Allison & Busby, London — £4.95.
itself is characteristic of the person.
In his 83rd year he has retained his unquenchable revolutionary optimism. In the last chapter in the book, which is a speech he made at an American 1 SupKally free trade union, Solidaridiscussed the prospects o revolutionary developments in the United States ana soul Airca While he has no doubts about a future American revolution, he says: 'I don't know that I will see that. I have been in the world a One TC. Dul l expecl lo comes in the inted are South Africa when I may be away but you can be certain ... I will do my best to come back...
The collection of writings and speeches in this volume traces the evolution (or degeneration, depending on one's point of view) of James as a socialist thinker, • writer and innovator. It starts off WILl couple of short stories he wrote Trinidad 1930's through his period as leading Trotskyist in Britain, the United States and elsewhere including gradual abandonment of Trotskyism for some sor ot unique combination of pan-Africanism blended WILd Marxism which owes a great deal to the This latest selection of the writings of C.L.R. James is a kaleidoscope of the literary and political life of this outstanding Caribbean revolutionary. The title spontaneism if Rosa Luxreaders of this terest will probatty lie in the extract from Revolution, 1917-1936 James's major history of the Third perhaps the first deal comprehensively with the rise of the Comintern from the Trotskyist point of view his Discussions with Trotsky in April, 1939.
Review by Charlie Van Gelderen Of the the editor mentions that : Trotsky described this very good book but he also added that he noticed 'a lack of dialectical approach, Anglo-Saxon empiricism, and formalism which is only the reverse of empiricism.
This extract, The Revolutior Abandoned, however is one of the best descriptions of the events which convulsed France in the 1930's, events which were to lead the country to the classical revolutionary situation where the people no longer wanted to live in the old wav and the rulins class was unable to carry on in the old way. We see here vividly described the ZIg-zag policies of the French CP, who were more concerned with the requirements of Stalin's " foreign policy than the preparations of the French revolution. This led them from 'united front' actions with the fascist, Union Na tionale des Combattants (readers who want verification can find it in Andre Marty's article in Humanite February 1934), to the Popular Front with the bourgeois Radical Party in 1936.
Then Stalin's greates fear with Naz Germany. He sent Chemadanov, Secretary of In en Communist Youth to Paris to tell the working class youth: there is a war it will unaouoleary be against the USSR rades, is at the front. If in Your duty, com• Raffle result Bristol Socialist Action. 1. C Starks 34, 2. R Simon 1300, 3. H McDonald 1214, 4. D Berry 684, 5. this period you make your revolution in France you are traitors...
The Discussions with Trotsky covers what was then called 'the _negro question' in America ranges over world politics. It is noticeable that Trotsky does not hesitate to criticise the mistakes of his own followers. What is also remarkable IS that here James and Trotsky raise the tactic of 'sit-ins' 'whites only' restaurants in the States, the tactic which was to be pursued so successtully dy Martin Luther King years later This is a book that deserves a place on every socialist bookshelf.
Alliance, NALGO Broad Left.
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