's breakthrough on Hegel's Absolutes, in
1953, brought to a head the philosophic divergences w ith in the Johnson-
Forest Tendency. These letters, first published in mimeograph form in
November 1955 follow ing the breakup of the Johnson-Forest Tendency,
were published posthumously in book form under the title The P hilo­
sophic M om ent o f M arxist-H um anism (P hilosophic M om ent), follow ing
the death of Raya Dunayevskaya, 9 June 1987. Dunayevskaya's 1953
letters on Hegel's Absolutes were published along w ith an extensive
1987 essay in w hich she returned to many of the issues that had preoc­
cupied her, Lee, and James, from 1949 to 1953 for an unfinished work,
"The Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy: 'The Party' and Forms
of Organization Born O ut of Spontaneity."
So far, we have traced the conceptual movement of the philosophic
studies that the Tendency undertook, beginning w ith James's 1948 Notes
and moving through the 1949-50 correspondence to Dunayevskaya's
 200 The Am erican Years: The Philosophical D im ension

1953 letters on Hegel's Absolutes. It was the latter that Dunayevskaya

held signaled the beginning of the end of the Johnson-Forest Tendency
and contained "the philosophic m om ent of M arxist-H um anism ," w hich
she developed over the next three decades.
It is the letters of M ay 1953, in other words, th a t te ll the fin a l tale. A t
the end of her 12 M ay le tte r on Hegel's Absolute Idea, Dunayevskaya
quotes a passage from James's le tte r to Grace Lee of 20 M ay 1949. Her
reference to that im portant lette r is significant. For in quoting James
favorably there, the reader, w ith the exception of Grace Lee, w ould not
im m ediately recognize that the w hole preceding development had been
the most serious refutation of James's "dialectic of the party," especially
as James had recapitulated i t in his 20 M ay 1949 letter.
W hile James had w ritte n in his 20 M ay 1949 letter that he had looked
at Hegel's Philosophy o f M in d and got nothing from it, nevertheless he
insisted that "For us it is now M ind, the subjective element, the party"
[RDC #1614). Against this claim, Dunayevskaya w rote on 12 M ay 1953:

I have an instinct that we couldn't get very far [in Hegel's Philosophy of
M ind] when we tried it before because we equated M ind to party, but now
that I believe the dialectic of the Absolute Idea is the dialectic of the
party, I feel that M ind is the new society gestating in the o ld . . . and what
is significant about that also is the building of the new w ith in the old
makes it possible to stop jumping from high point to high point but
rather to follow concretely since this new is in the d a ily struggle. (Philo­
sophic Moment 39)

Dunayevskaya has sublated not only James's "dialectics of the party"

but also one of the principles upon w hich i t was based, viz., the notion of
leaps or "jum ping from high point to high point."
Dunayevskaya makes her second reference to James's 20 M ay 1949
letter at the beginning of the penultim ate paragraph of her 12 May 1953
letter, when she writes:

Somewhere in the letters about Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks it is

stated that Lenin was aware of the gap between his Universal ("to a man")
and the concrete Russian proletariat, where we are more aware of the
identity of the Universal and the concrete American proletariat. (Philo­
sophic M oment 39)

This refers to w hat James wrote in his 20 M ay 1949 letter:

He [Lenin] was terribly aware of the gap between his Universal and the
concrete.. . . We, 1948, and in the US in particular (though educated by
 Epistemology, Absolutes, and the Party 201

the European experience) see that there is not so much a gap as a unity.
Where he [saw] the gap, we see the unity. (RDC #1614)

Everything that follow s this passage from James, including "We have
begun the dialectic o f the p a rty its e lf" and "For us it is now M ind, the
subjective element, the p a rty/' is being counterposed and challenged by
Dunayevskaya iir th e penultim ate paragraph of her 12 May 1953 letter.
Thus, where James had w ritten,

We have begun the dialectics of the party its e lf... [which] is so much the
expression of everything, that we battle not w ith the logic of Capital, not
ordinary epistemology, but w ith the epistemological, the economic, the
historical, the political significance of the party. (RDC #1614)

Dunayevskaya writes:

I feel that in the Absolute General Law [of Capitalist Accumulation]

when Marx is developing the dialectic of bourgeois society to its lim it
and came up w ith the revolt "united, organized, disciplined" he also set
the lim its to the dialectic of the party which is part of bourgeois society
and w ill wither w ith its passing as w ill the bourgeois state. (Philosophic
Moment 40)

Where James sought to "translate" the categories of Hegel's Logic into

p olitica l terms constituting a "dialectic of the party," Dunayevskaya
sought to comprehend economic reality w ith in the context of Hegel's
Logic. She mapped the correspondence between the tw o "logics"—that of
Hegel's Science o f Logic and what Lenin referred to as the "logic" of
Marx's C apital.
W hich is w hy Marx's law of the socialization of labor assumed a deter­
minate position in Dunayevskaya's philosophic studies, in the period
1949-53.2Indeed, the divergences over this category are at the root of the
differences over "dialectics of the party." W hile the concept of the social­
ization of labor underwent many changes in the views of the Johnson-
Forest Tendency, it was the one concept whose parameters encompassed
(1) the Tendency's view of the early Marx's concept of alienated labor,
through the various drafts and editions of C apital; (2) their efforts to
"translate" Hegel's dialectic in to an emancipatory "algebra of revolu­
tion"; and (3) the task of reconstructing the inner dialectical core of
Lenin's po litica l and organizational practice.
Whether deduced from James's concept of the "th ird layer," or elabo­
rated on the basis of her new concept of mass creativity, Dunayevskaya
 202 The A m erican Years: The P hilosophical D im ension

attributed the source of theory to the mass movement itself. C larifica­

tio n of the concept of socialism, elaboration of social theory, and artic­
ulation of the ideas of revolution a ll come from the rank-and-file masses,
" n o t as direct result of any revolution, but rather as the accumulated
experiences and feelings and social th in k in g when placed in the proper
theoretic and c lim a tic atmosphere of live people" (Dunayevskaya 43),
This was due to the m a tu rity of the post7 W orld War II age, marked by a
new stage of production methods and technology, that is, automation,
and a new stage of labor revolt and a c tiv ity in opposition to it. The law of
this new centralization of production and its corresponding socialization
of labor produced a new "social th in k in g " that the Tendency took as its
m aterial and class foundation, as w e ll as its p o litic a l raison d'etre. A u to ­
m ation meant n o t "o n ly further extension of that inversion of subject
and object w hich already occurs in the course of the production process"
(Marx 136). It also meant an interpenetration of objective and subjective
w hich was "so concrete that i t is impossible to say where theory leaves
off and practice begins. This can be so o n ly because the elem ents o f
the new society are everywhere in evidence" (P hilosophic M om ent 43).
From the new "social th in k in g ," w h ich is the "source of theory," D u ­
nayevskaya moved along the Hegelian path of the dialectic of M in d to a
new " social individua l, 'an in d iv id u a lity . . . purified of all that interferes
[w ith its universalism, i.e.], w ith freedom its e lf'" (Philosophic M om ent
46).
A t this point, we again encounter James's notion of leaps or subjective
impulses of the masses. Once again, however, i t is in order to transcend
another of the "universals of 1948." For Dunayevskaya, in her 20 M ay
1953 letter, finds that Hegel's concept of the " w ill to liberty," w hich
she "translates" as the free w ill of the social individual, "is no longer
an im pulse w hich demands satisfaction, but the permanent character—
the spiritual consciousness grown in to a non-im pulsive nature" (P hilo­
sophic M om ent 46). We are here fo llo w in g Dunayevskaya's treatm ent of
that w o rk i.e., Hegel's Philosophy o f M ind, w hich James reported in his
20 May 1949 letter he had gotten nothing from.
Hegel points to the concrete, historical determ ination involved in this
impulse grown in to the "permanent character" of a new social con­
sciousness, when he writes: "W hen individuals and nations have once
got in th e ir heads the abstract concept of fu ll-b low n liberty, there is
nothing lik e it in its uncontrollable strength, just because i t is the very
essence of m ind, and that as its very actuality" (Philosophic M om ent 47).
 Epistemology, Absolutes, and the Party 203

For Dunayevskaya, this meant "th a t when w ill to liberty is no longer

mere impulse but 'permanent character,' 'spiritual consciousness' it
means and means only the proletariat that has absorbed all of science in
his person" (Philosophic M om ent 47).
Finally, this new concept of social in d iv id u a lity and consciousness
gains its fu ll ontological determ ination. Dunayevskaya finds that w ith
the next moment?of his exposition, Hegel negates "the 'have' of posses­
sion, and [moves] directly to the is of the new society: 'If to be aware of
the idea—to be aware, i.e., that men are aware of freedom as their es­
sence, aim, and object—is m atter of speculation, s till this very idea itself
is the actuality of men—not something w hich they have, as men, but
w hich they are' " (Philosophic M om ent 47).
We have moved, therefore, from the socialization of labor at the end of
Dunayevskaya's 12 M ay letter, w hich has now fu lly sublated James's
notion of socialization of labor as something capitalistic, to the social
thinkin g of a new social individua l and social consciousness, w hich
Dunayevskaya posits on the basis of her reading of Hegel's concept of
Free M ind. And finally, from the social individual and m ind, we come to
the "new society," the dialectic of w hich she w ill develop out of her
reading of Hegel's concept of Absolute M ind, and the three final syllo­
gisms w ith w hich he closes out and transcends his own system of p h ilo ­
sophical sciences, in the Philosophy of M ind.
It was w ith Dunayevskaya's final encounter w ith this last of Hegel's
Absolutes that the philosophic divergences in the Johnson-Forest Ten­
dency became a philosophic break. That James never responded to the
letters on the Absolutes was a manifestation of this new philosophic
divide.
That C.L.R. James could have philosophically dug so deep into the
dialectic and not broken through to what he called the "core of the dia­
lectic . . . the m aterialist interpretation of Hegel's last chapters in the
Logic," especially the Absolute Idea, has meaning not only for today's
critical discourse in black and M arxist thought. It bears on the future of
revolutions to be. Indeed, can we be certain that it has not already had a
bearing on the tragic fate of the Grenada Revolution, in 1983?

Notes

1. A ll letters between Raya Dunayevskaya, C.L.R. James, and Grace Lee can be
found in the Raya Dunayevskaya C ollection—Marxist-Hum anism : A H a lf Cen-
 204 The A m erican Years: The P hilosophical D im ension

tu ry of Its W orld Development. Available on m ic ro film , Wayne State U n ive rsity

Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, D e tro it. A ll citations w ill be to RDC,
follow ed by m ic ro film number.
2. A c tu a lly Dunayevskaya had been preoccupied w ith the question of the
socialization of labor as early as 1942 when, as part of her original 1941 thesis on
Russia as a state-capitalist society, she translated parts of Marx's Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts o f 1844 for a theoretical study e ntitled "Labor and
Society." T his and other early w ritin g s by Dunayevskaya on her theory of state-
capitalism were published posthum ously in 1992 under the title The M arxist-
H um anist Theory o f State-Capitalism (Chicago: News and Letters, 1992).

Works Cited

Dunayevskaya, Raya. The Philosophic M om ent o f M arxist-H um anism . Chicago:

News and Letters, 1989.
James, C.L.R. Notes on D ialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin. Westport, Conn.: Law­
rence H ill, 1980.
M arx, Karl. Capital. Volum e 3. N ew York: Vintage, 1981.
 R ick Roderick

Further Adventures of the D ia le ctic

"I'm afraid American theorists w ill not understand

this, but the clue to everything lies in his proper ap­
preciation of the game of cricket."
—E.P. Thompson on C.L.R, James

" I come to sing songs not for victors only, but for
slain and despised persons.. . . "
—Walt Whitman

"T im e would pass, old empires w ould fa ll and new

ones take their place, the relations of countries and
the relations of classes had to change, before I dis­
covered that it is not the quality of goods and u tility
w hich matter, but movement; not where you are or
what you have, but where you came from, where
you are going and the rate at w hich you are getting
there."
—C.L.R. James

"Reason, or the ratio of all we have already known, is

not the same that it shall be when we know more."
—W illiam Blake

In the introduction to Notes on D ialectics (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence

H ill, 1980), a reading of the dialectic from Hegel to Lenin, C.L.R. James
outlines his project as a strategic analysis of "hard kn o ts/' or an as­
semblage of "personalities, spontaneous movements, certain mass ac­
tions, and the incalculable activities w hich constitute a society." W ith in
the book proper, James goes on to analyze the "hard knots" (Notes on
D ialectics 9) or "antagonisms" that emerge w ith in the history of the
labor movements. For James, "at a certain stage these apparently indeter­
minate activities coalesce in to a hard knot w hich are foci of arrest and

205
 206 The A m erican Years: The P hilosophical D im ension

direction in m ental life and consciousness" (Notes on D ialectics 9). Such

"kn o ts" constitute the basis for a new p o litic a l situation in to w hich a
new "s p irit" may enter, James engages in a dialectic of these "m om ents"
and th e ir potential.
Such a project is not psychoanalytical in approach, although it could be
viewed as a reading of these knots as antagonisms in to w hich the produc­
tive energies of the w orker have been transcribed as a kin d of residual
psycho-social text. H istorically, we can see in the organization of each
of the C om m unist Internationals a progression of knots, w hich were
formed by specific historical circumstances, but w hich were each dis­
placed by other knots, produced by different objective circumstances.
Each of these knots represents a m om ent of "freeze" where the workers
move toward self-realization as heterogeneous, where productive energy
is reduced to a homogeneous mass that m ust be spoken for by the party
or the state. James suggests that his analysis of the form ation of these
knots (essentially a histo ry of the labor movement from 1789 to 1948)
w ould enable us to "understand and develop for contemporary and future
needs the history of the labor movem ents" (Notes on D ialectics 8).
James's Notes on D iale ctics can be viewed as a h istorically inform ed
activist mapping strategy. By analyzing the h istory of the form ation of
knots and freezes in w orker organizational structures, James hopes to
provide a mapping by w hich the w o rkin g classes can realize their u lti­
mate aim: self-m obilization and self-valorization. This movement, or be­
coming, parallels the movement from Deleuze and Guattari's subjugated
groups to a subject group; again, this is becoming aware as heteroge­
neous productive energy, w hich determines itse lf w ith in specific, local
circumstances (see G illes Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A nti-O edipus:
C apitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert H urley [Minneapolis: U n i­
versity of M innesota Press, 1983]). Understood in this way, worker self­
m obiliza tio n is for James a self-organization for "m ortal struggle" w ith
its contradictory form ation, capital. T his struggle, however, is never
between an efficient machine (capital) and the "becoming conscious of
heterogeneous w orker production." Rather it is between a system that
appropriates a ll productive energies, including those in whose interest it
acts, and the real flu x of specific nonhomogeneous energy w hich has
produced everything of real value. Thus, activist mapping attempts to
locate the moments of productive appropriation and, on the basis of this
identification, to move against capital.
Notes on D ialectics is an expanded selection of James's correspon-
 Further Adventures of the D ia le ctic 207

dence w ith Grace Lee and Raya Dunayevskaya on the problem of re­
th in kin g the present w ith new, more objectively tenable categories, new
categories that w ould later be more fu lly developed by James in State
C apitalism and W orld R evolution. The form at of the Notes (James calls
it an anthology) consists of quotations from Hegel's Logic, followed by
James's reading of the worker's movement in an energetic and inform al
style. H is detailed*readings of d iffic u lt passages in Hegel are punctuated
by hum orously dialectical interjections such as "You are ready to go on?
You w ill never learn to be a dialectician. Stop and look at it. I am positive
that you do not see" [Notes on D ialectics 40). This playful yet serious
presentation of the Hegelian dialectic moves against certain passive
methods of presentation and against prejudicial assumptions about the
working classes, namely that they are always unaware of their own
situation. What James attempts to show in the Notes, as he does through­
out all his work, is that no one could know the circumstances of their
situation better than the workers themselves.
Toward the end, James distinguishes his method as an active process of
reading and w ritin g by w hich he develops new categories: "But to w rite it
down is something else. Finally, it is not an abstract essay. It leads us into
practice, in to practical politics" (Notes on D ialectics 184). James makes
passive reading impossible. He continua lly taunts the reader by suggest­
ing that her or his reading, at that point in the text, is premature and
nondialectical. He lite ra lly pushes us forward from category to category,
skipping whole sections of Hegel's Logic w hile paying particular atten­
tion to what he feels is necessary. This idiosyncratic reading (a contribut­
ing factor in the split in the Johnson-Forest Tendency in 1953) s till
produces effects.
What Hegel calls "Reason," James suggests, projects new categories, or
"new universals," based on specific contingencies it then breaks up,
form ing other "universals" that are themselves burst through. What
Hegel calls "Understanding" also projects "universals" but it "sticks to
them ," resulting in a "universal" that becomes a "frozen" residual form a­
tion. James says, "The universal of Reason today is by tom orrow the
Universal of Understanding" (Notes on D ialectics 23). It is im portant to
note that, for James, "Reason" does not project toward a resolution; to do
so would half the flu x and flow of the becoming of "Reason," reducing it
to an "abstract universal" of "Understanding." His reading of the dialec­
tic completely disavows the traditional Hegelian reading of W orld-spirit
as a resolution: "Hegel talks about the w orld-spirit, the Absolute, e tc.. . .
 208 The Am erican Years: The P hilosophical D im ension

For our purposes i t does not m atter a damn" (Notes on D ialectics 52). For
James, the dialectic and its m ovem ent is best understood by the dictum ,
"the proof of the pudding is in the eating."
James's ow n unique appropriation of the dialectic is dynamic and
projective, allow ing h im to "speculate" new categories that attem pt to
break through the contemporary residual structure that he found him self
inscribed w ith in . Notes on D ia le ctics is exemplary in that i t maps the
residual form ation "state capitalism " and moves against it. The thrust of
this projection in to new categories is fueled from below and is rooted in
daily life, in the concrete: "we are going to th in k about it and analyze i t
and speculate, but every serious movem ent has come from below. These
ever-displaced categories then, are not fixed and form alized construc­
tions, but are based, as forms of logic, in Desire, W ill, etc., human
feelings and actions." James's reading of the dialectic is grounded in the
productive, day-to-day struggle of the worker, and he cautions us against
any reading of the dialectic that neglects this. Thus, movement out of
the old categories is impossible w ith o u t recognizing productive self­
valorization by the workers; not sim ply w ith in the logic of capital, but as
the real heterogeneous value-producing power that i t is.
In assessing James's career as a whole, one m ight argue that specific
critiques th a t James makes of the residual become residual themselves.
This is certainly true but can only be said of particular strategies and not
of the m ovem ent of these strategies proper. James recognizes that to the
extent that categories are not determined "fro m below," from the con­
temporary, heterogeneous struggles of the worker, they freeze in to ab­
stracted categories of the "understanding." Thus, from w ith in the new
categories developed by Johnson-Forest in 1948-49, a result of move­
m ent of the dialectic, James critiques his own specific categories that he
developed in W orld R evolution as residual form ations. Those categories
were, in 1938, categories of "Reason"; but from the perspective of 1948,
those categories had become "frozen." James continued to w rite and
rew rite the categories, always mapping from below, actively. From the
position of the new ly form ulated categories based on their w ork on
Hegel's Logic, the Johnson-Forest Tendency moved against w hat i t saw
as the residual form ation w ith in the Fourth International: Trotskyism
and its insistence on old Leninist categories.
Trotsky's m ost profound mistake, James argues, was beginning by
believing that he knew categories changed: "To say that [categories
change], to th in k that, im plies that you know that categories change and
 Further Adventures of the D ia le ctic 209

Trotsky didn't. He w ould have been able to lecture you on changing

categories most profoundly. He talked about it all the tim e. But fixed and
fin ite determinations held h im by the throat t i l l the end" (Notes on
D ialectics 18). Trotsky's notion of changing categories was frozen as a
moment of abstract Understanding and can be seen as such in his strug­
gle w ith Stalin over Leninist categories. James suggests that Trotsky
remained frozen if i the categories of Lenin's practice during the years
1903-1923, categories that in working-class struggles from 1905 were
untenable and counterproductive. The result of Trotsky's intransigence,
and his rem aining w ith in the categories of the bourgeoisie revolution,
was that his position became, w ith in the revolutionary workers' move­
ment, "frozen" as a residual form ation. Trotsky's position, both as it was
determined against what he perceived to be Stalin's theory of socialism
in one country and later as it was elaborated w ith in the Fourth Interna­
tional, was based on: showing how close he was to Lenin in the past; and
showing how the Stalinists were not Leninists. This compulsion to ally
him self w ith categories of the Understanding prevented Trotsky from
developing new strategies that could have been m obilized against what
had emerged by 1948 as the most profound expression of the residual,
"state capitalism ."
In Notes on D ialectics, James was faced w ith two residual formations,
both of w hich refused to acknowledge the productive energies of the
working masses: "Both sides [Trotsky and Stalin] were much closer than
appears on the surface" (Notes 35). As I have previously mentioned,
Notes is both James's most theoretical w ork concerning antiresidual
strategies proper and a specific antiresidual strategy that moved against
the frozen categories developed w ith in the Fourth International. The c ri­
tique of the Stalinist residual form ation occurs more full-blow n in State
C apitalism and W orld R evolution, the culm ination of the Johnson-
Forest Tendency's work.
In Part II of Notes on D ialectics, James lays out his model of differen­
tia l construction and movement of the proletariat, calling it a kind of
"basic training" (Notes on D ialectics 67). He begins by suggesting that in
order to determine or propose a category, something else must be ne­
gated: "whenever you do something, you at the same tim e do not do
something else" (68). In this way, "being" is never a static or essential
category but instead is a movement and a projection. Along w ith this, he
proposes that being-for-itself is always being-for-another; his example is
that to determine men who work, we must distinguish them against
 210 The A m erican Years: The P hilosophical D im ension

those men w ho do not w o rk so that each term m u tu a lly suggests or

defines the other. Between these tw o categories, workers and nonw ork­
ers, there is a barrier that James calls quality, w h ich if broken through
creates a new "o th e r" of a new category. T his barrier or lim it, as Hegel
describes it, defines the lines along w hich a determ ination of a category
is made. A determ ination of one side of the lim it constitutes the cate­
gory's id e n tity; the other side of the barrier constitutes its "other." Once
this lim it or barrier is burst through, the*other becomes the determina­
tio n and a new "o th e r" is produced. James also discusses this in relation
to Hegel's proposition of w hat James calls the one and the many, by
w hich he suggests that the one exists as a singular category to the extent
that it repels the many. The particular q u a lity or lim it that determines a
category m ust be actively m aintained in order for the one to remain dis­
tin ct. James's insistence on both differential determ ination and Hegel's
notion of the one and the m any is the basis of his proposal of a nonessen­
tial, dynam ic proposition of category. Categories always im p ly move­
ment, but they also im p ly a peculiar double-articulated id e n tity as cate-
gory/other. The determ ination of a category, then, is not sim ply a m atter
of locating an isolated essentialist form or object, but is a construction
of the m ovem ent to the other: a m ovement that is not between tw o cate­
gories b u t a m ovem ent as m u tu a lly defining terms. Throughout his
explication of Hegel's notio n of being and essence, James continually
reminds us that his reading is a strategic movement through the Hege­
lian method, replete w ith mistakes, pauses, and idiosyncratic selections:
"m y explanations, as many of m y explanations, undoubtedly w ill com­
m it violations . . . I do not guarantee these interpretations. The point is
once they are down we begin to get somewhere. I am not afraid of
mistakes" (Notes on D ialectics 79-80). James's explanation of the deter­
minateness of categories subverts the boundaries of those "real" Hege­
lian categories, thrusting out in to new more objectively tenable catego­
ries and thus out in to a new other. H is reading of Hegel's Logic is itself a
strategic, contingent movement, based not on a rigid, essentialist Hege­
lian norm but on his own particular production of those terms.
We see in the differential nature of the constitu tion of categories the
importance of difference in id e n tity and of id e n tity in difference. H ow ­
ever, essential difference is not the same as being different. James cites an
example of w hat he calls vulgar difference: between a camel and a French
dictionary. There is obvious difference here, but i t means nothing to say
that these tw o categories are not the same. Real difference, James re-
 Further Adventures of the D ia le ctic 211

marks, is bound up w ith identity: a comparison of two books by the same

author reveals a more essential difference, based on their authorial and
generic identity. This leads in to what James calls essential difference, or
difference of identity:

W ithin the identity of an object, you have to establish the essential

difference, and w ith in its specific difference, you have to establish the
identity. If you^have established the specific difference, the difference
which belongs to the object, which distinguishes it from all other objects
and their differences, then you have the Other o f the object. The other is
the difference that matters, the essential difference. (Notes on Dialectics
85)

fames goes on to suggest that each object has as its id e n tity its essential
difference w ith other objects. Thus, id e n tity is based on a specific rela­
tionship that an object has w ith its other: id e n tity is not singular, but is
bound as its other. M ovem ent out of a category compels us to determine
its other by mapping its complex of qualitative line(s) of transgression or
lim it, through w hich we can then burst in to new strategic categories.
W ith James's differential understanding of category in place, we can
see the relationship between capital and its other, the proletariat; lik e ­
wise, we can see the proletariat and its other, capital. Otherness is not a
determ ination of nonessentiality; each determ ination has its own other,
but neither im plies the "real" basis for the existence of the other, rather
they are of the same essence. This essence is production, or nonessen­
tia lity, w hich capital m ust harness and deny in order for it to exist as a
category, and w hich the proletariat must affirm in order to move against
capital's appropriation of its energies and desires. James reads each Inter­
national along w ith its specific capitalist other as a mapping or history of
categorical freeze and movement: each freeze, or halting of essence (de­
fined as fluxive becoming), required a rethinking of the freeze and a
projection out by way of its other. From the labor movements of 1889, to
Menshevism, to Leninism, and fin a lly to Stalinism, movement has oc­
curred by freeze and breakthrough. In an odd way, the destruction of the
Stalinist freeze and the collapse of state socialism require that we put
C.L.R. James back on the agenda of our reading, acting, and w ritin g once
again, or perhaps for the first time.
 The Am erican Years,

a C ollaborative Enterprise:

The L ite ra ry D im ension

 Selwyn R. Cudjoe

"As Ever, lD arling, A ll M y Love, N e llo ":

The Love Letters of C.L.R. fames

Fine poetry is never general. It is always concrete, in ­

dividual. That is the difference between poetry and
philosophy. Poetry is a generalisation in concrete
terms. Philosophy is the concrete generalised.
—C.L.R. James to Constance Webb, 1 March 1946

You have fought against bourgeois society for your

independence as a woman, for the right to live your
own revolutionary life, against masculine tyranny
and shortsightedness and selfishness. You have
fought for " tru th " and "in te g rity," you have fought
for the realisation of your own powers when nobody
but I, and not adequately, believe that you had them,
you fought racial prejudice, you have fought the
temptations w hich your beauty and your charm, and
am bition made particularly dangerous for you, you
have fought and you have won.
—C.L.R. James to Constance Webb, 27 April 1946

The Problematic

In 1929, w hile he was a lecturer at the Government Teachers' Training

College in Port of Spain, C.L.R. James married Juanita Young, one of
three Chinese sisters and a secretary-stenographer at a Port of Spain
law firm . Beryl McBurnie, a lifelong friend of James, called James's mar­
riage "a somewhat satisfactory one" and described Juanita as a very
beautiful woman who adored her husband. However, James's immersion
in cricket, football, w riting, and other literary pursuits did not allow him
to spend as much tim e w ith Juanita as she deserved and perhaps de­
manded. McBurnie remembers telling James that Juanita was very lonely

215
 216 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

and urging h im to spend more tim e w ith Juanita. He responded: "I have
to live the way I'm liv in g /'1According to McBurnie, "James never under­
stood husbandliness. He wanted to be le ft alone." In 1986, w ritin g in his
never published autobiography about his life w ith women, James noted
that in 1930, about a year in to his marriage to Juanita, she said to h im
"w ith o u t h o stility, [that] the only tim e you have any pleasure w ith me is
when you are on top of me. I did not know w hat to say."2 M any years
later, after about nine m onths of marriage to Constance Webb, the recip­
ient of James's letters, she turned to h im and said, " w ith a certain pas­
sion, 'Look here, te ll me w hat you want from me, w hat can I give to you.
T ell me please but don't leave me in this situation. Tell me som ething.'"
Reflecting on these incidents some years later (about the 1980s) in his
unfinished autobiography, James observed:

I could te ll her nothing because I had only the vaguest idea of what she
was speaking about. It seemed that as a husband, living in the same
house, I was most unsatisfactory. N ot sexually nor in my behavior. I am a
well-behaved person, I don't quarrel or shout at people, far less shout at
my wife. We go out periodically when there is something that we want to
see, we have friends, there has always been enough money to carry on the
affairs of the household—though at times things were rather sharp. But it
seems that as a husband, my wife in Trinidad had spotted it. And my first
wife in the United States was quite plain about it. M y virtues as a
husband were entirely negative.
I didn't pay any attention to them as human beings sharing a life w ith
me. I had a very active life dealing w ith politics, literature and matters of
that kind, [and] it was looked upon, not so much by me (for me it was
quite natural) [but] by everybody else as a kind of life which was unusual
and was worth respect. These women gave it the respect that it seemed
such a life demanded. But I gave i t all that I had in the way of attention
and special concern. The plain fact of the matter is, as personalities, as
individuals sharing a life w ith both in Trinidad and the United States, I
ignored them completely. It was many years before I discovered that.3

A few years later, James adm itted that he saw the lig h t and realized
that he was lacking something v ita l in the way in w hich he related to
women:

I was lacking in the fact that I never completely committed my life and
my way of living to her life and to her way of living, and when she asked
me what I wanted, I hesitated and didn't work at it because it meant that
to request of her what I wanted meant ultim ately that my freedom and
independence to live my own life as I wanted would also be committed to
 "A s Ever D arling, A ll M y Love" 217

her. And the fact remains that I did not want anything in particular from
her, due to my ignorance and stupidity. I wasn't aware what was there,
because she was in many respects quite a remarkable person. So that is
the situation.4

On 16 July 1984 after seeing a television version of N e il Simon's

"Chapter Two," w hich portrayed a male character as displaying little
concern for the feelings of women and using her for his own convenience,
he wrote to Webb-Pearlstien:

Part of the trouble is that most writers and even some of the women
accept this instinctive feeling that the man automatically is the person
who has first consideration in everything—large things to small. I would
like to know what you think of this, particularly you who have a personal
experience of some years of someone who was not av/are (italics added)
that he was dominating you or using you for his own personal purposes—
that was myself. I had not the faintest idea of these things.

Although this "confession" was made some forty years after the in itia l
encounter, James had come to see the light. He recognized the exploit­
ative manner in w hich he treated his wives. Yet, during the period in
which he was most insensitive to his second w ife (even though, curi­
ously he understood the outlines of the "wom an question"), he would
w rite some of the most astonishingly revealing letters to her, arduously
courting and supporting her in her endeavors and, in the process, reveal­
ing some of the more intim ate concerns of his life.5 Love letters they
m ight have been, yet they were intensely po litica l documents that un­
veiled im portant aspects of James's life during a period in w hich he
produced his most im portant philosophical disquisition. In this essay, I
w ill concern myself w ith tracing certain aspects of James's intellectual
development (1939-48), his analysis of what he called the "Woman
Question," the method he employed and the concerns he expressed
w hile w ritin g Notes on D ialectics, w hich was the most im portant in te l­
lectual w ork he produced, and the curious manner in w hich some of his
most intensely insigh tfu l w ork emerged when he was most deeply in
love.
When James arrived in the U nited States in October 1938 at the in vita ­
tion of James P. Cannon and the Socialist Workers Party, he enjoyed an
enormous reputation as a M arxist thinker, a lover of literature, and a
ladies man. Seeker and Warburg, a publishing house dedicated to pub­
lishing books that were "anti-fascist, and probably anti-com m unist as
 218 The Am erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

w e ll"6 published the firs t year i t was formed James's M in ty A lle y (1936).
Since Fredric Warburg, one of the principals of the company, believed
that the "T ro tskyist heresy was its refusal to accept everything as gospel
tru th w hich was advanced by the lyin g champions of Soviet perfection,"
the works of James fitte d rig h t in to th e ir publishing program.7 W orld
R evolution (1937), "a k in d of Bible of Trotskyism ," sold fa irly w e ll w hile
Boris Souvraine's S talin (1939), translated from the French by James, sold
about tw o thousand copies w ith in a year of its publication.8 Both books
were published by Seeker and Warburg.
Because Warburg published James's major w orks and spent some tim e
w ith him , Warburg got to know James reasonably w ell. As a result, he
was able to observe James during his last tw o years in London (1936-38)
and thus offer a description of James's behavior during that tim e:

Despite the atmosphere of hate and arid dispute in his writings, James
himself was one of the most delightful and easy-going personalities I
have known, colourful in more senses than one. A dark-skinned West
Indian negro from Trinidad, he stood six feet three inches in his socks and
was noticeably good-looking. His memory was extraordinary. He could
quote, not only passages from the Marxist classics but long extracts from
Shakespeare, in a soft liltin g English which was a delight to hear. Im ­
mensely amiable, he loved the fleshpots of capitalism, fine cooking, fine
clothes, fine furniture and beautiful women, w ithout a trace of the guilty
remorse to be expected from a seasoned warrior of the class war. He was
brave. Night after night he would address meetings in London and the
provinces, denouncing the crimes of the blood-thirsty Stalin, u n til he
was hoarse and his wonderful voice a mere croaking in the throat. The
communists who heckled him would have tom him lim b from limb, had
it not been for the ubiquity of the police and their insensitivity to propa­
ganda of whatever hue. If you told him of some new communist argu­
ment, he would listen w ith a smile of infinite tolerance on his dark face,
wag the index finger of his right hand solemnly, and announce in an
understanding tone—"we know them, we know them"—as of a man who
has plumbed human wickedness to its depth and forgiven it, since man
even in his wickedness is pitiable.
If politics was his religion and Marx his god, if literature was his
passion and Shakespeare his prince among writers, cricket was his be­
loved activity. He wrote splendid articles on county matches for the
Manchester Guardian during the summer. Indeed, it was only between
A pril and October that he was in funds. Sometimes he came for the week­
end to our cottage near West Hoathly in Sussex and turned out for the
local team. He was a demon bowler, and a powerful if erratic batsman.
 "A s Ever D arling, A ll M y Love" 219

The village loved him, referring to him affectionately as "the black

bastard." In Sussex politics were fogotten. Instead, I can hear today the
opening words of Twelfth N ight, delivered beautifully from his fu ll sensi­
tive lips: "If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it."
Excess, perhaps, was James' crime, an excess of words whose relevance to
the contemporary tragedy was less than he supposed.9

Given the "measure of scepticism "10 w ith w hich Warburg viewed

Trotskyism, one has to temper his description of James w ith a reciprocal
measure of skepticism. Yet this description gives us a sense of the kind of
person James had become and the reputation that accompanied h im to
the U nited States. Grace Lee Boggs notes that when he came to the
United States he didn't know what Cannon knew but "he knew a lo t of
things Cannon did not know. James knew a lot about history for a
thousand years back. . . . Having w ritte n it [W orld R evolution), it crys-
talized in h im the idea that the ideas in that book were permanent. So he
became a preacher of w orld revolution, something like Trotsky. But he
was a man of extreme breadth. He knew European history, he knew
literature, he knew music, he wrote plays. W ithout C.L.R. James none of
us would be talking the way we are talking today."11 About ten years
later, in October 1947, one of James's friends said to him : "You are a man
who exercises a considerable fascination over women and along w ith
politics and what you represent there is also m ixed up sexual desire and
jealousy of w hich the women themselves are not aware" (11 October
1947, 6). In the U nited States, James had lost neither his oratorical skills
nor his considerable fascination for "beautiful women." He continued
to mesmerize those w ith w hom he came in to contact, and he spent some
of his most fru itfu l years investigating M arxist theory, studying the
African-American condition and observing the new forms of cultural
expression in an emerging and robust capitalist w o rld.12
A year after he arrived in the U nited States, James went to a Negro
church to speak on the "Negro Question," as the African-American
political condition was labeled at the tim e, saw a live ly young woman
twenty years his junior wearing a red dress, and fe ll head over heels in
love w ith her. Her name was Constance Webb, and for the next nine
years of his life (1939-48), his "greatest period of creative a c tiv ity ,"13 as
George R. Rawick, one of his comrades attested, James would w rite over
a hundred and fifty letters of approximately four thousand handwritten
pages (about six hundred typew ritten pages) to Webb telling of his love
and his fears. When one realizes the physical pain James underwent
 220 The Am erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

when he used a pen (in 1937 James was diagnosed as having a duodenal
ulcer, and his collapse in 1942 w ith a perforated stomach le ft h im w ith
shaky hands and fingers)14 it dawns on the reader that w ritin g these
letters was a m onum ental task of love and devotion. For example, in one
of his letters to Webb from M exico where he was v is itin g w ith Leon
Trotsky, he notes that because he had lost his green pen, w ritin g had
become "so very uncom fortable/' In subsequent letters, James w ould
always com plain about his "very shaky h ands/'15 But these letters were
not only about James's "undying affection" for Webb; they also demon­
strated an im portant dim ension of his in te lle ctu a l development that is
not obvious from a cursory reading of his oeuvre. Indeed, in these letters
one can document crucial moments in the form ation of James's out­
standing in te lle ctu a l career.
In a way, these correspondences can be considered one of the great love
affairs in the history of African-Am erican in te lle ctua l history. D uring
that period Webb became James's confidante, the person to w hom he
confessed his hopes and his fears and, in the process, revealed a lo t about
his many inte lle ctu a l concerns. Yet most of all, he was a man sm itten by
a woman, someone to w hom he exposed the most intim ate aspects of his
life. W hile these letters, as forms of self-representations, may be read as
fictio n , they do reveal an in te n sity of feeling on James's part that allows
the reader to establish some form of relationship w ith him . Moreover, we
are granted privileged access to w hat under norm al circumstances we
w ould not be p riv y —James's m any unconscious thoughts and feelings.
These letters were not meant to be made public at the tim e they were
w ritte n ("I w rite 'private and confidential' (because). . . long experience
has taught me that one's private affairs, even when not very private, had
best be kept private" [24 A p ril 1939]). But after he saw them typew ritten
in 1984, he responded to Webb in the fo llo w in g manner: "W hat strikes
me is the m aterial basis of your letters. The paper is good paper and the
typing and arrangement of the materials are precise and so form al that i t
almost achieves an aestheticism. T hat is more than a lo t of talk. The le t­
ters look fine on paper."16A bout tw o weeks earlier when appraised about
her preparation of these papers for publication, he responded to Webb: "It
is h elpful to know or to learn that those old letters can mean something
today" (London, 20 December 1983). P olitical anim al as he was, James
could not help com m enting on the p o litic a l im pact he thought the letters
w ould have had, and in a postscript of his 20 December letter to Webb, he
noted: "You should have been doing this long ago. Your letters, especially
 "A s Ever D arling, A ll M y Love" 221

the one of 9 December 1983, show that you have a sense of useful
m aterial—particularly m aterial of a personal style w hich Americans like
so much. However, as long as it is disciplined w ith in the p o litic a l con­
ceptions th a t are contained in the letter(s) the contribution ought to be—
w ill avoid the word devastating and content myself w ith effective"
(James's italics).
By examining the various nodes of attention and emphases that James
placed on certain issues in his letters, and by being conscious of the
"po litica l conceptio n/intention" that was inherent in these letters, one
gets a good sense of the kin d of concerns that animated James during this
period of his life and of the intense p o litica l and philosophical specula­
tion that engaged his attention during those brutal political years. More­
over, in the absence of a form al autobiography, we are able to trace many
aspects of James's intellectual and social development. And keeping in
m ind David Curtis's "concern that philosophy as the reflected challenge
to inherited thought cannot exist w ith o u t the assertion of a p olitical
w i l l . . . (and that] politics cannot consciously transform existing in s titu ­
tions unless these in stitu tio n s themselves can be put e xp licitly into
question,"17 one can argue that during this period James participated in
p o litics, par excellence; that is, he questioned the social and political
in stitu tio n s intensely. Or, we can advance the M arxist antinom y that
p o litica l w ill is nothing less than the concentrated expression of philo­
sophical desire.

The Letters (General Appraisal)

A close examination of these letters demonstrates that during the forties

James paid enormous attention to M arxist philosophy and economics.
Of particular importance to James was the w orking through of the dialec­
tic. Feeling that enough attention was not given to the philosophical-
dialectical understanding of the unfolding of M arxist thought (which
would explain Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany), James argued that
not only had philosophy become "w orldly. In the face of the universal
character of the [bourgeois] crisis, the w orld is driven to become p h ilo ­
sophical. It is compelled to examine in their nature and in the to ta lity of
their relations (that is to say, philosophically), economics, politics, sci­
ence and even the very nature of the universe and society."18 In the
forties, James paid especial attention to Hegel's Philosophy of H isto ry
and the Phenomenology of M in d and to Marx's C apital and his C ritiq u e
 222 The Am erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

o f Hegel's Philosophy o f R ight in order to understand w hat inhered in the

nature of bureaucracies that made them so brutal versus the alternative
concepts of M arx and the power of the w orking class. As he noted in
"D ialectical M aterialism and the Fate of H u m a n ity" (1947), "The Rus­
sian bureaucracy, as the N azi bureaucracy in its tim e, represents essen­
tia lly the opposition to the universality of the people in every single
sphere of life ."19 In fact, to understand that brutal feature of bureau­
cracies was the central task of "D ialectical M aterialism and the Fate
of H um a n ity," The Invading S ocialist Society (1947), and, his seminal
philosophical w ork, Notes on D ialectics (1948). In 1950, he had finished
substantial w o rk on "Notes on Am erican C iv iliz a tio n ," later amended to
read "C.L.R. James and the Struggle for Happiness" (1991) and edited by
Anna Grim shaw and K eith Hart. In 1952, the very im portant M ariners,
Renegades and Castaways (1953) was completed on Ellis Island. It was
the last major w o rk James completed before he was deported from the
U nited States, a result of the M cC arthy fulm inations against socialists
and communists. In the last chapter of this work, James makes his case
to the Justice Departm ent to be accepted as a citizen of the U nited States,
a society in w hich he saw the possibility of the emergence of a new
person.
If the works noted above can be characterized as reflections/re­
presentations of James's public life, there is also a private side of James
that is reflected in the very volum inous correspondences that he carried
on w ith Constance Webb from as early as 15 A p ril 1939 to as late as
4 A p ril 1981. In a way, these letters reveal a very im portant aspect of
James's intellectua l concerns and his academic method. One m ust see
not only that he shaped and reshaped many of his ideas in the course of
his correspondences w ith Webb, but also that his collaboration w ith
Webb and other women during this period of his life (particularly Raya
Dunayevskaya and Grace Lee Boggs) was part of the genuine collective
practice that characterized James's w ork.20 Moreover, this collective ap­
proach to scholarship (that is, in the actual solution of problems con­
fronted by his organization) played an im portant role in his solution of
many of the theoretical problems that arose. Thus w ould Rawick write:

I shall never forget his lifelong habit of interrogating people as to the

histories of their lives in the most minute details. It was from this
practice, as well as constant reading, that James derived much of his
understanding of modem society. Indeed, many of his works were co­
authored w ith his comrades as part of a practice based upon the under-
 'As Ever D arling, A ll M y Love" 223

standing th a t p o litic a l w o rk m u st be co lle ctive , in v o lv in g in w ritin g n o n ­

in te lle c tu a ls as w e ll as trained in te lle c tu a ls .21

Sometimes deep-seated splits emerged between James and the women

w ith w hom he worked. A colleague who worked w ith James for two
years in the seventies suggested that the contributions of these women
have not been given the value they deserve and that, perhaps, their break
w ith James may have had something to do w ith the manner in w hich
some "p o litica l men perceive and treat women as objects."22 In fairness
to James, it certainly seemed that he tried to overcome this aspect of his
behavior in his relationship w ith women. Nonetheless, it is im portant to
see James's exchange w ith Webb as a two-way form of com m unication in
which he certainly received as m uch as he gave.
James's letters to Webb dealt w ith any number of topics. He talked
about their plans to study together,- he wrote about Shakespeare and
Beethoven,* he outlined plays he wanted to w rite (he wanted to w rite a
play about H arriet Tubman); he was somewhat depreciatory of the acting
performance of Paul Robeson in O thello (James acted w ith Robeson in
1936); he revealed his relationship w ith the Com m unist Party, the in ­
fighting w ith in the Johnson-Forest Tendency, and his relationship w ith
Richard W right; he fille d in the years of childhood in Trinidad; he spoke
about his mother's death, rather indifferently, and about many other
such related matters. Always, he sought to in s till a sense of resoluteness
in her work, encouraging her to believe in her abilities and to confront
life w ith fearlessness and grace. Thus, in urging her to stick to her career
of acting, he writes:

The feelings th a t surge [w ith in you] and m u st be expressed are the pulsa­
tio n of a life w ith in you m ore p o w e rfu l than in the average person. A ll
people have it. C a p ita lism stifle s it. But w ith some i t is so p o w e rfu l th a t
i t breaks through. You achieve or you d o n 't achieve. But the th in g th a t
m atters is to liv e yo u r life , to express yourself as long as i t is n o t ignoble
or mean or actuated by cheap m o tive s such as ge ttin g a lo t of money. You
seem unce rta in about m y understanding w h a t you are doing and why.
Some pseudo-M arxist has been g e ttin g at you te llin g you th a t w hat you
should do is jo in a p a rty and w o rk in a factory? Just te ll them to go to hell,
that's a ll. I w orked at lite ra tu re fo r years and made m y ow n w ay to w here
I am. I made m y ow n way. N o t a soul contacted me. N obody taught me.
And, th a n k Heaven, I fin d th a t I am s till m a kin g m y ow n w ay w h ile so
m any others are flo u n d e rin g around, re p e a tin g ... . T he m ore p o w e rfu lly
you develop yourself, the m ore you strive to b rin g o u t a ll th a t is in you,
 224 The Am erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

the more genuinely yourself you are, for being yourself in any art, is a hell
of a jo b ... the more you express your own genuine personality, the easier
it is for people to recognise that you express something w hich is inside of
them. (1 September 1943,1-2)

To James, as he dem onstrated so elegantly in The B lack Jacobins, charac­

ter (w hat Am ericans called "personality/') m attered im m ensely w hich is
one reason w hy he always directed Constance to study the entire corpus
of European lite ra tu re . To the end, his favorite poet was Shakespeare, in
whose drama he saw the to ta l developm ent and fu lfillm e n t of the bour­
geois personality. He was a com m itted M arxist, and despite his m any
failings, he rem ained true to th is ca llin g to the end.

T h e Letters, 1939-40

W hen James m et Webb, she was m arried to N orm an B. Henderson, Jr. In

th e ir company, James fe lt "rather nervous and unsettled" (24 A p ril 1939).
Before he le ft fo r M exico, he w rote to te ll her th a t he was happy th a t he
had m et her, lik e d her a great deal, and fe lt very sorry th a t he did not see
more of her. W hile James was in M exico, Webb broke o ff her m arriage
w ith Henderson. James w rote to Webb as follow s: " I am sorry fo r N o r­
man. Perhaps you understand the b lo w —you can understand it o n ly if
you have been yourself desperately in love w ith someone. To have had
you and then to lose you w ould be a great blow for anyone, b u t par­
tic u la rly for him , because you were so obviously a stronger personality
than he. O f course I knew ten m inutes after I had seen you both together;
and your restlessness" (24 A p ril 1939).
A t th a t p o in t in his life , James fe lt the need to renew his study of the
M a rxist classics. A lthough he had already w ritte n M in ty A lle y (1936),
W orld R evolution (1937), The Black Jacobins (1938), and H is to ry o f Pan-
A frica n R evolt (1938) and was w e ll know n as a M a rxist scholar and
a c tiv is t, it was in M exico (one suspects after he m et Trotsky) th a t he
decided to study M arx's Das K apital. As he w rote to Webb in a rather
decidedly funny m anner:

And now for Das Capital. M y dear young woman I have some news for
you. One C.L.R. James, reputed M arxist, having thought over his past
life, and future prospects, decided that what he needed was a severe and
laborious study of—guess! The Bible? Wrong. Ferdinand the Bull? Wrong
again. N ot Das Capital? Right. (Loud and prolonged cheering, a ll rise and
 "A s Ever D arling, A ll M y Love" 225

sing the International.) I bought the book a few days ago in pesos, and
have gotten down to it ----- 1shall do [read] those three volumes, and noth­
ing w ill stop me but a revolution. Isn't that odd? What I am after is what
you mentioned—a method of thinking, of looking at history. I have it to
some degree. But I am not satisfied. (24 A p ril 1939)

T his attem pt to perfect a m ethod of th in k in g w ill culm inate in a study of

Hegel's dialectics^in his m agisterial Notes on D ialectics (1948). Webb
also had begun to read C apital, and James prom ised to assist her if she
required th a t he do so. Thus, they began to study together in preparation
for the w ork th a t they w ould do together.
In James's second le tte r to Webb, we get a glim pse of his firs t w ife.
Rather sarcastically, he w rites: " I also, by the way, am seeking a divorce. I
have not seen m y w ife fo r 7 years. She lives in the W[est] Indies, is a
stenographer, and is not interested in the W orld R evolution. There was
some sort of arrangement whereby she was to come to meet me in
England, but she saw after a tim e th a t I did not really need her and her
pride rebelled . . ." (24 A p ril 1939). Such a callous response to his w ife's
not jo in in g him in England needs to be compared w ith a somewhat
contradictory response offered in James's unfinished autobiography. He
states there that after being abroad for a w hile, his firs t w ife was supposed
to jo in him when he "was more settled in England. However, when I sent
for her she declined to com e."23 M cBurnie offers yet another version of
this incident. She says that when James sent for Juanita to jo in h im in
England she conferred w ith her, "perhaps the only person w ith whom she
conferred." M cBurnie noted that Juanita was "dreadfully afraid" to jo in
James because she knew th a t James was "extrem ely irresponsible" w ith
finances. According to M cBurnie, "th is fear of James's irre sp o n sib ility
w ith m oney was the m ajor reason w hy Juanita did not jo in James in
England" [inte rvie w w ith M cBurnie, January 1993], As other events con­
firm ed, James was not the m ost responsible person w ith money nor was
he concerned p a rticu la rly w ith dom estic m atters as his le tte r to Webb
on 10 October 1947, quoted below, indicated. Such evidence w ould seem
to give some credence to Juanita's version of the story as reported by
M cBurnie. It seems to be true, nevertheless, that Juanita may not have
shared m uch of James's in te lle c tu a l interests and, in the in te rim , may
have grown apart. G iven her T rinidad background, it w ould seem equally
true that she w ould disdain, perhaps reject, James's recently acquired
interest in M arxism , especially when James him self did not tu rn to
M arxism u n til tw o years after he arrived in England.
 226 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

By August 1939, Webb had le ft her husband and was responding

"w a rm ly " to James. She believed th a t James "understood" her, recog­
nized th a t he was getting fond o f her, b u t warned h im th a t she should not
be lik e d fo r "an em pty p re tty face." In her letters to James she expressed
her affection and regard fo r h im . According to James, her letters were
fille d w ith "such w arm th and affection . . . th a t it is alm ost as if you were
ta lk in g to me on the telephone" (postm arked 31 August 1939).
W hen James returned from M exico, he had v isite d m any southern
citie s such as N ew Orleans, M em phis, N ashville, K noxville , B ristol,
Roanoke, W ashington, and B altim ore. W hile his m ajor concern was "the
Negro Q uestion," w h ich he discussed w ith T rotsky ("He is the keenest of
the keen on the N [Negro] Q uestion" [M ay 1939]), James also recognized
the revolutiona ry p o te n tia l of the A frican-A m erican w orkers and saw
th e ir com iection to the colonial struggle in A frica. Thus, he w rites:

Also, I have talked much w ith L.T. [Leon Trotsky], and have been th in k ­
ing over a ll that he said. I am now certain that no one in America, none in
the party, has ever seen the Negro question for the gigantic thing it is, and
w ill increasingly be. L.T. sees it, I was groping towards it. I begin to see it
now, every day more clearly. The American Negroes touch on one side
the American proletariat, on whom so much depends in the present
period; on the other they and not the B ritish or the French proletariat,
form the lin k w ith the African revolution,* and they can form a lin k w ith
the m illio n s of Indians and Negroes and half-castes who form so much of
the population of Spanish-America. And not only before but after the
revolution. The American Negro w ill have to do most of the actual
contact between Western civiliza tio n and the m illions of Africans. (1939,
after trip to Mexico)

These were im p o rta n t insights. And they explain the energy that
James and his colleagues devoted to the A frican-A m erican w orkers in
places such as D e tro it as w e ll as the high hopes they had fo r the pro­
letarian struggle in the U nited States. W ith in th is context, James also fe lt
th a t The Black facobins w ould also play its part in s tim u la tin g "the
colonial re vo lu tio n " in A frica (postm arked 1 September 1939). W ith
these rem arks, James also began to anticipate the role th a t he w ould play
in the m aking of the A frica n revolution.
In these early letters, one also begins to sense some of James's fears,
sentim ents th a t w ould loom m uch larger when some fourteen years later
he w ould w rite chapter seven of M anners, Renegades and Castaways. By
September 1939, W orld War II had broken out, and James and his organi-
 'As Ever D arling, A ll M y Love" 227

zation became very prom inent in the struggle to prevent the U nited
States from entering the war. On 1 September 1939, James w rote to Webb
that he was doing a lo t of w o rk for the Appeal, the Socialist W orkers
Party newspaper. He was in the country ille g a lly since he had overstayed
his v is it, hence the fo llo w in g concern: " I shall w ork inside b ut I m ay have
to come out openly, accordingly as the situ a tio n develops. I don't m ind
going to prison h£re or in England. But m y night-m are is that I w ill be
deported to the W [est] Indies and be out of everything" (postmarked
1 September 1939).24 T his sense of being w ith in the th ic k of things helps
to explain James's ardent request fo r Am erican citizenship, his in a b ility
to stay in T rinidad after his party (The W orkers and Farmers Party) lost
the elections in 1966, and even his later departure in the early eighties
after the O ilfie ld W orkers Trade U nion had provided a home for him in
Trinidad.25
In these early letters, we begin to see James's concern fo r Webb in the
sense th a t he does not w ish to overpower her or to act out that sheer
m asculine (macho) role. He recounts a "m ysterious story" that was told
to him by an East Indian wom an from Trinidad, a clergym an's w ife and a
good friend of James. A fte r recounting the tale, he notes: "She is the
ablest woman I know and it is a tragedy that she is buried in the W[est]
Indies—clergym an's w ife —6 child re n " (Shipboard 1939). In th is letter,
James reflects upon the oppression of wom en in th e ir societies and the
manner in w hich they are prevented from realizing th e ir personal and
social autonom y.
In 1940, a s p lit took place in the Socialist W orkers Party between
James and Cannon, and th is led to the form ation of the Socialist Party
under the leadership of James, M ax Shachtman, and M arty Abern. By the
m iddle of the year, despite his love for p o litic a l w ork and his devotion to
the party, occasionally James became depressed at the effects that party
life and w ork was having on his private life . M ore than anything else, one
gets the feeling that James expressed these occasional fits of depression
to cheer up Webb. In the words of the Negro s p iritu a l and by way of
supporting Webb he w rites, "Som etim es I feel lik e a m otherless ch ild a
long way from home. Seeking sympathy? N o. I m erely te ll you th is so
that you w ill know I understand exactly how demoralised one can feel,
and the tem ptation to run away from it a ll. But I don't le t it overw helm
me, and you m ust not le t the hostile current sweep you away. If I were
near to you, I w ould not le t it happen. I could prevent it, I am positive.
W ell we m ust do w hat we can even though a ll these m iles are between
 228 The Am erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

us . . . " (postm arked 18 July 1940). By 18 July 1940, Webb had changed her
name (Constance Webb Keller), and James wondered aloud w hether she
had rem arried: " I see you have changed your name. W hat is it? C onspir­
acy? H o ly wedlock? O r what? I w ould lik e to know ."26
On 21 August James was in W ashington and heard of Trotsky's as­
sassination. It stru ck h im very hard. He w rite s to Webb:

Sweetheart, you have heard the terrible news. I came here on business
and after a meeting last night, and a long ta lk w ith friends, went to bed
happy. Now this m orning this aw ful news. It is the greatest blow we have
ever received. One by one they have struck down a ll our best people and
now the old man him self. The news is bad but if he regains consciousness
at a ll and can fig h t he w ill fig h t for his life . He has always fought for what
he thought w orth fighting for. (postmarked 21 August 1940)

By October, James's ulcer began to act up and he had to go to the hospital

for an operation. However, at th is p o in t James's correspondence w ith
Webb drops o ff and is not picked up again u n til 1943.
D uring th is early period (1938-40), we also begin to get a sense of
James's m ethodology. He says th a t w hen he is alone he makes some of
the m ost absurd speeches "to the Negroes on Fascism, to a Party Conven­
tio n ca llin g fo r a new s p irit in the leadership, to w orkers ju st before an
assault against the ca p ita list system, on the N azi-Soviet Pact. Then I s it
down and take notes of the things I said and they form the basis of future
articles and speeches. Subject, words, etc., come as spontaneously as the
absurdities, an excess of anim al spirits. It interests me enorm ously"
(postm arked 31 August 1939). Later, as was to become characteristic of
James, he never used notes when he spoke. He relates an incid e n t that
took place at a m em bership m eeting: " I was so tire d from ta lk in g to a
hundred people fo r three m inutes each at the party the n ig h t before th a t I
was nervous about m y speech and fo r the firs t tim e for m any years used
notes. But I go through very w e ll—in fact, after tw o m inutes I found I
d id n 't need the notes. Anyw ay, the experience was good fo r me. I realised
how d iffic u lt it m ust be fo r nervous or inexperienced speakers" (post­
m arked 18 O ctober 1939). D uring th is early period, James's capacity to
lis te n to people became evident. As he says:

I have one great virtue my dear: I can listen, for hours and hours To a ll
sorts of people, especially strangers. And m y greatest weakness? Impa­
tience at party meetings and committees. . . . I have sat for hours in
America listening to people, a ll sorts of poor working people, te lling me
 "As Ever D arling, A ll M y Love" 229

a ll about themselves. It is indispensable for any understanding of any­

thing. It must go side by side w ith the books. (Shipboard 1939)

From 1938 to 1940, by his own reckoning, James had seen a m illio n
things, traveled over eight thousand m iles, saw thousands of people and
spoke to many of them . He had engaged the Am erican public at a level of
in tim acy that m arfy a M arxist revolutiona ry in the U nited States had not
done before.

T h e Letters, 1943-48

A fte r an in te rva l of three years, James resumed w ritin g to Webb in 1943.

H is firs t act was to account for the long absence. A lthough she was
m arried, he kept on w ritin g to her rather ferociously. In July 1944, Webb
was having enormous d iffic u lty m aking a decision as to w hether she
should m arry Jack G ilford, a H ollyw ood film star, to w hom she was
engaged. He had demanded th a t she return to C alifornia, give up acting,
and m arry him . As Webb noted, " I was in love, but dreaded m arrying
again. M y arguments about a career were feeble and confused especially
when Jack raised questions of m y social and personal responsibilities"
(July 1944, 97). In his advice to Webb, James placed her p a rticular prob­
lem w ith in the larger context of the freedoms th a t the 1917 October
revolution and W orld War I had opened up for women. James saw the
Am erican woman as a unique personality, em bodying a ll of the freedoms
of the age. Thus, in th is le tte r to her, he notes,

a woman born after the Russian Revolution and W orld War I, a woman
born in America, is a certain type of person. Her relationship w ith a man,
even in her own mind, is something different from that of a person who
grew up in a different age___A woman of 1924 who submitted to the dic­
tation of another w ill, however much disguised, however sincerely . . .
when she subm itted it was to a large degree a battle in the head; she had
grown up fighting if she was a progressive woman at a ll in revolt. The
Suffragettes fought a revolutionary struggle (and I am sure had a fine
time.) This generation is different. It has grown up looking upon this
freedom as normal, as accepted. I have seen submission, after keeping
itself quiet for a dozen years, break out in the most furious revolt----
[W ]ith the increasing opportunities that modern production (and the
development of ideas based upon it) gives to women, a new type of
woman arises. She is called a career woman. The name is stupid but
nevertheless very revealing. A man is never a career man. That is his right
 230 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

and privilege. He can have his career and the finest fru it of his successful
career is w ife and children. But the woman is called a career woman
because her "career" in modern society demands that she place it in a
subordinate position or even renounce the norm al life. The social dice are
loaded, not only in the economic opportunities, but in the m inds of men.
The man cannot take it. I know my own sex reasonable w ell. And w ith
the best w ill in the w orld a man, a good man, unconsciously demands
that a woman subm it to him . It is what hfe wants that matters in the end,
not what she wants. Some men are crudely egoistic. Others are not. They
believe in equality. But the practice of society dominates them. It must as
long as they do not consciously oppose it, consciously and in te llig e n tly
and always on the alert. Nevertheless the "career woman" can fight and
given real a b ility, and luck, can sometimes w in through. (July 1944)

From the general he w ent to the specific, and draw ing on V irg in ia
W oolf's A Room o f O ne’s Own, he pointed ou t the necessity fo r Webb, as
a rtist, to produce a space of her own in order to realize her cre a tivity. In so
advising, he recognized th a t Webb had to choose between the need fo r her
personal happiness, as narrow ly defined, and her grow th and develop­
m ent as an a rtis t, or she had to determ ine how to reconcile these appar­
e n tly c o n flic tin g interests, as presented by G ilfo rd . As James noted,

a woman of conscious gifts— m ust fight for the development of herself.

It is a duty she owes to the fact that she has gifts. But, and this is your
case, if the woman is com pletely conscious of the social movements,
identifies herself w ith one part of it, and finds that she has a talent w hich
can help, then that is argument enough. N othing must stand in the way.
N othing at all. There are two reasons, both intim ately connected. First
one has a duty, the highest and most d iffic u lt type of duty, the self-
imposed, w hich springs from no external compulsion. It comes from
"inside." But this powerful im pulse from "inside" is merely the response
of a resonant, sensitive personality to what is taking place outside. That
is the essence of the personal question. As a result of this, however, an in ­
dividual becomes more pow erfully individua listic than ever. The stron­
ger the collective force w hich the individual is expressing, the more
pow erfully in dividua listic the individual becomes in that he or she can­
not suppress that in d ivid u a lity for another individual. One may try to,
may succumb to tem ptation, to strong personal feeling, one may even for
a tim e feel reconciled, one may even gradually become reconciled, and be
even "happy." But if the original impulse is strong and organic to the
personality—then a hell of a mess is the result. There is always the
gnawing consciousness of a wasted life, frustration, sometimes a resent­
ment that lies dormant and grows w ith the years___ To put it crudely, the
 "A s Ever D arling, A ll M y Love" 231

very attem pt to secure a "happy" "personal" life may be the road to life ­
long personal unhappiness. It a ll depends on the personality.

In a way, it was the classic case of a wom an "w anting it a ll," that is, of
her w anting to enjoy a measure of personal happiness and yet w anting to
fu n ctio n as a professional person in her own right. In order to help her
decide w hich w ay to go, w hat decision to make about her life , fames
ended by rem inding her th a t she had to fin d out w hether her man wanted
her "as he knows y o u ... or you as you w ant to be. If he loves you fo r your
sake, not w hat he says, but w hat he re ally needs for his own sake—then
despite a ll d iffic u ltie s you can make it."
In the end, James's le tte r played an im portant part in assisting Webb in
m aking a decision. As she said: " I carried N ello's le tte r around, reading it
and rereading it. W hat he had to say helped me break the engagement and
choose independence, however wrong it seemed to others, and no m atter
how hard such a decision was in the 1940s" (July 1944, 97).
A lthough Webb notes at the bottom of a James le tte r dated July 1944
that she broke o ff her engagement to Jack G ilfo rd , on 25 October 1944
she w rites to James as follow s:

I was disloyal both to Eddie (Keller] and Jack [G ilford]. I was married to
Eddie and I love Jack___
I can't te ll you what a shock it is to me to say "I have been disloyal to
Jack." You see I love him , and I never loved anyone before and these
letters from you if he had known of them would have hurt him . If I
insisted on receiving them he had the right to know you were in love
w ith me. But I didn't te ll him and w ith our close relationship (Jack and
me) he had the right.
I should have said to you "N ello, I love a m an...
In this "self-analysis" of mine I discover (through my relationship w ith
Jack) that I also lie.
There w ill one day be another Jack although it is s till too painful to
th in k about. M y emotions s till cling to this Jack who is as I've told you
often a very rare person.
It is very painful to become aware that one is less a person than she had
thought. The first step is the awareness of the reality, now I must act.
(25 October 1944)

A fte r repeating parts of th is le tte r and underlining the im portant parts,

James w rites "Jack, Jack, Jack. You are feeling it te rrib ly. T hat is to your
credit. But you are le ttin g it swamp you— Jack," he says, "is not w o rth y
of you." James believes that Jack, whom Webb says that she loves, "has
 232 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

no conception of your value" (25 O ctober 1955). James, w ho is gratified

by Webb's decision to make a break w ith things, professes his love to her
and w rite s in response:

now your life begins. You have decided to live, at least, your own life. But
what it w ill be no one knows, even you don't. O nly tim e w ill te ll. And I
want to be w ith you a ll the way. I need you. To give you a ll I can helps me.
I am not w aiting and hoping for a reward.*What sort of men have you met
that you cannot understand this. You w ill change. Your sense of values
w ill alter. I shall see. If I th in k you have changed sufficiently I shall ask
you to love me. If I see (in] you a type of person demanding from life what
I cannot give you, so be it. Once you go forward and not back, I shall be
satisfied. If I get tired I shall te ll you. What I want is to be w ith you, to go
to the pictures w ith you, to go for walks in the country on an afternoon,
to te ll you everything I know. You are obsessed w ith the idea that if
nothing comes of it in the end I w ill feel cheated, disappointed. W hich
proves how little you know of love. For you it is something that you get.
It isn't. It is something that you give and gladly, that you fight to give. It is
the same attitude that so many have to the revolution. If they thought or
were sure it would be successful they would give and risk their lives.
They would give their lives if [they were] sure of success. But that merely
to w ork for it, the actual working, is sufficient, they need not understand.
If I were friendly w ith you for three years and then you said " I am in love.
Goodbye. This cannot go on," m y response would be "W ell, I have had
some of her for three years." What pains me is to find you calculating.
Accept, sweetheart. It is much harder than to give. If after the past year
you cannot accept from me, then that is ungenerous. (25 October 1944,
180-81)

Later th a t year James and Webb began to liv e together, and in M ay 1946
they got m arried. Because the U n ite d States Im m igration Service w ould
not accept James's firs t divorce from Juanita, he had to get "a second
divorce" so th a t he could m arry Webb, w hich he did in 1948 in New
Jersey.27 W hile th is second divorce was a rather b itte r a ffa ir (James was
made to pay Juanita about nine hundred [U nited States] dollars), he was
more pleased when he learned th a t she w ould not contest the divorce
action thereby lessening the prospect of his going to ja il fo r bigamy. Webb
w rites:

N ello and I were married by a justice of the peace in New Jersey w ith two
bigoted policemen as witnesses. They almost dared us to kiss after the
ceremony and became red in the face w ith anger when we did so. N either
of us really wanted to exhibit our personal feelings, sim ply wanted to get
 As Ever D arling, A ll M y Love" 233

away as quickly as possible. But neither could we allow such blatant and
rampant bigotry to go unnoticed. In some fear and trem bling we em­
braced, brushed our mouths together quickly, and hurried out of their
sight. Our fear was real, not imagined. As far away as Greenwich Village,
most bohemian and liberal area, black and w hite couples were being
attacked and beaten, often dragged from restaurants. And New Jersey was
notorious for i t j hatred of blacks, particularly when they coupled w ith
whites. (Reno, Nevada, 1948, 1)

The marriage, its e lf, seemed very tu rb u le n t. Despite James's in te lle c ­

tual understanding of the "W oman Q uestion," his behavior seemed o th ­
erwise. Despite the noble sentim ents expressed in James's letters, James
seemed to have devoted more of his atte n tio n to his p o litic a l w ork and
thus, in the process, to have neglected Webb. On 10 October 1947 he
w rites to Webb as follow s:

Sweetheart, how I have wronged you and hurt myself. Your youth and
beauty, your charm and style, darling I revel in them. You are a work of
art, to make me warm in my blood and delight in you aesthetically.
Instead I fought you—fought your loveliness, all you had to give me as a
woman. As if anything could be wrong in that. Now I have not only love
and a burning glow inside of me for you but pride.

Later on he com plains in recognition,

I did not get things for the house. I could have got them. I could have
had the apartment decently furnished. I know that now. I could have
got[ten] money for you to buy two nice dresses when your stock was
running low. I see it a ll so clearly now. The antagonisms, hatreds, fears
that I have in me, all there for years, fought a last battle. They have been
conquered, driven out. I know.
M y friends spoiled me, and in return I developed a terrible need to
justify it, to be the one who symbolised the sacrificial aspect of the
movement. Many people are ready to sacrifice. I made a fetish of it at
your expense. That Orchard St. menage, the 1306 [Chisholm Street]
barrack-room, what necessity was there to live like that? To subm it to it,
right at the beginning, giving you nothing in return. You wanted to make
contributions. I fought you. [my emphasis]

Such a tu rm o il brought him and Webb considerable grief.

D uring th is period, on the p o litic a l fro n t, James was concerned p ri­
m arily w ith w orking out some of the theoretical issues that faced the
movement. In February 1945, as James commenced his study of the dia­
lectic, we get a clear a rtic u la tio n of James's objective. Recognizing the
 234 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

social crisis th a t he said expressed its e lf "as a p o litic a l c ris is /' James
noted:

We feel that a ll along the line inhum an conceptions dominate our people,
due to a false conception of philosophy, economics and history, which
expresses its e lf in their concepts o f people and p o litic a l organisation.
N aturally the whole thing is very complicated. M arx had a scientific
theory, but it expressed and depended*upon such a conception of the
development of man as you never saw, and now the whole thing is wide
open and I am engaged in m aking the firs t statement that has been made
among us and a ll near to us for over 20 years. It is a hell of a job but I am
confident for I see no one else to do it, and m y friends are priceless, good
brains and strong hearts. So we are at it, a ll of us and in a m onth or so the
w ork of a few years w ill receive its firs t comprehensive expression.

Later in th a t same year, he w rite s to Webb as follow s:

Tired, m y dearest Constance. Tired so I can not even go to bed___

I had something on m y m ind. It expressed itse lf as a problem I have to
solve. What exactly was the relation of Kant and his synthetic logic (I'll
explain one day) to his age. For days it is on m y m ind and I cannot forget
it. It is the last lin k in a chain. I 'll get it, but it's tough. I have an
analysis of the C ritique of Pure Reason in my pocket. I read it in bits. But
I just can't make it. W hy is it important? We have solved the m ain
problem of historical m aterialism . Rae [Dunayevskaya] and I have mas­
tered the basis of the economic theory. She is eating it up. But for some 70
years dialectic has remained a closed book. Everybody—even L.D. [Leon
Trotsky] paid lip-service. (L.D. understood, but never wrote.) Grace is a
graduate (has a doctorate) in philosophy. And we are on the verge of
solution. This alone holds it up. There is a curve from early Greeks to
A ristotle; a curve from Descartes to Kant; then another from Kant to
Hegel. By and large we have all, but the key is Kant. Look at these dates:
1776 Smith, W ealth of Nations
1776 Declaration of Independence
1789 French Revolution
1780 C ritique of Pure Reason
1784 "Beginning" of Industrial Revolution
D ialectic is on its way. The social crisis means a ll problems w ill be
posed in the most profound terms. In Russia thousands of copies of
Hegel's logic are sold every year. If I get this then the road is clear.
("P ortrait [Partial] of a M an," n.d., 1)

In those intervening years, James struggled to untangle the G ordian

kn o t of Hegelian dialectics. For James, his understanding of the role of
 As Ever D arling, A ll M y Love" 235

dialectics in h isto ry was key to his understanding of M arxism , given

w hat had taken place in Russia under S talin and in Germ any under the
Nazis. It was also im po rta n t to theorize the role of the proletariat in the
continuing struggle fo r liberation. W ritin g from Reno, Nevada, some­
tim e in 1948, James is w orking on Hegel. He w rites that he has com ­
pleted "Part 1 of m y d ia le ctic," w hich he sent on to Webb, com plains
of being "som ewhat tire d " (again), and notes th a t he has been "beating
at the D octrine of Being, there is m y particular self—between w ind
and water. A ll I can th in k of is just w ritin g down a lo t of things." He
continues:

I shall w rite to-day o therw ise I shall be p u ttin g i t o ff fo r to -m o rio w . B ut i t

is shaking me. I d o n 't k n o w w h a t. W ill there be an end to i t or have I now
em barked upon self-questioning th a t w ill be endless, you and I always
n ursing each other? N o . I d o n 't th in k so. W e 'll fin d some sport. W hat is
good is th a t I am w o rk in g . I read a page of the Logic [Hegel]—and, sister,
some of i t is to u g h —and I translate i t lik e French—French is m u ch easier.
1 w rite . I develop things. So I say: get w ith it. N o th in g is w rong w ith you.
You w o rk O.K. A n d you are closer to y o u r w ife th a t ever before.

James is consumed w ith w ritin g about the dialectic. He continues:

W hen I fin is h th is dialectic, I shall be happy. I f i t comes o u t as I aim i t to

do, then a great job w ill have been done, a big big step. A n d for you too.
You m ust m aster i t in its p o litic a l fo rm . A n d then you can transfer i t to
lite ra tu re . . . . O n ly the d ia le ctica l m ethod can unravel the past. Take
your tim e, G reek drama, French drama, E lizabethan drama, the R om an­
tic M ovem ent, the M oderns; develop an aesthetic of yo u r ow n, and then
carry the w ar in to the enemy's ranks. In te rn a l confidence, patience, and
the courage to endure; to be happy n o t o n ly w hen the u ltim a te goal is
achieved, b u t to enjoy the road there. (8)

The la tte r can be considered a sum m ary of James's m ethod: "Be happy
when the u ltim a te goal is achieved but enjoy the pleasures of discovery
along the way."
James spent m any hours on his w ork. He speaks of reading as m uch as
fifteen hours a day. He w rites Webb: "You should know the long, long
solitary hours I have spent, reading-reading-reading, th in kin g , w ritin g .
Since I was about four years old. It is the ingrained pattern of a life -tim e "
(n.d., Reno, Nevada, 10). D uring that period James was te rrib ly ill, having
suffered from an ulcerous condition that bothered h im considerably. Yet
he worked on. Yet, through it a ll, he kept the flam e of love going—or was
 236 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

it th a t the flam e of love kept h im going?—as he w orked through the

problem s of his private and p u b lic lives. In a le tte r composed on the
reverse pages of "W orld R evolutionary Perspectives and the Russian
Q uestion" and "D ia le c tic a l M a te ria lism and the Fate of H um anity,"
James w rites,

This is the man who loves you. I took up dialectic five years ago. I knew a
lo t of things before I was able to master it. I knew a lo t of things about
loving you. I am only just beginning to apply them. I can master that w ith
the greatest rapidity—just give me a hand. I feel a ll sorts of new powers,
freedoms, etc., surging in me. You release so many of my constrictions.
What are you going to do? I am bursting a ll over w ith love for you___ In
this M.S.S. [manuscript] is a h in t of me. But the real me is w aiting for you.
I know you w ill choose right. I owe you thousands of kisses. I want to pay
the debt.
I th in k now neither of w ork, nor love, nor personal, nor public, nor any
separation—only of you and me doing everything. I know now you are
fu lly equal to anything that life w ill demand of us. I have confidence in
you that I have in no one else.

T hat p o in t in his life m arked the com ing together of his personal and
in te lle c tu a l interests. On 17 N ovem ber 1948 he could w rite to Webb:
“ end of D ia le c tic , yes honey, the com plete end."28 It was the end of a long
process/project. But in retrospect, he w ould ca ll it "his m ost im po rta n t
theoretical w o rk ," a w o rk w ritte n w hen theory was im portant and when
it was im po rta n t to construct his arguments against S talinism and T rots­
kyism in closely reasoned philosophical term s.29
M ariners, Renegades and Castaways was also a product of th is period
of James's life even though it appeared in 1953. It is in James's letters that
we see the firs t o u tlin e of his project and the m anner in w h ich he applies
the d ialectical m ethod to the area of lite ra ry analysis. Som etim e in 1949-
50, he sends the fo llo w in g note to Webb:

I th in k that Sh/e [Shakespeare] embodied both rationalism and a critique

of rationalism as inadequate. H is intellectuals were men who acted, but
knew that the w orld had gone beyond them. [Herman M elville's] Ahab is
old, but he is new, but new in one sense only. He had conscious purpose.
Free enterprise and democracy no longer meant anything. Ahab was new
in that he realised that much. It was a great step forward. . .. but on the
basis of the old social relations. That is precisely what Stalinism is doing
w ith its "plan."
I am profoundly concerned about Sh/e and his recognition of the
 "A s Ever D arling, A ll M y Love" 237

intellectual types Hamlet, Cordelia, Edgar as people who know they can
find kinship w ith the social order. The intellect is now divorced from
society. [Russia's Five Year] Plan is an attem pt to reinstate this divorced
intellect by force. M e lville denounced the in tellect as such. He knew that
it could only end in Ishmaels. He sought to substitute a new category
w hich he called "heart." But he could find elements of heart only in the
crew and the harpooners. By "heart" he m eant. . . "open space, freedom,
adventure, danger, the Heart, spontaneity, self-less benevolence, single-
hearted dedication, passionate undirected thought, truth-seeking." This
was the sea. The land was safety, fam ily obligations, self-interest, the
Head. (2)

James continues:

The character Ishmael, his w riting, the whale as symbol, a ll come from
M /s grasp of the fundamentals and the need to f ill gaps in this total
vision, gaps that had to be developed by his own im agination to keep the
total vision in order w ith in its own logic. Ishmael and the whale. Where
did they come from?
The whale in particular. What gap in his total vision of society did M /e
have to f ill in w ith this monster? You see: the concept of the Other, the
appositive inside an organism which is the antithesis—the dynamic of
error on which a new universal w ill ultim ately establish itse lf as a
synthesis. This, as a logical construction, based on naturalistic premises,
is what constitutes form , and dictates language, plot, etc., and shapes the
great characters too. For the great original characters, as M e lville says, are
few. They cannot be many. They symbolise an age and its essential
forces; and characters last in the minds of men because the types they
represent last. Starbuck has not come into his own as yet.

W inding up and m aking the epic sweep that only James alone was
capable of m aking he concludes: "Aeschylus summed up the tra n sitio n
from blood relation to secular, the highest p o in t of classical society;
Shakespeare the tra n sitio n to modern individ u a lism ; M e lv ille modern
capitalism , when things, the objective w orld, capital, became a thing of
inscrutable m a lig n ity creating desires in man and at the same tim e
ru in in g him , p ilin g on h im a ll the w eight of previous ages." T his is the
dialectic made m anifest. Here is the law of the negation of the negation
pressed in to practice: thesis, antithesis, synthesis, new sublation. In
James's m ethod, th is is the true m anifestation of the dialectic at w ork
and as applied to lite ra ry analysis.
It is w o rth w h ile to remember that th is application of the dialectic is
not a project th a t owes its existence to, nor is it conceived in splendid
 238 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

iso la tio n from , the conscious engagement w ith people; th is is a project

th a t he w orked ou t w ith Webb and in the process of m ilita n t a n tica p ita l­
is t struggle. W hat he hoped to achieve through his labor seems to be a
w o rth y rem inder of the ends to w h ich lite ra ry analysis can be put. For
James hoped to "w rite a book, of profound lite ra ry theory and yet one
w h ich every w orker could understand." By the tim e th a t James com ­
pleted th is te x t on E llis Island, he was fig h tin g deportation from Am erica
and was suffering even m ore acutely from an ulcerated stomach. As
C edric Robinson has w ritte n , w hen James com pleted M ariners, Rene­
gades and Castaways, p a rtic u la rly in his last chapter, "he was defending
his claim to A m erican citizenship. The p o litic a l elites m ig h t be per­
suaded th a t since w ith in A m erican society so v io le n tly a c ritic a l in te l­
ligence as M e lv ille 's m ig h t be germ inated and celebrated, a kindred s p irit
m ig h t be extended a sim ila r h o s p ita lity ."30 Such, of course, was n o t to be
the case.
By 1952, James and Webb were no longer together, and in his letters to
Freddy and Lym an Paine, his closest friends w h ile he was in the U nited
States, he speaks of th a t loss. In a 1952 le tte r to Freddie Paine he w rites,

I see Constance often. We talk. For hours and hours at a tim e. She is
preaching, in fact has knocked a lo t of sense into me! You thought it
would be easy to get her back. Freddie that w ill be the most d iffic u lt thing
in the world. But that is what I want. We shall see.31

By early 1952 th e ir m arriage had ended and Webb was seeing someone
else. A lthough James is very sharp w ith her, he is s till very considerate of
her feelings. O n 25 February 1952, he w rites to Freddy Payne:

M y dear Frederick:
. . . C [Constance] says she is ill, so please help her out the best way you
can.
I wanted to w rite a longer letter about C to you. I can't. But I shall say it
briefly here. We m ust always avoid pushing someone to an extrem ity.
What I had to say to C in my letters was plain enough. I would have said
much more w ith equal tru th . But for that reason, and because I have
made it quite clear to her that she is accountable to me for every penny
beyond her allowance w ith w hich she does as she pleases, for those very
reasons, I must ask you and L[yman] to be very, very careful and not make
her feel everybody (you both in particular) are in league against her. She is
a God A lm ighty fool, but we have to take that into consideration. If not,
we ran a risk of breaking people's sp irit and that is an aw ful business. I
have seen it, and it defeats its own purposes. I hope you understand me.
 "As Ever D arling, A ll M y Love" 239

What I have been making clear to Constance in the last months is enough
for her to cope w ith, for anybody. So we should try to make it as easy
for her as possible in other ways, w hile not letting her get away w ith
anything.
I can't w rite a word more.

In 1953, James was deported from the U nited States and q u ickly there­
after he and W ebtf were divorced. By that tim e, however, James had
form ulated definite view s on the "W oman Q uestion" and w rites some­
tim e in 1952:

1. The woman question for us is the question of the proletarian women

or the proletarian w ife who is condemned w ithout choice to drudgery,
degeneration and frustration.
2. The bourgeois press has made remarkable penetration into the degra­
dation of the proletariat in the process of production. It has done so
because the proletariat is organised and had made a te rrific impact
upon the economic, social and politica l life of the country.
3. The proletarian housewife, however, is unorganized. Suffering in si­
lence is almost ignored and if the press has succeeded in presenting
and understanding the problems of labor in production it has failed to
do the same for the proletarian housewife.
4. The task of Bolshevism therefore is at all times to insist upon the
recognition of the circumstances of the proletarian woman as being
fundamental to an elucidation of the woman's question as the worker
is basic to the whole problem of modern society.32

The consolidation of such views, it seems to th is w rite r, represents the

cu lm ination of a ll the things James had learned about wom en through
his courtship and marriage to Webb and his long years of reading and
reflection on th is very im portant question. It m ight have been that after
an in te rva l of th irty years he s till had not gotten it right. It was not
because he did not try.

The Importance of These Letters

I am convinced that these love letters can play an im portant part in

fillin g in a rather w ide lacunae in fem in ist thought in the Am ericas. In a
society where we are allowed only a few glimpses in to the in tim a te
aspects of the lives of our im portant scholars and thinkers (for example,
Du Bois, W ashington, Douglass, Eric W illiam s, Padmore and others),
 240 The Am erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

these letters go a long way tow ard revealing the struggle between one's
life and w ork, one's words and actions, and the capacity of a genuinely
and deeply fe lt relationship to make one (that is, our in te lle ctu a ls and
men of re volutiona ry fervor) in to fu lle r hum an beings conscious of,
looking in to , recognizing, and treating w ith a certain degree of circum ­
spection and tru st the m ost im p o rta n t process of one's social develop­
m ent: one's relationship w ith a woman.^ James w ould have made no
d is tin c tio n between the private and p u b lic except to in s is t th a t the
p u b lic was conditioned by the private, the la tte r being a refle ctio n of the
form er. He w ould also have argued th a t to enjoy the m ost fu lfillin g
relationship w ith a wom an, one had to respect and lo v in g ly c u ltiva te her
autonom y.
These letters also reveal another aspect of James that can be of enor­
mous benefit to M a rxist theory. He enjoyed and cultiva te d a breath of
in te lle c tu a l interest th a t was nothing short of sta rtlin g . In her le tte r to
th is author, Webb makes the fo llo w in g observation:

N ello was a man of great breath and vision, not lim ite d by p o litica l
sectarianism and/or narrowness. One of the reasons he conceived of a
newspaper to express the Johnson-Forest views after the break w ith
Trotskyism was an attem pt to destroy in his own group the theory of the
vanguard party—both theoretically and practically----
Some of the letters indicate how passionately he loved the arts (and
what he gave up when he devoted him self to politics, w hile in the U.S.).
He studied poetry, literature, painting, and music as closely as he did
Hegel, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky.33

M ore than m ost figures of our tim e, James strove fo r com pletion in both
his pub lic and his private life . As Scott McLemee has noted:

Shakespeare and Lenin, cricket and Victorian literature, Hegel's Sci­

ence of Logic and w ildcat auto strikes, Pan Africanism and the demo­
cratic polis of Greek a n tiq u ity—a unique com bination of interest unfolds
across the decades of C. L. R. James's life and work. From book to book—
sometimes even from page to page—the perspective shifts among w idely
separated regions of experience and activity. But this is no mere eclecti­
cism. James's w ritings display something a ll too rare: a genuinely open
and responsive intelligence, a cosmopolitan sensibility which, though
intensely concerned w ith the past and w ith cultural traditions, also
possesses an acute and visionary feeling for "the future in the present" as
it emerges from the struggles of ordinary people around the globe for a
better life .34
 "As Ever D arling, A ll M y Love" 241

Such a vision, as his letters to Webb demonstrated, also encompassed the

struggle of women.
W ritin g to Webb (now Pearlstien) on 19 January 1984, James reflected
on his U nited States period and says: "O pinion w ill d iffe r on the value of
m y experiences in the U nited States. A ll I know is that they form a s till
v ita l part of m y procedures, m em ories of the past and perspectives for the
fu tu re ." In The Future in the Present, the firs t collection of James's
selected w ritings, James notes that it is in the seeds of the present that we
can begin to understand the o u tlin e of future events. One can confidently
assert th a t during his Am erican years James began to understand h im self
more fu lly and know his self more acutely. H is letters assure us th a t he
also began to recognize the manner in w hich an intensely lived personal
life throw s enormous lig h t on one's public w o rk and illu m in a te s spaces
that even the m ost introspective of us cannot know w ith o u t the active
p a rticipation of one's beloved.

Notes

First delivered as a lecture at the W.E.B. D u Bois In stitu te for Afro-Am erican
Research, Harvard University, 20 March 1992, at the Spring 1992 Colloquia.
1. Interview w ith Beryl McBurnie, January 1993.
2. "The West Indian at Home and Abroad: M y Experience w ith Women," 10.
This quotation is taken from a draft chapter of James's unfinished autobiography
that was offered to Paul Buhle, James's biographer, in 1985.
3. Ibid., 11. James's first letter, dated 25 A p ril 1939, is addressed to Constance
Henderson. His last letter of 16 July 1984 is addressed to Constance Webb Pearl­
stien. These letters, as Letters from a Revolutionary, are being prepared by Anna
Grimshaw for publication by Blackwell.
4. Ibid., 12.
5. The letters that are examined in this paper begin on 15 A p ril 1939 and end
on 4 A p ril 1981, even though about ninety-five percent of these letters were
w ritte n in the 1940s.
6. Fredric Warburg, A n Occupation fo r Gentlemen (London: Hutchinson,
1959), 182.
7. Ibid., 213.
8. Ibid., 211,270-71.
9. Ibid., 214-15.
10. Ibid., 213.
11. James and Grace Lee Boggs, Freddy and Lyman Paine, Conversations in
Maine (London: Hutchinson, 1959), 282.
12. See Scott McLemee and Paul Le Blanc, eds. C.L.R. fames and Revolutionary
Marxism: Selected Writings of C.L.R. James, 1939-49 (A tlantic Highlands, N.J.:
Humanities Press, 1994) for a selection of James's w ritin g during that period.
 242 The Am erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

13. "Introduction" to C.L.R. James, Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The

Story o f Herman M e lv ille and the W orld We Live In (New York: C.L.R. James,
1953), x iii.
14. See James, Mariners, Renegades and Castaways, especially chapter 7, for a
description of this period of James's life.
15. Webb notes that "N ello (that's what she called James] had very sensitive
hands and, since he always wrote longhand, required different pens depending on
the type of work he was doing. For marking up and editing he used a pen w ith a nib
that was heavier than for w riting where he required a free-flowing, fine nib pen"
(15 A pril 1939). For example, while one of these letters was eight typewritten,
double-spaced pages it consisted of forty-four hand-written pages (see letter of
1 September 1943). In his post-1940s years, he employed a secretary to type most
of his letters and his other intellectual work.
16. London, 5 January 1984. The dates and place of origin of all further refer­
ences to these letters w ill be inserted w ithin the text. This particular letter came
from 165 Railton Road where James lived for the last years of his life. He died at
this address in July 1989.
17. Cornelius Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, A u to n o m y (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991), v iii.
18. "Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanism," Spheres o f Existence:
Selected W ritings (London: Allison and Busby, 1980), 78.
19. Ibid., 97.
20. Raya Dunayevskaya (Freddy Forest), a secretary of Leon Trotsky during the
early part of her life, wrote and spoke Russian and was a tremendous scholar in
economics. She was among the first to characterize the Soviet economy as state
capitalism. Grace Lee Boggs (Ria Stone), a doctoral student at Columbia Univer­
sity in philosophy, was also fluent in German and helped tremendously to trans­
late and interpret philosophical works. James referred to Dunayevskaya and
Boggs as his "tw o chief theoretical collaborators" (Reno, Nevada, 1948,6). W riting
to this author on 13 June 1991, Grace Lee, who broke w ith James in 1962, noted:
"The C.L.R. James I worked w ith would have been politically outraged by the
current emphasis on his individual genius and the im plicit denial of the impor­
tant role played by the group [the Johnson-Forest Tendency] and the historical
circumstances in the development of his ideas" (Private correspondence, 13 June
1991).
21. Mariners, Renegades and Castaways, 1978, xv.
22. Private conversation w ith Cynthia Hamilton, 7 March 1992. See also Cyn­
thia Hamilton, "A Way of Seeing: Culture as Political Expression in the Works of
C.L.R. James," Journal of Black Studies 22, no. 3 (March 1992): 429-43, in which
she discusses the manner in which James emphasizes the role of "ordinary"
people in the making of history. As she notes, "the key in James is the emphasis
on struggle, the tension between the demands made by the society and human
need for expression."
23. "The West Indian A t Home and Abroad," 10.
24. W riting in 1968, Grace Lee Boggs, who ordinarily is very kind to James,
makes a fascinating point about James. She says: "[I]n 1953 James was already
becoming a Marxist egocentric, something which, strangely enough, Cannon
never became.. .. After 1953 [when James was deported from the United States]
 "A s Ever D arling, A ll M y Love" 243

C.L.R. didn't have the challenge of the United States which had never failed to
excite him. He went to Trinidad, formed a group and then left. It seemed as if he
was experimenting because he was never really passionately concerned w ith the
Trinidad Revolution as he had been w ith the American revolution" (Boggs et al.
Conversations in M aine , 287).
25. See Walton Look Lai, "C.L.R. fames and Trinidadian Nationalism" in Paget
Henry and Paul Buhle, C.L.R. fames's Caribbean (Durham: University Press,
1992), 174-209, and James M illette, "C.L.R. James and the Politics of Trinidad
and Tobago, 1965-70*' in this volume for a good discussion of James's post-1958
activities in Trinidad.
26. After Webb separated from Henderson, she began to live w ith Edward A.
Keller.
27. See Constance Webb Pearlstien, "Selected Letters of C.L.R. James," CLR
James Journal 3, no. 1 (Winter 1992): 85.
28. The CLR James Journal 3, no. 1 (Winter 1992): 104.
29. See "A Conversation w ith C.L.R. James"; a taped interview w ith Selwyn R.
Cudjoe in Brixton, London, October 1983. It was broadcast on Trinidad and
Tobago Television, March 1984.
30. Cedric Robinson, "C.L.R. James and the World System," CLR James Journal
3, no. 1 (Winter 1992): 61. Included in this volume.
31. This letter is contained in the Frances Paine Collection at the Walter P.
Reuther Library and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan.
32. James to Freddy Payne, 1952.
33. Constance Webb Pearlstien to Selwyn Cudjoe, 25 March 1991.
34. McLemee and Le Blanc, C.L.R. James and Revolutionary Marxism, 209.
 Cedric J. Robinson

C.L.R. James and the W orld-System

Even when laws have been w ritte n down, they ought

not always to rem ain unaltered.
—Aristotle, The Politics

If not before, then c e rta in ly by now, we are thoroughly fa m ilia r w ith the
details of C.L.R. James's biography: his T rinidadian origins; his th irty -
year expatriation in B rita in and Am erica, and so on. There is, however,
one reason fo r re v is itin g his background and th a t is to reiterate the d iffe r­
ences th a t sharply distinguished James from m ost of the in te lle ctu a ls
who w ould dom inate the developm ent of M arxian theory after the deaths
of M arx and Engels. For instance, James's form al tra in in g ended before
university. For another, neither was he European, a factor su fficie n t fo r
his exclusion from p u ta tiv e ly encyclopedic w orks lik e Perry Anderson's
C onsiderations o f Western M arxism . A nd if we were to pack these
p eculiarities w ith his apparent disdain fo r economics and m athem atics
and, a lternatively, his preferences fo r lite ra tu re , philosophy, and history,
it is n o t im m ediately obvious w hy James should become a M arxist.
Some students of James m ig h t object, in sistin g th a t his form al educa­
tio n was the superior of those received by m ost Am erican u n ive rsity
graduates; or th a t he was educated as if he were English or European. I
m ig h t contest these im p lica tio n s but never quibble w ith them . How -
ever, I w ould be a b it m ore persistent about there being little to contra­
d ict in the assertion th a t James found classical M arxian economics less
than seductive.
James took the labor theory of value and ca p ita list accum ulation as
both em pirical observations and the sources of a m oral im perative in
order to bend his energies to discovering w hat the exploited could do and
had done about th e ir m aterial degradation and s p iritu a l h u m ilia tio n . He
did not require M arx to a ffirm th a t slave labor and colonial labor were

244
 James and the W orld-System 245

c ritic a l to the germ ination and expansion of the capitalist system, or

linear statistics to calculate the value of subordinate workers to the
dom inant classes. It was the dialectic between opposition and rebellion,
the relations between exploiter and exploited, and not the scie n tific
determ ination of m ysterious com m odity prices, that drew h im to radical
discourse. He pursued a "sociology" based on the "relations between
people," not one ceptered on the "relations between men and th in g s."1
Consequently, James expended less energy on M arx's C a pital than on
Hegel's Logic, p rio ritiz in g the production of culture and m eaning over
the modes of com m odity production. H is interests foreground an evalua­
tio n of c iv iliz a tio n and w illfu l agency, and they forswore the mechanics
of determ inism and objectivity. Eventually, his efforts spawned new
histories—not only augm enting W estern historiography b u t revealing
narrative structures alien to the West.
James recounted that his firs t form ative p o litic a l in s tru c tio n as some­
th in g other than a B ritish in te lle ctu a l occurred by v irtu e of his West
Indian origins and his fascination w ith com petitive sports. He narrated
that as a young correspondent, he inquired of Learie C onstantine, the
m asterful West Indian cricketer (and eventually B ritish peer), how it was
that a B ritish team had lost to the West Indians. C onstantine contra­
dicted James, asserting th a t it was not that the B ritish team had lost but
that the West Indians had won. T his exchange occurred in 1923, and
w ith in a year we fin d the y o u th fu l James im m ersed in the equivocal
p o litic s that inform ed the trade union m ilita n c y and nationalist agita­
tio n led by C ip ria n i in T rinidad.2
From th is p oint on, James's p o litic a l thought w ould be an attem pt to
navigate between the Charybdis of an in ternation al w orking-class move­
m ent and the Scylla of anticolon ialism and anti-im perialism . H is p ilo t­
ing device was his c ritic a l im agination. E xistentially, James was form ed
from the intersection of the bourgeois lite ra tu re and culture of V icto ­
rian England (w hich in a characteristically Jamesian m utation included
cricket)3 and the social life and racial order of his own colonial w orld.
Consequently, during the next th irty years, James w ould harvest the
oppositions of his experience and his tim es. As a black re vo lu tio n ist in
the West, he w ould become a Leninist and move through the T rotskyist
movem ent in England and Am erica w h ile sim ultaneously engaging in
pan-African thought. He w ould achieve brillia n ce in each but never quite
obtain the synthesis anticipated by the appearance of The Black facobins
in 1938. If we fu rth e r conceded the a u th o rity he acquired and so ric h ly
 246 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

deserved in both M a rxist theory and black revolutiona ry thought, it

m ig h t w e ll be surm ised th a t the tw o lib e ra tio n is t tra d itio n s cannot be
reconciled.

The World-System and the Epistemic West

The h is to ric a l fo rm a tio n and stru ctu ra l characteristics of the m odern

w orld-system are far from settled m atters. H istoriographic disputes ex­
tend even to the dating of w hat M arx so poe tica lly referred to as the
"daw n" of the ca p ita list era. As we now know, in the late 1950s O live r
C rom w ell Cox postulated the origins of the ca p ita list w orld-system in
the Venetian Em pire of the th irte e n th century.4 In pushing back the
in itia tio n of capitalism as a system by h a lf a m ille n n iu m , Cox sought to
challenge the conventional M arxian construction of these events on
several conceptual and ideological scores: casting doubts on classical
M arxism 's A ng lo ce n tristic historiography; on its m etanarrative p riv ile g ­
ing of the p roletariat as both the c ritic a l source of labor power and the
p ivo ta l social bases of radical change; and on its indulgence of determ in-
is t logic and secular progress (as suggested, fo r instance, in the term
"precapitalism ").
Cox insisted th a t capitalism emerged from w ith in a trade system
enveloping the M editerranean and Asia; th a t commerce and not a mode
of com m odity production provided its source of accum ulation; and th a t
its form a tio n was a consequence of "chance occurrences" and not the
negation of feudalism : "T h is type of society was not derived lo g ica lly
from conditions fo llo w in g the fa ll of the Roman Em pire in the W e st.. .
Venice was anom alous."5 I w ill argue here th a t the parallel between
James's im agination and Cox's disavowal of the M arxian paradigm of
capitalism and the historiography of the West is not accidental.
W ith o u t consulting Cox, other m ore recent radical scholars have
taken up the debate w ith classical M arxism 's w orld-system and w ith the
present orthodoxy of the W allersteinian m odern w orld-system . For in ­
stance, Andre Gunder Frank m aintains th a t the w orld-system actually
began five thousand years ago and questions "th e supposed h isto rica l
uniqueness and perhaps the social-theoretical relevance of the m odern
ca p ita list mode of production." And lik e Cox, Frank rejects modes of
production as determ inant of h isto rica l change.6 Even closer to Cox,
Janet Abu-Lughod has conceived a "th irte e n th -ce n tu ry w orld-system ":
 James and the W orld-System 247

This world-system was organized around three or possibly four "cores."

One was the M iddle East, w hich occupied a strategic zone of interna­
tional interchange. A second was the northern steppe across central Asia
w h ic h ... had coalesced w ith China. A th ird core zone was focused on the
Indian Ocean, w hich linked China to the M iddle East via the Strait of
Malacca and India. And finally, thanks to the trade and industry stim u­
lated by the Crusades that eventually tied Europe to this ongoing world-
system, the towns of developing western Europe (especially Flanders,
France, and Italy) had begun to form a fourth "core" region.7

Thus in the last quarter of the century, as the Am erican Em pire began its
demise and its econom ic hegemony has dissolved in to naked and trans­
parent m ilita ry dom ination, it has become evident that c ritic a l h isto rica l
im agination and h isto rica l theory has taken on a neo-M arxist or post-
M arxist character.8 P a rtia lly emancipated from the dead w eight of the
epistem ic West, and diverting from the bourgeois conceit of orthodox
M arxism , these budding h isto rica l constructions bear a fa m ilia l resem­
blance to those c ritic a l narratives inform ed by black lib e ra tio n ist m ove­
ments in the m id-century. Cox's conceptualization of the capita list sys­
tem was one such invention , and James conjectured another.

State Capitalism and the World-System

W hile Cox concentrated his efforts on the premodern beginnings of the

capitalist system, James eventually turned his atte n tio n to its corruption
in to barbarism . I refer here to James's M ariners, Renegades and Cast­
aways [M ariners],9 a w ork whose appearance marked the end of his
m u ltip ly conflicted T ro tskyist period and coincided w ith the years im ­
m ediately fo llo w in g the Second W orld War. In th is w ork, James's ostensi­
ble return to lite ra ry c ritic is m since its subject was Herm an M e lv ille ,
James sought to determ ine the m eaning of S talinism and Nazism for
Western c iv iliz a tio n and to discover the destiny of the Am erican Empire.
It was w ritte n in an iro n ic voice and w ith some anguish since James then
resided on E llis Island, fig h tin g deportation from Am erica and suffering
w ith his ulcerated stomach. It m ight be inferred that his sp iritu a l and
physical pain at the tim e lent him a certain in te lle c tu a l acuity, but it is
also the case that in choosing M e lv ille as his subject James, too, was
defending his claim to Am erican citizenship. The p o litic a l elites m ight
be persuaded that since w ith in Am erican society so v io le n tly a c ritic a l
 248 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

intelligence as M e lv ille 's m ight be germ inated and celebrated, a kindred

s p irit m ight be extended a s im ila r h o s p ita lity .10
In 1952, in the wake of the West's im prisonm ent of the "rest of us" over
the previous centuries in its horror chambers of im perialism and colo­
nialism , and in the wake of the West's im p lic a tio n in the m urderous
excesses of the previous fo u r decades—fascism , S talinism and Nazism ,
and the m ore im m ediate paroxysms of colonialism in Asia and A frica in
the firs t years of the postw ar era, James enunciated his m ost radical
conception of the West:

O ut of the very heart of Western C iviliza tio n , there emerged in 1933 the
H itle r regim e.. . . and [Europeans] could not face H itle r yesterday w ith a
clear m ind and good conscience (as they cannot face Stalin today) because
the madness of both was born and nourished in the very deepest soil of
Western C iviliza tio n . (10)

T his in d ictm e n t of W estern c iv iliz a tio n suggested a sig n ific a n tly d if­
ferent James than the M a rxist-L e n in ist w ho earlier, in 1937, had a t­
trib u te d N aziism to the m achinations of desperate Germ an capitalists,11
or who later, in 1960, w ould portray fascism and N aziism as being
"organized fo r the sole purpose of destroying the threat of a socialist
society."12 In M ariners, Renegades and Castaways, James professed to
have discovered a c iv iliz a tio n of "m echanical" c re a tiv ity (7) w h ich was
"now advancing by incredible leaps and bringing at the same tim e the
m echanization and destruction of hum an personality" (8). T o ta lita ria n ­
ism , James declared, "w h ic h was madness in a book one hundred years
ago, today is the liv in g madness of the age in w h ich we liv e " (10).
A nd in M e lv ille , "the finest m ind th a t has ever functioned in the New
W orld and the greatest since Shakespeare's th a t has ever concerned its e lf
w ith lite ra tu re " (99), James insisted he had encountered the m ost pres­
cient prevision of th a t c iv iliz a tio n 's demise. The w haling ship of M oby-
D ic k y the "Pequod," was our m odern w orld, "the w orld we liv e in " (50).
And ju st as James had conflated w ith in The B lack Jacobins (1938), the
H a itia n slaves w ith the m odern p ro le ta ria t,13 he now compressed M e l­
v ille 's consciousness in to his own: "H ow close his experience was to ours
is proved by the fact th a t the tw o things th a t interested him m ost were:
a) the w o rld re vo lu tio n and b) the fu tu re of Am erican dem ocracy" (86).
James m aintained th a t the madness th a t had nearly consumed the
m odern w o rld in the firs t h a lf of the tw e n tie th century and that s till
persisted resulted from the appearance of a new hum an personality, "a
 James and the W orld-System 249

type of hum an being th a t had never existed before in the w o rld " (80): an
em bittered being, overwhelm ed by contem pt and hatred, situated in
"so lita ry com m and," and com pelled "to destroy the w hole w orld in
revenge" (90). It was M e lv ille who had firs t warned of th is apocalyptic
creature, drafting in the obsessive, n ih ilis tic figure of Ahab a com posite
sketch of a hum an character he had discovered in the w orld around him .
Both James and M e lv ille concurred that Ahab was not M e lv ille 's cre­
ation, rather he was an em anation:

Where does a w rite r find such characters? And here M elville is categori­
cal. He finds them in the world around him , in the w orld outside. They
do not originate in his head. (80)

James carefully traced the lite ra ry evolution of Ahab's character from the
works th a t had predated M oby-D ick: M e lv ille 's public-pleasing narra­
tives of his life among South Sea "cannibals," Typee (1946) and Omoo
(1847); his firs t expression of philosophical and m oral outrage at Europe
and Am erica, the poorly-received M a rd i (1849); and his adventures as a
w haler and sailor, R edbuin (1849) and W hite Jacket (1850), respectively.
Like Ahab, him self, the proto-Ahabs concealed in these works were not
"aristocrats, financiers, or property-ow ners." On the contrary, they were
the executors of capitalism , those who w ield a u th o rity among men at
w ork (92).
Two years earlier, in State C apitalism and W orld R evolution, James
w ith his colleagues Grace Lee and Raya Dunayevskaya had argued that
the essence of ca p ita list production was hierarchy and th a t the defining
characteristics of state-capitalism were "the tendency to centralization
on a w orld scale" and the supersession of states over national economies.
James and his cotheorists contrived then a new, postim perialist, stage of
capitalism , a "w orld-system " commanded by state bureaucracies, labor
bureaucracies, and party bureaucracies adm inistering "(n]o longer cartels
and distant colonies but contiguous masses of capital-----" The hierarchy
of capitalism had "grow n u n til it becomes the divid in g lin e between the
workers and the w hole bureaucratic organization of accum ulated labour,
science and knowledge. . . . " And they concluded: "W hat we call the
theory of state-capitalism is the theory of the proletariat as a class d i­
rected against capital and any agent of capital, in th is case the bureau­
cracy." State-capitalism anachronized the theory of the vanguard party;
and James, Lee, and Dunayevskaya eschewed any m ob iliza tio n of the
proletariat "w orked out by any theoretical e lite or vanguard." To the
 250 The Am erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

contrary, the p roletariat w ould achieve its ow n m ovem ent, constructing

organizations based on "the experience of m illio n s " th a t w ould "over­
ride, bypass or consciously aim at su b stitu tin g new social form s fo r the
tra d itio n a l w orkers7organisations."14
The "bureaucrats" w ho James helped to v ilify in State C apitalism and
W orld R evolution w ould reappear in his study of M e lv ille and to ta lita ri­
anism w ith a vengeance. Here, James took another s ta rtlin g leap: in its
p u rsu it o f to ta l destruction or reorganization, the to ta lita ria n personality
was abetted by the grey sycophancy of bureaucracy. T his was the "au­
th o rita ria n personality" Theodor Adorno uncovered among N azi pris­
oners of war; and Hannah A rendt, when she looked in to the soul of A d o lf
Eichm ann, w ould la te r characterize th is as " the b a nality of e v il." But
rather than an in d iv id u a l psychology of evil, James preferred a corporate
explanation: "th e to ta lita ria n power m ust find, create, educate a special
staff of m en w ho are psychologically p rim itiv e , aborigines, w ith the
added horror th a t they use m odern weapons and m odern science" (61).
The factotum s of to ta lita ria n is m were the tens of thousands o f" adm in­
istrators, executives, organizers, labor leaders, in te lle c tu a ls " w ho actu­
alized "th e plan" of society's to ta l destruction, the nightm arish inven­
tio n of th e ir "m axim um leader."
Just as Ahab's obsession w ith the k illin g of M oby-D ick had over­
whelm ed the sensible reason and com m ercial obligations of his officers
on the Pequod, transform ing th e ir o rig in a l m ission in to a voyage of
revenge, to ta lita ria n s transm uted the p o litic a l in s titu tio n s of the West
in to th e ir ow n negation:

T he p o litic a l organisation o f M o d e rn Europe has been based upon the

creation and co n so lid a tio n o f n a tio n a l states. A n d the n a tio n a l state,
every single n a tio n a l state, had and s till has a ra cia l d o c trin e -----
. . . T he N azis fastened on to th is and discarding a ll h a lf-tru th s , decided
to carry i t to its lo g ica l conclusions. T he n a tio n a l state was the one god
w ith o u t any hypocrisies o r pretenses. The n a tio n a l race was the m aster
race. By th is th e y w o u ld solve e ve ryth in g or m in Europe fin a lly , and th is
th e y have done. (10-11)

As M e lv ille had discerned, the m odern w orld had destroyed the hum an
personality of the Ahabs, producing beings capable of tossing aside the
tra d itio n a l restraints of c iv iliz a tio n in the p u rsu it of "a new theory of
society and a program of action" (9).
James perceived in Ishm ael, M e lv ille 's narrator and the sole survivor of
the Pequod, a sig n ifica tio n of the in te lle c tu a l to rn between subm ission
 James and the W orld-System 251

to the seductions of the to ta lita ria n program and the consciousness

em anating from the phatic processes of production and labor. W hile
Starbuck, the firs t mate, represented those "liberals and democrats [the
Second International?] w ho during the last quarter of a century have led
the ca pitulatio n to the to ta lita ria n s " (56), Ishm ael could not retrieve
him self from in te lle ctu a lism and "the in a b ility to embrace re a lity spon­
taneously" (47). T his m ay have been Trotsky, him self, w ith w hom James
had been deeply disappointed: "fixe d and fin ite determ inations held
him by the throat to the end."15 In M e lv ille 's w o rk James recalled that:
"Ishm ael follow s Ahab, as the g uilt-ridden in te lle c tu a l of today, often
w ith the same terror, finds some refuge in the idea of the one-party
to ta lita ria n state" (46-47). In State C apitalism and W orld R evolution,
James, Lee, and Dunayevskaya had exposed the T ro tskyist theory of the
party w ith its persistent claim s for "p o litic a l dictatorship":

"The p o litica l dictatorship" is an abstraction. Concretely it is the party of

Stalin, the murderers of the Bolshevik Party, the antithesis in every
respect of the Bolshevik Party. The theory is false whether it is standing
on its head or its feet, and in either form it is useless as a theoretical
weapon against Stalinism .16

Ishm ael, despite his em ancipating experience of the crew's com m unity
of w ork, u ltim a te ly seizes on the fix ity incorporated in the m onom ania
of his master.
M ariners, Renegades and Castaways obtained its title from the crew
of M e lv ille 's Pequod and James's Hegelian determ ination to explicate the
sane consciousness and harm onious social relations that usher from the
processes of labor. D raw n largely from every colonial site of the non in ­
dustrial w orld, the representatives of cultures inspired by religions as
diverse as totem ic anim ism , ancestor w orship, and Islam , "[t]he crew is
anonymous, th e ir in d ivid u a l personalities subordinated to the fact that
they are a ll liv in g , w orking and playing together" (31). M e lv ille deliber­
ately displayed th e ir nature in his detailed descriptions of the Pequod's
three harpooners, the e lite of the crew: Queequeg, the South Sea islander
cannibal whose q u ixo tic search for a deep understanding of the West and
whose social gentleness are contradicted by his w orship of a "negro"
figurine and his selling of shrunken heads; Tashtego, the "Gay-head
Indian from Massachusetts" whom M e lv ille described as "the son of the
Prince of the Powers of the A ir"; and Dagoo, the gigantic A frican, "w ho
retained a ll of his barbaric virtu e s" ("There was a corporeal h u m ility in
looking up at him ; and a w h ite man standing before him seemed a w hite
 252 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

flag come to beg truce of a fortress."17 O f the turbaned Fedallah, Ahab's

personal harpooner, M e lv ille te lls us next to n o thing except th a t his four
"com panions . . . were of th a t v iv id , tig e r-ye llo w com plexion peculiar to
some of the aboriginal natives of the M a n illa s ."18 Such were the diverse
origins and m o tle y characters of the crew collected under the command
of the Am ericans, representative of the West, Ahab, Starbuck, Stubb, and
Flask. Again, M e lv ille did n o t have to im agine th is in te rn a tio n a l d ivisio n
of labor under the em byonic hegemony of A m erican capital and manage­
m ent. In the m iddle of the nineteenth century, in N ew England's ship­
ping industries and in the social insurrections concom itant to the same
region's factory system, he could observe it . 19
James asserted th a t just as the evolu tio n of Ahab's character could be
discerned in M e lv ille 's early w orks, so too his recognition of the d ig n ity
and courage of nineteenth-century ship-w orkers. W hile in his earliest
w orks M e lv ille had depicted crews as "pent-up w ickedness" (Typee) and
as "v illa in s of a ll nations and dyes" (Omoo), by the tim e M e lv ille is
w ritin g W hite Jacket, "th e crew embodies some type of social order.
T h e ir association at w o rk gives them interests, ideas and attitudes th a t
separate them e n tire ly form the rest of society" (96). In M oby-D ick, it is
the Pequod's A m erican officers, Ahab, Starbuck, Stubb and Flask, who
are the p rim o rd ia l sources of social chaos and m oral degeneracy. On
the other hand, the crew is in "perfect harm ony" w ith N ature and tech­
nology notw ith sta n d in g th e ir "fo rm a l" ignorance and superstitions:
"T hrough them seems to move the very forces of N ature, w h ile at the
same tim e, they are the m ost s k illfu l seamen and the m ost generous and
m agnificent hum an beings on board" (32).
For James, M e lv ille 's treatm ent of capitalism was superior to th a t of
M arx, his contem porary. In his evocation of Am erican c iv iliz a tio n and
its w orld-system , M e lv ille became "th e representative of in d u s tria l c iv i­
liz a tio n ," capturing the com plex c u ltu ra l textures of m odern society,
escaping the d e te rm in istic reductionism of econom ism :

M e lv ille w orke d o u t an e n tire ly new conception of society, n o t dealing

w ith p ro fits and the rig h ts of p riv a te p ro p e rty (Ahab was u tte rly con­
tem p tu o u s o f both), b u t w it h new conceptions o f th e re la tio n s between
m an and man, betw een m an and h is technology and betw een m an and
N ature. (104-5)

M e lv ille w ro te M o b y -D ic k in 1851. Yet in i t today can be seen the

a n tic ip a tio n s o f D a rw in 's th e o ry o f m an's re la tio n to th e n a tu ra l w o rld , o f
M arx's th e o ry o f the re la tio n of th e in d iv id u a l to the econom ic and social
 James and the W orld-System 253

structure, of Freud's theory of the irrational and p rim itive forces w hich
lie just below the surface of human behavior. (142)

In his a n ticipatio n of the to ta lita ria n consciousness and its bankrupt

adm inistrators, M e lv ille 's w ork had foreordained the theory of state
capitalism . H is in a b ility to see a way out fo r m odern society did not
make h im the in fe rio r to his tw entieth-cen tury c ritic s and expositors.

D isputing James (and M elville)

Peculiarly, just as M e lv ille 's w ork had languished in obscurity for nearly
fifty years, a s im ila r fate w ould be visite d upon James's study of M e lv ille .
Published in the relative obscurity in w hich Am erica situates the a ctiv­
is t press, there was very little chance th a t the im pact of M a rin e rs , Rene­
gades a n d C a sta w a ys w ould reach the dom ain of academic critic is m or a
mass audience. The apparatchik of the C old War and M cC arthyism ,
some of the m ost in flu e n tia l of them emerging from the S talinist and
T ro tskyist organizations, were h yste rica lly in to le ra n t of le ftis t lite ra ry
c ritic is m .20 And lik e the present, the acceptable in te lle ctu a l representa­
tives of the black masses were self-referential, indulgent, and im pres­
sionistic rather than h isto rica l or analytical.21 In any case, M a rin e rs
w ould have been submerged by M e lv ille studies that interrogated a lte r­
native themes lik e hom osexuality and theodicy, or the esoteria of M e l­
v ille 's debt to G nostic texts, or approaches to the author's c re a tiv ity
in psychoanalytic term s.22 Despite the fact th a t in 1941, Francis M at-
thiessen's A m e ric a n R enaissance had braved the firs t "C old W ar" c ri­
tique of Am erican literature, a derivative treatm ent of M e lv ille was not
to appear fo r nearly fo rty years.
Donald Pease persuasively argues that w hat M atthiessen consciously
desired and effectively achieved in the a uthoritative designation of the
"m aster-w orks" of nineteenth-century Am erican litera tu re was the dem­
onstration of "a[n Am erican] cu ltu ra l power m orally superior to that
of any to ta lita ria n power w ith w hich the free w orld was then at w ar."
And in that project, M atthiessen elevated M o b y - D ic k to a m asterwork of
the Am erican canon, deliberately [m is]interpreting the novel as signify­
ing a " r e v o lu tio n a ry opposition between a free Ahab and a tyrannical
universe."23
Though H itle r was M atthiessen's chosen target, his w ork was rather
q u ickly appropriated for the M anichaean divisio n of the postwar era: the
 254 The Am erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

struggle between the Soviet and Am erican empires. T hat proved to be

the second disaster fo r M atthiessen: his professional demise as an early
v ic tim of M cC arthyism . The firs t disaster, however, was in te lle ctu a l.
H is heroic construction of Ahab not o n ly required fancy, interpretive
gym nastics ("H aving firs t posited Shakespeare's language as the rh e to ri­
cal power in fo rm in g Ahab's exchanges, M atthiessen then rediscovers
th is pow er Shakespeare w ields through Aj^ab [over his crew] at w o rk in
the spell Shakespeare cast over M e lv ille 's prose.") T hat construction
a d d itio n a lly rubbed against the obvious m oral significance M e lv ille had
im puted to Ahab's destruction:

That fin a l cataclysmic image of total destruction m otivated Matthiessen

and fo rty years of Cold War critics to turn to Ishmael, who in surviving
m ust, the logic would have it, have survived as the principle of America's
freedom who hands over to us our surviving heritage.

But Pease is not convinced. He wonders w hether Ishm ael "is possessed of
a w ill any less to ta liz in g than A hab's."24 A nd in th is fram e of m ind, Pease
provides an im p o rta n t addendum to James's in d ictm e n t of Ishm ael:

Ishmael cannot be said to oppose Ahab as freedom would totalitarian­

ism. . . . For in identifying a ll coercion as the w ork of Ahab's totalitarian
w ill, and not his own boredom, Ishmael is free to m u ltip ly his scenes of
persuasion w ith the knowledge that a ll of them w ill be free in advance of
the charge of coercion. Because in Ishmael's rendition it is Ahab alone
who controls us against our w ill, we are "free" to read Ishmael's own
obsessive m u ltip lica tio n of occasions to compel our attention as the
w ork of Ahab.25
♦

Burrowed under the m oral protection of exile and anti-S talinism , James
m ight have ventured, T rotsky was shielded from c ritic is m of his own
a uthoritaria nism both during the Russian R evolution (the suppression of
the Kronstadt rebellion) and afterwards (the party lin e of the Fourth
International).
Paul Buhle, James's m ost recent biographer, is m uch less charitable to
the c ritic a l stance James assumed in M ariners, Renegades and Cast­
aways. W hile in sistin g that it is the "least representative of his m ajor
w orks," w ritte n lik e "a young ultra-radical in te lle c tu a l," Buhle some­
w hat inconsisten tly m aintains th a t M ariners also "m ore nearly ap­
proached an apologia fo r social life under capitalism than at any other
tim e before or since." Buhle dismisses James's treatm ent of to ta lita ria n ­
ism as a m istaken emphasis on leaders who, if Am erican presidents are
 James and the W orld-System 255

any example, are more often "pleasantly d im w itte d m ediocrities." But

his m ost w eighty displeasures w ith M a rin e rs revolve around James's
treatm ent of C om m unist in tellectua ls and T rotskyists. Taking Ishm ael
as a representative of the firs t, Buhle chastizes James for his lack of
appreciation, indeed, his patronizing of Am erican "Left-leaning in te lle c ­
tuals and a rtists." Concerning the Am erican T rotskyists, Buhle in d icts
James for not havifhg anticipated the defection of so m any of them to
M cC arthyism and neoconservatism .26
These criticism s barely w ithstand th e ir grave shortcom ings as discrete
observations, no less th e ir analytical anarchy when taken together. As
evidenced above, M a rin e rs , Renegades a n d C a s ta w a y s was hardly a
delinquent text; it bore a strong resemblance to the argum ent of S tate
C a p ita lis m a n d W o rld R e v o lu tio n (and those developed in N o te s on
D ia le c tic s ).17 Furtherm ore, even in the iro n ic voice, James could not be
taken to have embraced Am erican capitalism when he proposed that
Ahab's Am erican c iv iliz a tio n "had fallen in to ruins about h im " (11). It is
also a b it bizarre to m aintain that part of James's d is a b ility was that he
was not an Am erican when the b u lk of the Am erican radical m ovem ent
consisted of Finns, Italians, Germans, Pale of Settlem ent Jews, etc. And
as for the courage (and the perfidy) displayed in the Am erican Left, James
referred to its to ta lity , its h isto rica l consequences, not to its p a rtic u la ri­
ties. The Am erican C om m unist Party, for instance, had supported Sta­
lin is m for three decades—th a t is, u n til Khrushchev o ffic ia lly signaled its
disgrace. Finally, the horrors recently acted upon the peoples of the
M iddle East, in the absence of a more sophisticated theory of the state's
adm inistration, should make Buhle reassess the significance of the pleas­
ant faces and moderate in te lle cts of our p o litic a l rulers. In short, Buhle's
treatm ent of M a rin e rs is a rather m ean-spirited and h is to ric a lly specious
interlude in a w ork that otherw ise evidences great affection for James.
A more trenchant M arxian c ritic m ight deliberate on James's claim
that M o b y -D ic k was a presentim ent of the future of the w orld-system
not so m uch for the declaration's elevation of a rtis tic consciousness over
histo rica l consciousness (since M arx, him self, expressed a s im ila rly fu g i­
tive position in discussing "the charm " of Greek a rt28) as fo r the adm is­
sion that conscious agency (Ahab) could overw helm the laws of an eco­
nom ic. In his apocalyptic interpretatio n of M o b y - D ic k , James had fused
the bureaucratic strata of the theory of state-capitalism w ith Hegel's
"w o rld -h isto rica l" heroes, "whose passionate belief in the legitim acy of
th e ir own private aims and interests is such th a t they cannot abide a n y
 256 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

disp a rity between w hat they desire fo r them selves and w hat the public
m o ra lity and legal system demand of men in general."29 A nd in so doing,
he had doubly damned the w orld-system , collapsing onto a perverted
stasis of the class struggle (the rule of the bureaucrats) the Tragic specta­
cle of the self-extinguishing and self-possessed in d iv id u a l.
W ith o u t achieving synthesis, James had juxtaposed c o n flic tin g h isto r­
ic a l paradigms: one orderly, the other e n tio p ic and chaotic. In a genera­
tio n when dictators had knifed through the fabric of history, James had
retrieved from Hegel's philosophy of h is to ry a figure genetically lin ke d to
the m ytho-ideology of Judeo-C hristian m essianism , a figure th a t appears
in Hegel's frustrated expectations of Fredrich W ilh e lm and Napoleon,
reappears as N ietzsche's Superman, and again as Weber's charism atic
leader. M arx had im agined th a t the in d u s tria l pro le ta ria t was the hero of
capitalism and had invented a theory of h is to ry whose narrative ju stifie d
th is presum ption. James honored th a t fa ith in the breach: choosing to
represent the destructive and chaotic im pulses of the ca p ita list w orld-
system by the appearance of a new to ta lita ria n personality from whom
the w o rld could be salvaged o n ly by the m obilized w o rkin g classes. The
paradigms were irreconcilable. Ahab possessed the w ill and the in s titu ­
tio n a l a u th o rity to destroy his crew and ann ih ila te th e ir social order. In
James's ow n exposition of M e lv ille , the d ialectic to w hich M arx had
adhered, between m aster and slave, between ca p ita list and proletariat,
between man and nature, had proven its e lf inadequate to the task of
disrupting the horrendous forces of capitalism .

C o n c lu s io n

In the afterm aths of the firs t appearances of to ta lita ria n ism , fo r at least a
m om ent James reevaluated the sources of the crises of the m id -tw e n tie th
century. A long w ith other radical in te lle ctu a ls no longer persuaded by
the critiques of capitalism and revolutiona ry theory origin a tin g in the
nineteenth century, James concluded th a t the capita list system had
evolved in to a th ird stage, succeeding those of com petitive capitalism
and m onopoly (im perialist) capitalism . The theory of state-capitalism
was prem ised on the massive scale of violence th a t m arked the tw e n tie th
century and conjectured the reorganization of the w orld-system in to tw o
com peting spheres of contiguous capital, each displaying sim ila r charac­
teristics: the rule of entrenched bureaucracies and an inveterate v u l­
n e ra b ility to to ta lita ria n programs. A w orld disaster now constantly
 James and the W orld-System 25 7

courted h u m a n ity It w ould be staved off on ly through the in te rve n tio n

of sanity, an a ttrib u te found in the shortest supply among every stratum
but the w orld's workers. In the social, m oral, and cu ltu ra l com m unity
constituted by men and wom en at w ork, "the m ariners, renegades and
castaways," resided the sources of the alternative, the opposition to the
m ost destructive crisis in h isto rica l memory.
A few years aftergames, another black Trinidadian and radical theorist,
O live r Cox, also had challenged the M arxian construction of the w orld-
system. Setting aside M arx's Eurocentric restraints and the privileged
place he gave to in d u stria l workers, Cox resisted the notion of an episte-
m ic West (a uniquely em ancipatory heritage founded in Greece and
eventually m anifesting its e lf in Am erica) and rejected M arx's architec­
tonic concept th a t capitalism had evolved as the negation of a p rio r state
(feudalism ) of h isto rica l development. Like James, Cox had insisted that
capitalism tended tow ard irra tio n a lity , p a rticu la rly v iru le n t in the ideo­
logical domains of its ru lin g classes w hich were dependent upon racial
theories of in fe rio rity to anesthetize themselves from the realization of
the inju rie s they imposed upon th e ir w orking classes.30 And because the
m ost draconian d iscip lin in g of labor was a constant in the w orld-system ,
Cox believed racial theories w ould persist fo r its duration. To the con­
trary, James a ttributed the racial theories that ordered the p o litic a l in ­
s titu tio n s of the West to the phenomena of nation-states.
Cox and James differed on the genealogy of the capitalist w orld-
system's irra tio n a lity and the u ltim a te sources of resolution—Cox hoped
for the emergence of developed economies at the peripheries of the
w orld-system , whereas James expected the m o b iliza tio n of the w orld's
proletariat. Yet they concurred on the scale and structure of capitalism —
it was a w orld-system adm inistered through state structures.

Notes
1. "Sociology based upon form of property, i.e., relations between men and
things, a theory of accumulation based upon consumption, socialism as the plan
by w hich these inequalities of property and consumption are readjusted—this is
the sociology, the economics and the politics of Stalinism inside and outside
Russia. Sociology based upon relations of production, that is to say, relations
between people, a theory of accumulation based upon production, socialism as
the organization of a higher mode of labour, that is the theory the International of
world revolution m ust adopt." C.L.R. James, Grace Lee and Raya Dunayevskaya,
State Capitalism and W orld Revolution (1950 reprint, D etroit: Facing Reality,
1969), 35.
 258 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

2. James, Beyond a Boundary (London: H utchinson, 1963), 116; and Cedric J.

Robinson, Black Marxism (London: Zed, 1983), 264-65.
3. James derided nineteenth-century B ritish historiography for its om ission of
W. G. Grace, the great cricketer and "the best know n Englishman of [that] tim e ."
James, Beyond a Boundary, 158-60.
4. O live r C. Cox, The Foundations of Capitalism (New York: Philosophical
Library, 1959). Andre Gunder Frank testifies th a t "w o rld system histo ry is now
'conventionally7 started around 1500, or more ^precisely' in 1492 by Frank . . .
1494 by M o d e ls k i. . . and more generously about 1450 by W allerstein---- " Andre
Gunder Frank, " A Theoretical In tro d u ctio n to 5,000 Years of W orld System H is­
tory," Review 13, no. 2 (Spring 1990): 163.
5. Cox, The Foundations, 122-23.
6. Frank, " A Theoretical In tro d u ctio n ," 155-248.
7. Janet Abu-Lughod, "R estructuring the Premodern W orld-System," Review,
13, no. 2 (Spring 1990): 275.
8. Cf. Hayden W hite, Metahistory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1973).
9. James, Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman M elville
and the World We Live In (New York: C.L.R. James, 1953).
10. Copies of Mariners were sent to every member of Congress. Paul Buhle,
C.L.R. fames: The A rtist as Revolutionary [London: Verso, 1988), 106.
11. James, "A fte r H itle r, O ur T u rn ," in Spheres of Influence (London: A lliso n
and Busby, 1980), 28.
12. James, Modern Politics (D etroit: Bewick Editions, 1973), 54.
13. "[T]hey were closer to a modern proletariat than any group of workers in
existence at the tim e " (James, The Black Jacobins [New York: Vintage, 1963], 86).
14. James, Lee, Dunayevskaya, State Capitalism, 38, 58, 58, 38, 35, and 11
respectively.
15. James, Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin (London: A llis o n and Busby,
1980), 18. For further elaboration, see Robinson, Black Marxism, 390ff, and
Buhle, C.L.R. James: The A rtist, 70-71 and 93.
16. James, Lee, Dunayevskaya, State Capitalism, 53.
17. Herman M e lville , Moby-Dick (New York: Bantam, 1986), 116-17.
18. Ibid., 205.
19. D. N orth, The Economic Growth of the United States: 1790-1860 (Engle-
wood-Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1961); and Howard Z in n , A People's History of the
United States (New York: Harper, 1980), ch. 10.
20. Cf. A lan Wald, The New York Intellectuals (Chapel H ill: N o rth Carolina
U niversity, 1987).
21. Cf. Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York: W illia m
Morrow, 1967).
22. For more recent examples of the same, see Brian Higgins's summary in
"M e lv ille ," American Literary Scholarship 1986 (Durham: D uke University,
1988).
23. D. E. Pease, "M e lv ille and C u ltu ra l Persuasion," in Ideology and Classic
American Literature, ed. Sacvan Bercovitch and M yra Jehlen (Cambridge: Cam­
bridge U niversity, 1986), 392,389.
24. Ibid., 405, 412, 413. Ishmael is also the centerpiece of Paul Royster's "M e l­
ville's Economy of Language," a second essay in the same collection containing
 James and the W orld-System 259

Pease's article. But in a direct if u n w ittin g contradiction of James (and Pease),

Royster interprets the relationship between Moby-Dick and Pierre (1852) in a
rather startling way. Arguing that M elville's approach to language "travelled from
one extreme [language as the "world's perfect counterpart"] to the other [language
as a "shadow w ith o u t corresponding substance"], Royster m aintains that "In the
same process, M e lville also moved from a deep com m itm ent to the capitalist
economy to an outright condemnation of it, both as a means of life and as a mode
of representation" (3*3).
25. Pease, "M e lv ille and C u ltu ra l Persuasion," 415.
26. Buhle, C.L.R. fames: The A rtist, 106-13.
27. Cf. Robinson, Black Marxism, 389ff.
28. "W hy should not the historical childhood of hum anity, where it attained its
most beautiful form , exert an eternal charm because it is a stage that w ill never
recur? . . . The Greeks were norm al children. The charm their art has for us does
not conflict w ith the im m ature stage of the society in w hich it originated" (Marx
in Maurice Dobb, ed., A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy [New
York: International Publishers, 1972], 217).
29. Hayden W hite, Metahistory, 110.
30. Cedric J. Robinson, "O liv e r C rom w ell Cox and the Historiography of the
West," Cultural Critique 17 (W inter 1990-91): 5-19.
 W illia m E. Cain

The T riu m p h of the W ill aftd the Failure of

Resistance: C.L.R. James's Readings of

M oby-D ick and O thello

Why, in M e lv ille 's M o b y-D ick, don't the crew members aboard the "Pe-
quod" rebel against th e ir diabolic captain?
For C.L.R. James, in M ariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of
Herm an M e lv ille and the W orld We Live In , th is w ould seem to be the
central question th a t M oby-D ick raises and one th a t demands an answer.
James him self, after a ll, cham pioned the c re a tiv ity of the masses and the
resourcefulness and resolve of w orkers. It w ould therefore appear in e v i­
table th a t he w ould explore the relationship between Ahab and his m en—
not the officers Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, but the harpooners and the
com m on seamen who, in M e lv ille 's reckoning, perform th e ir labor in
accord w ith th e ir captain's e le ctrifyin g w ill. But w h ile James is honest
enough to acknowledge th a t the crew's subservience to Ahab is an in te r­
pretive and p o litic a l problem , he fa ils to confront it adequately, overrid­
ing rather than re a lly grappling w ith it.
U ltim a te ly , in m y view , by over-honoring the crewm en and dissociat­
ing them from Ahab, James misreads M e lv ille 's novel. He eloquently but
m isleadingly bends it in to co n fo rm ity w ith his own h is to ric a l optim ism ,
crediting M e lv ille w ith a fa ith in com m on persons th a t th is w rite r's
masterpiece does not sustain. H is strength as a lite ra ry c ritic , evident in
his w o rk on M e lv ille and in an im portant essay on O thello as w e ll, rests
in his engagement w ith the text, his passionate concern fo r the tru th s
th a t it expresses. But th is tru th is one th a t James him self extrapolates

260
 Readings of M oby-D ick and O the llo 261

from , indeed creates in , the texts bringing to lig h t and a ffirm in g not w hat
the te xt contains but, rather, his v iv id reim agination of it.

M e lv ille scholars said little about M ariners, Renegades and Castaways

when it appeared in 1953, and it continues to be absent from nearly a ll of
the bibliographies and c ritic a l studies devoted to M e lv ille .1 To be sure,
M ariners is a curious performance, the product of a p o litic a lly suspect
w rite r who was detained at E llis Island (where he w orked on his book)
and was deported fo r passport vio la tio n s in the same year in w hich his
study was published. M ariners is h ig h ly personal and shuns academic
decorum, and in its skirm ishing w ith p o litic a l issues, it risked (and s till
risks) rejection by scholars and teachers trained in fo rm a list theory and
practice.
It is im portant, also, to take note of the contexts that James neglects or
treats only in passing. He om its m ention, fo r example, of M e lville 's
parents (especially his father, w ho died a debtor in 1832) and th e ir fa m ily
connections, M e lv ille 's own econom ically troubled life and balked lite r­
ary career, and the transform ations and crises in the Am erican economy
(in particular, the emergence of a b olition ism in Am erica and the panic of
1837) that occurred during the antebellum period. James also fails to
consider M e lv ille 's tra in in g in and dissent from the C a lvin ist doctrines
of the D utch Reformed C hurch, of w hich his m other was a member.2
N or does he deal w ith key lite ra ry influences on M e lv ille , from Thomas
Browne to C arlyle and Emerson.
Strangely, James also chooses to excise B illy Budd from the M e lv ille
canon. T his is a story whose action M e lv ille locates in 1797, in the period
of the French R evolution and its afterm ath—w hich w ould seem to make
B illy Budd profoundly relevant to the author of The Black Jacobins, w ith
its p o rtra it of the H aitia n revolutionaries of the 1790s and early 1800s.
But James, I th in k , could not tolerate the rig id rule of law and the
C hristian passivity of the afflicte d sailor that M e lv ille 's fin a l w ork de­
picts, and for this reason he leaves it out of his discussion.
M ariners suffers as w e ll from James's reductive accounts of Ishm ael
and the protagonist of M e lv ille 's next novel, Pierre, as neurotic in te lle c ­
tuals, as case studies of the gap between brooding, unw orldly dreamers
and the creative masses. A d m itte d ly th is speaks to one of James's chief
 262 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

concerns: his am bivalence about the role of self-appointed inte lle ctu a ls
and his suspicion of th e ir tendency to seize upon th e ir ow n inadequa­
cies—and pessim ism about the fu tu re —as gospel tru th s about p o litics,
culture, and history. But James's approach to Ishm ael and Pierre does
threaten to fla tte n them out, and it displays an im patience, an angry
fru stra tio n , th a t m ore accurately m irrors James's appraisal of m odem
authors, critics, and in te lle ctu a ls than it does M e lv ille 's characters.
There is also a serious problem w ith the rig id equivalence th a t James
asserts between H itle r and S talin, N azism and Soviet C om m unism . He
underscores a h o rrific com m onality between the tw o dictators, and he
concludes th a t both regimes are "to ta lita ria n " in th e ir instrum ents of
te rro r and coercion, reliance on propaganda, regim entation, and, above
a ll, e nlistm ent of the entire population under the ru le of a charism atic
leader in w hom the general w ill is incarnated. But James's com m entary
here, w h ile pole m ica lly strong, is a n a lytica lly loose,* it does not address
h isto rica l differences between the kinds of to ta lita ria n is m th a t existed in
G erm any and in the Soviet U nion or the d ifferent contexts w ith in w hich
they emerged. H itle r's Germany, destroyed by the A llie d Powers, did not
survive W orld W ar II, whereas Soviet to ta lita ria n is m lasted throughout
the w ar and beyond S talin's death in 1953, the year when James's book
appeared. By equating H itle r and S talin, N azi Germ any and the Soviet
U nion, James constructs a transhistorical form o f e v il—an allegorical
rendering of h isto ry th a t lacks the rigor and depth th a t James exhibits in
his other books and essays.
In part the explanation fo r James's om issions and debatable emphases
in M ariners lies in his determ ination to em ploy M e lv ille 's novel to query
and re fle ct upon the h is to ric a l tendencies of the W estern w orld. As his
s u b title makes plain, James judges M e lv ille our contem porary, a w rite r
who predicted the nature of "th e w orld th a t we liv e in " and w ho alerts us
to the p o litic a l dangers th a t we m ust face. He reads M oby-D ick as a
prophetic scru tin y of the m odern era, p a rtic u la rly as it has been defined
and ravaged by the lin ke d to ta lita ria n power of S talin and H itle r. M a ri­
ners is not about M oby-D ick alone; it includes sections on Pierre, "Bar-
tleby the Scrivener," "Las Encantadas," "B enito Cereno," and other texts
as w e ll. But James is interested, above a ll, in M oby-D ickt M e lville 's
m ajor book, and the incom parable lessons th a t it teaches about Am er­
ica's destiny.3
James deals in c is iv e ly w ith each of the characters, especially Ahab,
and he shows an adm irable appreciation of M e lv ille 's a rtistry. He quotes
 Readings of M oby-D ick and O the llo 263

extensively, both fleshing out his argum ent and enshrining M e lville 's
meanings fo r the present day in the author's ow n language. "The book
has been w ritte n in such a way," James rem arks in his Introduction , "th a t
a reader can read it from beginning to end and understand it w ith o u t
having read a single page of M e lv ille 's books" (7).4James honors M e lv ille
and acts as his representative, but he also edits and contains him , provid­
ing a selection of passages and interpretive com m ent on them that sub­
s titu te for M oby-D ick and the other prim ary w orks themselves.
T his sentence in the In tro d u ctio n shows James's daring and am bition
as an interpreter: it is a rare c ritic w ho w ill claim that his ow n te xt can do
fu ll justice to —more than that, replace—the original. There are many
such expressions of c ritic a l power in M ariners, the most significant of
w hich is James's staunch effort to distinguish between Ahab and the
crew. A t a key juncture of the book, James emphasizes the splendid
harm ony of the men who w ork together in th is com plex industry:

People w rite repeatedly th a t M e lv ille describes the technique of the

w h a lin g in d u s try as i f he were d raw ing up some sort of te xtb o o k or
m anual. M e lv ille is doing n o th in g o f the k in d . He has painted a body of
men at w o rk, the s k ill and the danger, the laboriousness and the physical
and m ental m o b iliz a tio n o f hum an resources, the com radeship and the
u n ity , the s im p lic ity and the naturalness.
T hey are meanest m ariners, castaways and renegades. B ut th a t is not
th e ir fa u lt. T hey began th a t way. T h e ir heroism consists in th e ir every­
day doing of th e ir w o rk . The o n ly tragic graces w ith w h ic h M e lv ille
endows them are the graces o f m en associated fo r com m on labour. (35)

M e lv ille 's characterization of the workers, James says, highlights "the

power of hum an association fo r a com m on purpose, the unconquerable
s p irit of m an" (66), and stands in contrast to the violence and rage of
Ahab's quest of the w h ite whale.
James does rom anticize here the conditions of w ork aboard the "Pe-
quod." As N ew ton A rv in has pointed out, "the life of a foremasthand on a
typical w haler of the tim e was as nearly unendurable as w orking life can
be and not prove fa ta l" (51). But the more pressing question is whether
James is rig h t to divorce the crew from the captain by proposing that the
workers depicted in M e lv ille 's text dram atize the alternative to Ahab's
to ta lita ria n insanity. In m aking his argum ent, James denies the agonized
bonds between the leader and the led, the ru le r and the ruled, that
M e lv ille insists upon. Ahab's remorseless, crazed pursuit of the w hite
whale both unnerves and exhilarates the men, as James's observations
 264 The Am erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

about a long quotation from "The Chase—Second D ay" (chapter 134)

in tim a te . " It is the noblest piece of w ritin g in the book and fittin g ly so /'
James m aintains:

This is modern man, one w ith Nature, master of technology, a ll personal

in d iv id u a lity freely subordinated to the excitem ent of achieving a com­
mon goal. They have reached it at last by the complete integration of the
ship and the w ind and the sea and their*own activity. True, it has been
achieved under the w hip of Ahab. But whereas Ahab is a ll isolation, all
loneliness, a ll megalomania and irresponsible madness, the men, in no
way inferior to him in technical s k ill, endurance and determ ination, are
moved by feelings common to a ll hum anity in its greatest moments.
This is the reason why they follow ed Ahab, though at the beginning
M e lville says he does not know. Once before we have been given a h in t of
it, that is when M e lville says that the thing that appealed to Queequeg,
Tashtego and Daggoo in Ahab was his inflexible determ ination to con­
quer the whale. (71)

T his is w onderful, b u t it underplays the force of James's adm ission that

"th e w h ip of Ahab" has lashed the men onward and driven them to th e ir
achievem ents. Toward the end of th is passage, James touches on the
closeness between Ahab and the crew and on the a ffirm a tive response
they give to him . B ut then he im m ediately backs away, in sistin g in the
firs t words of his next paragraph th a t "the separation of the m en from
Ahab is objectively placed before us" (71).
Throughout M ariners, James focuses on Ahab as the "em bodim ent of
the to ta lita ria n type," the "m ost dangerous and destructive social type
th a t has ever appeared in W estern c iv iliz a tio n " (21,15); and he repeatedly
calls a tte n tio n to the themes of dom ination, repression, coercion, and
terror, a ll of w h ich are ce rta in ly registered in M e lv ille 's text. But w hy
don't the men revolt?5 James asks th is question several tim es, struggles
w ith it, and fin a lly seeks to resolve it in the m idst of his discussion of
Fedallah and the savages w ho com prise the special crew Ahab has chosen
fo r his ow n whaleboat:

Totalitarianism is u tte rly alien to the vast m ajority of modern men, alien
to the way they w ork, alien to the social environm ent in w hich they live,
alien to their sense of individual personality, alien to their need for free
expression. Thus the totalitarian power m ust find, create, educate a
special staff of men who are psychologically prim itive, aborigines, w ith
the added horror that they use modern weapons and modern science. It is
impossible to account otherwise for the desperate inhum an cruelties
 Readings of M oby-D ick and O th e llo 265

w hich system atically are carried out day after day in, for example, to ta l­
itarian concentration camps. This is the lite ra l reversion to barbarism.
Unless one understands that men are such highly social creatures, so
highly civilized, even when individua lly they are only meanest mariners,
renegades and castaways, that only the most monstrous barbarism can
hold them down, then one has to fa ll back in to the theory of the inherent
evil in human nature as such, and the hopelessness and despair which are
so rampant todSy. Totalitarianism and barbarism are inseparable, tw in
sides of the same coin, and M e lville makes Fedallah and Ahab insepar­
able. (61)

The w orkers of the "Pequod" do not revolt, James contends, because

they cannot: Ahab's to ta lita ria n power and Fedallah's terrorism are too
extrem e, too absolute, fo r the men to break free. But th is is not quite
satisfactory, for it fa ils to consider w hy the men did not perceive the
threat to them that Ahab posed and w hy they did not strike him down
when he announced th e ir m em bership in his suicidal compact. M oby-
D ick is, or should be, deeply disturbing fo r James and fo r those who share
his fa ith in com m on people and th e ir capacity fo r p o litic a l resistance.
M e lv ille emphasizes the positive, awed response of the crew to Ahab and
plays up the a b ilitie s and energies in them that th is tyrannical leader
controls. M oby-D ick is very m uch concerned w ith the fa ta lity of human
nature and w ith the im pulse to destructiveness in persons.
And in th is sense M oby-D ick is o nly m arginally a p o litic a l novel.
P olitics, fo r M e lv ille , is yet another surface that conceals tru th s men and
women are unable or u n w illin g to brave; even the few who dare to
penetrate beneath the surface may not be equipped to fathom and voice
th e ir discoveries.6 The crew of the "Pequod" is cowed and terrorized by
Ahab yet grateful to him , and th is is an aspect of the human craving for
solidarity, even when it is grotesque, that M e lv ille is determ ined to
illu m in a te .
M e lv ille hammers home the pleasure and b ru ta lly clear self-definition
that comes from consent and fid e lity to mad auth o rity: people not only
tolerate but welcome it. In "The quarter-D eck" (chapter 36), fo r example,
M e lv ille shows Ahab stunning the mates in to acceptance of the pursuit
of M oby D ick: " It seemed as though, by some nameless, in te rio r v o litio n ,
he w ould fain have shocked in to them the same fie ry em otion accum u­
lated w ith in the Leyden jar of his own m agnetic life . The three mates
quailed before his strong, sustained, and m ystic aspect. Stubb and Flask
looked sideways from him ; the honest eye of Starbuck fe ll dow nright"
 266 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

(969). Ahab him self, in the next chapter, "S unset/' expresses his surprise
th a t neither the mates n or the crewm en opposed h im :" 'Twas not so hard
a task. I thought to fin d one stubborn, at the least; b u t m y one cogged
circle fits in to a ll th e ir various wheels, and they revolve. Or, if you w ill,
lik e so m any a n t-h ills of powder, they a ll stand before me; and I th e ir
m atch" (971). Later, in "M oby D ic k " (chapter 41), Ishm ael says th a t he
"was one of th a t crew; m y shouts had gon^up w ith the rest; m y oath had
been welded w ith theirs; and stronger I shouted, and m ore did I ham m er
and c lin c h m y oath, because of the dread in m y soul. A w ild , m ystical,
sym pathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless feud seemed m ine.
W ith greedy ears I learned the h is to ry of th a t m urderous m onster against
w hom I and a ll the others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge"
(983).7
James was not drawn to M oby-D ick sim ply because it foreshadowed
the to ta lita ria n m ind and hym ned the w orkers. In its grim , excited
p o rtra it of m en in league w ith a m enacingly charism atic leader, M e l­
v ille 's book figures fo rth dark po ssib ilitie s about hum an nature and
h is to ry th a t James stood steadfastly against. James iden tifie s M oby-D ick
as "th e firs t com prehensive statem ent in lite ra tu re of the conditions and
perspectives fo r the survival of W estern c iv iliz a tio n " (96), and he con­
cludes by a ffirm in g th a t M e lv ille , m ore than any other w rite r, exalted
the "creative power of the popular mass" (174). But these tributes func­
tio n to expose u n se ttlin g ideas about persons, and persons in groups, that
M e lv ille struggles w ith b u t th a t James w ill not name, fo r nam ing them
w ould betray everything James stands fo r and believes m ost deeply. In
th is respect, James's book is a fa te fu l m eeting between James and another
man, M e lv ille , w hom he refuses to become—and w hom he overcomes by
transform ing h im in to his ow n likeness. James m isconstrues and, thus,
seeks to vanquish M e lv ille 's language about Ahab, the crew, and the
im p lica tio n s of the ship's m anic quest.
M ariners, then, is extrem ely provocative about M oby-D ick, but it is
also inaccurate, an enlightening d isto rtio n . James does not dw ell upon
the perilous dim ension of M e lv ille th a t emerges no t o n ly in the novel but
also in his letters to H aw thorne and review of Mosses from an O ld
Manse. The tone of a ll of these texts is courageous, intense, sometimes
jocular and m ocking, but the th ru s t of them always gets at som ething
appalling about who, at bottom , we are and w hat a w ful tru th s reverber­
ate in us when we unprotectedly respond to H aw thorne or to Shake­
speare's tragic protagonists and v illa in s .
In "H aw thorne and H is Mosses," M e lv ille declares:
 Readings of M oby-D ick and O the llo 267

It is those deep far-away things in [Shakespeare]; those occasional

flashings-forth of the in tu itiv e T ruth in him ; those short, quick probings
at the very axis of reality;—these are the things that make Shakespeare
Shakespeare. Through the mouths of the dark characters of Hamlet,
Tim on, Lear, and Iago, he c ra ftily says, or sometimes insinuates, the
things w hich we feel to be so te rrific a lly true that it were a ll but madness
for any good man, in his own proper character, to utter, or even h in t of
them. Torm ent/d into desperation, Lear the frantic king tears off the
mask, and speaks the sane madness of vita l truth. (894)

The sym pathy for and sense of a ffilia tio n w ith M e lv ille that James
demonstrates bears w itness, I w ould hazard, to his antagonism to M e l­
v ille , to his fundam ental difference from the w rite r he esteems. In his
analysis of "B artleby the S crivener/' James argues th a t M e lv ille perceives
"the life of Bartleby and people lik e Bartleby [as] a m onstrous denial of
w hat is hum an in hum an beings"; but, James adds, "M e lv ille does not
believe that anything can be done to alter such fundam ental relations of a
modern society" (115). It is th is deep conservatism in M e lv ille that runs
contrary to James's own tru st in the innate decency and inventive power
of w orking people. M e lv ille is less James's a lly than his opposite, the
O ther whose pessimism about hum an nature James m ust override.
In his copy of Emerson's essays, M e lv ille marked Emerson's claim ,
"T rust men and they w ill be true to you," and w rote, "God help the poor
fellow who squares his life according to th is " (cited in Lewis 132). James
w ould have found M e lv ille 's annotation blasphemous, yet it does express
M e lville 's sense of the tru th about persons he had glim psed. T rust is
fo lly, and at its w orst am ounts to the suicidal self-abandonment that
Ahab demands from the crew and that they are powerless to w ith h o ld
from him . James resists the triu m p h of Ahab's w ill and thus identifies
cause for hope in M e lv ille 's book, as though the New W orld were indeed
contained in the shell of the Old.

II

James adm ired M oby-D ick more than any other book, and his rapt re­
sponse to it is extraordinary, yet he also spoke often about his esteem
for Shakespeare's plays and p a rticu la rly for the four m ajor tragedies—
O thello, H am let, M acbeth, and K ing Lear. James's published com m en­
taries on them show a s trik in g s im ila rity in th e ir angle of approach to his
interpretations of M e lv ille 's novels and stories. N ot only did he respond
fervently to the spirited language of Shakespeare's w orks, and to the
 268 The A m erican Years: The L ite ra ry D im ension

characters and spectacles th a t they exh ib it, but he also view ed Shake­
speare as a profound th in k e r, lik e M e lv ille —a w rite r w ho saw deeply in to
the m ovem ents of history, the sources of hum an action, and the com ­
p le x ity of personal and social relationships.
As Anna G rim shaw observes in The C.L.R. fames A rchive: A Reader's
G uide, James in fact intended to p u t together a book about Shakespeare,
a project th a t he did n o t liv e to com plete (rl5). But the second volum e of
James's selected w ritin g s, Spheres o f Existence, does contain tw o pieces
from 1963 on Shakespeare, the firs t of w h ich focuses on O th e llo and the
second on The M erchant o f Venice. These, lik e the book on M e lv ille ,
offer revealing signs of James's operations as an interpreter of lite ra ry
texts and the pow erful acts of w ill and energy th a t he m anifests.
James's treatm ent of The M erchant o f Venice concentrates on the
characters of Shylock, Portia, A ntonio, and Bassanio, and b ris k ly en­
gages—and then sets aside as secondary, as m arginal—the play's anti-
Sem itism . Yet James's com m entary on O th e llo is m ore in trig u in g , and it
stands as a puzzling and yet fin a lly em blem atic m om ent in James's
corpus—em blem atic because it accords w ith the im posing recreation of
M e lv ille in James's image th a t occurs in M ariners.
James begins by em phasizing th a t O th e llo differs from M acbeth, King
Lear, and H am let because "governm ent" is n o t a central concern in it.
"G overnm ent as a problem is not raised at a ll," James states. "There is an
excellent governm ent at Venice and Shakespeare shows it to us in a ll its
m ajesty" (141). T his is p a rtia lly true, b u t is not quite fa ith fu l to the
s itu a tio n th a t Shakespeare describes. W hen Brabantio, the father of Des-
demona, accuses O thello before the Venetian Senate of "stealing" and
"c o rru p tin g " his daughter (I. iii. 60), the D uke's firs t response—before he
know s the accused is O th e llo —is to declare:

Who e'er he be that in this foul proceeding

Hath thus beguil'd your daughter of herself,
And you of her, the bloody book of law
You shall yourself read in the b itte r letter
A fter your own sense; yea, though our proper son
Stood in your action.
(I. iii. 65-70)

But the D uke softens his verdict once he discovers th a t Brabantio's

rage is directed against O thello. The w a rrio r O thello is needed in the
m ilita ry campaign against the Turks. Venice cannot afford to lose his
 Readings of M oby-D ick and O the llo 269

leadership, and thus Brabantio's cry of personal in ju stice m ust go unan­

swered. James may be correct to stress the sm ooth, dignified fu nctionin g
of the Venetian governm ent, but he does not register the tension that
Shakespeare builds in to th is scene, as the D uke exempts O thello, the
valued soldier, from the judgm ent that he in itia lly rendered after hearing
Brabantio's firs t com plaint.
It is true, of course, that O th e llo te lls a captivating story of his m a rtia l
exploits and w ooing of Desdemona; and she p u b lic ly states her allegiance
to O thello, the man she has accepted as her husband. The D uke and his
officers listen to both O thello and Desdemona patiently, respectfully,
and are moved by th e ir eloquence. But it is part of Shakespeare's b rillia n t
effect here to make us aware that the D uke and the others w ant to be
moved: it is in th e ir interest to deny Brabantio's appeal, once they learn
that it is aimed against O thello. When the D uke turns to console Braban-
tio , he offers a string of cliches (e.g., "w hen remedies are past, the griefs
are ended," I. iii. 202) whose emptiness the em bittered Brabantio points
out.
Yet James's overstated account of the role of the Venetian governm ent
is less notew orthy than his rem arks about O thello him self. James insists
that O thello's "colour," his "race," is not a significant issue: "I say w ith
the fu lle s t confidence, that you could strike out every single reference to
his black skin and the play w ould be essentially the same" (141).
T his is an astonishing claim about O th e llo since the play is th ic k w ith
references to the M oor's color. Iago, for example, w ickedly te lls Braban­
tio that "an old black ram / Is tupping your w hite ewe" (I. i. 88-89); and
Brabantio condemns O thello before the Senate by saying that Desde­
mona violated "nature" in m arrying "w hat she fear'd to look on" (I. iii.
98). Later, when the crisis comes in A ct III, O thello perversely accepts as
a sign of Desdemona's fa ls ity that she m arried h im —a black m an—in the
firs t place. Instead of m arrying someone of "her own clim e, com plexion,
and degree" (III. iii. 230), Desdemona chose to m arry O thello, and this,
Iago suggests, should confirm fo r O thello that Desdemona cannot be
trusted. H is love poisoned, O thello construes the trium phant q u a lity of
his and Desdemona's m arriage—that it overcame racial and cu ltu ra l
differences—as proof that the tw o of them could never have been in love
at all.
James misreads Shakespeare's play by fa ilin g to acknowledge a feature
of it that is present in the text and unm istakable on stage. James's essay is
not a careless or superficial one, however. It is less that he fa ils to read
 270 The A m erican Years: The L iterary D im ension

Shakespeare rig h tly than th a t he refuses to abide by the words of the text
alone. T his is a pow erful m isreading in w h ich James seeks to put forw ard
an O th e llo th a t differs and departs from the play th a t Shakespeare actu­
a lly composed. James is n o t an objective reader of either Shakespeare or
M e lv ille but a forceful, provocative m isreader of th e ir texts. He recreates
the authors and the texts to make them serve his ow n social, p o litic a l,
and h is to ric a l purposes and a ffirm his goals. H is demand is th a t readers
perceive the texts as they should be, as they need to be, even if th a t
means scanting the author's words.
A nother way of m aking th is p o in t is to say th a t James leaves his own
meanings on the texts th a t he interprets, radically changing them , m ak­
ing them d ifferent from w hat they were. Jamesian in te rp re ta tio n is a
bold, hazardous enterprise, and the ris k is th a t such daring revisionary
argum ents w ill baffle or frustrate readers and w ill drive them away. It
is a sign of James's in te lle c tu a l zeal, and of his confidence in his com ­
m anding rhetoric, th a t he confronts readers w ith interpretations that, he
surely knows, w ill prove d iffic u lt, if not im possible, fo r them to accept.
James wants readers to im agine th a t a te x t—and beyond that, life its e lf—
can be made ra dically different. In th is respect, his sta rtlin g c ritic is m of
Shakespeare is yet another Jamesian subversion of the natural, the ob­
vious, the taken-for-granted. James teaches th a t life as w e ll as lite ra tu re
can be transform ed if m en and wom en possess the courage to leap be­
yond w hat is know n, and w hat seems unalterable.
In his w ork on M e lv ille and Shakespeare, James testifies to the neces­
s ity fo r creative in te rp re tive w ork. He does not supply or a rticulate a
m ethod, however, and in th is respect some readers w ill fin d his lite ra ry
studies to be disappointing. But it w ould vio la te the s p irit of James's
enterprise if, in his studies of M e lv ille and Shakespeare, he la id out a
pattern or scheme or m odel and proposed that others apply it. He w ould
never w ish to m echanize the c ritic a l consciousness or align his own
insights in to lite ra tu re w ith anything th a t approaches academic routine.
James emphasizes a personal investm ent in texts and c o n flic tiv e encoun­
ter w ith them . He w ould not w ish his inte rp re tive labors to be im itated:
no one could or should seek to copy him . Yet he affirm s always that
readers have the capacity to do them selves ju st w hat he has done.

Notes

1. Stanley T. W illiam s, in Eight Am erican A uthors, an im portant reference

book published in 1956, dismisses James's book in three sentences (235). Incredi-
 Readings of M oby-D ick and O the llo 271

bly, it is nowhere cited in John Bryant's nine-hundred-page Companion to Mel­

ville Studies. N or is it cited by Kerry McSweeney or M a rtin Bickman ("Introduc­
tion"), both of w hom provide overviews of the novel and its place in modern
criticism . It is also absent from all of the anthologies of criticism devoted to
M e lville in general and to Moby-Dick in particular. Richard Brodhead mentions it
in passing ("Introduction" 19), but inappropriately lin ks it to D. H. Lawrence's
chapter on M e lville in Studies in Classic American Literature (1923) and Charles
Olson's Call Me Ishmael[\9A7). Lawrence's and Olson's commentaries have been
w idely read and have inform ed scholarship on Moby-Dick. M e lv ille specialists,
as w ell as historians of American literature and criticism , either have not known
about, or have ignored, James's w ork.
2. See N ewton A rvin : "the most decisive intellectual and spiritual influence" of
M elville's life was "his saturation in orthodox C alvinism " (30).
3. For a helpful survey and bibliography of the extensive scholarship on M e l­
ville's social and p olitica l views, see M ilto n R. Stern. Recent w ork by Donald E.
Pease provides pow erfully argued accounts of the location of Moby-Dick in the
cultural politics of the Cold War. I am indebted to Pease's w ork and to the
stim ulating study of M elville's craft by Warner Berthoff, and I continue to benefit
from older studies of the novel by Lewis Mum ford, F. O. Matthiessen, Leo Marx,
and Alfred Kazin. The most detailed reading of Moby-Dick in the context of the
political crises of the 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, and the in te rtw in in g of capitalism,
imperialism , and slavery, is supplied by Rogin (102-51). See also Ann Douglas's
discussion of M elville's w ork in relation to the popular women writers of the
1840s and 1850s and the culture of sentim ent and dom esticity (349-95), and the
studies by Alan Heim ert, Joyce Sparer Adler, and C arolyn Karcher. On M elville's
conception of democratic "fra te rn ity," see W ilson Carey M cW illiam s (328-71),
and see Robert K. M artin, who views the relationship between Ishmael and
Queequeg as a radical alternative to the w orld of "male aggression, patriarchy,
linear progress, m ilitarism , and capitalism " (94).
4. The first edition of Mariners, Renegades and Castaways, and the reprinted
edition from which I take my quotations, include a disconcerting final chapter in
w hich James tells of his period of confinement on Ellis Island and his relation­
ships there w ith C om m unists and other p o litica l prisoners. James speaks force­
fu lly against the U nited States authorities who took away his freedoms, yet he
also engages in forms of special pleading, laced w ith warnings against Com m u­
nist subversion, to w hich he does not stoop in his other w ritings. This chapter
was excluded from the edition published in 1978.
5. Michael Rogin points out that m u tin y or desertion figures centrally in every
one of M elville's tales of the sea, w ith the sole exception of Redburn (128-29).
6. See Olson: "First causes were M elville's peculiar preoccupation" (49); and
Richard Chase: "M elville 's concern, be it noted, is not w ith the circumstantial
condition of present things. . . . M e lv ille wants to plunge as directly as may be
possible to the absolute" (885).
7. Larzer Z iff explains the point this way: "If men unite in upholding such
authority and subm it their w ills to it, th e ir recompense for lost self-mastery w ill
come from the unth in kin g solidarity they gain in the united support of a leader
who has persuaded them that his cause is the common cause. They can delegate
their weaknesses as w ell as their strengths to him and sail on" (273). Cf. M um -
ford: "There is an Ahab in every man, and the meanest member of the crew can be
 272 The A m erican Years: The L ite ra ry D im ension

awakened to the values that Ahab p riz e s .. . . A ll men live most intensely when
they are m oulded by such a purpose—or even, w anting that, by an enterprise that
counterfeits i t " (M elville 189).

W orks C ited

Adler, Joyce Sparer. War in M elville's Imagination. N ew York: N ew York UP, 1981.
A rvin, N ewton. Herman M elville: A C ritical Bibgraphy. 1950. N ew York: Viking,
1966.
Berthoff, Warner. The Example of M elville. 1962. N ew York: N orton, 1972.
Bickman, M a rtin , ed. Approaches to Teaching M elville's Moby Dick. N ew York:
M odern Language Association, 1985.
-------. "In tro d u ctio n ." New Essays on Moby Dick. N ew York: Cambridge UP,
1986. 1-21.
Bryant, John, ed. A Companion to M elville Studies. Westport, Conn.: Green­
wood, 1986.
Chase, Richard. "H erm an M e lv ille ." Major Writers of America. Ed. Perry M ille r.
Vol. 1. N ew York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1962. 877-91.
Douglas, A nn. The Feminization of American Culture. 1977. N ew York: Avon,
1978.
Grimshaw, Anna. The C.L.R. fames Archive: A Reader's Guide. N ew York:
C.L.R. James Institu te , 1991.
Heim ert, Alan. " Moby Dick and Am erican P olitical Sym bolism ." American
Quarterly 15 (W inter 1963): 498-534.
James, C.L.R. Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Mel­
ville and the World We Live In. 1953. London: A llis o n and Busby, 1985.
------ . Spheres of Existence: Selected Writings. Westport, Conn.: Lawrence H ill,
1980.
Karcher, Carloyn L. Shadow Over the Promised Land: Slavery; Race, and Vio­
lence in M elville's America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1980.
Kazin, Alfred. An American Procession: The Major American Writers from 1830
to 1930—The Crucial Century. N ew York: Knopf, 1984.
Lewis, R.W.B. The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the
Nineteenth Century. 1955. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1971.
M artin, Robert K. Hero, Captain, and Stranger: Male Friendship, Social Critique,
and Literary Form in the Sea Novels of Herman M elville. Chapel H ill: U of
N o rth Carolina P, 1986.
Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in
America. 1964. N ew York: Oxford UP, 1974.
Matthiessen, F. O. American Renaissance: A rt and Expression in the Age of
Emerson and Whitman. 1941. N ew York: Oxford UP, 1972.
McSweeney, Kerry. Moby-Dick: M elville's M ighty Book. Boston: Twayne, 1986.
M cW illiam s, W ilson Carey. The Idea of Fraternity in America. Berkeley: U of
C alifornia P, 1973.
M elville, Herman. "H aw thorne and H is Mosses." 1850. Major Writers of Amer­
ica. Ed. Perry M ille r. Vol. 1. N ew York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1962.
891-99.
 Readings of M oby-D ick and O the llo 273

------- . Moby-Dick. Library of America. N ew York, 1983.

Mum ford, Lewis. The Golden Day: A Study in American Experience and Cul­
ture. N ew York: Boni and Liveright, 1926.
------- . Herman Melville. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1929.
Olson, Charles. Call Me Ishmael: A Study of Melville. San Francisco: C ity Light
Books, 1947.
Pease, Donald E. " Moby Dick and the Cold War." The American Renaissance
Reconsidered. Jd. W alter Benn Michaels and Donald E. Pease. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins UP, 1985. 113-55.
------ . Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writings in Cultural Con­
text. Madison: U of W isconsin P, 1987.
Rogin, Michael. Subversive Genealogy: The Politics and A rt of Herman M elville.
N ew York: Knopf, 1983.
Shakespeare, W illia m . Othello. The Complete Signet Shakespeare. Ed. Sylvan
Barnet. N ew York: Harcourt, Brace, 1972.
Stern, M ilto n R. "M e lville , Society, and Language." A Companion to M elville
Studies. Ed. John Bryant. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1986. 433-79.
W illiam s, Stanley T. "M e lv ille ." Eight American Authors: A Review of Research
and Criticism. 1956. Ed. Floyd Stovall. N ew York: N orton, 1963. 206-70.
Z iff, Larzer. Literary Democracy: The Declaration of Cultural Independence in
America. N ew York: Viking, 1981.
 The Am erican Years,

a C ollaborative Enterprise:

The Theoretical D im ension

 Cornelius Castoriadis

C.L.R. Jarrfes and the Fate of M arxism

A lthough I am of Greek o rig in and was brought up in Athens, the firs t

person to speak to me about A thenian democracy in rela tio n to today's
problem s was C.L.R. James, a black expert on cricket and a revolutionary
from T rinidad. A lthough aspects of the above relation were addressed in
Correspondence, it is also a subchapter in our book Facing R ealityd In
order to situate the things I w ant to say, you m ust realize the predica­
m ent in w hich people lik e James and m yself, despite tw enty years d iffe r­
ence in age, and lo ts of others who joined the revolutionary m ovem ent
found themselves in the forties and the fiftie s . I do not know how or
when James joined the revolutionary m ovem ent, but I joined it during
the second h a lf of the th irtie s , at the age of fifteen, and im m ediately we
found ourselves facing the m onstrous deform ation of the revolutionary
ideas of M arxism its e lf that was holding sway then in the form of the
C om m unist Party and S talinism . As you know, Stalinism , a form of state
power, was not only able to m anipulate people, appear as the realization
of socialism , and to lie w orldw ide, it also k ille d tens of m illio n s of people
inside and outside of Russia. So we found ourselves facing this m onster;
and rather q uickly, at least I th in k so, the m ost subversive or the m ost
crazy amongst us fe lt th a t we had to break w ith Stalinism . Once you
broke w ith Stalinism , the firs t avenue opened to you was T rotskyism and
that is the course James and I took. And then at some stage, as James used

A lecture delivered under the auspices of the C.L.R. James Society, the Africana
Studies Department, Wellesley College and the Afro-Am erican Studies Depart­
ment, Harvard U niversity at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
4 A p ril 1992.1 thank Selwyn R. Cudjoe, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and the C.L.R.
James Society for giving me the opportunity to address these matters that I th in k
are very im portant as w e ll as very d iffic u lt for a ll of us.

2 77
 278 The A m erican Years: The T heoretical D im ension

to say—he was a w onderful speaker and his sense of diale ctica l develop­
m ent was always there and a live w hen he spoke—one began to see th a t
T rotskyism was n o t a ll th a t satisfying and th a t the theory about the
degenerate w orkers' state and the u n co n d itio n a l defense of the USSR was
not holding w ater. So one started to c ritic iz e T rotskyism , and it is at th is
p o in t th a t James and I m et. Thus, w h ile James, Raya Dunayevskaya, and
Grace Lee form ed a group w ith in M ax Shachtman's W orkers Party and
then w ent on to James P. Cannon's S ocialist W orkers Party, our ow n
group, w h ich I founded w ith comrades from the French T ro tskyist Party
from w h ich we s p lit in 1948, started producing Socialism or Barbarism
and attem pting to b u ild a new organization. D espite our differences th a t
rem ained, we stuck together fo r a w h ile . However, once we s p lit w ith
T rotskyism , the question arose: W hat could one do w ith M arxism itself?
T h is was the m ost d iffic u lt part of the journey, w h ich is over fo r me. For
others, it is not. Yet, even if th a t stage of the struggle was over, the
question rem ained: w hat next? If you w ant to rem ain active as a revolu­
tionary, if you w ant a radical transform ation of th is bloody society w ith
a ll its in e qua lities and injustices, nonfreedom and so on, despite the
m ore dem ocratic facade, w hat next? A nd there, I th in k after 1957 or
1958, James and I parted company.
Let me start w ith w hat I considered the tragic fate of M arxism , and
then I 'll say som ething about James. F irst of a ll, w hat one observed
e m p irica lly was th a t after a w h ile M arxism became the pretext fo r a lo t of
people—fo r example, the S talinists and the Social Dem ocrats who, m ost
of the tim e, proclaim ed they were M a rxists—and the cover fo r p o litic s
and policies th a t had n othing to do w ith w hat generally were the in itia l
p o te n tia litie s and aim s of the w orking-class m ovem ent and also the
in itia l in te n tio n s o f M arx him self. W ith that, one started to ask w hy was
th is so and how was it possible? The p o in t I reached around 1960,
cu lm in a tin g in 1965 w ith a te x t about M a rxist revolutiona ry theory th a t
appeared in Socialism or Barbarism (later becom ing the firs t part of The
Im aginary In s titu tio n o f Society), is th a t from the beginning there was a
deep antinom y in M arx's thought. Perhaps one can form ulate th is a n tin ­
om y in the fo llo w in g m anner: tw o elem ents struggled w ith each other.
A t the end, one elem ent took over in the name of M arxism . Up to a point,
the influence of these tw o elem ents rem ained active w ith James, at least
up u n til the m om ent I was in com m unication w ith h im in 1958.
W hy am I ta lk in g about tw o elem ents in M arxism ? M arx had th is
fundam ental in tu itio n th a t men, or as we w ould say today, humans,
 James and the Fate of M arxism 279

make th e ir ow n history, but they make it in given conditions. T his is an

absolutely correct and unobjectionable idea. However, the problem is to
know w hat these conditions are and how far they only condition or really
determ ine the a c tiv ity of the people. W ith th is w ent the firs t elem ent,
w hat I call the revolutiona ry elem ent, the extraordinary im portance he
gave to the self-A ctivity of the people. For instance, in The Econom ic and
Philosophical M anuscripts o f 1844, one observes the atte n tio n M arx
gave to the m anner in w hich the French w orkers w ould gather in th e ir
bistros and ta lk , and one could see th e ir lives on th e ir faces. In one of his
later w ritin g s, one sees the famous sentence proclaim ing that one con­
crete step in the effective m ovem ent is w o rth m uch m ore than ten
thousand programs on paper. So, too, was his recognition of the trem en­
dous im portance of the Paris Com m une, w h ich he in itia lly condemned,
but, when he saw its activitie s, im m ediately recognized as w hat he
called the dictatorship of the proletariat.
N ext, there is the other elem ent: that is, M arx's contam ination by and
particip a tio n in w hat I call the ca pitalist or O ccidental im aginary of th is
period. T his is expressed in w hat one can call M arxist rationalism , in the
deprecatory sense of the word, w hich expresses its e lf at the econom ic
level—the attem pt to b u ild a N ew tonian mechanics of capitalist econ­
om y in Das K apital, an attem pt th a t does not succeed; in the theory of
h isto rica l m aterialism that one can find, for instance, in very closed form
in The Preface to the C ritiq u e of P o litic a l Econom y where one gets the
fin a l tru th about hum an h isto ry in three pages; in the determ ination of
the superstructure by the infrastructure and so on. Also, w hat I fin d very
im portant is th is belief in the c e n tra lity of production and economy in
the society. For M arx, the idea of com m unism and the im portant h is to r­
ical role of the proletariat is based on the central role of the p roletariat in
production. Also, his idea of a socialist or com m unist society is based
necessarily upon the idea that it is only when the productive forces of a
society reach a certain level that one can speak about the liberation of
hum ankind. I ask, w hat is th is necessary and su fficie n t level of produc­
tive forces? The level of productive forces we have in the 1990s, at least
in the developed countries, is a level of w hich M arx never dreamt. The
development of production over the last century was a hundred tim es
more than the developm ent of the productive forces between the paleo­
lith ic and M arx's period. So, w hat is the necessary and sufficient level of
the productive forces to ensure th is liberation? To m y m ind, th is is one
in dication of M arx's serfdom to the capitalist im aginary, w hich one can
 280 The A m erican Years: The Theoretical D im ension

trace back to W estern rationalism . For example, if one follow s h isto rica l
m aterialism , or Engels fo r instance, one w ould fin d w hat I ca ll the
im aginary or the beliefs of precapitalist societies to be "p rim itiv e non­
sense" (Engels's phrase). W hy is it th a t the beliefs of A frican peoples or of
the A m erican Indians are p rim itiv e nonsense b u t C h ris tia n ity , w ith its
idea about a v irg in bearing a c h ild and rem aining a v irg in even after the
b irth , or three persons being one andione person being three, is not
p rim itiv e nonsense? W hat is behind this? It is a purely ra tio n a lis tic
conception of progressive h is to ry whereby people become m ore and
m ore rational; it is a to ta l m isunderstanding of the im aginary creation in
hum an h isto ry whereby each society attem pts to construct a w orld, to
give m eaning to its ow n existence and to the life of in d ivid u a ls in it, and
to m ake sense of w hat is going on around. We try to make sense in
various ways, w h ich contain a ra tio n a l com ponent b u t w h ich in the end
hang m ore or less in the air. Behind a ll of th is there is naive progressivism
and also th is philosophy called diale ctica l m aterialism . By the way, M arx
and Lenin never spoke about dia le ctica l m aterialism ; th is is a S ta lin ist
in ve n tio n . W hen you try to fin d out w hat is re a lly m aterialism in M arx,
Engels, or in a ll m a te ria list philosophers, you end up w ith the idea th a t
there is som ething they call m atter th a t is ruled by s tric t laws. T h is is the
basic tenet.
N ow , if one turns to any idea list philosopher w ho is w o rth h is /h e r salt,
one w ill fin d th a t s/he agrees to ta lly w ith the n o tio n th a t everything is
ruled by ra tio n a l law s. The o n ly difference is th a t at the horizon one
speaks about m atter w ith o u t being able to define w hat m atter is; or one
shifts the burden of the d e fin itio n to science, thus c o n tin u a lly changing
the d e fin itio n of m atter as poor Lenin does in M ate ria lism and E m pirio-
C ritic is m where he starts by saying m atter is w hat I can touch and then
he says th a t it is electrons because by then the la tte r were discovered. On
the other hand, the idealist Hegel says th a t the essence of the w orld is
sp irit. N ow, w hat is spirit? N e ith e r the form er nor the la tte r could define
m atter or s p irit. But the com m on p o in t in m ost tra d itio n a l m etaphysics
is the belief in these ra tio n a l laws th a t determ ine how the real develops,
evolves, appears, and so on.
However, w hat is worse in M arxism and even in M arx him self, despite
his personal a ttitu d e when he noted in a fam ous sentence that he was not
a M arxist, was a s tric t adherence to his ow n orthodoxy.21 th in k th a t the
catastrophic effect of M arxism , w h ich became apparent already w ith
Social Dem ocracy b u t m ostly w ith Leninism , was the in tro d u ctio n of
 James and the Fate of M arxism 281

th is concept of orthodoxy w ith in the working-class m ovem ent. W hat is

orthodoxy? O rthodoxy is w hat is defined in the books. But the books do
not speak for themselves and even if one records the books on electronic
contraptions and one has a cassette, there w ill be discourse. Yet the
question rem ains: w hat is the m eaning of th is discourse? You have to
interpret. Ah, Jm t w ho interprets? T his is a predicam ent th a t the M us­
lim s, C hristians, and Jews have had fo r tw e n ty-five hundred years. If
everybody can interpret, then everything is lost. To prevent this, we have
one instance w ho is the true interpretative instance, for example the
C atholic C hurch or the Party. If you have orthodoxy and one in s titu te d
instance th a t is the guardian of orthodoxy, then the people who do not
agree are heretics. For the salvation of the heretic's sake, fo r his or her
own salvation's sake, you m ust burn h im or her at the stake, because it is
the only way to p u rify h is /h e r soul. So, the revolutiona ry heretics m ust
be brought in fro n t of the court, confess th e ir crim es, and be k ille d in
the basement of the Lubianka and thereby expiate th e ir crim es. T his was
the m ain root of the trouble w ith the practical effects of the influence
of M arxism in the w orkers' m ovem ent, effects that were reflected in
the m ost cruel and m onstrous form s in Leninism and S talinism . T his
was also present in social democracy even though as social democracy
evolved th is tendency started to get watered dow n—but then everything
became watered down in social democracy, so it is not w orth ta lkin g
about. Now, we have a socialist party ru lin g France and when they
named the new Prim e M in iste r, M onsieur Pierre Beregovoy, the im m edi­
ate effect was th a t the stock exchange w ent up, because they were
confident that M onsieur Beregovoy w ould manage the French economy
w e ll and th a t the value of the franc w ould rem ain stable possibly at the
cost of another h alf m illio n unemployed, b u t that does not m atter, of
course. The im portant th in g is that our in fla tio n be less than that of the
Germans.
N ow about James. Let me introduce some autobiographical elements
here. In 1947, I came to know of the existence of the Johnson-Forest
Tendency in the U nited States when I was s till in the French T rotskyist
Party, at a tim e when we were a ll preparing for the Second W orld Con­
gress of the so-called Fourth International. The m ain ite m in th is Second
W orld Congress was the famous Russian Question, w hich was really the
crux of a ll the divisio n and discussion in the T ro tskyist m ovem ent. The
questions were asked: "W hat is Russia, and w hat is the essence of the
Russian state?" As you know, the classic T ro tskyist answer was th a t it
 282 The A m erican Years: The Theoretical D im ension

was a degenerate w orkers7state. In Greece, b u t especially in France, I had

developed a positio n th a t Russia had n o thing to do w ith a w orkers7state
and th a t the n a tio n a liza tio n of property, and the so-called planning, had
no th in g to do w ith socialism and w ith true colle ctive planning b u t were
ju st instrum ents of the ru le of the bureaucracy. In fact, the bureaucracy
had become an e xp lo ita tive and dom inant class. U nknow n to us, the
Johnson-Forest Tendency in the U n ite d States (Johnson was a pseud­
onym of James, Forest was a pseudonym fo r Dunayevskaya, and Ria
Stone a pseudonym fo r Lee) were doing the same th in g .3 They were
producing papers c ritic iz in g the o ffic ia l T ro tskyist p o sitio n and advocat­
ing the theory o f state capitalism . The fu n n y th in g is th a t w h ile we
agreed on our c ritic is m of the T ro tskyist p o sitio n and on the essence of
the Russian state, we did n o t agree on the label w ith w h ich to name the
thing. They were ta lk in g about state capitalism w h ile I was ta lk in g about
to ta lita ria n bureaucratic capitalism . Perhaps it is of no interest to enter
in to a discussion about w hy we were ca llin g the same phenomenon by
different names. However, the m ain p o in t was th a t in ta lk in g about state
capitalism , one was ta kin g in to the bargain the obligation, m ore or less,
to show th a t the Russian economy was fu n ctio n in g along the lines o f the
c a p ita list economy, along the presumed laws th a t M arx had discovered
in Das K apital.
The person in the Johnson-Forest Tendency w ho was very adamant
and in siste n t about the conception of state capitalism was D unayev­
skaya, the econom ist of the group.4 H er articles in The N ew In te rn a ­
tio n a l show the weaknesses of her position. For instance, she was try in g
to fin d increasing unem ploym ent in Russia. Why? Because in a capita list
econom y there m ust be increasing unem ploym ent. But there was no
unem ploym ent to be found. So Dunayevskaya pulled a te rrib le rabbit
from out o f her th a t and said: 77But w hat about the people in the con­
centration camps?77 So I said, 77T h a t7s nonsense. The people in the con­
centration camps are not there to w ipe out increasing unem ploym ent.
They are there for to ta lly d ifferent reasons.77 A nother weakness in the
p osition of the Johnson-Forest Tendency was the attem pt to sustain the
old M a rxist classical econom ic p osition about the fa llin g rate of p ro fit
w hich, fo r me, as a trained econom ist, was already a sort of Loch Ness
m onster, a sea serpent. W hat is the fa llin g rate of p ro fit and how is it
grounded? It cannot be determ ined em pirically, one cannot prove it theo­
re tica lly, and it contradicts the other tenets of M a rxist econom ic theory.
Despite these differences and especially through Grace Lee, who stayed
 James and the Fate of M arxism 283

alm ost eight m onths in Paris during 1947-48,1 became acquainted w ith
James and the w hole Tendency because we were looking in very m uch
the same way at w hat appeared to us as the m ain thing: the se lf-a ctivity
of the w orking class. I had w ritte n tw o texts in Hegelian jargon—I apolo­
gize for m entioning them , but as Stendhal says, that was the crysta lliza ­
tio n po in t in assort of in te lle c tu a l love a ffair between Grace and m e—in
order to explain to Grace Lee where I stood. One was called The Phenom­
enology o f P roletarian Consciousness and the other was The C oncentra­
tio n o f Productive Forces. I was try in g to show th a t through some sort of
self-developm ent, com bined m om ents of experience, m om ents of alien­
ation of th is experience, and m om ents of new—w hat I w ould now c a ll-
creation, the proletariat evolved from w hat it was in the beginning
(sheer raw m aterial for exploitatio n) to become a self-conscious w o rk­
ing class. T his w orking class then becomes organized in a party, then is
dom inated by th is party, and it fin a lly breaks away from th is party
w hich becomes to ta lly counterrevolutionary—of course, I had in m ind
the Lenin ist-S ta lin ist Party—to create a true hum an socialist society.
Grace was delirious about the firs t te xt and I am sure th a t she sent it on to
James.
T his collaboration continued and the m aterial traces of it exist. No
text of James's was published in Socialism e ou Barbarie, but from the
firs t num ber of the la tte r there is a translation of The Am erican W orker, a
pam phlet th a t the Johnson-Forest Tendency produced. The firs t part was
an account of the life of Paul Romano, a D e tro it autom obile w orker. As a
result, fo r the firs t tim e there was som ething that was absent to ta lly
from the entire M arxist tra d itio n and from Karl M arx him self except in
the Econom ic and P hilosophical M anuscripts o f 1844: that is, the ac­
knowledgm ent that being a w orker does not mean that one is just w o rk­
ing or th a t one is just being exploited. Being a w orker means liv in g w ith
workers, being in so lid a rity w ith other workers, liv in g in working-class
quarters of the city, having wom en who are either workers themselves
or, if they are not, th e ir predicam ent is the same or even worse than that
of the men. But the really tragic aspect of a w orker's life appears in the
second part, in w hich Lee speaks about the contradiction in a w orker's
life . On the one hand, s/he hates the factory and the w ork; on the other
hand, s/he cannot help being drawn there, not just to earn his or her
livelihood but because it is a com m unity and th is was th e ir [the Johnson-
Forest Tendency] idea of the "invading socialist society." The pathetic
part of th is description comes when Lee speaks about the retired w ork-
 284 The A m erican Years: The Theoretical D im ension

ers, about s ix ty -fiv e years old or so, w ho cannot bu t go back to haunt

around the w alls of the factory ju st to sm ell the atmosphere or to see
fe llo w w orkers com ing out of the factory and to chat w ith them . We
translated The A m erican W orker in the firs t six num bers of Socialism e
ou B arbarief and then we circulated another pam phlet th a t Lee and the
other wom en of her group had w ritte n , A Woman's Place, an iro n ic play
on the old jest th a t a wom an's place is in fhe kitch e n or w ith the children
and so on.
There was a divergence between us in 1948. We, in France, decided to
q u it the T ro ts k y is t party, b u t Lee and James were n o t in agreement w ith
us. They decided to s tic k w ith Cannon's S ocialist W orkers Party, b u t tw o
or three years la te r they le ft because it proved to be a hopeless enterprise
to change the T rotskyists. Then things started to accelerate. We came
out of a period of h is to ric a l gloom whose nadir was the Korean War
period. It was a tim e when nobody was m oving. Then there were strikes
in France, autom obile strikes in the U n ite d States (1955), and the dock­
ers' strikes in B rita in . We were ta lk in g about a ll these things and then
fin a lly there was N ik ita Khrushchev's speech at the T w entieth Congress
of the c p s u .
In 1953 James was deported. I th in k he w ent to London before going to
Ghana. I w ent to London to m eet h im in 1954 or 1955, and we started to
discuss things together. We had liv e ly exchanges and agreed on m ost
things. Then James came to France in the spring of 1955 and we had a
jo in t m eeting in Boulogne w ith expose by James, Lefort, me, and other
people in our group. O ut of th is discussion came num ber 20 of So­
cialism e ou Barbarie w h ich is fu ll of m aterial. N o th in g in th is num ber is
w ritte n by James, bu t then I do not believe in private property in any fie ld
(except fo r toothbrushes) and especially not in the fie ld of ideas. T his
issue effects a give-and-take there, then, and although there is no James
te x t as such, the ideas ce rta in ly bear the m ark of th is exchange.
Then there was the H ungarian R evolution, and James came to Paris
and spoke to our group w h ile I acted as an interpreter both ways. He was a
w onderful speaker. I hope you understand the praise I w ant to give to
h im . W hen he rose to speak, it was as though you suddenly had Louis
A rm strong him se lf taking the trum pet and doing a w onderful solo. He
was extrem ely m oving, capable, articulate, liv e ly , and he conveyed his
message forcefully. A fte r th is I w ent to London to see James. He proposed
and I accepted th a t we produce a pam phlet th a t u ltim a te ly became
Facing R eality. Around 1950,1 had moved far beyond the Leninist con-
 James and the Fate of M arxism 285

ception of the party. I was absolutely sure th a t th is conception was at the

root of the to ta lita ria n re vo lu tio n in the USSR, bu t James and Lee were
stuck w ith it. T his was the m ost liv e ly part of our disagreements and
discussion in th is period. Nonetheless, I contributed pages 90 to 105 of
Facing R e a lity although they were edited a b it and perhaps vulgarized in
some sense by James. M y co n trib u tio n contained a c ritic is m of the
Leninist vanguard conception, and it advanced the idea th a t there is no
vanguard. A ny vanguard is a vanguard at a certain m om ent. There is no
perm anent vanguard of w hich you can say th a t it is always ahead or th a t
it always has the m ost im portant ideas. T hat controversy represented the
end of m y relationship w ith James—I do not remember a ll the details—
but he decided to publish the pam phlet in 1958 and I became rather angry
w ith h im .5
I th in k , however, th a t the antinom y about w hich I spoke in M arx,
though attenuated, s till rem ained in James u n til the tim e we parted in
1958. On the one hand he had th is w onderful sense of the se lf-a c tiv ity of
the people, and he was able to translate it in universal term s that were
not absolute universals, if I m ay use th is expression. Also, the women's
co n trib u tio n to his group was very im portant. Sometimes I used to m ock
them and te ll them th a t fo r them the real bearer of the revolutionary
project was a black g irl w orking as an u n skille d autom obile w orker in
D e tro it. They w ould laugh, but there was the perception of th is im por­
tant p o in t about the wom an's position and the black position in the
struggle. And James saw a reflection of th is in the strikes in W estern
European countries, in the Polish and Hungarian events, and in the
m ovem ent of colonial peoples who, at the tim e, were in te n sifyin g th e ir
struggle. I remember the extrem ely im portant discussions we had to ­
gether about Ghana and Kenya. For me, it was a sort of changing p o in t in
m y way of seeing things, because by virtu e of w hat James had to say
about the way the people in Ghana and Kenya were organizing th e ir
struggle, I was able to overcome the classical M arxist conception that
argued that these people had to go through in d u stria liza tio n , become
proletarians, and so forth, before they could contribute to the emancipa­
to ry m ovem ent. Through this, I was able to see that if there is to be a
solution to hum anity's predicam ent, it could only occur through some
sort of genuine synthesis between w hat people in the rich, developed,
industrialized countries have to offer and w hat people in the so-called
backward countries have to offer, especially as com m unity lin k s go,
views of solid a rity between hum an beings go, views on w hat in human
 286 The A m erican Years: The Theoretical D im ension

life is w o rth , and so on. T h is was the kernel of w hat was extrem ely
im p o rta n t and, to m y m ind, positive in James's thought. T h is sense of the
struggle of the people was already there in The B lack Jacobins, an im por­
ta n t book, and James was able to carry it over when he spoke about
m odern capitalism .
Yet, rem nants of M arxism also were s till very m uch apparent in
James's thought at th a t tim e . He insisted, and rig h tly so, th a t the m ost
im p o rta n t th in g was the w orkers' struggle at the p o in t of production.
N ow , if one takes th is p o in t seriously, i t com pletely destroys the M arx­
ian conception of econom ics and th is is w hat I have done. Excuse me fo r
being modest. If one takes seriously the idea th a t the im p o rta n t th in g is
the w orkers' struggle at the p o in t of production, then the firs t th in g you
see is th a t labor power is n o t a com m odity. But a ll of Das K a p ita l is b u ilt
on the assum ption th a t labor power is a com m odity. Labor power as a
com m odity is w hat the ca p ita list w ould lik e it to be and w hat he tries to
do w ith it (and cannot). He can extract as m any calories as technology
allow s from a ton of coal, but he cannot extract as m uch surplus labor as
he w ould lik e from a w orker's day because the w orker resists, the w o rk­
ers coalesce, and thus emerges an in fo rm a l organization of the w orkers
w ho are opposed to the form al organization of the factory according
to the management's plan. T h is in fo rm a l organization both allow s the
w orkers to lim it the actual e xp lo ita tio n and, th is is the paradoxical thing,
allow s c a p ita list production to go on. The proof of th is is th a t if you w ant
the w hole th in g to collapse im m ediately, you ju st have to have every­
body w o rk to rule. If they w ork to rule, n o thing w orks. If the a irlin e p ilo ts
and the a irp o rt personnel started w orking to rule, I w ould never be in
A tla n ta to n ig h t as I am planning to be. If you take th is seriously, then the
w hole M a rxist p o sitio n about labor power and econom ic laws and risin g
rates of e xp lo ita tio n go down the drain. A nd that's true. Or, the other
p o in t about the invading socialist society, a very im p o rta n t concept th a t I
rem em ber discussing w ith James and Lee. The idea is, th a t elem ents of
socialist relationships are already form ing w ith in the ca pitalist society.
We named our group's periodical, Socialism e ou Barbarie. They said that
we should have named it Socialism and B arbarism . And that's the idea
behind the invading socialist society.6In a certain sense the tw o things go
together. There is a part of the tru th in it: th a t is, despite the efforts of
capitalism to com m odify people, th is never succeeds and people resist,
although in 1992 perhaps one w ould be less strongly a ffirm a tive about
the fa ilu re of capitalism 's efforts to com m odify people. Or, at least, if not
 James and the Fate of M arxism 28 7

to com m odify them then to get them stuffed w ith pseudocom m odities
and forget or alm ost forget anything else. If, therefore, on the other hand
you ta lk about the invading socialist society, then you keep som ething
w hich is there in M arxism and w hich is part of w hat is w rong w ith M arx.
You keep the apocalyptic, m essianic streak; the idea th a t there is a
d efinite end tcvthe road, and unless everything blow s up we are going
there and we are bound to end there, w hich is not true.
In rela tio n to the m essianic aspect, I w ant to speak of one more po in t
that you m ay not lik e at a ll. Together w ith th is m essianic streak, both in
M arx and in James, w ent the C hristian reference of Jesus on the M oun­
tain: blessed be the poor, fo r to them belongs the kingdom of heaven, that
is, the idea th a t there is a h isto rica l privilege of the poor, the dow ntrod­
den, and so fo rth . I do not th in k th is is true. O f course, there is a negative
histo rica l privilege of the class w hom we can sym bolize in the names of
George Bush and Lee Iaccoca. There is nothing to expect from them
except w hat they are doing. But fo r the rest of the society, apart from a ll
the considerations about the developments in the economy w hich mean
that you cannot ta lk anymore about the proletariat as the hegemonic
class, or the subject of histo ry and so on, I believe th a t dem ocratic
p o litics, revolutionary p o litics, p o litic s tow ard an autonomous society
m ust appeal to nin e ty-five percent of the population in the society today.
And these are not necessarily the poorest, or only the poor, or only the
downtrodden. They are in a ll fields. We saw th is in France in 1968 when,
leaving aside the students, in factories where the workers were on strike
and where the S talinists did not prevent them from occupying the facto­
ries, where people were active and mastered the situation, the general
assemblies combined, the w orkers, the technicians, the engineers, and
adm inistrative personnel. O n ly the president director general was not
there. O nly when a ll w orkers in the w idest sense of the term get together
can they reorganize production so that the products are shared more
equitably and production is made more e fficie n t w hile, at the same tim e,
the to il of people is lessened.
I w ill end w ith another provocative streak. A thenian democracy
w hich, as I told you, James was the firs t to speak about in relation to
contem porary society, was started alm ost tw enty-five hundred years ago
by the revolutionary reform s of Cleisthenes. Cleisthenes was not a pro­
letarian. He was a member of one of the m ost pow erful and m ost aristo­
cratic fam ilies in Athens. You m ig h t im pute to him m otives th a t are not
pure and say th a t he introduced democracy in order to outdo the other
 288 The A m erican Years: The T heoretical D im ension

riv a l a ristocratic fam ilies. I do n o t th in k th is w ould be true, b u t at any

rate, th is re vo lu tio n w ould have gone nowhere if the A thenian demos
had n o t been there to support it, to keep it alive, and to carry it forw ard
fo r more than a century. But s till the in itia to r was an aristocrat. From
th is analogy, there is som ething we ought to keep in m in d and th a t is th a t
v irtu a lly the w hole of hu m a n ity should and ought to struggle fo r a
transform ation of society so as to make ft m ore hum an.

Questions and Answers

W inston fam es: I w ant to raise a num ber of questions. I found the presen­
ta tio n very stim u la tin g , very interesting and I am very sym pathetic to its
overall thesis. B ut there are certain elem ents w ith in it w h ich I fin d rather
problem atic. The firs t one is th is extrapolation w h ich seems to have
taken hold, th a t of seeing S talinism and so-called to ta lita ria n is m in
Eastern Europe as having its roots in M arx. I really th in k th a t th is is an
extrem ely problem atic thesis to argue, and I am not by any means con­
vinced by a ll of it. I was quite astonished th a t in your presentation one of
the cru cia l elem ents w h ich helps to explain the rise of S talinism in the
Soviet U n io n was n o t m entioned at a ll. A nd th a t was the fact th a t the
Russian re vo lu tio n occurred in Russia. It did n o t occur in Germany, it did
not occur in B ritain, it did not occur in France, it did not occur in an
advanced ca p ita list society, even if we s tic k to relative term s. Yes, there
are problem s here such as w hat we mean by developed, etc. But w hat is
very clear is th a t in 1917, Russia was by no means as advanced in term s
of the developm ent o f the productive forces as was Germany. And, in ­
deed, they were depending upon Germ any to save them from France or
B rita in . A nd I th in k th a t the m aterial basis—and there is a rationale to
th a t type of argum ent—actually conditioned some of the p o ssibilities of
th a t society and created conditions th a t were m ore conducive to the
developm ent of some o f the things th a t we saw in Russia. And I could
elaborate on how th a t happened, b u t I just w ant to make the basic p oint: I
do believe th a t any serious analysis of S talinism or to ta lita ria n is m in
Eastern Europe has got to take th a t in to account. One also has to take
in to account th a t the C iv il War a ctually destroyed the cream of the
Bolshevik party; some of the m ost dedicated, the m ost selfless, the m ost
energetic members of the B olshevik party sacrificed th e ir lives during the
C iv il War in try in g to defend the country and m aintain the revolution. I
th in k those things are crucial elem ents in understanding the rise of
Stalinism .
 James and the Fate of M arxism 289

I agree fundam entally w ith your argum ent about rationalism in M arx,
and I argued at the James Conference on the logic to w hich that pushed
someone lik e James in term s of w hat I w ould regard as a profound level of
Eurocentrism in his argum ent. O n labor power, I'm surprised th a t you
regard the idea th a t labor power has got th is other characteristic to it, th is
liv in g q u a lity /o it, as som ething of a departure from M arx, because I
don't th in k it is so. It's there in M arx. That's precisely the contradiction
at the heart of capitalism , the fact th a t you have a com m odity that is
alive—of course, it is a com m odity but it's a live—but it is also a com ­
m odity. It is som ething th a t is bought and sold, but it's alive, it has
passions, it has feelings, it has pains, it gets sick, it has joys, and M arx
always recognized those aspects. So I don't see anything p a rtic u la rly new
in your fo rm u la tio n and I ce rtainly do not th in k th a t is a s tic k th a t one
should use to beat M arx w ith .

R ick R oderick7: Since I am more sym pathetic to M arx, I w ill com m ent
on the issue of liv in g labor although I w ould not do so at length. H arry
Cleaver, m y favorite econom ist, has a w onderful account of how, by
ignoring other things in M arx w hich is nothing unusual for a text we
enjoy reading, if you w ish to one can reconstruct a class struggle-based
M arxism w hich by analogy looks som ething lik e various versions of
chaos—where one can reconstruct m any M arxist categories based upon
this autonomous w orkers' power. But the critiq u e th a t I th in k James
w ould share w ith C ornelius is that o ffic ia l M arxism , in cluding academic
M arxism , has to ta lly underestim ated the heterogeneous power of w o rk­
ers to defy being com m odified, and tim e and tim e again that has been
overlooked in production. For me, that's the im portant insight on w hich
we may agree. I 'll le t C ornelius address the S talinism issue since I am not
a S talinist.

C astoriadis: I 'll try to be as b rie f as possible. O f course, M arx knew that a

w orking day was not lik e ten kilogram s of sugar, but that is not the
question. He was no fool. The question is w hat does he do w ith th is fact
in his econom ic theory. One has to be serious. Labor power is a com ­
m odity. N ow a com m odity has no say about its own price. A hamburger
never told me, "N o! no! no! You can't buy me fo r one dollar, you m ust add
ten cents." And a com m odity has no say about the use value w hich you
w ant to extract from it once you've acquired it. On these tw o points,
labor power cannot be regarded as a com m odity; but it is upon treating
labor power as a com m odity th a t a ll of M arxist econom ic theory is b u ilt.
 290 The A m erican Years: The T heoretical D im ension

It is b u ilt around the idea th a t w orkers have no say about w hat M arx calls
the value of th e ir labor power, and that's w hy he has the theory about the
risin g rate of e xp lo ita tio n . O therw ise where do you draw th is from? But
there has no t been a risin g rate of explo ita tio n , at least in advanced
c a p ita list countries, because the w orking-class struggle raised the value
of labor pow er or the standard of liv in g of the w o rkin g class and brought
down the length of the w o rkin g day. In M arx's tim e, we started w ith a
w o rkin g week of seventy-tw o hours or m ore and now we are at fo rty. The
same th in g is true about the use value of labor power. W ith o u t th is, we
w ould have an increasing rate of e xp loitatio n, and you w ould have a ll the
other things th a t fo llo w from th is, in c lu d in g the risin g organic com posi­
tio n of capital and so on.
As to the firs t part of your argum ent, I feel as though I was Rip Van
W inkle, com ing back to the w o rld fo rty years after because your argu­
m ents are the very argum ents th a t T rotsky developed during the w hole
of the 1930s. James, Lee, and I thought th a t we had refuted those argu­
m ents as early as 1945, b u t I w ill give you a very short rehearsal of our
refu ta tio n . F irst of a ll, I d id n 't say th a t the roots of to ta lita ria n is m were in
M arx. W hat I said is th a t w hat was catastrophic in M arx was the idea of
orthodoxy and th is could lead to to ta lita ria n is m . The proof th a t M arx is
not the cause of to ta lita ria n is m or the cond itio n of it is the fact th a t one
has social dem ocratic governm ents w hich, w hatever one m ay th in k of
them , are not to ta lita ria n governm ents. Lenin is the true creator of
to ta lita ria n is m , a positio n he states long before the re vo lu tio n in 1903. If
you take the pam phlet, W hat is to Be Done, you have the idea of a party
w hich, at the same tim e, is a sm all arm y, a church because of its d o c tri­
nal orthodoxy, and a sort of factory because there is a d ivisio n of labor and
everybody obeys w hat the higher a u th o rity says. T his is the m odel th a t is
in Lenin's head. W hen 1917 arises, you have th is fantastic contradiction
th a t up to O ctober 15 Lenin, in hiding, w rites State and R evolution in
w hich you do not fin d the w ord party. You w ill fin d a utopian description
not of an A thenian but of a m odern polis where "every cook can govern."
And then he takes pow er and w ho are the groups w ho govern? Before the
C iv il War, Lenin and the C entral C om m ittee behave in an absolutely
d ic ta to ria l way, and Lenin says we m ust p u rify the Russian land of a ll
th is verm in w ho are the people w ho don't agree w ith us. And that's there.
W ith regard to the argum ent about Russia being a backward country,
how do you know w hat w ould have happened if Germ any had done the
re vo lu tio n in 1919? I te ll you that Leninism w ould have come up stron-
 James and the Fate of M arxism 291

ger, not weaker. W hy is it that in France up u n til ten years ago a m a jo rity
of the w orking class follow ed the S talinist party? Is France a backward
country? A nd it is not o n ly France. Ita ly and lots of other countries have a
S talinist party. So, I suggest you look at the lite ra tu re again, at the
exchange of arguments th a t have been made, and you w ill fin d that
T rotsky and the T rotskyists were saying th a t it was im possible for Russia
to extend the regime outside of Russia because w ith the extension of the
regime, the isolation of Russia w ould have broken down and the regime
w ould have collapsed. But they happily installed themselves in Czecho­
slovakia, w hich was not a backward country, in Eastern Germany, w hich
was not a backward country, and even Hungary, w hich was not a back­
ward country; and they rem ained there u n til there was a revo lu tio n by
the population or other reaction.

Paget H enry: I was intrigued by the critiq u e that you articulated and the
sense of progressivism associated w ith it. T hat has been such a basic part
of the dynam ics of W estern history. I was curious as to how you see
h istory now. As you look ahead, p a rtic u la rly as we see the form ation of
three ca pitalist blocs (the Japanese, the European, and the N o rth A m eri­
can), it seems that the power of a rationalized capitalism and the lik e ­
lihood of the greater com m odification of social re a lity w ill occur, a
p o ssib ility that M arx explored when he discussed technology and auto­
m ation. It seems to me th a t this side of M arx is on the ascendancy, so I
was just curious about w hat you th in k histo ry w ould look lik e beyond
this point.

R oderick: One advantage and one reason I s till have trouble dropping the
word M arxist from the various things I call m yself is that u n like many
theorists of the present age, M arx has an account of the re a lity of com ­
m odification just as w e ll as he has an account of the com m odification of
reality. I th in k that's a nice dialectical way to state it. For example,
J. Baudrillard has one of those accounts but not the other. I th in k we do
need to take seriously the com m odification at that level of w hat m ight
be called the cu ltu ra l c ritiq u e of com m odities, especially in the advanced
countries. I th in k that's a w ide-ranging topic. M arxism is n 't the only
approach to th a t topic, but it's a topic that I have been try in g to w ork out
so I 'll have to leave you a footnote. T his is a topic where a reading of the
Grundrisse, based on some new premises, m ight yield some very nice
results. But th is seems to me to be an im portant topic because the
 292 The A m erican Years: The T heoretical D im ension

com m odification of cu ltu re from where we draw our meanings and

where, after a ll, we m ay establish our p o litic a l personae and iden titie s, if
one can im agine a com plete com m odified lim it to th a t situ a tio n , looks
bleak indeed. A nd in th a t context one feels com pelled to quote the firs t
sentence of W illia m Gibson's novel, The N eurom ancei: "T he sky above
the p o rt is the color of tele visio n tuned to a dead channel." I don't w ant to
be th a t pessim istic, b u t that's the landscape of a com m odified culture
where the p o litic a l, not o nly liv in g labor—I was speaking there in the
progressive sense of hum ans, b u t as consumers and as hum an beings and
m any other things—if those meanings drop or become sim ply more
goods fo r sale, that's the part of the c ritiq u e where I th in k M arx is s till
very useful.

C astoriadis: C e rta in ly the problem s w h ich our friend raised are very
im portant, serious-looking and threatening. It's n o t ju st the com m odifi­
cation of social re a lity. That's one thing. The other th in g th a t goes w ith it
is the p riv a tiz a tio n of ind ivid u a ls. It's the w ith d ra w a l of in d ivid u a ls from
p o litic a l and social affairs. It is the w aning of social and p o litic a l strug­
gles, w h ich are n o t there anym ore in the ric h countries of the West.
There is no p o litic a l opposition. There are tw o ru lin g parties w h ich are
the same th in g and there are no im p o rta n t w orkers' struggles. O f course,
there are some struggles in society: the wom en's struggle, the struggle of
the m in o ritie s, and so on. But, in general, one has the im pression th a t
these struggles tend to be m arginalized and th a t the ru lin g strata go along
th e ir way in the m iddle of increasing apathy, cynicism and so on, and a
feeling of helplessness on the part of society. A nd th is is our predicam ent
today. I don't know w hat h is to ry w ould lo o k lik e , or looks lik e , given the
present conditions. W hatever happens, we have to struggle against th is
sort of thing.
I w ould lik e to make one fin a l p o in t. M arx was and s till is a great
th in ke r. But he's one among m any great th in ke rs and it w ould be r i­
diculous fo r us, if we call ourselves revolutionaries or whatever, when­
ever a problem comes up to go to M arx to see if there is a place in w hich
one can fin d the answer. T his is such a ridiculous contradiction in
term s. You w ant to change the w orld, and you have to fin d an answer in
M arx. It is absolutely incredible. It's a sort of theoretical suicide, a self-
condem nation to radical s te rility . You get some in sp ira tio n from M arx—
b u t you can also get some from Hegel, A ris to tle , Hobbes, Spinoza and
lots of other th in ke rs—and then you go along and try to create ideas
 James and the Fate of M arxism 293

w hich more or less fin d an encounter w ith today's re a lity and w hich can
help us to go further.

C lin to n Jean: I have a lo t of questions but we don't have enough tim e. I

am very happy th a t the last speaker raised the question of w hat your view
of contem porary h isto ry is. I was th in k in g th a t one of the im portant
things about the study of h is to ric a l m a te ria list conditions or conditions
from th a t approach is th a t it tended to u n ify the rise of capitalism w ith
the e xp lo ita tio n of the T h ird W orld countries. When I was a younger man
and read about nineteenth-century colonialism , I got the im pression that
these folks le ft Europe, w ent to the rest of the w orld, colonized it, ripped
it apart and so on, and I was w ondering w hat people were doing when th is
was happening. Lately, it has begun to strike me th a t we are now w itness­
ing a situ a tio n where the U nited N ations has turned in to a w h ite man's
club. You've got a bunch of people such as John M ajor and others who s it
there and before them are brought questions as to w hat to do w ith
General M anuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein and w h ile these are not
m y personal heroes, it seems to me th a t it's astounding th a t the head of a
state could be arrested by a m ajor power and brought to tria l in another
country. I was w ondering how you put things lik e that in to the picture,
and extending your own rem arks about the com m odification of reality, it
seems to me that at the m om ent, there has developed a kind of strange
coincidence of the flo w of histo ry between w hat used to be called the
Soviet U nion and contem porary Am erican society where Soviet Russia,
as it used to be called, w hich made a m istake in try in g to th in k that a
country had to go through socialism or whatever to arrive at some kin d of
hum an condition. T his was a serious error. It's not so m uch that S talin­
ism grew out of Russian conditions or from the very beginning there was
som ething in Lenin that m isdirected them in to serious authoritarian
o v e rk ill and so on. I feel th a t if you th in k th a t to get to a hum anist
socialist system you need to have an abundance of the basic goods, you
were bound to go in the direction th a t Russia did. It's no wonder that we
see th is situ a tio n where the U nited N ations does not represent a cu ltu ra l
p lu ra lity of w orld voices. I wonder if you could extend the com m ent that
you made in response to the last question.

R oderick: Let me preface m y rem arks by saying that I th in k it's an

excellent question and I also agree w ith w hat C ornelius said about M arx,
that one d id n 't have to look up everything one had to say in M arx. On
 294 The A m erican Years: The Theoretical D im ension

colonialism in p articular, you w ould no t w ant to take m uch com fort

from M arx on the B ritis h in India, fo r example. I doubt that's a part of
M arx th a t m any of us w ould w ant to endorse. In term s of w hat I see as a
k in d of global pow er e lite , based in the core—and I s till w ant to call them
c a p ita list countries because I am no t going to ca ll them utopias—capital­
is t countries are a sort of w h ite man's U .N . C lub, Bush's N ew W orld
Order and, in its in c ip ie n t outlines, it seems to me, th a t as far as I know
we've done about a ll we can to denounce S talin and the Soviet U nion. I
thought they were gone. I'm going to tu rn the rest of m y career towards
attacking the pseudo-democracy in th is country and the gap between its
practices and its prom ises. I mean, the Soviet U n io n is gone. D ialec­
tic a lly as it were, it m ay tu rn out th a t we needed the Soviet U nion
to show the heterogeneous and d iffe re n tia l groups in struggle th a t it
cou ld n 't w ork. N ow th a t they are gone, after a period people m ay say,
"W ell, w hat the h e ll! Maybe we should try som ething new ." So, it m ay be
th a t the Soviet U n io n played a certain role in sta b ilizin g our own power,
and it m ay end up in th is new m u ltip o la r w o rld th a t the power e lite m ay
m iss the Soviet U nion. They m ay end by callin g on S talinists to re tu rn to
take over. By the way, Bush did som ething lik e th a t in China. C ertainly,
Bush's support fo r C hina looks th a t w ay to me. I'm going to devote m y
energies to c ritic iz e th is society where I happen to be.

C astoriadis: I th in k one ought to have no illu s io n s about the U .N . or any

other such organizations. In theory, Lenin always thought in term s of the
relationship of forces. In re a lp o litik , you w ill see that there is a re la tio n ­
ship of forces in the U .N . It is not even a w h ite man's club, although
m any w h ite m en are members of the club. There are the three groups you
talked about—in fact, Europe is not m uch of a group—b u t you also have
the force of the rest of the w orld in the situ a tio n it has been le ft in by both
colonization, half-coloniza tion, decolonization and half-decolonization
w hich are m uddling through and n o t going anywhere.
A nd that's the actual situ a tio n . T hat it's rather bleak, there is no
question about it and I w o u ld n 't w ant to make a forecast th a t everything
we do w ill be a ll rig h t in the end. The p o in t is not to make a forecast. It is
to see the situ a tio n we are in , the problem s that we have to address, and
to keep on w orking.

A zinna N w a fo i: U n fo rtu n a te ly there is not enough tim e to do fu ll justice

to an account th a t one finds te rrib ly tendentious and schem atic; an
 James and the Fate of M arxism 295

exem plary instance of w hat used to be know n as cathedral M arxism . Let

me raise tw o questions: First, you said that one of the reasons you fe lt
you had to leave M arxism was because of its shortcom ings. The question
to th is then is how do you address people lik e Georg Lukacs w ho said that
they had to rem ain w ith in the m ovem ent to exercise any kin d of in flu ­
ence on w hat is called underdevelopm ent; influence not only p o litic a lly
but also in te lle c tu a lly and the o re tica lly as w e ll. I t ;s a red herring when
you say you are not looking for answers in M arx. One of the m ost
creative developments, w hat in fact I've called an ahistorical movem ent,
was found in people w ho rem ained w ith in the m ovem ent and A ntonio
Gram sci w ould be an instance of th is. In any case, how do you address
such questions?
M y second question addresses your com m ents on the colonial m ove­
ments. You found fin a lly there was a re vo lu tio n in Ghana w hich presum ­
ably w ent against the dogm atic instance of m echanical development, but
in fact they found out that the hope for socialism exists because China,
India, and A frica constitute the largest segment of the w orld's population
and that the grasp has to be found in w hat has to be seen as the weakest
lin k in the chain of im perialism , not necessarily that they [these coun­
tries] had to develop to a certain stage, but that they constitute the
weakest lin k in the chain. Also in the answers w hich M arx gave to his
Russian questioner when he was asked, "Does it mean that Russia also
has to go through a ll of this?" To w hich he replied: "N o, they don't have
to go through th a t." These were a ll there long before the Ghanaian
R evolution. W hy do you co n tin u a lly in sist upon w hat is seen as a sche­
m atic m ovem ent in development?

C astoriadis: First of a ll I was te rrib ly schematic, not tendentious, be­

cause I had to say in tw enty m inutes w hat I have w ritte n in three
thousand pages. So, if you th in k you could do better, that's fine. Second,
it's funny that you bring up the sentence by Lukacs w hich says one m ust
rem ain w ith in the m ovem ent in order to influence it. T his proved to be
suicide for Lukacs. Lukacs was an im portant theoretician in 1919-1923
when he w rote H isto ry and Class-Consciousness (1923). A fte r that he
became silent, he became a lackey of S talin, he did n 't open his m outh. He
wrote th is ghastly book in 1948, The Eclipse o f Reason, w hich is the
purest zhdanovian book w ritte n by a philosopher and that was the fate of
Lukacs who wanted to rem ain w ith in the m ovem ent. W hich movement?
A t the tim e of Lukacs, already, you could ask—and that was also true for
 296 The A m erican Years: The Theoretical D im ension

Jean Paul Sartre and a w hole bunch of other in te lle c tu a ls —w hat is a

movement? W hy was th is the movement? It was the m ovem ent because
it had guns and prisons. A nd Lukacs and Sartre and a ll the other fe llo w -
travelers were bow ing, not before the w o rkin g class, b u t before state
power. But, at the present tim e, w hat is the p o in t of your question?
W hich m ovem ent should I rem ain in? W here is it?
As to the th ird p o in t of your question, Tdid not say th a t I discovered the
co lonial question when James talked to me about Ghana. I said th a t th is
was a triggering p o in t in m y m in d to see th a t colonial people could dis­
play th is se lf-a ctivity, se lf-m o b ilizin g and self-m o b ilizin g stance w hich,
in classical M a rxist term s, o n ly the pro le ta ria t could achieve. You can­
not have it both ways. You cannot say th a t the Russian revo lu tio n
degenerated because Russia was a backward country b u t M arx knew th a t
backward countries as w e ll can m ake a re vo lu tio n . It's either one or the
other. I said th a t contrary to w hat M arx and Lenin thought about colo­
n ia lism and racism —M arx condemned h a lf of the European population
(the Russians, the Slavs, the Hungarians, the Rumanians, the Czechs) as
in fe rio r in his foreign p o licy a rticle , and Lenin's positio n was th a t the
masses should re vo lt under the leadership of the pa rty—James called fo r
the se lf-m o b iliza tio n of the masses, and th a t was the im p o rta n t thing.
A nd th is se lf-m obilization, according to s tric t M a rxist theory, could on ly
be the task of the in d u s tria l p roletariat w hich is not true, and, if true,
w ould doom a ll re volutiona ry m ovem ents, since the in d u s tria l prole­
ta ria t properly speaking is today a vanishing m in o rity .

Notes

1. Castoriadis was one of the authors of Facing R eality (1956). [Editor]

2. Marx's famous sentence, "I am not a M a rxist" is usually quoted out of
context. When shown some w ritin g s by people in Germany who were saying they
were Marxists, M arx retorted, "If this is M arxism , I am not a M arxist." The clause
is conditional. He was a M arxist. Both the events in the First International and
the construction of the German Social Dem ocratic Party demonstrate that M arx
was a very strict adherent to his own orthodoxy.
3. We all used pseudonyms at that tim e because the police were m uch less
tolerant than they became afterwards, especially fo r people lik e James, who was
an alien and fin a lly was deported, and for myself, w ho was an alien in France who
could be deported w ith in tw enty-four hours w ith o u t any legal recourse.
4. See Dunayevskaya's letter to James, 22 September 1947, reproduced in this
volume. It m ight be useful to contrast these remarks w ith those of Lou Turner in
this volume, "Epistemology, Absolutes, and the Party." [Editor]
 James and the Fate of M arxism 297

5. Castoriadis's source of anger seemed to have come from the alacrity w ith
w hich James published Facing R eality w ith o u t fu lly w orking out the ideas con­
tained in the pamphlet and w ith o u t having Castoriadis's final approval to publish
his section in the pamphlet. [Editor]
6. In 1947 James, Lee, and Dunayevskaya published The Invading Socialist
Society as a pamphlet of the Johnson-Forest Tendency.
7. Rick Roderick's lecture, "Further Adventures of the D ialectic," was delivered
on the same occasion as Castoriadis's lecture. In this exchange he also responds to
the questions that were asked from the floor.
W inston James, an assistant professor of h istory at Colum bia U niversity, is the
editor of Inside Babylon. Paget Henry, chairman of the Afro-Am erican studies
program at Brown U niversity, has coedited C.L.R. James's Caribbean w ith Paul
Buhle. The late C lin to n Jean was the author of Behind the Eurocentric Veils.
Azinna N w afor wrote the in tro d u ctio n to George Padmore's Pan-Africanism or
Communism. [Editor]
 Three Letters

Letter, No. 1 Raya Dunayevskaya to C.L.R. James

The Johnson-Forest Tendency le ft the Workers Party in

July 1947 and entered the Socialist Workers Party in Sep­
tem ber 1947. D u rin g the late summer and fa ll of 1947,
Dunayevskaya traveled to Europe to present the state-
capitalist position that the Johnson-Forest had taken to the
Fourth International. W hile she was in France, she m et
w ith C ornelius Castoriadis, the founder of Socialisme ou
Barbaric, a French group w ith w hom they had much in
common. In th is le tte r to James, Dunayevskaya speaks of
her great excitem ent at m eeting Castoriadis.

9-22-47
Because we are liq u id a tin g our faction in October, and m y future
reports w ill be only to you, I am h u rryin g to apprise you of one develop­
m ent, though I w ould have preferred w a itin g t i l l I have som ething more
accom plished in th a t d irection, b u t th a t probably w ill n o t be u n til after
we no longer exist as a faction. It concerns one of the French groups:
C haulieu. [T his was the pseudonym used by C ornelius Castoriadis at
th a t tim e.]
As I w rote you when I got a hold of the b u lle tin s of the French con­
ference on the Russian Q uestion, it was evident from the docum ent of
C haulieu-M ontal that, although they called Russia "a new exploitative
so cie ty/' they were very close to us, closer in fact than the one th a t calls
its e lf "state c a p ita lis t." It was then I w rote the SC, saying I need more
elbow room here. However, w hat was no t evident u n til I m et h im after
his re tu rn from the holidays—it is one of those things you can only learn
on the spot, and not through correspondence—is th a t he is not m erely

298
 Three Letters 299

closer to us in conception of defeatism and w orld revolution, he is a fin d

a ll by him self. If we gain him , we have established ourselves not only as
an in te rn a tio n a l tendency, we have found a collaborator who can am ount
to som ething in the future developm ent of the revolutionary m ovem ent,
actually and theoretically.
He is a young Greek (only 25) w ho has a m astery of the dialectic,- he is
now translating Hegel's Logic in to French. He entered the Greek Com ­
m unist Party in 1936 when he was o n ly 14. He broke during the war, be­
came defeatist and as such entered the Greek T rotskyists. He is entire ly
opposed to the national resistance m ovem ent, and is a b it u ltra -le ftis t but
as sound in actual revolutionary w ork and courageous and sane approach
as you can im agine. He came to France in 1945 (I believe), started fig h tin g
G's (Germ ain and G and everybody in the In t. is as underconsum ptionist
as they can be, w ith o u t even know ing it; I was shocked to fin d G, who is
by far the m ost sensitive Bolshevik in the In t., recommend as "excellent"
Kautsky's " Econom ic D octrines o f K a rl M arx," w hich lite ra lly stinks to
heaven) underconsum ptionism and defensism at once; otherwise, as I see
it he w ould have gone m uch fu rth e r than G erm ain for he is by fa r the
superior. He fights bureaucratism , but does not go hayw ire on it, as does
G allienne on the one hand, and M unis on the other. He agreed w ith me
im m ediately that that m ust be fought w ith in p o litic a l context, w ith in
[the] fram ew ork on In t. and soberly, although when it comes to French
m atters, he gets p re tty hot, and did so w ith Frank who is no worse and
somewhat better in fact than our Am erican counterparts.
He does not accept [the] law of value, but that is not absolute; we are in
the process of serious discussions, and I have hopes of w inning him . He
does not accept SP-GP-CGT, but he does not do so as those who say they
w ish nothing w ith S talinism , or that it is absolutely excluded to have
such slogans, but rather as unnecessary. He points to the fact that Lenin
did not call fo r a M enshevik-Bolshevik G ovt., but fo r a ll power to the
soviets w hich were M enshevik controlled and our stress should be on the
factory and extra-parliam entary com m ittees, etc. But when I pointed out
that there are no soviets in existence, so we cannot have an exactly
parallel slogan to that of Lenin's, and that if the manner in w hich we
propagandize fo r SP-CP-CGT, puts its m ain emphasis on workers com ­
m ittees, we accom plish both tasks, he said he does not agree, but is
w illin g to rediscuss w ith me. He th in k s h ig h ly of a ll our w ork, is very
happy to meet someone w ho doesn't th in k that M arxian philosophy is
som ething referred to but never applied; has a tendency to stress p o litic s
 300 The Am erican Years: The Theoretical D im ension

over econom ics, but generally comes out not too far w rong because the
diale ctic gets h im there. H is group is overw helm ingly proletarian. He
agrees (1) th a t he m ust w rite im m ediately against Shachtman, as his
positio n has n othing in com m on w ith him , although Shachtman in his
usual unprinciple d m anner is try in g to pretend th a t th is group has a
s im ila r view and his stooge here votes w ith C haulieu; (2) that it is
necessary to have a long-term , not a shbrt-term perspective regarding
any change in the Internation al, th a t now we m ust back the forces th a t
are its core, although he wishes to make a clearer d is tin c tio n than he
th in k s we are m aking; (3) th a t it is necessary to have a cadre th a t is not
lim ite d to any one question, and th a t understands the seriousness and
integral connection of a ll aspects of M arxism .
Because th is is the biggest th in g th a t has happened since m y arriva l
here, and the im portance of th is task, I have decided to cut some of m y
travel, and rem ain here longer, and after a short trip to Ita ly and England,
re tu rn here fo r the French Party Congress som etim e at the beginning of
Novem ber. I am to address his group next week; m eanw hile I am anxious
to have m ore p re lim in a ry m eetings w ith him , in a couple of weeks I
ought to be able to report more defin ite ly, but I wished to h u rry the
in fo rm a tio n such as it is fo r the comrades.

Letter, No. 2 C.L.R. James to C ornelius Castoriadis and

Friends

Jan. 7 ,195[7]
Dear Friends:
These are notes to accompany Part 1 of the pam phlet w h ich we are
doing. I am sending copies to Sherman, O tt and C /u[C astoriadis]. I ex­
pect com m ents to be returned to me at once. If not, I shall be extrem ely
disappointed. I w ish I could do it w ith a ll our in te rn a tio n a l comrades but
th e ir response to m y letters is so generally slack, th a t is to say p o litic a lly
shortsighted, that fo r the tim e being, I am concentrating upon C /u alone.
I w ant you to understand that C /u in p a rticu la r w hat I am doing, and
w hat the French pam phlet did not do.
I am not arguing w ith the c p or w ith Social Dem ocrats or w ith any­
body. The H ungarian w orkers have made the m ain arguments for us
already. It is absolutely im perative, in fact w ith o u t it in p o litic s we are
lost, th a t you know exactly w hat to say and how to say it. T his in tro d u c­
tio n labels Russia and the U nited States as tw in m onsters w ho have
 Three Letters 301

dem oralized and brought the w orld alm ost to ru in . In to th is analysis I

place the general re vo lt against them and see Suez and H ungary m erely
as stages in a process. In [that] m anner I take it fo r granted th a t m y
audience are not only w illin g to go along w ith me but are ready to liste n
to someone who is te llin g them : le t us go th is way.
I have to repeat. If you do not do th is it means th a t you are s till w ith in
the same old swamp before Suez and Hungary. I can im agine nothing
more characteristic of the Shachtm anites and more stupid than the
debates they are having w ith the cpers in N ew York, a ll suddenly gone
dem ocratic. These cpers, by the mere fact of discussing w ith Shachtman
and the rest, keep the tone of the debate w ith in the fram ew ork of for or
against the c p . W hen the firs t flush of pub lic interest is exhausted, they
w ill just drop Shachtman and the others and go th e ir way. We have to aim
at creating a new audience. Hungary should teach us som ething. It w ill
come from workers in th e ir plants who know quite w e ll w hat they are
about, though they appear not to be m aking any p o litic s at a ll. It w ill
come from youth w ho are busy sw allow ing n a tio n a listic propaganda day
after day at school in the same way th a t the Hungarians swallowed
S talinist propaganda and in re a lity d id n 't care a good God-damn about it.
And it w ill come from th o u g h tfu l intelle ctu a ls who fin d the contradic­
tions of bourgeois and S ta lin ist apologetics too m uch fo r them . But in the
same way that it took tremendous mass dem onstration m arching on
tanks to make a ll these people aware of themselves, so the propagandists
and agitators today have to strike fo r the new society, to h it as pow erful
and uncom prom ising blow s w ith the pen as the revolutionary masses
stuck in Poznan and Budapest. N othing else w ill w in over the people. It
was the prospect of a new regime w hich brought them and you have to
w rite and speak now w ith the inner confidence and outer perspective of
an e n tire ly new regime. A nyth in g else is playing in to the hands of those
who do not know th a t 1957 is 50 years beyond 1956.
I ask C /u in p a rticular to take note of th is and ask h im not only to
answer m y request for com m ents prom ptly but also to arrange th a t at
least he and I should meet for a weekend.
Part II of the pam phlet w ill take up Poland and Hungary w ith a view
to showing in fact and in life that w hich is new. Part HI, the last part, w ill
make no bones at a ll about drawing the dialectic of M arxism beginning
from 1789 and taking it stage by stage up to the Hungarian revolution.
Bless you, m y children.
J.
 302 The A m erican Years: The Theoretical D im ension

Letter, No. 3 C ornelius Castoriadis to C.L.R. James

Paris, 29th September 1957,

Dear J,
I have ju st finished reading the draft of the M anifesto [Facing R eality]. I
fin d there are m any form idable things in it, and th a t you have perform ed
som ething of great and perm anent va lu e .O f course, there are m any sm all
points of detail, emphasis, drafting, w h ich we can easily discuss and
settle w hen we m eet. Here are three questions of a m ore general charac­
ter, w h ich I w ant to subm it to you before we meet, to help a m ore clear
discussion:
a) I th in k it is necessary to make the concept of socialism more clear, or
rather, m ore e x p lic it. You perform 9/ioths of the w ork, show ing w ith ad­
m irable concreteness socialism in the deeds o f the workers, be it in
H ungary or in a U.S. factory. But it is absolutely indispensible, I th in k ,
especially given the stage of m a tu rity of our audience, to push to a more
abstract level, and to sketch b rie fly the w o rkin g and/or "p rin c ip le s " of
a socialist society, precisely as the organic and n a tu ra l prolongation
and u n iversalisatio n of the concrete basis la id down before. Ideas lik e
w orkers management of the factory, w orkers management of the econ­
om y (the plan), equal pay, a b o litio n o f piece and rate w ork, to ta l auto­
a d m in istra tio n by the C ouncils (workers, farm ers, etc.,) a b o litio n of the
separate State apparatus (in d u stria lisa tio n of the "fu n c tio n s " of the State)
etc., m ust be e x p lic itly form ulated—and are nothing more b u t the clear
universal expression of the concrete h is to ric a l m aterial. T h is could be
done very b rie fly (one or tw o pages).
b) The same, I th in k we ought to sum up in one or tw o pages (after page
40, perhaps) the ideas expressing the real, deep roots of the crisis of
capitalism and bureaucracy, and state e x p lic itly th a t under-consum tion,
business fluctu a tio n s, rate of p ro fit, etc., either are of no concern to us or
noth in g bu t phenom enal (and changing) expressions of the essence of the
crisis: the perm anent suppression of the se lf-a c tiv ity of in d ividua ls and
the new social u n its by bureaucratic organisation, plan, adm inistration,
education and philosophy. T h is is v ita l given the am ount of deep and
wide-spread confusion over these m atters among our largest conceivable
audience.
c) The m ost im portant, I th in k the section about the organisation (by
the way, I propose to fin d another expression fo r " sm a ll organisation")
should have a d ifferent d is trib u tio n of emphasis. Rather, there is one of
 Three Letters 303

the tw o elem ents w hich is p ra ctica lly m issing altogether: a positive

conception of the proper h is to ric a l role and fu n ctio n o f the organisation,
w hich should be developed side by side w ith the denunciation of the
tra d itio n a l conception. The la tte r rested on the idea th a t the organisation
was the depositary of the universal (general interests as opposed to sec­
tion a l, in te rn a tio n a l to national, m axim um programme as opposed to
m in im u m demands—Lenin in W hat Is To Be Done etc.,). We, developing
the concept of socialism as self-organisation of the proletariat carried to
the extreme, say; the universal is w ith in the proletariat. The fu n ctio n of
the organisation is, firs t to help give an expression to th is universal,
secondly to make it e x p lic it, th ird ly to transpose it constantly to the
to ta l level (from plant to economy, from production to the w hole of
social a ctivities, etc.). A ll th is means concretely and in the firs t place
th a t it is the only place in m odern society where there can and m ust be an
organic coalescence of workers and intelle ctu a ls, as persons and as points
of view . We have to stress th is positive fu n ctio n (carefully distinguising
and opposing it to Lenin's transform ation of "advanced w orkers" in to
some sort of p o litic a l intellectuals) and the absolute need for such an
organisation. We cannot w ork alone, and we cannot call people to w ork
w ith us unless we are able to show a) the unconditional im portance of
w hat is to be done, b) that it can be done in a way germane to the deepest
aspects of our philosophy and p o litics, i.e. in a new type of organisation.
We have not only to destroy Lenin's conception of the party as [the]
depositary of the Reason in H isto ry (and so n aturally claim ant to abso­
lute power), bu t to oppose to it on tw o diffe re n t levels, 1) the W orkers
C ouncils, depositories of the N ew H um an Reason in action, 2) the orga­
nisation of workers and in tellectua ls, not riv a l to the C ouncils and
necessary part of the h isto rica l process leading to the G overnm ent by the
C ouncils.
 M a rtin G laberm an

The M arxism of C.L.R. James

W hen C.L.R. James came to the U n ite d States in 1938, he was a leader of
the T ro tskyist Fourth Intern a tio n a l. W hen he le ft the U n ite d States
fifte e n years later, he was the founder of an independent dem ocratic and
re volutiona ry M a rxist tendency. The nature of James's stay in the U n ite d
States obscured w hat he had done in attem pting to m ake M arxism rele­
vant to the m iddle of the tw e n tie th century. W hat he had done in th a t
period and the elem ents th a t made it possible are the subject of th is
paper.
In 1938, the Fourth In te rn a tio n a l was new ly form ed by T ro tskyist
groups th a t had le ft socialist parties in a num ber of countries to s trike out
on th e ir own. T rotsky was liv in g in exile in M exico. He had form ulated
fo r his m ovem ent a "T ra n sitio n a l Program ," w h ich was to lead it to
become a m ajor challenge to the C om m unist In te rn a tio n a l fo r the lead­
ership of the w orld revolutiona ry m ovem ent. However, the T ro tskyist
m ovem ent and its Am erican organization, the Socialist W orkers Party
(swp), very q u ic k ly began to confront crises th a t it could no t overcome.
The m ost im m ediate was the S ta lin -H itle r Pact of 1939 and then the
beginning of W orld War n. It p u t in question one of the fundam ental
tenets of T rotskyism —th a t the Soviet U nion was a degenerated w orkers'
state and had to be defended, a lbeit c ritic a lly , in c o n flic t w ith ca pitalist
powers. A n extensive and b itte r discussion took place in the s w p that led
to a s p lit in 1940. A substantial m in o rity , w h ich included m ost of the
youth, under the leadership of M ax Shachtman, le ft to form the W orkers
Party (wp|.
James was part of th is m in o rity and became part of the leadership of
the wp. But the question of defense of the Soviet U nion was a tactical
question. The debate around th a t subject had postponed the more funda-

304
 The M arxism of fames 305

m ental question of the nature of the Soviet U nion. That became the
overriding subject of the firs t post-split convention of the W orkers Party
in 1941. It was in th is discussion that James form ed his own grouping and
began the developm ent of his theoretical views. He was know n in the wp
as f. R. Johnson, a pseudonym (w ith a few others that he used) made
necessary by the ambiguous nature of his residence in the U nited States.
He had a visa of lim ite d duration w hich, probably because of the o u t­
break of war, the governm ent ignored. In any case, together w ith Raya
Dunayevskaya and a few others they form ed the Johnson-Forest Ten­
dency, also know n as Johnsonites. Forest was Dunayevskaya.
The m a jo rity of the w p developed the theory of bureaucratic c o lle c tiv ­
ism . T his held that the Soviet U nion was a c o lle c tiv is t society of a new
type that, w h ile not socialist, was more progressive than capitalism .
(Over the years, w ith Shachtman m oving more and more to the right,
bureaucratic co llectivism became as reactionary as capitalism and, f i­
nally, more reactionary than capitalism .) Johnson-Forest rejected the
idea of inventing theories to su it tactical problem s and returned to M arx­
is t roots to develop the theory of state capitalism .
Fundamental to the w ork of the Tendency was the understanding that
M arxism was not a party lin e and not a program. It was a methodology.
And so, under the guidance of James over the fo llo w in g years we turned
to the study of M arxian economics and dialectics. We became notorious
in the w p as the people who were always holding classes on M arx's
C apital. Raya Dunayevskaya was especially im portant to the w ork on
state capitalism and econom ic theory. It did not take m uch probing to
realize that nothing in M arx or Engels or Lenin equated socialism w ith
the n ationa lization of the means of production. Q uite the contrary. M arx
and Engels made it clear that the u ltim a te tendency of capitalism was
extreme centralization. " It was M arx in C a p ita l.. . w ho stated that the
only lim it to centralization was a ll the capital in a single country in the
hands of a single corporation. If th is is not the econom ic form of state-
capitalism , w hat is it? "1 In A n ti-D iih rin g Engels made his and M arx's
views absolutely clear:

The modern state, no m atter what its form , is essentially a capitalist

machine, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more
it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it
actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit.
The workers remain wage-workers—proletarians. The capitalist relation
is not done away w ith. It is rather brought to a head.2
 306 The A m erican Years: The Theoretical D im ension

T h is was not some obscure statem ent. It was part of the three chapters of
A n ti-D iih rin g th a t were published as Socialism : U topian and S cientific,
a booklet th a t was translated in to m any languages and sold in the m il­
lions of copies. The study of Soviet society by Dunayevskaya made clear
th a t the fundam ental laws of capitalism , as presented in C a p ita l, dom i­
nated the econom y.3
But cru cia l to the understanding of James's M arxism was the fact th a t
his theory of state capitalism was not a theory of the nature of the Soviet
U nion. It was a theory of the stage of w o rld capitalism . "T he develop­
m ent of Russia is to be explained by the developm ent of w o rld capitalism
and specifically, c a p ita list production in its m ost advanced stage, in the
U n ite d States."4 James was not prepared to accept any theory of Russian
exceptionalism any m ore than he w ould accept a theory of Am erican
exceptionalism .
W hat James had undertaken was to attem pt to do fo r M arxism during
W orld W ar II w hat Lenin had attem pted during W orld War I. In 1914,
w orld c iv iliz a tio n and M arxism were both in crisis. W orld w ar had shat­
tered any idea of advancing c iv iliz a tio n . A t the same tim e, the collapse of
the Second In te rn a tio n a l because the m ajor parties supported th e ir cap­
ita lis t governm ents in a w ar th a t the S ocialist In te rn a tio n a l had sw orn to
oppose showed the depth of the crisis in the in te rn a tio n a l socialist m ove­
m ent. Lenin in exile w ould not accept th a t a crisis of th is m agnitude
could be explained subjectively by the "betrayal" of the various party
leaders. It was also a tim e w hen he was studying Hegel and m astering
dialectics—som ething he had not done in his earlier book on philosophy,
M ate ria lism and E m p irio -C riticism . H is conclusions were embodied in
Im perialism . He presented his view th a t capitalism had reached a new
stage, im perialism , bu t th a t a new stage of capitalism im p lie d a new
stage of the w orking class. He held th a t the stage of im perialism , w ith the
reaping of super p ro fits from the e xp lo ita tio n of the colonies, made
possible buying o ff an e lite section of the w orking class; it was th is
section of the w o rkin g class th a t provided the social base fo r social
democracy and the acceptance of a role w ith in ca p ita list society.
James took th is as his m odel and attem pted to apply the same m eth­
odology to the analysis of ca p ita list society during and after W orld W ar II.
In studying the mode of labor in the U n ite d States, James w rote:
A w h o le new layer o f w orkers, th e re su lt of the econom ic developm ent,
b u rst in to re v o lt in the c io . The c io in its in c e p tio n aim ed at a re v o lu tio n
in p ro d u c tio n -----
Because i t was n o t and could n o t be carried th ro u g h to a conclusion, the
 The M arxism of James 307

inevitable counterpart was the creation of a labor bureaucracy. The his­

tory of production since is the corruption of the bureaucracy and its
transform ation into an instrum ent of capitalist production, the restora­
tion to the bourgeoisie of what it had lost in 1936, the right to control
production standards....
The bureaucracy must inevitably substitute the struggle over con­
sumption, higher wages, pensions, education, etc., for a struggle in pro­
duction. This is the basis of the welfare state, the attem pt to appease the
workers w ith the fru its of labor when they seek satisfaction in the work
itself.

And then he made his leap:

This is the fundamental function of the bureaucracy in Russia. Already

the tentative philosophy of the bureaucracy in the U nited States, its
politica l economy of regulation of wages and prices, nationalization and
even planning, its ruthless p o litical methods, show the organic sim ila rity
of the American labor bureaucracy and the Stalinists.5

The new form of the labor bureaucracy im p lie d a new stage of the
proletariat in the in d u s tria l countries. The consequences involved a
com plex to ta lity that included the form s of working-class struggle and
the rejection of the vanguard party. As always, fames and his follow ers
returned to the M arxist roots. We were the firs t to translate in to English
the early Econom ic-Philosophical Essays of M arx. In his in tro d u ctio n to
our meagre (mimeographed) publicatio n of these essay, fames w rote:

It is a terrible emasculation, in fact a denial of Marx to believe that

there was some science called economics and upon this, for decoration,
Marx grafted hum anistic sentiments. Every fundamental feature of his
economic analysis is based upon the worker in the labor process and
holds no perspective of solution except the emancipation of the laborer.
It is a strange reflection of our tim e that this conception, that the solution
of the economic contradictions of capitalism is the human solution, is
opposed nowhere so b itte rly as in the movement itself.6

fames loved to repeat the thought of M arx that the proletariat was
revolutionary or it was nothing. But, I suspect, it was th is absolute
confidence in the revolutionary capacity of the in d u stria l proletariat as
the rock bottom foundation of M arxism that makes James's ideas very
d iffic u lt fo r revolutionary intellectua ls to accept. In Am erican sociology
there is the m yth that workers are plagued w ith the desire for instant
gratification. In reality, it is the petty bourgeois in te lle c tu a l who needs
instant p o litic a l gratifica tio n . If there is a year or tw o of relative class
peace, the struggle is over and the w orking class is abandoned.
 308 The A m erican Years: The T heoretical D im ension

Or, the alternative, w h ich is s till based on the conception of the

backwardness of the w o rkin g class, is the re vo lu tio n made, sort of, or not
quite, by the w o rkin g class, b u t by some vanguard party. The absolute
a u th o rity fo r th is p o in t o f vie w is, of course, Lenin (who, being dead,
cannot defend him self), and the b ible is the famous pam phlet, W hat Is To
Be Done. The seeming con tra d ictio n th a t James rem ained an adm irer of
Lenin to the end, yet rejected the doctrine fo r w h ich Lenin was m ost
famous, has often been com m ented on. But i t is m ore apparent than real.
To begin w ith , after Russian w orkers asserted them selves and created
Soviets in 1905, Lenin retreated from his m ost extrem e earlier state­
m ents.7 (O f course, these la te r view s are buried in the C ollected Works. It
was not in the interest o f the Soviet regim e to give them the k in d of
circ u la tio n th a t was given to W hat Is To Be Done.) But m ore im portant
was the concern fo r M a rxist and L e n in ist m ethodology. It did not seem
reasonable th a t the form of the re volutiona ry organization, w h ich had
been the F irst In te rn a tio n a l in the m iddle of the nineteenth century, and
then the Second In te rn a tio n a l at the end of the nineteenth century,
w ould be rem oved from h is to ric a l developm ent and become an a histori-
cal abstraction as Lenin's Vanguard Party. A nd so James embarked on the
developm ent of his theory of proletarian organization appropriate to the
new stage of capitalism and of the w o rkin g class. T hat developm ent can
be traced through m uch of his w ritin g during the 1940s, although he was
in h ib ite d by his status as the leader of a m in o rity tendency th a t was
subject to the discip lin e o f the m ajority. But the p o in t o f view of the
James tendency received its m ost rem arkable presentation in w hat be­
came Notes on D ialectics.
T h is was o rig in a lly a co n fiden tial docum ent circulated p riva te ly
among the Johnsonites in the s w p . It was an attem pt to show the v ia b ility
of dialectical m aterialism as a m ethodological to o l at a tim e when the
rest o f the m ovem ent paid lip service to dialectics or rejected it as some
k in d of m ysticism . It was the application of dialectics to a specific
problem , the nature of the proletarian organization, and it was a fantastic
experience fo r those of us who saw it at th a t tim e. James says:

It is obvious that the con flict of the proletariat is between itse lf as

object and itse lf as consciousness, its party. The party has a dialectical
development of its own. The solution of the conflict is the fundamental
abolition of this division. The m illio n in the Com m unist Party in France,
the two and a half m illio n s in Italy, their dom ination of the union
movement, a ll this shows that the proletariat wants to abolish this
 The M arxism of James 309

distinction w hich is another form of the capitalist division between

intellectual and manual labor. The revolutionary party of this epoch w ill
be organized labor itse lf and the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie. The
abolition of capital and the abolition of the distinction between the
proletariat as object and proletariat as consciousness w ill be one and
the same process. That is our new notion and it is w ith these eyes that we
examine wha* the proletariat is in actuality.8

He knew th a t he was breaking new ground and noted in passing "(I do

not guarantee these interpretations. The po in t is once they are down we
begin to get somewhere. I am not afraid of m istakes.)"

Now if the party is the knowing of the proletariat; then the coming of
age of the proletariat means the abolition of the party. That is our new
Universal, stated in its baldest and most abstract form ___
The party as we have known it must disappear. It w ill disappear. It is
disappearing. It w ill disappear as the state w ill disappear. The whole
laboring population becomes the state. That is the disappearance of the
state. It can have no other meaning. It w ithers away by expanding to such
a degree that it is transformed into its opposite. And the party does the
same. The state withers away and the party w ithers away. But for the
proletariat the most im portant, the prim ary thing is the w ithering away
of the party. For if the party does not w ither away, the state never w ill.9

Those of us who read th is in 1948 were only d im ly aware of where th is

was going. Then, eight years later, these abstract categories came to life
in the Hungarian R evolution. In forty-eight hours the w orking class of
Hungary created workers councils that took over the means of produc­
tio n a ll across the country and destroyed the old regime. N othing in
Hungarian society could stand in the way. The revolution was destroyed
by the invasion of Soviet tanks. T his in a country in w hich the w orking
class had no party, no press, no independent unions, none of those in ­
s titu tio n s that radicals had always assumed were the m in im u m require­
ments of revolution. Then in 1968 the same process took place in France
in the French Revolt, and in 1980 it was repeated in Polish Solidarity.
These were the high points—there were stepping stones in between.
No theory, radical or conservative, had accepted the p o ssib ility of
w orking-class revolution in a to ta lita ria n society. O nly James and his
sm all group were not surprised by the events that transform ed postwar
Europe. But that did not change the views of tra d itio n a l M arxists. A rtic le
after article was w ritte n on the theme: the failure of the Hungarian
R evolution was caused by the absence of a Vanguard Party. When M arx
 310 The A m erican Years: The Theoretical D im ension

w rote about the rather meagre accom plishm ents of the Paris Com m une
of 1871 he w rote only praise, saying th a t the m ain lesson of the C om ­
m une was its ow n w o rkin g existence. W hen Soviet power had lasted one
day m ore than the Com m une, Lenin turned to his comrades and declared
victo ry, although the su rviva l of the re vo lu tio n was far from being as­
sured. James is in the direct lin e of th a t revolutiona ry tra d itio n . He did
not s it in judgm ent on events and view them through the narrow focus of
a party lin e or a party program . He was ever the re volutiona ry o p tim is t
and he never departed from the oft-repeated statem ent—the p roletariat is
re volutiona ry or it is nothing.
It should be noted th a t his rejection of the vanguard party is based on
a h is to ric a l analysis of the developm ent of the in d u s tria l proletariat. It
did not apply, and he never applied it, to the so-called T h ird W orld.
The seeming con tra d ictio n th a t he supported mass vanguard parties in
Ghana, in T rinidad, and elsewhere is no contradiction. In a g ricu ltu ra l
countries, where there is no p ro le ta ria t organized by the means of pro­
duction and trained by th e ir experience in an in d u s tria l society, he had
no problem seeing the need fo r a party to w in independence and organize
the em erging society. But, ever the democrat, he believed firm ly in the
need to base th a t party on the popular masses. He was quick to break
w ith revolutiona ry leaders w ho began to arrogate power to them selves
over the masses.
James's view s on proletarian organization were u ltim a te ly embodied
in the book th a t was based on the Hungarian R evolution, Facing Real-
ity .10 It was clear th a t the rejection of the vanguard party was not a
rejection o f organization. He believed th a t M arxists had the rig h t and the
duty to organize, to present th e ir view s to a w ider public, to examine, to
in te rp re t and to report the day to day a c tiv ity of the w orking class, to look
fo r the emergence of revolutiona ry possibilities, to participate in revolu­
tio n a ry struggles.
H is ow n organization—the Johnson-Forest Tendency, then Correspon?
dence P ublishing C om m ittee, then Facing R eality—was an integral ele­
m ent in the developm ent of his ideas. On one level there was the sharing
of w ork and the production of w ork that w ould have been beyond the
capacity of any in d ivid u a l. Raya Dunayevskaya was crucial in the devel­
opm ent of the ideas of state capitalism , in the study of the Soviet econ­
omy, in the understanding of Leninism . Grace Lee was a key figure in the
study of Hegel, in providing translations from the German, etc. James
gives them both credit for th e ir w ork in his in tro d u c tio n to Notes on
 The M arxism of James 311

D ialectics. W orker m ilita n ts such as James Boggs, John Zupan, Morgan

Goodson, and Simon Owen contributed th e ir experience, th e ir kn o w l­
edge of shop flo o r struggles, th e ir understanding of the re a lity of the
w orking class; and th e ir words appear in m uch th a t James has w ritte n .
But the significance of organization was far beyond the assistance of
individuals. W hen James said he was not afraid to make m istakes, it was
because he knew there was an organization th a t w ould sustain its m em ­
bers, w ould correct m istakes, and he encouraged the members of his
group to take risks in the developm ent of th e ir ideas, secure in the
knowledge th a t the organization w ould protect them from the w orst of
th e ir errors. (Another aspect of James's M arxism was its profound hu­
m anism . The tra d itio n in the old le ft was that you did not dare to make
m istakes because they w ould surely be used against you in the next
factional dispute.)
But an organization meant m uch more than this. It was the way to par­
ticipate in class and other struggles. It was the way to see and meet and
understand w orkers who were fig h tin g the class struggle in th e ir daily
lives, blacks who were struggling fo r freedom and equality, wom en who
were try in g to transform the social re a lity of gender in modern society,
young people who were b a ttlin g the oppression and re strictio n of youth.
James took his view of the im portance of the w orking-class and of rank-
and-file struggle seriously. As an individ u a l, he talked to people and
always sought to find out w hat they thought and how they lived. M any of
the ideas, phrases, events, th a t appeared in his w ritin g came from w o rk­
ers and others he had talked to. But it was also a m ethod he taught to his
organization. When his group became independent as Correspondence
and founded a newspaper, it was not to be a newspaper that lectured
workers on the correct party lin e but a paper that reflected th e ir ideas and
interests along w ith ours.
H is theories extended to other areas of social life and struggle, "non-
proletarian" struggles, so to speak, and one elem ent of that became an
im portant part of his w orld view. It began w ith his arrival in N o rth
Am erica and his discussions w ith T rotsky on w hat was then called the
Negro Question. The C om m unist theory of the Negro Q uestion had a
rather ambiguous history. It began w ith a passing com m ent by Lenin that
the Negro struggle was part of the national struggle. As everyone knew,
Lenin's view was that the struggle for national independence had a
v a lid ity independent of the class struggle. Am erican C om m unists in ­
terpreted Lenin's rem ark lite ra lly : national struggle m eant struggle for
 312 The A m erican Years: The Theoretical D im ension

land, and from th a t they derived th e ir long-standing demand fo r self-

determ ination in the black belt, those southern states and parts of states
th a t had a black m ajo rity. T rotsky sim ply accepted the old C om m unist
view . T rotsky's A m erican organization, the s w p , also accepted th a t view ,
b u t it was largely lip service. They were never very com fortable w ith it
and, in any case, had no presence in the South and so never had to deal
w ith it concretely. *
James, in his conversations w ith T rotsky, began to move in new direc­
tions. He offered rather moderate amendments to the program fo r self-
determ ination. In essence he said th a t it was a le g itim a te demand w h ich
M arxists should support—if it came from the black com m unity. He had
not seen too m uch of th a t and so he was afraid th a t it m ig h t become a
slogan im posed on the black com m unity fo r ideological reasons. In addi­
tio n , James proposed support fo r the idea of an independent Negro orga­
nization, in w h ich M arxists w ould participate, bu t one th a t w ould no t be
controlled by, or subject to, the M a rxist party. T hat aroused a certain
am ount of interest, b u t v irtu a lly nothing was done about it in the suc­
ceeding years, at least p a rtly because the s w p had no sig n ifica n t base in
the black com m unity.
But James's view s, deriving essentially from Len in ist m ethodology,
proved prescient in sig n ifica n t ways. W hen black struggles reemerged
once again as a m ajor factor of A m erican life , they emerged in the form of
independent black organizations in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. When
the mass c iv il rights m ovem ent appeared, it was based on organizations
form ed to represent p a rticu la r constituencies and not subordinated to
any vanguard of any kind. The Student N on-V iolent C oordinating Com ­
m ittee, the Southern C h ristia n Leadership Conference, the League of
R evolutionary Black W orkers, the Panthers, and so on—each took th e ir
place in the struggle. It was not th a t these developments reflected his
view s of 1938. It was rather th a t his earlier view s and the later develop­
m ent of his theories made it very natural fo r h im to accept these develop­
m ents and incorporate them in to his theories in ways th a t the organiza­
tions of the old le ft found d iffic u lt. A nd his theoretical p o in t of view
expanded to accept the independent v a lid ity of a w hole range of struggles
th a t were not d ire ctly proletarian. The a ntiw ar m ovem ent, the wom en's
m ovem ent, the youth m ovem ent, ju st as the black m ovem ent, had an
independent v a lid ity th a t did not depend on th e ir subordination to the
w orking class. A good part of th is had already appeared in the pages of
 The M arxism of James 313

Correspondence, w e ll before the N ew Left, the anti-V ietnam War m ove­

m ent, and the contem porary wom en's m ovem ent had emerged.
There is m uch in James's M arxism , questions of organization, the
p racticalities of organizational w ork, the nature of revolutionary journ a l­
ism , and so on, th a t cannot be covered in a paper of th is kind. D iscussion
of those and other questions w ill come in tim e. James's M arxist legacy
lay buried because of its origins in a p a rticu la r tim e and place. Access to
it was fu rth e r lim ite d by the fact th a t James was never the head of a
national state or of a pow erful mass m ovem ent. But it seems to me that
interest in James w ill grow. The destruction of S talinism in Europe, the
emergence of the new barbarism of Am erican power, the failu re of theo­
ries old or new to provide any guidance to these events, w ill only encour­
age the search for theories th a t p o in t a way out of our current barbarism .
T his is not to say that James had a ll the answers or th a t he was always
right. But he embarked on the m ost significant in te lle c tu a l project of the
tw e n tie th century after Lenin, a project based on the heritage of M arx­
ism , and there is no better place to begin the search for a road out of the
barbarism of contem porary c iv iliz a tio n . The revolutionary optim ism of
C.L.R. James w ill not disappoint the interested searcher.

Notes
1. C.L.R. James, State Capitalism and World Revolution (Chicago: Charles H.
Kerr Publishing Co., 1986), 18.
2. Karl M arx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25 (New York:
International Publishers, 1989).
3. See Raya Dunayevskaya, "A New Revision of Marxian Economics," A m e ri­
can Economic Review, 34, no. 3 (Sept. 1944) and "Revision or Reaffirm ation of
Marxism? A Rejoinder," ibid., 35, no. 4 (Sept. 1945).
4. James, State Capitalism and W orld Revolution, 39.
5. Ibid., 40-41; 43, James's italics.
6. James, A t the Rendezvous o f Victory (London: A lliso n and Busby, 1984), 71.
7. See Lenin, "The St. Petersburg Strike"; "W hat Is Happening in Russia"; and
" 'O ur Father the Tsar' and the Barricades," in Collected Works, vol. 8.
8. C.L.R. James, Notes on D ialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin (London: A lliso n and
Busby, 1980), 61-62.
9. Ibid., 79, James's italics; 175-76, James's italics.
10. Facing R eality (Detroit: Bewick Editions, 1958).
Blackness, Self-D eterm ination,
p

and A n tico lo n ia lism

 Glen Richards

C.L.R. James on Black S elf-D eterm ination in the

U n ited States and the Caribbean

For over half a century, C.L.R. James stood in the forefront of the struggle
for black freedom and self-determ ination in three continents, Europe,
A frica, and N o rth Am erica. The b u lk of his w ritin g s and the greater
part of his p o litic a l activism in th is cause, however, has focused on the
black populations of the Caribbean and the U nited States. H is consistent
advocacy of black self-determ ination in N o rth Am erica and the C arib­
bean was based upon one m ajor prem ise arrived at through his detailed
study of the black experience in the W estern hemisphere. As James
explained, "A lthough there had been slavery in A frica, the A frican in the
New W orld soon discovered that it was the blackness of his skin w hich
identified h im as a slave."1 Thus the socioeconom ic condition of A fri­
cans in the Am ericas was in e xtrica b ly in te rtw in e d w ith th e ir color. The
daily life of blacks in the Caribbean and in the rest of the Americas
was dom inated by "the desire, sometimes expressed, sometimes unex­
pressed, but always there, the desire fo r liberty,* the ridding oneself of the
particular burden w hich is the special inheritance of the black s k in ."2
T his is the theoretical basis upon w hich James's analysis of the ques­
tion of black self-determ ination rests. He recognized that the social
problems of the black populations of the Am ericas were not sim ply those
of w orking-class poverty. The black experience of slavery and racial
victim iza tio n , com bined w ith the psychic damage in flic te d by scie n tific
and religious theories of black in fe rio rity , imposed upon blacks a h isto r­
ical burden that w ent beyond poverty and poor liv in g conditions. Any
strategy that aimed at the p o litic a l and social em ancipation of the black
populations of N o rth Am erica and the Caribbean had also to address the
historical legacy and meaning of blackness.

317
 318 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

The Case fo r West Indian Self-Governm ent

In 1933, ju st one year after a rrivin g in England from his hom eland in
T rinidad, C.L.R. James commenced a long in te rn a tio n a l career of p o liti­
cal activism w ith his tireless agitation fo r West Indian self-determ ina­
tio n . In his firs t published p o litic a l w ork, e n title d The Case fo r West
In d ia n Self-G overnm ent, he condemned the system of C row n C olony
governm ent under w h ich m ost B ritis h West Indian colonies were ruled.
D enouncing the "trusteeship" p o licy by w h ich B ritis h colonial o ffic ia l­
dom sought to ju s tify continued co lonial rule, James w rote: "The advo­
cates of C o lonial O ffice trusteeship w ould have you believe th a t the
average Negro is a savage fellow , bearing beneath the veneer of c iv iliz a ­
tio n and his black skin, viciousness, and c rim in a lity w h ich he is losing
b u t slow ly, and w h ich o n ly the v irtu a l dom ination of the European can
keep in check."3 He rid icu le d the arrogant and autocratic colonial o ffi­
cials sent out to govern B rita in 's West Indian possessions and argued th a t
"th e m ore e fficie n t they are, the m ore w ould they act as a b lig h t upon
those vigorous and able men whose home is th e ir island, and w ho, in the
natural course of events, w ould rise to power and in flu e n ce ."4
In James's view , colo n ia l trusteeship made good governm ent im possi­
ble fo r it was prem ised upon the racist presum ption th a t black peoples
were incapable of governing them selves. W hether local leaders w ould be
less e ffic ie n t or more corrupt was not the issue. The people of the West
Indies, largely black, had the rig h t to make th e ir ow n p o litic a l m istakes,
to have th e ir ow n p o litic a l scandals. O n ly through self-governm ent
w ould the predom inantly black populations of the Caribbean be able to
overcome the burdens inherite d by the black skin.

Leadership and Mass in the Struggle fo r

S elf-D eterm ination in the Caribbean—
Toussaint-Louverture and M aurice Bishop

In his classic study of the relationship between leaders and the mass
in a revolutiona ry situation, The Black Jacobins, James examined the
dynam ics of leadership w ith in independent black mass movem ents
through the role of Toussaint-Louverture, and he w rote the fo llo w in g
c ritiq u e of Toussaint's p o litic s : "H e ignored the black labourers, be­
w ildered them at the very m om ent that he needed them m ost, and to
bew ilder the masses is to strike the deadliest of a ll blows at the revolu-
 On Black S elf-D eterm ination 319

tio n ."5That could have been the epitaph of Grenada's M aurice Bishop or,
indeed, of the Grenadian re volution its e lf. The rig id vanguardism that
had taken hold of the N ew Jewel M ovem ent, the revolutionary organiza­
tio n that organized and led the revolution, created a w idening g u lf be­
tween the Grendadian w orking people and the revolutionary leadership.
The vanguardi$jt party structure of the New Jewel M ovem ent, based
upon the doctrinaire m odel that Joseph S talin had constructed, stood in
to ta l opposition to everything James advocated and believed. Its rig id
selection process w hich elim inated even loyal party members who had
been active in the party p rio r to the seizure of power, its in tim id a tin g
atmosphere w hich made even members of the party's central com m ittee
afraid to voice dissenting opinions, and the attem pt of the party to
control and direct a ll areas of social and econom ic life stifle d the grow th
of direct popular p a rticipation . The vaunted organs of popular democ­
racy, the zonal and parish councils, were, in effect, extensions of the
party. There were no in s titu tio n s through w hich the Grenadian people
could independently influence or shape public policy except by direct
in tervention in the streets w ith predictable consequences.6
The problem of the vanguardist direction of the N ew Jewel M ovem ent
and its w ell-know n consequences goes beyond questions about the na­
ture of leadership or about the appropriate form of organizations for
a p o litic a l party engaged in revolutionary transform ation. Despite the
rhetoric of popular democracy, a ll decision-m aking power in postrevolu­
tionary Grenada was concentrated in the hands of a sm all central com ­
m ittee of seventeen persons. The party and its revolutionary leadership
had arrogated unto its e lf the rig h t to determ ine that socialist construc­
tions and an alliance w ith the "socialist bloc" was the best future for the
Grenadian w orking people—and this w ith o u t dem ocratically consulting
the Grenadian workers themselves. The w orking people then were de­
nied th e ir rig h t to determ ine w hat type of society they wanted for them ­
selves and th e ir children. The rig h t of self-determ ination had become a
m onopoly of the party and its leadership that was exercised in accor­
dance w ith rig id dogmas laid down by foreign observers. T his is a fu n ­
damental question. For the rig h t of self-determ ination m ust entail the
right of a people, the w orking people in particular, to determ ine how
and by whom they are governed. For C.L.R. James, the rig h t of self-
determ ination involved not only the rig h t of w orking people to elect
representatives to speak on th e ir behalf but, more fundam entally, th e ir
right to represent and govern themselves directly. Self-determ ination
 320 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

m eant the lib e ra tin g s e lf-a c tiv ity of w o rkin g people. James repudiated
the need fo r a vanguard party of the m ost conscious and the m ost revolu­
tio n a ry w ho w ould act on behalf of the w o rkin g masses. In advice to
future leaders of re vo lu tio n a ry uprisings, he cautions:

None of the regular in stitu tio n s m ust be allowed to enter into negotia­
tions on behalf of any section of the revplution. Over the next period new
upheavals m ust understand this from the very beginning. Students w ill
represent students and discuss w ith university staffs. Workers w ill repre­
sent workers, peasants w ill represent peasants, blacks w ill represent
blacks, women w ill represent women.7

James did acknowledge the u tility of party structures in aiding the

m o b iliz a tio n of w orkers and peasants in backward co lonial societies that
lacked a p o litic a l tra d itio n of democracy. But always he called fo r the
creation of mass, n o t vanguard, parties, and even the mass party should
not replace the independent p o litic a l a c tiv ity of the w orking people. He
advised Caribbean p o litic a l leaders th a t "th e day they [the Caribbean
people] spontaneously in th e ir independent organizations say to th e ir
ow n party or to th e ir ow n governm ent, 'We don't lik e w hat you are doing;
it is not w hat we understood you to prom ise; please come and explain,'
then the party leader w ill rejoice: he know s now th a t he has som ething
behind h im ."8 D ire ct popular p a rticip a tio n in the management of th e ir
ow n affairs provided the only way fo r the predom inantly black popula­
tions of the Caribbean to overcome the legacy of powerlessness. W ith ­
out th is, they could not b u ild the confidence needed to determ ine th e ir
ow n future; and new Caribbean governm ents, dem ocratically elected or
not, w ould sim p ly assume the autocratic powers of the form er colonial
masters.

Black S elf-D eterm ination in the U nited States

A fte r his a rriva l in the U n ite d States in 1938, James turned his atten­
tio n to the co n d itio n of the black m in o rity population and, in th is in ­
stance, saw no case fo r te rrito ria l self-determ ination. In a m em orandum
e n title d "P re lim in a ry Notes on the Negro Q uestion," prepared fo r dis­
cussions held w ith Leon T rotsky in October 1939, he argued th a t "self-
determ ination fo r the Am erican Negroes is (1) econom ically reactionary,
(2) p o litic a lly false because no Negro (except C.P. stooges) wants it. For
Negroes it is m erely an inverted segregation."9
 On Black S elf-D eterm ination 321

W hile rejecting the ca ll for te rrito ria l self-determ ination for blacks
in the U nited States as in va lid , James did see the need fo r black self-
determ ination, not as a te rrito ria l demand b u t as a call fo r black demo­
cratic rights w ith in Am erican society. He urged the need fo r independent
black p o litic a l action around the concerns and specific demands of the
black population. James observed:

Furthermore, the awakening p o litica l consciousness of the Negro not

unnaturally takes the form of a desire for independent action uncon­
trolled by whites. The Negroes have long fe lt and more than ever feel
today the urge to create their own organizations under their own leaders
and thus assert not only in theory but in action, their claim to complete
equality w ith other American citizens.10

He argued th a t African-Am ericans had a dem ocratic rig h t to organize

themselves independently, to have th e ir ow n organizations, headed by
th e ir independently chosen leaders, and to pursue th e ir own social and
p o litic a l objectives. The independent black m ovem ent w ould both af­
firm and guarantee black equality w ith in Am erican society.
For the black populations of the Caribbean and the U nited States, self-
determ ination m eant "rid d in g " themselves "o f the particular burden
w hich is the special inheritance of the black s kin ." In the colonial C arib­
bean, th is could only be achieved at a national te rrito ria l level. In the
U nited States, where African-Am ericans had participated v o lu n ta rily in
the war of national independence, thereby co m m ittin g themselves to
Am erican citizenship, the objective of the m a jo rity of blacks was to
attain fu ll equality, including the rig h t to govern themselves in th e ir own
p o litic a l organizations and so p u t an end to the legacy of w h ite m astery
and tutelage over th e ir daily lives.
It is im portant to note that James's arguments against te rrito ria l self-
determ ination fo r black Am ericans were not based on the m in o rity
status of the black population in the U nited States or on his ideologi­
cal conviction that such a ca ll was econom ically reactionary. H is argu­
ments were based instead on w hat he believed to be the predom inant
a ttitude of blacks in the U nited States at that tim e. Whereas the Com ­
m unist call for te rrito ria l self-determ ination in the "black b e lt" of the
South was based upon the 1928 resolution passed by the C om m unist
International m eeting in Moscow, James based his opposition to black
national self-determ ination in the U nited States on the attitudes and
demands of the black w orking peoples themselves. He added in qualifica-
 322 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

tio n th a t " if (the black population) wanted self-determ ination, then how ­
ever reactionary it m ig h t be in every other respect, it w ould be the
business of the revo lu tio n a ry party to raise th a t slogan." As a M arxist, he
believed th a t black Am ericans had "to be w on fo r socialism " w h ich was
the o n ly w ay out fo r blacks in A m erica or elsewhere but, James added,
black people had to be w on for socialism "on the basis of . . . (their) ow n
experience and . . . (their) ow n a c tiv ity ."11*
T his s e n s itiv ity to the p a rticu la r needs and circum stances of black
populations has been m arkedly lacking in m any Caribbean and A frican-
Am erican M arxists. Indeed, m any black Am erican M arxists have shown
greater s e n s itiv ity to the p o litic a l image of th e ir ideological sect and
to the needs and prejudices of th e ir w h ite comrades than to the black
w orkers in whose name they claim ed to speak. James's leading opponent
w ith in the ranks of the T ro tskyite W orkers Party was D avid Coo-
lidge, A frican-A m erican labor organizer, w ho was labor secretary of the
party. Coolidge was an ardent advocate of the leading role of the w h ite -
dom inated labor m ovem ent in the fig h t fo r the dem ocratic rights of
blacks. In a resolution presented to the W orkers Party convention in
1944 Coolidge argued that:

The w hite workers m ust take the lead and take the offensive in the
struggle for the Negro's democratic rights. . . . The w hite workers are
strongly organized, they have had ages of experience and they are power­
ful. . . . To place the main burden of this fig h t on the Negroes separated
from the w hite workers, or on Negro organizations, no m atter how
m ilita n t, outside the labor movement, is only to wish and dream and
send the Negroes out to certain defeat.12

M ost black w orkers w ould have been bemused by Coolidge's assertion

th a t the fig h t fo r th e ir dem ocratic rights could not be w on u n til the w h ite
w orkers and the w hite-dom inated labor m ovem ent, w ith its long h isto ry
of racial d iscrim ination, took the lead in th is struggle fo r equality. Even
more, Coolidge failed to see th a t such arguments, even if theoretically
correct w ith in the ideological fram ew ork of the W orkers Party, could
on ly serve to reinforce the n o tion of black in fe rio rity . For his position
said, in effect, th a t the black population could not achieve dem ocratic
rights through its ow n efforts but was dependent upon the goodw ill of
the w hite-dom inated labor m ovem ent.
In a m in o rity resolution presented at the same convention, James
 On Black S elf-D eterm ination 323

criticize d the weaknesses of Coolidge's position and urged the W orkers

Party to emphasize "to the Negroes that Negro em ancipation cannot
take place w ith o u t the vigorous and self-sacrificing struggle of Negroes
them selves." He cautioned the party against accepting that "d is to rtio n of
M arxist tru th w hich states th a t the Negroes cannot get to firs t base
w ith o u t the leadership or organized la b o r."13
Coolidge's resolution, overw helm ingly accepted by the predom inantly
w h ite m em bership of the W orkers Party, was to ta lly repudiated by the
events of the C iv il Rights and subsequent Black Power m ovements. The
fig h t fo r c iv il rights was in itia te d by the independent black m ovem ent
w ith organized labor, far from taking the lead, playing a supporting role.
W ith his break from T rotskyite p o litic s in 1953, James repudiated the
idea of the vanguard party by p o in tin g to the rise of the independent
black m ovem ent as proof of the obsolescence of th is theory. In Facing
R eality [ 1958), James and his colleagues observed that Am erican M arx­
ists had proved "by the analyses of texts and society" that dem ocratic
rights for African-Am ericans were "im possible except by the revolution
led by the trained vanguard." T his M arxist theory was sim ply ignored by
black Am ericans who "d id not w a it for the Vanguard Party to organize a
corps of trained re vo lu tio n a rie s. . . to achieve th e ir em ancipation."14
James's early recognition of the "independent dynam ic" of the in ­
dependent black struggle sets h im apart from Am erican M arxists of
various shades who have analyzed the race problem in the U nited States.
H is approach did not subordinate black Am ericans to the dictates of a
predom inantly w h ite revolutionary party, but it placed the in itia tiv e
and responsibility for black em ancipation in the hands of black A m eri­
cans themselves. It was not coincidental that when the young A frican-
Am erican and Caribbean m ilita n ts of the 1960s began casting around for
ideological grounding, it was to the w ritin g s of C.L.R. James that they
turned.

"We Have a False Idea of the Negro"

The failure of revolutionary black leadership, from Toussaint-Louver-

ture to D avid Coolidge to M aurice Bishop, has been the leadership's lack
of confidence in th e ir black follow ers. M any black leaders have tended to
look to w hite in s titu tio n s , be it the U nited States federal governm ent or
the K rem lin, to provide the solutions to black problems. They have
 324 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

deeply believed th a t the black populace has been too damaged by slavery,
are too ignorant or lacking in cultu re to be able to make the great
sacrifices needed fo r black em ancipation.
James often argued th a t the m ost im p o rta n t prerequisite fo r w orking
among the black population of the Am ericas is a detailed study and
understanding of th e ir h istory. As he explained, " If we w ant to know
w hat the ordinary population can do, le t hs know w hat they have done in
the past."15 In draw ing up plans fo r the creation of a nationa l Negro
organization in the U nited States, James gave pride of place to the "study
of Negro h is to ry and h is to ric propaganda," in c lu d in g the em ancipation
of the Negroes in San D om ingo lin k e d w ith the French R evolution, the
em ancipation of the slaves in the B ritis h Em pire lin k e d w ith the B ritish
reform b ill of 1832, and the em ancipation of the Negroes in the U nited
States lin k e d w ith the C iv il W ar.16 M ost tra d itio n a l scholars have seen
black struggles as offshoots of and subordinate to in te rn a tio n a l m ove­
m ents. A lw ays the in te rn a tio n a lis t, James urged the im portance of see­
ing such connections. But even m ore c ritic a l to his approach was his
stress on the prim ary influence of the independent black m ovem ent
upon d o m e s tic /te rrito ria l and in te rn a tio n a l developments.
In a discourse on Negro em ancipation and the Am erican C iv il War,
James com m ented, "N o rth and South in A m erica moved to th e ir pre­
destined clash u n w illin g ly , b u t the revolutiona ry Negroes helped to
precipitate the issue."17 The mass exodus from the South, organized by
the "re vo lu tio n a ry organization know n as the Underground R ailroad,"
began the black struggle fo r freedom and pushed N o rth and South inex­
orably to war. The attem pts of N o rth and South to arrive at a com pro­
m ise through the Fugitive Slave A ct were overturned by the slaves them ­
selves w ith the assistance of w h ite revolutionaries in the N o rth . James
observed th a t "in the h isto ry of the U n ite d States such is the s itu a tio n of
the masses of the Negro people and th e ir readiness to re vo lt at the
slightest opportunity, that, as far back as the C iv il War, in rela tio n to the
Am erican bourgeoisie, they form ed a force w hich in itia te d and s tim u ­
lated and acted as a fe rm e n t."18 Black Am ericans were not only the
agents of th e ir own em ancipation, they spearheaded p o litic a l and social
changes in the U nited States.
S im ilarly, in the Caribbean, the attem pts of the French mercan­
tile bourgeoisie to m ain ta in slavery and colonialism by confining "the
R ights of M an" to France were defeated by the slaves themselves. The
slave in surrection in San D om ingo and the m achinations of the F euillant
 On Black S elf-D eterm ination 325

and G irondin governm ents to preserve slavery roused the Paris masses
"w ho were s trik in g at royalty, tyranny, reaction and oppression of a ll
types, and w ith these they included slavery."19 Widespread revulsion at
slavery and hatred fo r the "aristocrats of the sk in " bred a revolutiona ry
enthusiasm fo r lib e rty in the Paris masses w ho "storm ed the T uileries
and dragged the^Bourbons o ff the throne."20 The fierce resistance by the
slaves to B ritish attem pts to take San D om ingo tied up the B ritish forces
and delayed, at a c ritic a l m om ent, the B ritish assault upon revolutionary
France. As James remarked, the "part played by the blacks in the success
of the great French R evolution has never received adequate recognition."
He added, "the revo lu tio n in Europe w ill neglect coloured workers at its
p e ril."21
W hile some black leaders have been dism issive of the aspirations of
th e ir people, James's strength lay in his u n fa ilin g fa ith in the re vo lu tio n ­
ary capacities of the black populations of the Am ericas. He constantly
pointed to the achievements of independent mass m ovem ents made up of
ordinary black w orking people acting w ith o u t guidance from external
agencies and independently of and often in opposition to th e ir recognized
leaders. He never hedged th e ir rig h t to self-determ ination w ith the as­
sertion th a t the popular struggles of blacks had to be led by a w hite-
dom inated labor m ovem ent or by a vanguard under the banner of interna­
tio n a l socialism . The h is to ric independent struggles and achievements of
ordinary black w orking people convinced h im of the v a lid ity of the inde­
pendent black m ovem ent. Speaking of the black "Jacobins" who defeated
Napoleon's army, James observed:

These are my ancestors, these are my people. They are yours too if you
want them. We are descendants from the same stock.. . . Faced w ith the
same difficulties, we would respond in the same way. That seems to be
inherent in people who have made the M iddle Passage and had to learn all
that they can and build a new life w ith what they gathered from the
standards, the ideas and the ideologies of the people and the new civiliza ­
tion in w hich they live.22

Academics can le g itim a te ly debate the lim ita tio n s of James's vision
and question his unshakable, some m ay say naive, belief in the revolu­
tionary potentia l of ordinary black workers. C.L.R. James was not about
academic philosophizing. H is purpose was revolutionary change. It is
w ith an undying revolutionary s p irit and an abiding fa ith in the innate
pote n tia litie s of the black populations of the Am ericas, among w hom he
 326 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

struggled and agitated, th a t James approached the task of "rid d in g " them
"o f the p a rticu la r burden w h ich is the special inheritance of the black
s k in "—a task th a t s till rem ains to be accom plished.

Notes

1. C.L.R. James, "Presence of Blacks in th e Caribbean and its Im pact on

C ulture," in A t the Rendezvous o f V ictory: Selected W ritings (London: A llis o n
and Busby, 1984), 218.
2. C.L.R. James, "The M aking of the Caribbean People," in Spheres o f Exis­
tence: Selected W ritings (London: A llis o n and Busby, 1980), 177.
3. C.L.R. James, The Case fo r West In d ia n Self-Government (London: Hogarth
Press, 1933), 6.
4. Ibid., 32.
5. C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L O uverture and the San
Dom ingo Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), 247.
6. For an in-depth analysis of the party structure of the N ew Jewel M ovem ent
and the relation between the party and the zonal and parish councils, see Tony
Thondike's Grenada (Boulder, Colo.: Lunne Rienner Publishers, 1985), 68-93.
The party's copious m inutes reveal the in tim id a tin g atmosphere w ith in the NJM.
See, for example, Tan Bartholomew's c o n trib u tio n at the extraordinary meeting
of the central com m ittee, 14-16 Sept. 1983 and F ittzroy Bain's statement to the
extraordinary general m eeting of the central fu ll members, 25 Sept. 1983 in
M ichael Ledeen and Herbert Romerstein, eds. Grenada Documents: an O verview
and Selection (Washington: U.S. Government P rinting Office, 1984), 112-17,
113-25.
7. Quoted in Paul Buhle, C.L.R. James: The A rtis t as R evolutionary (London:
Verso, 1988), 169.
8. C.L.R. James, Party P olitics in the West Indies (Port of Spain: C.L.R. James,
1962), 127.
9. J. R. Johnson, "P relim inary Notes on the Negro Question," in In te rn a l
B u lle tin Socialist Workers Party, no. 9 (June 1939): 4 (note: J. R. Johnson was the
T rotskyist pseudonym employed by C.L.R. James during most of his stay in the
U nited States).
10. J. R. Johnson, "The swp and Negro W ork." Resolution adopted at the swp
N ational C onvention, July 1-4,1939, in Leon Trotsky on Black N ationalism and
Self-D eterm ination, ed. George Breitman (New York: M erit, 1967), 73.
11. Johnson, "P relim inary Notes on the Negro Question," 4.
12. D avid Coolidge, "Resolution of the P olitical C om m ittee," The N ew In te r­
n ational (January 1945): 10. (Note: David Coolidge was the T rotskyist pseud­
onym adopted by Ernest McKinney.)
13. J. R. Johnson, "The Resolution of the M in o rity ," The N ew In te rn a tio n a l
(January 1945): 17.
14. Grace C. Lee, Pierre Chaulieu, and J. R. Johnson, Facing R eality (Detroit:
Correspondence Publishing Co., 1958), 150.
15. James made clear th a t this was a general observation applicable to all
 On Black S elf-D eterm ination 327

peoples adding, " It is the way of life, not blood." See James, "The M aking of the
Caribbean People," 187.
16. See J. R. Johnson's proposal e ntitled "Plans for a Negro Organization" in
Breitman, ed., Leon Trotsky on Black N ationalism and Self-Determ ination, 56.
17. J. R. Johnson, "R evolution and the Negro," The N ew In te rn a tio n a l (Decem­
ber 1939): 341.
18. C.L.R. Jamjs, "The R evolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the
USA," in The Future in the Present (London, A llis o n and Busby, 1977), 123.
19. James, The Black Jacobins, 120.
20. Ibid.; C.L.R. James, A H isto ry o f Negro Revolt (London: Race Today, 1985),
11.
21. James, A H istory of Negro Revolt, 12.
22. James, "The M aking of the Caribbean People," 187.
 fames M ille tte

C.L.R. James and the P o litics of T rinida d

and Tobago, 1958-1970

It is im p o rta n t when discussing the relationship of C.L.R. James to the

p o litic s of T rinidad and Tobago to emphasize th a t the period from 1958
to 1970 was at once the nadir and the zenith of James's involvem ent in
practical p o litic s in the West Indies. It was the nadir in th a t i t repre­
sented, fo r James, the unqua lified fa ilu re of his tw o attem pts to become
d ire c tly involved in electoral p o litic s , firs t w ith the People's N atio n a l
M ovem ent ( p n m ) between 1958 and 1960, and, second, w ith the W orkers
and Farmers Party (w f p ) in the period 1965-66. It was the zenith be­
cause those tw o failures led to his exertion of an im p o rta n t influence
on the p o litic s of the country resulting in a crisis in 1970 th a t was, in sev­
eral singular respects, n o t only the product of James's p o litic a l influence
over several im p o rta n t players in th a t crisis but also the beginning of a
new radical stage in the p o litic s of the w hole of the English-speaking
Caribbean.
For a ll of his adult and p o litic a lly active life , James had lived and
w orked outside of the region. He had le ft T rinidad in 1932 and did not
re tu rn fo r more than tw e n ty-five years. In the in te rim , he had acquired a
tow ering reputation as a M a rxist scholar and p o litic ia n and as an a n ti­
colonial a ctivist. But in none of these, as w e ll as in his other lite ra ry and
philosophical capacities, did he ever d ire c tly relate to the West Indies.
H is M a rxist p o litic a l life was live d ou t in Great B ritain, France, M exico,
and the U nited States of Am erica. H is a n tico lo n ia l a c tiv ity was con­
ducted in the m ain from London, and w hen his efforts had helped to
realize the independence of Ghana, he visited th a t country b rie fly in
1957, as it were, to celebrate and to advise.
He returned to T rinidad and Tobago on 18 A p ril 1958. The n ationa list

328
 The P olitics of T rinidad and Tobago 329

m ovem ent was in fu ll flow er. The People's N ational M ovem ent, founded
in 1956 and led by D r. Eric W illiam s, was in its halcyon days. W il­
liam s had s k illfu lly brought together some of the m ost em otive elements
in the new in te rn a tio n a l eschatology of lib e ra tio n and decolonization,
namely, pub lic education, nationhood, and m o ra lity in p ublic affairs. A
new heaven and a new earth were being constructed. The names of the
leading figures in the antico lo n ia l and decolonizing w orld, and th e ir
accom plishm ents, were being invoked in the cause of presenting a new
vision of West Indian society in general, and of T rinidad and Tobago in
particular.
N ehru, Nasser, N krum ah, Sukarno, the heroic early figures in the de­
colonization m ovem ent; Teodoro Moscoso, the Puerto Rican econom ist
credited w ith inventing the "Puerto Rican m iracle" otherw ise know n as
"O peration Bootstrap"; A rth u r Lewis who, in his celebrated essay "The
In d u stria liza tio n of the West Indies," sold the region on adopting the
"m ira cle " that later came to be know n, b itte rly and more c ritic a lly , as
the "Puerto Rican m odel of developm ent," or "in d u s tria liz a tio n by in v i­
ta tio n "; N orm an, the elder M anley, whose People's N ational Party (p n p )
anticipated and inspired the p n m perhaps m ost of a ll by its own elec­
toral v ic to ry against the less progressive and forw ard-looking Jamaica
Labour Party ( j l p ) in Jamaica in 1955: these were some of the principal
role models whose example and achievements W illiam s was constantly
holding up before the masses fo r em ulation.
It was in to th is league of tita n s that C.L.R. James was physically
inducted by W illiam s in 1958; and w ith him , by name, and often by
James's own a rticu la tio n , was added the m em ory of the life and w ork of
George Padmore. A t the tim e, very few people had heard of James or
knew him . But there was no better way to be installed in to the con­
tem porary pantheon than to be anointed by W illiam s. James him self
recounts in his book Party P olitics in the West Indies the essential
strengths and weaknesses of th is position of w hich he was from the
beginning only too w e ll aware.1
James and W illiam s had long been friends. James, born in 1901, had
taught W illiam s, ten years his junior, at Queen's Royal College, one of
the tw o leading secondary educational in s titu tio n s in T rinidad in those
days. They were "colonials in exile" in B rita in at the tim e when W illiam s
was at O xford w ritin g the thesis that was u ltim a te ly to be published in
1944 as C apitalism and Slavery, an acknowledged classic fo r nearly fifty
years.
It is no shame on W illia m s to say that James was a m ajor influence on
 330 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

th a t w ork. W hen the book was w ritte n , th a t influence helped to sharpen

W illia m s's focus: a focus th a t gave utterance to a succinct sum m ation of
the underlying philosophy of the w o rk in five propositions advanced at
the end th a t James h im se lf to ld me he w rote.2A n exam ination of the te xt
w ould support the view th a t the ideas expressed are m ore consonant
w ith James's know n philosophical com m itm ent than w ith W illiam s's,
w hatever th a t com m itm ent m ig h t have bfeen. In tru th , it is a conviction
th a t is sharpened by a reading of the w hole chapter and the elaboration it
contains of the "ideas and p rin cip le s" th a t in fo rm it.
The p o litic a l situ a tio n in T rinidad and Tobago was very interesting.
The years preceding the triu m p h a l emergence of the p n m had been
probably the m ost backward and taw dry in the p o litic a l h is to ry of the
country. In 1950, a com bination of m iddle-class opportunist p o litics,
c o lonial reaction, and m etropolitan m aneuver had brought about the
fin a l h u m ilia tio n and u ltim a te p o litic a l decline of the B utler m ovem ent
and of its leader, the w orking-class agitator and p o litic ia n Tubal U riah
"B uzz" B utler.3 In 1937 B utler had led the assault on the econom ic and
p o litic a l structures of the C row n C olony system. Inspired by his leader­
ship and the behind-the-scenes organization of the Negro W elfare and
C u ltu ra l A ssociation (the n w a ), the w orking people of T rinidad and
Tobago la id down the m ost sig n ifica n t challenge to B ritis h im perial
a u th o rity in a period of m any such challenges. The rio ts and strikes that
to o k place in T rinidad and Tobago were countryw ide in character and,
taken in the context of s im ila r struggles in Jamaica, Barbados, St. K itts,
Guyana, and several other te rrito rie s, absolutely disturbing to B ritish
im pe ria lism .4 In T rinidad and Tobago, B utler him se lf was incarcerated
from 1939 to 1945,5 an act fa cilita te d by the onset of the Second W orld
War w hich made it tenable to characterize h im as a security risk. And his
foes were supported in b u ild in g up m iddle- and upper-class p o litic a l
organizations and "respectable trade u n io n ism ."6
But the coup de reaction was adm inistered in 1950. A prolonged and
vicious persecution of Butler, his party, his trade union, and his follow ers
had taken place in the years from 1945 to 1950. Then, in 1950 he was
w in kle d out of p a rticip a tio n in the governm ent form ed under a co n stitu ­
tio n that, fo r the firs t tim e, conferred a measure of m in is te ria l respon­
s ib ility on elected members of the local legislature. The next six years
witnessed the entrenchm ent of a very m ediocre conservative regime,
u n o ffic ia lly led by A lb e rt Gomes. Its firs t m ajor achievem ent was th a t it
accom plished the effective fin a l fru stra tio n of the w orkers' m ovem ent
 The P olitics of T rinidad and Tobago 331

led by Butler. In the period from 1937 to 1956, w h ile Barbados, Jamaica,
and Guyana moved forw ard p o litic a lly if not always co n stitu tio n a lly, the
establishm ent w orked w ith every resource at its command to suppress
p o litic a l radicalism in T rinidad and Tobago. It had taken tw enty years
but by 1956 the job had been done. The second m ajor achievem ent of the
"Gomes governm ent" was to put T rinidad and Tobago, as W illia m s was
to p u t it, "a t the bottom of the p o litic a l p ile ." By the tim e the p n m threw
the "Gomes governm ent" out of power, the country had acquired a
reputation, as Gordon Lewis put it, fo r "the flagrant im m o ra lity of the
local p o litic a l life , the w idely-publicized T rinidadian 'b o b o l'... became a
byw ord in the C aribbean."7
In 1956, then, Eric W illia m s entered a situ a tio n distinguished by the
fact th a t m ost people wanted to w ipe the slate clean and to start the
country on a new course. M eeting those expectations, W illia m s q u ickly
realized, called fo r talents not im m ediately available to him from the
p o litic a l stock th a t lay at hand. It is no m ystery that W illia m s turned to
James. T h e ir friendship had been continuous through the years. W il­
liam s had consulted w ith James, Padmore, and A rth u r Lewis in London
in December 1955 about the draft party program and co n stitu tio n of the
party he was about to form .8W illia m s knew that James was one of a very
short lis t of nationals to whom he could tu rn in the conviction that they
w ould bring to the p n m and to the country additional s k ills and resources
necessary for the task ahead. Indeed, he was on a short lis t of one. Learie
C onstantine, the noted cricketer, had already been incorporated. H is
gifts were not practical; they were sym bolic. Padmore was dead. A rth u r
Lewis was a com m itted academic. The local Left, the M arxist West
Indian N ational Party ( w i n p ), and the n w a in particular were alienated.
And the burden of leadership rested heavily on the shoulders of W illiam s.
H is in v ita tio n to James, therefore, was a plea to help w ith upgrading
the p n m but, it m ight be said, not w ith its radicalization. W illiam s
him self was no radical, even if the C olonial O ffice spies had long deter­
m ined th a t he was a C om m unist. W hat he wished to create was a w e ll-
oiled p o litic a l m achine th a t w ould keep the people in a high state of
em otional m o bilization, secure th e ir support for the party, and regularly,
at stated intervals, deliver the votes necessary to keep the p n m govern­
m ent in power. Apparently, w hat James thought he was com ing to do
was to assist in b u ild in g a w ell-organized p o litic a l party.
It was th is view, perhaps, more than any other that determ ined that
James's firs t m ajor com m itm ent was to take the editorship of the p n m
 332 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

party paper, The N ation. In M a rxist ideology, the party paper is second in
im portance on ly to the party its e lf. A w ell-organized party m ust have a
paper. Thus, under James's editorship The N a tio n was organized and
propagandized as it never had been before and never was afterw ard; b u t it
was m uch better at propaganda than at organization. It became the organ
of the m ost progressive opinion inside and outside the party w ith a
readership extending w e ll beyond the shbres of T rinidad and Tobago. It
was required reading fo r nationals abroad in the m etropolitan centers,
p a rtic u la rly in London and elsewhere in England, and it helped to fo rtify
the n a tio n a list com m itm ent to such themes as Federation, the a n ti­
colonial struggle, a n tiracialism , econom ic reorganization, and support
fo r West Indies cricke t. Its m ost m em orable crusades were fought in the
interests of Federation and of the claim s of the b rillia n t Barbados c ric k ­
eter, Frank W orrell, a black man, to be captain of the West Indies cricke t
team. Indeed, James was to claim apropos the Federation, "th e restra in t
of B ill [W illia m s] and The N a tio n and m any of [the] p n m " averted the
damage th a t threatened in some of the w orst days of secessionist ta lk
from Jamaica.9
The fact was, though, th a t James was no mere jo u rn a list, even if he was
a good one. As he h im se lf confessed, perhaps he had erred in taking the
e ditorship of the paper before its relationship to the party had been sorted
o ut and clarified, presum ably to his satisfaction. Also, lo oking back, he
was "q u ite certain th a t no harm w ould have been done at a ll and a great
deal of benefit w ould have accrued if I had been entrusted w ith the post of
General Secretary of the Party or better s till A dviser to the then General
Secretary."10
He was a p o litic ia n firs t and forem ost, and he was a p o litic ia n w ith
very firm and very clear ideas on the w ay forw ard fo r the p n m and the
country. F ollow ing from th is he kept his counsel to h im se lf—and to
Selma, his w ife, who had accompanied h im —fo r as long as possible,* and
then he in itia te d a series o f exchanges w ith W illia m s on w hat he per­
ceived as the m ost pressing problem s. The content of those exchanges
derives very largely from the selections offered by James in P arty P o li­
tics. From those it is clear th a t tw o issues were raised, one o ve rtly and
the other s u b lim in a lly. The overt issue was the issue of party organiza­
tio n . The s u b lim in a l issue was the issue o f James h im se lf and his rela­
tio n sh ip to the p n m .
W ith respect to the la tte r, it is clear th a t w h ile James had a strong
relationship w ith W illia m s, he had a very weak one w ith the party.
 The P olitics of T rinidad and Tobago 333

Though he was editor of T he N a tio n , he was not a mem ber of the General
Councils A part from his relationship w ith W illiam s, his relationship
w ith the party was uncertain and info rm a l. Eclectic, personal, and un­
structured relationships existed between him se lf and some individua ls
in the party, but he was no t in te g ra lly related in to the power structure.
C ertainly he was not, nor was he generally regarded as being, part and
parcel of the decision-m aking apparatus called in to action for consider­
ation of the m ost im portant questions. In P a rty P o litic s , James spent
m uch tim e c ritic iz in g the relationships between the party and the paper.
A n extension of th a t c ritic is m was his proposal, in te r alia, fo r a special
conference called fo r the purpose of reorganizing that relationship and, of
course, the status of the paper's editor as an im p o rta n t o ffic ia l of the
party. On th a t score he had very firm views. He argued that "the E ditor of
the o ffic ia l organ should by rights be a member of the General C ouncil
and an active participant in the leadership o f the Party." And, again: "The
[General] Secretary [of the Party] and the E ditor of the Party press should
be elevated to status not in fe rio r to any legislator. The Party should set
out to raise an annual fund of say 100,000 dollars fo r its ow n press,
headquarters, e tc ."11
A t firs t it seemed th a t his view s were being regarded favorably by the
leadership and the party. H is recom m endations "alm ost word for w ord
[form ed] the body of D r. W illiam s's address to the T h ird A nnual Conven­
tio n ." The address was repeated in the "U n iv e rs ity of W oodford Square"
and printed as a party docum ent, P erspectives fo r O u r P arty. From Ja­
maica, N orm an M anley praised the proposals, seeing in them , "in theo­
retical form w hat we in Jamaica have been try in g to do w ith the p n p . " 12
But there were other apprehensions about James. The p n m ' s p o litic a l
enemies and the opposition press were not amused, and possibly they
saw the o pportun ity to divide the n atio n a list m ovem ent. It was certainly
not in th e ir interest to sit, m ute and accom m odating, w h ile the tw o
finest m inds in the p o litic a l firm am ent consolidated a theoretical and
practical agreement about the way forw ard at a crucial stage in the
nation's development. A lb e rt Gomes, w hom W illiam s had effectively
sidelined, labelled the proposals as "C om m unistic"; and the T rin id a d
C h ro n ic le attem pted to prove th a t the ideas were "L e n in is t."13
More im portant, however, were the rum blings in the party. From
the very start, some had been skeptical of James's associations w ith
the party. In his autobiography, In w a rd H u n g e r , W illiam s declared that
"m any of our good party members on the General C ouncil objected to his
 334 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

adm ittance in to the Party on the ground of his notorious p o litic a l rec­
o rd ."14For such persons, the W illiam s-Jam es axis as w e ll, if re a lly consol­
idated, was unw elcom e. Rum ors began to circulate th a t James wanted to
"take over the party," to take the positions of general secretary and editor
(or, at least, to take the form er and co n tro l the latter).
There was also W illia m s's ow n unease. Am ong the petty-bourgeois
types th a t surrounded W illia m s, James Was a "C om m unist p o litic ia n "
parachuted in to the party by "B ill." He was no t to be trusted, no t only
because "C om m unists were bad people" b u t because his advice, if taken,
could easily d ive rt the party from the tra d itio n a l track of com fortable,
self-seeking in d iv id u a lis m th a t W illia m s h im se lf w ould, in 1973, de­
scribe as ram pant w ith in the organization.15 Even fo r W illia m s him self,
James was a smorgasbord o n ly some parts of w h ich were edible. He lik e d
the man. He respected his erud itio n , his capacity fo r hard w ork, his s k ills
as editor and propagandist. But he trem bled at the thought of really
attem pting to put in to effect the program and p o lic y to w hich James was
com m itted. H is was a party of a ll classes, a ll colors, and a ll creeds. He
feared the prospect of a p n m tainted w ith the n o tio n of class struggle,
w orking-class com m itm ent, and radical reconstruction of the economy.
And even though James, in his practical p o litic a l life , showed an agile
a b ility to get along w ith people whose view s he did not share, his know n
philosophical p osition scared W illia m s to death. In his own reference to
the s p lit in In w a rd Hunger, W illia m s's ow n words reflect the distaste o f a
m an w ho shared to a considerable degree the view s of those around him :

[James] claim ed th a t the a tta c k by the (F ourth Party) C o n v e n tio n on h im

was a p o litic a l a tta c k on me, and th a t he should have "ta k e n " the post of
General Secretary of th e P arty instead of E d ito r of th e P arty Organ, th a t
the en tire General C o u n c il sh o u ld be made to read some of his, th a t I was
a "gangster" fo r refusing to discuss the C o n v e n tio n a ctio n w it h h im . . .
and th a t I had sold o u t to th e A m e rica n s at the Tobago C onference.16

Already, he had insisted th a t the West Indian Federal Labour Party, of

w h ich James was secretary, should e lim inate the w ord "s o c ia lis t" from
its program m atic p la tfo rm .17 And in form ing the p n m he had carefully
ruled out the prospect of trade union a ffilia tio n to the party; such trade
unionists as were in it were there as individua ls and brought no organiza­
tio n a l baggage w ith them . Yet as the telephone strike in 1960 showed,
W illia m s was not b lin d to the advantages of trade union agitation in
bringing to heel elem ents in the business com m unity to w hich he was
 The P olitics of T rinidad and Tobago 335

opposed. Under the lash of trade union pressure, the more privileged and
prosperous firm s, denied of th e ir telephone service, were driven to the
expedient of h irin g "additio n a l staff in the form of H igh School youths on
holidays to act as messengers in an attem pt to keep th e ir contact w ith
customers on th e ir previous day to day basis. In spite of th is m any are
losing sales-----" 18
The telephone strike, indeed, was an im portant stage in the b u ild in g of
the peculiar "hands-on-hands-off" relationship th a t W illia m s developed
w ith the trade unions over the years. Those unions that were led by trade
unionists susceptible to his influence were pacified and emasculated
through the dom estication of th e ir leaders who were bought o ff w ith
cushy jobs and diplom atic assignments abroad. Those whose leaders
were not susceptible to such m anipulation were ostracized, pillo rie d ,
and persecuted fo r m ost of the tim e, p a rticu la rly after the enactm ent of
the In d u stria l S tabilization A ct in 1965. Later events c la rify that in
W illiam s there was a basic a ntiunio n m ind set, an antagonism to notions
of class and class struggle, an em bryonic accom m odationist co m m it­
m ent to the old colonial order, and a fundam ental d istrust of the people.
James, on the other hand was com m itted to a ll that W illiam s distrusted
and was unfortunate enough to be com m itted as w e ll to w hat W illiam s
him self was later to call "the absurdities of w orld re v o lu tio n ."19 There
was, in brief, a p o te n tia lly very d iffic u lt relationship between the tw o
men.
W ith respect to party organization, the o vertly declared issue that
fin a lly brought about the break between W illiam s and James, the prob­
lem was sim ple. In the p n m , W illiam s was the party and the party was
W illiam s. W hat W illia m s said was law ; and, as long as his rapport w ith
the people existed and his policies proved reasonably successful, the rest
of the party was content. Between elections they w ould do w hat W il­
liam s to ld them to do, and at election tim e they w ould rouse themselves
to w in the votes that w ould return him to power and confirm his close
admirers and supporters in the continued enjoym ent of th e ir privileges.
By 1970, the hostile masses in the streets w ould signalize the d e fin itive
tu rn in the relationship between the p n m and the people; and by 1973,
W illiam s w ould offer his resignation to the party w ith a horror-struck
analysis of the p o litic a l Frankenstein th a t he had created.20
For James, the mere thought of being in the same room w ith such an
organization, dignified w ith the name party, was the w orst fate im agin­
able. Chaos was already threatening: "The p n m has no organization to
 336 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

speak of, y e t . . . demands are hurled at it, as if [its members) are soldiers
w ho have noth in g to do b u t to obey. The in evitable result is th a t m em ­
bers and friends liste n , and then do little or nothing. The pu b lic and the
Party get blam ed fo r apathy, ignorance, backwardness, when in re a lity
the fa u lt is e n tire ly the leadership's."21
Already, in Facing R e a lity, James had c ritic iz e d the vanguard party. But
the vanguard party presented a d iffe re n t*kin d of problem . W hat James
argued against was "d ic ta to rs h ip ," n o t organization. In his view , the p n m
was fundam entally disorganized, and the g u lf between its e lf and the
vanguard party was w ide enough to p e rm it fo r sig n ifica n t perm utation in
the space between.
Inevitably, James and W illia m s locked horns over the question of party
organization. It was James's view th a t "W est Indian p o litic a l organiza­
tio n is lagging behind [the] developm ent of the masses and the needs of
the day." P o litic a l organization lagged behind social and econom ic de­
velopm ent; even progressive p o litic a l organizations continuously disap­
pointed and irrita te d the masses by th e ir lack of organizational self­
developm ent; opposition parties w ith no respectable programs of th e ir
ow n are provided w ith opportun ities to b a it and jeer and c ritic iz e ; and,
given the in h e re n tly unstable character of West Indian society as a re­
s u lt of colonialism , a state of in c ip ie n t (and continuing) disorder is the
resu lt.22
C.L.R. James, already a developed M a rxist w ith a fo llo w in g of some
significance among independently m inded M arxists, had his ow n firm
view s on the questions of party organization. For him , the p n m was
placed in a situ a tio n th a t had trem endous significance not only fo r the
party and the people of T rinidad and Tobago b u t also fo r countries placed
lik e it, countries lacking "an indigenous c iv iliz a tio n and c u ltu re " and led
by parties lik e the p n m , com ing out of colonialism and entering upon the
path of independence. In such countries, everything has to be created
from scratch: "P o litics, econom ic developm ent, art, lite ra tu re , history,
even social b ehavio ur. . . EverythingZ'23
A nd then he spelt ou t his conception of the k in d of party he envisaged.
For him , the key words were "m ass . . . dem ocratic." "Organize your
Party, B ill, organize your Party," James pleaded, seeing w hat W illia m s
w ould never see.24 The p n m in the period from 1958 to 1960 could s till
claim to be popular; w hether it was a mass party, dem ocratically orga­
nized and led, was debatable. C e rta in ly James thought it was not. And on
th is question he and W illia m s parted company.
 The P olitics of T rinidad and Tobago 33 7

T ypically, James couched the differences in philosophical and ideologi­

cal term s. For him , the organization of a mass party was a "m atter of life
and death for an emerging West Indian society." And W illiam s, just as
typ ica lly, chose the path of bureaucratic assault on James's perform ance
at The N a tio n and ignored the organizational question com pletely. A t
the Fourth A nnual C onvention of the p n m , an investigative com m ittee
was set up to loolc in to the relationship between the party and the paper.
In addition, the General C ou n cil in itia te d its own investigation and
w rote off the w hole period of James's editorship as "q u ite b rie fly . . . a
period of m ism anagem ent."25 James was summoned to appear before a
d isciplinary com m ittee on tw o charges. He refused the in v ita tio n , and he
le ft the party. W illia m s said he was expelled. The parting was to prove to
be perm anent.
Over the ensuing five years, C.L.R. James was to emerge in the public
m ind, and even more so in W illiam s's, as a serious elem ent in the ranks
of the opposition forces in T rinidad and Tobago. W hat is more, James
brought to the p o litics of the country a revolutionary, M a rxist dim ension
that had u n til then been weak and in articulate. It was not that M arxism
was unrepresented among the existing p o litic a l philosophies. The M arx­
is t Left had been in evidence since the 1930s, beginning w ith the n w a
and the a ctivitie s of personalities lik e Jim Barratt, C h ristina King, Spen­
cer Percival, Elma Francois and others, rig h t up to the late forties and
early fiftie s w ith the w i n p and people lik e Lennox Pierre and John La
Rose, Trevor C arter and B illy Strachan, and on in to the sixties w ith
Desmond A li and John Poon. But it had neither been very articulate nor
very strong. James's emergence as an in te rn a tio n a lly im portant p o litic a l
figure, as a M arxist spokesman of adm itted authority, and as a c ritic as
w e ll of the p n m regim e to w hich he had b rie fly belonged was to change
a ll that.
James brought to the M arxist Left a personal prestige th a t no single
in d ivid u a l had previously possessed. And even though it was to emerge
that m any members of the Left disagreed w ith James on some aspects of
his p o litic a l beliefs, it was generally adm itted that his credentials were,
fo r practical purposes, unassailable. For example, the outstanding con­
tradiction between James and many members of the Left had to do w ith
his strident anti-Soviet, and less strident anti-C uban position. But n ei­
ther James nor those who disagreed w ith h im on that score was w illin g to
make th a t difference an issue.
But it was not prestige alone that James brought. In addition, he
 338 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

brought a s p e cificity of organizational m ethods and goals th a t had been

m issing previously. Part of th is had to do w ith his id e n tific a tio n of the
O ilfie ld W orkers Trade U n io n ( o w t u ) as a m ajor factor in fu tu re p o litic a l
program m ing; and in p a rticu la r his id e n tific a tio n of George Weekes, the
risin g star in the union in the early sixties, as an im p o rta n t p o litic a l fig ­
ure in b u ild in g w orking-class p o litic a l consciousness and organization.
James had n o thing but adm iration fo r Weekes and, in the usual James
m anner, discovered in Weekes a h ith e rto undiscovered excellence that
made him , in James's opinion, the near perfect w orking-class p o litic a l
leader. In the years th a t follow ed, he was to see in a variety of individua ls,
ranging from Stephen M araj to D rayton W heeler to M ackandal Daaga
(form erly Geddes Granger), an undiscovered excellence th a t some of
them were them selves q uite unable to see.
In Weekes he had picked w e ll. From 1960 rig h t up to the fa ll of the p n m
governm ent in 1986, George Weekes was one of the m ost consistent and
severe c ritic s of the regim e. M ore im portant, though, fo r m ost of th a t
tim e u n til his retirem ent from the o w t u in 1985, he was perceived as the
leading trade union advocate of w orkers rights and p o litic a l aspirations
in the country. H is apogee as a w orking-class p o litic ia n was achieved in
the period 1965 to 1977, a period that spanned the enactm ent of the
In d u stria l S tabilisation A c t ( i s a ), the form a tio n of the W orkers and Farm ­
ers Party, and the emergence of the U nited Labour Front (u l f ) from its
fo rm a tio n in 1973 to the s p lit th a t took place in 1977. F ollow ing his
retirem ent in 1985 under enorm ous pressure from a young am bitious
clique in the union, he accepted a senatorship from the N a tio n a l A l­
liance for R econstruction (n a r ) governm ent and was, at the tim e of
James's death, in serious c o n flic t w ith the new leadership.
But in the earlier period, the o w t u and George Weekes were the m ost
im po rta n t item s in the toolbox th a t James fashioned fo r taking on the
W illia m s regim e after his departure from the p n m . There were other
item s in th a t box. There was, fo r example, the N ew Beginning M ove­
m ent ( n b m ), an organization founded by James to undertake p o litic a l
w ork in T rinidad and Tobago on his behalf. Through th a t group, James
undertook the propaganda w ork th a t was necessary to popularize his
p o litic a l opinions. A newspaper was founded, publications were put out,
and p o litic a l a c tiv ity was undertaken. The group was m ost active up to
1976-77 when it entered on a decline fo llo w in g the emergence of the
u l f , and later, the appointm ent of its leading figure, Bukka Rennie, as

editor of the o w t u newspaper, The Vanguard. But long before that, it was
 The P olitics of T rinidad and Tobago 339

clear that the o w t u and George Weekes were the instrum ents favored b y
James fo r the w ork at hand.
James had always been clear th a t the p o litic s of the postindependence
period w ould be daunting. He was equally certain that the p n m was going
to be severely tested in m any respects by the challenges of independence;
and perhaps he was even more certain that W illia m s him self w ould be.
P o litic a l people V h o w ish to understand som ething of the dilem m a
anticipated fo r W illia m s and his party need only read the few pages of
P arty P o litics encompassing James's analysis, e n title d "D r. E. E. W il­
liam s" and the "N ote fo r 1962."26
When James departed from the country in August I960, he had no
doubt but that he w ould return. In the in te rim , he kept h im self fu lly
briefed on the situ a tio n in Trinidad and Tobago, m aintained his p o litic a l
contacts, and bided his tim e. On 26 February 1964, at the West Indian
Students Association in Edinburgh, James gave every ind ica tio n of being
ready to return once circum stances were right. Speaking beyond his
audience to the people of Trinidad and Tobago, he said:

If you w a n t me, send fo r me. You sent fo r George Headley because you
w anted h im to play against the Englishm en. If you w a n t me to come and
enter p o litic s , then make a p u b lic sub scrip tio n and send for me. I w ill
come. Furtherm ore, I do n 't w a n t a seat. M y people have been liv in g in
Tunapuna fo r 150 years in the same spot. Everybody know s them , and it
w o u ld be the general o p in io n th a t if I ran in Tunapuna I am hardly lik e ly
to be defeated. I w ill no t ru n in Tunapuna. If I go, I am ru n n in g in the
constitu e n cy th a t the Prem ier has chosen fo r h im s e lf—w h ich e ve r one he
likes, that's up to h im . If he says he's going to ru n fo r th is one, I w ill
oppose h im there. The w hole of the West Indies w ill see it. . . . If he w ins,
w e ll, he w ins. I am n o t dying to be any m in is te r in any West Indian
island. But if I w in th a t is clear notice to everybody th a t the people w a n t a
change. A n d even if I lose, the a lte rn a tive p o s itio n w o u ld have been pu t
before them . A n d th a t is w h a t I am prepared to do. I do n 't w a n t anybody
to give me some money. N o t at a ll. P ublic subscription. Put i t dow n for
everybody to see: "W e w ant James to come back." I say if you do that, I
w ill come.27

But that was the ideal, and it was not to come to pass. James made his
return to Trinidad in early 1965 as a correspondent for the London
newspaper, The G uardian, to cover the upcom ing Test series between
the West Indies and England. The country was in the throes of a serious
industrial co n flict, the firs t in a long lin e of confrontations that were
 340 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

to take center stage in the postindependence era. Already, the a ir was

charged w ith p o litic a l and ideological c o n flic t. In 1963, the governm ent,
openly voicing its concerns, had established the M banefo C om m ission
to investigate and report on the incidence of "subversive a c tiv ity " in the
country. The C om m ission had conducted its investigations over the
preceding tw o years and was about ready to report in early 1965. In fact,
the governm ent was to use the Report, th e a trica lly, to add to the atm o­
sphere of in d ic tm e n t and in tim id a tio n th a t surrounded the passage of the
is a , the centerpiece of the events about to unfold. It was la id on the table

in parliam ent w ith some w ell-chosen words by W illia m s h im self before

the discussion of the i s a , w h ich was hustled in to law in a single s ittin g .
And in the nearly tw o years th a t ensued between the enactm ent of the
i s a and the general elections of 1966, the a ir was th ic k w ith charges of

"C om m unist subversion" uttered by governm ent spokesmen.28

For W illia m s, though, the s itu a tio n was sim ple: "T he subversive ele­
m ents in the society, w ith James in the forefront, were at w ork; the
background was an open attem pt to lin k the trade unions in o il and
sugar."29 As a result, James was detained under house arrest alm ost as
soon as he touched the so il of T rinidad and Tobago. A state of emergency
was declared in the ward of St. Ann's, county St. George (m iles away from
the o il and sugar belts), and he was restricted to th is sister's home at 124
Seventh Street, Barataria. A t th a t place, in those circum stances, James
began to plan the direct p o litic a l in te rve n tio n in the country's p o litic s .
Like W illia m s ten years earlier, C.L.R. James decided "to le t his bucket
dow n" in T rinidad and Tobago and to take the fig h t to his erstw hile friend
and associate.
A t firs t, he attem pted to use the sm all progressive elem ent w ith in the
m ain opposition party (that is, the D em ocratic Labour Party [ d l p ]) led by
Rudranath Capildeo, the "Indian doctor," w ho was id e n tifie d as the
natural riv a l to W illia m s because of his scholastic record. Indeed, the
prospect of elections in the not-too-dista nt future was once again stim u ­
la tin g schism s and strains w ith in the party. Stephen M aharaj, the incum ­
bent party leader in Capildeo's absence abroad, and Leader of the Opposi­
tio n in parliam ent, was persuaded by James to attem pt to reorganize the
party, name a new slate of senators to the second chamber, and put the
d l p on a new and better footing as a broad-based, nonracial, genuinely

progressive labor party. Suffice it to say th a t the attem pt failed, and very
q u ic k ly M aharaj h im self was out of the party.
The fa ilu re of th is attem pt m eant th a t a new vehicle had to be ide n ti-
 The P olitics of Trinidad and Tobago 341

fled w ith w hich to fig h t W illiam s. W hatever his in te n tio n s m ight have
been, James was now persuaded that the issue between h im self and
W illiam s had to be settled. W hile under house arrest he had seen a
constant stream of visitors, m any of w hom had encouraged, even be-
seeched h im to stay and become involved p o litic a lly . He had listened. A t
firs t he had done w hat he knew best. He had lectured on p o litics, philoso­
phy, lite ra tu re a lfin the grand Jamesian manner. On 25 M arch, one week
after the enactm ent of the i s a , a few individua ls at the U niversity, m yself
included, had received police perm ission to take him to the campus to
speak on W ilson H arris. He was in his elem ent. He not only spoke on
W ilson H arris; I believe he introduced him , for the firs t tim e, to an
audience in the Caribbean. He spoke on Heidegger, Jaspers, and Sartre.
And one could feel that he fe lt, as he spoke, th a t his Jasperian tim e had
come: he was now liv in g in his ow n "extrem e lim it boundary situa­
tio n ."30 I w e ll remember his te llin g me as we rode together to the U n i­
versity for the lecture th a t he had seen his doctor, and he was happy
to report th a t the doctor had to ld h im he was good for another tw enty
years. T im e enough, he commented, to do w hat he had to do to replace
W illiam s. W ith the i s a in place, W illia m s deemed it unnecessary to
prolong James's detention. The state of emergency was lifte d , autom at­
ic a lly p u ttin g to an end the re strictio n put on James; and the p o litic a l
w ork began.
It was an u p h ill task a ll the way. The break between James and W il­
liam s was out in the open, and m any doors were now closed. It is not that
the ordinary T rinidadian regarded James w ith any less respect or affec­
tio n than before,- he had that capacity of endearing him self to a ll but the
m ost unrepentantly hostile. But to offer w hat could be regarded as sig n if­
icant p o litic a l assistance was another m atter. Such assistance and collab­
oration as there was came p rin c ip a lly from the acknowledged Left w ing:
from the o w t u and from the other p o litic a l organizations already com­
m itte d to a M arxist or revolutionary position. But those resources were
sm all. W illiam s was w atching the o w t u lik e a hawk, p n m agents w ith in
the union were on the alert to see w hether the union's revenues were
being used to support the p o litic a l a ctivitie s of the leadership. M ore than
that, the essential dichotom y that was to become tra d itio n a l w ith in the
o w t u soon took shape. On the one hand, the leadership adopted a strong

a n ti-im p e ria list and anti-PNM position, m aking the i s a a m atter of p rin ­
cipled disagreement w ith the governm ent. W henever it was able to dem­
onstrate th a t the m aterial benefits of the members were at stake, the
 342 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

wages and w o rkin g conditions, there was no shortage of rank-and-file

support. W hen on the other hand the leadership attem pted to take an
avowedly p o litic a l stand, however, and p a rtic u la rly to take the fig h t to
the p n m p o litic a lly , general union support was divided at best and some­
tim es s ig n ific a n tly hostile.
In other words, the puta tive strength of Weekes and the o w t u , in the
actual p o litic a l contest, counted fo r m uch less than m ig h t have been
im agined. In the w ider trade u nion environm ent, it was clear th a t a
serious s p lit had taken place over the i s a . The Trade U nion Congress
( t u c ) of w h ich George Weekes was the leader was divided down the

m iddle in a rupture th a t was to become endem ic from th a t tim e on u n til

w e ll in to the 1980s. C arl T u ll, the p n m leader of the telephone w orkers'
union, replaced N athaniel C ritch lo w , leader of the N atio n a l U nion of
G overnm ent Employees (n u g e ) in the senate. And a governm ent spon­
sored N a tio n a l Federation of Labour was form ed w ith the clear in te n ­
tio n of s p littin g the labor m ovem ent and d im in ish in g the influence of
Weekes, the o w t u , and the progressive trade unions and trade unionists.
As a result, James had to fa ll back on the people fo r the support th a t he
needed, and he had to scrounge around for the resources w ith w hich to
wage a credible p o litic a l campaign against W illia m s and the p n m . Indeed,
were it not fo r the generosity of a single businessman w ho undertook to
pay the deposits of m ost of the candidates to contest the elections, the
expected fin a l contest m ig h t w e ll never have come off.
The fact was th a t even when a ll the resources of James and his associ­
ates were aggregated, they s till fe ll substantia lly short of w hat was re­
quired to deal w ith a regim e already entrenched in power for nearly ten
years and led by a sagacious and resourceful opponent who possessed
charism atic powers. A part from Weekes and the o w t u , there was the
Transport and In d u stria l W orkers U nion, w hich was just beginning to
emerge as a full-fledged, radical union, there was Stephen M aharaj, and
there were a few supporters who had follow ed h im out of the d l p . Finally,
there was the M a rxist Left: determ ined, b u t sm all and weak.
O n the other side, there was the p n m party, the governm ent, the state,
the pub lic bureaucracy, the d l p as o ffic ia l opposition, the Liberal Party
com prised of elem ents who had earlier broken away from the d l p , the
Chamber of Commerce, the m outhpiece of big business, the m u ltin a ­
tionals in o il, sugar, banking, insurance and advertising, the local m an­
ufacturers, the churches, and a w hole host of com m unity, village, youth
and other organizations m ore or less firm ly com m itted to the status quo.
 The P olitics of T rinidad and Tobago 343

There was also the New W orld Group, an association of regional in te lle c ­
tuals that refrained from taking part in the p o litic a l struggle.
As a result, the p o litic a l challenge prom ised by James was not quite
w hat either he or the public had expected. In the p ublic im agination the
Jam es-W illiam s clash was to be the p o litic a l war of wars. In fact, it was an
a nticlim ax. The p o litic a l m o b iliza tio n of the new m ovem ent began w ith
the Public A c tio n C om m ittee w hich soon transform ed its e lf in to the
W orkers and Farmers Party ( w f p ). The party's program was basically
socialist in in spiration. It also anticipated to a considerable degree, not
only future p o litic a l platform s of the national Left, but also aspects of the
program that W illia m s adopted in haste—and called "The Chaguaramas
D eclaration"—after the 1970 Black Power unrest. The w f p M anifesto of
1966 was a more enduring achievem ent than the w f p campaign for
p o litic a l power, and it was one of tw o legacies le ft by C.L.R. James to the
p o litic s that emerged in the ensuing period.
The w f p failed to w in a single seat though its candidates' lis t was
studded w ith the names of prom inent left-w ingers who, lik e James, were
expected to do better. Am ong these was Weekes h im self who was so
shaken by the results that he could never w ith equanim ity face the
prospect of running for electoral office again. Also listed among the
defeated was Basdeo Panday whose electoral fortunes were to change in
the elections of 1976 as a candidate and leading figure in the u l f . The
party took three per cent of the popular vote, the least of a ll the parties
contesting. The p n m received fifty -tw o per cent and won tw enty-four
seats; the d l p received th irty -fo u r per cent and won tw elve seats. The
Liberal Party, w hich lik e the w f p had w on no seats, got nine per cent of
the vote. The elections had reconfirm ed the racial s p lit in the electorate.
The w f p had been obliterated. James took the earliest flig h t out of the
country and abandoned, fo r the tim e being, the electoral struggle against
W illiam s.
But the w f p had le ft another enduring legacy: it had form alized the
radical dissent against W illiam s. From that tim e on p o litic s proceeded on
three d is tin c t tracks.
First there was the conventional, parliam entary p o litic s generally re­
garded as fu tile as evidenced by the disastrous experiences of the w f p
itself, as w e ll as of the D em ocratic Labour Party and the Liberal Party.
Second, there was the radical "unconventional" p o litics of a grow ing
number of M arxist and non-M arxist groups, increasingly disenchanted
w ith elections and more concerned w ith liftin g the level of p o litic a l
 344 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

consciousness as a precondition fo r accom plishing the dow nfall of the

p n m . T h ird there was, in due course, a th ird stream a ctively involved in

undertaking revo lu tio n a ry insu rre ctio n under the guidance of C.L.R.
James.
To be sure, the period seemed ripe fo r insurrection. A gainst the back­
ground of the c i a overthrow of the Peoples Progressive Party in Guyana
in 1964, the U.S. invasion of the D om inican R epublic in 1965, the A n ­
g u illa n crisis in the period 1967 to 1969, and fin a lly the Rodney crisis of
1968, a m ajor ra dicalization was taking place throughout the region. In
T rinidad and Tobago its e lf, there was a sig n ifica n t radicalization of pub­
lic consciousness in the context of the debates surrounding the founding
of the Caribbean Free Trade Area ( c a r i f t a ). W ith in the labor m ovem ent,
grow ing resentm ent of the i s a and its provisions provided the progressive
unions, especially the o w t u and the Transport and In d u stria l W orkers
U nion (t i w u ), w ith a standard grievance around w h ich to m obilize th e ir
follow ers, and the tem po of w ild ca t strikes increased. The previous
distance between the leaderships of the progressive and the governm ent-
oriented trade unions had a ll bu t disappeared.
In A p ril 1969 the bus strike took place, m arking a c ritic a l stage in the
four-year campaign against the i s a . In an episode redolent w ith the
aura of a n ti-w o rke r b ru ta lity in the colo n ia l era, the governm ent ordered
the police to use force against the strikers w ho were try in g to prevent
the buses from being driven on to the road by scab labor. Trade u n io n ­
ists were beaten and seventeen persons were arrested, in clu d in g George
Weeks, Joe Young, and C live Nunez, top o ffic ia ls of the t i w u . From here
on increased labor m o b iliz a tio n became the order of the day. Eric W il­
liam s fo r his part declared th a t it w ould be a "fig h t to the fin is h ."
It was the Sir George W illia m s U n iv e rs ity crisis in M ontreal, Canada,
th a t eventually brought the m ovem ent in to the streets, under the leader­
ship of a new and h ith e rto unheralded organization, the N a tio n a l Joint
A c tio n C om m ittee ( n j a c ). The Black Power m ovem ent had arrived. The
n j a c s k illfu lly m obilized the u n ive rsity students, the urban masses,

organized and unorganized labor, and the unem ployed in to a mass m ove­
m ent of protest th a t erupted in the country's p o litic s in early 1970, from
26 February when it began to 22 A p ril when it was suppressed. The effect
of the Black Power unrest was to erode the popular support fo r the
governm ent, dem onstrate its unpopularity, and isolate i t from a ll b ut the
m ost conservative and reactionary of its supporters.
 The P olitics of T rinidad and Tobago 345

As the crisis developed the m ilita ry became involved. Founded at

independence in 1962 and bereft of any serious role pertaining to the
country's defense, by 1970 the arm y had become unsure of its e lf, dissatis­
fied, corrupt, incom petent, and increasingly unmanageable. Its apparent
m ain role was to suppress in te rn a l disorder and, as the crisis developed,
m in is te ria l statem ents clearly indicated that the arm y w ould be ex­
pected, in an emergency, to do ju st that. But the arm y of 1970 was not the
arm y of 1962. Themselves inspired by the prevalent Black Power ideol­
ogy of the mass m ovem ent, soldiers in u n ifo rm were seen giving the
Black Power clenched fis t salute to the crowds, and Black Power slogans
were prom in e n tly displayed on the w alls of the Police T raining Centre.
In due course the arm y did become involved, but not quite as the govern­
m ent had expected.
On 22 A p ril a state of emergency was declared and the leaders of the
mass m ovem ent were arrested. Thereafter a series of events ensued
w hich threatened fo r a w h ile to overthrow the governm ent itse lf. The
fact that it did not happen is explained by the incoherence of the tactics
involved. The in te lle ctu a l insp ira tio n of the arm y revolt was separate
and d is tin c t from that w hich presided over the Black Power dem onstra­
tions. Indeed, the n j a c leaders were deeply d is tru s tfu l of the m ilita ry ,
w hile the leaders of the m ilita ry re vo lt regarded the n j a c leadership as a
group of bum bling amateurs. P artly because of its own subjective defi­
ciencies, b u t also because the m ilita ry re vo lt w ent w e ll beyond w hat the
n j a c had contem plated, there was never any real jo in in g of the forces.

The mass m ovem ent had no weapons, and those who had the weapons
had little or no access to the mass m ovem ent. And so the p n m adm in­
istra tio n survived.
The exact role of C.L.R. James in these events is to be determ ined by
further research. W hat is certain is th a t m any of the activists behind the
m ilita ry insurrection were his close associates and openly adm itted his
p o litic a l and ideological influence over them . The period 1965 to 1970
saw the emergence of an opposition of a new type in T rinidad and
Tobago. T hat opposition, d ire ctly and in d ire ctly, witnessed to James's
unrivaled influence as a revolutionary in te lle c tu a l whose w ritin g s and
a ctivitie s came close to a n ticipatin g in Trinidad, by nearly ten years, the
revolution that took place in Grenada in 1979. Despite his defeat in 1966,
therefore, James had emerged as an im portant revolutionary figure in
Caribbean p o litic s in the era of the sixties and early seventies onward.
 346 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

Notes

L C.L.R. James, Party Politics in the West Indies (form erly pnm Go Forward)
(Port of Spain, 1962), Part II, "The N a tio n and The Party." (Document subm itted
to Dr. W illiam s, M a rc h -A p ril 1960).
2. See Eric W illiam s, C apitalism and Slavery (Chapel H ill: U n ive rsity of
N o rth Carolina Press, 1944), chapter 13, w h ich pulled together the m ain "ideas
and principles" that emerged from the study. ^
3. See W. R. Jacobs, "The Role of Some Labour Movements in the P olitical
Process of Trinidad and Tobago, 1935-1950," M.Sc. thesis, U n ive rsity of the West
Indies, 1969. See also his B utler vs. the King: Riots and Sedition in 1937 (Port of
Spain: Key Publications, 1976).
4. See M alcolm Cross and Gad Heuman, eds., Labour in the Caribbean (Lon­
don: M acm illan, 1988).
5. See Jacobs, B utler vs. the King and Roy Thomas, ed., The T rinidad Labour
Riots (St. Augustine: U n ive rsity of the West Indies, 1987).
6. W. R. Jacobs, The H isto ry and Philosophy o f the Trade U nion Movem ent: A
Caribbean Perspective (San Fernando: O ilfields Workers Trade U nion, 1975).
7. Gordon Lewis, The G row th o f the Modern West Indies (New York: M o n th ly
Review, 1968), 208.
8. Eric W illiam s, Inw a rd Hunger: The Education o f a Prime M in iste r (London:
Andre Deutsch, 1969), 143.
9. See his "Lecture on Federation" (1959), in C.L.R. James, A t the Rendezvous
o f V ictory (London: A llis o n and Busby, 1984), 108.
10. James, P arty Politics, 43.
11. Ibid., 42, 14.
12. Ibid., 14.
13. Ibid.
14. W illiam s, Inw ard Hunger, 267.
15. See Selwyn Ryan, R evolution and Reaction: Parties and P olitics in T rin­
idad and Tobago, 1970-1981 (St. Augustine: U n ive rsity of the West Indies, 1989),
Chapter 1.
16. W illiam s, Inw ard Hunger, 268.
17. See, for example, John Mordecai, The West Indies: The Federal Negotia­
tions (London: A lle n and U n w in , 1968).
18. "C om m ercial Report-Trinidad," Canadian H igh Commission, Port of Spain,
25 August 1960.
19. W illiam s, Inw a rd Hunger, 77.
20. Selwyn Ryan, R evolution and Reaction, Chapter 1.
21. James, Party Politics, 18.
22. James, Party Politics, 12-24.
23. Ibid.
24. James, Party Politics, 77. Letter from C.L.R. James to Eric W illiam s,
26 M arch 1960.
25. "Report of the [pnm ] General C o u n cil," quoted by W illiam s in Inw ard
Hunger, 268.
26. James, Party Politics, 157-64.
 The P olitics of Trinidad and Tobago 347

27. James, A t the Rendezvous of Victory, 157-58.

28. W illiam s him self provides tw o examples of such statements in Inw ard
Hunger, 335. Both examples, incidentally, reveal the extent to w hich Cuba, and
its relations w ith the Trinidad and Tobago Left, loomed large in o fficial conscious­
ness.
29. Ibid.
30. This lecture is reprinted in C.L.R. James, Spheres o f Existence (London:
A lliso n and Busbyf 1980), 157-72.
 A ld on L. Nielsen

Reading James Reading

Once in 1965, C.L.R. James was tem p o ra rily released from the house
arrest im posed upon h im by the T rinidad governm ent of D r. E ric W il­
liam s, a m an to w hom James had earlier given guidance in his own
rereadings of history, so th a t James m ig h t address an audience at the
U n iv e rs ity of the West Indies on the subject of his recent reading. The
lecture James gave th a t evening was subsequently p rinted and circulated
under the title "W ilson H a rris—A P hilosophical Approach" as the firs t
jo in t p u b lica tio n of the College of A rts and Sciences and the E xtra-M ural
D epartm ent of the U n iv e rs ity of the West Indies' General P ublic Lecture
Series, and it begins w ith a s ta rtlin g b u t ty p ic a lly Jamesian observation.
He rem arks: " I w ould be very m uch surprised if, except in a private home,
there was a copy of Heidegger's Being and Tim e in the West Indies" ("O n
W ilson H a rris" 157). It is a com m ent th a t addresses its e lf at once to the
state of our reading and to our reading in the state. James doubts the
existence of a copy of Heidegger's central w ork in a state-sponsored
library, b u t he know s there is a volum e of Heidegger in his private library,
in his house, w h ich is now his prison, from w h ich he is tem porarily
paroled by the state to issue his book report. It is also ty p ic a lly Jamesian
th a t the next sentence of his lecture on W ilson H arris, a man he had tw o
years earlier called "one of the strangest of liv in g novelists" (Kas 28),
makes th is backhanded rem ark about Caribbean readings of C ontinen tal
philosophy the ground fo r his rem arks on H arris. "T herefore," he advises,
"you w ill understand w hy I w ill speak at greater length than usual on
certain philosophical aspects of H arris's w o rk " (157).
It is an arresting rem ark, as it underscores the fact th a t James puts
these observations in to c ircu la tio n speaking as a man under confine­
m ent. He is, as has been true of h im in the past, attem pting to circulate

348
 Reading James Reading 349

his readings, and thus he is repeating the acts th a t brought on his arrest.
The state had, at least once, attem pted to arrest James's w ritin g its e lf.
H is 1960 series of lectures, printed under the title M odern P o litics, had
been locked down in a warehouse in Port of Spain; thus Eric W illia m s
held James in one house and his w orks in another. But James was able to
circulate his H^jdegger, thus p u ttin g in to play from his private, peni­
te n tia ry lib ra ry philosophical com plications in the continuing conver­
sation he had w ith contem porary w ritin g . H is house em itted Heidegger
for the purpose of confirm in g his reading of H arris. In his in tro d u ctio n
to H arris's c ritic a l study "T ra d itio n and the West Indian N ovel," w hich
has been joined to his lecture on W ilson H arris in the re p rin t collec­
tio n Spheres o f Existence, James remembers his excitem ent upon hear­
ing and reading H arris. He says: "W hom H arris had been reading I don't
know. I sent h im at once a copy of Heidegger and he rapidly replied that
he agreed w ith Heidegger e n tire ly " (170). Hence, we have one p rivately
held Heidegger volum e reread agreeably by "one of the strangest of liv in g
novelists."
But unless James's later m em ories of these events are faulty, there is a
redoubling of th is rereading to be traced. In an A p ril 1972 interview ,
James recalls the episode som ewhat d iffe re n tly and more fu lly :

I w e n t one day to th e W est In d ia n S tudents' hostel in London. W ilso n

delivered a lecture on " T ra d itio n and the West Indian N o v e l." A fte r about
ten or fifte e n m in u te s I realized th a t W ilso n was after som ething new. He
was saying th a t the tra d itio n of the E nglish novel was one th in g , b u t the
West Indian novel, to re a lly express som ething, should be som ething
new. If I m ay use the w ords o f Heidegger, the English novel so far as we
were concerned w o u ld be an "in a u th e n tic experience" and the "a u th e n tic
experience" w o u ld be a creative novel th a t did n o t depend on the pre­
vious style. I w e n t hom e and I dug up a book th a t R ichard W rig h t had
given to me, w h ic h I had been reading in te rm itte n tly over the years. I t
was a book th a t explained the ph ilo so p h ica l w ritin g of Heidegger, the
G erm an e x is te n tia lis t philosopher. So I read the th in g again th a t same
n ight. The next m o rn in g I to ld a boy w h o m I knew, "Take th is to M r.
H arris fo r me and ask h im to read it . " I sent i t to W ilso n saying, "W o u ld
you say th a t w h a t Heidegger is saying is in lin e w ith w h a t you have been
w ritin g and w h a t you to ld us the o th e r n ig h t? " W ith in a few hours i t
came back w ith a note, "Yes. I d o n 't kn o w Heidegger's w ritin g , b u t th a t is
w h a t I am th in k in g , th a t is w h a t I am saying." (Kas 29)

H arris, evidently, was a quick study. Here we see a lite ra lly enacted gene­
alogy of readings. Richard W right, in his exile's tu rn tow ard existential-
 350 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

ism , passes his Heideggerian te x t to C.L.R. James, w ho in tu rn passes it to

H arris as co n firm a tio n of H arris's w ritin g and reading of West Indian l i t ­
erary arts. But w hat James finds in H arris's ow n texts is th a t H arris, w ith ­
out previously having read Heidegger, has found a route through H e i­
deggerian thought th a t passes beyond the existentialism s of W right and
Sartre. In attending to the language and space of the N ew W orld c o n ti­
nent, James believes, H arris has accom plished a Heideggerian hom ecom ­
ing; he has added "a contin e n ta l dim ension to West Indian insular lite ra ­
tu re " ("O n W ilson H a rris" 172) in both senses of the w ord "co n tin e n ta l."
C.L.R. James often conducted his readings under state surveillance.
M ore than a decade before his lecture on H arris he had been under arrest
on another island, rereading another of the strangest of novelists. S ittin g
on E llis Island, James had reread the greatest novel of another w rite r w ho
had endured arrest on an island, Herm an M e lv ille . In w ritin g his study of
M e lv ille , a study th a t may be read in some ways as a precursor te xt to
H arris's T radition, the W riter and Society, James had noted:

It seems that at very great crises in human history, and they must be very
great, an author appears who becomes aware that one great age is passing
and another beginning. But he becomes aware of this prim a rily in terms
of new types of human character, w ith new desires, new needs, new
passions. The great w rite r. . . conceives a situation in w hich this charac­
ter is brought right up against things that symbolize the new. The scene is
set outside the confines of civilization. (Mariners 124)

It had to have been w ith a sense of hom ecom ing th a t th is Heideggerian

student of M e lv ille 's M oby-D ick read, a decade later, another novel
about a strange crew of m ariners, renegades and castaways, W ilson H ar­
ris's Palace o f the Peacock. James m ust have fe lt a fa m ilia r strangeness as
he read of th is crew that: "The odd fact existed of course that th e ir liv in g
names m atched the names of a famous dead crew th a t had sunk in the
rapids and been drowned to a man, leaving th e ir names inscribed on
Sorrow H ill w h ich stood at the foot of the fa lls " (26). In th is passage we
fin d a replicating of existe n tia l genealogies th a t parallels the replicating
readings of James's Heidegger. James reread Richard W right's Heidegger,
and reread it again as the new speculative philosophy of a new c o n ti­
nental tra d itio n in the speculative fic tio n of W ilson H arris. He passed
W right's Heidegger to H arris, who found the rereading to f it th a t w hich
he had already w ritte n . Likew ise, w ith in the narration of H arris's firs t
novel, Palace o f the Peacock, James read of spectral, in te rn a tio n a list
 Reading James Reading 351

crew members who bear w ith them on th e ir journey deep in to the in te ­

rio r the names of the members of an earlier, drowned crew. But just as the
central character's name, Donne, reinscribes an O ld W orld lite ra ry tra d i­
tio n (and just as the title of H arris's c ritic a l w ork "T ra d itio n and the West
Indian N ovel" signals a parting of the ways w ith its namesake, the
recolonized T. S^Eliot's "T ra d itio n and the In d ivid u a l Talent"), the re p li­
cated names of the tw ice dead crew reinscribed at the foot of the falls
on Sorrow H ill also recall the names of those m ariners and castaways
dragged to th e ir deaths in the wake of Captain Ahab's m onom aniacal
desires. It is th is rein scrip tio n of the nam ing act w ith in a new continent's
tra d itio n th a t is the m ark, fo r C.L.R. James, of the new, authentic lite ra ry
arts.
We m ust be clear, however, that when James speaks of a u th e n ticity he
is not speaking of reified, essential, and heritable c u ltu ra l tra its. He does
speak of the essential; but he uses th is term in its Hegelian sense,
locating the essential in the hom ecom ing m ovem ent of e xistential au­
th e n tic ity . In his explanation of "The D octrine of Essence" in his Notes
on D ialectics, James insists: "The th in g I w ant you to notice is where
[Hegel] says Essence does not contain a m ovem ent, but is that move­
m ent" (75). For James, man's route to self-knowledge is essential, phe­
nom enological m ovem ent. "H is only way of know ing anything about
him self is to become one of the things that is in him . The day he becomes
som ething and knows, feels, that th is is it, then he is som ething new at
last" (75). The prim ary site of th is m ovem ent is the language we speak,
the act of language. As New W orld peoples we do not speak the language
of any of our old worlds, no more than H arris sim ply respeaks Heidegger,
though our New W orld languages bear the in flections of our m u lti­
tudinous pasts. To paraphrase Kenneth Burke, a different name fo r w ater
im plies a different voyage. It is H arris's unw illingness to m outh the old
languages and his insistent, im plosive m ovem ent w ith in the languages
of the Am ericas that most excites James. In his 1965 lecture on Harris,
James remarks that "European c iv iliz a tio n fo r m any centuries had a fixed
assum ption and classification of m aterial achievem ent and correspond­
ing philosophical conceptions. H arris says that Am erica is not lik e th a t"
(168). Here is the essential m ovem ent of difference that m arks New
W orld cultures. H arris insists, according to James, that the Am ericas
"have a different attitude to the w orld, because th e ir w hole h istorical
and m aterial experience has been d ifferent" (168). It is w ith in that move­
ment of destabilizing difference that James locates H arris's authen ticity,
 352 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

H arris's nam ing of Being: "H a rris is saying th a t in the Am ericas, in

C entral A m erica and in the West Indies, . . . there has never been th a t
fixed assum ption of things, th a t belie f in som ething th a t is m any cen­
turies old and solid. T hat is w hy he is saying w hat I in te rp re t as the
dasein, the 'being th e re '" (168).
T hat saying of the dasein, th a t saying of the being there, is w hat
constitutes language, in the Heideggeridh view , as the house of Being.
The hom ecom ing th a t Heidegger finds in H o ld e rlin 's verse parallels the
hom ecom ing th a t James finds in H arris. W hen Donne, the central figure
in H arris's Palace o f the Peacock, asks his m ost tro u b lin g rhe to rica l
question, "q u ic k ly and m o ckin g ly," "Is it a m ystery of language and
address?" (52), the narrator is at firs t uncom prehending, then he b lu rts
out his sentence of dread:

it's an inapprehension of substance [...] an actual fear . . . fear of life . . .

fear of the substance of life, fear of the substance of the folk, a cannibal
b lind fear in oneself. Put it how you lik e [. . .] it's fear of acknowledging
the true substance of life. Yes, fear I te ll you, the fear that breeds b itte r­
ness in our m outh. (52)

The dread addressed by the narrator is a fear of speaking the authentic

language of our experience. But H arris also shows us the rigors of our ow n
rhetoric. In the syntax we have evolved from the s w irl of languages set
conversing and cursing in the N ew W orld, we have come to a new home
fo r Being. James w ould argue th a t it is here we m ust begin our search.
Against Donne's rh e to rica l question, "Is it a m ystery of language and
address?" James w ould set the question D aSilva asks of the sym bolic
voyage of the crew: "Is how m uch farther we got to go?" (Palace 76). By
liste n in g to the rhythm s and contours of DaSilva's question, we can
begin to fin d a way to bespeak ourselves. In his rem arks on H arris's
"T ra d itio n and the West Indian N o ve l," James declares his fa ith th a t th is
is the crucial p o in t in the new w ritin g of the Am ericas:

I have talked w ith George Lamming on this question of language in the

West Indies and he has very definite views on it. These he w ill, I hope,
make clear (and popular) one day. Derek W alcott I know is grappling
practically w ith this problem. The point that shook me was that Harris,
grappling w ith a West Indian problem, had arrived at conclusions w hich
dealt w ith the problem of language as a whole in the w orld at large. ("On
W ilson H arris" 170)

It is because H arris deals w ith the problem of language as a w hole in

the w o rld at large th a t his texts appear d iffic u lt to some. Even James says,
 Reading James Reading 353

in his 1972 in te rvie w in Texas, th a t H arris's "are the m ost peculiar novels
in existence at the present tim e " (Kas 29). H arris presents the reader w ith
a realism of a different sort from the synthesized constructions of V ic­
torian m im e tic realism , socialist realism , or existential form s of natural­
ism . H arris's novels bring to the fore the realities of com plex social
processes and psychological states by using language to reveal its own
m otions. The result is a te xt of speculative tru th , to use James's Hegelian
term fo r Reason (Notes 19). It is a te xt th a t w orks, as M ichael G ilkes
outlined in his study of H arris's novels, "w ith a w e ll articulated theory of
'im p lo sio n .' T his is a m ethod o f fic tio n in w hich the m eaning of the w ork
is to be found neither in the overt p lo t nor in characterization but w ith in
the numerous echoes, associations and reverberations of meaning set up
in the reader's m ind as he enters the novel" (xxvii). (Those w ho knew
James in his later years know th a t as handw riting became increasingly
d iffic u lt fo r him , he accelerated his life -lo n g habits of m arginalia by
elaborating a system of check m arks, lines, cryp tic letters and other
codes by w hich he annotated the books he read. In the m argins of his
copy of G ilkes's book on H arris, th is com m ent upon the novelist's im p lo ­
sive style is m et w ith an explosion of James's approving check marks.)
Like the tales of Conrad's M arlow , and lik e M e lv ille 's ungainly narra­
tives, the meanings of H arris's novels are not lodged in some kernel at
the heart of the plot, but arise as the reader passes through the layerings
of language in the experience of the text, the skin of the skin. H arris has
constructed a m arvelous register of the New W orld's histo rica l experi­
ence. As he made clear to his interview ers during a v is it to the U nive rsity
of Texas at A ustin, H arris's prose enacts his belief that "D eeply planted
in subje ctivity is a far-reaching index of com m unity"; that "the private or
subjective im agination may catch the tide of com m unity, as it sweeps
forw ard in to another century, and may secrete a pressure fo r a revised
canvas of existence w ith in a culture or c iv iliz a tio n , before th a t pressure
of fate, in term s of value turned in to bias, becomes catastrophic" (Kas
54).
It is in this m ost M e lville a n m om ent that James sees H arris surpassing
the philosophical fictio n s of Sartre. James tru ly adm ired Sartre; indeed,
he reported of his reading of the French author th a t he had "never know n
a philosophy so closely reported in fic tio n or dram a" ("O n W ilson H arris"
165). S till, fames believes that H arris has gone past the m om ent of
C ontinental existentialism represented by that close student of Heideg-
gerian texts, Jean Paul Sartre, and it is in contem plating th is judgm ent
that we m ust rem ind ourselves that Herm an M e lv ille was an early
 354 Blackness, S elf-D eterm ination, and A n tic o lo n ia lis m

instance of the postcolonial w rite r. James, w ho was always loo kin g fo r

the fu tu re in the present, praised M e lv ille as one who, in his reading of
the N ew W orld text, had become aware th a t one great age was passing
and another beginning. V iew ing the long recessional of colo n ia l culture,
James looked to his reading fo r new w rite rs w ho stood astride the cata­
strophic breach colonialism created and sought to e xp lo it even in its
decline, w rite rs he m ig h t lo o k to fo r a "revised canvass of existence." He
found in W ilson H arris an a rtis t w ho had mapped the ravages of colonial
language and w ho had found his "far-reaching index of co m m u n ity" in
the su b je c tiv ity constructed in N ew W orld languages. A t the beginning
of H arris's firs t visionary novel, the narrator inform s us of his inauthen­
tic state, a co lonial state of m ind. "The map of the savannahs was a
dream ," he te lls his readers. "The names B razil and Guyana were colonial
conventions I had know n from childhood. 1 clung to them now as to a
curious and necessary stone and footing, even in m y dream, the ground I
knew I m ust no t re lin q u ish " (Peacock 24). But th is ghostly persona
learns, from his voyage among the tw ice drowned crew of m any colors
and nations, and from the ancient Araw ak wom an w ho advises them ,
th a t he m ust relin q u ish the nom inal ground of colonial language if he is
to be rebaptized in the tide of com m unity. He stands at the fo o t of the
fa lls th a t m ark the separation between one age and another. "We stood on
the frontiers of the know n w o rld ," he declares, "and on the selfsame
threshold of the unknow n " (75).
Speaking at v irtu a lly the same m om ent th a t the beginnings of post-
e xiste n tia l and p o ststru ctu ra list thought are parting company w ith Sar­
tre and resituating Heidegger's texts w ith in a new m odality of C o n ti­
nental thought, C.L.R. James reads in W ilson H arris a thought and a
w ritin g that, risin g from the m aterial experiences of the N ew W orld's
continents housed in th e ir languages, succeed in doing fo r James w hat
Sartre could not do. Em ploying a typ ica l b it of Socratic irony, James
warns his auditors in 1965 th a t in discussing his readings of H arris he
w ill speak at greater length than usual of certain philosophical aspects of
his texts. I w ould be very m uch surprised if, except in a private m edita­
tio n at home, D r. Eric W illia m s ever registered the fu ll force of the
readings C.L.R. James delivered as he was tem porarily delivered from his
house arrest. James calls his readers to a s tric te r accounting, to a yet
closer reading of th e ir culture and its scripts. He te lls his audience th a t he
has learned from Heidegger th a t you can understand philosophy " only
when you are yourself taking p a rt in p h ilo s o p h y and it is clear th a t we
 Reading James Reading 355

should read W ilson H arris, C.L.R. James, and the texts of our d aily lives
in th is same s p irit. "O therw ise, unless you are philosophizing," we read
as we read James, "fig h tin g out an authentic way of philosophy, you are
not only doing nothing but you cannot even understand the men you
have been reading" ("O n W ilson H arris" 163). C.L.R. James, confined to
his home at the close of his address, had earlier w ritte n that "H arris
should not be confined to London. He should be speaking from end to end
of the West Indies" ("O n W ilson H a rris" 172). C.L.R. James w ould hold
that the speaking of the postcolonial dasein cannot be confined, not
w ith in one book, not w ith in one house, not w ith in one language, and not
w ith in one nation. It is not just to H arris's novels that James addresses
him self as he delivers him self out of confinem ent in to his public reading
and declares, "I fin d it p a rticu la rly im portant . . . especially fo r people
who liv e in these te rrito rie s " ("O n W ilson H arris" 168).

Works Cited
Gilkes, Michael. Wilson Harris and the Caribbean N o ve l Trinidad and Jamaica:
Longman Caribbean Lim ited, 1975.
Harris, Wilson. Palace of the Peacock. The Guyana Quartet. London: Faber and
Faber, 1985.
----- . Tradition, the W riter and Society. London: New Beacon Books, 1967.
James, C yril Lionel Robert. Kas Kas: Interviews w ith Three Caribbean Writers in
Texas. Ed. Ian M unro and Reinhard Sander. Austin, TX: African and Afro-
American Research Institute, U niversity of Texas at A ustin, 1972. 22-41.
----- . Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story o f Herman M e lville and the
World We Live In. 3d edition. London: A lliso n and Busby, 1985.
----- . Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin. Westport, CT: Lawrence H ill and
Co., 1980.
----- . "O n W ilson H arris." Spheres o f Existence: Selected Writings. London: A l­
lison and Busby, 1980. 157-72.
C ricket, M arxism , and the

Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

 M ark K ingw ell
p

Keeping a Straight Bat: C ricket, C iv ility ,

and Postcolonialism

In tro d u c tio n

"W hat I re ally hate about c ric k e t/' says Tom m y Judd in the film Another
Country, "is that it's such a damn good game." We m ig h t be forgiven for
th in k in g the sentim ent expresses a feeling deeper than, and iro n ic a lly at
odds w ith , the M arxist ideology th a t fuels Tom m y's rebellion against his
schooling at a th in ly masked E ton.1 "Judd's Paradox," his friend Guy
Bennett calls it, indulging in a parody of the M arxist analysis that was
later, one imagines, to underw rite his own spying and celebrated defec­
tio n to the Soviet U nion. "C ric k e t is a fundam ental part of the capitalist
conspiracy," mocks Guy. "There's every reason to suppose that the game
u ltim a te ly derives from the w h o lly un ju stifie d rig h t of the m edieval lord
to the unpaid labour of v ille in s and serfs at hay-m aking and harvest."
("You know ," says Judd, "you're really beginning to get the idea.")
Then, as the film closes, the tactless Am erican interview er v is itin g
Guy in his bleak M oscow apartm ent asks h im w hether he misses any­
thing English. " I m iss . . . the c ricke t," whispers G uy pathetically, p a tri­
cian fop to the last. W hich is only to say again w hat the film (and play)
have already said numerous tim es in less obvious manner: Guy's M arxist
po litics flo w not from com m itm ent b u t from resentm ent—the result of
his hom osexuality and the hyp o critica l reactions it occasions among his
schoolfellows as they close h im out of th e ir highest echelons. He is not
even a fellow traveler; he's m erely a dilettante . For to fancy cricke t—

This paper was prepared w ith the generous support of a postdoctoral fellowship
from the Social Sciences and Hum anities Research C ouncil of Canada. I w ould
like to thank Michael Nash and G ail Donaldson for their comments on earlier
drafts of it.

359
 360 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

to continue to fancy cricke t, the quintessential upper-class game—is

surely evidence of an im perfect conversion, an in s u ffic ie n tly exam ined
consciousness.
The conclusion suggested here is reactionary, to the effect th a t le ftis t
ra lly in g points, up to and in c lu d in g w ell-p u b licize d defections, are illu ­
sions. The p o litic a l is the personal—and that's a ll it is. G uy's u n w illin g
exclusions from school power are held cfose to Judd's w illin g ones, bu t
the ju xta p o sitio n does both a disservice. G uy is n o t a pioneer in sexual
p o litic s , m erely a crybaby; hatred o f a class hypocrisy th a t shuts h im out
is his only ideological com m itm ent. By contrast, the com m itted Judd is
k ille d in the Spanish C iv il W ar—w h ich shows w hat happens to w e ll-
m eaning parlour pinkos lo o king fo r street c re d ib ility . ("You're always
try in g to be d iffe re n t," a p a rtic u la rly lu m pish schoolm ate com plains at
one point.) The fact th a t Judd is the o n ly character in play or film w ith
any scrap of in te g rity is not re a lly countervailin g here, sim ply fu rth e r
evidence th a t he is too good fo r th is w orld. F inally, it is not an exaggera­
tio n to credit the lo v in g ly detailed camera w o rk and exquisite landscapes
of M arek Kanievska's film w ith providing a perfect aesthetic wash fo r
these rig h t-w in g sentim ents. The scenes of r o t c m usters and cricke t on
Eton's greensward are fa m ilia r ico n ic snapshots th a t in th is context
approach self-parody. They are being celebrated, not criticize d . Judd's
Paradox is n o t resolved by A nother C ountry, o n ly enhanced: class des­
tin y , in clu d in g a love fo r cricket, cannot be escaped.
Consider some other examples o f Judd's Paradox, these drawn not
from conservative pseudo-history bu t from reportage, and referring not
to upper-class M arxists b u t to w o rkin g p o litic a l actors. Ram M anohar
Lotha (1910-67), the Indian p o litic a l th e o rist and freedom fighter, re­
peatedly denounced cricke t in his w ritin g s as a colonial re lic keeping the
Indian people from th e ir destiny. Yet he eagerly attended Test matches.
And jo u rn a lis t M ervyn de Silva, w ritin g of a Sri Lankan cricke t victory,
noted the "rom antic paradox" of the late N . M . Perera, w ho fe lt more
pride in being president of the Sri Lanka Board of C ontrol fo r C ricke t than
in being a founding father of Sri Lanka's M a rxist revolutionary m ove­
m ent.2 We have, fin a lly , the greatest exem plar of Judd's Paradox in
C.L.R. James, the T rinidadian M arxist whose life lo n g association w ith
cricke t is, perhaps contrary to expectation, the m aster key to his p o litic a l
awareness. These are not isolated instances of the am bivalence th a t
exists between p o litic s and sport, even the decisively aristocratic sport of
cricke t.3 The game's place at the center of English im perial attitudes
 Keeping a Straight Bat 361

should make it a clearly a n tith e tic a l elem ent in revolutionary m ove­

m ents, especially in colonial settings: a m ark of the old rule that sim ply
m ust be throw n off. Yet in view of the pervasive influence of the game in
colonial societies4—its ineradicable effect on questions of national char­
acter and destiny—the m atter cannot be viewed so sim ply. But w hat role
cricket in true je v o lu tio n , one is tem pted to ask? Is love for the game
sim ply a socialized aberration from the party line, a regrettable piece of
leftover c u ltu ra l baggage? O r is there, perhaps, a c ritic a l p o s s ib ility in
cricket th a t m arks it not only as not opposed to social restructuring but
also as a llied w ith it? Is there, in other words, a p o litic a l resolution of
Judd's Paradox through a closer exam ination of cricke t itself?
In exploring such a p o ssibility, one is obliged to fend o ff (at least) tw o
cherished but one-sided interpretations of cricket's p o litic a l role. These
may be called for convenience the im perial and the colonial versions of
cricket. A nd the s im ila ritie s suggested by the pairing are not coinciden­
tal, for these are in re a lity tw o shades of the same color: the culture of
dominance and the culture of subordination, both playing the game for
ends th a t may be teased out w ith good results. These interpretations do
not give us the w hole story, however. In w hat follow s I w ill attem pt a
joining of these tw o interpretations th a t gives us more of that story, if not
its e n tire ty—for th is is a story whose ending rem ains by design (and w ith
clamorous approval) forever deferred in the great ellipsis of a ll sporting
events, that there is always next year.
Before beginning, one is likew ise obliged to deal w ith the lim ite d but
increasingly in flu e n tia l notion that cricket has, as a professional sport,
no p o litic a l role whatsoever. T his can be done b ris k ly by invoking the
firm voice of James, here discussing his fa llin g away from T rotskyism in
the 1950s. "T ro tsky had said th a t the workers were deflected from p o litics
by sports," James w rites in his autobiographical essay Beyond a Bound­
ary. "W ith m y past I sim ply could not accept th a t."5 Even more firm ly ,
James notes w ith apparent wonder th a t a "professor of p o litic a l science
p u b licly bewailed th a t a man of m y know n p o litic a l interests should be­
lieve that cricket had ethical and social values." D eclining in to co llo q u i­
alism for perhaps the firs t and only tim e, he w rites, "I had no w ish to an­
swer. I was just sorry for the guy" (BB 241). T hat sports and p o litic s lin k up
in numerous and com plex ways cannot here be doubted, w ith o u t anyway
m isunderstanding the m eaning of the words "p o litic s " and "sports"—and
we may feel sorry for those who do. In cricket especially, we m ight th in k ,
the sports-politics dialectic sim ply cannot be ignored: James's considered
 362 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

answer to th is professor's challenge is his entire life , a life spent re fle ct­
ing on the destiny of the West Indies, a destiny th a t sim ply makes no
sense w ith o u t the cu ltu re of cricke t. Because th is is so, because fo r any
West Indian (or Indian, and to a lesser extent A ustralian) life is not ex­
plicable w ith o u t cricket, James w ill repeatedly ask the famous question
u ltim a te ly traceable to the great c ric k e t w rite r N e v ille Cardus: "W hat do
they know of cricke t w ho o n ly cric k e t know ?" To know o n ly the game is
not to know the game, and the autobiographical and p o litic a l details of
Beyond a Boundary are therefore no more or less indispensable in m ak­
ing it a treatise on cricke t, as conversely the details about w hat makes a
great bow ler or batsm an are indispensable in m aking it a treatise on
radical p o litic s . In w hat follow s, then, we w ill explore the c ritic Ashis
Nandy's view th a t "some argum ents about colonial, neo-colonial, a n ti­
colonial and post-colonial consciousness can be made better in the la n ­
guage of in te rn a tio n a l cricke t than th a t of p o litic a l econom y."6
W hat I w ill suggest, circum scribed now in a w o rld where cricke t is any
and a ll of m etaphor, b a ttle fie ld , p o llin g booth, hustings, e d ito ria l co l­
um n, nationa l m irro r, and c u ltu ra l history, is th a t the culture of c iv ility
embedded in cricke t provides it w ith radical p o litic a l possib ilitie s m iss­
ing in other team sports. The claim m ay appear c o u n te rin tu itiv e . We are
not used to th in k in g of c iv ility as a co n d itio n of social reform , nor do
we ty p ic a lly consider cricke t as anything more than an expression of, on
the one hand, social supe rio rity or, on the other, colonial in fe rio rity . N or,
fo r th a t m atter, do we often push sports to the forefront of p o litic a l
awareness, however m uch we m ig h t in c lin e to the view defended by
James th a t they cannot be understood outside a social and p o litic a l
context. N o one w ould reasonably deny th a t football, fo r example, ex­
presses a set of "e th ic a l and social values" th a t could be codified w ith
relative ease as the dom inant ideology of a large p o stindu stria l nation
lik e the U n ite d States: team s p irit, aggressiveness, ruthlessness, te r­
rito ria l com m itm ent, a high-tech reliance on state-of-the-art equipm ent.
It is no m istake th a t m any of the reigning metaphors in business and
governm ent are football-derived. Yet the c u ltiv a tio n of such values in
these w ider contexts puts in to question the role of foo tb a ll itse lf. Is it
in d o ctrin a tio n , c o lo rfu l expression of w hat is already dom inant, re in ­
forcem ent of the wavering? Perhaps none of these? The peculiar advan­
tage of cricke t lies in its having ethical and social values w hich are, in the
current p o litic a l atmosphere, reform ative in o rie n ta tio n —and th is some­
tim es despite appearances to the contrary. W hich is of course not to
 Keeping a Straight Bat 363

suggest th a t cricket can, or even should, acquire a w ider popularity than

it now has; cricke t w ill never catch on in Am erica, not sim ply fo r aes­
th e tic or c u ltu ra l reasons, but fo r stru ctu ra l p o litic a l ones th a t contain
the others and also go beyond them . W hat I have called cricket's culture
of c iv ility m ay indicate, however, p o litic a l lessons that te ll beyond the
boundaries not enly of the p itc h its e lf—that can no longer be doubted—
but of the countries in w h ich the p itc h lies.
Though one m ight choose another focal point, in w hat follow s I w ill
concentrate on the figure of James and th is for at least three com pel­
lin g reasons. First, the strong elem ent of autobiography th a t is woven
through James's reflections on cricke t provides an object lesson in the
in e x tric a b ility of the personal and p o litic a l in the realm of sport—w ith ­
out cricket we cannot understand James either as a self-described "P u ri­
tan" or as the author of The Black Jacobins and The Case fo r West Indian
Self-Government. Second, then, the delicious in co n g ru ity—an incongru­
ity , I w ill suggest, th a t under analysis resolves its e lf in to com plex shades
of m eaning—of the com m itted M a rxist who is also com m itted to the
aristocratic game cannot be ignored. N o N o rth Am erican sport could
provide the same apparently paradoxical juxtaposition. T hird, then,
these factors com bining, it is no sm all m atter that James's life spans the
last days of the V icto ria n "golden age" of cricket, w ith the amateur
sportsman forem ost and a sense (if not always a reality) that " It is n 't
cricke t" and "Keep a straight bat" were phrases w ith meaning, and spans
the firs t days of the new professional ethos that, in common w ith profes­
sional sports everywhere, finds such sentim ents either sim ply naive or,
worse, cyn ica lly useful as platitudes fo r the sports pages. The tu rn in g
point between these eras is, fam ously, the "bodyline" controversy of
1931-32, and James's reactions to it provide an illu s tra tio n of the possi­
b ilitie s that m ight s till exist for a culture of c iv ility , now somewhat
chastened and w o rld ly but nevertheless v ita l—in cricke t and elsewhere.

V ic to ria n a : W. G. Grace and C ric k e t's G olde n Age

o f Im p e ria lis m

A good deal has been made of the influence the physician W. G. Grace
(1848-1915) had on the game of cricket, not least by James him self, who
argues that w ith Thomas A rnold (of Rugby School fame) and Thomas
Hughes (of Tom Brown fame), Grace completed the H o ly T rin ity of
the V ictorian Age. The m atter is p u t succinctly by Alasdair M acIntyre.
 364 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

D raw ing a d is tin c tio n between goods "e xte rn a l" to a practice and ones
"in te rn a l" to it, M acIntyre notes th a t whereas the form er m ust be either
w on or lo s t—th a t is, they are goods by exclusion and can be enjoyed o nly
by the w in n e r—the la tte r m ust be considered good fo r everyone engaged
in the practice. "In te rn a l goods are indeed the outcom e of com petition to
excel, bu t it is characteristic of them th a t th e ir achievem ent is a good for
the w hole com m unity w ho participate in*the practice," says M acIntyre.
"So when T urner transform ed the seascape in pa in tin g or W. G. Grace
advanced the art of b a ttin g in cricke t in a quite new way th e ir achieve­
m ent enriched the w hole relevant c o m m u n ity."7 It is in th is sense of
enriching an entire com m unity th a t the q u alities allo w in g great exem­
plars to cu ltiv a te in te rn a l goods are rele va n tly called "th e v irtu e s "—
those tra its of character w ith o u t w h ich such goods w ould not be possi­
ble. We m ig h t even say, in Grace's case anyway, th a t his achievem ent
created the com m unity, fo r organized first-class cricke t was a phenome­
non whose popu la rity and recognition grew w ith Grace h im self through
the la tte r part of the nineteenth century. Though the game was m uch
older than that, dating back in some accounts to the tw e lfth century, it
was Grace's singular achievem ent to make of cricke t the repository of
those values of sportsm anship and politeness we at least u n re fle ctive ly
associate w ith the game. T hat he did th is w ith refinem ents of the art of
b a ttin g —the details of w hich do not concern us here, nor w ould they
m ake w id e ly d ive rtin g reading—cannot obscure the fact th a t it is the
figure of Grace, the image of the p o rtly bearded doctor w ith his a rtfu l
style and crude w illo w wand, th a t draws cricket's virtues in to a recogniz­
able hum an shape.8The econom y of th a t image is w hat concerns us here:
its ico n ic roles, its referential stock and charge, possibly its su sce p tib ility
to m anipulation. There are no obvious parallels in the h isto ry of N o rth
Am erican sport, though a few images perhaps suggest a cognate power
(the m ustachioed, ram rod-straight W alter Camp at Yale, for example, or
the celebrated photograph of Jackie Robinson stealing home).
In th is sense Grace, the father of v irtu e in cricket, is not m erely its
Abner Doubleday but also its Odysseus. The com parison is apt in an­
other sense too, fo r Grace was by a ll contem porary accounts a crafty and
cheerful com petitor, given to rapid and b rillia n t calculations of tactical
advantage, m oreover fond of deceit and ruthlessness in his quest to w in.
He was suspected of using an oversize nonregulation bat, he frequently
in tim id a te d um pires to make favorable calls, and he was not above
o u trig h t cheating. He was, fin a lly , a cricketer w ho donned the m antle of
 Keeping a Straight Bat 365

the gentlem an w h ile nevertheless m aking money at the game. "W. G.

G race/7says Geoffrey M oorhouse, " was not only one of the outstanding
mercenaries of a ll tim e, but one of the m ost conspicuous offenders
against th a t s p irit of cricket w h ich became g lo rifie d during his era and
w hich he was supposed to represent.7/9 There are a num ber of possible
responses to the$e less im m ediately desirable tra its of Grace's character.
We m ight, lik e his opponents, seek to undercut his p osition as the game's
exemplar, or at least ca ll a tte n tio n to its hypocrisy in a damaging fashion.
("It's only cheating. Everybody does it," says Guy Bennett in Another
Country. "Sportsm anship—it's a ll hypocrisy.") Why, after a ll, should op­
posing bowlers feel in clin e d to see Grace's batting prowess as som ething
that "enriched th e ir com m unity"? In the short run, of course, it did not:
he—and soon his im ita to rs too—knocked them a ll over the p itch. In the
long run, the developm ent and refinem ent of batting led to advances in
bow ling as w ell, fo r tit-fo r-ta t refinem ent is the nature of sport as it is of
warfare and espionage. Then again, we m ight view Grace's peccadilloes
as did m any contem porary fans, the forgivable foibles of a great man,
comparable to the philandering of an in sp ira tio n a l leader or the habitual
rudeness of a famed opera singer. But th a t response, too, leaves the
problem of countervailing vices unsolved. N eith e r of these attitudes to
Grace—one negative, one positive—makes any headway in understand­
ing the relationship between aspects of Grace's character, aspects of
V ictorian cricke t more generally, aspects (let us not forget) of the V ic­
torian m ind. The p o ssib ility unexplored in such responses is the one
w illin g to accept Grace's hypocrisy as an integral part of his gamesman­
ship, an aspect of character no more separable from the standard virtues
of the am ateur cricketer than from the man him self.
This is to suggest that w hat was peculiar to the V ictorian m ind was a
system atically am bivalent a ttitu d e to the very values it was exporting,
through colonial incursions not the least of w hich was cricket itse lf, to
m uch of the w o rld .10 As a repository of values concerning good conduct,
c iv ility , sporting fairness and elegance, cricket represented the alleged
bright side of th is exportation, those qualities that were supposed to
make the de facto triu m p h of the B ritish colonizers u ltim a te ly a de jure
m atter. We are n a tu ra lly suspicious of such legalistic, and prescriptive,
sleights of hand; but so, I am suggesting, were the exporters themselves.
For cricket had a dark side too, embodied in the concealed drive to w in,
the aggression and brute desire to crush opponents that lay beneath its
surface show of po lite elegance. These sides of the game should not be
 366 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

seen as c o n flic tin g aspects b u t rather as com plem ents, indispensable

to one another and neither, of its e lf, a ll th a t is cricke t. The dialec­
tic between them is instantiate d not ju st by Grace him self, the w ily
gentlem an of the p itch, b u t also by the d iv is io n th a t developed in firs t-
class c ricke t between "th e G entlem en" (that is, am ateurs of independent
means w ho played fo r pleasure) and "th e Players" (the professionals,
often of low er-class orig in , w ho played fo r money). T h is d ivision, w hich
persisted u n til q uite recently, is o n ly the m ost obvious in s titu tio n a l
illu s tra tio n of the inn e r c o n flic t of V icto ria n or golden age cricket, an
inner c o n flic t th a t w ith o u t exaggeration m ay be said to be typ ica l of
the V icto ria n m ind, especially in its co lonizing a c tiv itie s . The disap­
pearance of the d is tin c tio n indicates, n o t surprisingly, th a t one side
has w on out. There are no longer Players versus G entlem en, m erely
players—a ll of w hom , in first-class cricket, are paid to play though they
s till come from a va rie ty of social backgrounds. The triu m p h of the
players in th is generic sense m ay indicate, however, a loss of value in the
game its e lf—such that, fo r reasons I w ill explore presently, it no longer
has the reform ative p o ssib ilitie s it retained, however oddly, in its V ic­
to ria n m anifestation.
O n the one hand, then, we have the values of the gifted am ateur
G entlem an—the lover of the game—w ho is ty p ic a lly a ric h m an of taste
and d iscrim in a tio n w ho plays cricke t m a in ly for its show of elegance and
grace. In the stereotypical version, the G entlem an is concerned m ore
w ith aesthetic values than com petitive ones. He w ould rather be retired
on a s ty lis h stroke caught at the boundary than plod through a w o rk­
m anlike innings devoted to w ic k e t protection and slow accum ulation of
runs. He w ould, in other words, rather go down g loriously than stay in
and w in w ith o u t style. He prizes fa ir play, the show of politeness to
opponents, and the w illin g display of good conduct thought appropriate
to the game. O n the other hand, the typ ica l Player is interested m ainly, or
possibly only, in w in n in g —fo r his liv e lih o o d depends on it. He is ruthless
because he has to be and, moreover, because th a t is the best possible way
to gain victo ry. He is not prepared to go beyond the rules, unless he is
certain he w ill not be caught. He is fu lly prepared to exp lo it the rules to
th e ir fu lle s t extent in the interests of w inning. He m ay no t be e n tire ly
b lin d to the aesthetic aspects of the game, but they sim ply cannot com ­
pare in w eight to the issue of w inning. He w ill not w in "a t any cost" but
he w ill w in "a t any reasonable cost"—the q u a lific a tio n to be determ ined
precisely by circum stances, available personnel, and the la x ity or other­
wise of the um pires.
 Keeping a Straight Bat 367

The m ythology of cricke t indicates that these stereotypes form ed

themselves in to re la tiv e ly stable groups w ith very little value-seepage
between them , a m ythology reinforced by the G entlem en v. Players
matches popular through the last century and in to the beginning of the
present one. Though the G entlem en frequently lost, especially before
Grace, th e ir losses reinforced rather than challenged a cherished self-
understanding: they did not play the game to w in if that m eant playing at
the cost of good sportsm anship, for th is was no longer playing the game.
Thus protected, they could w in or lose w ith equal assurance as long as
the values of c ric k e t-v a lu e s expressed in the set phrases of "keeping a
straight bat" and doing "w hat's c ric k e t"—were m aintained. The m ove­
m ent of these phrases from the playing fie ld in to w ider social contexts,
w ith a l iro n ic a lly as tim e w ent on, was evidence th a t cricket represented
the best a Gentlem an could be. But th is narrative of self-protection, the
value of the so-called "m oral v ic to ry " (i.e., defeat done properly), is more
a result of that m ythology being the property of w riters, journalists, and
artists. These m yth-m akers were often m iddle-class snobs—the people
m ost lik e ly to feel a yearning for the Gentlem en's values and the culture
there represented, a culture of w hich they were not members. Grace was
only the firs t cricketer who, though te chnically a G entlem an in the
cricket sense, was a canny, aggressive com petitor given to, say, sacrific­
ing an elegant but doomed shot in favor of a sneaky deflection for one or
tw o needed runs. It was in th is sense of com bining the dark and lig h t of
cricket th a t Grace was the representative V ictorian, an em bodim ent
both of the best values to be found in the era's notions of fairness and c i­
v ility , and of the cheerful hypocrisy th a t w ent w ith flo u tin g those values
when the occasion was rig h t. "Grace was one of those who defined the
V ictorian period," says Ashis Nandy, echoing James and M acIntyre, in
The Tao of Cricket. "H e did so by redefining cricke t to make it a represen­
tative V ictorian game—at one plane a v io le n t battle w hich by com m on
consent had to be played lik e a gentle, ritu a lize d garden party; at another,
a new profession w hich had to be practised as if it was a pastim e."11
This, then, is w hat N andy calls the "in trin s ic schizophrenia of tra d i­
tio n a l cricke t" (TC 97), a kin d of inner dynam ic th a t pitted the overtly
valued virtues of good sportsm anship against the largely unm entionable,
but nevertheless w idely recognized and valued, virtues of aggression and
drive to w in . " It was," says Nandy,

to keep [working-class) cricketers at bay that the cultural hierarchy be­

tween the Gentlemen and the Players evolved in cricket. The class
 368 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

discrim ination in cricket legitim ized the class discrim ination in society
by ranking sportmanship, in d iv id u a lity and fla ir, reportedly the qualities
of the gentlem anly amateur, higher than competitiveness (defined as an
over-eagerness to w in), application and consistency, a ll reportedly the
qualities of the professional player. . .. C ricket thereby epitomized the
basic problem —the fatal flaw of character—in the Victorian personality.
The V ictorian had to see the low er classes as carriers of those "vulgar" or
"d irty " modern qualities w hich allowecf the upper classes to uphold the
traditional virtues and yet enjoy the benefits of m odernity. (TC 19)

W ith th is schizophrenic nature of tra d itio n a l cricke t la id bare before us,

it is harder to make sense of the superficial b u t now canonical narrative
of cricket's descent from am ateur glory in to an era of w in-at-all-costs
professional pragm atism . Grace rem inds us, as no one else can, th a t the
story is not so sim ple—that, even if there has been a discernible sea
change, it is not one of sim ple lig h t to dark. (The language is not coin­
cidental to th is story's typ ica l contours, especially when one factors in ,
as we m ust, the influence of co lonial challenges to the game's practice.)
The schizophrenic nature of tra d itio n a l cricke t, w hatever its obvious
drawbacks, preserved som ething of value th a t has been lo st in the one­
sided reaction to it, a reaction exem plified by the aggression of bodyline
bow lin g and the m odern triu m p h of the professional. In m aking such a
claim , it w ill rem ain im p o rta n t th a t V icto ria n cricke t did not triu m p h
over its in n e r c o n flic t b u t instead embraced it. Judd's Paradox, in other
words, is resolved no t by rem oving one or the other side o f cricket's
nature b u t rather by seeing the c o n flic t as productively dynam ic, a sport­
ing dialectic.
T h is m ay be seen m ore clearly if we reflect on a com m ent by the Indian
prince K. S. R a n jitsin h ji, one of cricket's m ost famous heroes. Grace,
according to R a n jits in h ji, was a great cricketer because he had "made
u tility the c rite rio n of s ty le "—a judgm ent th a t m ay seem at odds w ith
images of Grace as the great aesthetic s ty lis t of batting. But the rem ark is
acute, fo r it provides a clue to the lin e o f c o n flic t we have been pursuing.
Style, fo r Grace, was acceptable insofar as it was useful to the object of
the game, nam ely w inning; but it was nevertheless style that lay at the
center o f his life lo n g study of batting. R a n jits in h ji does not say th a t
Grace made u tility the c rite rio n o f playing, but of style. The p o in t m ay
seem sm all, but it is significant. It was o n ly as a great s ty lis t of batting
th a t Grace could take up his possession as the virtu o u s exem plar of
cricket's in te rn a l goods—goods th a t include, but do not end w ith , w in-
 Keeping a S traight Bat 369

ning. If Grace had m erely been adept at w inning, he w ould deserve no

place in cricket's pantheon, and he w ould have none. In cricket, at least
of the tra d itio n a l variety, w in n in g is not (pace Vince Lom bardi) the only
th in g —however m uch it m ay rem ain a m ost im portant thing.
The in te rn a l co nflicts of tra d itio n a l cricket were, I have said, dynam ic.
In the event, th a t m eant it could not survive the process of exportation
unaltered, for its class-based social balance and peculiar brand of hypoc­
risy were too delicate fo r overt challenge. That challenge came from the
colonies, in a m anner th a t may prove surprising—and may, in the end,
give credence to James's claim in Beyond a Boundary that colonialism is
both oppression and liberation. Or, to put the p o in t in Nandy's provoca­
tiv e form u la tio n , now from an Indian rather than West Indian perspec­
tive: "C ric k e t is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English"
(TC 1). Nandy means a great deal by saying this, more than I can reason­
ably approach here, so I w ill re strict m yself to exploring one meaning
only of th is proclam ation, a m eaning shared by James's close study of
West Indian cricket. The exportation of cricke t contained w ith in it the
seeds of its own destruction, Nandy suggests, just as colonialism more
generally w ould lead to the destruction of em pire. "V icto ria n cricket
reversed the process" of exporting aristocratic values, he argues. " It a l­
lowed Indians to assess th e ir colonial rulers by western values reflected
in the o ffic ia l philosophy of cricket, and to fin d the rulers wanting. The
assessment assumed that cricke t was not the w hole of Englishness but
was the m oral underside of English life w hich the English at the tu rn of
the century, even w ith m uch of the w orld at th e ir feet, found d iffic u lt to
liv e dow n" (TC 7; ita lic s added). And to the extent they could not live
down these values, the oppressors gave the oppressed the exact means of
th e ir ow n liberation. Was it, Nandy wonders, for reasons lik e this that
Rudyard K ipling, the arch-im perialist w ith more insight than m ost in to
colonial th in kin g , despised cricketers as "flanelled fools"?

C o lo n ia l Responses: B eating the M asters,

C hanging the G am e

The contours of V ictorian cricket are the contours of im perial cricket.

Nandy's analysis suggests there are tw o levels at w hich the game m ust be
viewed in order to understand the product that was being exported by the
Empire and the transform ative reception of that product by the colonies.
We can ca ll these, w ith him , the levels of "ru le " and "n o rm ." We can
 370 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

like w ise agree th a t the dual valence of cricket's principles is a response to

the nature of the game, "its cu ltu re of anarchic in d iv id u a lis m [and] the
peculiar, non-repressive c o lle c tiv is m based on th a t anarchy" (TC 4). For
it is o n ly in such a context of barely controlled in d iv id u a l effo rt th a t
there arises the need for, and the cu ltu re to support, nonstated norm s of
sporting behavior. The game by its nature gives in d iv id u a l players in o rd i­
nate re sp o n sib ility when representing thfc team, in p a rticu la r when bat­
ting. A nd it is also in the nature of the game th a t tin y slips can result in
dism issal w h ile batting, a tric k y rem inder of fate's p ro x im ity th a t is
u n lik e alm ost any other sport.12 As a result of these and m any other
s im ila r features of the game, it is never clear w hether the best team —that
is, the team w ith the best players—w ill succeed in w in n in g . "W hen a
game perm its such anarchy, p lu ra lity and randomness, how does one
judge q u a lity and defy fate w h ile conform ing to the norm s of the game?
Even more im p o rta n t, how does one define transgressions or determ ine
c u lp a b ility ? " (TC 27).
The rules/norm s d is tin c tio n provides an answer, fo r it specifies not
ju st tw o ways in w hich one can "play c ric k e t" but also specifies a num ber
of possible relationships between the tw o levels of p rinciple, re la tio n ­
ships p u t in to play by the acts of cricketers themselves. The rules are, as
Nandy says, the "low er-order rules or laws of cricke t: they are the rules in
the rule book of the game and the only o ffic ia lly recognized norm s of
cric k e t"; and "[o ]ve rtly, the w o rld of cricke t believes th a t there is no
other rule except these and th a t these rules, com bined w ith adequate
sportsm anship, can guarantee good cricket. In th is respect, the game is
no different from other games in w hich the good player m ust learn to
push the rules to th e ir lim it or to e xp lo it them fu lly ." But the norms of
cricke t are a d ifferent m atter, being "a set of higher-order or overarching
rules w h ich con tro l the cu ltu re o f the game and w hich underlie the
slogan of sportsm anship" (TC 27). These norm s are not rules in the s tric t
sense, no t being part of the rule book (w hich, incid e n ta lly, calls the firs t-
order rules Laws, as though they were unto e te rn ity unchangeable), but
instead consist of the values, both articulable and not, th a t go in to such
phrases as "Keep a straight bat" and " It is n 't c ric k e t." These norm s need
not be articulated so long as the cultu re of sportsm anship is v ita l, and
indeed a rtic u la tio n is dangerous since it suggests they could be codified
and by doing so makes them w eaker.13 It is fo r reasons lik e th is th a t

for the makers of the firs t set of rules these [second-order norms] are mere
conventions or traditions. These are not even mentioned in the rule
 Keeping a Straight Bat 371

book, except in the form of occasional exhortations to good, sporting

cricket. Yet, the com plexity and subtlety of the second set is what gives
cricket its uniqueness. Most games are predom inantly controlled by the
lower-order rules,- some lik e chess entirely by them. In cricket, i f one
follows every lower-order rule one s till may not be playing cricket, since
many of the higher-order norms of cricket, lik e the constitution of B rit­
ain, are not w ritte n down but yet constitute standards by which players
and teams are constantly judged. (TC 28; italics added)

The im plications of such a d is tin c tio n are w ide, and not m erely for
cricket. The force of " It is n 't c ric k e t" is th a t certain styles of play or pitch
behavior may, w h ile not being active ly u n law ful, flo u t the conventional
norm s of playing the game "properly." T his opens up the possibility,
explored b rie fly in the example of the G entlem an, of w hat C. B. Fry called
cricket's "aesthetic m o ra lity "—w hat m atters is not who w ins or loses,
but how one plays the game. H ow one plays the game is a fun ctio n of
style, and since style cannot be learned by rote but only cultivated, the
less cultivated rem ain at a disadvantage so long as the norms of cricket
are le xic a lly p rio r to its rules.
T his lexical p rio rity cannot be doubted, fo r the rules/norm s d is tin c ­
tio n is not value-neutral. And given the social charge of golden-age
cricket, the cricket in w hich th is ordering rem ained largely unchal­
lenged, there should be doubt as to w hat underlies the ordering. "T ra­
d itio n a lly ," says Nandy, "the am ateur cricketer, the gentlem an, was
supposed to be specially w ell-versed in the intricacies of the crucial
u n w ritte n laws of cricket, in addition to being w e ll acquainted w ith the
w ritte n laws of the game." By contrast, "the professional was not trusted
in the m atter of his knowledge of and allegiance to the u n w ritte n norm s.
That is w hy fo r many years the captaincy of national teams was reserved
for only the gentlem an-cricketer, openly in England and less bla ta n tly
in other countries" (TC 28). The association of th is fa m ilia r class d iv i­
sion w ith the rules/norm s d is tin c tio n contributes, in some cases quite
openly, to a gradual devaluing of the norm s of cricket, for they "sound
m oralistic, old-fashioned and s lig h tly com ic to the professional, modern
cricketer" (TC 28). On the other hand, the fu n ctio n of the norm s as
governing conventions in situations where rules cannot be specified or as
a background of style against w hich a ll use of the rules is carried out,
indicates that loss of the norm s through social challenge may actually
weaken the game. Thus the paradox of colonial and professional chal­
lenges to cricket, challenges that arise coincidentally w ith and rein­
force a general s h ift from amateur to professional in the game. The
 372 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

ruthless com petitiveness of colonial challenger and professional a like

underm ines cricket's uniqueness and, more im portant, its in te g rity as a
game. U n w ittin g ly , such challenges have the u ltim a te effect of rem oving
cricket's capacity fo r social critiq u e .
The p o in t is clearer if we specify the role of the norm s in cricket's
practice. C ricket, says Nandy, "is alm ost unique in providing am ple
scope fo r unjust play as w e ll as having strong taboos against such play
and yet, at the same tim e, not having m uch concrete protection against
u njust play or against someone try in g to take fu ll advantage of the
loopholes in the law s." M oreover, "the cultu re of cricke t also emphasizes
th a t w hatever else it m ig h t be, it w ill not be cricke t if the game tries to
b u ild in to its laws to ta l protection against a ll transgressions" (TC 30).
The norm s play the crucial role of providing nonlegalistic, u n w ritte n
(and often unspoken, except in generalities) principles by reference to
w h ich the scope fo r un ju st play is m inim ized. If th a t reference is no
longer available, there is no re s tric tio n on the fu ll e xp lo ita tio n of the
rules' m any loopholes; and if, m oreover, the key value of the game shifts
from playing w e ll to w inning, there is no w ay to curb th a t e xploitatio n.
W ith o u t sportsm anship, the game is no more than a brute contest of
canniness and ruthlessness. Sportsm anship is, fo r cricket, "the over­
arching value, w h ich gives structure to m any of the higher-order norm s,
in clu d in g conventions or folk-w ays, of cricket, and connects the tw o
kinds of norm s w h ich face the cricke te r—the tra d itio n a l and the rational-
legal" (TC 37).14 Sportsm anship does not mean th a t w in n in g is unim por­
tant, b u t it m aintains its hold on exploiters of the rules by valuing a
sporting defeat more than an unsporting victo ry, as in th is p rio rity chain:

Sporting yictory > Sporting defeat > Unsporting victory > Unsporting
defeat

" It is as if the cultu re of cricke t was am bivalent towards com petition and
perform ance," says Nandy, "and sought to contain the am bivalence by
m a in taining the illu s io n th a t success was not the goal of cricket; sports­
m anship was." Therefore "[c jric k e t in its purest form s can be seen as
either a display of sportsm anship through the in s tru m e n ta lity of compe­
titio n and perform ance, or as a display of p la yfu l com petition and play­
fu l perform ance in w hich the playfulness of the exercise is made clear
through sportsm anship" (TC 38).
The am bivalence m entioned here is clearly class-connected to the
extent th a t the gentlem an-cricketer was thought to embody the sporting
 Keeping a S tra ig h t Bat 3 73

values w h ile the professional player sought v ic to ry at any cost.15 T his is

w hy it was acceptable to have players on a national side but not in the
captaincy. The class connection is also m aintained in w hat I called
earlier the descent from lig h t to dark in cricket. W ith the disappearance
of the gentlem an-am ateur as a viable social type, a disappearance dating
to the firs t part ofj:h is century, the triu m p h of the player and the player's
values was com plete. The m odern trend in cricket is that the rules

instead of being part of a framework w ith in w hich the conventions or

traditions dominated, have now become supreme. The rules now rule by
themselves. The goal is no longer to display one's superior conform ity to
the rules by showing one's superior conform ity to the higher-order con­
ventions or to the idea of sportsmanship. The goal is to display success as
a sportsman or as a sports-team w ith in the confines of the rules by
making the best use of the rules. Such use rejects a ll traditions as guides
to action and it rejects the idea that there could be norms not specified in
the rules. Mechanical conform ity to the rules is s till looked down upon
but superior conform ity has now come to mean superior exploitation of
the rules. (TC 39-40)

T his m odern triu m p h of use-values in cricke t represents one kin d of

resolution of the inner co nflicts of the V ictorian game explored earlier,
but it is a resolution w ith o u t progressive possibility. C ricket is no longer
a delicate com bination of tw o notions of success: successful participa­
tio n in the game (shown by w inning) and successful show of sportsm an­
ship (shown by playing w ell). The modern game emphasizes only the
value of entertaining w ith success, not succeeding w ith entertainm ent.
Nandy illu stra te s th is trend w ith the fo llo w in g schem atic, w hich shows
the com peting hierarchies of success in cricket.

Victory > Draw > Defeat (professional)

Victory > "Grand" Defeat > "Tame" Draw (transitional)
"Grand" Defeat > "Inglorious" Victory > "Tame" Draw (amateur)

"The interplay of these orders," he says, "gave cricket its charm, even
though the allegiance to the second and th ird orders was often h y p o c riti­
cal. . . . The game has acquired its new hardness by v irtu a lly elim in a tin g
the second and th ird orders" (TC 42). And it is that "new hardness" that is
associated w ith the social triu m p h of the professional.
W hat role did colonial responses to cricket play in this? The accepted
interpretatio n of the colonial appropriation of cricket is one that sees it
reinforcing the professional's victory. That is, to the extent that colonial
 374 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

cricketers were less bound by the strictures of norm -behavior in cricket,

they were m ore fu lly able to e xp lo it the rules to th e ir advantage. The
desire to beat the masters at th e ir ow n game, a celebrated colonial
enterprise, succeeded in changing the game because it made it im possi­
ble to w in in any fashion other than the aggressive, explo ita tive style
adopted by, say, the A u stralian sides of the 1920s. Even com m itted
gentlem en cannot sustain them selves o it a pure d iet of sporting defeats,
and anyway the English teams of th is period were not gentlem en a ll
through. O n th is view , the colonial com petitiveness, a com petitiveness
n o t s u ffic ie n tly fettered by the cultu re of sportsm anship, transform ed
cric k e t by chipping away the patina of hypocrisy the V icto ria n game had
given its e lf. And, lik e a ll dem onstrations of hypocrisy, th is transform a­
tio n has access to a certain cynical piece of high ground, fo r our m oral
cu ltu re is such th a t any expose of hypocrisy, no m atter how self-serving,
provides an illu s io n of e thical bona fides.16
But the colonial reception of cricke t is no t so sim ple, as James's tale of
West Indian cricke t makes clear. The long opening sections of Beyond a
Boundary; w hich detail James's rather old-fashioned education in to a
sim ulacrum of an English gentlem an, are crucial in th is regard. Though
he describes him se lf as, by the age of ten, "already an alien in m y own
environm ent, among m y ow n people," James's u ltim a te contention is
th a t th is education was p e culiarly West Indian in a less superficial sense
than his egregious preference fo r Thackeray m ig h t indicate. " I began to
study L a tin and French, then Greek, and m uch else," he says at one poin t.

B ut p a rtic u la rly w e le a rn t, I le a m t and obeyed and ta u g h t as code, the

E nglish p u b lic-sch o o l code. B rita in and h e r colonies and the co lo n ia l peo­
ple. W hat do the B ritis h people k n o w o f w h a t th e y have done there? Pre­
cious little . T he c o lo n ia l peoples, p a rtic u la rly the W est Indians, scarcely
k n o w them selves as yet. I t has taken m e a long tim e to begin to u n der­
stand. (BB33)

In tim e, James became th a t peculiar colonial product, the English gentle­

man m ore gentlem anly than his objects of im ita tio n . A ll the dicta of
sportsm anship were in ternalized effortlessly, jo y fu lly , by h im and his
fellow s. S ocially they were a diverse group. "Yet ra p id ly we learned," says
James,

to obey th e um pire 's decision w ith o u t question, how ever irra tio n a l i t
was. We learned to p lay w it h the team , w h ic h m eant s u b o rd in a tin g y o u r
personal in c lin a tio n s , and even interests, to the good o f th e w hole. We
 Keeping a Straight Bat 375

kept a s tiff upper lip in that we did not complain about ill fortune___ We
were generous to opponents and congratulated them on victories, even
when we knew they did not deserve it. We lived in two worlds . . .
[whatever went on elsewhere] on the playing field we did what ought to
be done. |BB 34)

"Eton and H arrow ," James concludes, "had nothing on us." And we
cannot doubt him , for there is no more perfect sportsm an than the
displaced sportsman.
T his is, of course, colonial behavior at its m ost obvious. W hat better
way—indeed, w hat other way?—to challenge the masters than to illu s ­
trate th e ir own ideals more perfectly than they themselves? W hat more
serious challenge to dom ination than to beat the masters at th e ir own
chosen game, w hether th a t is cricket its e lf or the c iv il norm s lyin g
beneath cricket? That th is response to dom ination is in fact a structural
defeat, result of a double bind on colonials, seems rarely to occur to
agents e xh ib itin g the behavior. The double bind resides in there being no
really effective response w ith in the constraints of im perial dom ination:
difference is proof of subordination (the natives are not even civilized),
w hile sim ulation is proof of subm ission (the natives have no id e n tity of
th e ir own). Both strategies are defeatist, because the parameters of the
situation allow no other possibility. " It was only long years after," James
notes,

that I understood the lim ita tio n on spirit, vision and self-respect which
was imposed on us by the fact that our masters, our curriculum , our code
of morals, everything, began from the basis that Britain was the source of
a ll lig h t and learning, and our business was to admire wonder, im itate,
learn; our criterion of success was to have succeeded in approaching that
distant ideal—to attain it was, of course, impossible. Both masters and
boys accepted it as in the very nature of things. (BB 38; italics added)

The triu m p h of im perialism is that such stru ctu ra l dom ination gives the
masters an a b ility to interpret any and a ll behavioral responses in term s
that reinforce, and never challenge, the contours of the dom ination. But
w ith th is gloom y awareness comes no respite from the response's at­
tractions. The Canadian diplom at Charles R itchie notes in his diaries
how the novelist Elizabeth Bowen remarked on his manners as being
"m ore English than the E nglish"—and one can feel, perhaps even share,
R itchie's rather perverse pride in th is .17
James is a master at defending th is paradoxical aspect of his colonial
 376 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

character. " I never appealed fo r a decision unless I thought the batsman

was o u t/' he says of his playing days. " I never argued w ith the um pire, I
never jeered at a defeated opponent— From the eight years of school life
th is [public school] code became the m oral fram ew ork of m y existence. It
has never le ft me. I lea rn t it as a boy, I have obeyed it as a man, and now I
can no longer laugh at it " (BB 35). But m ore rarely, James is also adept at
tu rn in g th is feature of colo n ia l character to p o litic a l advantage. The con­
catenation is, on reflection, a natural one: "M y P uritan soul burst w ith in ­
dignation at in ju s tic e in the sphere of sport," he confesses. "C ric k e t had
plunged me in to p o litic s long before I was aware of it. W hen I did tu rn to
p o litic s I did n o t have too m uch to learn" (BB 71). B ut th is p u b lic school
ethos, w h ich James had to take seriously, was also a focus of p o litic a l
challenge. "T he B ritis h tra d itio n soaked deep in to me was th a t when you
entered the sporting arena you le ft behind you the sordid com prom ises of
everyday existence," he says, em phasizing the im ported game's m ost
sacred tenet. "Y et fo r us to do th a t we w ould have had to divest ourselves
of our skins. . . . Thus the cricke t fie ld was a stage on w hich selected
in d ivid u a ls played representative roles w hich were charged w ith social
significance" (BB 72). The peculiar grandeur of cricke t in th is era was that
it could allo w expression of so m uch p o litic a l value w ith o u t losing its
in te g rity as a sport. T his, according to James, was as good for the West
Indies as it was fo r cricke t. " I haven't the slightest doubt th a t the clash of
race, caste and class did not retard b u t stim ulated West Indian cricket. I
am equally certain th a t in these years social and p o litic a l passions, denied
norm al outlets, expressed them selves so fie rce ly in cricke t (and other
games) precisely because they were games" (BB 72). W hich is to say,
u ltim a te ly , th a t cricket's glory lay in being "a game w hich, in lands far
from th a t w h ich gave it b irth , could encompass so m uch of social re a lity
and s till rem ain a game" (BB 97). Remain, th a t is, not society its e lf b u t the
m ost effective critiq u e of society available.18
It is th is advantage th a t makes of colonial cricke t m ore than a m atter
of beating the masters at th e ir ow n game. The danger in such a view of
the game is th a t it w ill change the game in a way th a t destroys its c ritic a l
p o ssibilities. The colonial k ille r in s tin c t, w hich achieves the u ltim a te
goal of w in n in g —beating the m asters—w ill triu m p h o n ly at the price of
m aking cricke t a game lik e a ll other professional sports th a t have be­
come a com m odity, one w ith o u t the cultu re of c iv ility th a t can become a
focus of social critiq u e . W hat looks sim ultaneously lik e a valuable ex­
pression of nationa l achievem ent and a salutary exposure of hypocrisy in
 Keeping a Straight Bat 377

the code of w hich James speaks turns out, on reflection, to be the capitu­
la tio n not only to dom ination b u t also to the w orst im peratives of hyper-
com petitive m odern sport. C olonialism 's unique possibilities, whatever
they may be, are here sacrificed fo r a false goal.
James lays the foundation of th is argum ent, though he does not ex­
p lic itly make it, by recounting tw o events th a t were central to his en­
meshed p o litic a l and sporting developm ent. The firs t concerns his firs t
v is it to the U nited States in 1938, the firs t tim e he allow s contem pt for
the schoolboy values to enter his consciousness. But no t for long: the
stim ulus of reaction is a baseball game, attended w ith friends. Between
raucous shouts and denunciations of opposing players, he says, "they
asked me if I were enjoying the game. I was enjoying the game; it was
they w ho were disturbing me. And not only they. Managers and players
protested against adverse decisions as a m atter of course, and sometimes,
after b itte r quarrels, were ordered o ff the field, fined and punished in
other ways" (BB 52). James even attem pts to play cricke t w ith some of his
Am erican associates, but the results are predictably disastrous: they
argue calls, shout abuse, and generally im port the cheerful in c iv ility of
baseball in to the sphere of cricket, where it could only be incongruous.
James's bew ilderm ent at Am erican sporting culture is increased by news
of a college basketball scandal, in w hich players were im plicated for
taking bets to influence games. James's w ell-bred shock meets no recep­
tio n in his friends, whose responses consist of shrugs: w hy shouldn't they
cheat? The college, after a ll, does nothing but e xploit them anyway.
A part from reinforcing James's own regard for his public school ethos,
the incident has tw o im plications. It underlines, firs t, the im portance of
c iv ility in cricket even when it is the game, as James has said, m ost fu lly
charged w ith p o litic a l significance. In fact, th a t c iv ility , made especially
visible by its absence in other sports, m ay prove essential in allow ing
cricket its extraordinary p o litic a l possibilities. And it shows, second,
that the absence of a culture of c iv ility in sport is a necessary condition (if
not also a su fficie n t one) fo r opening the door to pure self-interest in
sport. I w ill explore the im plications of these issues in the next section of
th is paper, but the im m ediate question is w hether cricket retains the
c iv ility that, for James, set it apart from baseball and the cheating basket­
ball players. (One can only im agine, in cidenta lly, how appalled he w ould
be by current norm s in Am erican college football and basketball.) Is
cricket, in other words, s till cricket?
James is forced, lik e m any others, to conclude in the negative: the
 378 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

m id n ig h t of cricket's cu ltu re of c iv ility has been passed. "T he blow from

w h ich 'I t is n 't c ric k e t' has never recovered came from w ith in and it came
in 1932. T his was bodyline " (BB 185). In the England-Australia Test of
th a t year, the English captain Douglas Jardine, fearing defeat from a more
pow erful A ustra lia n aide th a t included legendary batsm an D onald Brad­
man, counseled his bow lers to b o w l a short length and bounce the b a ll
in to batsm en's bodies. Since cricke t b ow ling properly aim s at the w icket,
w h ich the batsm an is defending w ith his bat, n o t his body,19 the effect of
th is strategy is roughly equivalent to th ro w in g a succession of brush*
back high inside fastballs. If some of the bodyline balls h it the batsmen,
so m uch the better: the obvious in te n t of th is strategy was to in tim id a te
the free-sw inging Bradman and his colleagues, and a little rib bruise
m ig h t go a long w ay in achieving th a t goal, a goal ju s tifie d by the desire to
w in .
T hat we m ay fin d such tactics m ore or less acceptable, or at least
understandable, is evidence th a t the cultu re of sports has changed. There
were m any reasons fo r Jardine's strategy—some have suggested he was
furious at Bradman's ow n w e ll-kn o w n lack o f chivalry, w h ile N andy
engages in a long psychological p ro file —but the sim plest explanation is
probably also the m ost accurate. Jardine was not prepared to allo w an­
other colo n ia l victo ry. T h a t his strategy underm ined the values he was
ostensibly try in g to protect in bringing home a v ic to ry is the incident's
deep irony; th a t it changed the face of cricke t possibly forever is its
p o litic a l legacy. It is o f course true th a t " It is n 't cric k e t" has already come
under sustained attack, from athletes and others, and was no longer a
phrase w ith real m eaning. "B odyline," says James, "was only a lin k in a
chain. M odern society took a dow nturn in 1929 and 'I t is n 't c ric k e t' is
one of the casualties" (BB 190). One m ig h t place the date even earlier: the
F irst W orld W ar's destruction of Edwardian values, the late In d u stria l
Age revision of V icto ria n values, or even V ictorianism its e lf, w ith its
cultu re of u tility . Here it is useful to revert to the earlier discussion and
note only th a t Jardine exposed w hat was ever-present in cricket, the
com petitive urge, but exposed it in a way th a t made im possible its return
to con tro l by cricket's strictures and norm s of c iv ility . Thus the game
was s p iritu a lly halved, and the triu m p h of having uncovered hypocrisy is
u ltim a te ly a sm all reward fo r the loss o f the game's c ritic a l possibilities.
James's ow n a ttitu d e to " It is n 't c ric k e t" is am bivalent, as we have
seen, bu t he m ourns its loss, not because of nostalgia for schoolboy days
b u t because the p o s s ib ility of tu rn in g the values of cricket back on
 Keeping a Straight Bat 379

themselves was retreating. "C ricketers try to preserve the external de­
cencies/' he says carefully. "The tra d itio n is s till strong. But instead of
'It is n 't c ric k e t/ now one hears more frequently the cynical 'W hy is n 't
it c ric k e t? '" (BB 189). T hat sentim ent is m erely a defence of hyper­
com petitiveness, the drive to w in at a ll costs. A t the same tim e, it
surrenders a standard of value that can be used to challenge the hege­
m ony of im perial dom inance in the only w ay that is effective: from
w ith in , by indicating an in te rn a l contradiction. If, in other words, " It
is n 't c ricke t" has no meaning, everything is ju stifie d ; and in such an
atmosphere, the subordinate are lost forever.
James illu stra te s the c ritic a l p o ssibilities of cricket's tra d itio n a l values
in his account of the 1960 campaign to make Frank W orrell, a black man,
captain of the West Indies team. It is by p o in tin g out that there was
no possible cricket-based ju s tific a tio n fo r th is exclusion th a t W orrell's
case is won. " 'The Case for West Indian Self-G overnm ent' and 'It is n 't
cricke t' had come together at last and had w on a signal v ic to ry ," James
notes w ith some satisfaction, referring to his in flu e n tia l book. "W hen I
confessed I was angry" at W orrell's treatm ent, James says, "even sym ­
pathizers balked at th is ___ According to the co lonial version of the code,
you were to show yourself a 'tru e sport' by not m aking a fuss about the
m ost barefaced discrim in a tio n because it w asn't cricket. N o t me any
longer. To th a t I had said, was saying, a fin a l goodbye" (BB 232). I th in k
that goodbye is not, significantly, to the entire culture of " It is n 't cric k e t"
but rather to its subm issive colonial interpretation. James's triu m p h here
is to reinvigorate the values of cricke t w ith new p o litic a l energy, to see
how they can contain and direct anger in a manner th a t is tru ly lib e ra t­
ing—that is, quite possibly, the one and only tru ly liberating strategy for
the colonized. N o t sim ply by beating the masters at th e ir own game, not
by changing the game by destroying its values, but by reinterpreting
those very values as vehicles of p o litic a l change.

P ostco lo nial C iv ilit y

I suggested earlier that cricket's reform ative possibilities reside, if any­

where, in its culture of c iv ility . But c iv ility m ay seem an u n lik e ly place
to look for p o litic a l critique, for reasons that should be obvious. P olite
behavior (to take the m ost overt display of c iv ility ) has long been a means
of social control, a way of constraining discourse such that those in
in fe rio r positions, or sim ply those thought to be, were denied a proper
 380 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

voice in w h ich to a rticu la te th e ir claim s. T h is dom inating strategy of

politeness is therefore a key feature of colo n ia l control. Politeness re­
inforces the stru ctu ra l dom ination th a t characterizes colonialism by
(a) a llo w in g the superordinate to condescend to those not versed in
proprieties and (b) forcing the subordinate to capitulate to those pro­
prieties in response to condescension. The double bind of politeness,
from the co lo n ia l p o in t of view , is th a t frcan neither fa il to observe its
dicta, nor observe them , w ith o u t u n d e rlin in g m y status as dom inated. It
is useful to th in k of th is along the lines o f M arx's analysis of ideology:
politeness operates by m aking m y interests and claim s phraseable only
in the term s of a dom inant ideology, term s th a t w ill make those interests
and claim s u ltim a te ly redound to the benefit o f th a t ideology. I can
neith e r speak nor be sile n t w ith o u t reinforcing m y own subordinate
position.
So m uch fo r one standard vie w of politeness. In concluding th is exam­
in a tio n , I w ant to suggest a d ifferent in te rp re ta tio n of politeness, an
in te rp re ta tio n th a t turns on points Nandy and fames b ring to our atten­
tio n w ith in the game of cricke t. M y thought here is the fo llo w in g : if
c iv ility is an expression of values th a t a ru lin g class considers desirable,
or at least th in k s it ought to, it is possible th a t c iv ility m ay be turned to
p o litic a l advantage through co lonial use—n o t by im ita tio n , w hich gives
the game away, but by selective in te rn a l application. The m ost effective
colonial strategy w ill therefore not be a k in d of gleeful surrender to
hyper-com petitiveness, the value th a t ignores c iv ility , fo r th is w ill only
reinforce the co lonial position. The m ost effective response w ill be an
iro n ic m aintenance of ju st those values th a t the ru lin g classes profess to
adm ire, a m aintenance that, as suggested earlier, w ill u ltim a te ly indicate
how little in fact they liv e up to them . T h is is beating the masters at th e ir
ow n game, b u t not by w in n in g —or anyway not by w in n in g at any cost.
The strategy m ay seem defective both p o litic a lly and in term s of sports
strategy. The culture of sport, in N o rth A m erica especially, is such th a t a
com m itm ent to c iv ility w ould now be considered evidence o f poor com ­
m itm e n t to the game as a w hole. A thletes now consider it more appropri­
ate to say how m uch they hate losing, how ungraceful they w ill be in
defeat, and th is is evidence of th e ir laudable desire to w in . The s h ift of
values is obvious and b la ta n t—classic poor sportsm anship is here as­
sessed a virtu e , perhaps the only v irtu e we can a rticulate th a t belongs to
the m odern sportsm an. A rearguard action fo r c iv ility m ig h t seem, from
th is vantage, a naive venture. P o litic a lly even more so: the kin d of
 Keeping a S traight Bat 381

in te rn a l change apparently advocated by James in the W orrell case is

feeble compared to a fro n ta l assault th a t m ight have changed things
earlier, or more d e fin itive ly. But is th is really so? If James's account of the
social dominance of the West Indies is accurate, no change of a definite
kin d could have been achieved earlier, nor w ould it have succeeded so
w e ll done by other means. The colonial position is defined in ju st th is
way, that fro n ta l assault short of revo lu tio n cannot succeed—and revolu­
tio n is a dangerous business.
Just so in sport. We are so used to the values of the professional dom i­
nating our sporting consciousness th a t we may forget a tim e when good
conduct and politeness counted for som ething in games. The w inner-
take-all approach to contem porary sport dim inishes the significance of
games because it robs them of value dim ensions they possessed earlier.
N o single com petitor, or team, can hold out against the modern drive to
vic to ry at any cost—he, or they, w ould be obliterated—but it is possible
an entire game can. T raditional cricket's culture of c iv ility is not to be
ignored, not even by today's players. W hat use w ould its m aintenance
be? There w ould be, firs t, the consciousness th a t violence and aggres­
sion, however om nipresent in hum an c o n flic t, can be controlled: not
m erely through rules, the avoidance of punishm ent, but by reference to a
set of shared values th a t make up m o ra lity in its w idest sense.20 Such
control w ould not deny the presence of drive and the urge to w in, nor
w ould it always succeed in c o n tro llin g them,- but the dynam ic of c iv ility
is that restraint posts its value even when it succeeds on ly p a rtia lly. It
rem inds us of the p o ssib ility of shared values, in other words, even when
it is not yet clear w hat they are. C iv ility , lik e cricke t itse lf, is more than a
set of rules, fo r politeness is not sim ply the sum of dicta unearthed in
etiquette books. The culture that supports such books rests on a firm e r
foundation: the w illingness to consider the interests and claim s of oth­
ers, the w illingness to restrain m yself in countless subtle ways in the
service of a com m on project.
But th is is also, it should be noted, a project w ith liberating possib ili­
ties. Nandy embraces the apparent contradiction of using aristocratic
values to reform ative purpose when he notes that "[c]ricke t is aristo­
cratic by virtu e of being a great le v e lle r.. . . It shows—in fact, th is is the
only thing about w hich cricket provides certitude—that there is not only
the survival of the fitte s t but also th a t of the weakest. . . . cricket
reaffirm s, against the better judgem ent of the m odern w orld, that the
meek can in h e rit the earth" (TC 120). In a game where fate plays such a
 382 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

large role, the perm utations of possible m eaning are endless and crucial;
the on ly perm utation of m eaning th a t is not w a rm ly accommodated is
the one in w h ich v ic to ry is everything. " It is pointless," N andy says,

to waste tim e, energy and money on a five-day, thirty-hour game w hich

refuses to be fu lly responsive to human effort and skills. This is the
special, realistic meaning of sportsmanship w hich the Victorians, defy­
ing their own rational self, tried to capture in the tradition-bound, rules-
scarce culture of cricket. That is w hy it is not enough to say that rules are
not crucial in cricket; one m ust also affirm , however strange it may
sound to modern ears, that the cricket in w hich rules are crucial is a
negation of cricket itself. (TC 121)

T his is the sense in w h ich cricke t "is a V icto ria n negation of V ictorian-
ism "; it is, m oreover, the sense in w h ich tra d itio n a l cricke t is hostile to
the values of m odern sport. In understanding the bodyline controversy,
N andy argues, we should see th a t Jardine "expected to w in by fu lly and
m ost ruth le ssly e xp lo itin g the existing rules" of cricke t; yet, by so ex­
pecting, he had in a cru cia l sense ceased to play cricket. O f course th is
p o in t holds o nly insofar as cricke t can be understood as som ething more
than its rules, th a t is, a game w ith a cu ltu re of c iv ility underlying the
rules. If the game its e lf is so changed by the fin a n cia l and m anagerial
pressures of m odernity, it may, by bending to its im peratives, cease to be
the game any longer—a prospect already underway in the s h ift from Test
matches to lim ited-overs m atches.21
The presence of c iv ility in a sport lik e cricke t m ay also rem ind us that,
in M acIntyre's usage, it is a practice w ith goods in te rn a l to its e lf. Excel­
lin g at the game in its w idest sense is a c o n trib u tio n to the entire culture
of the game; v irtu e is possible on ly here, where the practice is grounded
in com m on interests and is not sim ply a m atter of w ho can w in . Paying
a tte n tio n to c iv ility means paying a tte n tio n to the fact th a t the sum of
the game is not victo ry. Valuing c iv ility may appear anachronistic be­
cause it appeals to a version of the game no longer supportable by the
realities of m odern life —the realities, as it is frequently expressed, of
the m arketplace. But th is is just w hat the game is m eant to do, to show
up those values as not om nipotent and, perhaps, not very desirable. If
c ricke t says Nandy, "survives the vicissitudes of our tim e —and m any
hope against hope th a t it does so—it w ill perhaps survive as a defiance
and critiq u e of m odernity in a w o rld m oving towards post-m odernity"
(TC x). If games cannot do this, if they capitulate to the perverse im pera-
 Keeping a S traight Bat 383

tives of the m arketplace, they w ill have surrendered u tte rly th e ir role as
c ritic a l reflections on the social order. It w ill no longer be possible to
view national struggles and im perial-colonia l dynam ics through the lens
of cricket or football, no longer possible to observe the clash of fate and
character in baseball. They w ill be not reflections of life b ut sim ply more
life , th e ir a rtific ia l constraints con trib u tin g to nothing except a defi­
n ite and tim e-bound outcom e. T hat w ill make them —already has made
them , in some cases—lesser games; it w ill also make us lesser citizens,
fo r it w ill rob us of c ritic a l p o litic a l possibilities.
Judd's Paradox is fin a lly resolved, then, by in some sense ceasing to
look fo r a resolution. One hates the game (as a repository of aristocratic
values) because it is a good game (com pelling in its own term s, able to
reflect on those values). Judd's Paradox is re a lly the nature of cricket
its e lf, the aristocratic game w ith so m any revolutiona ry possibilities, the
colonial sym bol th a t underm ines empire, the in te rn a l dynam ic of sports­
m anship and aggression. It is because cricket possesses th is unique in te r­
play of values and charges that it has sustained so m uch p o litic a l interest
and has succeeded as the vehicle of national self-consciousness in so
m any different contexts. It is for these reasons, fin a lly , that cricket
succeeds as a com plex critiq u e of social and p o litic a l life —succeeds at
realizing a p o ssib ility th a t can reside in any organized sport insofar as it is
a repository of values. I am aware th a t th is is a great burden to place on
our games. In the case of cricket, at least, it is a burden that was form erly
borne w ith o u t demur. Nevertheless it is possible we have now passed the
tim e when it was possible to reinvest our games, even cricket, w ith such
social w eight. The question of w hether cricke t is s till cricket, or can be
again, cannot be decided here. We can only conclude w ith the hope that it
may be so.

N otes

1. The play and screenplay of Another Country, w ritte n by Julian M itch e ll,
mixes facts and character traits associated w ith all of the four celebrated patrician
spies recruited at Cambridge in the 1930s: Guy Burgess, K im Philby, A nthony
Blunt, and Donald McLean. The film (1982) was directed by M arek Kanievska and
starred Rupert Everett as Guy and C olin F irth as Tommy.
2. Both instances are mentioned in Ashis Nandy, The Tao o f Cricket: On
Games o f D estiny and the D estiny of Games (New York: Viking, 1989), 43 and
134. These expressions of the paradoxes are instances of what Nandy calls the
"divided hero" presence in cricket. I w ill have more to say on this below.
3. That this aristocratic patina was acquired relatively recently—in the last
 384 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

century and a half, perhaps—does not obscure the point. Andrew Lang makes a
good case, in his popular h isto ry of cricket (English Illu stra te d Magazine, 1884)
that cricket, as opposed to tennis, "is the game of the people"—i t developed from
natural bat-and-ball amusements of a variety of classes. A nd working-class York-
shiremen have long been among the best cricketers going. Yet the id y llic , elegant
character of the game, its association w ith English public schools and leisured
amusements, cannot be shaken off. It is also, in contour, a game of refined beauty:
the w h ite flannels, the linear action, the lack of body contact. Iconically, cricket
remains aristocratic.
4 . 1 am naturally restricting m yself to the colonial societies formed by the
B ritish Empire. It is an obvious p o in t that some form er B ritish colonies, notably
Canada, have not m aintained a culture of cricket. The standard, and s till plausi­
ble, explanation for this is the cu ltu ra l influence of the U nited States. C ricket is
played in Canada—and there is a national team—b u t enthusiasm for the game has
gradually shifted from a sm all group of expatriate English people and Anglophiles
to a growing but s till sm all West Indian and Indian im m ig ra n t population. To the
extent th a t cricket remains a game incomprehensible to the N o rth Am erican
sports m ind, cricket w ill never flo u rish in the Canadian context.
5. C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (London: Fontana, 1963), 151. This m edi­
ta tion on colonialism and cricket's role in the West Indian experience w ill be a
central part of the thesis o utlined in this paper. A ll fu rth e r citations are given in
the m ain text, abbreviated BB.
6. Nandy, The Tao o f C ricke t, ix. Nandy's view of the issues, w ith w h ich I
substantially agree, is summarized in the fo llo w in g rather complex passage: " I
view cricket as [a] m edium of self-expression on four planes: tra d itio n a l English
cricket (w hich is in many ways a reflection of earlier social hierarchies but is also
u n w ittin g ly a c ritic is m of the values associated w ith m odem industrialism ),
modern cricket (increasingly an endorsement of the hegemonic, urban-industrial
managerial culture and a c ritic is m of the pre-industrial values now associated
w ith defeated ways of life), im ported cricket (the cricket w h ich was exported to
non-western societies as a c ritic is m of native life-styles from the po in t of view of
the in dustrializing West but w hich, as reconstructed by the natives, brought out
the latent function of the game in the West and became a c riticism of the common
cu ltu ra l principles of capitalism , colonialism and m odernity) and new cricket
(the cricket w h ich by its close id e n tificatio n w ith the industrial-managerial ethos
is becoming increasingly an endorsement of the ru lin g culture of the w orld and a
criticism of the victim s of history)" (xi). These points w ill be clarified in w hat
follows.
7. Alasdair M acIntyre, A fte r Virtue: A Study in M oral Theory (London: D u ck­
w orth, 1982), 190-91.
8. The influence of Grace sim ply cannot be underestimated here. In an 1895
Strand Magazine intervie w w ith Grace, Fred W. Ward notes that the D octor had
probably scored more than seventy thousand runs in his th irty years of com peti­
tive cricke t—an incredible total. "W ell, indeed," enthuses Ward, "m ay one of the
verses of an earlier song be repeated:

There's a name w h ich w ill liv e for ever and aye,

In the true-born cricketer's m in d —
 Keeping a Straight Bat 385

A name w hich is loudly re-echoed to-day,

And borne on the wings of the w ind.
Britannia may gladly be proud of her sons,
Since who is more famous than he,
The stalw art com piler of thousands of runs,
'Leviathan' W.G.?"

See "Interview w i*h M r. W. G. Grace," in Cricket's Silver Lining: 1864-1914, ed.

David Rayvern A llen (London: W illo w Books, 1987), 61.
9. Geoffrey Moorhouse, L o rd ’s (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1983), 43.
10. H istorical accounts of cricket's spread around the w orld tu rn on the pres­
ence of the British m ilita ry in colonial regions. This was instantiated most obvi­
ously in India, where it is possible the game was played as early as 1743. There
was certainly a Calcutta C ricket Club by 1792. In other countries, for example
Samoa, cricket developed in odd ways on the native soil: "Matches of 200 a-side
took place, w ith four or five umpires and three batsman at each end, the contests
lasting for weeks," Cricketer A n n u a l reported in 1922/3. "W ork was neglected,
and steps had to be taken to compel the natives to return to reason. Men who
played were expelled from Church, and the King had to issue a special decree." See
"Some Notes on C ricket Abroad," in A llen, C ric k e t’s Silver Lining, 186.
11. Nandy, The Tao of Cricket, 8. Despite its rather unfortunate title , and
though occasionally marred by sociological jargon, Nandy's book is the best
available full-length treatm ent of cricket's p o litic a l im plications. A ll further
citations w ill be given in the m ain text, abbreviated TC.
12. One m ight be inclined to offer baseball as a counterexample here, but
Nandy is convincing on the significant differences: a baseball batter has three
strikes to w ork w ith , and moreover represents his team only once every nine at-
bats—he may get three or four chances to succeed. But the comparison is fru itfu l,
for baseball surely shares the "culture of anarchic individualism " in a way that
nonlinear, te rrito ria l team sports like football cannot. You are never alone on a
football field—unless your teammates have failed you in fa irly obvious ways.
13.1 explore this danger in the larger context of a culture of c iv ility in a later
section of this paper.
14. Sportsmanship should not be confused w ith gamesmanship, the canny
exploitation of the rules for tactical advantage. Gamesmanship taken too far is a
danger to sporting values. "A t its worst," says Nandy, "tra d itio n a l gamesmanship
takes advantage of the sporting sp irit and allegiance to norms in others—and one's
own partial com m itm ent to the norms—to advance the cause of individual or
team success" (TC 38). This cannot occur in a game whose culture of sporting
values is vital. There are games, however, where no culture of sportsmanship can
be presumed. A n attem pt to specify w ith rules the contours of sportsmanship is
almost always an indication that this culture has broken down, or never has been
present. In American football, for example, the presence of a penalty called
"unsportsmanlike conduct"—w hich includes fighting and late h its —is strong
prima facie evidence that there is no real sportsmanship in the game: a player w ill
be sportsmanlike only because, and to the extent that, he cannot get away w ith
doing otherwise w ith o u t damaging his team. It is significant that transgressions
in this game are not, except in extreme cases, punished w ith ejection from the
 386 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

game but rather by loss of te rrito ria l advantage—in the case of unsportsm anlike
conduct, fifteen yards.
15. It is th in k in g such as this that led N e v ille Cardus, in his "T rib u te to P.G.H.
Fender" (Illu s tra te d Sporting and D ra m a tic News, 1928) to praise a c a p ta in -
understood to be a G entlem an—w ho "is a hard fighter. [Fender] does not belong to
the soft school of captaincy. Too m any contemporary captains apparently imag­
ine that cricket is honoured by the policy of 'G ive your opponents every chance/
T h is is not chivalry; i t is weakness w h ich really does in d ig n ity to the greatest of
games. A brave opponent is w o rth y of the most k illin g steel: he expects no
quarter." This enjoinder is on ly necessary because of a discernible gap in attitudes
between Players (who made up most national sides) and Gentlem en (s till the
choice-set for captain). See "Great C ricke t Captaincy," in A lle n , C ricket's Silver
L ining, 252.
16. Judith Shklar explores our love of exposing hypocrisy in her book O rdinary
Vices (Cambridge: Harvard U n ive rsity Press, Belknap Press, 1984), especially Ch.
2. Shklar's suggestions is that "p u ttin g hypocrisy firs t" —considering i t the most
serious vice, more serious than cruelty, say—leads to m isanthropy and a cacoph­
ony of accusing and counter-accusing voices.
17. Charles R itchie, Siren Years (London: M acm illan, 1980).
18. T his possibility of rem aining a game—a p ossibility increasingly m in o r as
cricket approaches the degree of professional dominance typical in other major
sports—is w hat underwrites its c ritic a l abilities. If big sport becomes professional
sport in the way, for example, pro football and basketball have in the U nited
States, the lines between game and life are obscured. T horoughly professional
sport, in other words, is just life continued by other means: its o n ly difference lies
in posting w inners and losers, w h ich in itse lf may constitute a danger.
Professional dominance may, of course, be ambivalent. In the pro football satire
N o rth D allas Forty (1979), a character attacks a coach in a scene th a t has become
famous for expressing the professional athlete's peculiar frustration: "W hen we
call i t a game, you call i t a business," he yells at the coach. "W hen we call i t a
business, you call it a game."
19. One of the several ways a batsman can be got o u t—and the one least
im m ediately understood by casual observers—is by stepping in fro n t of the w icket
and touching the ball w ith anything but his bat. T his "leg before w ic k e t" or "lb w "
decision is the umpire's, hence the many shouts bowlers and defenders give after a
bow l: they are appealing to the um pire for an out, believing (or merely claiming)
that the batsman has blocked the ball w ith his leg.
20. Nandy reminds us that the "crucial behavioral tra it demanded by the
dom inant culture of cricke t—for that matter, by all professionalized modern
sport—is hyper-competitiveness. As opposed to the norm al competitiveness of
sport, hyper-competitiveness is the behavior w h ich ignores all the conventions of
sport, including all lim its on com petition, once the lim its stand between success
and failure. Hyper-competitiveness abides by the laws lim itin g competitiveness
on ly when success is guaranteed or when the penalties prescribed by the laws of
the game make transgressions overly expensive. In other words, there is no moral
check against transgression,- the only check is the fear of punishm ent" (TC 93;
italics added). He compares this a ttitude to one of the early Kohlbergian stages of
moral development, in w hich moral standards have yet to be internalized.
 Keeping a S traight Bat 387

21. A cricket match is tra d itio n a lly played u n til each team's entire side of
batters have been dismissed twice, in successive innings. Even w ith variations of
strategy . . . declaring, fo llo w in g on—this may take three or four days. Lim ited-
overs or "one-day" cricket creates a fast result by lim itin g the number of bowls a
team can make. L im itin g run production, rather than dismissing batters, be­
comes the m ain object of the game. Anyone fa m ilia r w ith the tw o games knows
how different the dynamics are. The look of the game is also different in some
cases: rather than th e traditional whites, A ustralian and N ew Zealander cricket­
ers play in leagues w ith colored uniform s and stadium floodlights.
 Paul Idahosa

James and Fanon and the Problem of the

In te llig e n tsia in Popular O rganizations

[The masses] do not th in k as intellectuals do, and

this intellectuals m ust understand.
—James, "Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of
Hum anity"

We are nothing on earth if we are not, firs t of all,

slaves of a cause, the cause of the people, the cause
of justice, the cause of liberty.
—Fanon, Wretched of the Earth

In The Black Jacobins C.L.R. James crafted the form ative narrative of the
o nly successful slave re vo lu tio n in history. In The Wretched o f The
Earth, Frantz Fanon passionately issued the ca ll to re vo lu tio n to "th ird
w o rld " peasants and w orkers. One is a w o rk of h is to ry p o in tin g to past
lessons fo r d is tillin g possib ilitie s in the future; the other a searing prose­
c u tio n of a h is to ry shaped by colonialism and a fu tu re cast by the depen­
dency narrow vistas offered by the parvenu local managers of the post-
colonial state. If both w orks spoke to the hope and p o s s ib ility of popular
autonom y and democracy, they also bore testim ony to its failures and
attested to its subversion by those w ho m ight have been one of its
vehicles: the in te llig e n tsia .
For any agenda th a t discusses popular democracy, a crucial ite m fo r
debate is how to realize, encourage, and expand participatory decision­
m aking. Increasing the means by w hich people can expand basic choices
in a ll aspects of th e ir lives is a staple of dem ocratic theory. Being clear as
to who makes decisions, or w ho—amongst the "people"—are the p rin ci-

388
 James and Fanon 389

pal agents or agencies of p o litic a l and social change, becomes integral to

disputes about achieving the aim s of a dem ocratic society and p o litic a l
system. A resource c ritic a l for, and re s tric tio n to, achieving a democra­
tic society and p o litic a l system is the organizational form inherited or
adopted by people.
The conceptualization of the intellig e n tsia 's role in the operation of
popular and dem ocratic organizations is crucial; and it often finds its
sharpest and perspicuous expression in the thought of thinkers, lik e
James and Fanon, from underdeveloped countries. As tw o of the C arib­
bean's m ost form idable defenders and participants in the cause of colo­
n ia l liberation, they did not demand freedom fo r th e ir own indepen­
dence, as m uch of the in te llig e n tsia have done. Rather they "grounded"
and engaged (see Robbins xi) themselves in the experiences and aspira­
tions of others: peasants and workers w orldw ide. It is from w ith in the
context of grounding and independence, of educated intelle ctu a ls and the
w ider, c u ltu ra l ties and social m ilie u x from w hich they come, that many
of the interesting tensions faced by th ird w orld in te lle ctu a ls arise.
James and Fanon were interpreters rather than legislators (Bauman 1-
6). Legislators are m odernist and authoritative ; they assert, prescribe,
and lay down autho rita tive statem ents that m ediate between disputes.
The a u th o rity to arbitrate is legitim ated by the superior specialized
knowledge they have over the n o n in te lle ctu a l parts of society. Legisla­
tors select the best, m ost appropriate p o litic a l order; they lay down the
crite ria that gives collective ownership of the knowledge that they pro­
duce, w hich is not local but universal, having a p p lica b ility irrespective
of where it m ight be used or reside.
Interpreters, however, translate statem ents w ith in a given model,
com m unity, or tra d itio n . They assist rather than authorize com m unica­
tio n between participants w ith in a given com m unity. Interpreters claim
for themselves a site of a u th e n tic ity th a t derives not from the tra d itio n a l
a u th o rity of the sovereign in d ivid u a l in liberalism or the tra d itio n a l
in te lle ctu a l (Gramsci 118-19) but from the people as a c o lle c tiv ity and
th e ir traditions. Through providing a language they give a voice to the
people.
If James and Fanon fa ll w ith in the role of interpreters, they do so for
different reasons. James strove fo r a language and practice of organization
w ith in w hich to place traditions in the absence of the conventions from
wrhich he came and was try in g to overcome: the pre-N ew Economic
Policies of Leninist vanguardism . H is search fo r populism was always
 390 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

occluded by L e n in ist lin k s and w ould on ly be realized when he turned to

the ascription of pop u list developm ent by Nyerere. T h is was true even
fo r his greatest w ork, The B lack Jacobins, where he could n o t fin d the
concrete organizational form w ith in w h ich to place his organic in te lli­
gentsia (Gram sci 119-20). M oreover, James's organizational experience
was w ider, as was his problem atic.
Fanon's exem plary in te lle c tu a l, however, guides on ly insofar as the
specific people's organizations envisaged in the postcolonial state and
c iv il society accord w ith actu a lly existing organizations th a t had been
the basis fo r n ationa l lib e ra tio n . Fanon's was always an organization
rooted in a th ird w o rld problem atic. But both drew upon popular culture
to m ake th e ir claim fo r the kinds of organization they had in m ind.

II

James was fond of suggesting th a t he was, "as a ll West Indian in te lle c ­

tuals are," s o lita ry (James, C ricke t 71).1 Geographical iso la tio n c o n trib ­
uted its share to th is condition . But the psychological reclusiveness of
radical, a c tiv is t West Indian in te lle ctu a ls lik e him self, such as Cesaire,
Fanon, and C astro,2lay of course in the tra d itio n a l theoretical and p ra c ti­
cal problem of bridging the c u ltu ra l gap between the educated and non-
educated in any society: the problem of the tra d itio n a l in te lle c tu a l in any
society.
U nder any circum stances, men and wom en trained to consume at e lite
gram m ar schools and lycees the c u ltu ra l and m oral lessons of Pericles
and Euripides, of L iv y and D ostoyevski, M atthew A rn o ld and Flaubert in
English, French, Greek, and Latin, are apt to feel some distance from
th e ir less educated brethren. Indeed, lik e m any tra d itio n a l intellectua ls,
they are lik e ly to feel "above," cut o ff from , or a separate class from the
com m unity to w h ich they belong and are destined to serve only insofar
as they lead. However, James's "W indow to the W orld" (Beyond a Bound­
ary 13ff) ruled out th is p o ssib ility.
W ith hindsight, James saw one of his in itia l gateways to the w o rld in
the fig u ra tive scenery of the peculiar playing fields of colo n ia l cricket,
seen through the lenses of his gilt-edged, E urocentric colonial education.
They were, however, w indow s refracted through the segmented prac­
tices of co lonial society, w ith its pervasive divisions of race, class, and
culture. So the confrontatio n w ith being a tra d itio n a l in te lle c tu a l under
colonialism could no t be inno ce n tly pushed aside. James and Fanon faced
 James and Fanon 391

an in e q u a lity between them selves and a ll other intellectua ls who shared

in the id e n tity of w orking w ith ideas through the privilege of education,-
others did not have to suffer the h u m ilia tio n s imposed by the segrega­
tions of social and p o litic a l power characteristic of the colonial order.3
M oreover because of th is education, the problem atic was compounded.
The education's g ilt edges were dulled by its lack of a bond to native au­
th e n tic ity and by its alienation from the indigene's culture. In the face of
a com m on oppression, a com m on heritage of forced m igration and slav­
ery, in the face of the collective h u m ilia tio n s forced on society through
colonialism 's racial exclusivity, the in te llig e n tsia had to face the d i­
lem m a of being "e ith e r p o litic a lly or fig u ra tiv e ly " representative of the
peoples' interests (Carby 49-50).
Like James, Fanon was acutely aware of the breaches th a t had devel­
oped between the W estern educated in te lle c tu a l and the broader social
and c u ltu ra l m ilieus from w hich they came. From W estern education the
in te lle c tu a l realizes that his native culture is backward relative to the
West and seems to be of m arginal use in the m odern w orld. A fte r a ll, was
it not th e ir Western education th a t allow ed the in te lle c tu a l to espouse
negritude, Pan-Africanism or cu ltu ra l nationalism ? If the nation and the
people become the p rincipal ideological reference points to legitim ate
p o litic a l action, and if a response has been to reject the W estern perspec­
tive th a t has cut h im o ff from his roots, the c u ltu ra l n a tiona list turns his
back on technological m odernity to "archaic positions" (Fanon, Pour la
revolution africaine 42; cf. 217-18; ibid., 209-10; cf. Van cinq de la
R evolution 230). Fanon's invective, here reserved for the more exotic
proponents of negritude, lik e Senghor, has an echo that finds resonance
in James and a ll those who seek the populist route to democracy and
organization: fin d in g in people's collective experiences the seeds of th e ir
own and th e ir nations' destinies.
James's view of organization in itia lly seemed cradled in the organiza­
tio n a l productivism of Leninism and T rotskyism . Here was James, albeit
am bivalently, the m odernist: seeing and seeking in the agency and in
th e ir organizational form the modern systems of production that capital­
ism generates: the slaves on the plantation in San Dom ingo, "on the huge
sugar factories w hich covered the northern plain, [w hich] were closer to a
modern proletariat than any group of w orkers in existence at the tim e "
(Black Jacobins 86); the proletarian m ariners of the factory w haling ships
of M oby-D ick (see G rim shaw and H art 5); and fully-fledged workers
supervised and controlled by the bureaucracies of the contem porary
 392 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

ca p ita list factories o f m odern c a p ita list society, in either th e ir W estern or

th e ir Soviet variant (see James, State C apitalism 6-8). But these iro n
cages were o n ly part of the story; there were other tra d itio n s to draw
from .

m *

C edric R obinson presents in his B lack M arxism the view th a t significa n t

members of the black diaspora in te llig e n ts ia do not owe th e ir theories of
rebellion and re vo lu tio n to the W estern narratives or theories alone.
O stensibly, th e ir theoretical and practical adulthood m ig h t have come
through in s tru c tio n devised p rim a rily by the W est and (though n o t only)
through M arxism . The like s of James, D u Bois, and R ichard W right (and
no doubt Fanon too)4 m ay have started out w ith the b u ild in g blocks of
W estern thought; they m ay even have apprenticed under and thereby
seem ingly been form ed by M arxism and kindred W estern narratives.
To be sure, it was James the T ro tskyist and p o st-T rotskyist w ho, re­
volted by S ta lin is t crudities and b ru ta litie s and repelled by the toady
practices of S ta lin ist com m unist parties, directed an antipath y tow ard a ll
form s of bureaucracy, ca p ita list or socialist. He w ould reject the van­
guard party in favor of the indigenous capacity of w o rkin g peoples, the
colonized and black people, to be self-active and self-organizing (James,
"R esults" 71-79; T rotsky and James 38-69; James, Notes 147-50). Thus
his understanding of the spontaneous resources of the w o rkin g and popu­
la r classes (M arxism 4-10) and his celebration of the H ungarian Revo­
lu tio n [M arxism 24-25; cf. Buhle 121-24, 134-35) a ll seemed part of
his H egelian-M arxian ideas, found in his Notes on D ia le ctics, th a t the
masses and party reflected Being and Essence (James, Notes). S im ila rly
Fanon's n o tio n of spontaneity and its lim its , lik e his rejection of the
lim its of peasants' organizational capacities, owes its origins to the de­
bates w ith in M arxism over the appropriate organizational form w ith in
w h ich the masses could struggle for lib e ra tio n . If the context fo r the
debate could not be otherw ise, the form it w ould take w ould be radically
different.
Both fames and Fanon owe th e ir insights and explanatory stories to
w hat Robinson calls the Black R adical T radition. The black radical
tra d itio n is radical no t o n ly because it is p o litic a lly oriented tow ard
socialism and is a direct c ritiq u e of capitalism . The tra d itio n is radical
also because it has rootedness in the accum ulated com m on conscious-
 James and Fanon 393

ness of h isto rica l "struggles of lib e ra tio n m otivated by the shared sense
of obligation to preserve the collective being, the ontological re a lity "
(Robinson 245-46). James's experience of the black w orking class in the
U nited States during the 1940s and early 1950s, and his w ork amongst
the sharecroppers of the South, convinced h im of the necessity of autono­
mous ideas and, struggles transm itted to a subsequent generation of
scholar-activists. For example, in the U nited States, radical and neo-
M a rxist black Am erican scholars lik e M anning M arable, C ornel West,
and James L. Cone have adduced notions lik e B lackw ater to explain the
persistence of an autonom ous, popular radical black tra d itio n : from slave
rebellions and the endurance through, and despite, slavery, of the black
fam ily, to the radical church and the daily acts of resistance by in d iv id ­
uals under slavery and Jim Crow. Thus for Cone and West, the C hurch
becomes the prin cip a l body, com m unity, resource, and repository of and
vehicle fo r blacks becom ing an independent social force. W hat they are
suggesting is the tra d itio n s and th e ir organizational and in s titu tio n a l
form s constitute th e ir radical tra d itio n (see Gorm an 124-36).
M ore broadly, w hether in A frica, the Caribbean, or the scattered realm
of the diaspora; w hether slave revolts, precolonial, or colonial rebellions;
w hether the values, m usic, and struggles of black churches,- w hether
jazz, reggae, calypso or rumba, or hip hop, the various chants of vodun, or
the invocation to santeria; a ll constitute the com m on, if dispersed and
contradictory, experience of both A frican and diaspora responses to the
taking away, the repression, and denial of a collective experience. T his
experience developed a unique w orldview of resistance and struggle that
in adversity aspired to make a better w orld fo r slaves, indentured la ­
borers, o il and sugar workers, black soldiers, southern black sharecrop­
pers, or A frican workers and peasants (see James in G rim shaw and H art
15, and see Marable ch. 1).

IV

James and Fanon were w itness to the failure of not taking the aspirations
of people seriously. James spoke of the great and heroic, but tragic, figure
of Toussaint-Louverture w ho dem onstrated a lim ite d vision fo r those in
whose names he was put forw ard to act; whose "autocratic" deportm ent
was i l l suited to being an organic in te lle ctu a l, and who w ould become an
icon, severed from the people's w ill, fo r w hom he had emerged and
originated as a liberator (James, Black Jacobins 153; cf. Blackburn 242):
 394 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

"he ignored the black labourers, bew ildered them at the very m om ent he
needed them the m ost," and he never did confide in them or try to
educate them (Black Jacobins 287).
The lesser personalities th a t Fanon and James w ould excoriate were
n o t tragic figures; they were u n w o rth y agents of the peoples' w ill, w hich
they absorbed to leg itim a te the demand fo r nation-statehood and the
expectations of peoples in postcolonial society. The people's court had
found them w anting; they betrayed the people's aspirations in not fu lf ill­
ing democracy, and in James's view they had repeated the errors of
Toussaint.5The construction of an indigenous revo lu tio n a ry cu ltu re had
not become consolidated because of the eventual in a b ility of the indige­
nous in te llig e n tsia , w ith the possible exception of M oise, to respond to
the demands of the masses. But in The Black Jacobins one can also fin d
hope. The s p irit of rebe llio n and independence th a t burned in Toussaint
was to be found w herever repression existed (Black Jacobins 376-77).
In seeking an organizational fo rm b e fittin g the masses, James's experi­
ence in the U n ite d States reaffirm ed his understanding of the distance
between the in te llig e n ts ia and the people. He also saw th a t one means to
bridge th is gap was through popular culture, and thus he saw as his duty
to "translate the econom ic and p o litic a l forces through and in to liv in g
hum an beings, so th a t one gets interested in them fo r w hat they are:
people" (cited in G rim shaw and H a rt 20). F inally, clearly influenced by
M arx's early w ritin g s, there was the rem arkably Fanonist note about the
effects of m odem ca p ita list c iv iliz a tio n and organization on the d isin ­
tegration of hum an personality. For James, therefore, the com m on need
of hu m a n ity was to reconstitute the self as hum an subjectivity, "as an
integral hum an being," since "The life of m odern man has been s p lit in to
fragm ents and his w hole life and personality need to be integrated" (cited
in G rim shaw and H a rt 25). A n integrated hum anism is one in w hich
producers become the "centre of hum an theory and practice" (ibid.).
H enceforth the need to w o rk out "T he fundam ental re la tio n . . . of the
one and the M any, In d iv id u a l and Social, In d ivid u a l and U niversal, lead­
ers and follow ers, representatives and ranks, the part and the w hole"
[Beyond a Boundary 193). Therefore, "In te lle ctu a ls should prepare the
way fo r the a b o litio n of in te lle ctu a ls as the em bodim ents of c u ltu re " by
becom ing absorbed in the people, rather than in th e ir tra d itio n a l roles as
the custodians of cu ltu re and convention or in th e ir separateness from
the people (Grim shaw, Popular D em ocracy 25). James, in his w ritin g s on
cricket, trie d to show how th is was possible through the masses absorb-
 James and Fanon 395

ing a genuine a rtis tic cu ltu ra l form : the Constantines, W orrells, Sobers,
Kanhais, and Richards were the expressions and products of art and
popular culture. C ricke t was a visual art th a t bypassed the trustees of
culture: an appreciation th a t was objectively and aesthetically pleasing
to everyone, including the masses. Perhaps equally as im p o rta n t—as it
had been for Japies—was th a t it was a conduit to the realization of
consciousness, especially in reflecting the divisions in Caribbean society
and reaching beyond the boundaries of local ide n titie s.
Thus the vantage p o in t of the cricket grounds could be seen as the piers
of Fort-de-France or Port of Spain's docklands. They form a seamless
w hole in th a t they are both expressions of w hat men and wom en liv e by
and therefore w hat also constitute an authentic popular national culture.
W hat cricke t—no less than revolutiona ry slave revolts—had shown was
the capacity of people to be independently adaptive to changing circum ­
stances. S till, however w e ll cricke t exem plifies popular culture, it was
not an organizational form suggestive of the practical relationships be­
tween p o litics, intellectuals, and organization.
James w ould later claim that he found in Lenin's6 later w ritin g s on the
party and cooperatives (see James, N krum ah 189-213; cf. Notes 142-47),
and in Nyerere's ujam aa socialism (James, N krum ah 214-24), the form
appropriate to popular education and developm ent. Lenin came to the
tardy realization in "O n C o-operation" that tra d itio n a l collective a ctiv­
ity , such as communes and villages, can also be sites of resistance adapt­
able to modern circum stances. He eventually took these organizations of
petty com m odity production seriously as the basis for the expanded m ar­
kets of state capitalism , rather than impose on the peasantry a regime of
collective agriculture by the distant state in the name of national devel­
opment. The peasant saying m oin pas esclaves m oin pas travaye (cited
in Blackburn 241) captures the voice not just of the sem i-proletarian,
freed slave, but also of the egalite of a peasant proprietorship anywhere
that, however m uch a chim era, wishes to retain some independence for
th e ir labor power. Had James the knowledge of the populist tra d itio n that
had been defeated by Lenin, he w ould not have been surprised at Nyerere
a rriving at Lenin's 1923 conclusions "by h im se lf" (ibid., 214).7

Fanon discovered very little by him self, and m uch of it was, lik e any
p o litic a l thought, one of ascription. H is populist organization and in te l-
 396 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

lectu a l were rooted e m p irica lly in the organizational experience of the

A lgerian n ationa l lib e ra tio n struggle* T h is experience gave h im an af­
fin ity w ith ordinary people th a t he expected of other members of the
in te llig e n tsia , and his accord allow ed h im to take seriously w hat he
perceived to be peasant aspirations. He took seriously the people's capac­
itie s, and believed th a t they could be extended. He also to o k as a given
th a t em pathetic in te lle ctu a ls and adm inistrators needed to "ra tio n a lize
popular practices" and devote th e ir talents to the task of econom ic and
p o litic a l regroupm ent after independence (see Fanon, Les Damnes 149).
For Fanon, the roots of an em bryonic n a tiona l cultu re were to be found
in some sort of com m unal, village dem ocracy—the village assemblies.
Here the p u b lic discussion and se lf-c ritic is m th a t had been part of tra d i­
tio n a l village life could be used as a foundation fo r encouraging demo­
cratic form s of p a rticip a tio n (Les Dam nes 48-49). A nd although Fanon
does not elaborate on the role in te lle ctu a ls are to play in village assem­
blies, his discussions on the in te llig e n ts ia p o in t to organic in te lle ctu a ls
w ho have an organizational and practical, as opposed to ju st an ideologi­
cal, fu n c tio n w ith in local com m unities, although it is never clear how or
w hat they are supposed to organize.
W hen Fanon discussed com m unity values, he always spoke about
changing attitudes arising in reaction to the emergent dom ination of
capitalism w ith in the com m unity. In Fanon's view , com m unity is not a
closed bond and exclusive solidarity,- co m m u n ity is defined by w hat it
does, not o n ly by w ho is in it, and is id e n tifie d by specific a ctivitie s,
causes, and interests w hether they are riven by class divisions or dom i­
nated by tra d itio n a l chiefs and fledgling ru ra l capitalists (Les Damnes
190-91). It is w ith in such peasant com m unities th a t Fanon found the
prin cip a l defense of tra d itio n s against the encroachm ent of m odernizing
dissolution, against, in effect, bourgeois and m arket in d ivid u a lism and
colonial in fe rio rity . Here is the source of Fanon's im perative fo r in d iv id ­
uals to stand "aside in favour of the com m unity." The urban experience
of intelle ctu a ls, however, had done little to prepare in te lle ctu a ls to learn
from , and defer to, uneducated producers (112).
Fanon did not rom anticize the tra d itio n s of the peasants or the village.
Indeed, he generally saw them as capable of being conservative, often
in e rt, trib a lly narrow -m inded, su rviva list, prone to vio le n t, vengeful
outbursts, som etim es reactionary, and m ost im portant, unorganized,
except w hen under the dom ination of village chiefs: "ringed about by
m arabouts, w itc h doctors, and custom ary chieftains, the m a jo rity of the
 James and Fanon 397

country dw ellers are s till liv in g in a feudal mass" (Les Damnes 109-10;
see also, in te r alia, esp. 44-48, 55-58, 108-9, 112-14, 117-20, 136-39,
195, 223-33; cf. L'an cin q de la R evolution 123ff). But Fanon never had
contem pt nor patronizing attitudes for peasants and th e ir village life . He
believed he understood some of the causes for m any of the negative
features of peasant life , or w hat Lenin had called peasants' lack of cu l­
ture. T his lack of culture was due, not only to th e ir relative lack of
involvem ent in the com m odity economy, but also to the w eakly devel­
oped "m odern" in s titu tio n s and infrastructure upon w hich th is economy
depends. For instance, national reconstruction required a bridge between
the em inently ju stifia b le but narrow subsistence demand fo r bread and
land and the broader aim of integrating peasant practices in to the na­
tio n a l and w orld economies, together w ith the developm ent of peasant
capacities to participate in local and national self-governing in s titu tio n s .
A dynam ic agrarian economy and a p articipatory party require an expan­
sion of awareness beyond the im m ediate subsistence of the local com ­
m u n ity to the nation and its place in the w orld economy. A peasant
subsistence m entality, concerned just w ith "the m om ent to the next
harvest," m ust be extended to encompass "the rest of the w o rld " (Fanon,
Les Damnes 193-94). Land reform was essential to th is process of bring­
ing about a change in the m o tiva tio n of peasants to raise production. It
was also essential to broaden the p o litic a l and w orld o utlook beyond the
narrow horizons of the peasant's kin sh ip relations (see ibid., 190). We see
here w hat m ight have been Toussaint's tra n sitio n a l solution had it not
been for his epoch, and, w ith the exception of his nephew, Moise, for the
class interests of his coleaders.
D evotion to a com m unity's lim ite d altru ism does not necessarily ex­
tend to those outside of that w orld, w hether other groups or even the
nation (see Hansen 154; cf. Caute 79). Indeed, as Toussaint w e ll knew,
these kinship systems, when coupled w ith peasant proprietorship, may
constitute one of the m ajor obstacles to nation-building, w hether in
regards to expanding the m arkets necessary for national econom ic de­
velopm ent, or especially the bounded space of local com m unity.
Nevertheless, Fanon m aintained a fa ith in the good sense of the peas­
ants, in th e ir a b ility to be future-orientated, and in th e ir a b ility to break
out of the narrow horizons of kinship relations. He asserted, for instance,
that, given the local bourgeoisie's in a b ility to found genuine national
in s titu tio n s , the interm ediary trading sector should be nationalized,
planned, and decentralized in to dem ocratically run wholesale and re ta il
 398 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

cooperatives (see Les Damnes 178-81). These n o n p ro fit cooperatives

were to have functioned, not o n ly to provide e ffic ie n t d is trib u tio n , bu t
also to ensure th a t any adm in istra tive stratum did not have an oppor­
tu n ity to get ric h by th e ir access to state agencies. Such econom ic decen­
tra liz a tio n w ould act in tandem w ith the p o litic a l and adm inistrative
decentralization away from the citie s, "a rtific ia l" com m ercial e n tities
in h e rite d from the co lo n ia l period (ibid., 182,183,189).
U n lik e James, w ho could not, of course, anachronistically ascribe or
suggest m odels of tw e n tie th -ce n tu ry debates about econom ic develop­
m ents to late eighteenth, early nineteenth-century H a iti, Fanon had
the hindsigh t and in tim a tio n of disputes th a t had resonated w ith in the
p o p u list-M a rxist debate.8 N evertheless, in Jamesian term s, w ith regards
to the scale and scope of the organizational design fo r econom ic grow th
and the role to be played by the in te llig e n tsia , the p opulist experience
and conceits could have had some purchase in Grenada and could have
presented a genuinely p o pulist antidote to the vanguardism o f the N ew
Jewel M ovem ent.
Fanon's belief in decentralized practices lik e cooperatives im puted to
the people a m o tiv a tio n fo r in itia tin g co llective action when they have a
stake in w hat they are doing; his b elief in such practices did not just
invoke abstractions of the nation. If peasants have chances to be autono­
m ously responsible, even under pressure, a g ricu ltu ra l a c tiv ity w ill in ­
crease (see Fanon, Les Damnes 190). The peasant, moreover, has such
knowledge at hand; but the peasant also is w illin g to learn more if those
w ith hum an capital can have the patience to explain in concrete ways
how w ork can be im proved upon and made less onerous (ibid., 177, 194-
95).
However, fo r Fanon the p rin cip a l focus was on how form s of labor
cooperation m ig h t be effected by a long process of patient m oral persua­
sion and education. Fanon took fo r granted that m ethods w ill be w orked
out to address peasant interests in a way th a t m ig h t bring tra d itio n a l
practices and relationships in to concordance w ith the cooperative form
of labor enterprise. Fanon assumed th a t peasants can be persuaded of the
benefits of cooperation and w ould jo in v o lu n ta rily . H is beliefs m ay seem
som ewhat ra tio n a list, where persuasiveness invested w ith honesty is
charged w ith changing people's lives. Such an o u tlo o k goes to the center
of Fanon's thought. It derived from the tra d itio n th a t sees education not
just as a means to com bat a u th o rity but also as an in ju n c tio n to co m m it­
m ent: to "educate man is to be a ctional" (Fanon, Peau n o ir masques
 James and Fanon 399

blancs 224). Technical and in te lle c tu a l expertise carries w ith it the re­
spo n sib ility of using one's a b ilitie s for the developm ent of others (Fanon,
LesDam nes 197).
Clearly, Fanon's evaluative fram ew ork com m its h im to a h ig h ly m or­
a lis tic p o litic a l theory, w hich seems naive from the standpoint of p ra cti­
cal p o litics and perhaps the cynical hindsigh t of th irty years of A frican
independence. The same could be said of Fanon's view of p o litic a l par­
ties. He saw a role fo r the party that, as Hansen has claim ed (191), m irrors
Rousseau's general w ill: to b u ild consensus and an expression of the
people's w ill. It is an instrum ent of p a rticipation th a t allow s groups and
individua ls to express th e ir interests and grievances, a forum that aims to
harm onize in d ivid u a l view points and collective projects, local interests
and national concerns.
Fanon did not spell out the mechanisms of th is process, b u t it is clear
th a t he believed the party to be the expression of the national culture and
a means to u n ite the variety of local cultures. For th is reason, and lik e
other A frican thinkers but u n lik e James, he u nfortuna tely did not con­
sider party pluralism and com petition as an antidote to the unmeasured
dominance of the national bourgeoisie. The party could express peo­
ple's wishes, w hich in tu rn ought to be com m unicated to the state (Les
Damnes 182-85). Society, via the party, absorbs the state.
W hat was the basis fo r the tra d itio n that Fanon had in mind? Part of it
lay in peasant production and its wholesale expropriation that had taken
place in A lgeria through forced in d ivid u a liza tio n and com m ercialization
of com m unal-tribal (arch) and extended fa m ily (w e lk ) lands. Land con­
solidation and the m echanization of agriculture fu rth e r pushed hundreds
of thousands of peasants in to m arginal existence as ru ra l underemployed
(meskine), as sharecroppers (khammes), and as seasonal laborers on set­
tle r farm s, or as landless laborers who eventually m igrated to the towns
(see Abu-N asi 251-58, 313-41; Bourdieu passim; Halvorsen 332-37;
Sm ith 82-97). It was such groups who in te rm itte n tly punctuated A l­
gerian history w ith peasant rebellions from the conquest u n til national
liberation. It was Algerian peasants who provided the support for the
armed struggle (Chaliand and M inces 16). The poor peasantry, together
w ith the urban poor, the subproletariat, form ed the rank and file of the
Armee de liberation nationale (a l n ), the national liberation arm y (Perin-
baum 429ff.; Bennoune 5-11). Thus, Fanon's partisanship w ith peasants
and lum penproletarians accorded not only w ith populist theory but also
w ith the actual practice of the libera tio n m ovem ent.
 400 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

Fanon was under no delusions about the lim ita tio n s of uncoordinated
jacqueries, and he was in siste n t on the lim its to spontaneity of form er
peasants or sem iproletarians (w ith o u t a "bone to knaw on") (Les Damnes
135-36; cf. 116-17,120,124,139,147, passim). They were revolutiona ry
o n ly insofar as in te lle ctu a ls m aintained the idea of social transform a­
tio n , and such change was inconceivable w ith o u t engaging the peas­
antry. T his was a necessary, rather than a su fficie n t, condition since a
p o litic a l organization w ith in the context of a long-term visio n for a
fu tu re society were the m issing ingredients.
Fanon insisted on the need fo r strong p o litic a l leadership,- and he
consistently stressed the weakness of spontaneous, localized revolts th a t
were isolated from the broad concerns of people engaged in a national
lib e ra tio n struggle fo r land, bread, and d ig n ity (Les Dam nes 136-37,174).
But he also believed th a t unless in te lle ctu a ls encourage popular par­
tic ip a tio n , and b u ild in s titu tio n s in harm ony w ith peasant aspirations,
the n a tio n a list m ovem ent is pointless (ibid., 68; Pour la re vo lu tio n a fri-
caine 186-87).
So m uch of Fanon may sound lik e vague utopian Rousseau; but u n lik e
James, it is b u ilt up from a conception of change rooted in a real organiza­
tio n a l tra d itio n th a t draws upon the people's aspirations in a m anner that
they are fa m ilia r w ith . Therefore Fanon's thought allow s, in principle,
the p o s s ib ility of the role of the interpreter to act in service of the people.
James's black radicalism is an in te llig e n ts ia in search of an apt form :
there are the people, b u t not th e ir in s titu tio n s .
W hen James said in Notes on D iale ctics, "there is nothing le ft to
organize because organization as we know it is at an end" (117), he was
wrong. He was not wrong no rm a tive ly and m o ra lly but em pirically,
about the persistence of organizations as we know them , but more im ­
portant also about popular form s o f organization th a t become the basis
fo r the interpreter playing its role.

VI

James and Fanon made clear in th e ir w ritin g s th e ir concern to efface the

role of in te lle ctu a ls. Seem ingly outside of the day-to-day experiential
struggles of people, caught, lik e m ost members of the in te lligen tsia,
between the masses and the ru lin g classes, they engaged in in te lle c tu a l
struggles o n ly insofar as they gave theoretical shape to w orking peoples'
practices. Dedicated to the eventual absence, o r even e lim in a tio n , of the
 James and Fanon 401

in te llig e n tsia as a d is tin c t group, agency, or class, both were com m itted
to the d is tilla tio n of the good sense inherent in m uch of popular organi­
zations' own coordination and self-developm ent.
James and Fanon affirm ed w hat popular culture was capable of achiev­
ing fo r the people in the domains where it m attered m ost and as re­
flections of th e ir a b ility to make p o litic a l choices: in th e ir w ork, th e ir
com m unities, and in everyday popular culture. For both, to achieve
freedom, obtain p o litic a l power, and consolidate democracy m eant fin d ­
ing an appropriate form of organization. James and Fanon challenged the
skeptics regarding w orking peoples' capacities for developing and sus­
tain in g dem ocratic practices; they believed that, despite econom ic de­
priva tio n or being beholden to tradition-bound cultures, w orkers and
peasants were nevertheless capable of developing and enacting in s ti­
tu tio n s conducive to "m odern democracy." In a ffirm in g this, James and
Fanon pointed to the various elem ents of popular culture th a t had sin­
gular properties of collaborative equality, even where they saw inequa li­
ties and possibilities of indigenous dom ination. Tied to th e ir capacity
for resilience and adaptation, especially when faced w ith exigencies of
v io le n tly imposed change or the m ost cataclysm ic upheavals, the at­
tributes of cooperation and particip a tio n could sustain in s titu tio n s re­
quired fo r the participatory com m onality demanded of radical demo­
cratic citizenship.
If great men do make history, and its achievem ent is feasible to the
extent of th e ir m aterial circum stances, then they have to ground them ­
selves in the lives of those who in h a b it the relations of production, in the
lives of those who produce, live, and create for them . W ith a ll of our and
th e ir gaps in the knowledge of understanding this, James and Fanon le ft
to us a legacy w ith in black radicalism to interpret so that people m ight
legislate on th e ir own behalf.

Notes

1. The notion of the free but isolated and im potent intellectual is part of James's
tragic vision of the corruption of bourgeois conception of freedom: the divorce of
practice from theory, or "action and thought in social function and personality"
(cited in Grimshaw, C.L.R. James Archive 38).
2. As James does in the addendum to the second edition of The Black Jacobins,
(392ff.; cf. James cited in Grimshaw, C.L.R. James A rchive 25). There is some­
thing p laintively fam ilia r in the present plig h t of Cuba, and its main symbol of
revolution, the only "successful" one in the Caribbean and Western hemisphere:
 402 C ricke t, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

isolation in the face of an implacable enemy (an exiled settler class in M ia m i

w aitin g to exact various kinds of revenge); a barrack room socialism; an attem pt
at a return to an almost preindustrial age; and a centralization and paranoia in the
face of attacks from w ith o u t and perceived ones from w ith in ,
3. In a typ ica lly b rillia n t aside in a lu m in o u sly engaged essay on Frank W orrell
and Barbadian cricket, James (C ricket 269) points to another group fo r w hom
privilege and jobs were bought at the expense of exclusion fro m p o litic a l power
and often social hum ilia tio n s, exile, and deatlv the nineteenth-century Russian
intelligentsia, from Decembrists, anarchists, and populists to, of course, M a rx­
ists. It is unfortunate James did n ot fo llo w up th is insight; it w ould have allowed
h im to see a historical antecedent of some of his ideas, and perhaps i t w ould have
pointed h im to a direction in w h ich he was always headed: populism.
4. I t is questionable, given Fanon's sweeping amendments (indeed, some w ould
argue, rejections) of M arxism , that he can on Robinson's terms be called a Black
M arxist. Given, however, Fanon's influence on black Americans and M arxists
everywhere, especially in the "th ird w o rld ," Robinson's three references to Fanon
in Black M arxism do little to enlighten us (unlike his b rillia n t discussions of D u
Bois, James, and W right) about his relationship to the genre of radicalism he
discusses. Fanon's relationship and absorption of the local narrative Caribbean
tra d itio n of lore and m yth has been pursued extensively by P atrick Taylor.
5. Fanon condemned nearly a ll (African) postcolonial leaders fo r th e ir lack of
genuine democracy, or, as he called it, national liberation. James was often more
specific, as in his perceptive analyses of N krum ah, who, he argued, "never under­
stood that democracy was a m atter in w hich the o fficia l leaders and an opposition
were on tria l before the mass of the population. It is not a question of co n flict
between rivals for power, as so many w ho shout 'democracy' believe— [H]ere his
shallow concept of democracy found h im o u t" (James "Rise and Fall" 178; cf. 180,
and N krum ah 107-108,183).
6. Despite his evolution in the face of changed circumstances, Lenin's (and
Trotsky's) position on agricultural development and agrarian reform remained
consistent. W ith the partial exception of his pragmatic and belated w ritings
during the nep — in the face of the palpable fact of peasant dissent and attachment
to th e ir com m unal land and plots in the afterm ath of the re vo lu tio n —Lenin
remained com m itted to an agricultural agency and appropriate organizational
form : the agricultural proletariat amidst the economies of scale to be derived from
the large socialized cooperative or state farms. It is never clear in James whether
this view finds tacit, if melancholy, acceptance in his view of the outcomes of the
San D om ingo R evolution. Carolyn Fick's b rillia n t updated account of James's
revolution from below is not so m uch a defense of the p o ssib ility of economic
development from below (populism as an economic ideology was nonexistent at
the time). Rather i t acknowledges the kin sh ip roots of the ex-slaves' u n w illin g ­
ness, in the name of some far away development, to chart the onerously fa m ilia r
oppressions of capitalist compulsion. Populist peasant autonomy, however chi-
meral, was preferable to a return to the (pre-Prussian) road of the plantation.
There are, of course, dissenting voices (see Genovese 88-92).
7. That Nyerere d id n o t, is not the point.
8. Perhaps more accurately, the Bolshevik-Menshevik debate: "the theoretical
question that for the last fifty years has been raised whenever the history of
 James and Fanon 403

underdeveloped countries is under discussion—is whether or not the bourgeois

phase can be skipped" (Les Damnes 175).

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and Intellectuals. Cambridge: Polity, 1987.
Bennoune, Mahmood. "Algerian Peasants and N ational Liberation." MERIP Re­
ports, no. 48 (1976): 3-24.
Blackburn, Robin. The O verthrow o f C olonial Slavery. London: Verso, 1988.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Algeria, 1960. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979.
Buhle, Paul. C.L.R. fames: The A rtis t as Revolutionary. London: Verso, 1988.
Carby, Hazel V. "Proletarian or Revolutionary Literature: C.L.R. James and the
Politics of the Trinidadian Renaissance." South A tla n tic Q uarterly 87.1
(1988): 39-52.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skins W hite Masks. Trans. C. L. Markm an. N ew York:
Grove, 1967.
----- . A D ying Colonialism. Trans. H. Chevalier. New York: M o n th ly Review,
1971.
----- . Van C inq de la Revolution A lgirienne. Paris: Maspero, 1959.
----- . Les Damnes de la Terre. Paris: Maspero, 1961.
----- . Peau noire masques blancs. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1952.
----- . Pour la revolution africaine. Paris: Maspero, 1964.
----- . Towards the A frican Revolution. Trans. H. Chevalier. New York: Grove,
1969.
----- . The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. C. Farrington. New York: Grove, 1963.
Fick, Carolyn. The M aking of Modern H a iti: The Saint Domingue Revolution
from Below. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1990.
Genovese, Eugene. From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-Am erican Slave Revolts
in the M aking o f the N ew World. New York: Vintage, 1982.
Gorman, Robert A. "Black Neo-M arxism in Liberal Am erica." R ethinking M a rx­
ism 2.4(1989): 118-40.
Gramsci, Antonio. The Modern Prince and Other Writings. N ew York: Interna­
tional Publishers, 1957.
Grimshaw, Anna. The C.L.R. fames Archive: A Reader’s Guide. New York:
C.L.R. James Institute, 1991.
----- . Popular Democracy and the Creative Im agination: The Writings of C.L.R.
James, 1950-1963. New York: C.L.R. James Institute, 1991.
Grimshaw, Anna, and Keith Hart. C.L.R. fames and “The Struggle fo r H appi­
ness." New York: C.L.R. James Institute, 1991.
Halvorsen, Kjell. "The Colonial Transformation of Agrarian Society in Algeria."
Journal o f Peace Research 15.4 (1978): 323-43.
Hansen, Emmanuel. Frantz Fanon: Social and P olitical Thought. Athens: Ohio
UP, 1977.
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James, C.L.R. Beyond a Boundary. 2d ed. N ew York: Vintage, 1963.

----- . The Black Jacobins: Toussaint U O uverture and the San D om ingo Revolu­
tion. 2d ed. N ew York: Vintage, 1963.
----- . C ricket. London: A llis o n and Busby, 1986.
----- . M arxism and the Intellectuals. D e tro it: Facing Reabty, 1962.
----- . N krum ah and the Ghana R evolution. London: A llis o n and Busby, 1977.
----- . Notes on D ialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin. London: A llis o n and Busby, 1980.
----- . "Results." Trotsky and James. 71-79. €
----- . "T he Rise and Fall of N kru m a h ." In A t the Rendezvous o f Victory. London:
A llis o n and Busby, 1984.
James, C.L.R., Grace Lee, and Raya Dunayevskaya. State C apitalism and W orld
R evolution. Chicago: Charles Kerr, 1986.
Lenin, V ladim ir. "O n Co-operation." Lenin's Last A rticles. Moscow: Progress
Publishers, 1967. 28-34.
Marable, Manning. A frica n and Caribbean P olitics: From Kwame N krum ah to
M aurice Bishop. London: Verso, 1987.
Perinbam, Marie. "Fanon and the Revolutionary Peasantry—the A frican Case."
Journal of Modern A fric a n Studies 11.211973):427-45.
Robbins, Bruce. Introduction. In te lle ctu a ls: Aesthetics, Politics, Academics. Ed.
Bruce Robbins. M inneapolis: U of M innesota P, 1990. ix -x x iv .
Robinson, Cedric. Black M arxism : The M a kin g o f the R adical Black Tradition.
London: Zed, 1973.
Sm ith, Tony. The French Stake in Algeria, 1945-62. Ithaca: C ornell UP, 1978.
Taylor, Patrick. The N arrative o f L iberation: Perspectives on Afro-Caribbean
Literature, Popular C ulture and Politics. Ithaca: C ornell UP, 1989.
Trotsky, Leon, and C.L.R. James. Leon Trotsky on Black and Self-Determ ination.
N ew York: Pathfinder, 1978.
 Horace C am pbell

C.L.R. James, W alter Rodney and the

Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

In troduction

The conference on C.L.R. James that gave rise to the essays in th is

collection took place at a m om ent of crisis and opportunity. M eetings
organized by peoples of color in the w orld today are occasions to a ffirm
the rig h t of the downtrodden to raise th e ir voices against the new w orld
order of m ilita ris m and recolonization. In the tim e of th is m eeting com ­
m em orating the in te lle ctu a l legacies of a revolutionary scholar there
were num erous rem inders that the conditions for academic freedom
have steadily deteriorated in A frica and the Caribbean. A rrest of teach­
ers, students, poets, w riters, the banning of academic unions, and the
prevention of dem ocratic debate and discussion are a ll features of the
crisis of social reproduction. T his repression and v io la tio n of basic hu­
man rights is hidden in the m etropolitan countries behind the triu m ­
phant lib e ra l ideology that proclaim s the d e fin itive failure of socialism .
M eetings and conferences attended by progressive intelle ctu a ls open
opportunities that are not afforded in the T h ird W orld to c ritic a lly chal­
lenge the ideological aggression that is a m ajor com ponent of the new
im perial th ru st for the next century.
R hetorical promises of a New W orld Order seek to d isto rt the realities
of the m ajor changes in the inte rn a tio n a l system. The tra n sitio n from the
old assembly lin e production (called Fordism) to Just in Tim e production
has m ajor im plications for the reorganization of society and the transfor­
m ation of the labor process. These transform ations prom ise to challenge
old ideas about w ork, com m unity, society, happiness, the fam ily, and our
whole mode of social organization. And w h ile these changes are under­
way, the processes of development and independence in m ost parts of the

405
 406 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

T h ird W orld are being underm ined. T his is m anifest m ost clearly in the
a ctiv itie s of in te rn a tio n a l finance capital.
Econom ic decline and social distress has relegated the peoples of the
T h ird W orld to the old era of speculation and piracy. The present eco­
nom ic d ire ctio n rem inds one of the words of A m ilca r Cabral, th a t

if we w ish to place the fact of im perialism w ith in the general trajectory of

the evolution of the transcendental factor w hich has changed the face of
the world, namely capital and the process of its accum ulation, we can say
that im perialism is piratry transplanted from the sea to dry land, piratry
reorganised, consolidated and adapted to the aim of exploiting the natural
and human resources of our peoples.1

T his p ira try is m ost evident in the region of the Caribbean where the
tra d itio n a l exports cannot sustain a positive balance of paym ents and
where the trade in ille g a l substances replaces the c u ltiv a tio n and export
of a g ricu ltu ra l com m odities such as sugar and bananas. U n til the last
decade, the image of the Caribbean projected on the in te rn a tio n a l media
was th a t it was a to u ris t resort where sun, m m , calypso, reggae, and
cocaine could provide fo r the recreational needs of the citizens of the
developed w orld. T h is image has undergone some m o d ifica tio n in the
face of the resistance of the peoples of the area and the increased m ilita ry
presence of the U nited States. P o litic a l changes in the context of the end
of the cold w ar and the dele g itim iza tio n of the ideas of social democracy
lend greater force to m eetings and conferences th a t seek to give c la rity of
purpose fo r those involved in in te lle c tu a l w o rk to com bat the resurgence
of conservative ideas. It is the challenges at the p o litic a l, ideological, and
philosophical levels th a t set apart the w o rk of C.L.R. James and make
th is colle ctio n of essays sig nificant.
C.L.R. James was a p o litic a l a c tiv is t fo r freedom, social justice, and a
new social order. Hence discussions of C.L.R. James m ust respond to the
p o litic a l and in te lle c tu a l crisis of th is m om ent. C.L.R. James was born in
1901 in T rinidad and died in 1989 in London. Since his passing, there
have been m om entous events such as the fa ll of the B erlin W all, the
collapse of the planned economies, the release of Nelson M andela, and
the U n ite d States m ilita ry expedition to the Persian G ulf. A ll of these
issues of resistance, war, social change, and decolonization were ques­
tions th a t agitated the m ovem ents w ith w hich James was associated in
his life tim e . James not o n ly participated in the a n tico lo n ia l struggles but
also constantly sought to enrich the hum an s p irit, to expose the barbarity
 James, Rodney, and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l 407

of capitalism , and to define the m eaning of socialism in the context of the

prom ise of social em ancipation.
These issues are pressing fo r the current generation of in te lle ctu a ls and
activists in the w orld as despair and self-doubt deepen in the face of
retreat and reaction and where the m etaphysics of the idea of the m arket
as the so lution fo r econom ic grow th seems to represent the new salva­
tio n . T his ideological crisis is also m ore evident in the Caribbean and
L a tin Am erica in the afterm ath of the reversals in Grenada and N ic ­
aragua and the debates on the future of the Cuban experim ent. A ll over
the region, the peoples seek new form s of p o litic a l representation to
break the cycle of in stitu tio n a liz e d corruption and v ic tim iz a tio n . A fte r
three decades of p o litic a l independence in the Caribbean, the m ain­
stream p o litic a l organizations have m anipulated the sym bols of the a n ti­
colonial struggles and have distorted progressive concepts such as social­
ism so th a t there is a real p o litic a l void in the area of alternatives to the
present p o litic a l and econom ic retrogression.
A sm all independent p o litic a l party called the W orking Peoples A l­
liance ( w p a ) in Guyana is one of the p o litic a l forces in the English-
speaking Caribbean th a t seek to carry forw ard an independent ideologi­
cal lin e and at the same tim e rise above cynicism , despair, and the racial
divisions in the society. It is the form ation in w hich W alter Rodney spent
the last six years of his life . He was one of the founders of th is party.
Rodney had been exposed to James and his ideas at an early period and
had developed his ow n co n trib u tio n to the revolutionary in te lle ctu a l
traditions that had been established by C.L.R. James, George Padmore,
Eusi Kwayana, and m any others.
Both C.L.R. James and W alter Rodney in different generations were
part of the collective resistance of the Caribbean peoples and helped to
establish an in te lle c tu a l and p o litic a l fram ew ork for social transform a­
tio n and self-em ancipation.2 James, for m ost of th is century, combined
the contradictions of the Caribbean in te llig e n tsia in attem pting to define
the role of the peoples of the Caribbean w ith respect fo r th e ir ow n libera­
tion, but he did so in a w orld where the liberation of the Caribbean could
not be divorced from m ajor changes in the intern a tio n a l p o litic a l econ­
omy. As Africans, they were both sensitive to the special responsibility
that the place of an independent A frica had for oppressed Africans every­
where and th e ir ideas enriched the search fo r Pan-African liberation.
The fact that the social and p o litic a l life of the Caribbean stands at the
crossroads of the cu ltu ra l life of five continents (Africa, Asia, the Am er-
 408 C ricke t, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

icas, and Europe) has propelled a num ber of Caribbean in te lle ctu a ls in to
the center of the in te rn a tio n a l arena* In the tw e n tie th century, C arib­
bean nationals such as George Padmore, Claude M cKay, M arcus Garvey,
A im e Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Rene Depestre, George Beckford, N icolas
G u ille n , George Lam m ing, and countless others have made th e ir m ark in
enriching the fo untain of hum an knowledge. Some lik e Frantz Fanon
made fundam ental co n trib u tio n s to the afield o f m edicine and in th is
p a rticu la r case Fanon was m ost e x p lic it in the ca ll fo r a decisive break
w ith Europe.
These in te lle ctu a ls can be distinguished from a w hole school w ho had
set them selves up as cham pions of the people bu t w ho were really
transm ission belts fo r the c u ltu ra l values of Europe. Am ong th is group of
in te lle ctu a ls, the career of Eric W illia m s was the m ost notew orthy. Eric
W illia m s was among those w ho enjoyed the support o f the Caribbean
people w hen he a rticulated the relationship between C apitalism and
Slavery. W illia m s rode the crest of a mass m ovem ent th a t articulated
fundam ental social demands and challenged U n ite d States m ilita ry im ­
perialism . But the same W illia m s, w ho as prim e m in is te r of T rinidad
asked James to edit The N a tio n , the party paper of the People's N a tional
M ovem ent ( p n m ), la te r placed James under house arrest. The career of
W illia m s was not unique; there were so m any prom ising w riters, econo­
m ists, historians, and sociologists from the region w ho m atured to over­
see the wretchedness o f the people or w ho graduated to become spokes­
persons fo r the ru lin g circles in Europe and N o rth Am erica.
T h is experience should alert those reflecting on the in te lle c tu a l lega­
cies of James to note th a t in his life tim e he always pointed to the direc­
tio n of greater p a rticip a tio n by the people, and he always w anted to draw
a lin e between those in the service of im perialism and those who wanted
to advance the interest of the oppressed. Therefore, the s p irit of a collec­
tio n of essays on C.L.R. James m ust be different from a sim ple statem ent
o f celebrations by Caribbean nationals abroad th a t g lo rify fames as a son
of the region. O ur re fle ctio n on James and Rodney as Caribbean in te lle c ­
tuals m ust be part of the task to generate greater study by the youth in
order to carry forw ard the task of reclaim ing the d ig n ity of the Caribbean
people.
A book considering James as a w rite r, novelist, p layw right, speaker,
teacher, lite ra ry c ritic , philosopher, Pan-A fricanist, sports w rite r, and
p o litic a l a c tiv is t is an im p o rta n t trib u te . The study of the w ork of James
is already the subject of a num ber of theses, dissertations, articles, and
 James, Rodney, and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l 409

books, and led to the appearance in 1990 of the C.L.R. fames Journal The
creation of a C.L.R. James In s titu te and the publica tio n of the C .L R .
fames A rchive: A Reader's G uide provide a record of James's w ork during
the last fo rty years of his life .3 A lo t of th is painstaking w ork has been
undertaken by those who shared the com m itm ent to the ideals of James
w ith o u t the support of established academic in s titu tio n s . Those w ho
seek to make his w o rk more accessible have undertaken an im portant
task in a period when in d ivid u a lism and private property prevails even in
the ranks of progressive scholars.
The bringing together of distinguished scholars and p o liticia n s such as
M ichael Foot is its e lf a m ajor trib u te to the legacy of James and can either
carry forw ard the search for c la rity among revolutiona ry scholars or
serve to enhance the prestige of m ainstream academics. In a w orld of
increasing polarization between rich and poor, between the capitalist
m etropoles and the underdeveloped w orld, between organic scholars of
the oppressed and tra d itio n a l scholars of the dom inant classes, it is
im portant that steps be taken to ensure th a t the study of the ideas of
James is not confined to the academy. James's dive rsity was such th a t he
self-consciously crossed the lines divid in g narrow academic expertise.
T his chapter seeks to assess the c o n tin u ity and c o n trib u tio n of C.L.R.
James and W alter Rodney in relation to the d ig n ity of the black person, to
the questions of rebellion, the ideas and social forces capable of sustain­
ing revolution and social transform ation. It is also part of the effort to
carry fo rth a tra d itio n of independent in q u iry th a t raises new questions
from the standpoint of the oppressed in the Caribbean and the T h ird
W orld.

C.L.R. James and the Rebellion of the Slaves

The rig h t to rebellion by oppressed and colonized peoples has been one of
the enduring principles of contem porary society. W hether it is w ith in the
liberal dem ocratic traditions of the French and Am erican revolutions,
the revolutionary trad itio n s of the Bolshevik, Chinese, Vietnamese, and
Cuban revolutions, or the more recent a n ticolon ial revolts in A frica, the
rig h t to free a society from external dom ination has become one of the
cornerstones of in te rn a tio n a l p o litics. T his had taken the legal form of
the D ecolonization C om m ittee of the U nited N ations. It finds its day-to-
day expression in the continuous resistance by the peoples w ho are
suffering under the yoke of colonial dom ination.
 410 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

T h is issue of co lonial ru le is not a h is to ric a l question in the Caribbean.

A t present in the closing decade of the tw e n tie th century there are more
than tw e n ty colonies in th is region ranging from M artinique, Guade­
loupe, Cayenne, Puerto Rico, the V irg in Islands, Bermuda, M onserrat,
the Caym an islands, to other sm aller islands whose status in in te rn a ­
tio n a l p o litic s is hidden behind the concepts of "departm ent" or "com ­
m onw ealth status." M ost of these islands are inhabited by peoples of
A frica n descent. Consequently, in these societies the problem is one not
o n ly of legal sovereignty b u t also of the d ig n ity of the A frica n person.
C.L.R. James was born in the co lonial society of T rinidad when B ritis h
im pe ria lism was in its heyday. Though reared in an era w hen the colonial
educated was supposed to in te rn a lize the c u ltu ra l values of the West,
James from a very early period had his eyes on the d ig n ity of the people
who m aintained th e ir h u m a n ity w h ile constantly seeking ways to a tta in
freedom . T h is was one of the m ajor issues in the Caribbean in the
afterm ath of W orld War I, fo r James had reached adulthood when the
Garvey m ovem ent was a m ajor p o litic a l and social force in the Am ericas.
The Garvey m ovem ent centralized the problem of A frican redem ption as
an integral part of p o litic a l freedom in the Caribbean and the Am ericas.
James was not unaware of the im pact of th is m ovem ent in challenging
co lonial ideological hegemony.
James was less than three generations rem oved from slavery. The
conditions of p la n ta tio n slavery and the form s of consciousness issuing
from th is mode of social organization were deep in the consciousness of
the Caribbean person. T h is was m ore so since the form s of social rela­
tions of slave society were s till dom inant in p lantatio n economy. In
searching for ways to understand the response of slaves to the dehum an­
iz a tio n of slavery, James investigated the problem of rebellion by slaves
and w rote the h isto ry of the successful slave re vo lt in San D om ingo in
1789. T h is w ritin g took place in the 1930s when the dom inant them e in
re la tio n to the a b o litio n of slavery was the hum anitarian role of the
a b o litio n ists in Europe. T h is w ritin g also took place in the period when
the m ajor ca p ita list depression of th is century unleashed reaction, rac­
ism , and fascism in Europe.
The resu ltin g book, The Black Jacobins, brought to lig h t the "incred­
ib le transform ation th a t had taken place among the slave population" of
the Caribbean. W ritin g in 1964 on the H a itia n R evolution, James said of
the revolt:
 James, Rodney, and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l 411

They not only produced a body of men (some unable to sign their names)
who to this day astonish a ll observers by their achievements in war and
the m ultifarious demands of government, Toussaint and his lieutenants,
inspired by freedom, the concepts of the French Revolution and their
long experience of a colonial regime, accomplished what leaders of strug­
gles for national independence are rarely able to do. They did not take
over the form e* colonial regime. They constructed, from the ground up, a
new government based upon their own consciousness of their needs.4

T his concept of black rebellion and slave re vo lt had been w ritte n by a

colonial w ho made a radical break w ith the then dom inant view th a t the
abo litio n of slavery was the result of the hum anitarian efforts of W illia m
W ilberforce and the antislavery society in Europe. The Black Jacobins
was pathbreaking in m any ways by showing the m aterial conditions of
the w orld of the colonized and the colonizers. In the book James also
clarified the im pact of slavery on the m etropole and explained how,
w h ile there was ta lk of lib e rty, equality, and fra te rn ity by the re vo lu tio n ­
aries in France, these freedoms had to be taken by the slaves themselves.
It was one th in g fo r French revolutionaries to speak of lib e rty in Europe;
it was quite another to speak of the lib e rty of slaves. But for the slaves
lib e rty had no skin color. The successful revolt by the slaves in H a iti was
a m ajor tu rn in g p o in t in the h isto ry of the relations between Europe and
the Am ericas and between A fricans and Europeans.
Since the w ritin g of th is book, m any studies have allowed even more
insight in to the ideas and actions of the slaves in H a iti.5 Some of these
works have brought to lig h t conceptual flaw s in the w ork of James.
Others have pointed to the overemphasis of James on the ideas of the
Enlightenm ent. O f necessity, some of these researchers using the re­
sources of the academic w orld and the opportun ity to analyze w orks that
were not available to James have been able to deepen our understanding
of the forces at w ork in the H a itia n R evolution. These insights do not,
however, detract from the fundam ental co n trib u tio n of the study The
Black Jacobins in po in tin g to the search for freedom and the se lf-a ctivity
of the slaves in search for dignity.
The docum entation of th is successful revolt and its afterm ath and his
other w ritin g s on A H isto ry o f Negro R evolt showed that James was
consumed by the passion to inspire. To be able to see the w orld from the
p oint of view of the revolting masses was James's way of giving co n fi­
dence to the 1930s generation of A fricans who were caught in a quagmire
 412 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

s im ila r to the present crisis in the in te rn a tio n a l system, w herein fas­

cism , degeneration in the Soviet U nion, the Ita lia n invasion of Abys­
sinia, and econom ic depression had exposed the nature of capitalism on a
w orld scale. In its scope covering both v io le n t and n o nviole nt form s of re­
sistance, re vo lt, and uprisings in A frica , the U n ite d States, and the C arib­
bean, A H is to ry o f Negro R evolt published in 1938 recognized th a t the
freedom and independence of the A frica n person in the Caribbean was
inescapably connected to the freedom of A fricans everywhere. T h is is
one of the essential principles of Pan-Africanism , and James is correctly
seen as one of the m ajor Pan-African th in ke rs in the tw e n tie th century.6
C.L.R. James influenced the th in k in g of a w hole generation of C arib­
bean and A frica n scholars w ith his ideas on black rebellion. In the heady
days of decolonization w hen the B ritis h were tra in in g a responsible
m iddle class to oversee the decolonization process, a num ber of young
scholars in Europe came in contact w ith the w o rk and ideas of James.
W alter Rodney was one of these students. He was influenced by the clear
Pan-African o u tlo o k of James. W alter Rodney called James "a m odel of
the p o ssib ilitie s of retaining one's in te lle c tu a l and ideological in te g rity
over a protracted period of tim e ."
As a h istorian, W alter Rodney understood the k in d of im pact th a t A
H is to ry o f Negro R evolt w ould have had in a period w hen orthodox
historians were w ritin g th a t A fricans welcom ed the com ing of co lo n ia l­
ism and European overrule. Rodney, w ho h im self w rote on A frica n re­
sistance to slavery and colonialism , said of the w ritin g on the rig h t to
revolt that: "th e mere m ention of a diffe re n t p o sition in 1938 was an act
of defiance and singled out C.L.R. James as a front-runner in the fie ld of
A frica n studies devoted to A frica n lib e ra tio n ." To separate A frican and
Caribbean studies fo r lib e ra tio n from A frica n studies fo r dom ination and
external rule is s till im portant, and W alter Rodney served to continue
the in te lle c tu a l tra d itio n s established by James in focusing on the re w rit­
ing of h is to ry to inspire re vo lt and social change. W alter Rodney in his
ow n trib u te to James and the A frica n R evolution observed:

M o s t schoolboys w o u ld have heard the a xio m th a t each generation re­

w rite s its o w n histo ry . It does so n o t m e re ly by g iv in g d iffe re n t answers
to the same questions b u t by posing e n tire ly d iffe re n t questions on the
stage of developm ent w h ic h th e p a rtic u la r society has reached. C e rta in
scholars w il l be am ong the firs t to raise new and m e a n in g fu l issues
because of th e ir s e n s itiv ity and co n n e ctio n w ith the m ost d yn a m ic group
in the society. T hus, w h e n A fric a n peoples were m o u n tin g a struggle fo r
 James, Rodney, and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l 413

po litica l independence and as they continued that struggle through m ili­

tary means in Southern Africa and politico-econom ic means elsewhere,
they autom atically became interested in recalling previous resistance.
In itia lly , only a scholar com m itted to or at least sympathetic to the
present African emancipation drive would find it possible to seek out and
unearth the evidence of earlier struggles.7

Rodney was doing his ow n doctoral w ork at the U n ive rsity of London
from 1963 to 1966 and learned firs t hand from experiences of James in the
Pan-African m ovem ent and the socialist m ovem ent. N orm an G irvan
m entions Richard Small, Orlando Patterson Adolph Edwards, John M ax­
w e ll, Joan and Stanley French, and W ally Look Lai as members of th is
group in 1962.8
Rodney can be distinguished from m any of his contem poraries not
only by his academic w ork but also by the sort of com m itted scholarship
he inspired. There were m any in the N ew W orld Group in the Caribbean
who had been influenced by James but there was a general reluctance by
these scholars to see the lin k between Caribbean rebellion and the A fri­
can revolutionary process. W alter Rodney understood that the A frican
R evolution was part and parcel of the Caribbean R evolution. Hence in
his own w ork he wanted to bring to lig h t the same question of re vo lt but
to raise e n tire ly different questions w hich were posed by the re a lity of
neocolonialism in A frica and the Caribbean. It is th is that distinguished
the concerns of Rodney from those of James. But he had agreed on the
fundam ental p rinciple of revolt by in sistin g that:

A people's consciousness is heightened by knowledge of the dignity and

determ ination of their foreparents. Indeed, the African world-view re­
garding ancestors as an integral part of the livin g com m unity makes it so
much easier to identify a given generation w ith struggles of an earlier
generation. . . . To give historical depth to the process of resistance is
itse lf functional w ith in the African revolution today. James knew this.
His major effort to project a past revolt into present consciousness was
The Black Jacobins, that remarkable study of the momentous victory of
the enslaved African population of San Domingo against w hite planta­
tion society, against Thermidorean reaction in France, and against the
expansionism of British capital. A H istory of Negro Revolt fu lfille d the
same purpose; and one its most significant features was its emphasis on
the continuity of resistance.9

C ritic a l essays on the philosophical im portance of James can show

who has read his w orks, or they can connect the ideas of James in a
 414 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

c ritic a l m anner to the leading resistance against dom ination at th is

m om ent w hether it is in South A frica, Kenya, Palestine, Cuba, or El
Salvador. T h is co lle ctio n should n o t o n ly relate to the w ritin g s of James
at the theoretical and philosophical level bu t should also be able to raise
new questions posed by the struggle fo r change in th is period. It is
essential th a t the deliberations of James scholars be connected to the
social forces and expressions of resistance* w h ich issue when capitalism
reproduces the degradation and deform ities th a t one witnesses on a
w orld scale.

W alter Rodney and C.L.R. James on R evolution

C.L.R, James was quite aware of the lim ita tio n s of the H a itia n re vo lt in
bringing social em ancipation to the people of H a iti. To draw a tte n tio n to
the w ritin g s of Rodney and James on the rig h t to rebellion leads d ire c tly
in to th e ir co n trib u tio n to our understanding of re vo lu tio n . Both were
involved in p o litic a l organizations th a t w anted to understand the func­
tio n of re vo lu tio n and w hether there was the capacity among oppressed
peoples fo r new revo lu tio n a ry breakthroughs. T h e ir experiences in the
ranks of revo lu tio n a ry parties is s till to be docum ented. T h is docum enta­
tio n on the ideology, the m em bership, and the c o n trib u tio n to socialist
thought of these form ations is a subject th a t w ill enrich the h isto rica l
record of the tw e n tie th century.
In a period when the w hole fu tu re of socialism is being raised in the
context of the ideological offensive of the conservative forces in te rn a ­
tio n a lly , it is essential to restate the fact th a t both Rodney and James saw
them selves as M arxists. They were Caribbean nationals w ho had under­
stood the contours of the debates on social classes, parties, and the form s
of organization m ost lik e ly to generate the em ancipation of the m ost
oppressed. They wanted to understand M arxism not o n ly in rela tio n to
m astering h is to ric a l facts and analyses b u t also to grasp the contradic­
tions in society th a t can p o in t to the ideas and social forces capable of
m aking revolu tio n . Rodney made special m ention of th is aspect of his
relationship to the study group and to James when he stated:

G e ttin g together in London and m e e tin g over a period of tw o to three

years on a fa irly regular basis afforded m e the o p p o rtu n ity th a t I, and a
n u m b e r o f o th e r people w ere seeking—to acquire a know ledge of M a rx ­
ism , a m ore precise understanding o f th e Russian R e vo lu tio n , and of
h is to ric a l fo rm u la tio n . O ne of the m o st im p o rta n t th in g s th a t I got o u t of
th a t experience was a c e rta in sense of h is to ric a l analysis, in the sense
 James, Rodney, and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l 415

that C.L.R. James was really a master of the analysis of historical situa­
tions. It was not merely enough to study Lenin's State and Revolution. It
was im portant to understand why it was w ritte n and what was going on
in Russia at that precise moment. It was not enough to study Lenin's
What Is To Be Done. One must understand the specific contextual nature
of the discussions that were going on in Russia at that tim e. This comes
to m y m ind because I feel that a lo t of debates that go on about Marxism
are definitely out of context.10

Throughout his short life Rodney sought to com m unicate to Africans

the im portance of M arxism , not o nly as a m ethod of analysis fo r those
who have read the num erous w orks of M arx, but also to see M arxism as a
revolutiona ry ideology and as a class ideology. T his aspect of M arxism ,
w hich rehabilitates the crucial fu n ctio n of revolutions, was upperm ost
in the consciousness of both Rodney and James, and th is is m anifest in
th e ir preoccupation whatever the subject at hand. For the issue was how
to understand m om ents of q u a lita tive transform ations and the c ry s ta lli­
zation of p o te n tia litie s offered by these transform ations. They w ould no
doubt agree w ith the observation by Samir A m in that "In each of the
three great revolutions of the m odern w orld (the French, the Russian and
the Chinese), the play of ideas and social forces at m om ents of radicaliza-
tio n succeeded in m oving far beyond the requirem ents of historical,
objectively necessary social transfo rm a tio n ."11 W hat were the ideas and
social forces th a t could generate such a radicalization of the p o litics of
A frica and the Caribbean? These were the questions one could see being
posed in the w ork of James but more pointedly so in the w ork of W alter
Rodney. As Caribbean persons who had come in contact w ith the in te r­
national socialist m ovem ent in Europe, A frica, the Am ericas, and the
Caribbean, James's and Rodney's embrace of M arxism was part of the
search for levers to understand the w orld beyond the libe ra l conceptions
of Social D arw inism and progress.
U ndoubtedly C.L.R. James, who was reared before the decisive in te r­
vention of A frican scholars on the question of the dialectics, internalized
some of the Eurocentric notions of progress and the idea that a decisive
break in hum an h isto ry was made in the period of the European Renais­
sance. T his was a lim ita tio n of the circum stances of the discourse and
the m ain social actors in the in te rn a tio n a l revolutionary m ovem ent in
the th irtie s and forties. It had to aw ait the p o litic a l in tervention of the
Caribbean and A frican masses to give room fo r scholars who rein te r­
preted the w orld to correct the falsifications of hum an history.
Rodney m atured in the period of the Cuban and Vietnamese revolu-
 416 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

tions and was involved in the m ain debates on the question of the A frican
R evolution. In th is there was some c o n tin u ity in th a t both Rodney and
James were interested in m om ents in h is to ry w hen the q u a lita tive trans­
form ations could break centuries of co lonial dom ination. But Rodney
benefited from developing his w o rk in the context of the w o rk of th in k ­
ers such as Frantz Fanon, A m ilc a r Cabral, and Che Guevara.
For James the question of re vo lu tio n had been posed decisively by the
in te rve n tio n of the Bolsheviks, and he devoted a considerable part of his
adult life to try in g to understand the strength and weaknesses of th is
revo lu tio n . T his understanding fo r h im was crucial, fo r the issue had
been posed by the m ajor revolutions of how to lif t oppressed peoples out
of centuries of external dom ination. He suggested th a t the m ethodologi­
cal tools brought to bear in his research of the H a itia n R evolution opened
one w indow to understanding theory in a w ay th a t w ould guide practice.
R eferring to the application of M a rxist-L e n in ist ideas, James said of his
ow n w ork: "T he theoretical basis of the book, am ply dem onstrated, is
th a t in a period of w orld-w ide re volutiona ry change, such as th a t of
1789-1815 and our period w h ich began w ith 1917, the revolutiona ry
crisis lifts backward peoples over centuries and projects them in to the
very forefront of the advanced m ovem ents of the day."12 T h is was the
p o sitio n of James w hen he had h is eye on the p o te n tia litie s of the A frican
R evolution. James h im se lf w ent on to say clearly w hy he was w ritin g on
the p o te n tia litie s of the re vo lu tio n in A frica:

We had le a rn t fro m hard experience th a t, in those days in p a rtic u la r, n o t

o n ly socialists of the rig h t and of the le ft needed to have th is placed before
th e m in unam biguous term s. T h e co m m u n is ts o f th e m e tro p o lita n coun­
tries w ere a ll fo r th e A fric a n R e v o lu tio n (u n til the K re m lin changed the
line), b u t th e y c o n tin u a lly w ro te and spoke in term s o f "g iv in g freedom "
to A fricans.

Though James was not h im self im m une to the idea th a t the A frican
"needed guidance," he was among those attem pting to strengthen the
determ ination of the A frican and the self-confidence of the A frica n peo­
ple to free them selves from im perialism . It is now possible to understand
the lim ita tio n s of the concepts of re vo lu tio n th a t were being developed
by James and the socialists in the 1930s. T h is is made m uch easier by the
problem s of socialist transform ation and by the realities of the fra g ility
of even the revolutiona ry m ovem ents in C hina and the Soviet U nion.
James had the foresight to understand as far back as the 1930s some of the
 James, Rodney, and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l 417

weaknesses of the Russian R evolution and some of the p o litic a l prob­

lem s that led to the recent reversals in Europe. As early as the 1940s
James had studied w ith others in the Johnson-Forest Tendency w hat he
called State C apitalism and W orld R evolution. T his w ork had ques­
tioned the v a lid ity of term ing the process in the Soviet U nion socialist.
M any com m entators inside and outside the socialist m ovem ent have
debated th is question of characterizing the social order in the Soviet
U nion as state capitalism but one of the early insights of James and those
w ith w hom he was associated was to see the problem of try in g to catch
up and surpass the West. The im plem entation of the capitalist m odel of
the factory w ith a ll the im plica tio n s fo r social life was of concern to
those who saw the socialist re vo lu tio n as being q u a lita tiv e ly different
from bourgeois society. C ould socialism adopt the techniques of scien­
tific management and the factory conditions of the West w ith the only
distinguishing feature being the form of "c o lle ctive ,, ownership?
The question of the factory as the site of p o litic s issued d ire ctly from
the social conditions of industrialized societies. T his re a lity in Europe
and Am erica inform ed the conception th a t "p o litic s is the concentrated
expression of Econom ics." T his led to the preoccupation w ith the role of
organized workers, party form s, questions of vanguardism and those
issues that arise in societies where the w orking people were com pletely
separated from th e ir means of subsistence. T his conception of p o litics
and revolution failed to take in to account the consequences of accum ula­
tio n on a w orld scale and the fact that fo r m any in the T h ird W orld the
village com m unity and the relationship to the natural environm ent were
s till the dom inant issues of social transform ation.
The discourse on revolution and socialism in Europe m inim ized the
im pact of the incom plete separation of the producers from th e ir means of
subsistence, the im pact of th is on p o litic a l consciousness and the rela­
tionships of p o litic s to the com m unity and to questions of the democra­
tiza tio n of com m unity life . The problem of democracy and revolution in
relation to the com m unity is inadequately theorized. Increasingly th is
issue is related not on ly to the site of p o litic s and democracy but also to
the whole question of social reproduction. For in the previous debates on
revolution, the issue of social reproduction taking p rio rity over com ­
m odity production was an area that was re la tive ly underdeveloped in
M arxist theory.
This underdevelopm ent is evident in contem porary A frican p o litic s
where the relationship of the people to democracy is reduced to the form
 418 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

of state and the num ber of parties. It is in A frica w here the crisis of social
reproduction and In te rn a tio n a l M onetary Fund (i m f ) management h it
household production to the p o in t where wom en become the shock
absorbers of s tru ctu ra l adjustm ent. It is in th is context of the pressures
upon a ll social classes, n a tio n a litie s, wom en, youth, and children in the
T h ird W orld where the social crisis of capitalism is m ost severe th a t the
ideas of James and Rodney on re v o lu tio n are now m ost relevant. T his re l­
evance also means th a t th e ir ideas should be pu t under c ritic a l scrutiny.

W alter Rodney on the Bolshevik R evolution

It is necessary to scru tin ize the ideas of Rodney and James in the C arib­
bean and in the Pan-African w o rld in the afterm ath of the collapse of
socialist governm ents in Eastern Europe and in the context of the retreat
from M arxism . N o t only have the reversals in Grenada and Nicaragua led
to self-doubt and recrim inations among the a n tic a p ita lis t forces, but the
resurgence of unbridled conservatism is m eant to paralyze c ritic a l th in k ­
ing and analysis. As the social dem ocratic forces in the advanced coun­
tries retreat, the confidence of the rig h t-w in g parties and ideas has
grown. T h is onslaught has led m any on the Left to abandon the ideas of
class struggle to the p o in t where there is even a question of w hether
revolutiona ry change has played any positive role in social change.13
T h is retreat inside and outside the academy deepened at the tim e
when the collapse of socialism created doubts and led m any to w rite
about re th in k in g M arxism . Books and journals on socialism and democ­
racy, the fu tu re of socialism , the relevance of M arxism , and other signs of
equivocation reflected the general pessim ism of a m ovem ent th a t had
been cut o ff from real p o litic a l struggles. It was in the m idst of the
im p e ria lis t crisis, however, th a t there was some theoretical c la rity on
the search fo r a new mode of p o litic s in A fric a .14 In the m idst of th is
crisis, the w ritin g s of James and Rodney carry a certain prom ise of being
able to grasp the nature of such earthshaking processes as the fa ll of the
B erlin W all, the collapse in Eastern Europe, or the democracy m ovem ent
in C hina and of show ing how they m ig h t open new w indow s to the
questions of re vo lu tio n and em ancipation.
W alter Rodney was preoccupied w ith the issue of re vo lu tio n not sim ­
p ly as a scholarly enterprise, but also by his concern w ith ending the
e xp lo ita tio n of A frica and A fricans. It is in re la tio n to ending such exploi­
ta tio n and underdevelopm ent th a t he made notes on contem porary revo-
 James, Rodney, and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l 419

lu tio n s and gave a series of lectures in the U nited States on "Tw o W orld
Views of the Russian R evolution: R eflections from A frica ." These lec­
tures dealt w ith m ethodological issues in the study of revolutions, the
actual h isto rica l evidence of the in te rve n tio n of the w orking people of
Russia, the principal h is to ric a l actors and the parties w ith w hich they
were associated, the im portance of the Bolshevik party, and the real
problem s of social transform ation that faced the people of the Soviet
U nion. It was in th is context th a t he analyzed the crisis in the leadership
of the revolution and the contradictions that gave rise to Stalinism .
Rodney took to task the im pact of bourgeois scholarship on people's
conception of revolution. A t the same tim e, he brought his tra in in g as a
scholar to bear on w hat the A frican perspective on the B olshevik Revolu­
tio n should be.
In attem pting to enrich our understanding of revolution through the
eyes of the A frican, one of the m ost im portant aspects of th is fu ll length
unpublished m anuscript was its stress on the theoretical issues that were
central to understanding revolutions. Was there a particular m ethodol­
ogy to be developed to understand revolutionary processes? Was there an
A frican poin t of view? If so, how did th is p o in t of view relate to the
debate over m aterialism and idealism? These questions form the core of
Rodney's study on the Bolshevik R evolution. In th is statem ent Rodney
was try in g to p o in t to the ideas and social forces in A frica that w ould
have to be m obilized fo r the revolutionary process. He reached in to the
past to the English and French revolutions to show how the study of
revolution brings about ideological polarization on a w orld scale. That
this polarization w ill be an essential com ponent of the A frican revolu­
tionary process was the essential message.
It is in relation to how the A frican sees th is w orld that Rodney makes a
unique co n trib u tio n that was its e lf taking on the new issues that he had
learned from James. For Rodney not only affirm ed that there was an
A frican view ; he also w ent on to say that in the development of m ethod­
ological fram eworks:

There is an area of potential conflict which arises by trying to use two

approaches—! 1) an African view (2) to measure two w orld views. It can be
argued that aspects of ideology coming from Europe are irrelevant to the
African perspective or the black world-view. Conversely, it can and has
been said that a world view is either idealist or m aterialist and the label
"A frican" conveys no meaning and probably m ystifies. That issue can
only be resolved in the forces of discussion, and it is the intention to try
 420 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

to avoid pre-judgement. However, the very title of this study should

indicate to the reader that whatever uniqueness one may attach to any
given African view, it does not dispense w ith the necessity to take the
position that (1) there is the superiority of m aterialism over idealism , and
(2) m aterialist views are partial and do not take A frican in to account.15

T his fo rm u la tio n has profound im p lica tio n s in the context of under­

standing the changes in the present w o rld and the contending philosoph­
ic a l debates. Rodney was n o t sim ply reproducing a crude m ateriahst
conception of the w o rld b u t was saying th a t in the context of the in te rn a ­
tio n a l d ivisio n of labor there has to be the developm ent of an A frica n
perspective on revo lu tio n a ry processes. Rodney w ent to great pains to
show that, w h ile in his judgm ent the M a rxist m ethodology and d ia le c ti­
cal m aterialism as a mode of analysis were superior to idealism , the
problem fo r the A frica n is th a t the m a te ria list analysis is o nly partial.
Rodney was w e ll aware of the divisions between the s p iritu a l w o rld and
the m aterial w o rld th a t had been entrenched in European ideas since the
era of the E nlightenm ent. He had drawn a tte n tio n to th is phenomenon in
the w ritin g s of those w ho id e n tifie d w ith N egritude and w ho accepted
the fo rm u la tio n th a t the European was ra tio n a l w h ile the A frica n was
em otional. It follow ed th a t th is em otional bent made the A frican incapa­
ble of reasoning. For many, th is disqualified the A frica n from m aking
im p o rta n t co n trib u tio n s to the revolutiona ry in te lle c tu a l cultu re that
m ust be part of the process of libera tio n .
T h is discussion on the question of the dialectics is now posed more
clearly as A frican scholars grapple w ith the crude m aterialism th a t has
been reproduced as M arxism and where there is the general th ru st to
liberate M arxism from the E nlightenm ent. The experiences of socialist
transitions outside of Europe has shown that the theories of M arx have
pote n tia l fo r grow th and are n o t a closed bible. For Rodney, one of the
burning problem s in the study of re vo lu tio n was to be able to grasp the
im pact of changes in a w o rld beyond Europe. T his grasp of p o litic s was
also a necessary com ponent to rise above the sectarianism and fetishism
among the European Left.
In his view , it was necessary to study not only a system such as that
w hich produced the B olshevik R evolution but also to study both the
national and in te rn a tio n a l forces th a t shaped its environm ent. Such an
outlo o k w ould enable one to grasp the present p o litic a l and econom ic
crisis in the Soviet U nion. T his was a them e th a t Rodney stressed in
m any different form s, fo r he fe lt th a t it was the laziness of the Caribbean
 James, Rodney, and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l 421

and T h ird W orld in te lle c tu a l th a t induced the acceptance of orthodox

theories w ith o u t c ritic a l h isto rica l exam ination. In the Caribbean he
pointedly said th a t "the West Indian in te lle c tu a l class was so lazy th a t
it never seriously attem pted to come to grips w ith the Cuban experi­
ence."16 And in the case of Cuba one could add th a t anticom m unism
foreclosed discus^on for many.
It is in part to struggle against th is laziness and cold war in te lle c tu a l
discourse as w e ll as to bring an A irica n view to the Bolshevik R evolution
that Rodney took pains to elaborate on the question of socialism and the
possibilities of transform ation offered by th is experim ent. The very na­
ture of the econom ic backwardness of Soviet society and the com plex
tasks of transform ation are analyzed from the standpoint of one w ho has
in m ind the special conditions in the A frican countryside. C.L.R. James
had pointed to these problem s in relation to w hat he had called the
Ghana revolution.
In a special a rticle w ritte n for a p o litic a l journal in Ghana in 1964,
James had drawn atte n tio n to the necessary tasks th a t m ust be assigned
to the A frican revolutionary in dealing w ith illite ra c y , econom ic back­
wardness, and the propensity to corruption by party and state fu n ctio n ­
aries. James had e n title d th is essay "Lenin and the P roblem ."17 A close
reading of Rodney's lectures on the Bolshevik R evolution w ould demon­
strate that W alter Rodney understood the problem s th a t had been high­
lighted by James of how the defects of the re volution led to corruption in
both the p o litic a l and cu ltu ra l life of a society. These insights showed
that neither James nor Rodney w ould have been surprised by the present
p o litic a l process in the Soviet U nion.
One of the m ajor strengths of Rodney's co n trib u tio n to the study of the
Soviet U nion was to get to the center of the debates on the revolution by
M arxists and non-M arxists and to dem onstrate how even among m any
M arxists th e ir conception of the revolutionary process had been in flu ­
enced by conservative forces such as the Russian emigres at the Harvard
Center on Russian studies. He w ent on to show how many of the scholars
in these centers saw the masses as mobs incapable of intervening in the
histo rica l process.
Rodney was no less c ritic a l of the M arxist w ritin g s on the Bolshevik
R evolution. He recommended studies on the revolution such as of John
Reed's w ork, w hich avoided the sectarian divide between Bolsheviks and
M ensheviks. He was also c ritic a l of com partm entalization of the revolu­
tio n by social scientists and historians. But he reserved his sharpest
 422 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

analysis for the many M arxists such as Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg,
and Leon Trotsky whose works have influenced our understanding of
revolution. In the particular case of Trotsky, Rodney made an im portant
d istinction between Trotsky's w ritings on the Russian Revolution when
he was in the leadership of the revolutionary process and his w ritings
that were part and parcel of the subsequent struggles w ith the leadership
of Stalin. *
W alter Rodney clarified in "Two W orld Views" how one can respect
the position of a revolutionary such as Rosa Luxemburg but be critica l of
her arguments in ways that could cla rify to others the contending argu­
ments between her and Lenin. This document is instructive, for here was
an attem pt by an African revolutionary to rise above the sectarianism
that had dogged the understanding of the p o litica l crisis in the Soviet
Union, a crisis that led to the phenomenon of Stalin. Rodney was careful
to rise above the personalization of politics but to develop the m eth­
odological tools for a clear African perspective on the processes that
brought the Soviet Union to where it was when he was w riting . W alter
Rodney had in m ind the problem of the intellectual culture in Africa
where conceptions of im portant social processes are mediated through
the eyes of Europe. This w ork was part of the effort to lay the foundation
for the original interpretation of revolutionary processes by the African
people. For Rodney, this was an essential component of the African
revolution.

Rodney and James on Transform ation

U ltim a te ly the concerns of Rodney and James w ith rebellion, revolts,

and revolution were tied to the issue of social transform ation. Even
before imm ersing him self in the politics of the Caribbean when he
returned from Tanzania in 1974, Rodney had pointed to what he called
the process of retrogression in the Caribbean and in Africa and to the fact
that capitalism stood in the path of further human development.18 One
can discern that this was Rodney's central concern when he became a
fu ll-tim e organizer in the ranks of the Guyanese working people. He
wanted to understand how the w orking people could intervene in the
p o litica l process to reverse this retrogression and to make breakthroughs
that w ould propel the people in the forefront of change. His major study,
The H is to ry o f the Guyanese W orking People, brought this question of
the intervention of the w orking people to the forefront. From the outset
 James, Rodney, and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l 423

he clarified the relations between the working people and the natural
environment; how in the major struggles to control the environment,
these relations have always been to the benefit of capital and to the
detrim ent of the producing classes.
The concern w ith social reproduction, the natural environment, and
the relations between humans and nature has now come to the attention
of hum anity in the face of the destructive capabilities of capitalism.
The earth is experiencing its worse ecological crisis in history, a crisis
that threatens not only the existence of thousands of plant and animal
species but the survival of the human species as well. The promise of the
technological developments in releasing human labor from centuries of
drudgery and hard work has not been fu lfille d , for in the advanced cap­
ita lis t countries the technological advances have served the cause of
m ilitarism and dom ination. It is also the issue of the environment that
points most clearly to the fact that "m arket forces" cannot be the basis
for organizing economic activities. The inadequacy of market forces
reinforces the conception that the conscious intentions of the working
people have to be decisive in changing the direction of society.
How can working people intervene to harness the scientific and tech­
nological advances for the general liberation of humanity? This is a
major task of the current generation as Europe celebrates five hundred
years of colonization. This celebration also serves the process of recon­
stitu tin g capitalism in the more fierce com petition between Europe, the
United States, and Japan. Rodney, who was aware of how the partitioning
of the globe affected the African peoples at the end of the last century,
was always preoccupied w ith how the oppressed could struggle against
the new forms of dom ination fashioned by capitalism. It is this struggle
that makes the working people and their struggle for survival central to
the transition from capitalism .19His works on the social struggles in the
Caribbean always took into account the long-term im plications of par­
ticular struggles.
In w ritin g The H isto ry o f the Guyanese W orking Class and the First
Sugar Strikes 1840/41 and 1847 Rodney mapped out the characteristics
of the working people and the conditions of struggles that led to the
strikes and the introduction of indentured labor from India. This re­
course to history was taken to show how the plantation form was unable
to guarantee the working people a livin g wage. Rodney was clarifying
that it was in the process of transforming the social system that the
worker could receive a livin g wage. Identifying the contributions of the
 424 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

w orking people to the development of independent com m unities that

gave the workers greater independence from the plantations of Guyanese
society Rodney made this observation:

In addition, the new working class contributed something else. It had a

novel conception of what its standard of living should be, of what a living
wage in its situation should be. The terin "livin g wage" has been used by
many Marxists, and non-Marxists, and there is a sense in which one
needs to try to define what is some sort of biological minimum, what is
required so that people can exist, just physically exist. But that is a very
abstract notion. Even after one defines that, what it comes down to is that
the concept of a living wage arises out of class struggle, because the class
that is dominant always has a conception that workers should live at any
wage, to whatever level it m ight be reduced. If it is left a question for the
dominant class, then a living wage would be a wage that presumably we
could show biologically could not reproduce the human metabolism. But
in reality all concepts of a living wage are determined w ith in the class
struggle itself so that workers (and peasants, if it is a peasant situation)
have an input into saying that is what we consider to be a minimum.

This issue of the conditions of life is so stark that the plig ht of the
African slave im m ediately after the abolition of slavery has so many
sim ilarities today when the i m f conditionalities devalue the return for
labor power. Throughout the Caribbean the question of what is the
m inim um on w hich the w orking people can subsist is a central p o litica l
problem. This is a ll the more evident w ith the defeat of the trade union/
p o litica l alliances that had guaranteed a m inim um wage for the working
poor in the period of the struggle for independence. In the context of over
fifty percent unemployment in some societies, the whole society is faced
w ith how to productively put to use human labor w hile guaranteeing the
conditions for survival, food, shelter, medical care, and basic education
for children. The social system as it is presently organized has to be
transformed to be able to guarantee a decent livelihood for the people.
This is not sim ply an issue in the Caribbean, Central America, and
Latin America. It is the issue in the Third World suffering under the
yoke of debt, financial speculation, and im perial dom ination. The tech­
nological changes that now seek to relegate Fordism to history in the
advanced capitalist countries also seek to transfer those industries that
destroy the environment to the Third World. This is the case in Brazil,
Korea, and those societies that are touted as breakthroughs for capitalist
development.
 James, Rodney, and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l 425

This crisis in social reproduction is striking in southern Africa where

the struggle in South Africa has posed this question of a livin g wage as a
fundamental problem of social transform ation. For this and the insights
that Rodney provides, it is essential that we pose the question of the
reproduction of the w orking people in the context of the class struggle.
Rodney maintained:

Immediately after the abolition of slavery this question was sharply

posed. Planters went about saying Black people only needed so and so to
live on. However, the ex-slaves were saying that the whole conception of
what we need to live on is now quite different___ The African said that
the whole conception of freedom is that we must have clothes to wear
and that our houses must be of a certain standard. Children must go to
school, and if it costs to get them clothes and so on, we have to get money
to pay for this. Automatically, there was a struggle now about what was a
living wage, what should be the new condition in the working classes.20

Here Rodney was going back to the original emancipatory claims of the
slaves to make claims as to what a livin g wage should constitute. The
point was that not only were the conditions of reproduction to be decided
in the process of struggle but also that these conditions were to be
established by the working people themselves. This was key to the
concept of self-emancipation where the working people took themselves
to higher levels of existence. Walter Rodney as an organizer and theoreti­
cian in the ranks of a Caribbean movement had carried the ideas of self­
emancipation to a new level, clarifying the original concept of Marx that
had been overlooked in the debates on parties and vanguardism.
W alter Rodney drew from historical experiences such as the strikes
and rebellions in Guyana to remind the working people of the adage "the
emancipation of the oppressed can only be carried out by the oppressed
themselves." He sought to distinguish him self from a whole generation
of Caribbean intellectuals who wanted to participate in radical change
but in the actual political process gave orders to the people. From the
period of his groundings w ith the Rastafarians in Jamaica, Rodney oper­
ated on the principle that those in the process of acquiring knowledge
had an im portant role to play in the struggle for a new social order. "Thus
it was useful for those who had knowledge or were in the course of
getting knowledge, which the very in s titu tio n of oppression had kept
from them, to point their vision to the direction of that knowledge and
open up their appetite for self-discovery."
 426 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

It was in the context of the kind of a ctivity that Rodney engaged in

w ith in the Caribbean that set him apart as a revolutionary who made a
major contribution to the struggle for a new social order. In this charac­
terization of Rodney as a revolutionary, one is setting out to grasp how
his efforts in the Caribbean to build a new kind of p o litica l movement
contributed to the understanding of revolutionary politics globally. This
was the m ission of James in the 1930s, to be able to understand the
rebellion of the African in a changing world. The objective conditions of
the parties that he was associated w ith plus the level of development of
ideas about transform ations outside Europe proved to be a handicap for
James's understanding of the process of transform ation.
W alter Rodney was the product of the self-confidence of the rebellious
generation that James had inspired w ith w ritings on slave revolts and the
capacity for oppressed peoples to launch themselves to the center of the
international arena. Rodney was able to draw both positive and negative
lessons from James's experience, to take the positive ideas relating to
rebellion and revolution and to make concrete his intellectual develop­
ment in the ranks of the African liberation struggle and in the context of
building a new movement in Guyana.

C onclusion

Numerous scholars and activists in the Caribbean and among the Carib­
bean diaspora have benefited from the insights of C.L.R. James. His
works influenced academics who are also part of the establishment. In
the w ider p o litica l arena of struggles against im perialism , James was an
im portant reference point for those who were seeking lessons of how to
confront external dom ination. His w ork on the Black Jacobins was not
only a major historical project to inspire rebellion but it was also an
outstanding lite ra ry achievement. A H is to ry o f Negro R evolt connected
the Pan-African struggles of Africa, Europe, and the Americas and it
inspired the struggles against colonialism . But this Pan-Africanism was
not presented from a racially exclusive position; it was taken from the
position of seeking the ideas necessary for social emancipation. James
was not sim ply speaking to the issues of the colonized. He paid close
attention to and participated in the workers' struggles in the im perialist
centers, especially in the U nited States.
It is proper that any discussion of James also raises the problem of
colonialism , especially in the outstanding colonial outposts of Puerto
 James, Rodney, and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l 427

Rico, M artinique, Guadeloupe, and Cayenne. The Caribbean cannot be

independent u n til a ll vestiges of colonialism have been removed. Just as
the Cold War prevented serious scholarly inquiry in to the socialist ex­
periment in Cuba, so the official positions of the United States and
French governments prevent raising the issue of outstanding colonial­
ism. Caribbean leaders can speak of independence in Africa, but they
refuse to raise this issue in their own region. The Caribbean intellectual
has the responsibility to continue to raise this issue on whatever plat­
form possible. In the process, the question of p o litica l independence can
also raise the level of the discourse to be able to assess c ritic a lly the
realities of dependence and external dom ination in the region. The ques­
tion of the present content of po litica l independence is tied to the search
for popular democracy, economic independence and new forms of coop­
eration that break the petty barriers between the peoples.
W alter Rodney was a student of James who matured in a period when
the Caribbean masses had decisively intervened in the political process.
He had carried forward the study of the im pact of slavery and the slave
trade on Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean. His study of the impact of the
A tla n tic slave trade on the Upper Guinea Coast remains an outstanding
contribution for our understanding of the disruptions unleashed by cap­
italism . Rodney complemented this work w ith H ow Europe Under­
developed A fric a , a study that cemented the fact that for the African
people capitalism stood in the path of further human development.
It was the concern for African liberation and for real independence in
the Caribbean that led Rodney to his investigation of the whole revolu­
tionary process and of the capacity of oppressed peoples to dram atically
shape the historical process. In this both James and Rodney made deci­
sive contributions to the whole question of the transition beyond capital­
ism. Their contribution remain an im portant basis not only for scholars
but also for political activists.
The emancipatory project of Rodney and James is even more urgent in
this period when the barbarism of capitalism exploded in the Persian
G ulf where the people of Iraq were bombed back to the preindustrial era.
One cannot discuss the ideas of James and Rodney and the issues of
revolutionary transformation w ithout paying attention to the present
ideological onslaught of capital w hich is called a new world order. Both
Rodney and James understood the centrality of war in speeding up the
processes of transformation and/or regression.
A collection of essays on C.L.R. James assembled shortly after the G ulf
 428 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l

War must address itse lf to the clear regressive tendencies of the A m eri­
can ru lin g class and the deepening of racism in the m idst of the economic
crisis. James's piece "W hy Negroes Should Oppose the War" is as fresh
today as when it was originally w ritte n during the Second W orld War.21
James understood clearly how American democracy used m ilitarism
abroad for im perial dom ination and for diverting the attention of the
w orking people at home from the unequal distribution of the social
product. W alter Rodney developed the same theme in his analysis of the
im pact of the war on the African continent.22
When peoples respond to the call to defend freedoms elsewhere w hile
they are themselves oppressed, they are reinforcing the ir own oppres­
sion. This became clear as thousands of African-Am erican men and
women and Africans were called upon to fig ht in order to liberate Kuw ait
when the task of African liberation is incomplete. The glorification of
the m ilita ry along w ith the projection of a son of the Caribbean as one of
the leading m ilita rists in the U nited States should require a clearer
position by the Caribbean intellectuals on the major tasks of d e m ilita ri­
zation and democracy. Many Caribbean nationals exhibit pride that a son
of the region, General C olin Powell, became the chairperson of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff of the U nited States m ilita ry. Progressive intellectuals
have the responsibility to clarify to our young people the role that the
U nited States m ilita ry plays in international politics.
For Caribbean intellectuals in the metropole at this period, a collection
on James can be a celebration of his works and at the same tim e an
opportunity to clarify the problems in breaking the alienation embodied
in the nature of intellectual w ork at this historic juncture. U ltim ate ly
this task involves widening the discussion on James beyond the academy
and overcoming the semantic and lin g uistic lim itatio n s that cut off our
w ork from the working people. The international bourgeoisie has devel­
oped such confidence that it can celebrate cultural and p o litica l heroes
such as M a rtin Luther King, M alcolm X, Marcus Garvey, or H arriet
Tubman so that youth see these as individuals outside the context of
p o litica l struggle. Our reflection on James can be an effort either to
canonize him or to make his w ork accessible as a component of the
ideological and p o litica l struggle to rise above the degradation of the
present social system.
This issue of m aking the works and ideas of James more accessible is
also an issue in the Caribbean. Many of the younger generation have
never head of C.L.R. James. In the secondary schools, in established
 James, Rodney, and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l 429

books such as Great West Indians: L ife Stories fo r Young Readers, the
names of W alter Rodney and C.L.R. James do not appear. This omission
offers an im portant challenge. It is a challenge that is tied to the process
of the democratization of intellectual production, one that itself is part of
the process of the complete democratization of society.
Such a process^of democratization requires the redefinition of social
relations in society: the relations between men and women, the relations
to children and to the elderly, the relations to the natural environment,
and the relations between men and women and nature. James had al­
ready begun to th in k deeply of this form of democracy by the tim e he
wrote "Every Cook Can Govern."23 James fe lt strongly that "a ll true
believers in democracy and equality" should strengthen themselves by
studying past experiences of popular democracy in order to rise above the
lim itatio n s of bourgeois democracy. He believed that only in the context
of real popular democracy when every citizen could participate in the
government could the basis for destroying the present inequalities be
laid.
James understood the difficulties in finding a political organization
which could embrace the far reaching consequences of his ideas. This did
not deter his grand vision of the possibilities of hum anity to break from
this present form of social organization. W alter Rodney took seriously
the question of building alternative forms of organization that could give
expression to the search for dignity and self expression among the W ork­
ing People. Hence the tremendous energies that he invested in building
the W orking Peoples Alliance and the grass roots structures on which
this p o litica l party is grounded.
The W orking Peoples Alliance of Guyana is one of the political organi­
zations dedicated to carrying on the work of C.L.R. James and Walter
Rodney. This organization grew out of mass rebellions in the region and
out of attempts to survive in a period of reaction. As a party based on the
principles of Walter Rodney, it is working to place a new concept of
politics and struggle before the peoples of the oppressed world. This is
very significant in a clim ate of racial polarization and racial insecurity.
To rise above this insecurity w hile seeking to develop a new political
culture is one of the practical lessons that this organization has learned
from both C.L.R. James and Walter Rodney. This party serves as an
im portant place for the deepening of progressive ideas in the aftermath of
the invasion of Grenada and Panama and the violent reversals in N ic­
aragua. It takes the position that the struggle to transform society cannot
 430 C ricket, M arxism , and the Caribbean In te lle c tu a l

be based on short-term solutions. In this the party had learned one of the
principal lessons of James, that politics is not sim ply about elections but
is part of the process of enriching the human spirit.
In this period of self-doubt on the Left internationally, it is fittin g to
rem ind the youth of what E. P. Thompson said of James:

When one looks back over the last twenty years to those men who are
most far-sighted, who first began to tease out the muddle of ideology in
our times, who were at the same time marxist w ith a hard theoretical
basis, and close students of society, humanists w ith a tremendous re­
sponse to and understanding of human culture. Comrade James is one of
the first one thinks of.

Notes

1. A m ilc a r Cabral, Revolution in Guinea (New York: M o n th ly Review Press,

1969).
2. A n early paper that sought to discuss the contributions by James and
Rodney was w ritte n by Carlene J. Edie, "Caribbean C ontributions to A frican
P olitical Thought: From C.L.R. James to W alter Rodney," African Studies Asso­
ciation meeting, Denver, 1987.
3. Anna Grim shaw, The C.L.R. James Archive: A Reader's Guide (New York:
C.L.R. James Institute, 1991).
4. C.L.R. James "Black Sansculottes" in A t the Rendezvous of Victory (Lon­
don: A lliso n and Busby, 1984), 160.
5. Carolyn E. Fick, The Making of H a iti: The Saint Domingue Revolution
from Below (Knoxville: U n ive rsity of Tennessee Press, 1990).
6. C.L.R. James, "Towards the Seventh: The Pan A frican Congress—Past,
Present and Future," in A t the Rendezvous of Victory: Selected Writings (London:
A llis o n and Busby, 1984).
7. W alter Rodney, "The A frican R evolution," in C.L.R. James: His Life and
Work, ed. Paul Buhle (London: A llis o n and Busby, 1986).
8. "Appreciating C.L.R. James," in Tribute to a Scholar, ed. Bishnu Ragoonath,
A Publication of the C onsortium Graduate School of Social Sciences, U niversity
of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston, Jamaica, 1990, v iii.
9. W alter Rodney, "The A frican R evolution," in C.L.R. James: His Life and
Work, ed. Paul Buhle (London: A llis o n and Busby, 1986), 34-35.
10. Walter Rodney Speaks: The Making of an African Intellectual, w ith an
Introduction by Robert H ill, A frica W orld Press, 1990.
11. Samir A m in, "T he Future of Socialism " in M onthly Review, July-A ugust
1990.
12. C.L.R. James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, Lawrence H ill and
Company, Conn., 1977, 66.
13. See Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New
York: Knopf, 1989).
 James, Rodney, and the Caribbean In te lle ctu a l 431

14. Wamba D ia Wamba, " It Is N o t the N um ber of Parties: Peoples A g ita tio n for
Democracy in Search for a N ew H istorical Mode of Politics in A frica," M imeo,
Dares Salaam, 1990.
15. Walter Rodney, "Tw o W orld Views on the Russian Revolution: Reflections
from A frica ," unpublished manuscript.
16. W alter Rodney Speaks, 18.
17. C.L.R. James,^Nkrumah and the Ghana R evolution (London: A lliso n and
Busby, 1977), 189-213.
18. W alter Rodney, "Contem porary P olitical Trends in the English-speaking
Caribbean," Black Scholar 7.1 (September 1975): 15-21.
19. W alter Rodney, "T ransition," Transition 1.
20. W alter Rodney, The H isto ry o f the Guyanese W orking Class and the First
Sugar Strikes 1840/41 and 1847. WPA pamphlet, Georgetown, Guyana, 1989.
21. C.L.R. James et al., Fighting Racism in W orld War I I (New York: Monad
Press, 1980), 28-40.
22. Walter Rodney, W orld War I I and the Tanzanian Economy (Ithaca: C ornell
U niversity Africana Studies and Research Center, 1976).
23. C.L.R. James, "Every Cook Can Govern," in The Future in the Present:
Selected w ritings (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence H ill, 1980).
A fterw ord
 Paul Buhle

From a Biographer's N otebook: The Field of

C.L.R. James Scholarship

That the study of C.L.R. James, his life , and his importance should come
so far in just a few years is in itse lf a remarkable thing. C.L.R. fam es: H is
In te lle c tu a l Legacies can be described as the external evidence of the
process of creation—as poets are wont to say about their published po­
etry. The extremely slow rise of scholarly attention to James up to very
recent times remains a mystery, however. The character of the now
continually expanding scholarly contributions bears, I would insist, the
weight of belated examination. We must respond to the elderly James's
unanswered question (so beautifully described in this volume by Anna
Grimshaw), "W hy me?" w ith "W hy us?" and "W hy now?"
A fu lle r story can be told at some later point. Here, I w ill sketch out the
slow rise of scholarship (or readership) from my own point of entry, the
middle 1960s, and briefly suggest some prospects in the period ahead.
James taught us by suggestion and by personal example to place our­
selves in the picture; I do so to help the reader understand my own
circumstances, w ith their advantages and disadvantages, for grasping the
main thread.

We begin w ith a remarkable vacuum. A fter James's early years in En­

gland as sui generis black scholar, sports commentator, and political
activist, he disappeared as far as public reception goes; in the follow ­
ing quarter century or so, he did not return. Outside of an admiring N ew
York Times review of The Black Jacobins before he had arrived, he had

435
 436 A fte rw o rd

never surfaced as a public figure in the U nited States. B ritish sports buffs
along w ith a stratum of West Indian intelligentsia were arguably his
m ain or at least his most numerous constituency through the 1950s.
Most West Indians, of course, had never heard of him either, and even
w ith in the American Left at large, outside specific (m ostly Trotskyist or
ex-Trotskyist) circles, he was v irtu a lly unknown.
1963 was a banner year, but only relative t*o the previous situation. The
reprinting of The B lack Jacobins gave him a U nited States audience,
m ostly of historians, in the same years as the publication of Beyond a
Boundary brought him modest fame in the field of sports history across
the B ritish Commonwealth. He remained, as a M arxist or revolutionist,
a distant figure. H is works, w ith the sole exception of The B lack Jac­
obins, could be obtained almost exclusively through personal contact
w ith the Facing Reality group in D etroit. One can easily recall comments
on him or his w ork by prestige scholars of the tim e, sim ply because they
were so very rare.1
It would be a mistake, however, to see this virtu a l absence of interest
in him either as some kind of bizarre oversight or as the product of
concerted intellectual repression. The answer is more simple. U n til the
m id-sixties, so few were the outlets and so lim ite d was the constituency
for outright radical ideas in the U nited States (or the Caribbean) that any
figure needed either a p o litica l sponsor or the rare m ass-circulation suc­
cess reached by a w rite r like C. W right M ills. N either the fringes of
the Popular Front, disintegrating since the Hungarian Revolution and
Khrushchev revelations; nor the social democratic circles (yet smaller,
albeit linked to prestige liberal outlets and about to put forward cham­
pions like M ichael Harrington); nor yet the minuscule surviving Trots­
kyist circles could be expected to champion his ideas.2
By being forced out of the country in 1953, James had missed w ritin g
the C iv il Rights book that he urgently wanted to create, and he missed
playing the intellectual role in the black movement that he m ight w ell
have played at a critic a l moment, somewhere between M artin Luther
King, Jr., and M alcolm X. He also missed out on the proto-New Left
around Libe ra tio n magazine that meant so much to intellectuals and
activists who, like him , had little use for either the American or Russian
empires, the arms race or the Vanguard Party. James's followers were
both too few and too geographically insular in D etroit to have any mea­
surable impact here. For that matter, their expectant yearning shared by
James for a social movement based in the w orking class had, alas, little
 From a Biographer's Notebook 437

cre d ibility as the sixties advanced, save where class and race (later, class
and gender) issues merged. James him self, as a personality and a dean of
Pan-Africanism, m ight nevertheless have leaped over the various bound­
aries, if he had had the chance.
It is tantalizing to note a single exception to James's obscurity w ith in
the existing currents of the Left. The black journal Fieedomways, w ith
its distinct roots in the Popular Front, proved the one noted Left maga­
zine to publish James in this period, in a special issue on the contempo­
rary Caribbean. Founded to succeed the tabloid Freedom published by
Paul Robeson in the early 1950s, Freedomways continued to bear the
stamp of James's friend-of-youth and drew its contributors widely, from
Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee to James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry
to Eric W illiam s and Derek W alcott. We m ight call this a case of com­
radely black radicalism across p o litica l lines that could not have been
crossed a decade earlier,- it stands up w ell compared to the nonrecogni­
tion James and his interests received in the baker's dozen other M arxist
publications, Old or New Left vintage.3 But an appearance or two in any
black magazine was not lik e ly to change the reputation or readership of
an author.
W ithin the universities, meanwhile, the dominant Cold War narrative
yielded only grudgingly. The junior professors and graduate students who
admired (and assigned) The Black Jacobins often faced stolid senior
faculties who fe lt threatened by revisions of the existing canons. D issi­
dent gatherings of scholars (like the historians behind the outstanding
pre-New Left journal, Studies on the Left) meanwhile bent their efforts
m ainly to study the machinations of the upper classes. The rising aca­
demic radicals' p olitical sympathy w ith c iv il rights evidently did not yet
demand a major rew riting of Western history as a whole. If W.E.B. Du
Bois, arguably the greatest historian of the American nation, remained
o fficia lly out of bounds to scholars, one cannot wonder at the virtual
exclusion of James.4
A ll this began to change, but only slowly and on a person-by-person
basis, as the New Left blossomed and James was firs t allowed back in the
United States to speak in 1969. A t the s d s journal R adical A m erica,
where his "discovery" had been a happy accident (due in no small part
to the warm th and openness of the Facing Reality group's chief anima­
tor, M arty Glaberman), the publication of a James talk and of several
Jamesesque essays in 1968-69 by historian-sociologist George Rawick in
the magazine brought a burst of enthusiasm from readers and edito-
 438 A fte rw o rd

ria l associates. We had been looking for a revolutionary M arxist ap­

proach to working-class and black history and to popular culture. James's
ideas, interpolated in part through Rawick's essays, were extraordinarily
suggestive.
Those ideas soon helped us b uild a proto-constituency. A group of
precocious Northwestern undergraduates whose efforts had indirectly
helped James return to the country via a teaching position now made
contact w ith R adical A m erica . They amounted, on a very sm all scale, to
a w orking model of the new black radical intellectuals eager to hook up
w ith black M arxist traditions and w ith avowedly revolutionary p o litica l
activity. That D e tro it was the home of the League of Revolutionary
Black Workers and sim ultaneously a center for James's sm all p o litica l
group offered more than a pleasant coincidence, if less than decisive
proof, of his influence on the current scene.
The evident connections, acknowledged on a ll sides, nonetheless v in ­
dicated James's own m ixture of Pan-Africanism, M arxism and de facto
syndicalism. One result, an extraordinarily popular R adical A m erica
issue on race and class w ith League documents as the p o litica l highlight,
demanded a major updating of M arxist approaches based on black indus­
tria l labor and also a new history of black and w hite working-class life.
This was a necessary step for New Left intellectuals; but by no accident,
it was also a fu lfillm e n t of some of the collective intellectual tasks that
James had set out tw enty years earlier.5 From that effort, we hoped, a
generation would be prepared to assist the renewed class struggle ahead,
reshaped by broad race and gender shifts, and prepared to help coordinate
the non-working-class response to it. A James peroration in R adical
A m erica from 1971 drew a conclusion: direct democracy in the revolu­
tionary process w ith a ll groups represented—even better, representing
themselves—at the table of the new society.6
That vision would be the most hopeful in the direct action struggles
we could document from around the world, in the period from 1968 to
1973, France and Ita ly to Portugal to Quebec to Chile, where official
order had broken down in spots, and where bureaucrats had not yet
succeeded in leading a retreat nor the Right succeeded in brute crushing
of the incendiaries. The 1968 cracks in Stalinism, and the many sim ­
ila ritie s of Czech or East German or Polish young people to ourselves,
allowed us to believe in an approaching revival of fru itfu l confronta­
tion. (James would see his vindication in early Polish Solidarity, but this
was too far ahead in tim e for our m ilieu.) Soundings from high-tech
 From a Biographer's Notebook 439

factories like auto plants in Lordstown, Ohio, meanwhile revealed a

post-Vietnam w orking class unhappy w ith the very nature of their work.
For a moment, the eventual prospect of a new kind of workers-and-
people's councils seemed very real—at least to us. The dozen or so United
States community/class-oriented newspapers and organizing projects to
come out of the New Left untainted by Maoist vanguard obsessions
expressed much tlie same expectations.
Then the moment passed, not only at home where revolutionary forces
had always been weak, but also internationally, where the promise of
direct action, substituting for both vanguards and parliamentarianism,
had seemingly been so great. The activist New Left at large crashed so
quickly and completely that it lost any possible Jamesian connection, or
indeed any lasting character at all. W ith in a few years, meanwhile, the
black w orking class had been so far physically reduced by layoffs that
the League of Revolutionary Black Workers' recent political equations
seemed, no less than the apocalyptic music of the Woodstock Genera­
tion, just another collapsed sixties fantasy. The wider p olitical engage­
ment w ith James, consequently, never quite took place.

II

Clearly, no m inor variation of events would have altered the outcome in

regard to James or anything else. But had he traveled just a few years
earlier on the United States campus lecture tra il, w ith a theoretical book
or two commercially available, James m ight have made a useful, even
lasting effect upon many thousands of readers and listeners. The recogni­
tion and reading of Herbert Marcuse—to offer a contrasting case of a
thinker from an older generation who was outside the loop of the tradi­
tional Left—had come just in tim e, during the middle 1960s. Thanks
largely to the success of O ne-D im ensional Man and the accessibility of
Marcuse's other works, also to the old man's w inning ways as teacher
and mentor, his inform al disciples had students reading their copies of
Eros and C iv iliz a tio n en route to demonstrations. (One can also imagine
other reasons why James's ideas m ight not have h it it off so easily w ith
youngsters; Marcuse had "polymorphous perversity" and a sexualized
youth culture on his side.)7 W illow y and eloquent like the great Ger­
man—and no less devoted to Hegel—James toured the campuses and
attracted increasing attention only from 1969 forward, as the p olitical
fury had begun to die down.
 440 A fte rw o rd

S till, James had a certain p o litic a l cachet in the flickering afterglow of

the sixties excitement. R adical A m erica's publication of C.L.R. fames
A n th o lo g y (1970) was crucial to reach those outside his lecture tra il and
to reach a ll those who sought a w ider sense of his w ork than The Black
Jacobins allowed. A t the tim e, when a p o litic a l turnaround s till seemed
illu s o rily possible and a rapprochement of the New Left w ith some types
of blue-collar currents appeared im perative ^f not necessarily inevitable,
he presented the theoretical background now required.
No one could say that he offered the fu ll formulas, but he offered
something d efinitely post-O ld Left, an unreductive M arxism to build
upon. We m ust also have suspected—but only allowed ourselves to sus­
pect—that the A ntholog y, the firs t tim e and place that his w ritings had
been collected anywhere, was lik e ly to be less a document for current
struggle than a love le tte r aimed at the future.
I chose the contents, w ith the active encouragement of James: a fu ll
range of the author's w riting , from philosophy to history and class strug­
gle to Caribbean materials, mass culture and high culture. The 120 pages
of tin y type, printed by an anarchist collective in D etroit, included M ar­
tin Glaberman's brief introduction sim ply laying out James's life and the
chief tenets of his work. The issue/book sold for a dollar or sixty cents
per copy in bulk. A t that price, it was perfect for the radical literature
table.8
The popular response to the A nth o lo g y was a firs t indication that
James had a sizable potential audience awaiting the availability of his
works. We sold out the in itia l p rint-run of five thousand through bulk
and individual orders in the U nited States, Canada, U nited Kingdom, and
the Caribbean, and another three thousand or so, m ostly for classes at the
U niversity of M ichigan and M ichigan State. In the commercial pub­
lishers' w orld of mass marketing, this was no great accomplishment. In
James's w orld of documents that earlier were barely available anywhere,
its circulation marked a m inor revolution (lamentably, none of the James
anthologies or any book about him has, as yet, exceeded this modest
figure). It also encouraged a small spurt of shorter reprints by Glaberman
and others through helping to create a devoted if small-scale readership.9
M y own clearest memory, a sort of shop floor " lit com m ittee" recollec­
tion, is of little bands of people at the R adical A m erica storage rooms in
Madison, W isconsin (my apartment's attic), later in Somerville, Mas­
sachusetts, in a comrade's basement, wrapping up the copies of the
A ntholog y and a ll other available James works for m ailing to the m ostly
 From a Biographer's Notebook 441

young people who had recently discovered the author. Engaged in a wide
spectrum of local activities from com m unity and factory newspapers to
peace committees to black study groups, they had only the briefest
moment to try to bring the revolutionary aspirations of James's pages
into life .10 As their political groups folded, former activists or sym­
pathizers became one core of steady James readers, a process paralleled
by other groups arfd former groups in the Caribbean, Canada, the United
Kingdom, and Italy. Here we find, among activists and others, the earliest
body of several hundred radical readers and scholars eager to discover the
"James Connection" to past and future revolutionary politics and to
cultural criticism .
M y other strongest memories of the reception to the C.L.R . fames A n ­
thology in the early 1970s are less certain and less positive. A marked
division set m ostly w hite readers (New Leftists drawn to class or cul­
ture themes) off from black readers (intellectuals of a ll generations,
but m ostly young people interested in a radical black w rite r w ith Pan-
African connections). These m ilieus, like the individual Trotskyists,
quasi-Maoists and close-to-cp types also drawn to him , had so little in
common w ith each other that they probably could not have even dis­
cussed James's work in a productive and amiable fashion. Apart from this
division, the lack of interest in James from a large number of ostensibly
radical, astute readers astounded me (and s till does). He did not "take,"
or perhaps the idea of him was more attractive than his actual w riting
for many readers including some of the R adical A m erica faith fu l who
mailed out the books!11
No doubt many of his w ritings seemed dated or increasingly unreal, as
had his predictions in the 1940s and 1950s for im m inent revolutionary
factory councils w ith in the United States and the United Kingdom. No
doubt James's Hegelianism went down badly for a New Left grown to
doubt the "in e v ita b ility of socialism ." Demanding a conceptual leap of
faith, his work seemed to epitomize elements of the Old Left (although
not the fam iliar Stalinist fondness for Russian-style governments, the
equally fam iliar social democratic compromises w ith im perialism , or
their m utual mishandling of cultural questions) that young intellectuals
were eager to escape. More than a ll this, James had an elusive quality that
was fascinating to us—Wilson Harris remarked that James's thoughts
appear entirely different when seen from various angles—but daunting to
many others.
James nevertheless did find, for a tim e in the 1970s, a black p olitical
 442 A fte rw o rd

current that continued to have real influence. If the League of Revolu­

tionary Black Workers, the Black Panthers, and w ith them the short­
term revolutionary hopes had vanished, the victories of black officials in
big U nited States cities lay m ostly ahead. The m ultira cia l crusades to
elect them offered more than a moment of expectation. An urban, parlia-
m entarist Black Power and somewhere ahead a m ultiracial, radical re­
b irth of mass resistance Rainbow C oalition-style often seemed possible.
In the U nited Kingdom, the "colored" population sim ila rly came of age
p olitically, and in the Caribbean the struggle continued w ith new con­
tours, lik e the Bishop regime in Grenada. For a ll these movements, a
Jamesian element could be felt, albeit on a very personal basis. James the
Pan-African A ncient reinforced the impressions made during his speak­
ing tours.
The C.L.R. James of Federal C ity College gave advice freely to those
activists of the Washington, D.C., area eager to listen. Many others
continued to discover James's w ork as they discovered James the teacher
or lecturer and as they also worked on the ir own politics. Manning
Marable is the most obvious and memorable example, but probably
hundreds effected during the 1970s a continuing relationship in their
own w ork between the influence of James the scholar and of James the
p o litica l adviser or inspiration. A t the Institu te for the Black W orld in
Atlanta, James held court to the likes of Vincent Harding, the soon-
in flu e n tia l historian of the African-Am erican odyssey. A t public recep­
tions and in private homes, the scene was repeated almost innumerable
tim es.12
And yet it must be said that few of these inspired younger black
activist-scholars actually published on fames. Indeed, strikin g ly few of
the younger radicals in any category, in any clim e or continent, pub­
lished about h im .13 When I firs t hatched the idea in the early 1970s of a
scholarly volume, "C.L.R. James: His Life and W ork," a dozen or so
names came to m ind through the intellectual network that had been as­
sembled by his followers and comrades. A decade later when the volume
appeared as a special issue of the journal U rgent Tasks, the lis t of contrib­
utors had grown longer, but most of the names were strikin g ly fam iliar.
The m ajority had been intim ates or colleagues of long standing.14
An essay or a prom inent m ention appeared here and there (comments
in the N a tio n and Village Voice by Christopher Hitchens and Alexander
Cockburn around the tim e of the Brixton riots in 1981 come to mind);
and a small burst of reviews and interest occurred around the tim e of the
 From a Biographer's Notebook 443

A llison and Busby reprints of James's works.15 Interviews w ith James

certainly appeared w ith more regularity on B ritish and Caribbean public
television. But it remains impressive how slight the intellectual currents
toward James were even near the end of his life . The rush of scholarship,
if one can call it that, has been post-1990.
It has also been said, often and justly, that the obscurity of James was
grounded in the victual inaccessibility of his works. This is a good point,
especially for the would-be interested readers outside major cities and
major libraries. But the obscurity of sources has never diminished schol­
ars' energy previously, and (for instance) one would be hard put to explain
in this way the v irtu a l absence of dissertations and paucity of scholarly
papers about him , his intellectual oeuvre and his p o litica l life. Other
explanations seem to me more likely, and they may te ll us more about
the nature of the scholarship to come.

I ll

The firs t factor in the geologic shift may, perversely, be James's death in
May 1989. Outsiders never need hear about the inform al lobbying re­
quired to get a good obituary into the N ew York Times or on National
Public Radio; such is intellectual life in the United States for the less-
than-famous. But the staffers at the London papers and the b b c Carib­
bean service obviously fe lt a twinge of sadness, in vitin g as they did some
prom inent names of the B ritish intellectual Left (Stuart H all, Robin
Blackburn, etc.) for eulogistic commentary. W ith James had passed the
last of the great Pan-Africanists, one of the livin g links w ith Trotsky and
Paul Robeson, as these w riters were quick to note. Dead, James could be
summed up better than in life.
For my part, I had been working rather frantically against that dead­
line, so to speak. A handful of w riters had been rumored, for twenty
years, to be a,t w ork on the old man's life. They had been daunted, no
doubt, by his insistence that he was w ritin g an autobiography—an insis­
tence that was at once a serious intention of the 1970s abandoned in
substance somewhere along the way, and also a "necessary m yth" to
keep younger people around h im .16
The palpable nonexistence of the autobiography and his rapid decline,
by the later 1980s, prompted prelim inary rethinking on m y part. But
perhaps only because the suggestion of w ritin g his biography had come
to me a few hours before I was about to vis it James at home (and could put
 444 A fte rw o rd

the question forward, w ith o u t much shyness) did I turn out to be some­
thing lik e an "o ffic ia l" biographer or for that m atter a biographer at all. I
set m yself to produce a brief volum e available during his lifetim e, w ith
James and Anna Grimshaw reading the m anuscript for errors of fact or
interpretation. I succeeded (w ith the help of the publishers, Verso) in
tim e to hear his satisfaction that a necessary job had been done, and done
right. He had not been overwhelm ingly concerned, however. Like the
republication of his books, w hich he hardly bothered him self about, the
significance of his reputation he le ft to others and to the future.17
I suspect that the mem orial meetings in various parts of the world, the
b b c special on James, and the odd sense of shock among those friends and

admirers who somehow expected h im to live forever, a ll helped to shift

the public and scholarly mood.18M y one lasting impression is of a Wash­
ington, D.C., crack zone after dark, a college auditorium , and some two
hundred people including form er students, colleagues, w ith scattered
members of the public (only a tin y proportion of them white). They had
come to honor a James whom few outside the ir m ilie u had ever known as
they had: the renowned scholar who was not too proud to be a teacher in
the prisons or a com m unity college role model.
I am certain, at least, that a Boston mem orial meeting was the origin of
the C.L.R. James Society. We had never discussed the prospect of such an
organization, and his response to the outside world had grown steadily
weaker (even w hile his sense of hum or and his charming manners re­
mained vivid) in any case. But the moment had clearly arrived, for us as
much as for the C.L.R. James Institute, w hich began publishing a pam­
phlet series, or for the O ilfie ld Workers Trade U nion in San Fernando,
Trinidad, whose officers had marched behind his coffin and who later
named an educational center after him .
The death-m otif of our response w ill, nevertheless, be seen, in tim e, as
of far less lasting importance than an incom ing cultural-intellectual
trope, and behind it, a disguised p o litica l impulse. We can already see
a relation to M artin Duberman's well-received biography of Paul Robe­
son, published in 1988. The M alcolm X connection went deeper into
the popular culture by far. By 1990, T-shirts w ith an all-signifying "X "
(writers in the Village Voice often commented on an "X " generation)
made the ir in itia l appearance, soon spread w ith immense salesmanship
through Spike Lee's M alcolm X film biography.19This media event, and
the new scholarship placing M alcolm alongside M artin Luther King, Jr.,
opened up a vast new te rrito ry of black history to belated public recogni-
 From a Biographer's N otebook 445

tion. The pertinent w riters and film m akers, it should be noted, had by
and large not known their subjects,- most were far too young. The histor­
ical claim was thus passing from the appointed (or self-appointed) de­
votees to an unappointed mass of variegated intellectuals and artists.
James along w ith the other great black personalities quickly became
part of a larger subject that was developing by the end of the 1980s and
early 1990s. He did'not live to see Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on the cover of
the N ew York Times Magazine, or to remark on Cornel West's prom i­
nence across the intellectual map, or to appreciate Spike Lee's auteur
charisma and notoriety. One wonders what James would have made of
the various ironies involved, such as the Right's attack on m u lticu ltural-
ism and the contrary or complementary Afro-Centrist insistence upon
an intellectual reductionism. But we can be sure that he would have
pointed to the deeper issues behind the immediate controversies. He had,
like Du Bois, argued a half-century earlier that race relations lay at the
foundation of Western civilization.
The sudden proliferation of black cultural texts and m u lticu ltural
texts, their dissemination from popular radical venues like the Village
Voice to the p olitical-cultural "little magazines" of the day (C u ltu ra l
C ritique, Social Text, M o n th ly Review, etc.) hails a genuinely fresh
development. That it arrives simultaneously w ith a wave of popular
music splashing upward, so to speak, from street culture to the marble
palace of the corporate media, is no accident—even if none of the newer
scholars would presume to describe themselves as the "organic intellec­
tuals" of the rap artists and hip-hop musicians. However weighted down
w ith postmodern jargon at various points of discourse, the emerging
criticism from the likes of Robin D. G. Kelley and Michael Eric Dyson to
Cornel West and Hazel Carby is schooled in a theoretical tradition of
cultural-political interpretation that explicitly includes C.L.R. James.
This development is something new and im portant.
It has already led to a quiet explosion of textual and subtextual recogni­
tion of James, from African studies to cultural criticism to history and
development studies. Edward Said and Sylvia W inter, among the most
in flu en tia l of the now-elder critics, issue virtu a l manifestoes on the
hidden trajectory in James's work. His name appears, w ith increasingly
frequency, in passing phrases and in footnotes of essays in journals where
it had been prom inently missing before. Often the referencing is only
meant to demonstrate the author's erudition, or it repeats a distorted
impression. Yet such appearances, w ith their studied offhandedness,
 446 A fte rw o rd

lend the curious impression that James has always been present w ith in
the discourse. They foretell the intellectual or scholarly future where he
w ill continue to be present, in one way or another. A t last! we may say to
ourselves w ith a deserved sigh of relief. Like the a vailability and prestige
reception of Grimshaw's C.L.R . fames Reader, the open-ended conversa­
tio n guarantees that the days of near-total obscurity are at an end. How­
ever much James is misused, he w ill now be available to be discovered by
those who need his w ork most.
And where w ill this style of recognition lead? Noel Ignatiev, a long­
tim e worker-scholar heavily influenced by James and the editor of U r­
gent Tasks who encouraged me to compile the firs t scholarly anthology,
commented laconically that "cu ltu ra l studies" were destined to immerse
Jamesian ideas in an hyperacademic fog.20 That is a possibility, consis­
tent w ith the depoliticization of the tim e.
But there is another possibility, just as like ly. James remains the lin k to
a politics of culture and cu ltu ra lly shaped class p olitics that together
offer the best way to interpret the possibilities of mass creativity in an
age of economic stagnation and mass im m iseration. By means of James's
unfinished classic, A m erican C iv iliz a tio n , modern people find them ­
selves, their identities, m irrored back toward them in that culture and
may see the way to strike out in radically democratic directions.21
This form ulation would hardly satisfy James, of course. By his own
lights, he had predicted the economic stagnation and p o litica l collapse of
the Soviet U nion and of Stalinism more generally. He believed that w ork­
ers' and people's councils would come out of that collapse, predicted in
the early days of Poland's Solidarity union. The opportunity of 1989 was
missed. But post-comm unist governments bowing to Western pressures
to lower the liv in g standards of their populations have w idely discredited
themselves, w ith unforeseeable consequences. In short, James's predic­
tions for Eastern Europe have not been disproven. His theory that these
struggles would loosen the Cold War bonds around the class and social
struggles in the West may very w ell be accurate. W ith a new generation
coming of age w ith in a troubled capitalism and an increasingly devas­
tated environment, the w orld looks considerably worse than in James's
o ptim istic moments of 1969-70. But the contradictions are nevertheless
rising to a boil, and the internationalism that he constantly appealed for
remains an elementary human requirement to survive the worst ahead.
No one knows what form or m ultitude of forms a contemporary James-
 From a Biographer's N otebook 447

inspired p olitical project would take, as no one would (I think) find his
p olitical perspectives of the 1930s-1940s, replete w ith intra-Trotskyist
references, to be a working guide. But it seems to me inevitable that ever
larger numbers of thinkers and activists w ill find his w ritings both useful
and inspiring.

IV

If we turn, finally, to the future theoretical, exegetical, and historical

scholarship of James, we can best see C.L.R. fames: H is In te lle c tu a l
Legacies as the la s t prelim inary to the increasingly intense study of his
ideas, his life, and his influences. It succeeds and—w hile not displacing
the earlier volumes—marks a clim ax to the kind of collective labor that
went into C.L.R. fames: H is Life and W ork and C.L.R. fames's C arib­
bean, w hile providing a counterpart to the first published biographies.
One of the "pleasures of the text" is surely its variegated authors and
their viewpoints. To cite only the contributions of Anna Grimshaw,
Derek Walcott, Horace Campbell, W illiam Cain, and Aldon Nielsen: the
intensity of close observation and recollection about James him self and
the cosmic perspective upon James the revolutionary in a cataclysmic
century are enough to keep the reader thinking w ell and hard for a long
time. But more than that: locked up in them is the material for a thou­
sand conversations, dialogues in the Jamesian sense between scholars
and activists, scholars and their work.
It would be presumptuous, however tempting, to predict the future
course or even the principal lines of the forthcom ing intellectual effort. I
am personally convinced that much more study w ill go into the various
political projects attempted, the collective efforts of James and his com­
rades. But I am equally convinced that the discovery of new caches of
letters and other unpublished documents, as w ell as the interview ing of
those who knew him , w ill reveal many possibilities s till not in sight. I
believe that a much greater distance is destined to be traversed in the
comparisons and contrasts of James to a host of Marxists, cultural fig­
ures, and artists, from Lukacs (as here) to Lenin to Gramsci and Bakhtin
to Du Bois and W ilson Harris and his placement among several gen­
erations of novelists, socialist, and Pan-African thinkers and activists
at large. More than that I need not say. The biographer's notebook is
closed.22
 448 A fte rw o rd

Notes

1 .1 am th in k in g here of Eugene Genovese's brief remarks in his collection of

essays, In Black and Red: Marxian Explorations in Southern and Afro-American
History (New York: Pantheon, 1971), 154 n and 211. For some observations about
the more mean-spirited treatm ent of James by Caribbean historian Gordon Lewis,
see W alton Look Lai, "C.L.R. James and T rinidadian N a tio n alism ," in C.L.R.
James’s Caribbean, ed. Paget H enry and Paul Buhle (Durham: D uke U n ive rsity
Press, 1992), 207. *
It is p a in fu lly interesting that form er colleagues and cofactionalists w ho had
gone on to n o ta b ility as anti-com m unist socialists or liberals did not bother, even
in footnotes, to take measure of James's in te lle ctua l accomplishments. One can
look through the volum inous w ritin g s of Irv in g Howe, M ax Shachtman, D w ig h t
Macdonald, and Gertrude H im m elfarb for a single reference, and none of James's
books was ever reviewed in Howe's Dissent magazine (it is rum ored th a t he
attempted to contribute several essays here during the 1970s, b u t was system ati­
cally turned down).
2. The one exception is his 1948 convention resolution, "The R evolutionary
Answer to the Problem of the Negro in the USA," reprinted in C.L.R. James, The
Future in the Present (London: A llis o n and Busby, 1977), 119-27.
3. James, "Parties, P olitics and Economics in the Caribbean," Freedomways 4
(Summer 1964): 312-18; reprinted in C.L.R. James, Spheres of Existence (London:
A llis o n and Busby, 1980), 151-56. The o n ly other notable contemporary ap­
pearance in the Left press was "Rastafari A t Hom e—and Abroad," New Left
Review, no. 25 (May-June 1964), reprinted in C.L.R. James, A t the Rendezvous of
Victory (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence H ill, 1989), 163-65.
4. In B ritain, where radical h isto ry had more early resonance, one is tempted to
say that the key scholars looked backward to the very particular h istory of the
B ritish w orking class. Thus the journal of ex-communists, Past and Present, and
E. P. Thompson's own epochal Making of the English Working Class (New York:
Pantheon, 1963). There is little doubt, however, that James could have injected
him self further in to the B ritish Left h isto ry dialogue if he had been so inclined;
his interests lay elsewhere, especially in the Caribbean, and m ost of his w ritin g in
various spots lik e the B ritish liberal New Society, the Cricketer, and even the
Fabian Society's Venture, as w e ll as the Caribbean press itself, concerns this.
5. The special issue of Radical America 4 (M a rc h -A p ril 1971) was edited by
Eric Perkins along w ith John Bracey and John Higginson. On the League and
D etroit, see also Dan Georgakas and M a rvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do M ind Dying
(New York: St. M artin's, 1973) for a v ita l treatment. Dan Georgakas, "Young
D e tro it Radicals, 1955-1965," in C.L.R. James: His Life and Work, ed. Paul Buhle
(London: A llis o n and Busby, 1986), is a valuable m em oir of James's influence on
the scene.
6. C.L.R. James, "W orld Revolution: The Way O u t," Radical America 7 (N ov.-
Dee. 1971); and reprinted in "15 Years of Radical America: A n Anthology,"
Radical America 16 (May-June 1982): 125-26.
7. To offer another case, the once-gloriously popular E. P. Thompson of the Ban
the Bomb movement remained out of sorts w ith the N ew Left in England, adopted
 From a Biographer's Notebook 449

as a model social historian in the U nited States but also for the most part only by
the 1970s.
8. Glaberman later complained, w ith justice, that m y emphasis had slighted
the s tric tly economic views of James and consequent predictions of crisis in state
capitalism. A t the tim e, p o litic a l crises were close but economic crises seemed far
away indeed. Like the comments from Castoriadis in this volume about brushing
aside the Marxist-predicted crisis of capitalism, these may have proved prema­
ture. Whatever the details, James and his collaborators may then be credited w ith
a long-range accurateness in this respect, i f not in its counterpart predictions for
the industrial proletariat of the West.
9. Radical America's own con trib u tio n to this small-scale outpouring was a
pamphlet-selection from the 1940s document Dialectic in History (Cambridge:
Radical America, 1972); Facing Reality had reprinted State Capitalism and World
Revolution (Detroit: Facing Reality, 1968), and Glaberman's Bewick editions
(Detroit) had reprinted The Invading Socialist Society (1972); Modern Politics
(1973), and Facing Reality (1974).
10. P olitical grouplets w ith a particular fervency for James's ideas deserve
special m ention here. In the U nited States, the Chicago-based Sojourner T ruth
Organization m ixed Maoism and Jamesianism in a shop-floor Black Power orien­
tation and a magazine, Urgent Tasks; in the U nited Kingdom, Race Today was a
sometimes influential magazine, and rose on occasion to lead or articulate the
ideas of "colored" antigovernment protests w ith a Jamesian line; in Canada, a
Windsor-based group oriented itself around Race Today in various activities; and
in Italy, extra-parliamentarists who had made contact w ith James's ideas at the
dawn of the sixties, via Dan Georgakas and the journal Quaderni Rossi, published
a history magazine of Jamesian flavor, Primo Maggio. In all cases, the existence of
these publications encouraged readership of James's books. On the special case of
the Caribbean, see essays by Paget Henry on Antigua and by W alton Look Lai on
Trinidad in Henry and Buhle, C.L.R. James's Caribbean. None of the other groups
has left a published m em oir or found its historian.
11. See for instance, Paul Berman, "Facing Reality," in Buhle, C.L.R. James: His
Life and Work (206-11) for an almost purely syndicalist recuperation of James.
12. Classic encounters of this kin d are recalled by John Bracey, "N e llo ," and
Richard Thomas, "Black Scholar," in Buhle, C.L.R. James: His Life and Work (the
Sojourner Truth edition only). "Conversation" of Vincent Harding and Ken Law­
rence ( Urgent Tasks 12 [Summer 1981]: 125-26 and 121-22 respectively) in the
same volume (shortened for the A lliso n and Busby edition) discusses the Institute
of the Black World episode. Noel Ignatin's essay "M eeting in Chicago," preserved
in the later edition (243-46) is another eloquent account.
13. Like the earlier Genovese reference, the essay by Tony M artin, "C.L.R.
James and the Race/Class Question," Race 14 (October 1972): 183-93, is interest­
ing for its singularity. A European reprint house published a high-priced library
edition of World Revolution in 1970 (Nendeln/Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint;
1970). A group of CORE-related activists brought out a new edition of History of
the Negro Revolt, retitled History of the Pan African Revolt (Washington, D.C.:
D rum and Spear Press, 1969), but it achieved little circulation beyond the im m e­
diate area.
 450 A fte rw o rd

14. Perhaps most notably, James's W ashington days had brought James Early,
Gregory Rigsby, and E. Ethelbert M ille r in to his orbit, and in to Buhle, C.L.R.
fames: His Life and Work.
15. Derek W alcott's front-page New York Times Book Review essay on the U.S.
edition of Beyond a Boundary (25 M arch 1984) was splendid, but it was v irtu a lly
the only notice of the book, w h ich sunk out of sight im m ediately among a
baseball-oriented A m erican public. James's appearance at a N ew York ra lly for
Polish S olidarity in 1981 had also excited a certain interest. Jim Murray, later of
the James In stitute, had by th is tim e taken over C ultural Correspondence, pub­
lishing this ta lk and one by James on black wom en w riters, in C ultural Corre­
spondence, n.s. 2 (Summer 1981); reprinted in Paul Buhle, ed., Popular Culture in
America (Minneapolis: U n ive rsity of M innesota Press, 1987), 232-39.
16. The m ost credible explanation is that of Anna Grim shaw in the essay in this
volum e. As in other m atters bearing on his last years, there can be no doubt that
she knew his intentions best.
17. A t least three other biographies have been planned, of w h ich one is an­
nounced for publication: Tony Bogues, C.L.R. James and Marxism (London:
Pluto, 1993). Kent Worcester and Ron Ramdin, a Trinidad-B ritish scholar, are also
w o rking on general biographies. As to the reception of m y ow n volum e and the
discussion about James that it provoked, much credit is due to Edward Said.
Thanks also go to the Village Voice, whose lite ra ry editors and contributors have
provided for a large popular audience repeated references to James, his intellectual
influence, and his p o litic a l disciples from the N ew York Caribbean c o m m u n ity
and elsewhere.
18. M em orial meetings were held in London, N ew York, D etroit, Washington,
Los Angeles, Port of Spain, and Boston. Bandung Productions' BBC feature, "A
T ribute to CLR James," w ith excerpts of interview s w ith h im and a panel discus­
sion about him , was shown tw ice in the U nited Kingdom and has been shown
privately in other cities, m o stly at conferences and in classrooms.
19. Conrad Lynn, M alcolm 's lawyer in his fin a l year, related to me in 1992 that
the nationalist-turning-in te m atio n a list had begun reading all the M arxist mate­
rials that Lynn (a longtim e devotee of James) offered h im . James was very high on
the list, Lynn reported, as a black man who could argue p o litics and philosophy
w ith the w h ite intellectuals and not be restricted to "black questions." But
tragically, M alcolm was cut down before the tw o could make personal contact—a
m ajor loss all around.
20. " I have visions of colloquia at the Center fo r C u ltu ra l Studies and of
symposia at the Conference on Contemporary C ritic is m and syllabi in the De­
partm ent of Popular Semiotics. I foresee graduate students and ju n io r faculty
members welcom ing James the historian, James the lite ra ry critic, James the
philosopher and all the other Jameses who can be made to fit in, w h ile excluding
James the revolutionary. I see a ll this, and I shudder." (Noel Ignatiev, "Books," Z
Magazine, June 1990.)
21. The po litica l project of Jamesian cu ltu ra l explication has been attempted,
but never yet at the right tim e. The 1950s Detroit-based newspaper Correspon­
dence, named after the unsuccessful "Workers Correspondence" project to gather
the proletariat's own story in to the com m unist papers of the 1920s, was (or
documented) the first collective effort around James to interpret the daily life and
 From a Biographer's Notebook 451

culture of the modern w orking class. Despite good w ork, it could not escape the
lim its of its Cold War historical environment. The journal Cultural Correspon­
dence founded in 1975 w ith its name taken from the predecessor, sought a
quotidian equivalent for the masses of more recent times. By bringing M arxism in
relation to "cu ltu ra l studies" (then hardly a field) we 1970s Jamesians foreshad­
owed the task of a later generation. But we made little progress otherwise: the
p olitical space sim ply did not exist.
Among our editor? we counted the w rite r who today best argues the Jamesian
case for the revolutionary prospects of culture: George Lipsitz, a student of
George Rawick's, now a much-admired historian/m usicologist/ethnologist of
the hidden m u ltic u ltu ra l past and the uncharted possibilities ahead—and an
increasingly frequent figure on the lecture paths evangelizing this view to an
educated public. See his recent book, Time Passages (Minneapolis: U niversity of
Minnesota Press, 1992), easily one of the most in flu e n tia l works of contemporary
cultural studies. A selection and reminiscence of the larger m ilie u around Cul­
tural Correspondence and its relation to James can be found in Buhle, Popular
Culture in America.
22. Scott McLemee and Paul Le Blanc, eds., C.L.R. James and Revolutionary
Marxism (A tlantic Highlands, N.J.: H um anities Press, 1993), substantially docu­
ments the "Am erican Years" of 1938-53. Paul Le Blanc's foreword and Mc-
Lemee's afterword offer the closest sustained look thus far at the most collec­
tive moment in James's p o litica l life. James's hitherto unpublished manuscript,
American C ivilization (London: Blackwell, 1993), edited and introduced by Anna
Grimshaw and Keith H art helps further. C.L.R. James's Caribbean w ill almost
certainly remain the prim ary "regional" study of James's background and in ­
fluence, destined to be followed by many individual contributions elsewhere.
James's English years, his m ilieux, p o litica l activities, and influences, remain,
however, the least studied and surely deserve a volume of their own.
Those interested in oral history around James should consult the "Johnson-
Forest File," Oral H istory of the American Left, Tam im ent Library, New York
University, for a beginning. Video tapes also exist in at least a half-dozen archives,
m ostly of interviews given in the 1970s. A handful of other audio tapes (mostly
his speeches) have been donated to the Schomburg C ollection, New York Public
Library. Separate collections exist of James's letters at the Schomburg and at
Wayne State U niversity (in the M a rtin Glaberman Collection). The com piling
and organization of a formal CLR James C ollection has been tragically delayed
and may be some years further in negotiation; scholars are urged to proceed on
their own to save material from loss and destruction.
 C ontributors

W illiam E. Cain, professor of English at Wellesley College, is the author of

The Crisis in C riticism (1984) and F. O. Matthiessen and the Politics of
C riticism (1988). He is also the editor of W illiam Lloyd Garrison: Selections
from “The Liberator" [1994).

Selwyn R. Cudjoe, professor of Africana studies, Wellesley College, is the

author of Resistance and Caribbean Literature (1980) and V. S. N aipaul: A
M aterialist Reading (1988). He is also the editor of Caribbean Women
Writers (1990) and Eric E. W illiam s Speaks (1993).

Robin Blackburn, a research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Stud­

ies, University of London, was a resident fellow at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. (1993-94). His publi­
cations include The O verthrow of C olonial Slavery; 1776-1848 (1988) and
A fter the Fall: The Failure of Communism and the Future of Socialism
(1991). He also edits New Left Review.

Grace Lee Boggs, one of the founders of the Johnson-Forest Tendency, has
been a Movement activist and theoretician since the early 1940s. She re­
ceived her undergraduate degree from Barnard College in 1935 and her Ph.D.
from Bryn Mawr College in 1940. W ith her husband, James Boggs, she wrote
Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century (1974) and Conversa­
tions in Maine (1959), w ith Freddy and Lyman Paine. She has lived in De­
tro it since 1953 where she is editor of the Save Our Sons and Daughters
(SOSAD) newsletter and is active in Detroit Summer, a m ulticultural, inter-
generational youth program/movement to "ReBuild, ReDefine and ReSpirit
Detroit from the Ground Up."

453
 454 C on tribu to rs

Paul Buhle edited "A CL.R. James Anthology," the first anthology of C.L.R.
James's writings, which appeared in 1970 as a special issue of Radical Am er­
ica. In 1986 he edited the first critical anthology, C.L.R. fames: His Life and
W ork, and in 1988 he wrote the first biography, C.L.R. fames: The A rtis t as
Revolutionary. W ith Paget Henry he edited C.L.R. fames's Caribbean
(1992). He has w ritten or edited fifteen other books, including M arxism in
the U nited States (1987), Encyclopedia of therAmerican Left (1990), and The
Am erican Radical (1994).

Horace Campbell, resident director of Syracuse University's Harare Center

in Zimbabwe, is a professor of comparative politics in the Department of
African-American Studies, Syracuse University. He is the author of Rasta
and Resistance (1987) and the editor, w ith Howard Stein, of Tanzania and
the IM F.

Cornelius Castoriadis was born in Constantinople in 1922. He studied law,

political and economic science, and philosophy in Athens. After being a
member of the Communist Party Youth and Greek and French Trotskyite
organizations, he founded Socialisme ou Barbarie in Paris. Now a practicing
psychoanalyst in Paris, he has been the director of studies at the Ecole des
Hautes Etudes en Sciences since 1980. Castoriadis worked very closely w ith
C.L.R. James in the late 1940s and the 1950s. His published works in En­
glish include P o litica l and Social W ritings (3 vols.), The Im aginary In s titu ­
tion o f Society, Crossroads in the Labyrinth, and Philosophy, Politics,
Autonom y.

Alex Dupuy, professor of sociology at Wesleyan University and chair of the

sociology department, is a specialist on H aiti and the Caribbean. He is the
author of H a iti in the W orld Economy: Class, Race and Underdevelopment
since 1700 (1989). A sequel to this, The Challenge of Democracy in H a iti:
Development and Change in the “New W orld Order," is forthcoming.

Michael Foot, a member of the British Parliament from 1945 to 1992 and the
leader of the British Labour Party from 1980 to 1983, is an Honorary Fellow
of Wadham College, Oxford University. The author of The Pen and the
Sword (1957), Aneurin Bevan (1962; 1973), Loyalist and Loners (1986), and
Pohtics of Paradise (1988), Foot corresponded w ith James regularly.

M artin Glaberman, a member of the Johnson-Forest Tendency and an asso­

ciate of C.L.R. James from 1941 onward, joined the socialist movement at
 C ontributors 455

the age of thirteen. An auto worker in Detroit, he was active in the United
Auto Workers Union for about twenty years. He published some of James's
work under the im print of Bewick Editions. A professor emeritus of social
science at Wayne State University, he is the author of W artime Strikes and
the editor of Correspondence and Speak O ut.

Anna Grimshaw, a lecturer in visual anthropology at the University of Man­

chester, England, was James's assistant for six years. She is the editor of The
C.L.R. James Reader (1992) and Letters from a Revolutionary (forthcoming).
She and Keith Hart edited James's American C ivilization (1993).

Paul "Pablo" Idahosa, an unreconstructed populist, teaches Third World and

African politics at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto. In addition
to reviewing the relevance of Frantz Fanon's politics to Africa and the in flu ­
ence of Caribbean intellectuals on African political thought and develop­
ment, he is currently writing a book on African socialism.

Mark Kingwell received an M .Litt. from the University of Edinburgh in

1987 and a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1991. An assistant professor of
philosophy at Scarborough College, University of Toronto, he is the author
of A C iv il Tongue: Justice, Dialogue, and the Politics of Pluralism (1994).
His articles on ethics and political theory have appeared in Journal of Phi­
losophy, Philosophical Forum, Philosophy and Social C riticism , and Yale
Journal of Law and Hum anities.

James M illette, formerly a senior lecturer at the University of the West In­
dies (St. Augustine, Trinidad), is a visiting professor in the Afro-American
studies department at Oberlin College. He is the author of Society and Poli­
tics in C olonial Trinidad (1985).

Bernard M oitt, a graduate of the University of Toronto, has been teaching

there since 1985. He specializes in African, Caribbean, and African Ameri­
can history and literature and has published widely in the field.

H. Adlai Murdoch, assistant professor of French and Francophone litera­

tures at Wellesley College, is interested in the intersections of postcolonial
discourse and narrative theory, w ith particular reference to the French Ca­
ribbean. His articles have appeared in entralogos, Callaloo, Research in A f­
rican Literatures , and Yale French Studies. Presently he is examining
narrative resistance and identity in the Francophone Caribbean novel.
 456 C on tribu to rs

Aldon L. Nielsen, professor of English at San Jose State University, is the au­
thor of Reading Race: W hite Am erican Poets and R acial Discourse in the
Twentieth Century, which was awarded the Kayen Prize and the South A tlan­
tic Modern Language Association Studies Award. His most recent book is
W riting between the Lines: Race and Intertextua lity. Nielsen, who was a stu­
dent in C.L.R. James's classes at Federal C ity College, is currently an Institute
of American Cultures fellow at UCLA's Center* for Afro-American Studies.

Barbara Paul-Emile, a member of the English department at Bentley College,

teaches English, Caribbean, and African American literatures. A scholar and
a creative writer, she has had her short stories published internationally.
She received an Achievement Award honoring black scholarship from the
University of Massachusetts.

Helen Pyne-Timothy, formerly dean of the Faculty of Arts and General

Studies and head of the Department of Language and Linguistics at the U ni­
versity of the West Indies, was a visiting associate professor at the Africana
Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, during the spring of 1994.
She has also taught at the University of California (Santa Barbara and Los
Angeles). Her specialties are Creole linguistic theory, African American and
Caribbean literature, and women's writings from Africa and the diaspora.

Kara M. Rabbitt is a doctoral student in Romance studies at Cornell Univer­

sity. Her dissertation treats the concepts of journey as it relates to poetics
and examines the prose-poems of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Cesaire.

Glenn Richards was a lecturer in the Department of History, University of

the West Indies.

Cedric J. Robinson, professor of black studies and political science and chair
of the black studies department at the University of California, Santa Bar­
bara, is the author of Black M arxism : The M aking o f the Black Radical Tra­
d itio n (1983). He is completing The Anthropology of M arxism , a study of
Western socialism.

Rick Roderick received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of

Texas (Austin). He has taught there and at Duke University. The author of
Habermas and the Foundations of C ritic a l Theory, he is a social theorist for
the Glendon Association and teaches at National University in Los Angeles
and Santa Barbara C ity College.
 C ontributors 457

Lou Turner, a colleague of the late Raya Dunayevskaya, is the managing edi­
tor of and author of a monthly column, "Black World," for News and Let­
ters, the Marxist-humanist journal Dunayevskaya founded in 1955. With
John Alan he has written Frantz Fanon, Soweto, and American Black
Thought (1986). He teaches urban studies at North Central College, Naper­
ville, Illinois.
p

Derek Walcott, Nobel Laureate (1993), is the author of the award-winning

works In a Green N ight (1962), The Castaways and Other Poems (1965),
The G ulf and Other Poems (1969), Dream on Monkey M ountain (1970), A n­
other Life (1973), and Omeros (1990). He is a professor in the creative w rit­
ing program, Boston University.

Kent Worcester is the author of several articles and monographs on C.L.R.

James, as well as of C.L.R. James: A P o litical Biography (1995).
 P

Index

Endnotes are indexed if they continue or amplify discussion in the text. Indexable
material in the text w ith no reference to the source other than an endnote reference
number is referenced w ith a number in parenthesis, which refers to the page where the
endnote is located in the text (e.g. 158 n. 46 (146).

A.A.B. See James, C. L. R., pseudonyms Another Country, 359-60,365,368,383,

of
Abern, Marty, 227
abolition movements, 81-88, 410-11
Abu-Lughod, Janet, 246-47
Abu-Nasir, Jamil, A History of the
Maghrib, 399
Adler, Joyce Sparer, War in M elville’s
Imagination, 271 n. 3 (262)
Adorno, Theodor, 250
African and Caribbean Politics: From
Kwame Nkrumah to Maurice Bishop,
393
Algeria, 399
"Algerian Peasants and National Libera­
tion," 399
Ali, Desmond, 337
America, United States of. See United
States of America
American Civilization, 3, 7, 25, 29-32,
174, 184-88, 446-47, 451 n. 22. See
also James, C. L. R.; Johnson-Forest
Tendency
American Communist Party, 255
American society and culture, 183-84
American Worker, The, 283-84
Amin, Samir, "The Future of Socialism,"
415
"Amis des Noirs," 83-85
Anderson, Perry, Considerations of
Western Marxism, 244
383 n. 1 (359)
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizo­
phrenia, 206
antislavery, 81-82, 103
Appeal (Socialist Workers Party news­
paper), 227
Arendt, Hannah, 250
Aristotle, 6, 121-25, 132-33 n. 6 (122),
234, 292
Arnold, Matthew, 36, 51
Arnold, Thomas, of Rugby, 363
Artisans and Sans-Culottes: Popular
Movements in France and Britain
During the French Revolution, 100-
101, 105n. 4
Arvin, Newton, Herman Melville: A
C ritical Biography, 263, 271 n. 2 (261)
Athenian democracy, 287-88
A t the Rendezvous of Victory, 313n. 6
(307), 326n. 1 (317), 346n. 9 (332),
347 n. 27 (339), 402 n. 5 (394); "Black
Sansculottes," 411, 430n. 4; "Rastafari
A t Home—and Abroad," 448 n. 3 (437);
"Towards the Seventh: The Pan A fri­
can Congress—Past, Present and Fu­
ture," 412, 430 n. 6
Aulard, Alphonse, 100
Au temps des isles &sucre: histoire d ’une
plantation de Saint-Domingueau
XVIIIesiecle, 140-52 (passim), 157n. 19

459
 460 Index
Bangou, Henri, "L'epopee Delgres," 97
Baraka, A m iri, 5
Barbados, 38,330,331
Barratt, Jim, 337
Baudrillard, J., 291
Bauman, Zygmunt, Legislators and In ­
terpreters: On Modernity, Post-
Modernity and Intellectuals, 389
Beacon, The, 3, 58
Beckles, Hilary, N atural Rebels: A Social
H istory of Enslaved Black Women in
Barbados, 158 n. 46 (146)
Beik, Paul H., The French Revolution,
104 n. 3 (100)
Bennett, J. Harry, Bondsmen and
Bishops: Slavery and Apprenticeship
on the Codrington Plantations of Bar­
bados, 158n. 46 (146)
Bennoune, Mahmood, "Algerian Peas­
ants and National Liberation," 399
Benot, Yves, 87; La revolution frangaise
et la fin des colonies, 97 n.
Berthoff, Warner, 271 n. 3
Beyond a Boundary, 3,16,17n. 3,30,
42-43, 59n. 7 ,115-16n. 1,188,390,
394-95,436; as autobiography, 361—
63,374-77; prose style of, 35-37; re­
issue of, 7; review of, 34-36
Biondi, Jean-Pierre, 16 PluvidseAn II,
97 n.
Birth of a Nation (film), 28
Bishop, Maurice, 318-20,323,442
black bourgeoisie, 106
Blackburn, Robin, 9,443; The Over­
throw of Colonial Slavery, 97,393-94,
395
black churches, 393
Black Jacobins, The (play), 119, 121
Black Jacobins: Toussaint LOuverture
and the San Domingo Revolution,
The, 2,6,9, 10, 17n. 3 (2), 43, 81-97,
98-99, 101-3, 133 n. 10(124), 134 nn.
12(126), 13(126), 15(127), 17(130),
224, 226, 246, 248, 258 n. 13 (248),
318-19,363,390,391,393,394, 401 n.
2 (390), 410-11,426,440; preface to
first edition, 119-20; a reassessment
of, 106-16; reception of, 435-37; a
study of slave society, 136-57; Tous­
saint as literary hero, 118-31,132n. 2
Black Marxism: The Making of the Radi­
cal Black Tradition, 258 n* 15 (251),
392-93, 402 n. 4 (392)
Black Panthers, 312,442
Black Power movements, 343,344-45,
442
Black Reconstruction, 2-3
Black self-determination, 317-27
Black studies, 6-7,324-26,435-47
Blake, W illiam , 43
Boggs, Grace Lee, 2,10,13, 163-72,176,
219,<222, 234,241 n. 11 (219), 242nn.
20 (222), 24 (227), 282-83,310; The
American Worker, 164; Conversations
in Maine, 241 n. 11; and Cornelius
Castoriadis, 282-83; on Hegel, 197,
199; The Invading Socialist Society,
297n. 6 (286); and James in the U.S.A.,
163-72; pseudonym of, 164; State
Capitalism and World Revolution,
176, 249-51, 255, 257n. 1 (245), 392,
417; "Thinking and Acting Dialec­
tically: C. L. R. James, The American
Years," 18 n. 20
Bogues, Tony, C. L. R. James and M arx­
ism, 450 n. 17
Bois Caiman, 83
Bolivar, Simon, 94
Bolshevik-Menshevik debate, 402n. 8
(398), 421
Bolsheviks, 416,418-22
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 92, 93,95, 102-3,
121,122,132n. 4
Bondman, Matthew, 24
Bondmen and Bishops: Slavery and Ap­
prenticeship on the Codrington Plan­
tations of Barbados, 158 n. 46(146)
Bondmen and Rebels: A Study of
Master-Slave Relations in A n ti­
gua, 158 n. 46(146)
Bourdieu, Pierre, Algeria, 399
Bradman, Donald, 378,386 n. 18. See
also cricket
Brazil, 91
Brereton, Bridget, A History of Modern
Thnidad, 71 n. 1
Britain's West Indian possessions, 318
British Anti-Slavery Movement, The,
103
Bruleaux, Anne-Marie, et al., Deux sie-
cles d ’esclavage en Guyane frangaise,
1652-1848, 159n. 69 (150)
Brutus, Edner, Revolution dans Saint-
Domingue, 116n. 2
Buhle, Paul, 4, 181, 241 n. 2 (216); "The
Audacity of It A ll," 17n. 8 (3); as biog-

rapher of James, 435-51; C. L. R.
fames: The A rtist as Revolutionary, 7,
70-71,258 n. 10; C. L. R. fames: His
Life and Work, 78 n. 1, 184,190n.24,
413, 442, 447,449nn. 11,12, 450n. 14
(442); review of, 442-43; editor of
C. L. R. fames's Caribbean, 7 ,17n. 4,
243n. 25, 447,448*. 1,449n. 10 (441),
451 n. 22 (447); on Mariners, Rene-
gades and Castaways, 254-55; Popu­
lar Culture in America, 450 nn. 15,21;
"Young Detroit Radicals, 1955-1965,"
448n.5 (438)
Burke, Edmund, 88
Bush, Barbara, Slave Women in Carib­
bean Society 1650-1838, 158n. 46
(146)
Bush, George, and New World Order,
294
Butler, Tubal Uriah ("Buzz"), 331; and
the Butler movement, 330
Butler vs. The King: Riots and Sedition
in 1937,346nn. 3,5
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 98-99
Cabon, Adolphe, Histoire d'Haiti, 116n,
159n. 82 (153)
Cabral, Amilcar, 416; Revolution in
Guinea, 406,430 n. 1
Cahier d ’un retour au pays natal, 129,
130
Cain, W illiam E., Mariners, textual anal­
ysis of, 13
Calcutta, 38
Call Me Ishmael: A Study of Melville,
271 n. 6 (265)
calypso, 7, 24, 56
Campbell, Horace, 10,16-17
Cannon, James P., 217,219, 284; and So­
cialist Workers Party, 278
Capildeo, Rudranath, 340
capitalism, 29
Capitalism and Slavery. See Williams,
Eric
Carby, Hazel, 51, 391,445; "Proletarian
or Revolutionary Literature: C. L. R.
James and the Politics of Trinidadian
Renaissance," 59 n. 3 (51), 391
Cardus, Neville, 362,386n. 15
Caribbean: censorship in, 45; culture of,
37-38,43-44,46, 52, 58,59, 406-8;
Hellenic temperament, 37; its history,
324-26; m ilitants of the, 319-26 (pas­
Index 461
sim), 413. See also New World litera­
ture
"Caribbean Contributions to African Po­
litical Thought: From C. L. R. James to
Walter Rodney," 430n. 2 (407)
Caribbean Free Trade Area, 344
Caribbean historiography, 136-57
Caribbean intellectuals, 408
Caribbean writers, 44-45, 82; cultural
topics of, 61-63; James's influence on,
41-44
Carmichael, Stokely, 5
Carpentier, Alejo, El Siglo des las Luces,
90
Carter, Trevor, 337
Case for West-Indian Self-Government,
The, 129,318,363,379
Castoriadis, Cornelius, 12, 13, 277-97,
296n. 3, 5,300-303,449 n. 8; The Con­
centration of Productive Forces, 283;
and Facing Reality, 277, 284-85,
296nn. 1, 5,302-3; The Imaginary In ­
stitutions of Society, 278; on James
and the fate of Marxism, 277-97; and
James's messianic streak, 287; letter
of, to James, 302-3; letter to, from
James, 300-301; The Phenomenology
of Proletarian Consciousness, 283;
Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, 242n.
17 (221); and the Russian Question,
281-82, 298; Socialism or Barbarism,
278,284, 286
Castro, Fidel, 390, 401 n. 2
Cauna, Jacques, Au temps des isles a
sucre: histoire d ’uneplantation de
Saint-Domingue au X V I lie siecle,
140-52 (passim), 157n. 19
Cayenne, 410, 427
Cesaire, Aime, 5,45, 102, 133 n. 11 (125),
390; Cahier d ’un retour au pays natal,
129,130; quotations from The Col­
lected Poetry, 130, 131
Chase, Richard, "Herman Melville,"
271 n. 6 (265)
Chaulieu. See Castoriadis, Cornelius
Christophe, Henri, 92
Cipriani, Arthur, 3, 245
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Rev­
olution, 81,430n. 13 (418)
Cleaver, Harry, 289
Cleisthenes, 287-88
C liff, Tony, State Capitalism in Russia,
181,189n. 18
 462 Index
C. L. R. James: A P olitical Biography, 7
C .L.R . James: His Life and Work, 78 n.
I, 184, 190n. 24,413, 442, 447, 449nn.
I I , 12, 450n. 14 (442); review of, 442-
43; "Young D etroit Radicals, 1955-
1965," 448 n. 5 (438)
C. L. R. James and Revolutionary M arx­
ism: Selected Writings of C. L. R.
James, 1939-1949, 7
"C. L. R. James and the Race/Class
Question," 449 n. 13 (442)
"C. L. R. James and the World-System,"
243 n. 30 (238)
C.L.R . James and 'The Struggle for
Happiness,” 33 n. 4, 222,391,393
C.L.R . James Anthology, publication of,
440
C. L. R. James Archive: A Reader’s
Guide, 409,430n. 3
C. L. R. James Institute, 8, 409,444
C .L.R . James Journal, 8,409
C. L. R. James Reader, The, 7,12,33 n,
446
C. L. R. James's Caribbean, 7 ,17n. 4,
243n. 25, 447, 448n. 1, 449n. 10(441),
451 n. 22 (447); "The Audacity of It
A ll," 17n. 8 (3)
C. L. R. James Society, The, 8,444
C. L. R. James: The A rtist as Revolution-
ary, 259n. 26 (255), 326n. 7 (320), 392
Code Noir, Le, and the feeding of slaves,
147-53
Code N oir ou le Calvaire de Canaan, Le,
159n. 63(149), 160n.95(154)
Code noir ou recueil des reglements
rendus jusqu’d present, Le, 138,147-
53,155
Coleman, Terry, on Haitian poverty, 95-
96
Collier de servitude, Le, 157 n. 17
(140)
"Colonial Transformation of Agrarian
Society in Algeria, The," 399
Colonizer and the Colonized, The, 71 n.
4 Labour in the Caribbean, 346 n. 4
"Commercial Report-Trinidad" (Cana­
dian High Commission), 346 n. 18
(335)
Committee of Public Safety, 92
Concentration of Productive Forces,
The, 283
Condorcet, Marquis de, 83,101
Cone, James L., 393
Congress of Industrial Organizations
(CIO), 166,306-7
Constantine, Learie, 245,331,395. See
also cricket
Contribution to the C ritique of Political
Economy, A, 259n. 28 (255)
"Conversation w ith C. L. R. James, A"
(taped interview), 243n. 29 (236)
Conversations in Maine, 241 n. 11 (219),
242-43n. 24 (227)
Coolidge, David, 322-23; "Negroes and
the Revolution," 179-80; "Resolution
of the Political Committee," 326n. 12
(322)
Correspondence, 170,311,313,450 n. 21
(446)
Correspondence group, 177,183
Coupland, R. P., The British A n ti-
Slavery Movement, 103; Wilberforce,
103
Cox, Oliver Cromwell, 246-47, 257; The
Foundations of Capitalism, 258 nn. 4,
5
Craton, Michael, Searching for the Invis­
ible Man: Slave and Plantation Life in
Jamaica, 158 n. 46 (146)
cricket, 5, 7, 24,35,37,104,218-19,390,
402 n. 3 (391); and American baseball,
385 n. 12 (370); in Canada, 384n. 4; ci­
v ility of, 362-63,370-83; in the colo­
nies, 369,373-79; "one-day" cricket,
387 n. 21; players of, 245,258 n. 3,363-
69,378,382,384-85 n. 8 ,386n. 18,
395, 402n. 3 (391); its political role,
361-87 (passim); as visual art, 395
C ricket’s Silver Lining, 385 n. 8,386n. 15
Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 258 n. 21
(253)
Critchlow, Nathaniel, 342
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,
221-22
Critique of Political Economy, The, 128,
279
Cross, Malcolm, and Gad Heuman, eds.,
(330)
Cruse, Harold, The Crisis of the Negro
Intellectual, 258 n. 21 (253)
Cuba, 91,337,401 n. 2, 407, 421, 427
Cudjoe, Selwyn R.: "The Audacity of It
A ll: C. L. R. James's Trinidadian Back­
ground," 17 n. 8; "A Conversation w ith
C. L. R. James," 243n. 29 (236); "Eric E.

Williams and the Politics of Lan­
guage/ 18 n. 26; on James's intellec­
tual activities, 8
Cultural Correspondence, 450 nn. 15,21
Curtis, David, 221
Czechoslovakia, 291
Daaga, Mackandal, 3£8
Daddario, Filomena, A Woman's Place,
164
Das C apital 163,168-69,196,197,221,
224,245,279, 282,286,305
Debien, Gabriel: Les esclaves aux An-
tilles frangaises, 138-55 (passim);
Plantations et esclaves a Saint-
Domingue, 138-55 (passim)
Deleuze, Giles, 206; Anti-Oedipus: Cap­
italism and Schizophrenia, 206
Delgrfcs, Louis, 92
Democratic Labour Party, 340,342-44
Denby, Charles, Indignant Heart: A
Black Worker's Journal, 164
Descartes, Rene, 234
Des colonies, et particuli&rement de
celle de Saint-Domingue, 138, 157n.
10
Des colonies frangaises: abolition im ­
mediate del'esclav age, 146, 158n. 48
(146), 160n. 93 (154)
Description de la partie frangaise de
Visle Saint-Domingue, 156,160n. 102
(156)
Dessalines, Jean-Jacques, 9,134n. 13
(126); conflict w ith Toussaint L'Ouver-
ture, 106-15, 126, 132n.4
Deutscher, Isaac, 82
Deux si&cles d'esclavage en Guyane
frangaise, 1652-1848, 159n.69(150)
Dickens, Charles, 37
Directory, 92
Dobb, Maurice, ed., A Contribution to
the Critique of Political Economy,
259 n. 28 (255)
Dominica, 90
Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of
American Culture, 271 n .3 (262)
Down w ith Starvation Wages in South­
east Missouri, 166
Du Bois, W. E. B., 17,53,58,59n. 6,392,
437,445; Black Reconstruction, 2-3;
The Souls of Black Folk, 59n. 6 (52)
Dunayevskaya, Raya, 2,4,10,13,171-
72,176,184,193,222,234,242n. 20
Index 463
(222); her archives, 196-97,203 n. 1; on
Castoriadis, 13,298-300; on Hegel's
idea of Absolute, 199-203; The Invad­
ing Sociahst Society, 176,297n. 6; on
labor, 201,204n. 2 (201); "Labor and
Society," 204n. 2; letters on Hegel's
Absolutes, 199-202; letter of, to James,
298-300; Marxism and Freedom:
From 1776 u n til Today, 4,18 n. 11,
180-81,189n. 18,198; Marxist-
Humanist Theory of State-Capitalism,
204 n. 2; "New Revision of Marxian
Economics,"313n. 3 (306); The
Philosophic Moment ofM arxist-
Humanism, 200-203; pseudonym,
17n. 2, 163-64, 175,194; "Revision
and Reaffirmation of Marxism? A Re­
joinder," 313 n. 3 (306); on Russian un­
employment, 282-83; State Capital­
ism and World Revolution, 249-51,
255,257 n. 1,392,417; theory of state
capitalism, 180-81,282,298,305-7,
310; See also Raya Dunayevskaya
Collection—Marxist-Humanism: A
H alf Century of its Development -,
Wayne State University
Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 53, 58
Dupuy, Alex, 9; H a iti in the World Econ­
omy: Class, Race, and Underdevelop­
ment since 1700, 116n
Dutertre, P£re Jean-Baptiste, Histoire
generale des Antilles habitues par les
Frangais, 138, 141, 157n. 10
Dyson, Michael Eric, 445
Echoes, 36
Eclipse of Reason, 295
Economic and Philosophical Manu­
scripts of 1844, 170, 279, 283, 307
Economic Growth of the United States:
1790-1860, 258 n. 19(252)
Edie, Carlene J., "Caribbean Contribu­
tions to African Political Thought:
From C. L. R. James to Walter
Rodney," 430n. 2 (407)
Edwards, Adolph, 413
Eight American Authors: A Review of
Research and Criticism, 270 n. 1 (261)
Ellison, Ralph, 178
El Siglo de las Luces, 90
Emancipation Act of 1780, 89
emancipation decree. See Pluviose de­
crees
 464 Index
Engels, Friedrich, Anti-Duhring, 305-6
Eros and Civilization, 439
Example of Melville, The, 271 n. 3 (262)
Executive Order 8802, 167-68
Explosion in the Cathedral, 90
Facing Reality, 13-14,127,128,163,
277, 284-85, 296n. 1,310,336,417,
449 n. 9) and American Marxists, 323;
Cornelius Castoriadis's suggestions
for, 302-3; and Hungarian Revolution,
13-14; "Marxism and the Intellec­
tuals," 392
Fanon, Frantz, 388-403,416; L’an Cinq
de la Revolution Algerienne, 391,396,
397; Les Damne, 396-400; Peau n o il
masques blancs, 398-99; Pour la revo­
lution africaine, 391, 400; The
Wretched of the Earth, 388,396-400
(passim), 402n. 8
Fascism, 25
Feminization of American Culture, The,
271 n. 3 (262)
Fick, Carolyn, Making of H aiti, The: The
Saint Domingue Revolution from Be­
low, 116n. 2, 128,158 n., 402n. 6, 411
Fighting Racism in World War II, 428
First International, 308
Foot, Michael, 9,409; on James, 98-105
football, American, 362
Forest, Freddie. See Dunayevskaya,
Raya
Fouchard, Jean, Les matrons de la l i ­
berty 152
Foundations of Capitalism, The, 258 n. 4
Fourth International, 304; and the Rus­
sian Question, 281
France, M., La verite et les faits ou Tes-
clavage d nu, 138
Frances Paine Collection, 243 n. 31
Francois, Elma, 337
Frank, Andre Gunder, 246, 299; "A Theo­
retical Introduction to 5,000 Years of
World System History," 246, 258 nn. 4,
6 Gilkes, Michael, Wilson Harris and the
Frankfurt School, 183, 194
Franklin, Benjamin, 83
Freedomways, 437; contributors to, 437;
"Parties, Politics and Economics in the
Caribbean," 448 n. 3
French, Joan and Stanley, 413
French planters, 106-16
French Revolt of 1968,309
French Revolution, 81-83, 98-102. See
also Haitian Revolution
From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-
American Slave Revolts in the Making
of the New World, 402 n. 6
Future in the Present, The, 129,241>
"Every Cook Can Govern," 429,431 n.
23; "The Revolutionary Answer to the
Problem of the Negro in the USA,"
448 n. 2
"Future of Socialism, The," 415
Garvey, Marcus, 102,410,428
Gaspar, David Barry: Bondmen and Reb­
els: A Study of Master-Slave Relations
in Antigua, 158n. 46 (146)
Geggus, David, 87; Slavery, War, and
Revolutions: The British Occupation
of Saint Domingue, 97n.
Geismar, Maxwell, 6
Genette, Gdrard: on James's narrative
technique, 64-65; Narrative Dis­
course, 71 n. 5 (64-65)
Genovese, Eugene: In Black and Red:
Marxian Explorations in Southern and
Afro-American History, 448 n. 1 (436);
From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-
American Slave Revolts in the Making
of the New World, 402n. 6 (395)
Ghana, 285, 295,296,310,328,421
Gibson, W illiam, The Neuromancer, 292
Girod-Chantrans, Justin, Voyage d ’un
Suisse dans differentes colonies
d ’Amerique, 137, 145, 146
Girondins, 84-85,88
Girvan, Norman, 413
Gisler, Antoine, Lesclavage aux Antilles
frangaises, 138-54 (passim)
Glaberman, Martin, 2,14,171-72, 176,
437, 449n. 8; C. L. R. James A nthol­
ogy, "Introduction," 440; on Facing Re­
ality, 14; Wartime Strikes, 167
Glissant, Edouard, Le Discours antillais,
71n. 4 (63)
Caribbean Novel, 353
Glover, Margaret, 23
Golden Day: A Study in American Expe­
rience and Culture, The, 271 n. 3 (262)
Gomes, Albert, 3,330-31,333; Through
a Maze of Color, 17 n. 8, 60 n. 10
Gorman, Robert A., Rethinking Marx­
ism, 393

Gorman, W illiam, 2, 164, 176
Grace, W. G., 258n. 3, 363-69,384n. 8.
See also cricket; Cricket’s Silver Lin­
ing
Gramsci, Antonio, 295; The Modern
Prince and Other Writings, 389,390
Granger, Geddes, 338
Great West Indians: Life Stories for
Young Readers, 42$
Grenada, 91, 203,326n. 6 (319), 345, 407,
418, 429, 442; and the New Jewel
Movement, 319
Grenada Documents: an Overview and
Selection, 326n. 6 (319)
G riffith, D. W., 6
Grimshaw, Anna, 3, 7, 8,444,450n. 16
(443); American Civilization, 184-88,
446, 451 n. 22 (447); C. L. R. James A r­
chive: A Reader’s Guide, 33 n. 4, 268,
390, 401 nn. 1, 2, 402 n. 3, 409; The
C. L. R. James Reader, 7,18 n. 18,446;
C. L. R. James and “The Struggle for
Happiness, ” 33 n. 4, 174, 222,391,
393-94; Letters from a Revolutionary,
33 n. 3, 175, 189n. 4, 241 n. 3; The Pop­
ular Democracy and the Creative
Imagination: Writings of C. L. R.
James, 1950-1963, 33 n. 4,394-95
Grundrisse, 291
Guadeloupe, 89, 91, 92, 139, 141,410,
427
Guattari, Felix, Anti-Oedipus: Capital­
ism and Schizophrenia, 206
Guerin, Daniel, History of the French
Revolution, 82
Guevara, Che, 416
Guyana, 330,331, 407,429. See also
Rodney, Walter
Haitian Revolution, 10, 81-97, 102-3,
106-16, 116n. 2, 132n.3,416
H aiti in the World Economy: Class,
Race, and Underdevelopment since
1700,116n. 2
Hall, Stuart, 2,443
Halvorsen, Kjell, "The Colonial Trans­
formation of Agrarian Society in A l­
geria," 399
Hamilton, Cynthia, 52, 59 n. 4; "A Way
of Seeing: Culture as Political Expres­
sion in the Works of C. L. R. James,"
242n. 22
Harding, Vincent, 442
Index 465
Harlem Renaissance, 44, 52, 53, 58
Harrington, Michael, 436
Harris, Wilson, 5, 441; James's lecture
on, 341,347n. 30,348-55; Palace of
the Peacock, 352,354; Tradition, the
Writer and Society, 348-55
"Harris, Wilson—A Philosophical Ap­
proach," 15,341,347n. 30
Hart, Keith, 3, 7,444; American C iv ili­
zation, 184-88, 446, 451 n. 22 (447);
C. L. R. James and “The Struggle for
Happiness,” 33n. 4,174, 222,391,
393-94
Haskell, Thomas, on slavery, 82
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Mosses from an
Old Manse, 266
Hazlitt, W illiam, 103-4
Headley, George, 339
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 292,
392; idea of Absolute, 198-203; Doc­
trine of Being, 194, 196,392; Phenom­
enology of Mind, 221; Philosophy of
History, 221,256; Philosophy of Mind,
200; Science of Logic, 193-203 (pas­
sim), 207-8, 210; "world-historical"
heroes, 255-56
Hegelian dialectic, 7, 27, 28, 52, 132-
33 n. 6 (122), 163, 184, 201-3; James's
struggle with, 234-36, 441
Heidegger, Martin: Being and Time,
348-55; dasein, 352
Heimert, Alan, "Moby-Dick and Ameri­
can Political Symbolism," 271 n. 3
(262)
Henderson, Norman B., 224
Henry, Paget, 291,442, 449n. 10 (441);
C. L. R. James’s Caribbean, 7, 17n. 4,
243n. 25, 447, 448n. l,449n. 10(441),
451 n. 22 (447); "The Audacity of It
A ll," 17n. 8 (3)
Herman Melville: A C ritical Biography,
263, 271 n. 2 (261)
Hero, Captain, and Stranger: Male
Friendship, Social Critique, and Liter­
ary Form in the Sea Novels of Herman
Melville, 271 n. 3 (262)
Higgins, Brian, "M elville," 258n. 22
(253)
Higman, Barry, Slave Populations of the
British Caribbean, 1807-1834,158n.
46(146)
Histoire de la Guadeloupe sous l ’ancien
Regime, 141,157n. 15
 466 Index
Histoire de Vescalavage dans les colo­
nies fran$aises, 138,157n. 9
Histoire generate des A ntilles habitees
par les Fran^ais, 138,141,157n. 10,
158n. 23
H istory and Class-Consciousness, 295
History and Philosophy of the Trade
Union Movement, The: A Caribbean
Perspective, 346n. 6 (330)
H istory of Negro Revolt, A, 10,327 nn.
20,21,411-13,426
History of Pan-African Revolt, 224,
449 n. 13
H istory of the Guyanese Working Class
and the First Sugar Strikes 1840/41
and 1847,421-16
History of the Maghrib, A, 399
H istory of the Russian Revolution, 82
Hitler, Adolf, 262
Hobbes, Thomas, 292
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,
427
Hughes, Langston, 53, 58
Hughes, Thomas, 363
Hugues, Victor, 90-91, 94-95
Hungarian Revolution, 6, 13, 127, 284,
291,300-301, 309,310,392,436
Hurston, Zora Neale, 53, 58
Hussein, Saddam, 293
Idahosa, Paul, 16; Idea of Fraternity in
America, The, 271 n. 3 (262)
Ignatiev, Noel, editor of Urgent Tasks,
446, 449 n. 12, 450 n. 20
Imaginary Institutions of Society, The,
278
Indignant Heart, 164
industrial capitalism, 29
Industrial Stabilization Act, 338
Intellectuals: Aesthetics, Politics, Aca­
demics, 389
Invading Socialist Society, The, 128,
222, 297n. 6 (286), 417, 449n. 9
(440)
Inward Hunger: The Education of a
Prime Minister, 333-34,347 n. 28
Jacobs, W. R.: Butter vs. the King: Riots
and Sedition in 1937,346nn. 3, 5
(330); History and Philosophy of the
Trade Union Movement: A Caribbean
Perspective, 346n. 6 (330); "The Role
of Some Labour Movements in the Po­
litic a l Process of Trinidad and To­
bago," 346 n. 3 (330)
Jamaica, 91,330,331,332
Jamaica Labour Party, 329
James, C. L. R.: arrest, internment, and
deportation of, 4,15,34,176,184, 222,
227,239, 247, 261,271 n. 4 (264), 284,
350; birth of, 3,329,406,410; death of,
23,4Q£, 443; divorce and remarriage
of, 232-33; early career of, 3,- educa­
tion of, 244-45,390-91, 410; his many
interests, 2-17 (passim), 183-84,240;
lecture style of, 35, 284; literary in flu ­
ence of, 51, 99,103-4; literary tastes
of, 236-37, 240; marriages of, 18n. 15,
184, 232-33; Marxism of, 304-13;
mother of, 4, 23, 223,225; narrative
technique of, 64-65, 82; pseudonyms
of, 35,165,175,194,305; reading of,
260-73; son of, 184; in United States,
4, 163-72,173-88, 219, 437; Victorian
demeanor of, 36, 43, 245,363; James-
Williams clash, 339-45; and the
"Woman Question," 217, 219, 239,
241 n. 5 (217). Works: American C iv ili­
zation, 3, 7, 25, 29-32, 174,184-88,
446, 451 n. 22 (447); A t the Rendez­
vous of Victory, 313 n. 6 (307), 326 n. 1
(317), 346n. 9 (332), 347n. 2 (339),
402n. 5 (394); "Black Sansculottes,"
411, 430n. 4; "Rastafari A t Home—and
Abroad," 448n. 3 (437); "Towards the
Seventh: The Pan African Congress-
Past, Present and Future," 412,430 n.
6; Beyond a Boundary, 3,1 6 ,1 7n. 3,
30,42-43, 59n. 7, 115-16n. 1, 188,
390,394-95, 436; —, as autobiography,
361-63,374-77; —, prose style of, 35-
37; —, reissue of, 7; —, review of, 34-
36; Black Jacobins, The (play), 119,
121; Black Jacobins, The: Toussaint
L'Ouverture and the San Domingo
Revolution, 2, 6, 9, 10, 17n. 3 (2), 43,
98-99, 101-3, 133 n. 10(124), 134n. 12
(126), 134 nn. 13(126), 15(127), 17
(130), 224,226, 246, 248, 258 n. 13
(248), 318-19,363,390,391,393,394,
401 n. 2 (390), 410-11, 426, 440; - ,
preface to first edition, 119-20; —, a re­
assessment of, 106-16; —, reception
of, 435-37; —, a study of slave society,
136-57; —, Toussaint as literary hero,
118-31, 132 n. 2; Conversations in

Maine, 241 n. 11; Cricket (see Grim-
shaw, C. L. R. fames Archive: A Read­
er's Guide)} "La Davina Pastora," 53-
55; "Lenin and the Problem/' 421;
Letters from a Revolutionary, 241 nn.
3,4; "The Making of the Caribbean
People/' 326n. 15 (324), 327n. 22 (325);
Mariners, Renegades and Castaways:
The Story of Herman M elville and the
World We Live In, 4,6, 12-13,15,127,
188, 222, 226,236, 238,242nn. 13, 14;
—, first edition of, 271 n. 4 (263); —,
"Introduction," 242n. 13 (219); —, as
literary criticism, 247-55, 260-73;
M inty Alley, 4, 8, 17n. 3, 218, 224; —,
analysis of, 49-78; —, authorial voice
in, 56; —, character analysis of, 52; —,
and gender, 72-78; —, narrative struc­
ture of, 64-65; Modern Politics, 258 n.
12 (248), 417, 449n. 9 (440); Nkrumah
and the Ghana Revolution, 329,402 n.
5 (394); Notes on Dialectics: Hegel,
Marx, Lenin, 4, 11, 61, 181, 188, 193-
99,255,258 n. 15,308-9,310-11,392,
400; —, analysis of, 205-11; —, "The
Doctrine of Essence," 351, 392; —, and
influence of Herbert Marcuse, 194; —,
speculative truths, 353; Party Politics
in the West Indies, 18n. 12,326 n. 8
(320), 329,332-33,339,346 n. 1 (329);
"Plans for a Negro Organization,"
327 n. 16 (324); "Preliminary Notes on
the Negro Question," 177-78, 189n. 7,
326 n. 9 (320); "Resolution of the M i­
nority," 326n. 13 (323); "Results," 392;
Spheres of Existence, 51, 54, 55, 59 n.
1, 242nn. 18, 19 (221-22), 347n. 30
(341); - , "After Hitler, Our Turn,"
258 n. 11 (248); - , "Dialectical Mate­
rialism and the Fate of Humanity," 32,
242 n. 18 (221-22); - , "The Making of
the Caribbean People," 326 n. 2 (317);
—, on Shakespeare, 268; —, "On
Wilson Harris," 348-55; 'Trium ph,"
52-53, 60n. 9; "Turner's Prosperity,"
53,55; "The West Indian at Home
and Abroad: M y Experiences w ith
Women," 241 nn. 2,3 (216), 242n. 23
(225). See also Johnson-Forest Ten­
dency: Publications
fames, Eric, 23
James, Selma, 164; A Woman's Place,
177
Index 467
fames, Winston, 288-89
Jameson, Fredric, Nationalism, Colo­
nialism and Literature, 71 n.
Jardine, Douglas, 378,382. See also
cricket
Jaur6s, Jean, 100
Jean, Clinton: on commodification of re­
ality, 293; on United Nations, 293
Jefferson, Thomas, 83
Johnson, James Weldon, 53,58
Johnson, J. R. See James, C. L. R.,
pseudonyms of
"Johnson-Forest File," 451 n. 22
Johnson-Forest Tendency, 2, 10,14,32,
163,165, 168,175-84 (passim), 193-
204, 223, 240, 281-84,417; achieve­
ments of, 14; breakup of, 198-203; for­
mation of, 2, 4, 175; philosophic diver­
gence of, 12, 193-204, 240; theory of
state capitalism, 282,305-7,310; on
the vanguard party, 182-83. Publica­
tions: The American Worker, 176,
283-84; Dialectical Materialism and
the Fate of Humanity, 176; "Educa­
tion, Propaganda, Agitation: Postwar
America and Bolshevism," 182, 189n.
20, 190n. 21; Every Cook Can Govern:
A Study of Democracy in Ancient
Greece, 176, Facing Reality, 13-14,
127, 128, 163,277, 284-85, 296n. 1,
310,336, 417, 449 n. 9; —, and Am eri­
can Marxists, 323; —, Cornelius Cas-
toriadis's suggestions for, 302-3; —,
and Hungarian Revolution, 13-14;
"Marxism and the Intellectuals," 392;
The Invading Socialist Society, 176,
297 n. 6 (286); "Plans for a Negro Orga­
nization," 327 n. 16 (324); "Preliminary
Notes on the Negro Question," 189n.
7 (177-78), 326n. 9 (320); "The Resolu­
tion of the M inority," 326 n. 13 (323);
"Revolution and the Negro," 327 n. 17
(324); State Capitalism and World
Revolution, 176, 182-83, 184, 190n.
22, 198-99, 207, 208, 209, 219, 249-
51,255,257n. 1,392, 417,449n. 9;
"The SWP and Negro Work," 326n. 10
(321); A Woman's Place, 284
Kanhais, Rohan, 395. See also cricket
Kanievska, Marek, director of Another
Country, 359-60
Kant, Immanuel, 195, 234
 468 Index
Karcher, Carolyn, Shadow Over the
Promised Land: Slavery, Race, and Vi­
olence in M elville’s America, 271 n. 3
(262)
Kas Kas: Interviews w ith Three Carib­
bean Writers in Texas, 348-49
Kautsky, Karl, 299,422
Kazin, Alfred, An American Procession:
The Major American Writers from
1830 to 1930—The Crucial Century,
271 n. 3 (262)
Kelley, Robin D. G., 445
Kenya, 285
Kermode, Frank, 6
Khrushchev, N ikita, 255,284,436
King, Christina, 337
King, M artin Luther, Jr., 428,436,444
Kingwell, Mark, 15,19 n. 27
kinship systems, 397, 402n. 6
Koinange, Mbiyu, People of Kenya Speak
for Themselves, 163
Kuhn, Thomas, 169
Kwayana, Eusi, 407
Labat, P£re Jean-Baptiste, Nouveau voy­
age aux lies de l ’Amerique, 137, 149
Labor Action, 177
labor bureaucracy, 307
Labour in the Caribbean, 346 n. 4 (330)
Lacan's Ecrits:A Selection, 71 n. 10
"La Divina Pastora," 53-55
Lafayette, 83
Lamming, George, 5,35,36,44,352
L’an Cinq de la Revolution Algerienne,
391,396,397
Lang, Andrew, popular history of cricket,
383 n. 3
La Rose, John, 337
Lawrence, D. H., 270-71n. 1
League of Revolutionary Black Workers,
312, 438, 439,442
Le Blanc, Paul, C. L. R. fames and Revo­
lutionary Marxism: Selected Writings
ofC. L. R. James, 7 ,17n. 7 ,18n. 11,
174,241 n. 12,451 n. 22
Le Cap, the capture of, 88
Leclerc, General, 112; as character in
play, 121, 132n. 4
Leclerc, Theophile, 171
Ledeen, Michael: Grenada Documents:
an Overview and Selection, 326n. 6
(319)
Lee, Grace. See Boggs, Grace Lee
Lefebvre, George, 100
Legislators and Interpreters: On Moder­
nity, Post-Modernity and Intellec­
tuals, 389
Leibniz, 195
Lenin, Vladimir, 6,17,123,171,194,
290-91, 293,294,306,308,402n. 6,
422; Collected Works, 308,313n. 7;
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,
280,306; and the "Negro Question,"
311-12; Philosophical Notebooks,
170,193, 196; What Is To Be Done,
290,306,308,415
Leninism, 211,245,280-81,285,308,
312,389-91,416
Leon Trotsky on Black Nationahsm and
Self-Determination, 177
L’Esclavage aux A ntilles frangaises
avant 1789, 138, 157n. 10
Les esclaves aux A ntilles frangaises,
138-55 (passim)
Letters from a Revolutionary, 33 n. 3
Lewis, Arthur, 329,331
Lewis, Gordon K.: The Growth of the
Modern West Indies, 331,346n. 7;
Main Currents in Caribbean Thought,
138-39,156
Leyda, Jay, 6
Liberal Party, 342-43
Liberation, 436
Lilburne, John, 171
Lincoln, Abraham, 6
Lipsitz, George, 451 n. 21 (446)
Literary Democracy: The Declaration of
C ultural Independence in America,
27In . 7(266)
Lois et constitutions des colonies fran­
gaises de TAmfaique sous le vent,
159n. 53 (148), 160n.98(155)
Look Lai, Walton, 413; "C. L. R. James
and Trinidadian Nationalism," 243 n.
25, 448n. l,449n. 10
Lord’s, 385 n. 9 (365)
Lotha, Ram Manohar, on cricket, 360
Louis XVI, 83
L'Ouverture, Toussaint, 6,9,82-92 (pas­
sim), 101, 102, 134n. 12,318-20,323;
and the French, 106-16; and Haitian
Revolution, 106-16; and historical fig­
ures, 124; and kinship systems, 397; as
literary hero, 118-31, 132n. 2
Lovelace, Earl, 5
Lukacs, Georg, 194,295-96; The Eclipse

of Reason, 295; History and Class-
Consciousness, 295
Luxemburg, Rosa, 422
Lynn, Conrad, 450n. 19
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 37
McBurnie, Beryl, 215-16, 225, 241 n. 1
(216)
McCarthy, Joseph, T fL , 254, 255
Machine in the Garden, The: Technology
and the Pastoral Ideal in America,
271 n. 3 (262)
MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A
Study in Moral Theory, 363-64,367,
382
McKay, Claude, 53,60 n. 10
McKinney, Ernest. See Coolidge, David
McLemee, Scott, 240; C. L. R. fames and
Revolutionary Marxism: Selected
Writings of C. L. R. fames, 7, 17n. 7,
18n. 11, 174, 241 n. 12,451n.22
McWilliams, Wilson Carey, The Idea of
Fraternity in America, 271 n. 3 (262)
Madiou, Thomas, Histoire D ’Haiti,
117n.
Maharaj, Stephen, 340,342
Main Currents in Caribbean Thought,
138-39, 156
Major, John, 293
Making of Modern H aiti: The Saint
Domingue Revolution from Below,
402 n. 6 (395), 411
Malcolm X, 428, 436,444
Malenfant, Colonel, Des colonies, et par-
ticulierement de celle de Saint-
Domingue, 138, 157n. 10
Malouet, Pierre-Victor, Memoire s u rl’es-
clavage des negres, 138,157n. 10
Manchester Guardian, The, 4,95-96,
218,339
Manley, Norman, Sr., 329,333
Mansfield decision, 89
Marable, Manning, 442; African and Ca­
ribbean Politics: From Kwame
Nkrumah to Maurice Bishop, 393
Maraj, Stephen, 338
Marcuse, Herbert: Eros and Civilization,
439; One-Dimensional Man, 439; Rea­
son and Revolution, 194
Mariners, Renegades and Castaways:
The Story of Herman M elville and the
V/orld We Live In, 4, 6, 12-13, 15, 127,
188,222,226,236, 238,242 nn. 13,14;
Index 469
first edition of, 271 n. 4 (263); "Intro­
duction," 242 n. 13 (219); as literary
criticism, 247-55, 260-73
Marrons de la liberte, 159nn. 66 (150),
80(152)
Marryshow, T. A., 3
Martin, Gaston, Histoire de Vesclavage
dans les colonies frangaises, 138,
157n. 9
Martin, Michel, De la revolution fran-
gaise aux revolutions creoles et
negres, 97n.
Martin, Robert K., Hero, Captain, and
Stranger: Male Friendship, Social C ri­
tique, and Literary Form in the Sea
Novels of Herman Melville, 271 n. 3
(262)
Martin, Tony, "C. L. R. James and the
Race/Class Question," 189n. 13(179),
449 n. 13(442)
Martin, Wallace, Recent Theories of Nar­
rative, 7In . 7 (65)
Martinique, 89, 91, 92, 139, 410,427
Marx, Karl, 255, 279, 281, 286, 289-92,
296 n. 2 (280), 305; Critique of Hegel’s
Philosophy of Right, 221-22; Critique
of Political Economy, The, 128, 279;
Das Capital, 163, 168-69, 196, 197,
221, 224, 245, 279, 282, 286,305; Eco­
nomic and Philosophical Manuscripts
of 1844, 170,279, 283,307
Marx, Leo, The Machine in the Garden:
Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in
America, 271 n. 3 (262)
Marxism and Freedom: From 1776 u n til
Today, 4, 18 n. 11, 180-81,198
Marxist and Leninist methodology,
308
Marxist-Humanist Theory of State-
Capitalism, 204 n. 2
Marxist ideology, 9, 15, 17, 24, 25, 26,
219, 221, 244-48, 255-57, 277-96,
301,392, 414-22 (passim); and African
revolutionary processes, 420-22; in
the Caribbean, 15, 58; and Hegelian
roots, 193-95; and history, 100; on
James's writing, 51-52; and labor, 201;
and new black radicals, 438; and ortho­
doxy, 281; retreat from, 418-22; as rev­
olutionary and class ideology, 415
Marxist West Indian National Party
(WINP), 331,337
Mathiez, Albert, 100
 470 Index
Matthiessen, F. O., American Renais­
sance: A rt and Expression in the Age
of Emerson and Whitman, 253-54,
271 n. 3 (262)
Maxwell, John, 413
Mbanefo Commission, 340
"M e lv ille /'258 n. 22 (253)
M elville, Herman, 6,12,13,29,185,188,
236-37,247-59,260-67,270-73,350,
353-54; "Bartleby the Scrivener," 262,
267; "Benito Cereno," 262; B illy Budd,
261; on Emerson, 267; on Hawthorne's
Mosses, 266-67; "Las Encantadas,"
262; Mardi, 249; Moby-Dick, 12,13,
28, 188,248-55,262-67,350-51,391;
Omoo, 252; Pierre, 261,262; Redburn,
249,271 n. 5 (264); Typee, 249,252;
White Jacket, 249,252
"M elville, Society and Language," 271 n.
3 (262)
"M elville and Cultural Persuasion,"
258 nn. 23,24
"M elville's Economy of Language,"
258 n. 24 (254)
Memmi, Albert, The Colonizer and the
Colonized, 7I n . 4
M im oire sur Vesclavage des negres, 138,
157n. 10
Mendes, Alfred, 3
Menshevism, 211,299
Metahistory, 258n. 8 (247), 259n. 29
(256)
Michel, Pierre, 92
Michelet, Jules, 9,99-104 (passim); His­
tory of the French Revolution, 104 n;
influence of,.on C. L. R. James, 99
"M ighty Sparrow," 7
M illette, James, 15
M ills, C. Wright, 436
M in ty Alley, 4, 8,17 n. 3,218,224; anal­
ysis of, 49-78; authorial voice in, 56;
character analysis of, 52; and gender,
72-78; narrative structure of, 64-65;
plot of, 63-64
Mirabeau, 83
Moby-Dick, 12, 13,28,391
"Moby-Dick and American Political
Symbolism," 271 n. 3 (262)
Modern Politics, 258n. 12 (248), 417,
449n. 9 (440)
Modern Prince and Other Writings, The,
389,390
Moise, 112, 115,123
M o itt, Bernard, 9,10; "Sugar, Slavery and
the Law in the French Caribbean,"
159n. 55 (148); "Women and Resis­
tance in the French Caribbean during
Slavery," 160n. 100(155)
Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat,
Esprit des Lois, 83
Moorhouse, Geoffrey, Lord's, 385 n. 9
(365) „
Mordecai, John, The West Indies: The
Federal Negotiations, 346n. 17 (334)
Mumford, Lewis: The Golden Day: A
Study of American Experience and
Culture, 271 n. 3 (262); Herman M el­
ville, 271 n. 3 (262)
Murdoch, H. Adlai, 8
NAACP, 177
Nabokov, Vladimir, 36
Naipaul, V. S., 5,35,36,44,59 n. 7
Nandy, Ashis, The Tao of Cricket: On
Games of Destiny and the Destiny of
Games, 362,367-73,378,380-82,
383 n. 2,384 n. 6,385 nn. 11,14,386n.
20
Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Po­
etics, 71 n. 8(65)
Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 329
Nation, The (newspaper of PNM), 4,
331-37,408. See also People's Na­
tional Movement
National Alliance for Reconstruction,
338
National Convention of 1794, 92
National Federation of Labour, 342
Nationalism, Colonialism, and Litera­
ture, 7 In . 11
National Joint Action Committee, 344-
45
N atural Rebels: A Social History of En­
slaved Black Women in Barbados,
158n. 46(146)
Nazism, 5,247, 248,262
Necker, 83
Negro Question, 219,226,311-12,320.
See also Trotsky, Leon
Negro Welfare and Cultural Association
(NWA), 330
Nehru, 329
Nello (C. L. R. James), 35,232-33, 240,
242 n. 15
Nelson, Lord, 102
Neuromancer, The, 292

New Beginning Movement, 338
New International and Labor Action, 183
New Jewel Movement. See Grenada
New Left, 437-41
New World African, 52-53, 58-59. See
also Caribbean, culture of
New World cultures, 185,186,351-55.
See also Caribbean, culture of
New World Group, 343,413
New World language, 351-55
New World literature, 52, 58, 348-55
New World slavery, 81-83
New York intellectuals, 174
New York Intellectuals, The, 258 n. 20
(253)
Nicaragua, 407,418, 429
Nielsen, Aldon L., 15
Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution,
329,402 n. 5 (394)
Noriega, General Manuel, 293
North, D., The Economic Growth of the
United States: 1790-1869, 258n. 19
(252)
Notebook of a Return to the Native
Land, 129, 130
"Notes on American Civilization," 222
Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin,
4, 11, 61, 181, 188, 193-99, 255, 258n.
15, 308-9,310-11, 392, 400; analysis
of, 205-11; "The Doctrine of Essence,"
351,392; and influence of Herbert
Marcuse, 194; speculative truths, 353
Nouveau voyage auxiles de l ’Amerique,
137, 149
Nouvelle Revenue des Antilles, 97n.
Nwafor, Azinna, 294-95,297
Nyerere, Julius, 395, 402 n. 7
Oilfield Workers Trade Union, 5, 227,
338-39, 342, 344, 444
Old Left, 440-41
"Oliver Cromwell Cox and the Histo­
riography of the West," 259 n. 30 (257)
Olson, Charles, Call Me Ishmael: A
Study of Melville, 271 n. 6 (265)
Omeros, 38-40
On Narrative, 71 n. 3
One-Dimensional Man, 439
Ordinary Vices, 386n. 16 (374)
Orwell, George, 36
Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 97,393-
94, 395
Overton, Richard, 171
Index 471
Padmore, George, 3,102,329,331, 407
Paine, Freddy, 2,10, 18nn. 16,17,164,
166, 238-39,241 n. 11 (219), 243 nn.
31,32
Paine, Lyman, 2, 164, 238, 241 n. 11 (219)
Paine, Thomas, 89
Pan-Africanism, 3, 97, 407, 412-13, 426-
30,437, 438, 441,442, 443
Panama, 418, 429
Panthers, 312
Parris, D. Elliot, 72
Party Politics in the West Indies, 18n.
12,326n. 8 (320), 329,332-33,339,
346n. 1
Patterson, Orlando, 413; Slavery and So­
cial Death, 160n. 92(154)
Paul-Emile, Barbara, 8
Pearlstien, Constance Webb, 18 nn. 22,
23 (12); letter to Selwyn Cudjoe, 243 n.
33 (240); "Selected Letters of C. L. R.
James," 243 n. 27 (232). See also Webb,
Constance
Pearson, Carol, The Hero Within, 78n. 3
(74)
Pease, Donald E.: The American Renais­
sance Reconsidered, 271 n. 3 (262);
"M elville and Cultural Persuasion,"
253; Visionary Compacts: American
Renaissance Writings in Cultural
Context, 271 n. 3
People of Kenya Speak for Themselves,
The, 163
People’s History of the United States, A,
258 n. 19(252)
People's National Movement, 4, 5,328-
45 (passim); General Council of, 333-
37 (passim); and James, 331-45; and
The Nation, 332-37, 408
Percival, Spencer, 337
Perinbaum, Maria, "Fanon and the Revo­
lutionary Peasantry—the African
Case," 399
Petion, President, 93
Peu noir masques blancs, 398-99
Peytraud, Lucien, L’Esclavage aux A n­
tilles frangaises avant 1789, 138,
157n. 10
Phenomenology of Proletarian Con­
sciousness, The, 283
Philosophical Notebooks, 170,193,196
Philosophic Moment of Marxist-
Humanism, 200-203
Pierre, Lennox, 337
 472 Index
Pierrot, a Black partisan, 92
Pitt, W illiam , 83
"Plans for a Negro Organization," 327 n.
16(324)
Plantations et escalaves a Saint-
Domingue, 157n. 8
Pluchon, Pierre, Toussaint L’Ouveituie:
de Vesclavage au pouvoir, 117n.
Pluviose An II, 87,89, 90,95
PNM Weekly, 4
Poland, Solidarity movement of, 6,301
Poon, John, 337
Popular Democracy and the Creative
Imagination: The Writings of C. L. R.
fames, 1950-1963, 33 n. 4, 394-95
Popular Front, 436, 437
Pour la revolution africaine, 391
Powell, General Colin, 428
"Preliminary Notes on the Negro Ques­
tion," 189n. 7 (177-78), 326n. 9 (320)
"Proletarian or Revolutionary Litera­
ture? C. L. R. James and the Politics of
the Trinidadian Renaissance," 59n. 3
(51), 391
Prudent, Lambert Felix, Les langues cre­
oles en gestation, 97n.
"Puerto Rican miracle," 329
Puerto Rico, 410, 426-27
Putney Debates, 95
Pyne-Timothy, Helen, 8
Queen's Park Oval, 34,48 n.
Queen's Royal College, 329
Quilden, Mr., 24
Rabbitt, Kara M., 9
racial tropes, 68
Radical America, 437-38, 440, 441,
448 n. 5, 449 n. 9
Ragoonath, Bishnu, Tribute to a Scholar,
7,430n. 8 (413)
Ramdin, Ron, 450n. 17 (444)
Randolph, A. Philip, 167
Ranjitsinhji, K. S., 368. See also cricket
Rawick, George R., 219, 222-23,437-38,
451 n. 21 (446)
Rawle, C. D., 3
Raya Dunayevskaya Collection—
Marxist-Humanism: A H a lf Century
of Its Development, 18n. 18
Raynal, Abb6, H istoiie des Deux
Mondes, 83
Reason and Revolution, 194
Recent Theories of Narrative, 71 n. 7 (65)
Reed, John, 421
Reid, Victor, 44
Rennie, Bukka, 338
"Resolution of the M inority," 326n. 13
(323)
"Restructuring the Premodern World-
System," 258 n. 7 (247)
"Result^," 392
Rethinking Marxism, 393
Revolution and Reaction: Parties and
Politics in Trinidad and Tobago,
1970-1981,346nn. 15,20(334-35)
"Revolution and the Negro," 327n. 17
(324)
"Revolutionary Answer to the Negro
Problem, The," 178,327n. 18 (324)
Revolution dans Saint-Domingue, 116n.
Revolution frangaise aux revolutions
creoles et negres, 97n.
Revolution frangaise et la fin des colo­
nies, 97 n.
Richards, Glen, 14-15
Richards, Vivian, 395. See also cricket
Richie, Charles, Siren Years, 375
Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith, Narrative
Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, 71 n. 8
(65)
Rise and Fall of the Communist Interna­
tional, The, 18n. 9
Rise of the People's N ational Movement,
The, 18n. 12
Robbins, Bruce, Intellectuals: Aes­
thetics, Politics, Academics, 389
Robeson, Paul, 6, 223, 437,443,444
Robinson, Cedric, 12, 14,238; Black
Marxism: The Making of the Radical
Black Tradition, 244-59, 392-93;
"C. L. R. James and the World-
System," 243 n. 30 (238); on Frantz
Fanon, 402 n. 4 (392); Mariners, textual
analysis of, 12-13; "O liver Cromwell
Cox and the Historiography of the
West," 259 n. 30 (257)
Roderick, Rick, 11, 289, 291-92, 293-94,
297 n. 7(289)
Rodney, Walter, 17, 405-31; "The A fri­
can Revolution," 413; "Contemporary
Political Trends in the English-
speaking Caribbean," 431 n. 18 (422);
The H istory of the Guyanese Working
People and the First Sugar Strikes
1840/41 and 1847, 422-26,431 n. 20;

—, on "a living wage/' 423-25; How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa, 427;
and James on transformation, 422-26;
Transition, 423, 431 n. 19; "Two World
Views on the Russian Revolution: Re­
flections from Africa," 419-22, 431 n.
15; and vanguardism, 425; World War
I I and the Tanzanian Economy, 428,
431 n. 22 ' also Wayne State University
Rogers, De Wilton, The Rise of the Peo­
ple's National Movement, 18n. 12
Rogin, Michael, Subversive Genealogy:
The Politics and A rt of Herman
Melville, 271 n. 5 (264)
"Role of Some Labour Movements in the
Political Process of Trinidad and To­
bago," 346 n. 3 (330)
Romano, Paul, The American Worker,
164
Romerstein, Herbert, Grenada Docu­
ments: an Overview and Selection,
326n. 6 (319)
Roosevelt, Franklin D.: administration
of, and Executive Order 8802,167-68;
No-Strike Pledge, 167
Roumain, Jacques, 45
Roux, Jacques, 171
Royster, Paul, "Melville's Economy of
Language," 258 n. 24 (254)
Ryan, Selwyn, Revolution and Reaction:
Parties and Politics in Trinidad and
Tobago, 1970-1981, 346n. 15 (334)
Said, Edward W., 1,2,5,17,445,450 n. 17;
on M inty Alley, 70; Nationalism, Colo­
nialism and Literature, 71 n. 11 (70)
Saint-Mery, Medic Moreau de: Descrip­
tion de la partie fran^aise de 1'isle
Saint-Domingue, 156, 160n. 102; Lois
et constitutions des colonies fran-
$aises de VAmerique sous le vent,
159n. 53(148), 160n. 98 (155)
Sala-Molins, Louis, Le Code noir ou le
Calvaire de Canaan, 159n. 63 (149),
160 n. 95(154)
Sander, Reinhard: The Black Jacobins
(play), 119, 121; Trinidad Awakening,
The, 17n. 8
San Domingo. See Haitian Revolution
Satineau, Maurice, Histoire de la
Guadeloupe sous 1’ancien Regime,
141, 157n. 15(140), 158n. 22(141)
Sartre, Jean Paul, 296, 353-54
Index 473
Schama, Simon, Citizens: A Chronicle of
the French Revolution, 81,430n. 13
(418)
Schoelcher, Victor, Des colonies fran-
Caises: abolition immediate de Tes-
clavage, 146, 158n. 48 (146), 160n.93
(154)
Schomburg Collection, 451 n. 22. See
Searching for the Invisible Man: Slave
and Plantation Life in Jamaica, 158 n.
46(146)
Seeker and Warburg, 217-18
Second International, 306,308
Second World Congress, and the Russian
Question, 281. See also Second Inter­
national
Shachtman, Max, 175, 180, 181, 227,
300-301,304-5. See also Workers
Party
Shadow Over the Promised Land: Slav­
ery, Race, and Violence in Melville's
America, 271 n. 3 (262)
Shakespeare, 6, 17, 237, 248, 254, 270;
Hamlet, 267, 268; King Lear, 267, 268;
Macbeth, 267, 268; The Merchant of
Venice, 268; Othello, 260, 267-70
Shklar, Judith, Ordinary Vices, 386n. 16
(374)
Silva, Mervyn de, on cricket, 360
Silverman, Kaja, The Subject of Semiot­
ics, 71 n. 9 (69}
Singer, Phil, 164
Singham, A.W., 133n.8(124), 134n. 15
(127); "C. L. R. James on the Black Jac­
obin Revolution in San Domingo:
Notes Toward a Theory of Black Pol­
ities," 132x1.2(118)
Sir George Williams University, 344
Situation des esclaves dans les colonies
frangaises, urgence de leur Emancipa­
tion, 159n. 74(151)
Slave Populations of the British Carib­
bean, 1807-1834, 158n. 46(146)
slave rebellion, James on, 409-14
Slavery and Social Death, 160n. 92 (154)
Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar: M a rti­
nique and the World Economy, 1830-
1848, 151, 159n. 75(151), 160n. 86
(153)
Slavery, War, and Revolution: The B rit­
ish Occupation of Saint Domingue,
97 n.
 474 Index
slaves, 38; accommodation of, 139-44;
feeding of, 147-52; labor of, 144-47;
punishment of, 152-55
Slave Women in Caribbean Society,
1650-1838, 158n. 46 (146)
Small, Richard, 413
Social Darwinism, 415
Social Democracy and the concept of or­
thodoxy, 280-81
Socialism or Barbarism, 278,284,286
Socialist International and opposition to
World War 1,306
Socialist Workers' Party (SWP), 4,170,
174, 175, 177-79,217, 227, 278,284,
304,312. See also Trotsky, Leon;
Trotskyite movement
Sonthonax, Leger Felicite, 86-88, 92,94
Souls of Black Folk, 59 n. 6 (52)
Southern Christian Leadership Con­
ference, 312
Souvraine, Boris, Stalin: A C ritical Sur­
vey of Bolshevism, 18 n. 9 (4), 218
Soviet Union, 174, 262, 294,337
Spheres of Existence, 51,54, 55,59 n. 1,
242 nn. 18, 19 (221-22), 347n. 30 (341);
"A fter Hitler, Our Turn," 258 n. 11
(248); "Dialectical Materialism and
the Fate of Humanity," 32,242n. 18
(221-222); "The Making of the Carib­
bean People," 326n. 2 (317); on Shake­
speare, 268; "On Wilson Harris," 348-
55
Spinoza, 195, 292
Springfield, Consuelo Lopez, 128, 133 n.
9(124), 134 n. 17(130)
Stalin, Joseph, 262, 422
Stalin-Hitler Pact of 1939, 304
Stalinism, 211,247,248,255, 277-95
(passim), 299, 438; James's contempt
for, 4, 5, 25,392; orthodoxy, 281
State Capitalism and World Revolution,
176, 182-83, 184, 190n. 22, 198-99,
207, 208, 209, 219, 249-51, 255, 257n.
1,392,417, 449n. 9
State capitalism and the world-system,
247-53
State Capitalism in Russia, 189n. 18
(181)
Stein, Robert, 92
Stern, M ilton R., "M elville, Society, and
Language," 271 n. 3 (262)
Stone, Ria. See Boggs, Grace Lee
Strachan, Billy, 337
Struggle for Marxism in the U.S., The,
179
Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee, 312
Studies on the Left, 437
Subject of Semiotics, The, 71 n. 9 (69)
Subversive Genealogy: The PoHtics and
A rt of Herman M elville, 271 n. 5 (264)
Suez, 301
Sukarno, 329
"SWP and Negro Work, The," 326n. 10
(321)
Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny
and The Destiny of Games. See
Nandy, Ashis
Tardo-Dino, Frantz, Le collier de servi­
tude, 157n. 17(140)
"Theoretical Introduction to 5,000 Years
of World System History, A," 258n. 4
(246)
Thermidorian Directory, 90,95
"Thinking and Acting Dialectically,"
172n. 1 (163)
"T hird Annual Convention," 333
Thompson, E. R, 5, 430, 448 n. 7 (439);
Making of the English Working Class,
448n. 4 (437)
Thorndike, Tony, Grenada, 326n. 6
(319)
"Three Letters," 298-303; C. L. R. James
to Cornelius Castoriadis et al., 300-
301; Cornelius Castoriadis to C. L. R.
James, 302-303; Raya Dunayevskaya
to James re: Cornelius Castoriadis,
298-300
Through a Maze of Colour, 17 n. 8,60 n.
10
Ti dife boule sou istoua Ayti, 117 n.
Tobago. See Trinidad and Tobago
Tomich, Dale, Slavery in the C ircuit of
Sugar: M artinique and the World
Economy, 1830-1848, 151, 159n. 75,
160n. 86(153)
Toomer, Jean, 53, 58
Toure, Kwame, 5
Toussaint LOuverture: de Vesclavage au
pouvoir, 117n.
Toussaint LOuverture (play), 119, 121
Trade Union Congress, 342
"Tradition and the West Indian Novel."
See Harris, Wilson
Transition, 423,431 n. 19

Transport and Industrial Workers Union,
342,344
Treaty of Amiens, 95
Tribute to a Scholar: Appreciating
C. L. R. fames, 7j "Appreciating
C. L. R. James," 7, 430n. 8 (413)
Trinidad, The, formation of, 3, 60 n. 10
Trinidad and Tobago: and Marxist left,
15; nationalist politics of, 4,227,328-
47; and vanguard parties, 310
Trinidad Awakening, The, 17 n. 8
Trinidad Chronicle, 333
Trinidad Guardian: "It's the Workers
and Farmers Party," 18n. 13 (5)
Trinidad Labour Riots, 346n. 5 (330)
Trinidad Renaissance, 51-54, 58-59
"Trium ph," 52,53, 60n. 9; authorial
voice in, 56; characters in, 57-58
Trotsky, Leon, 26, 254, 291, 443; on agri­
culture, 402 n. 6 (395); assassination of,
228; on Leninist categories, 208-9; on
Hegel's logic, 234; History of the Rus­
sian Revolution, 82; James's conversa­
tions with, 26, 175, 177; on the "Negro
Question," 174, 226,311-12,320; "Re­
sults," 392, 404; and the Socialist
Workers Party, 312,322-23; on sports
and politics, 361; and his "Transitional
Program," 304. See also Socialist
Workers' Party
Trotskyite movement, 4, 174, 180, 194,
218, 219, 245, 247, 277-82, 291,391,
436,441; James's break with, 174, 251,
277-78, 282, 284, 291; and the New
York intellectuals, 174; and "the
Negro Question," 174-75, 177; and
the Russian Question, 281,304
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, Ti dife boule
sou istoua Ayti, 117 n.
Tubman, Harriet, 102, 428
Tull, Carl, 342
Turner, Lou, 11-12
"Turner's Prosperity," 53,55
United Labour Front, 338
United Nations, 293-94; Decolonization
Committee of, 409-10
United States of America: Black politics
in, 177-80; culture and society of,
183-84,364,377; Justice Department,
222
"universal of 1948," 195-96, 198,199,
200, 201
Index 475
"University of Woodford Square," 333,
341
Urgent Tasks, 442,449nn. 10, 12 (441-
42)
Vaissifcre, Pierre de, La society et la
vie creole sous Tancien regime, 137,
157n. 2
Vanguard, The, 338-39
vanguardism, 285,398, 425,439
Vanguard Party, 174, 181-83, 240,308,
309-10,323,336, 436
Varlet, Jean, 171
Venezuela, 91
Verite et les faits ou Vesclavage a nu, La,
138, 157n. 10
ViUage Voice, 444-45,450 n. 17
Visionary Compacts: American Renais­
sance Writings in Cultural Context,
271 n. 3 (262)
Visions of History, "C. L. R. James,"
189n. 5 (177)
vodun ceremony, 82-83, 86
Voyage d ’un Suisse dans differentes
colonies d ’Amerique, 137, 145,146,
157n. 2
Vulcan, Captain, 92
Walcott, Derek, 8 ,352; on Beyond a
Boundary, 34-37, 450n. 15 (443); "ep­
och," 45; Freedomways, 437; on his­
tory, 47-48; on James's intellect, 41-
42; on Whitman, 46
Wald, Alan, The New York Intellectuals,
174, 258n. 20(253)
Walker, Alice, 5
Walter Rodney Speaks: The Making of
an African Intellectual, 414-15, 430n.
10(415), 43In . 16(421)
Wamba Dia Wamba, "It Is N ot the N um ­
ber of Parties: Peoples Agitation for
Democracy in Search for a New h is ­
torical Mode of Politics in Africa,"
431 n. 14(418)
Warburg, Fredric, 217-19; An Occupa­
tion for Gentlemen, 241 n. 6 (218-19)
Ward, Fred W., interview w ith W. G.
Grace, 384n. 8 (364)
War in Melville's Imagination, 271 n. 3
(262)
Wartime Strikes, 167
Warville, Brissot de, 83
Washington, George, 83
 476 Index
Waxman, Percy, The Black Napoleon:
The Story of Toussaint LOuverture,
118,119,132n. 1,133n. 10 (124); "Way
of Seeing, A: Culture as Political Ex­
pression in the Works of C. L. R.
James," 52, 59, 242n. 22 (223)
Wayne State University, 171-72,243 n.
31. See also Raya Dunayevskaya
Collection—M aixist-Humanism : A
H a lf Century of Its Development;
Schomburg Collection
Webb, Constance, 18 n. 15, 242n. 15
(220), 243 n. 26 (228); Indignant Heart,
164; and Jack Gilford, 230-32; and
James's letters, 6,26-29, 31,32,33 n.
3,174-75,176,181, 183, 216-41. See
also Pearlstien, Constance Webb
Webber, A. R. F., 3
Weekes, George, 338-39,342
Weinstein, Selma. See James, Selma
Weir, Stanley, "Revolutionary A rtist,"
190n. 24 (184)
Wellesley College, international con­
ference at, 2, 7, 8,17
West, Cornel, 393; cultural-political in ­
terpretation of C. L. R. James, 445; and
the radical church, 393
"West Indian at Home and Abroad, The:
M y Experience w ith Women," 241 nn.
2,3(216), 242n. 23 (225)
West Indian Federal Labour Party, 334
West Indian Federation, 4
West Indian Students Association, James
speaks to, 339
West Indies. See Caribbean
West Indies: The Federal Negotiations,
346n. 17(334)
West Indies cricket, 332,362,374-81
(passim)
What Is To Be Done, 308
Wheeler, Drayton, 338
White, Hayden: Metahistory, 258n. 8
(247), 259n. 29 (256); "Value of Nar-
rativity," 71 n. 3 (63)
Whitman, Walt, 6, 29,46, 185
Wilberforce, W illiam , 410-11
Wilberforce, 103
Williams, Eric, 5, 48n. 1, 82, 329-45
(passim), 354; and arrest of James, 34;
and bus strike, 344; Capitalism and
Slavery, 3,329, 346 n. 1 (330), 408;
"The Chaguaramas Declaration," 343;
and clash w ith James, 339-45,- and the
Industrial Stabilization Act, 335; In ­
ward Hunger: The Education of a
Prime Minister, 333-34,346n. 25
(337), 347n. 28 (340); PNM, 18n. 12;
his resignation, 335; and telephone
strike, 334-35
Williams, Gwyn, Artisans and Sans­
culottes: Popular Movements in
France and B ritain During the French
Revolution, 100-101,105 n. 4
Williams, Stanley T., 270n. 1 (261)
Williams, Sylvester, 3
Winter, Sylvia, 445
Wolforth, Tim, The Struggle for M arx­
ism in the U.S., 179
Woman's Place, A, 164,284
Woolf, Virginia, 230
Worcester, Kent, 11,450n. 17; C. I . R.
fames: A Political Biography, 7
Workers and Farmers Party, 5, 227,328,
338,343
Workers' Party, 4,169-70,175,182,227,
304-5,322-23
Working People's Alliance in Guyana,
407,429. See also Rodney, Walter
World Revolution, 17n. 3 , 18n. 9, 219,
224, 449 n. 13. See also State Capital­
ism and World Revolution
world-system and the epistemic West,
246-47
Worrell, Frank, West Indies cricket, cap­
tain of, 332,395,402n. 3 (391). See
also cricket
Wretched of the Earth, The, 388,396-
400 (passim)
Wright, Richard, 5, 7,164,178,223,349-
50,392
Yacou, Alain, De la revolution frangaise
aux revolutions creoles et negres, 97 n.
Young, Juanita, 215-16
Ziff, Larzer, Literary Democracy: The
Declaration of C ultural Independence
In America, 271 n. 7 (266)
Zinn, Howard, A People's History of the
United States, 258 n. 19 (252)
Zuccarelli, Francois, 16 Pluviose An II,
97 n.
Zupan, Johnny, 170