C. L. R. James

Articles

• C L R James, World Revolution 1917-1936 The Rise and Fall of the Communist International
  7 March 2009

  Chapter 1 MARXISM
  WHAT THEN IS SOCIALISM ACCORDING TO THE PROPHETS? To answer this question we have to look back and not forward, at the origin of Socialism in the scientific sense, placing it in the particular phase of social evolution to which it belongs. For though it is to be attained by the will and energy of men, it will not be attained how and when men please. It is neither pious hope nor moral aspiration but a new form of society which will arise for one reason and one only, the (…)

• Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity
  4 December 2021

  C.L.R. James 1947
  Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity
  Mankind has obviously reached the end of something. The crisis is absolute. Bourgeois civilisation is falling apart, and even while it collapses, devotes its main energies to the preparation of further holocausts. Not remote states on the periphery but regimes contending for world power achieve the most advanced stages of barbarism known to history. What civilised states have ever approached Nazi Germany and Stalinist (…)

• CLR JAMES AND THE NEGRO MOVEMENT IN THE USA
  22 March 2009

  C L R James 1939 The Right of Self-Determination and the Negro in the United States of North Americas
  Source: SWP New York Convention Resolutions, 11 July 1939.
  In 1930 Negroes in America constituted nearly twelve million, or 10 percent of the American population. Of these, two-thirds were still in the South, despite the war and postwar emigration to the North. In the cities of the North and East, the Negroes form only a small minority of the population, generally less than 10 percent. (…)

• STALIN RUINS THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
  19 December 2021

  C.L.LR. James
  STALIN RUINS THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
  EVEN WHILE THE STALINISTS, BY FALSIFICATION AND PHYSICAL repression, were destroying the propagandists of international Socialism, the world revolution which had seemed so remote in October, 1924, stirred itself, and even while the new theory was being made law presented the International with one of its greatest opportunities. We have to pass over how the Stalinists forced the Communist Party of Poland to support Pilsudski in the coup (…)

• Expliquer en termes simples la doctrine de l’Etre de Hegel
  25 juin 2024, par Robert Paris

  Expliquer en termes simples la doctrine de l’Etre de Hegel
  (Un chapitre de « Notes sur la dialectique » de C.L.R. James)
  Alors que je me propose de commencer « La Logique » de Hegel proprement dite, je ressens un léger frisson.
  Harris, qui a finalement écrit un très bel ouvrage sur la logique hégélienne, était professeur de philosophie et conférencier sur Hegel de seconde main. Brockmeyer, gouverneur du Missouri, a fait une traduction de la « Grande Logique » et quelqu’un l’a donnée à (…)

• LENIN AND SOCIALISM
  26 December 2021

  C.L.R. James
  LENIN AND SOCIALISM
  THOUGH BEFORE VERY LONG THE SOVIET UNION WAS TO be the only Workers’ State in the world, the international Socialist revolution had begun. As time passed and the isolation of the Soviet Union became clear, it might have been thought that the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia enforced by the situation inside the country was premature. Difficult and dangerous as was its position, liable to collapse at any time, yet the Soviet Union fitted into the (…)

• Trotsky’s Place In History
  18 January 2022

  Trotsky’s Place In History, By C.L.R. James
  THE bourgeoisie, perforce lacking historical method and suborning all aspects of life to the maintenance of power, has not only confused the proletariat but has confused itself in the estimation of what constitutes greatness in contemporary men. Woodrow Wilson, Poincaré, Stanley Baldwin and similar mediocrities have all been crowned with the laurel, not excluding Nicholas Murray Butler, on the score presumably that he had dined often with the (…)

• CLR James - « Trotskysme »
  1er octobre 2023, par Robert Paris

  CLR James - 1937 - « Trotskysme »
  Lénine, qui n’était ni Dieu ni Staline, a commis une grave erreur en s’opposant pendant douze ans à la théorie de Trotsky de la Révolution permanente. Il pensait que la Révolution russe allait libérer le capitalisme russe, mettre la bourgeoisie russe au pouvoir. Dans ses « deux tactiques », il le dit une douzaine de fois. Par exemple, il écrit : « Les marxistes sont absolument convaincus du caractère bourgeois de la Révolution russe. Qu’est-ce que ça (…)

• Notes on Dialectics: PART II The Hegelian Logic C L R James on Hegel
  14 March 2009

  The Doctrine of Being
  PRELIMINARY EXERCISES
  You know, as I propose to myself to begin the actual Logic, I feel a slight chill. The Doctrine of Being. Harris, who ultimately wrote a very fine work on the Hegelian Logic, was a professor of philosophy and lecturer on Hegel at second-hand. Brockmeyer, Governor of Missouri, made a translation of the larger Logic and someone gave it to Harris. Harris says that he copied out the thing with his own hand, the whole thing, and when he was (…)

• Les jacobins noirs, CLR James
  7 novembre 2008, par Robert Paris

  Les Jacobins noirs, par C.L.R. James.
  Préface de l’auteur (1938)
  En 1789, les deux tiers du commerce extérieur de la France se faisaient avec sa colonie antillaise de Saint-Domingue, laquelle représentait le plus grand marché de la traite européenne des esclaves. La plus grosse colonie du monde, fierté de la France et objet de convoitise de toutes les autres nations impérialistes, faisait partie intégrante de la vie économique d’alors. Tout cet ensemble reposait sur le labeur d’un (…)