C.L.R. James

Year Published:  1990
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX3847

Abstract: 
C.L.R. James, a political activist, novelist, cricket writer, Marxist intellectual and revolutionary, has died in Trinidad at the age of 88. As a young man in Trinidad, James wrote short stories, a book in favour of Trinidadian independence, and the acclaimed novel Minty Alley. A cricket player, he became the cricket writer for the Manchester Guardian when he moved to England in 1932. His Beyond a Boundary is considered a classic book on cricket. In England, he also wrote The Black Jacobins, a history of the Haitian revolution, and World Revolution, a history of the Comintern. Politically, James became a leading figure in the Trotskyist movement, and was became editor of the journal International African Opinion. In 1938, James came to the United States, where he was active in radical politics until he was forced out of the country during the McCarthy period in 1953. His most lasting political work was as part of the Marxist group Facing Reality, which argued that the Soviet Union was an extreme form of oppression that negated Marxian ideas of socialism.