The Audacity of the Organic Intellectual

Abstract

This essay suggests that almost fifty years after its publication, James Boggs's The American Revolution is still being celebrated because it challenges us to recognize that the analyses and projections of Karl Marx about the role of the working class were made in the nineteenth century, a period of scarcity, and that Boggs's book, written during a period of abundance, represents doing for our time what Marx did for his. Suggesting that Boggs had the courage to write this book because he was an organic intellectual, this essay stresses the importance of thinking dialectically in order to avoid producing calcified ideas.

Keywords:

• C. L. R. James
• fixed notions
• James Boggs
• thinking dialectically