James, C.L.R.
Recommended Author Index

Clicking on the title of an item takes you to the bibliographic page for the resource, which typically also contains an abstract, a link to the full text if it is available online, and links to related topics in the subject index. You can find items through the Title, Author, Subject, Chronological, Dewey, Library of Congress, and Format indexes.
Particularly recommended items are flagged with a red Connexions logo:

  1. After Ten Years
    On Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1946
  2. Beyond a Boundary 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1963   Published: 1983
    Part memoir of a boyhood in a black colony (by one of the founders of African nationalism), part passionate celebration of the game of cricket, this book raises serious questions about race, class, politics, and the realities of colonial oppression.
  3. The Black Jacobins 
    Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1938   Published: 1963
    An account of the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803.
  4. 'Civilising' the 'Blacks'; Why Britain needs to Maintain Her African Possessions
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1936
    Africans must win their own freedom. Nobody will win it for them. They need co-operation, but that co-operation must be with the revolutionary movement in Europe and Asia. There is no other way out. Each movement will neglect the other at its peril.
  5. Dialectic and History
    An Introduction
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1947
    A pamphlet extracted from James' essay Dialcetical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity, originally published in 1947.
  6. Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1947
    There is no philosophy of history without Marxism, and there can be no Marxism without the dialectic.
  7. Every Cook Can Govern 
    A Study of Democracy in Ancient Greece: Its Meaning for Today
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1956
    Modern parliamentary democracy elects representatives and these representatives constitute the government. Before the democracy came into power, the Greeks had been governed by various forms of government, including government by representatives. The democracy knew representative government and rejected it. It refused to believe that the ordinary citizen was not able to perform practically all the business of government.
  8. The Future in the Present
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1980
  9. A History of Pan-African Revolt
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1938   Published: 2012
    Originally published in England in 1938 and expanded in 1969, this work isa classic account of global Black resistance. This concise, accessible history of revolts by African peoples worldwide explores the wide range of methods used by Africans to resist oppression and the negative effects of imperialism and colonization as viewed in the 20th century.
  10. C.L.R. James Quotes
    Resource Type: Unclassified
  11. James, C.L.R. - Writings - Index
    Resource Type: Article
    Writings of C.L.R. James (1901-1989).
  12. Lenin and the Vanguard Party
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1963
    To believe that Bolshevism, or to be more precise, Leninism, would under the circumstances advocate or preach the theory of the vanguard party is to continue slander of Leninism, but not to his theory of the party (that is no longer viable) but to his central doctrine - the role of the proletariat in the preservation of society from barbarism. To interpret Leninism as the advocacy of a vanguard party of three million is nearly as bad as the doctrine of Goebbels that Christ was not a Jew. Objective circumstances in Russia forced Lenin into a certain position. He accepted it without apologising for it. He knew what he was doing and he knew also, for he said it many times, what he was not doing. His doubts about it, not only for other countries but for Russia, he made public many, many times.
  13. Lenin, Trotsky and the Vanguard Party
    A Contemporary View
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1963   Published: 1964
  14. Modern Politics
    Resource Type: Book
  15. Notes on Dialectics (Hegel, Marx, Lenin)
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1948   Published: 1980
    James believes that an understanding of Hegel's Logic is essential to an understanding of Marxism.
  16. The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the USA
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1948
    The impetus of the Negro movement toward the revolutionary forces, which we have traced in the past, is stronger today than ever before.
  17. The Right of Self-Determination and the Negro in the United States of North Americas
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1939
  18. State Capitalism and World Revolution
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1950   Published: 1986
    The great organisations of the masses of the people and of workers in the past were not worked out by any theoretical elite or vanguard. They arose from the experience of millions of people and their need to overcome the intolerable pressures which society had imposed upon them for generations.
  19. They Showed the Way to Labor Emancipation
    On Karl Marx and the 75th Anniversary of the Paris Commune
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1946
    Marx drew a great theoretical conclusions from the experience of the Commune. He showed that the capitalist army, the capitalist state, the capitalist bureaucracy, cannot be seized by the revolutionary proletariat and used for its own purposes. It had to be smashed completely and a new state organized, based upon the organization of the working class.
  20. World Revolution 1917-1936
    The Rise and Fall of the Communist International
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1937
    No major economic or political development in Russia, and few of the minor ones, can be understood, except in relation to the strength of the revolutionary movement in Western Europe, so long dominated by the Third International.