For a long period - ever since the 1955 split between Johnson (C.L.R. James) and Forest (Raya Dunayevskaya) which was immanent in James' studied silence on the 1953 letters on the "Absolute Idea"1 - Johnson has been rewriting the history and development of the theory of state-capitalism in the U.S. On the whole, we have taken no notice of it, as the Record spoke for itself.2 This record, however, is unknown to the new generation of revolutionaries. One former SDS grouping (Radical America) that is moving to Marxism has undertaken its journey by hiding James' record. (See Radical America 11/12/71, not to mention the ads for Tendency documents, such as State-Capitalism and World Revolution, which James has republished under his own name.)
To set the record straight, we publish, below: I - "Radical America Starts its Marxist Path by Rewriting History"; II - the 1958 Letters I wrote when C.L.R. James' Facing Reality was first published as having been written by Grace C. Lee, Pierre Chaulieu3 and J.R. Johnson; and III - the letter I recently wrote to a professor who had asked me to comment on James' 1948 "Notes on the Dialectic". Setting the record straight has never been only a question of correction of mistakes. It has always involved a method of thought, the dialectic or self-movement which emerges precisely because it cannot be held in isolation from the totality which gives action its direction. Like the class nature of a phenomenon, the mode of thought determines the inseparability of philosophy and revolution. To attempt to separate these by speaking abstractions, as do the Johnsonite authors when they speak of the end of "a" philosophy (Facing Reality, pp. 65-70) as if Marxists are interested in any philosophy but that of dialectics is to doom that method of thought (empiric) even as the factual errors doom its "historicity".
July, 1972
- R.D.
In announcing its conversion to Marxism, Radical America (11/12/71) set its goal as nothing short of "the creation of a view adequate to modern conceptions - the whole of modern life - pointing toward a conception of the world which Marxism since Marx's time has almost completely lacked..." (p. 2) To Make up for this 100-year lack, we are presented with James' "all-sided theory and practice ... the breadth of James' labor from the American working class to critic, from Lenin to literature." Fearing that any narrow-minded American may not think cricket a way to revolution here or in England or the whole of what was the British Empire, the editors hurry to assure us that "Here we offer a more specifically political selection reflecting James' status as a major Third World Marxist theorist..." (p. 3) The "specifically political selection" consists, mainly of the publication of an unpublished 1967 document, titled "Peasants and Workers" as proof of just how far in advance of "Western Marxism" is the work of C.L.R. James, "more than the work of any other living figure." (p. 2). Black Jacobins is cited.
Young Radical America may have read only the 1963, revised edition of Black Jacobins, which finds striking similarities between Cuba, 1959 and Haiti, 1970, and judge C.L.R. James to be a "Third World Theorist". But Black Jacobins was originally published in 1938 when CLRJ was a proud Trotskyist - that is to say, the work was researched and written in a "Western Marxist" context. It took him a quarter of a century to make his discoveries. For the sake of argument, we will grant him the right to predate them to 1938. But how does the fact that he has a right to his discoveries, his development, his re-interpretation of the Haitian Revolution, give him the right also not only to rewrite his interpretation of the 1917 Russian Revolution, but also its history? And, to climax it all, to transform that world-shaking proletarian revolution into the type of peasant mass activity that, at one and the same time, reverts back to the 18th century and much, much earlier, then gallops into the future - so that, in 1917, they acted out his 1967 triple vision?
Such magical feats would hardly interest us if thereby Radical America didn't help James rewrite the history and theory of the state-capitalist tendency of which I was co-founder, and which, over the period 1941-51 was know as the Johnson-Forest Tendency. To set the record straight, we must look at the Big Lie as it unfolds in 1971-72.
The prefatory paragraph to "C.L.R. James, I: PEASANTS AND WORKERS" reads: "The following consists of two major excerpts from 'The Gathering Forces', written in 1967 as a draft for a document to appear on the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Never published, this abortive document was to be the third major statement of James' group (following State-Capitalism and World Revolution in 1949, and Facing Reality in 1958)." (p. 5)
First of all, as is well know except, evidently, to Radical America, there was no such thing as a "James' group" and not merely because James used the pseudonym of Johnson, but, mainly, pivotally, because, as the historic record shows, two (two, not one) individuals - J.R. Johnson and Freddie Forest (who first used the pseudonym Freddie James4) - enunciated, in two different localities, New York and Washington, D.C., the formulation of a new political tendency, the tendency which enunciated the theory of state-capitalism. As it happened - and this, in its way, shows that it was not the result of a joint discussion - the first article, by each of the founders of the state-capitalist tendency bore the same title: "Russia is a State-Capitalist Society". (Workers Party Discussion Bulletin, 1941).
Secondly, since at the first convention of the WP, the state-capitalist tendency only got one and a half votes, and since the WP then assigned5 Johnson to do some organizational work in Missouri, Forest was to concentrate her research work in the Slavic Division of the Library of Congress on the economic nature of Russia in order not to leave the debates on the class nature of that state to be only political. It soon became clear that economics, as well as politics, did not exhaust the ramification of "the Russian Question."
(I remember, for example, way back then, making on sight translations from the Russian material at the Library of Congress both from Marx's Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts and Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks. See attached letter on C.L.R. James' "Notes on the Dialectic").
Thirdly, even when the Tendency did grow, had a "grouping", it, for good and substantial and principled reasons, having nothing to do with whether James or Johnson was the "real" name of the founder, called itself the Johnson-Forest Tendency. This became fact in 1945 in the WP, persisted after the Tendency broke with the WP and returned to the Socialist Workers Party in 1947, and indeed, reached its high point as theory in 1950, when the Johnson-Forest Tendency handed in to the SWP the summation of its position under the title of State-Capitalism and World Revolution.
Now, then, if Radical America wishes to be known as "James' group", that, of course, is its business. Since, however, we are informed that "RA will now seek the next logical step in its development: the combining of the full implications of a methodological critique with the class critique" (p. 2), it should at least inform itself of the fact that "the second major statement of the positions of the James' group" - Facing Reality - (a) was not the logical step from State-Capitalism and World Revolution; (b) came after the Tendency split and the rewriting of its origin and development began, as witness its Appendix; and (c) was the most glaring contradiction within the Facing Reality Grouping which has yet to face reality.
(See my 1958 Letters. Actually, all anyone has to do to gauge the depth of the philosophic divide separating James and Dunayevskaya is to set that most ambivalent pamphlet, Facing Reality, signed jointly with the unacknowledged bureaucratic collectivist, Pierre Chaulieu, alongside Marxism and Freedom: from 1776 until Today).
As for the "third major statement" which RA so proudly prints because it is supposed to prove their claim to James' work being "more than the work of any other living figure", the new Marxism, that, too, was produced after still another split, this time with the co-author of "the second major statement", and precisely, it should be added, because of "Third World" questions in general and the Black dimension in particular which James now raises as pivotal, but which, earlier, had led to the split between C.L.R. James and Grace Lee.
We will not tarry at the question: Why should a journal like Radical America, concerned with the most up-to-date modern conceptions, center its 11/12/71 issue around something written in 1967? And why should a document, written at the height of Mao's "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution", when a genuinely revolutionary opposition to Mao from within China (Shen Wu-lien) has arisen, not concern itself with that magnificent spontaneous concrete revolt from below, but, instead, pontificate about "the bewildering profundities of Chairman Mao". I will, however, say that one hundred and sixty years before the 1967 pronunciamento, that profound analyst of such artificers, Hegel, had the right word for such writings: "darkness of thought mated to the clearness of expression".
Now then, what is the new for 1972 that RA found so well stated in 1967 that it excerpted it for its readers? Here is what the unpublished "Gathering Forces" states in its key section, "Peasants and Workers": "For us who celebrate the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, this political emergence of the Third World is a culmination of what emerged from theory into reality in 1917." (p. 7) To create the spirit adequate to this revelation, we had been told in the Introduction (p. 3); "James expresses the intimacy of the relations of workers and peasants across thousands of miles by showing the .direct relevance of Hegel's 'Slave-Master Relationship'... "for which James here (p.27) holds out fantastic claims: "The life and death struggle that Hegel talks of appears In the bitter character of peasant wars from those In Germany in the 16th century to the guerrilla struggles in Latin America and Vietnam, today,"
C.L.R, James proceeds to roam all over the world, from Germany In the 16th century, through England, 1640-1648, where not only the yeoman farmers but the role of the leader of the army, Oliver Cromwell, is stressed mightily (p.27), on to France in 1789, Russia 1917, and China 1927 - at which point, the "bewildering profundities of Chairman Mao" notwithstanding, we are solemnly told: "Mao Tse-tung was theoretically unprepared for the intricacies of the agrarian question," (p. 33) What is the upshot of this globe-trotting through the centuries ? The generalization turns to the African continent: "Africa is in many ways key to the understanding of the role of the peasants in a world in transition." (p.35) Lest any one, however, conclude from this the advanced stage of consciousness of the modern peasant, CLRJ instead singles out a most disgusting male-chauvinist remark from a Tanganyikan whom he quotes as having said, "All these reasons combine to compel the rural African to return to the rural areas 'where men are men and women are proud of them,'" (p.39)
Enough lies are now being told about Africa that gained Its freedom by its own hands and lives and thoughts Without having C.L.R. James add his bit of rewriting and "original" discoveries. Instead of writing of Tanzania as if such male chauvinist quotations characterized it, why not tell the truly new of Tanzania which is not the sending of rural Africans to rural areas for such purposes, but the sending of city leaders to the villages for ujaama? The great African women are hardly limiting their role to being "proud" of others rather than being themselves shapers of history.
Ah, but that might leave no room for creating still another myth, that of James as "a figure of enormous stature in the expression of notions that were to be encompassed in the African anti-colonial struggles." (p.3) There is no end to the RA editors' discoveries as the introduction puts them: "Along with Du Bois, George Padmore, and a handful of others, James was a figure of enormous stature in the expression of notions that were to be encompassed in the African anti-colonial struggles." Not only that, but out of nowhere, we are suddenly assured that Soledad Brother is "a vindication of James' own theoretical method... More important, the valorous existence of George Jackson is the best evidence of James' conclusion that we have reached perhaps (I love that word, perhaps, there, just there ... rd) a 'decisive and final stage' in the world revolutionary process," (p.4)
As for James' own analysis of George Jackson's book, he writes that "The letters are in my opinion the most remarkable political documents that have appeared inside or outside the United States since the death of Lenin". (p.54)
Be that as it might, the point that needs proving is James' "enormous stature". I dare say it is too much to expect such stratospheric fly-by-night flying as RA practices to pay attention to anything so "non-dialectical" as an empiric fact, but "ordinary" human beings may appreciate some simple facts. One is that the only particle of a grain of truth in that "along with Du Bois, George Padmore..." is that, in the mid-1930's, when James joined the Trotskyist movement in England, we were all fighting against Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia. A committee was organized by Padmore and James to that end. By the time, however, that Halle Selassie reached England, the queen, herself, was prepared to meet the emperor.6 The point is that, in trying to play up the character of the "Third World" theoretician, not alone is not a word said about Ethiopia or Emperor Haile Selassie, but, more importantly, what is also skipped over, is that James was very far removed from the African struggles in the mid-1940's. This was when the Pan-African Congress, with Nkrumah7 in London, moved away from DuBois' elitist Pan-Africanism and toward genuine mass reliance. When, by 1953, James informed Padmore he was returning to England, he got the cold reply that his new "American way of life" would hardly fit into the present concerns of Africans and West Indians in England.8
The points at issue remain, (1) whether the third "major statement" (in nearly a quarter of a century!) has anything fundamental to do with "the first', State-Capitalism and World Revolution (which I deny); and (2) why is the reader not given any explanation of why "this abortive document" of 1967 was "never published"? Was that when the split occurred with Grace Lee who penned the second document? And, if so, why is this not noted? Or did it signify the beginning of the disintegration of Facing Reality which never has faced reality? Or is this a matter of a new absorption - into Radical America? One might ask who is absorbing whom? And where, in this, are "Friends of Facing Reality" who continue with still an older facet, the 1948 "Nevada Document", now republished as "Notes on Dialectics: Hegel and Marxism"?
Clearly, for those who reduce Thought, Tendency, Dialectics, to the Thought of One (C.L.R. James) dialectic unity, much less history, may mean nothing. But to us, the historic record Is the essence, because the birth of a state-capitalist analysis of both Russia and the world at the outbreak of World War II, when Trotskyism tail-ended Stalinism is an historic event we will not see sullied.
March 15, 1972
-- Raya Dunayevskaya
1 See Letters on the Absolute Idea, May 12 and May 20, 1953 (Republished by News & Letters, June 1971)
2 The documents, as originally published, are on deposit with the Wayne State University Labor History Archives, under title, "The Raya Dunayevskaya Collection", which carries the documentation through to the split or Johnson and Forest, and the establishment of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S. as News & Letters Committees.
3 I should also report that Pierre Chaulieu denied having either written or signed that document. C.L.R. James is expert both at naming authors who aren't and not naming authors who are. (See how my analysis "The Nature of the Russian Economy" is listed on p. 169, sans authorship).
4 When I discovered Johnson's real name, I promptly changed mine to Forest, but I couldn't do it before submitting my discussion piece, as I was unaware of the other's document.
5 The new James myth about joust how he come to work in Missouri makes it necessary to underline that word, assign. Not only did he not go there because of his position on the "peasantry", not to mention the "Third World", but when he stopped in Washington on the way to St. Louis, we interpreted that "Shachtmanite assignment" as a way to keep James from being at the center, able to organize a "grouping", and to keep us two apart, now that we knew we had the same political position.
6 See Hooker's biography of Padmore, Black Revolutionary; George Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism. On the question of Du Bois, see my "Negro Intellectuals in Dilemma" (New International, 1943, reprinted in News & Letters Feb, 1961, On George Jackson, see "Nixon and Mao Aim to Throttle Social Revolution" N&L report, 1971. Consult also my Nationalism, Communism, Marxist-Humanism and the Afro-Asian Revolutions, 1959, 1961.
7 By now, from Montreal to Ann Arbor, wherever James can find some who, knowingly or unknowingly, help in the rewriting of history, a tale is told of just how close CLRJ was with Nkrumah, and who introduced whom into the "intricacies" of every question from underground activities to... But the simple fact is that I met Nkrumah when he came to my defense during a Harlem discussion on "A World View of the Negro" where the speaker, Dr. W.E.B. DuBois (who was then still NAACP educational director and about to appeal to the to-be-born UN on behalf of "the educated" in Africa) criticised me - "the lady is obviously a Marxist" -- as if that, in itself, "proved" how wrong was my revolutionary view against the UN. I introduced Nkrumah to CLRJ who introduced him to... etc., etc. What the heck has any of this to do with what actually happened in Ghana, and with Nkrumah's development once he gained power?
8 Let the archivists who are so busy going back to cricket and all that James did before he became a Marxist find that letter. It is true that James and Padmore "made up" by the time the Gold Coast became Ghana and James was Secretary of a nationalist party in Trinidad, but all that is a very different story.