C L R James S Notes On Dialectics

C.L.R. James's Notes on Dialectics

John H. McClendon III's CLR James's Notes on Dialectics: Left Hegelianism or Marxism-Leninism? is the first-ever book devoted exclusively to James's "magnum opus," Notes on Dialectics: Hegel-Marx-Lenin. The seed for this study was planted over thirty years ago when James handed the author his personal copy of Notes. James's contribution to dialectical philosophy and his vast intellectual and scholarly output is rivalled only by the seemingly bottomless depths of McClendon's own analysis and erudition. McClendon provides a thorough-going critique of James's exploration into the dialectic of Hegel, Marx, and Lenin while challenging all the seminal texts on James's Notes'. A book of this magnitude is rare. This is ever more the truth when it is focused on a giant like James who stands at the nexus of so many disciplines: philosophy, history, sociology, Caribbean studies, cultural studies, African, and African American studies. CLR James's Notes on Dialectics: Left Hegelianism or Marxism-Leninism? is a must read for anyone concerned with how revolutionary theory is a guide to contemporary struggles.

Notes on Dialectics

In Love and Struggle

James Boggs (1919-1993) and Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015) were two largely unsung but critically important figures in the black freedom struggle. Born and raised in Alabama, James Boggs came to Detroit during the Great Migration, becoming an automobile worker and a union activist. Grace Lee was a Chinese American scholar who studied Hegel, worked with Caribbean political theorist C. L. R. James, and moved to Detroit to work toward a new American revolution. As husband and wife, the couple was influential in the early stages of what would become the Black Power movement, laying the intellectual foundation for racial and urban struggles during one of the most active social movement periods in recent U.S. history. Stephen Ward details both the personal and the political dimensions of the Boggses' lives, highlighting the vital contributions these two figures made to black activist thinking. At once a dual biography of two crucial figures and a vivid portrait of Detroit as a center of activism, Ward’s book restores the Boggses, and the intellectual strain of black radicalism they shaped, to their rightful place in postwar American history.