C. L. R. James - World Revolution, 1917–1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International

C. L. R. James in Trafalgar Square (1935).
Courtesy of Getty Images.

THE C. L. R. JAMES ARCHIVES recovers and reproduces for a contemporary audience the works of one of the great intellectual figures of the twentieth century, in all their rich texture, and will present, over and above historical works, new and current scholarly explorations of Jamess oeuvre.

Robert A. Hill, Series Editor

WORLD REVOLUTION
19171936

The Rise and Fall of the Communist International

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C. L. R. JAMES

Edited and Introduced by Christian Hgsbjerg

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESSDURHAM AND LONDON2017

Introduction and Editors Note 2017 Duke University Press

World Revolution, 19171936 1937 C. L. R. James Estate

Harry N. Howard, World Revolution, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , pp. xii, 429 1937 Pioneer Publishers

E. H. Carr, World Revolution, International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 19311939) 16, no. 5 (September 1937), 81920 1937 Wiley

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Typeset in Arno Pro and Gill Sans Std by Westchester Publishing Services

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: James, C. L. R. (Cyril Lionel Robert), 19011989, author. | Hgsbjerg, Christian, editor.

Title: World revolution, 19171936 : the rise and fall of the Communist International / C. L. R. James ; edited and with an introduction by Christian Hgsbjerg.

Other titles: C.L.R. James Archives (Series)

Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2017. | Series: The C. L. R. James archives | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017006462 (print) | LCCN 2017008443 (ebook)

ISBN 9780822363088 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN 9780822363248 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 9780822373346 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH : Communist International. | Communism. | Soviet UnionPolitics and government19171936.

Classification: LCC HX11.I5 J 25 2017 (print) | LCC HX 11. I 5 (ebook) | DDC 324.1/75dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017006462

Cover art: Detail from a poster for a rally at which C. L. R. James spoke in London in 1967, organized by the International Socialists, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Artist unknown. Courtesy of Sean Wallis.

CONTENTS

For this edition of World Revolution , being published on the centenary of the Russian Revolution, one aim has been to preserve as much as possible of the essential, original text as it appeared in the 1937 edition, while making the volume accessible to a new generation of readers. For the sake of readability, we have therefore corrected the dozen or so typographical mistakes that crept into the original edition, and also where possible brought the spelling of individuals and place-names in line with modern scholarship and usage, so, for example, Bucharin is now Bukharin. Moreover, this edition (unlike the 1937 edition) uses numbered endnotes instead of footnotes and includes an index, which will hopefully aid readers. I have also added a list of abbreviations to define the acronyms that James uses. One necessary consequence of the changes made for this new edition, though, which should be noted at the outset, is that the pagination is different in this new edition from previous editions. This, regrettably, has meant that references to page numbers of the original edition in the text of World Revolution itself, and elsewherefor example, in my introduction and in the contemporary reviews that are reproduced in this editionno longer fit for this edition. To try to offset this and to avoid any potential confusion arising, I have placed the relevant new page numbers from this edition in brackets after references to earlier editions of the work throughout the text where necessary.

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There are many people who helped in various ways when it came to researching Jamess World Revolution by providing me with some of the miscellaneous material that I include in this volume. My research here initially began in earnest while working on my doctoral thesis on Jamess life and work in the 1930s in the Department of History at the University of York. Many of the people whom I thank in my acknowledgments in C. L. R. James in Imperial Britain (Duke University Press, 2014), the monograph that resulted from my thesis, deserve thanks again here. However, for the sake of space, I shall just take the opportunity to specifically thank Talat Ahmed, Logie Barrow, Ian Birchall, Paul Blackledge, Paul Buhle, Ted Crawford, Daniel Evans, David Featherstone, Paul Flewers, David Goodway, Christopher Hall, Ron Heisler, David Howell, Staffan Lindh, Kevin Morgan, Fergus Nicol, the late Sidney Robinson, Sean Wallis, Sam Weinstein, Kent Worcester, and the late James D. Young. Reg Wicks kindly gave me permission to reproduce the two reviews of World Revolution by his father, Harry, while I am also grateful to Henry and Maureen Rothstein for their kind consent for me to republish the review by Andrew Rothstein.

An earlier, shorter version of my introduction first appeared as A Kind of Bible of Trotskyism: Reflections on C. L. R. Jamess World Revolution in The C. L. R. James Journal 19, nos. 12 (2013), and I would also like to take the opportunity to thank the editors of The C. L. R. James Journal for their assistance and support. My thanks also to the many librarians and archivists who assisted my research at various points, particularly at the British Library, the Glasgow Caledonian Archive of the Trotskyist Tradition, Hull History Centre, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (London), the Marx Memorial Library (London), the National Archives (Kew), the University of Leeds, the University of Stirling, the Alma Jordan Library (University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad), and the Working Class Movement Library in Salford. Special thanks are owed to Robert A. Hill, the literary executor of the C. L. R. James Estate, not only for his support for this project but also for his characteristically astute comments on my introduction, which improved it immeasurably, and expert editorial guidance throughout. I also owe a debt of thanks to the team at Duke University Press for their support for this project, and I would like to especially acknowledge the anonymous readers, as well as Gisela Fosado, Lydia Rose Rappoport-Hankins, Danielle Houtz, Christine Dahlin, Liz Smith, and Amy Ruth Buchanan. As is customary, I am responsible for the argument within my introduction and for any errors in the text.