C.L.R. James: A socialist scholar, writer, and orator

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14 SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 1989 By KWAME M.A. SOMBURU The world revolutionary movement has rarely been fortunate enough to have among its ranks members with over 50 years of service to the cause. And rarer still among the 50-year veterans are those of African ancestry.

C.L.R. James, who died in England at the age of 88 on May 31, was one of the most significant people among this group. James was born Jan. 4, 1901, in the colony of Trinidad at the height of the power of the British Empire. The almost nine decades of his life witnessed the closing stages of that empire as well as the reassertion of neocolonial domination by a few countries.

As a child, James was more fortunate than the overwhelming majority of his colonialized contemporaries. C.L.R., notes The New York Times, "had a school-teacher father and a mother whose zest for reading was contagious." His parents had the financial means to provide him with a comfortable home, social, and academic environment.

Early on, James developed a deep love for the English sport of cricket, classical literature (particularly Shakespeare), and music (particularly Beethoven). At the age of nine, he was the youngest winner of a national educational competition. Nine years later, he had become a certified teacher.

The poverty and racial and social oppression that was pervasive in Trinidad nurtured values that motivated his life's activities. James took part in the intense political debate following the First World War that led to criticisms of the colonial system.

James one year for $8. nths for Nam Address City Zip Send C.L.R. James movement of Andre Cipriani, the mayor of Port of Spain, Trinidad. That led to his biography of Cipriani, which was later revised and republished as "The Case for West Indian Self-Government."

Educated in the In 1932, he arrived in England and settled in the Lancashire town of Nelson. It was an area with a history of radicalism and industrial disputes. James later credited the Lancashire workers with educating him in the class struggle. It was there that he read Trotsky's "History of the Russian Revolution" and was stimulated to study the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.

In 1934, James joined the Labor Party and became a [] Enclosed is a itribution State Tel.

Rm. 308, San class struggle Independent socialist re10. volutionary and an active member of the Trotskyist Marxist Group. He rapidly acquired a reputation for being an outstanding orator, debater, and writer.

rise of the Communist (Third) International under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky and its decline under Stalin.

Trotsky commented that it was a good book, but that James did not understand the dialectical method. This irked James and was the beginning of his differences with Trotsky that led to a break with some major tenets of Marxism.

James gave intense study to Hegelian methodology. In his "Notes on Dialectics," James argued that it was Trotsky who misunderstood the dialectic, and that Trotsky's interpretation of history was flawed.

However, James defended Trotsky against Stalin's slanders during the Moscow Trials. He was a prominent member of the Trotsky Defence Committee in England.

In 1938, James was a delegate to the founding conference of the Fourth International-the organization of the world Trotskyist movement. He was elected to the International Executive Committee.

The same year, his most famous book, "The Black Jacobins," was published. In this classic study, James utilized the science of Marxism to analyze the Haitian revolution at the turn of the 18th century against the French colonizers.

Work in the United States At the end of 1938, James I noved to the United States for 15 years of : peaking, Organizing, and writing-until he was expe led communist frenzy of the Sen. Joe McCarthy era.

In 1939, James and other members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) traveled to Mexico to speak with Trotsky, who was in exile in that country. Those discussions helped the SWP develop an understanding of the racial situation in the United States and how the support that Marxists give to the right of self-determination can apply to the struggle of African-Americans.

The obituary writer for The New York Times, C. Gerald Fraser, asserts that James went to Mexico to tell Trotsky that "Black people had to have their own organization— not one ruled by the left." But that gross slander is not evident in transcripts of the discussions or in any subsequent statements by James.

In reality, James proposed that SWP members participate in helping to set up a nationwide mass organization that would fight against all forms of oppression and discrimination that Blacks suffer in this country. The general lines of this proposal were accepted by Trotsky.

The text of these discussions (which was never disputed by James) is in "Leon Trotsky on Black Nationalism and Self-Determination," published by Pathfinder Press.

After the Stalin-Hitler Pact of 1939, James concluded that the Soviet Union was no longer a workers state that had to be defended. He denied Trotsky's view that a counterrevolutionary bureaucracy now ruled the Soviet Union, arguing instead that the country was "state capitalist."

James left the Socialist Workers Party in 1940. With others who left the SWP, James helped to found the Workers Party. In 1947, he rejoined the SWP, but left again in 1951.

James spent most of his remaining years in England. But he visited Africa and Trinidad. His interest and involvement in Pan-African affairs, which began in the 1930s, continued until his death.

He exerted varying degrees of influence on political leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Jomu Kenyatta (Kenya), Eric Williams (Trinidad), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania), Michael Manley (Jamaica), Forbes Burnham and Walter Rodney (Guyana), and Maurice Bishop (Grenada).

To the end of his life, James remained committed to the liberation of all victims of class, racial, and sexual oppression. He was for a socialist world. Many revolutionaries, including this writer, differed with James over strategy, tactics and analysis—but not over our general goals.

Memorial meetings were attended by thousands in New York, London, and Trinidad. The capitalist government of Trinidad wanted to have a state funeral for him, but his legal will stated that the "Oilfield Workers Trade Union be solely responsible for making all the arrangements." Charlie Cornell In our last issue, we printed in our "Readers Speak Out" column a tribute to Charlie Cornell, who died on Jan. 1, 1989. We should have published this obituary sent by a reader as a separate article to underline our respect for Cornell. He made a special contribution to our movement by serving as one of Leon Trotsky's guards in Mexico in 19391940.-the editors

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In 1936, his book "World Revolution 1917-34" was published. It was a study of the