Over sixty years ago, C.L.R. James and a small circle of collaborators making up the radical left Johnson-Forest Tendency reached the conclusion that there was no true socialist society existing anywhere in the world. Written in collaboration with Raya Dunayevskaya and Grace Lee Boggs, this is another pioneering critique of Lenin and Trotsky, and reclamation of Marx, from the West Indian scholar and activist, C.L.R. James. Originally published in 1950, this definitive edition includes the original preface from Martin Glaberman to the third edition, C.L.R. James’ original introductions to three previous editions and a new introduction from James’ biographer Paul Buhle.
Written in collaboration with Raya Dunayevskaya & Grace Lee, this is another pioneering critique of Lenin and Trotsky, and reclamation of Marx, from the West Indian scholar and activist. This edition includes the original introduction from Martin Glaberman, a new introduction from Paul Buhle, and one from the author himself. Two generations ago, CLR James and a small circle of collaborators set forth a revolutionary critique of industrial civilization. Their vision possessed a striking originality. So insular was the political context of their theoretical breakthroughs, however, and so thoroughly did their optimistic expectations for working class activity defy trends away from class and social issues to the so-called 'End Of Ideology', that the documents of the signal effort never reached public view. Happily, times have changed. Readers have discovered much, even after all these years, to challenge Marxist (or any other) orthodoxy. They will never find a more succinct version of James' general conclusions that State Capitalism and World Revolution. In this slim volume, James and his comrades successfully predict the future course of Marxism. [Paul Buhle, from his Introduction] When one looks back over the last 20 years to those men who were most far-sighted, who first began to tease out the muddle of ideology in our times, who were at the same time Marxists with a hard theoretical basis, and close students of society, humanists with a tremendous response to and understanding of human culture, Comrade James is one of the first one thinks of. [E P Thompson]
Russia: From Proletarian Revolution to State-Capitalist Counter-Revolution is a selection of writings by the Marxist-Humanist philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya, which begins with an examination of Lenin’s Hegel Notebooks, his philosophic preparation for proletarian revolution, followed by a section on “What Happens After” the revolution--the first years post 1917. Analyses of Trotsky, Stalin, Bukharin, and Luxemburg are presented. A key section is “Russia’s Transformation into Opposite: The Theory of State-Capitalism.” Opposition to Russian state-capitalism such as the 1953 East Germany Revolt and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution are described. Mao’s China as another form of state-capitalism, as well as the Sino-Soviet conflict, is discussed. The study ends with a “battle of ideas” with other analyses of the Revolution and its aftermath.
Originally published in 1937, C. L. R. James's World Revolution is a pioneering Marxist analysis of the history of revolutions during the interwar period and of the fundamental conflict between Trotsky and Stalin. James, who was a leading Trotskyist activist in Britain, outlines Russia's transition from Communist revolution to a Stalinist totalitarian state bureaucracy. He also provides an account of the ideological contestations within the Communist International while examining its influence on the development of the Soviet Union and its changing role in revolutions in Spain, China, Germany, and Central Europe. Published to commemorate the centenary of the Russian Revolution, this definitive edition of World Revolution features a new introduction by Christian Høgsbjerg and includes rare archival material, selected contemporary reviews, and extracts from James's 1939 interview with Trotsky.
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the legitimacy of American capitalism seems unchallenged. The link between open markets, economic growth, and democratic success has become common wisdom, not only among policy makers but for many intellectuals as well. In this instance, however, the past has hardly been prologue to contemporary confidence in the free market. American Capitalism presents thirteen thought-provoking essays that explain how a variety of individuals, many prominent intellectuals but others partisans in the combative world of business and policy, engaged with anxieties about the seismic economic changes in postwar America and, in the process, reconfigured the early twentieth-century ideology that put critique of economic power and privilege at its center. The essays consider a broad spectrum of figures—from C. L. R. James and John Kenneth Galbraith to Peter Drucker and Ayn Rand—and topics ranging from theories of Cold War "convergence" to the rise of the philanthropic Right. They examine how the shift away from political economy at midcentury paved the way for the 1960s and the "culture wars" that followed. Contributors interrogate what was lost and gained when intellectuals moved their focus from political economy to cultural criticism. The volume thereby offers a blueprint for a dramatic reevaluation of how we should think about the trajectory of American intellectual history in twentieth-century United States.
It has been nearly two centuries since Marx famously turned Hegel on his head in order to repurpose dialectics as a revolutionary way of thinking about the internal contradictions of our social relations. Despite critiques from post-structuralists, post-colonialists, and others, there has been a resurgence of dialectical thought among political theorists as of late. This resurgence has coincided with a rise in the mention of words like class warfare, socialism, and communism among the general public on the streets of Seattle in 1999, in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, in the actions of the Greek anarchists and the Spanish indignados, and in the rallying cry of "we are the 99%" of the Occupy Movement, and in academia. This book explores how it is that dialectical thought might respond to the critiques brought forth by those on the left who are critical of Marxism’s universalizing and authoritarian legacy. Brian C. Lovato singles out Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as the key interlocutors in this ongoing conversation between Marxism and post-structuralism. Laclau and Mouffe argue that Marxist theory is inherently authoritarian, cannot escape a class-reductionist theory of revolutionary subjectivity, and is bound by a closed Hegelian ontology. Lovato argues the opposite by turning to two heterodox Marxist thinkers, Raya Dunayevskaya and C. L. R. James, in order to construct a radically democratic, dynamic, and open conceptualization of dialectical thought. In doing so, he advances a vision of Marxist theory that might serve as a resource to scholars and activists committed not only to combatting capitalism, but also to fighting against colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and heteronormativity. The writings of Dunayevskaya and James allow for Marxism to become relevant again in these tumultuous early years of the 21st century.
Rethinking Race, Politics, and Poetics offers a critical appraisal of C.L.R. James as a major twentieth-century activist-intellectual, exploring his prolific output spanning decades within genres as diverse as history, philosophy, sociology, literary and cultural criticism, prose fiction, and reportage. The book also analyzes some of the flaws and contradictions that surfaced within James’ writings as a consequence of the difficult circumstances in which he worked and lived as an itinerant migrant intellectual invariably involved with fringe political groups. Assessing James as a lifelong committed Marxist and humanist, the book argues that his core concern with racial, political, and cultural questions as central to human and social understanding led him to develop a distinctive critique of the modern world.
