American Civilization

American Civilization is one of those pivotal texts of CLR James often ignored or omitted from discussion. However, upon reading it, one gains new insights with regards to how James conceived the relationship between popular movements and their leaders. It also serves as a testament to the intellectual development of the Johnson-Forest Tendency of ca. 1950. Indeed, inklings of a rejection of vanguardism and the autonomous socialist vision of James manifest in American Civilization, which also triumphs for its forward-looking conception of American popular culture, individualism, and the the threat of totalitarianism. 

Indeed, American Civilization is refreshingly bereft of most of Adorno's disdain for US popular culture, while sharing a similar concern with the danger of alienation and totalitarian Plans. Like his other works of the period, James commits himself to a rejection of Stalinism, overly centralized bureaucracies, Catholic Humanism, and the disconnect between intellectuals and workers. Instead, the separation of labor of the body and mind is increasingly unnecessary as laborers have mastered new technology and benefit from mass produced literature, arts, and production. To paraphrase another line of James, philosophy must be proletarian. 

One supposes the remaining question is, what does one make of the actual trajectory of US civilization after 1950? The miners, UAW workers, and others, supposedly responding to a collectivized individual need for control of production, may be found among wildcat strikes today. However, what happened to the new socialism? The New Left and its failure during the resurgence of the Right and neoliberalism? I cannot help but think American Civilization successfully identified the problem of alienation and its impact on US popular culture and responses to it, but perhaps James incorrectly assumed the labor movement would, through spontaneous action and the need to control production, ultimately overthrow the capitalist order. To his credit, James avoids foretelling the future, but the struggle against alienated, mechanized existence seems as pressing as ever. 

State Capitalism and World Revolution

CLR James's State Capitalism and World Revolution is a short but dense critique of Trotskyism, Stalinism, and the state capitalist dominant order of the world (as it was in the post-WWII period in an era of Fordism and planned economies with bureaucrats administering capital). Much has changed since the neoliberal order, but James offered profound critiques of limited definitions of socialism which assume state-owned property and industry rather than private control automatically meant a transition from capitalism and labor exploitation. As scholars like Matthew Quest have indicated, James's perspective here is central for understanding workers must have direct control of the means of production rather than bureaucrats, otherwise socialism is not achieved. James spends too much time basing his theory of state capitalism upon Lenin's criticisms of bureaucracy and nationalization for my taste, but this is a key insight upon which the failures of the Russian Revolution, Tito's Yugoslavia, and numerous other revolutionary moments provide learning moments on the central importance of the emancipation of labor.

In addition to the theory of state capitalism, James develops an intriguing idea in the final chapter. Philosophy, according to James, must be proletarian in order to overcome the role of the division of labor in manual and intellectual workers. If this division is not overcome, bureaucracy and bourgeois rationalism can only culminate in state capitalism, fascist reaction, and the reactionary (anti-egalitarian, anti-democratic) Christian Humanism. One wonders how this plays out in terms of bureaucracy, the neoliberal phase, and the contemporary crisis we face globally. How useful is the theory of state capitalism for today and where does one begin to see the future of the emancipation of labor in a post-Fordist economy?