Abstract
The article presents a critical reading of American Civilization, which C.L.R. James wrote between 1949 and 1950 and was published four years after his death in 1989. While the manuscript has been previously analysed for its contribution to cultural studies or interpreted as evincing his humanism − over-appreciative of American culture − the author here outlines his Marxist thought and politics. By placing James in the historical context of the scientific and political literature that marked his US moment (1938−1953), he explains that James pointed out how the US looked for a reactionary doctrine to suppress ‘the struggle for happiness’ of workers, blacks, and women by disciplining their labour and social relations within racial and sexual hierarchies. American Civilization not only brought to light an unexpected ‘antagonism of workers against work itself’, but, more importantly, outlined James’s revolutionary vision – today more relevant than ever – of the potential connection between workers, blacks and women’s antagonisms.
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References
1.
S. Hall, “A Conversation with C.L.R. James,” in Rethinking C.L.R. James , ed. G. Farred (Oxford, Blackwell, 1996), 40.
2.
See N. Pizzolato, Challenging Global Capitalism, Labor Migration, Radical Struggle, and Urban Change in Detroit and Turin (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 102–112; H. Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically [1979] (AK Press, 2000), 12–17, 59–63.
3.
See M. Renault, La Vie Révolutionnaire d’un Platon Noir (Paris: La Découverte, 2016); J. L. Williams, C.L.R. James: A Life beyond the Boundaries (Brown Books, 2022).
4.
See J. Scott, “The Americanisation of C. L. R. James,” Race & Class 60, no. 2 (2018): 3–20; C. Høgsbjerg, “Remembering C.L.R. James, Forgetting C.L.R. James,” Historical Materialism 17, no. 3 (2009): 221–34.
5.
See, for example, B. Schwarz, “C.L.R. James’s American Civilization ,” Atlantic Studies 2, no. 1 (2005): 15–43; F. Rosengarten, Urbane Revolutionary: C.L.R. James and the Struggle for a New Society (University Press of Mississippi, 2008), 210–19; B. St. Louis, Rethinking Race, Politics, and Poetics: C.L.R. James’ Critique of Modernity (Routledge, 2007), 121–58; A. Ross, “Civilization in One Country? The American James,” in Rethinking C.L.R. James , ed. G. Farred, 75–84; G. Jarrett, ““To Put It More Harshly Still:” The Intervention of C.L.R. James’s American Civilization ,” The CLR James Journal 6, no. 1 (1998): 36–60.
6.
L. Harris, “The Subjunctive Poetics of the Undocument: C.L.R. James’s American Civilization ,” Criticism 58, no. 2 (2016): 205–230.
7.
C. L. R. James, “Education, Propaganda, Agitation: Post-War America and Bolshevism,” in Marxism for Our Times . C.L.R. James on Revolutionary Organization, ed. M. Glaberman (University Press of Mississippi, 1999), 37.
8.
C. Høgsbjerg, ““That Dreadful Country”: C.L.R. James’s Early Thoughts on American Civilization,” Journal of American Studies 51, no. 1 (2017): 21–42.
9.
C. L. R. James, “Lessons of the International Strike Wave,” Fight 1, no. 7 (1937): 3, https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/fight/Fight%20v1%20no7.pdf.
10.
C. L. R. James, American Civilization (Blackwell, 1993), 240.
11.
James, American Civilization , 166.
12.
James, American Civilization , 111.
13.
For a Marxist like James, “antagonism” identifies the fundamental conflict between workers and the conditions of labour, between blacks and race relations, between women and social and family relations with men. This conflict establishes an irreconcilable opposition or struggle that is always present in social relations, even if it does not take organised, trade union or party form.
14.
James, American Civilization , 134.
15.
C. L. R. James, World Revolution 1917 –1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International (Secker & Warburg, 1937).
16.
See C. Høgsbjerg, C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).
17.
“The Black Scholar Interviews: C.L.R. James,” The Black Scholar 2, no. 1 (1970): 36–37. See J. Teelucksingh, “Black and Bold: Re-examining C.L.R. James and Pan-Africanism,” The C.L.R. James Journal 19, no. 1–2 (2013): 228–42.
18.
C. L. R. James, A History of Pan-African Revolt [1969] (PM Press, 2012), 57, https://files.libcom.org/files/c-l-r-james-a-history-of-panafrican-revolt-1.pdf.
19.
M. Renault, “Decolonizzare la Rivoluzione con C.L.R. James, o Cosa Fare con L’eurocentrismo?,” in Marx nei margini. Dal marxismo nero al femminismo postcoloniale , ed. M. Mellino and A. R. Pomella (Edizioni Alegre, 2020). See also C. Høgsbjerg, “The Red and the Black: C.L.R. James and the Historical Idea of World Revolution,” The C.L.R. James Journal 26, no. 1–2 (2020): 179–98.
20.
C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (Vintage Books, 1963), p. 283. See also T. Martin, “C.L.R. James and the Race/Class Question,” Race & Class 14, no. 2 (1972): 183–93; and M. Renault, “Pour une contre-généalogie de la Race. À propos de C.L.R. James,” Vacarme 71, no. 2 (2015): 24–43.
21.
In Letters on Politics , 20 March 1957, James wrote: “The African Revolution (as a process) is no longer to be seen as supplementary to or subordinate to the revolution in Western Europe.” In The CLR James’s Reader , ed. A. Grimshaw (Blackwell, 1992), p. 269. See also F. Gambino, “Only Connect,” in C.L.R. James. His Life and Work , ed. P. Buhle (Allison & Busby, 1986).
22.
During his detention, before he was deported, James wrote his book on Melville’s Moby Dick which, with American Civilization , was his most important US legacy.
23.
C. L. R. James, “The Place of the Negro is in the Vanguard,” Socialist Appeal 3, no. 76 (1939): 3, https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1939/10/negro2.htm.
24.
C. L. R. James, “Revolution and the Negro,” The New International 5, no. 12 (1939): 339, https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1939/12/negro-revolution.htm.
25.
James reconsidered the relationship between class and organisation, confronting the writings on dialectics of Hegel, Marx, and Lenin. C. L. R. James, Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin [1948] (Allison & Busby, 1980). See also K. Anderson, Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism: A Critical Study (Haymarket Books, 1995), 198–209.
26.
James, “The Historical Development of the Negro in the United States [1943],” in C.L.R. James on the “Negro Question” , ed. S. McLemee (University Press of Mississippi, 1996).
27.
C. L. R. James, “The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in US,” Fourth International 9, no. 8 (1948): 242–51, https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1948/07/meyer.htm. Emphasis in the original.
28.
See D. Roediger, An Ordinary White: My Antiracist Education (Fordham University Press, 2025), 101–102.
29.
James, “The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in US,” 242–51.
30.
All quotations in this section are taken from James, “The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in US,” 242–51.
31.
James cited Marx on the Civil War in “Negroes in the Civil War: Their Role in the Second American Revolution,” New International 9, no. 11 (1943): 338–42, https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1943/12/negroes-civil-war.htm. James’s reading of the Civil War was also indebted to W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935). See C. L. R. James, “Black Studies and Contemporary Student [1969],” in C. L. R. James, At the Rendezvous of History: Selected Writings (Allison & Busby, 1984).
32.
On Marx and the American Civil War, see M. Battistini, “Karl Marx and the Global History of the Civil War: The Slave Movement, Working-class Struggle, and the American State within the World Market,” International Labor and Working-Class History 100 (2021): 158–85, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-labor-and-working-class-history/article/karl-marx-and-the-global-history-of-the-civil-war-the-slave-movement-workingclass-struggle-and-the-american-state-within-the-world-market/5FE4B6669063991CEA6B830DEF314313.
33.
James, “The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in US,” 242–51.
34.
James, “The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in US,” 242–51.
35.
James criticised Jean-Paul Sartre, Theodore Adorno, David Riesman and Charles W. Mills, for outlining existentialist or pessimistic philosophies that depicted an alienated individual in the “totalitarianism of society,” or radical sociologies that portrayed a hetero-directed society. See James, American Civilization , 233, and C. L. R. James, Marxism and the Intellectuals (Facing Reality Publishing Committee, 1962), 32.
36.
C. L. R. James, “On Marx’s Essays from the Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts,” in C. L. R. James, At the Rendezvous of History: Selected Writings (Allison & Busby, 1984), 72.
37.
James, “On Marx’s Essays from the Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts,” 66.
38.
C. L. R. James, “Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity,” in The C.L.R. James Reader , ed. A. Grimshaw (Blackwell, 1992), 172.
39.
James, “Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity,” 170.
40.
James, “Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity,” 170.
41.
James, “On Marx’s Essays from the Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts,” 70.
42.
James, American Civilization , 167–68.
43.
James, American Civilization , 38.
44.
James, American Civilization , 121.
45.
James, American Civilization , 121.
46.
James, American Civilization , 357.
47.
All quotations in the paragraph are from James, American Civilization , 106.
48.
James, American Civilization , 106.
49.
James, American Civilization , 106.
50.
James, American Civilization , 226. James cited Max Lerner, Stuart Chase and Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
51.
James, American Civilization , 265.
52.
James, American Civilization , 107.
53.
See M. Glaberman and E. Jennings, “Wildcat! The Wartime Strike Wave in the Auto Industry,” Radical America 9, no. 4–5 (1975); M. Glaberman, Wartime Strikes (Bewick, 1980), 35–61.
54.
James, American Civilization , 107.
55.
James, American Civilization , 107.
56.
James, American Civilization , 107. James also referred to B. B. Gardiner, Human Relations in Industry (R.D. Irwin, 1947).
57.
James, American Civilization , 108.
58.
James, American Civilization , 170.
59.
James, American Civilization , 184.
60.
James, American Civilization , 183.
61.
James, American Civilization , 184.
62.
James, American Civilization , 108.
63.
James, American Civilization , 108.
64.
James, American Civilization , 112.
65.
James, American Civilization , 114.
66.
James, American Civilization , 108. Emphasis added.
67.
All quotations in the paragraph are from James, American Civilization , 186. James also cited Industry and Society , ed. W. Whyte (McGraw-Hill, 1946), and W. L. Warner, The Social System of the Modern Factory (Yale University Press, 1948).
68.
James, American Civilization , 187.
69.
James, American Civilization , 188.
70.
James quoted the article from Fortune in American Civilization , 114–15.
71.
C. L. R. James, Trotskyism in the United States, 1940 –47, Balance Sheet: The Workers Party and the Johnson-Forest Tendency (Johnson-Forest Tendency, 1947), 11, https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1947/balance-sheet/index.htm.
72.
C. L. R. James, R. Dunayevskaya and G. L. Boggs, State Capitalism and World Revolution [1950] (PM Press, 2013), 41.
73.
James et al., State Capitalism and World Revolution , 33.
74.
James, American Civilization , 228.
75.
On neoconservatism see M. Battistini, “The New Class of Neoconservatism and the De/legitimation of American Capitalism,” Crisis and Critique 10 (2023): 9–29.
76.
James, American Civilization , 240.
77.
James, American Civilization , 241.
78.
James, American Civilization , 239.
79.
James, American Civilization , 236.
80.
James, American Civilization , 241.
81.
James, American Civilization , 241.
82.
James, American Civilization , 242.
83.
James, American Civilization , 200.
84.
On race and US socialism see L. Costaguta, Workers of All Colors Unite: Race and the Origins of American Socialism (University of Illinois Press, 2023).
85.
James, American Civilization , 201.
86.
All quotations in the paragraph are from James, American Civilization , 202.
87.
James, American Civilization , 204.
88.
James, American Civilization , 202.
89.
James, American Civilization , 203.
90.
James, American Civilization , 203.
91.
James, American Civilization , 203.
92.
James, American Civilization , 205.
93.
James, American Civilization , 206–207. See also J. Grahn, “The Johnson-Forest Tendency, Radicalizing Gunnar Myrdal’s American Dilemma ,” Race & Class 66, no. 1 (2024): 65–81.
94.
James, American Civilization , 207.
95.
James, American Civilization , 209.
96.
James, American Civilization , 210.
97.
James, American Civilization , 208. See also C. L. R. James, “The Race Progroms and the Negro [1943],” “The Rapid Growth of the NAACP [1947],” “Capitalism and Welfare State [1950],” in C. L. R. James on the “Negro Question” , ed. C. L. R. James and S. McLemee (University Press of Mississippi, 1996).
98.
James, American Civilization , 203.
99.
Although in a 1984 interview with Anna Grimshaw – quoted in St. Louis, Rethinking Race, Politics, and Poetics , 143 – James acknowledged that he had not pursued the woman question as he had done for the black question, in American Civilization his commitment to women’s antagonism was evident, as Selma James also reported. S. James, Sexe, Race et Classe. La stratègie de l’autonomie (Premiers matins de novembre, 2012), 256–57.
100.
All quotations in the paragraph are from James, American Civilization , 212.
101.
James, American Civilization , 212–13.
102.
James, American Civilization , 214.
103.
James, American Civilization , 213.
104.
James, American Civilization , 215.
105.
James, American Civilization , 213.
106.
James, American Civilization , 219.
107.
James, American Civilization , 214. Emphases in the original.
108.
James, American Civilization , 221.
109.
James, American Civilization , 222.
110.
James, American Civilization , 214.
111.
James, American Civilization , 214. Emphasis in the original.
112.
James, American Civilization , 214.
113.
James, American Civilization , 213.
114.
All quotations in the paragraph are from C. L. R. James, “On the Woman Question: An Orientation,” 3 September 1951, https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1951/09/woman-question.htm.
115.
James, American Civilization , 201.
116.
James, American Civilization , 201.
117.
James, American Civilization , 207.
118.
Stuart Hall is certainly the one who recovered his heritage: S. Hall, “C.L.R. James. A Portrait,” in C.L.R. James’s Caribbean , ed. P. Henry and P. Buhle (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992).
119.
James, American Civilization , 108.
120.
James, American Civilization , 117.