Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was a journalist, and a prominent socialist theorist and writer. Jump to: navigation, search January 4 is the 4th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1901 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search May 19 is the 139th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (140th in leap years). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search A journalist is a person who practices journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people. ... The color red and particularly the red flag are traditional symbols of Socialism. ... Jump to: navigation, search The term writer can apply to anyone who creates a written work, but the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms. ...

Birth and early career

Born in Trinidad, he attended the Queen's Royal College on the island before becoming a cricket journalist and also writing fiction. In 1932, he moved to Nelson in Lancashire, England in the hope of furthering his literary career. There, he worked for the Manchester Guardian and helped the cricketer Learie Constantine write his autobiography. Jump to: navigation, search Trinidad (Spanish, Trinity) is the largest of the 23 islands which make up the country of Trinidad and Tobago. ... Queens Royal College Queens Royal College is one of the oldest secondary schools in Trinidad and Tobago. ... Jump to: navigation, search A cricket match in progress. ... Jump to: navigation, search A journalist is a person who practices journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1932 is a leap year starting on a Friday. ... Nelson is a town in Lancashire in north-west of England with a population of around 30,000. ... Jump to: navigation, search Lancashire (archaically, the County of Lancaster) is a county palatine of England, lying on the Irish Sea. ... Jump to: navigation, search Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location within the UK Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area - Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population - Total (mid-2004) - Density Ranked 1st UK... The Guardian was also the name of a U.S. television series. ... Learie Constantine, Baron Constantine of Maraval and Nelson (b. ... Jump to: navigation, search Autobiography (from the Greek auton, self, bios, life and graphein, write) is biography written by the subject or composed conjointly with a collaborative writer (styled as told to or with). The term dates from the late eighteenth century, but the form is much older. ...

London years

In 1933, James moved to London. James had begun to campaign for the independence of the West Indies while in Trinidad, and his Life of Captain Cipriani and the pamphlet The Case for West-Indian Self Government were his first important published works, but now he became a leading champion of Pan-African agitation and the Chair of the International African Friends of Abyssinia, formed in 1935 in response to Fascist Italy's invasion of what is now Ethiopia. He then became a leading figure in the International African Service Bureau, through which he later met Kwame Nkrumah. In Britain, he also became a leading Marxist theorist. He had joined the Labour Party, but in the midst of the Great Depression became convinced of Trotskyism and in 1934 joined an entrist Trotskyist group inside the Independent Labour Party. Jump to: navigation, search 1933 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... London is the capital city of the United Kingdom and of England. ... The Caribbean or the West Indies is a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea. ... Jump to: navigation, search Kwame Nkrumah (September 21, 1909 - April 27, 1972) was a Ghanaian politician and one of the most influential founders of Pan-Africanism. ... The name Labour Party or Labor Party is used by several political parties around the world. ... Entryism (or entrism or enterism) is a political tactic by which a smaller organisation joins a (usually hostile) larger organisation in an attempt to either gain recruits, influence or both. ... The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a former political party in the United Kingdom. ...

In this period, amid his frantic political activity, James wrote a play about Toussaint L'Ouverture, which was staged in the West End in 1936 and starred Paul Robeson. He also wrote what are perhaps his best-known works of non-fiction: World Revolution (1937), a history of the rise and fall of the Communist International which was critically praised by Leon Trotsky, and The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938), a widely acclaimed history of the Haitian revolution which would later be seen as a seminal text in the study of the African diaspora. Jump to: navigation, search François-Dominique Toussaint LOuverture François-Dominique Toussaint LOuverture, also Toussaint Bréda, Toussaint-Louverture (c. ... West End is the name of some places in the world, including: The West End of London, England West End Theatre, is where many of Londons major theatres are located and premier cinema screenings take place. ... USPS Black Heritage stamp Paul LeRoy Bustill Robeson (April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American actor, athlete, singer, writer, and political and civil rights activist. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1937 was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... The first edition of Communist International, journal of the Comintern published in Moscow and Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) in May 1919. ... Jump to: navigation, search Leon Trotsky Leon Davidovich Trotsky ▶(?) (Russian: Лев Давидович Троцкий; also transliterated Leo, Lev, Trotskii, Trotski, Trotskij and Trotzky ) (October 26 (O.S.) = November 7 (N.S.), 1879 – August 21, 1940), born Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Лев Давидович Бронштейн), was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search The Haitian Revolution was the first successful slave rebellion in the Western Hemisphere and established Haiti as a free, black republic, the first of its kind. ... The African diaspora is the diaspora created by the movements and culture of Africans and their descendants throughout the world, in places including Europe, the Caribbean, the Americas including United States and Canada, South America, and Central America. ...

In 1936, James and his Trotskyist Marxist Group left the Independent Labour Party to form an open party. In 1938, this new group took part in several mergers to form the Revolutionary Socialist League. The RSL was a highly factionalised organisation and when James was invited to tour the United States by the leadership of the Socialist Workers' Party, then the US section of the Fourth International, in order to facilitate its work among black workers, he was encouraged to leave by one such factional opponent, John Archer, in the hope of removing a rival. Jump to: navigation, search 1936 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Revolutionary Socialist League was the name of two Trotskyist political parties in the United Kingdom, one in the 1930s and 1940s and a second one which was founded in the 1950s and existed into the 1960s. ... The Socialist Workers Party is a small communist political party in the United States. ... The Fourth International has been the international organisation of Trotskyist communists. ...

US career and the Johnson-Forrest Tendency

James moved to the US in late 1938 and after a tour sponsored by the SWP stayed on for over twenty years. But by 1940 he had developed severe doubts about Trotsky's analysis of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers state and left the SWP along with Max Shachtman, who formed the Workers' Party. Within the WP he formed the Johnson-Forrest Tendency with Raya Dunayevskaya (his pseudonym being Johnson and Dunayevskaja's Forrest), in order to spread their views within the new party. Jump to: navigation, search 1940 was a leap year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... In Trotskyist political theory, degenerated workers states are states where capitalism has been overthrown through social revolution and the property forms have changed into a collectivized planned economy, but where the working class has lost its political power and socialist democracy has been replaced by a form of dictatorship. ... Max Shachtman (September 10, 1904 - 1972) is best known as an American Trotskyist theorist. ... The Workers Party was a Trotskyist group in the United States. ... The Johnson-Forrest Tendency got its name from its two main leaders: C. L. R. James, who used the pen name J.R. Johnson, and Raya Dunayevskaya alias Freddie Forrest. ... Jump to: navigation, search Raya Dunayevskaya (1910 – 1987) was a Ukrainian born immigrant to the United States of America who was a member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). ...

While within the WP the views of the J-F tendency underwent considerable development and by the end of the Second World War they had definitively rejected Trotsky's theory of Russia as a degenerated workers state, instead analysing it as being state capitalist. They were increasingly looking towards the autonomous movements of oppressed minorities, a theoretical development already visible in James' thought in his discussions with Leon Trotsky which took place in 1939. An interest in such autonomous struggles came to take centre stage for the tendency. Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... There are multiple definitions of the term state capitalism. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1939 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ...

After 1945 the WP saw the prospects for a revolutionary upsurge as receding. The J-F Tendency, by contrast, were more enthused by prospects for mass struggles and came to the conclusion that the SWP, which they considered more proletarian than the WP, thought similarly to themselves about such prospects. Therefore, after a short few months as an independent group when they published a great deal of material for a small group, the J-F tendency joined the SWP in 1947. Jump to: navigation, search 1945 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1947 was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

James would still describe himself as a Leninist, despite his rejection of Lenin's conception of the vanguard role of the revolutionary party, and argue for socialists to support the emerging black nationalist movements. By 1949, he came to reject the idea of a vanguard party. This led his tendency to leave the Trotskyist movement and rename itself the Correspondence Publishing Committee. James' writings were influential in the development of Autonomist marxism as a current within marxist thought. Vladimir Lenin in 1920 Leninism is a political and economic theory which builds upon Marxism; it is a branch of Marxism (and it has been the dominant branch of Marxism in the world since the 1920s). ... Black nationalism is a political and social movement prominent in the 1960s and early 70s among African Americans in the United States. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1949 is a common year starting on Saturday. ... Jump to: navigation, search This politics-related article is a stub. ... Jump to: navigation, search Autonomism, or Autonomist Marxism is a left wing political movement and theory. ...

Return to Trinidad and final years

In 1952, James was deported from the US to England for having overstayed his visa by over ten years. Famously in his attempt to remain in the USA he wrote a study of Herman Melville and had copies of the privately published work sent to every member of the Senate. In 1958, he returned to Trinidad, where he edited The Nation newspaper for the pro-independence People's National Movement (PNM) party. He also became involved again in the Pan-African movement, believing that the Ghana revolution showed that Africa was the most important inspiration for international revolutionaries. Jump to: navigation, search 1952 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search An entry visa valid in all Schengen treaty countries Visas for Laos, Thailand, and Sri Lanka A visa (short for the Latin carta visa, lit. ... Jump to: navigation, search Herman Melville Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, essayist, and poet. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1958 was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Peoples National Movement is apolitical party in Trinidad and Tobago. ... Pan-Africanism is a term which can have two separate, but related meanings. ...

James also advocated the West Indies Federation, and it was over this that he fell out with the PNM leadership. He returned to Britain, then to the US in 1968, where he taught at the University of the District of Columbia. Ultimately, he returned to Britain and spent his last years in Brixton, London. Jump to: navigation, search National motto: Official language English Political status Overseas territory of the UK Capital Chaguaramas Largest cities Kingston and Port-of-Spain Queen Elizabeth II Governor-General Patrick George Thomas Buchan-Hepburn Prime Minister Grantley Herbert Adams (West Indian Federation Labour Party) Creation January 3, 1958 (union... Jump to: navigation, search 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ... The University of the District of Columbia (also known as UDC) is a public university located in Washington, DC. The university was formed in 1977 through the amalgamation of the Federal City College and Washington Technical Institute - which had both been established in 1966 as the result of a study... Jump to: navigation, search Brixton is an area of South London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth. ...

His 1963 book, Beyond a Boundary, discussed the strong influence cricket had on his life, and how it meshed with his role in politics and his understanding of issues of class and race. It is considered by many to be a seminal work of cricket writing, and has gained the status of required reading by serious fans of the sport, being described by some as "the best book on sport ever written." Jump to: navigation, search 1963 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Bibliography

• The Life of Captain Cipriani: An Account of the British Government in the West Indies (1932)
• The Case for West-Indian Self Government (1933)
• Minty Alley (1936)
• World Revolution 1917-1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International (1937)
• The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938)
• Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx and Lenin (1948)
• American Civilisation(1949)
• State Capitalism and World Revolution (1950)
• Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In (1952)
• Facing Reality (1958)
• Modern Politics (1960)
• Party Politics in the West Indies (1962)
• Beyond a Boundary (1963)
• Kwame Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (1977)
• Cricket (selected writings) (1986)

Minty Alley is a groundbreaking novel written by [Trinidadian]] writer C. L. R. James in the late 1920s, and published by Frederick Warburg Secker & Warburg in 1936, as West Indian literature was starting to flourish. ...

External links

• The C.L.R. James Institute
• C L R James Archive
• Libertarian Communist Library CLR James Holdings
• On Karl Marx and the 75th Anniversary of the Paris Commune
• A Controversial Caribbean: C.L.R. James
• Revolution as a New Beginning': an Interview with Grace Lee Boggs. Autonomy & Solidarity. Aidan. April 1, 2005 - 7:08pm. Retrieved April 15, 2005. Longtime associate of C.L.R. James discusses their work and her later career.

• Obituarty: Constance Webb, Writer wife of CLR James by Caryl Phillips. The Guardian. Friday April 15, 2005. Retrieved April 15, 2005.

Jump to: navigation, search The Guardian is a British newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. ...

Further reading

Buhle, Paul. CLR James. The Artist as Revolutionary. 1989. Webb, Constance. Not Without Love. 2003. Worcester, Kent. CLR James. A Political Biography. 1996.

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CLR James