C. L. R. James

Cyril Lionel Robert James was born in Trinidad in 1901. Brought up in the village of Tunapuna, near Port of Spain, he early on exhibited a passionate interest in literature and cricket – two great passions that were to remain with him throughout the rest of his life. Following in his father’s footsteps, he became a schoolteacher in 1918, having received a classical British education with a scholarship to the premier Queens Royal College in Trinidad. In 1932, at the invitation of Learie Constantine, James went to Britain to pursue a career as a writer and soon become cricket correspondent for the Manchester Guardian and the Glasgow Herald. After reading Trotsky’s recently published History of the Russian Revolution, he was drawn to anti-Stalinist Marxism and quickly emerged as a leading theoretician of various Trotskyist organizations, followed by his own independent brand of Marxism after World War II based on the theory of state capitalism. His most significant work, The Black Jacobins, was completed in 1938 which, along with his History of Negro Revolt (1937), helped to lay the basis of the post-war movement for African emancipation.

In 1953 James was deported from the United States because of his political activities, under the guise of visa violations. He returned to live in England; in 1958, on a visit to Trinidad, he was invited by Eric Williams, his former pupil, to become editor of the weekly Nation newspaper, the influential organ of Williams’s People’s National Movement (PNM). Following a bitter break with Williams over the direction of the PNM and the collapse of the abortive West Indies Federation, James returned to England. During his life he authored a number of classic works, including an early novel, Minty Alley (1936); World Revolution 1917-1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International (1937); Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In (1953); Beyond A Boundary (1963), a memoir and cultural study of cricket; as well as several works on historical, political, and philosophical subjects. During the seventies, he taught at several universities in the United States and lectured widely in Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. He lived in Brixton, England, until his death in 1989.