AfricaNow! March 6, 2024 Thinking Through CLR James with Matthew Quest

Topic and Guest: In an article for Insurgent Notes, Matthew Quest asks, What Type of Historian Was CLR James? CLR James, native of Trinidad, was a historian with a speculative philosophy of history. He brought these methods to his narrative of Haiti in The Black Jacobins (1938), and later in his Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (1977). James was influenced by historians of the French Revolution, while his approach was shaped by Leon Trotsky’s A History of the Russian Revolution, Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, and the Edwardian radicals GK Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, both literary men who wrote polemical histories sympathetic to the social motion of commoners. 

...For James, the working classes, be their wages high or low, and the unemployed possessed a hidden depth, a latent understanding, and a creative genius. Ordinary people, not professional leaders of official society, were the chief actors of history....Highlighting another important contribution of CLR James to Black radicalism, Matthew Quest unpacks his political economic analysis. Quest writes that CLR James is recalled as a Pan-African and independent socialist...

Quest goes on to argue that the Black radical tradition, after experimenting with European radicalism and socialism, never developed its own independent political economy. ...For James, there is a connection between state planning and repression of toilers, and he in no way subscribes to classical liberal market economics. We must remember that James’s mature political economy was worked out not just in response to Russia but Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal welfare state, and its repression of self-directed action during the CIO labor movement....

Today, we will explore CLR James’s thought, paying specific attention to his articulation of notions of direct democracy, worker’s self-emancipation, and meditations on autonomy with Matthew Quest. 

This conversation will be presented as a three-part series where we specifically explore CLR James as a frame of reference in the context of current labor struggles, the opportunities and potential limitations of demands within labor movements [where we think through the limitations of labor demands being divorced from direct critique of imperialism and colonialisms]; and how does CLR James’ conceptualization of autonomy and direct democracy have an important part to play in conceptualization of labor movements today. 

To understand the depth and range of impact of CLR James’s work, I would describe him as your ‘rappers’ favorite rapper’. Your favorite theorist, revolutionary, radical, Pan Africanist had to or at some point must come to terms with CLR James’s work. His influences are both undeniable and misunderstood. 

Matthew Quest has taught African, African American and Caribbean History at universities including Georgia State University in Atlanta, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He is known as a scholar of the legacies of CLR James.

MUSIC ON THE SHOW: intro--“BABA AFRIKA” BY CHRISTINE KAMAU; break--“KURIMA” CHIWONISO MARAIRE; sign-off--“JARABI” BY SONA JOBARTEH; closing song--“ALUTA CONTINUA” BY MIRIAM MAKEBA commemorating her birthday on March 4 (March 4, 1932—November 10, 2008) International Women’s Day March 8 and Women’s History Month.

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AfricaNow! Mar. 6, 2024 Thinking Through CLR James with Matthew Quest

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AfricaNow! Mar. 6, 2024 Thinking Through CLR James with Matthew Quest

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