CLR James: grant to document his life

[ALB]

Charity receives £70,000 grant to document the life of C.L.R. James

I wonder how they will handle his Trotskyism in the 1930s and his coming to the view in the 1940s that Russia was a form of state capitalism, i.e not socialism nor a "Workers State", and his abandoning of the idea of a vanguard party in the 1950s.

He knew of the Party and was due to debate us for the Trotskyists in the 1930s but it never came off (at least not with him as their speaker). He did mention us not sneeringly in a footnote to his book on World Revolution for making the point that Marx (and he said Lenin) did not make a distinction between socialism and communism.

[Anonymous]

CLR James rejected the Vanguard Party concept ,but he never rejected Leninism completely. He kept most of the others distortions that Lenin made to Marxism and socialism. In order to break with Trotskyism completely you must also reject Leninism completely,We must remember that in 1923 Lenin adopted the theory of the permanent revolution elaborated by Leon Trotsky, and that theory is one of the basic components of Bolshevismhttp://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1963/lenin-vanguard.htm  In this article of CLR James shows that he did not have a clear concept about the vanguard party, or he had mixed conception about it,  because the vanguard party concept is one of the basic component of Bolshevism, and the idea was taken from Ferdinand Lasalle and  the Second International.He had the same point of view of all the Trotskyists  that socialism in Russia was reversed by Stalinism, and the Maoist and Hoxhaist claimed that it was reversed by the KruschovitesEven that Lenin  expressed that What is to be done?  was only applicable to Russia, and some Leninist claim that he was not going to re-publish again,  it became one of the textbook of Bolshevism, and it was used by all the Communist Parties that were members of the Third International This was the view of the Socialist Party in regarding to Lenin  What is to be done ? http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2002/no-1179-november-2002/what-we-should-not-do.His view about the Soviet Union being a state capitalist nation was correct but  the date when it started  is wrong because state capitalism was established since the very beginning in 1917, and it was not in 1930 by the so called counter-revolution within the revolution

[Anonymous]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1986/11/revhis-interview.htmThis interview made to CLR James indicates how he became a Trotskyists. We can see that since the very beginning he started on the wrong foot.  and since the very beginning he had a wrong conception about socialism and Marxism. It confirms that whoever departs from the experience of the Soviet Union will always  have wrong conclusions and wrong applications

[ALB]

There were about 200 there. It was organised by the ex-Living Marxism people from the ex-RCP now calling themselves the Instutute of Ideas. They now no longer pretend to be socialists but dedicate themselves to defending the universal humanist ideals of the 18th century Enlightenment against the post-modernists and advocates and practioners of identity politics. So James was held up not as a role model for black people but as a "humanist" and "modernist" who had absorbed and propagated the ideals of the Enlightenment.Much of the discussion was taken up with what should be the "canon" of English literature as taught in schools and universities. The panel (except one) was in favour of everyone studying the same thing, not Jews "Jewish Studies", black people "Black studies" or women "Women's studies". Sounds a good idea, but not everyone in the audience seemed to agree.Obviously cricket came in. I hadn't realised that until 1960 the West Indian touring teams always had a white man as captain. You live and learn.So did his political views. James was described as "a lifelong Marxist" and his writings from his Trotskyist and post-Trotskyist periods were on sale. I bought a copy of his State Capitalism and World Revolution.The meeting was filmed and I was one of those who was interviewed afterwards about what we thought of the meeting. I said that the only "cannon" I'd heard of was in billiards, that I didn't read English literature and hated Shakespeare but liked James's views on state capitalism in Russia and was against his picture appearing on the Brixton pound as he was ultimately for a society without money. It might appear on their site but, don't worry, I didn't say I was from the Party so we won't all come across as philistines.

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