Sunday, September 13, 2015

The Evolution of the Political Thought of C.L.R. James


LaGuerre, John Gaffar, “The Evolution of the Political Thought of C.L.R. James”, St. Augustine: University of the West Indies, Faculty of Social Sciences, 1972.

Intro by the author:
My concern is the evolution of James’ political thought and the factors shaping that thought. I shall be looking at themes, at the background from which they emerged and the controversies to which they give rise. I shall focus on four main themes – James’ early championship of West Indian self-government his theorizing on the nature of metropolitan and colonial revolutions, his contribution to the debate on state capitalism and his attitude to the negro struggle.


Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901 – 19 May 1989), best known as C. L. R. James, who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J. R. Johnson, was an Afro-Trinidadian historian, journalist, socialist theorist and essayist. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts. His work is a staple of subaltern studies, and he figures as a pioneering and influential voice in postcolonial literature.[1] A tireless political activist, James's writing on the Communist International stirred debate in Trotskyist circles, and his history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins, is a seminal text in the literature of the African Diaspora.[

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