![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
This essay describes the evolution of James Boggs's thinking during the decade leading up to the publication of his book The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's Notebook in 1963. The essay focuses on ideological differences between Boggs and C. L. R. James when they were leaders of Correspondence, a small political organization that James had founded. These differences, which revolved around Marxist theory and the revolutionary agency of the American working class and the black struggle during the 1950s and early 1960s, reveal Boggs's increasing challenge to Marxism and articulation of new theoretical spaces that would undergird his unique analysis of Black Power and mark the next stage of his intellectual and political career. The essay begins by outlining the organizational and political context in which these debates between James Boggs and C. L. R. James occurred. Then it examines the two primary moments of their debate—the first in 1956–57 and the second in 1961–62—revealing both the theoretical and political contexts out of which Boggs produced The American Revolution. In tracing Boggs's thinking in relation to and in conflict with C. L. R. James, the essay also helps to situate James Boggs and his contributions to black thought within the larger history of black radicalism.
Notes
C. L. R. James, “Black Power,” in The C. L. R. James Reader, ed. Anna Grimshaw (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 62.
Ibid., 367.
“Remarks by James Boggs on ‘The Political Economy of Black Power’ by Ray Franklin, Socialist Scholars Conference, New York, September 10, 1967,” James and Grace Lee Boggs Papers, Box 3, folder 14, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
This essay originally appeared in the April and May 1967 issues of the black radical magazine Liberator. It was subsequently published in Boggs's 1970 book Racism and the Class Struggle: Further Pages from a Black Worker's Notebook. The essay is also included in Stephen M. Ward, ed., Pages from a Black Radical's Notebook: A James Boggs Reader (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011): 171–179. The quotation appears at 174.
Ward, Pages from a Black Radical's Notebook, 7–8. For more on Boggs's background, see Taj Robeson Frazier's essay in this issue.
Ibid., 8–18.
Letter dated November 5, 1956, with no signature or addressee, Glaberman Papers, Box 5, Folder 6 (emphasis in original). Read in the context of the other letters, this can be identified as written by C. L. R. James. The top of the letter says copies have been or are to be sent to “Sh,” “Th,” and “Neff,” which are references to Sherman (Glaberman), Thompson (Grace), and Lyman Paine. James struck the same tone in a letter to Glaberman dated December 13, 1956: “I want to repeat, and I say so because it will take you some time to understand; the Hungarian Revolution is the greatest political event since the October Revolution of 1917.” C. L. R. James to Martin Glaberman, December 13, 1956, Glaberman Papers, Box 5, Folder 7.
J (C. L. R. James) to Friends, November 15, 1956, p. 3, Glaberman Papers, Box 5, Folder 6. This is a letter from C. L. R. James to members of the organization in the United States. It includes a copy of a letter from Grace (signed Thompson) to James on November 10, 1956. James's statement cited here is from a postscript that he wrote at the end of Grace's letter.
J (C. L. R. James) to Friends, November 15, 1956.
Jim to J (James Boggs to C. L. R. James), November 28, 1956, Glaberman Papers, Box 5, Folder 6. All quotations in this paragraph are from this letter.
Ibid. All quotations in this paragraph are from this letter.
Ibid.
Kent Worcester, C. L. R. James: A Political Biography (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 119. C. L. R.'s friend Richard Wright had visited Ghana in 1953 to observe and write about the independence movement, resulting in Wright's book Black Power.
Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (New York: International Publishers, 1957), 281–283; Kwame Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom (London: Panaf Books, 1973 [1961]), 64–69; June Milne, Kwame Nkrumah: A Biography (London: Panaf Books, 2006 [1999]), 75.
C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1989). The quotations cited here appear in the unpaginated “Preface to the Vintage Edition.” The final pages of the study to which James refers are 375–377.
C. L. R. James to Friends, February 10, 1957, Glaberman Papers, Box 5, Folder 9.
C. L. R. James to Martin Glaberman, December 13, 1956, Glaberman Papers, Box 5, Folder 7.
C. L. R. James to Martin Glaberman, February 8, 1957, Glaberman Papers, Box 5, Folder 9.
James was still recovering from an illness that had slowed down his writing of the Hungary pamphlet. Nkrumah said that his government would pay for C. L. R.'s passage to and from Ghana and also host him as a guest of the government. Nonetheless, C. L. R. indicated in letters to the American group that there would be other expenses incurred. Lyman Paine subsequently agreed to cover these expenses.
C. L. R. James to Martin Glaberman, February 8, 1957.
J to Friends (C. L. R. James to Martin Glaberman), February 18, 1957, Glaberman Papers, Box 5, Folder 9.
J (C. L. R. James) to Friends March 3, 1957, Glaberman Papers, Box 5, Folder 10.
C. L. R. James to Everybody, March 20, 1957, Glaberman Papers, Box 5, Folder 10. All quotations in this paragraph are from this letter (emphasis in original).
James, using Boggs's old alias from the Johnson-Forest Tendency, quietly acknowledged this fact with this parenthetical statement: “I want Heinz to note this particularly.” James also singled Boggs out on a related point: “I shall expect from you all and from Heinz in particular a statement as to what is the attitude of the American Negroes in particular to Ghana.” The surviving letters show no reply or response from Boggs on either of these points. These two quotations and all quotations in this paragraph are from C. L. R. James to Everybody, March 20, 1957.
C. L. R. James to Friends, March 21, 1957, Glaberman Papers, Box 5, Folder 10.
C. L. R. James to Friends, March 25, 1957, Glaberman Papers, Box 5, Folder 10. This letter has been published in at least two collections of work by and on C. L. R. James: Grimshaw, The C. L. R. James Reader; and Paul Buhle (ed.), C. L. R. James: His Life and Work (London: Allison & Busby, 1987). These publications provide a valuable contribution by making this letter widely available, however a much fuller meaning of the letter can best be gained by reading it alongside the many letters, housed in the Glaberman Papers, exchanged between James and his American comrades during the spring of 1957.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. All quotations in this paragraph are from this letter.
Facing Reality, 24.
Ibid., 27.
“Tide of Afro-American Nationalism Is Rising in the United States,” Correspondence, April 8, 1961.
Grace Lee Boggs to C. L. R. James, January 13, 1961 (mistyped as January 31), Glaberman Papers, Box 6, Folder 8.
Marty Glaberman to C. L. R. James, January 25, 1961, Glaberman Papers, Box 6, Folder 8.
James Boggs to Friends, December 30, 1961, Glaberman Papers, Box 6, Folder 12.
Marty Glaberman to C. L. R. James, September 10, 1961, Glaberman Papers, Box 6, Folder 11.
Marty Glaberman to Freddy Paine, November 11, 1961, Glaberman Papers, Box 6, Folder 12.
C. L. R. James to Marty Glaberman, February 11, 1961, Glaberman Papers, Box 6, Folder 13.
C. L. R. James to Grace Lee Boggs, November 20, 1961, Glaberman Papers, Box 6, Folder 13.
C. L. R. James to Secretary, Resident Editorial Board, January 15, 1962, Glaberman Papers, Box 6, Folder 13.
Martin Glaberman (ed.), Marxism for Our Times: C. L. R. James on Revolutionary Organization (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999).