The
Legacy of CLR James
The following article was written for an on-line discussion of CLR
James' book Facing Reality. It has been edited
for publication here.
. . . When Martin Glaberman died in Detroit last year, it was in
many ways the end of a tradition. Marty often referred to himself as
an "unreconstructed Johnsonite" and given that James died some 12
years previously, he could reasonably claim to be the last survivor
of the tradition. Despite some impressive publications and a working
class orientation and readership that many left groups would envy,
the Johnson-Forrest tendency never built a large organization. At its
peak the group was little more than one hundred people. The split
between James and Dunayevskaya in the mid-50's saw the latter take
over half of the organization (about sixty people) to found the still
existing News & Letters group. In 1962, the tendency was further
reduced when founding member Grace Boggs and some of her supporters
split away taking the name correspondence. The remaining members
continued until 1970, when at a conference Marty moved dissolution of
the group, over James' objections.
In his introduction to James' Marxism for Our Times,
Marty wrote that organizationally the James tendency was a failure;
however, it was a failure that was rich in lessons for a democratic
revolutionary Marxism.
Is this a reason to read James? In reading Facing Reality
the book's strengths and weaknesses still jump out. In her
autobiography Living for Change, Grace Boggs wrote that
the book was pure James in its "celebration of spontaneous rebellion
and its insistence that the mail role of socialist revolutionaries is
to recognize and record the rebellions of ordinary working people." A
not entirely accurate characterization in my opinion. Boggs confessed
to doubts, but signed her name anyway. The other author was even less
pleased by the final product. Cornelius Castoriadis (Pierre Chaulieu)
of Socialisme ou Barbarie wrote the section "The Marxist Organization
Today," which was subsequently edited without his knowledge or
permission. In "For a New Orientation," written in October 1962,
Castoriadis wrote of James' claim that socialism already exists in
the factory, "if the socialist society already existed, people would
probably have noticed."
Facing Reality is an often maddening book containing
a marvellous critique of the pretentiousness of the numerous little
vanguards, and at other times a telling naivety about opposition
forces in society. James' praise of the shop stewards' movement in
Britain must bring a smile to anyone who has studied the rank
and file' oppositions so beloved by organizations like Labor
Notes.
Likewise, the generally soft approach to the unions. Although the
Johnsonites were aware of the role of the unions, and Marty Glaberman
wrote very powerfully on this question, they also believed that they
were working class organizations which could still be used by the
working class. But perhaps the worst passages were the fawning over
Nkrumah. James' comments are worth quoting:
In one of the most remarkable episodes in revolutionary
history he [Nkrumah] singlehandedly outlined a program, based
on the ideas of Marx, Lenin and Gandhi [!], for expelling
British imperialism from the Gold coast. (Facing
Reality 77-78)
Just a few short years later James became virtually a house
leftist for Eric Williams' People's National Movement, before his
conscience reasserted itself and led to house arrest. These latter
attitudes represent a part of the Johnsonites' incomplete break with
Leninism. Indeed, James referred to himself as a Leninist till the
end of his days.
Loren Goldner has pointed to a number of key strands in the book
and draws certain conclusions from them.
1. The use of Hegel
2. The one-party state as a stage in the development of capitalism
and the consequences for the Bolshevik model
3. The importance of the automation
4. The immediacy of revolution and the impediments to it.
I'd like here to concentrate on points one and three, but approach
them from a slightly different angle. Namely, one, What happened to
the working class? And two, the vanguard party.
Facing Reality contains much of the familiar
Johnsonite lyricism about the working class. Not that this is
surprising. Their 1946 document, The American Worker, set the stage
for postwar "councilism." An extremely worthwhile document, and which
taken with other material produced by Johnson-Forest expresses their
point of view as everywhere the working class chomping at the bit in
the struggle for socialism, held back only by trade unions and other
guardians of "workers' interests." This view is not so outlandish at
it now sounds. Nor was it unique to the Johnsonites.
Despite the cold war atmosphere of the 1950's and apparent
quintessence of the working class, it was a time of massive struggle.
In the United States the auto-wildcats that so humiliated Walter
Reuther, along with the emerging civil rights movement heralded the
beginnings over a decade of building working class struggle. The
Hungarian Revolution of 1956 seemed to prove Johnson- Forest's belief
that the working class could act without the vanguard. If the working
class in a Stalinist state could, without the wisdom' of a
party overthrow the existing social structures, why not in the more
materially advanced USA?
The view of permanent struggles was by no means unique to the
Johnsonites. The opening lines of Trotsky's Transitional
Program also claim that all the conditions are ripe for
revolution and all we need are good leaders to replace the bad. The
immediacy of Facing Reality seems mild when compared to
the apocalyptic writings of Trotsky prior to the Second World War.
Another case in point are some of the left communist organizations
such as the International Communist Current, who now claim capitalism
is in the process of decomposition.
So what happened? How did a self-confident working class throw
away its cards? Did the capitalists take into account the arguments
of Facing Reality? The answer to that question could
fill at least several books.
On the surface at least it would seem as if the working class has
suffered catastrophic defeats: A number of humiliating defeats such
as PATCO, Staley, Detroit, Liverpool. Hormel, to name only the best
known; the destruction of the unions and the rolling back of the
welfare state; the widespread de- industrialization of major
capitalist centres such as Detroit The list is seemingly endless.
While not wanting to underplay the seriousness of some of those
changes and the toll it has taken on the working class, I also want
to suggest that the picture is not simply as bad as the average
leftist makes out. I'm not suggesting in the form of the Polly-Anna
leftist that every strike is the revolution, but to look at class
struggle in a different way.
For those who measure class struggle by votes to social democracy
or by the sales of their own newspapers, the results of the last two
decades must be bleak indeed. But, that's not really an index of
class struggle. For an alternate method I would refer comrades to an
article by Curtis Price in the most recent issue of Collective
Action Notes entitled "Fragile
Prosperity, Fragile Peace" which takes into account the so-called
hidden transcript.
So, my disagreement with the Johnsonites is not their notion of
working class struggle, although I do think it is oversimplified at
times. In my opinion, one of the key strengths of the Johnsonite
tendency was their focus on the working class and their notion that
the working class was key to a revolution. All hands go up: Every
leftist group does that. I disagree. Most leftist groups pay lip
service to the idea of a working class revolution, but essentially
consider themselves to be the bringers of truth to backward
workers.'
I'm almost loathe to enter into a discussion on the question
of the vanguard party, since it seems to be an article of faith for
many people. While being more critical than James and Castoriadis of
the Hungarian Revolution I'd lean much more toward their
interpretation. I don't think the Hungarian Revolution would have
occurred had there been a vanguard any significance (and what does it
say about Lenin's theory that the revolution did occur without one?).
Furthermore to reduce the defeat of the revolution to the absence of
the vanguard party, as do so many Trotskyists, and not even to
mention the military power of the Russian army, is, well, missing the
point. It is certainly true that the Hungarian workers made mistakes
and were even naive in retrospect, but if you look at the Russian
workers who made their revolution, you will see mistakes, you will
see religious fanaticism and anti-Semitism. All sorts of backward
ideas. Marx noted that you make a revolution and that's how you
change people. If you wait for it to happen the other way, you'll be
waiting a long time.
I have a much lower opinion of Lenin than even James and company;
rather than being a Marxist, I see Lenin as a Russian populist
adopting a mixture of populism and Lassalle's ideas, via Kautsky.
It's instrumental that until his break with Kautsky Lenin never
sought to transfer his ideas to Germany, and thereafter regarded
Kautsky as a renegade (implying his earlier work was sound). For
those who point to Lenin's revision of his philosophical views and
especially his State and Revolution, there's also the
Lenin of one-man management, of Taylorism and the glory of a
"productivist Marxism." In State & Revolution Lenin
also admits his continued fondness for a model of socialism based on
the German postal system.
I don't want to suggest that the working class does not need
organization. In fact, organization and the ability to stop
production are the key strengths of the working class. However, I
would tend to agree with the Johnsonites and also with the late Stan
Weir who saw leadership developing organically out of existing
conditions. I also want to state that I don't see leadership stepping
fully formed like Athena out of the head of Zeus from a particular
struggle. The 1956 edition of State Capitalism and World
Revolution contained a preface signed by, among others
Castoriadis and Cajo Brendel, which stated
What type of new organizations do we propose? We do not
propose any. The great organizations of the masses of the people and
of workers in the past were not worked out by any theoretic elite or
vanguard. They arose from the experience of millions of people and
their need to overcome the intolerable pressure which society had
imposed upon them for generations.
N.F May 2002
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