Rakesh on C.L.R. James

[Apsken at aol.com]

Rakesh wrote, "1. CLR James' defense of separate, but not separatist, black
politics was elaborated in certain historical conditions, i.e., an apartheid
America. Does his defense hold in the present conditions? For the CLR
Jamesians it's surprisingly undialectical to take James' formulations from the
1940s and apply them to contemporary America."

C.L.R. James developed a much firmer pro-nationalist position in the late
1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, from the time he was readmitted to the United States,
spending considerable time with DRUM/League of Revolutionary Black Workers
activists in Detroit and RAM members in Chicago, then later as a professor at
Federal City College in Washington, until his return to the U.K. (Afterward,
he continued this stance in correspondence with his followers, and with those
of us who visited him at the Race Today center in Brixton, up to the time of
his death. I think Rakesh cannot conceive that Marxists learn except by
studying yellowed pamphlets from the old days.) It was evident to C.L.R. that
autonomous movements of the oppressed (recall that his wife Selma was a
leading theoretician of the women's movement) had the greatest revolutionary
potential, and more so than when he had held the discussions with Trotsky in
Mexico and when he had drafted the WP and SWP resolutions.

Ken Lawrence