CLR James: Cultivator of the Popular Will

CLR James, the Pan African and independent socialist, was a historian and literary man. The advocate of world revolution, almost lost in a fog of progressive and culture-talk, is restored. This global history, distinguished by copious archival research, clarifies James, the agitator and creative political organizer. Direct democracy and workers’ self-management was the content of the new society he wished to bring closer. As a philosopher of history, he rejected reform and representation. As propagandist, he destroyed bureaucracy and hierarchy. As cultivator of the popular will James unleashed ordinary people’s repressed strivings to directly govern. Before and after broken glass was everywhere he was a teacher of insurgency. Not simply a pillar of the Black radical tradition, his ‘every cook can govern’ notion haunts the post-civil rights, post-colonial world.