August 25, 1949
Everybody
Dear Friends:
I could not do a stroke at camp:1 and here at Northp't I have had two or three days only. I propose therefore to write a composite letter.
1. William2
The analysis and proposed plan are superb. That is the only word for it. The only thing I see now is to avoid phrases as Negro is "vanguard of revol'n.", etc., avoid also too many references to the contemporary scene. They should be few but telling, they should illuminate the historical past and need no proof.
Now in regard to method. Your problem is, at the same time, to give a new interpretation and destroy him (including the latest war election pamphlets).3 State your conclusions and new facts boldly. Be sparing of too many quotes to prove your points. Be bold, clear and give only indispensable and unchallengeable quotes. Spend quotes etc. on Aptheker and the rest.4 Tear them to pieces systematically. You are not on trial. They are. Try and make the articles each more or less self-contained.
Now I have asked John D5 to do some reading in the Civil War. William should write to John giving him the details of what I want and where to look etc. I want a mass of material of the self-activity of Negroes before, during and immediately after the C.W., and the same for the white petty-bourgeoisie and the proletariat; and the influence of these activities on Lincoln, general policy, military policy etc. The best place to look is a systematic combing of contemporary writers. Without this we (and particularly, I) face trouble. My classes on the contributions of the French masses to the Revolution met a bitter sullen hostility from some comrades and a critical coolness from others. But they got nowhere in face of the mass of evidence that I had with me. This evidence must be systematically piled up. It means patient reading for months. But without it we are in difficulties.
Re W's complaint about my bawling him out for nothing.6 I shall reply in time. W's very letter, however, is an example of what is wrong and must be corrected. He does not say "Jimmy, something seems wrong here. What is it?", and then, when I fail to reply satisfactorily, make his protest. He says instead: "Usually, you are right but this time you are awful". If anyone is usually right, then when he seems to be all wrong is the time for his usually right to be borne in mind. It is not so important as to need frantic replies by me. I shall take it up in time when I am ready.
2. Rae7
We shall meet in N.Y. Meanwhile I recommend a close study of Grace's latest letter on U.P.I.8 After much trouble and patient work, we have it at last. The basic structure. That is it. I am absolutely confident, and the working out of it is but another, perhaps the best, of what we owe to Grace's special training and instinct for philosophy. We shall build the whole thing on that. I do not like the phrasing in the letter - too much revolution, and too little of the patience and suffering of the negative, but the root of the matter is there.
I want Rae in particular to think of the following: ...9 of capital
1) On the H.T'y of C.A., M'x describes:10 a) centralization of capital; b) socialization of labor.
But as we decided socialization of labor substituted for centralization is bourgeois. The neglected taken-for-granted thing is "the growing revolt". Now the revolt has been an integral part of capitalist production. Please, dear friends, stay here and ponder. The revolt has marked every stage of capitalist progress. Please tabulate the three stages. Simple coop'n;11 manufacture; heavy industry. The revolt caused the changes to advanced methods; the revolt saved the life of the country. But each revolt caused a greater centralization, exploitation, socialization; and greater organization, both objectively and subjectively, of the proletariat. Note also that simple cooperation is the first stage; the end is socialist cooperation. The revolt is the means. Tie this up with Grace's letter. The Soviet is (the latest) form of revolt. This is the dialectic that we need, of Capital. Working at Imperialism I found in the end I had to go back to Capital; and the secret of Capital is in the Logic. And again, do not prove. Just let the whole thing be internally consistent, simple and direct. Let the opponents do the squeaking and squalling.
2) The second point (and there are only two) is the relation between thought, abstraction, generalization, e.g. value, and the objective connections. Grace has said some things about it. It preoccupies Lenin in the notes. I believe in preparation for our discussions, we should make a serious attempt to clarify this and relate it to U.P.I. I don't want to go into it here, but I want to say this much. Lenin based everything in 1917 on the Soviet. Socialism, republic, d'c dictatorship of p't and P'try,12 all these were formulae, generalizations, abstractions. The Soviet was the concrete, the only way by which the collapse of Russia and the progressive handling, I should say, revolutionary reorganization of nationalizations etc. could take place. Socialism was looking at them through the windows.13 There was no other socialism. This is not quite in the same category as value; all major contributions contained in exchange of commodities, etc; but I think it is all of the same piece. If we get this right we have everything.
I believe that R should concentrate on the first and G. on the second, but R should think about both because she has Capital in her head.14
As for G, all I can say is that she needs or should have a well-deserved rest (two days). The solution of that problem is really something. The only genuine appreciation I can show, the highest, is to propose that you solve the relation between the abstract, the generalization, and the concrete.
J.
If it will please the public, you will be glad to know that I now have the Fr. Rev'n15 all worked out, all, completely; and the thing that has been haunting me for three years or more is now laid to rest. The key is the relation between politics and democracy. The sections carried direct dem'y16 to the extreme; achieved miracles; but never worked out anything approaching the economic form by which the emancipation of humanity was to be achieved. The contradiction is between the Rights of Man and the length of the working-day. But enough. Later I shall do a detailed criticism or rather annotation of G's latest letter.
1 This appears to be a reference to a Socialist Workers' Party summer school.
2 William is most likely William (Willie) Gorman. Gorman was a member of the Johnson-Forest Tendency. When the split between Dunayevskaya and James happened in 1955, Gorman went with James. When Grace Lee-Boggs and James split, Gorman went with James. He was one of the co-authors, (with James, Martin Glaberman and George Rawick), of The Gathering Forces, (1967), published by the Facing Reality Publishing Committee.
3 It is not clear who the 'him' is that James refers to. The election pamphlets appears to be a reference to a series of 'Fact sheets' produced by the Socialist Workers' Party for their campaigning work for the 1949 New York City elections.
4 Herbert Aptheker (1915-2003) was a leading member of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), which he joined in 1939. He was a member of the National Committee of the CPUSA from 1957 to 1991. Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Brooklyn, (New York), he became interested in the oppression of African-Americans in his teens. He was the author of some major historical studies of African-American struggles, most notably, American Negro Slave Revolts (1943). He was chosen by W. E. B. Du Bois to be his literary executor. It seems likely that some of the work that 'William' was doing helped to inform CLR James's articles on the CPUSA and African-American struggles: Stalinism and Negro History, which appeared in the December 1949 issue of Fourth International and Herbert Aptheker's Distortions, which appeared in the December 1949 issue.
5 The editor has been unable to identify John D.
6 Some members of the Johnson-Forest Tendency found CLR James condescending, given to fits of temper and sometimes authoritarian in his manner. See, for example, O'Brien, Johnsonism: A Political Appraisal, (1956), and Raya Dunayevskaya 'Two letters on his "tone"', #9320-9327.
7 Rae is Raya Dunayevskaya.
8 The previous letter in this correspondence. Titled: 26. August 16, 1949. Lee to James on Hegel's categories of Universal, Particular and Individual.
9 A portion of the text is missing from the archived version of the letter.
10 On the Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation, Marx describes.
11 Cooperation.
12 democratic dictatorship of proletariat and Peasantry.
13 The 'windows' reference is to Lenin's pamphlet The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It (October 1917). The quote, in context, is:
"Imperialist war is the eve of socialist revolution. And this not only because the horrors of the war give rise to proletarian revolt - no revolt can bring about socialism unless the economic conditions for socialism are ripe - but because state-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs. Our Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks approach the question of socialism in a doctrinaire way, from the standpoint of a doctrine learnt by heart but poorly understood. They picture socialism as some remote, unknown and dim future. But socialism is now gazing at us from all the windows of modern capitalism; socialism is outlined directly, practically, by every important measure that constitutes a forward step on the basis of this modern capitalism."
14 G is Grace Lee (Boggs), R is Raya Dunayevskaya.
15 French Revolution.
16 democracy.