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7 C. L. R.James and the Theory of State Capitalism Christopher Phelps C. L. R.James, the Xfro-Caribbean ~vriter best known for The Elacl{Jacobi~ls, his 1938 history o f the San Domingo slave revolution led by Touissant L'Overture, is the subject o f a vast secondary literature treating him largely as a cultural thinker. Whole volumes are devoted to James and cricket, James and the Caribbean,James and race, and James and philosophy leaving vivid impressions o f a figure ~vhose life arched from the Tl'est Indies to London and Los h g e l e s ,~ v h o examined comic strips and gangster films as avidly as Thaclzeray and Shakespeare, and ~ v h o took Hollyvood movies and radio soap operas as seriously as Pan-Africanism and Hegelian dialectics.' This cultural James, so ~velletched, deserves supplementation. TlVl~en specif~ing the signal result o f his American sojourn between 1938and 1933 in one late life inter vie^^ James did not refer to his noJv celebrated reflections o n black liberation, the novels o f Herman Melville, or American civilization.' "TlVhatJras important about m y ~vorlz in the United States," he said, 'ivas this: I insisted o n analyzing the capitalist society o f the age in ~vhich we live."' T h e esteem that James himself felt for his assessment o f modern capitalism malzes it all the more stunning that scholars have devoted so little attention to the concept o f state capitalism running through his o e ~ n ~ e . ~ Largely unpursued is Robin D. G. Kelley's tantalizing insight that James's significance lies in the connection he dre~v bet~veen issues o f identity and culture and "political economy labor, and the state."" Inattention toJames's theory o f state capitalism has multiple causes: the rise o f cultural studies, for ~vhose practitioners James'senthusiasm for popular culture holds greater appeal than his social, political, and economic theory;the decline o f the socialist movement and the consequent thinning o f the ranlzs o f those inclined to follo~v the intricacies o f Marxist argument; prejudice against antiStalinist revolutionary radicalism as sectarian, leading to dismissal o f its theoretical preoccupations; and the intrinsic denseness o f James's theoretical ~vritings, steeped in Hegel, hlarx, Lenin, and the insular debates o f the far left. Since the collapse o f Communism in 19891991 , debate over the structure o f Soviet-type societies-a crucial point o f 138 Christopher Phelps reference for James's state capitalist theory-has come to seem obscure, esoteric, or antiquarian. It requires an imaginative leap to recapture the once commonplace feeling that it matters, profoundly h o ~ v one characterizes the Soviet Union and similarly patterned societies. That is precisely the leap that must be made in order to comprehend the intellectual universe that C. L. R.James inhabited and his distinctive contribution to social theory at midcentury The Workers' State, the Left Opposition, and the Russian Q~~estion W h e nJames arrived in the United States in October 1938, he Tras in his late thirties, having undergone several earlier phases o f intellectual development . Born in 1901 o n the island o f Trinidad in the British West Indies, he spent a youth centered upon English literature and cricket, and then developed affinitiesfor Trinidadian nationalism. His commitment to revolutionary socialism came uncommonly late, after his 1932 emigration from the Caribbean to England. T h e conditions o f Europe-the slump, the rise o f fascism, and increased ~vorker militancy-prompted James to read Karl Marx and \ladimis Ilych Lenin for the first time, initiating his lifelong study o f their ~vritings. Even as he covered cricket for the L\la~lcheste~. Gualdin~l, James, persuaded by Leon Trotslzy's Histolj of the Rfussinn R~-rjolution, helped in 1934 to form one British faction o f the revolutionary socialist opposition movement that Trotsky had inspired." Trotsk7; the foremost leader o f the Russian October Revolution o f 1917 alongside Lenin, had led a Left Opposition in the Soviet cnion to resist its bureaucratic course after Lenin's death in 1924. By the end o f the decade, the Left Opposition had lost out and Trotslzy~ras banished to exile asJoseph Stalin outmaneuwered all rivals and consolidated his exclusive hold o n state power. T h e Left Opposition he~ved to the belief that it, not Stalin, Jras the genuine heir...

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