Month: October 2021

State Capitalism and World Revolution, first published in 1950, is perhaps the definitive polemic of the Johnson-Forest Tendency (JFT). The JFT’s lead theorists were C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevsakaya, and Grace Lee (later Grace Lee Boggs). The essay provides a demolition of Stalinism and Trotskyism. It lays down an analysis of “state capitalism” based on a sharp reading of Capital, and also Lenin, which centers class struggle in production and locates the proletariat as the source of capitalist crisis. Paul Buhle (1986) has noted that the piece was “the last of James’ texts to be set in the classic Marxist-Leninist strategic framework” (p. xx).

There are at least 5 English-language editions of State Capitalism and World Revolution:

1. 1950: The essay originally appeared in the September, 1950 Discussion Bulletin of the Socialist Workers Party (a scan is available here) and was credited to “Johnson-Forest.”
2. 1956: Published by “a Marxist Group” with a preface by James, Castoriadis, Brendel et al (see below) in England. There was no new authorship claim in the second edition, and the collectively-signed preface, likely written by James, references authorship of State Capitalism with “The writers of the document” and that “They bring all phenomena into one integrated and growing body of theory, shedding new lights as new events unfold.”
3. 1969: Published by Facing Reality Publishing Committee with authorship credited to James.
4. 1986: Published by Charles H. Kerr with authorship credited to C.L.R. James. “[w]ritten in collaboration with Raya Dunayevskaya & Grace Lee.”
5. 2013: Published by The Charles H. Kerr Library and PM Press, with authorship credited the same as the 1986 edition.

Authorship of State Capitalism is a bit contested. Martin Glaberman’s preface to the 1969 edition attributes the document to James in a context of collective activity.

However, Frank Rosengarten, in his important biography Urbane Revolutionary, credits the document to all three thinkers: “Two chapters of State Capitalism and World Revolution, jointly written by James, Raya Dunayevskaya, and Grace Boggs and published in 1950…” (p. 57). Rosengarten goes on to mention Lee and Dunayevskaya’s involvement in “discussions of the work-in-progress that eventually bore the name State Capitalism and World Revolution, but which first entitled Marxism and State Capitalism” (p. 61). And then Rosengarten challenges Glaberman’s claim on authorship (pardon our highlights/notes):

In a speech in 1985, Dunayevskaya stated the the work was written “under [James’] direction” (Dunayevskaya, 2013, p. 2). It seems to us that the collectively attributed authorship is likely the most accurate, so we are attributing it that way.

While the first edition of State Capitalism and World Revolution was published in the SWP’s Discussion Bulletin, based in New York City, the second edition was published in England. The publication was credited to “A Marxist Group” based in Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire. James had been in England for more than three years at this point, after he had been expelled from the United States. In his introduction to the 1969 edition, Glaberman notes: “When the second edition of State Capitalism and World Revolution was at the printer, the Hungarian Revolution exploded.”

The preface to the 1956 second edition, which was republished in the 1969 and 1986 editions (posted online here), is signed by six men: Johnson (C.L.R. James), Alan Christianson, Chaulieu (Cornelius Castoriadis), Cajo Brendel, Maassen (Theo Massen), and IP Hughes. In his 2006 essay, “Beyond the Boundary of Leninism? C.L.R. James and 1956”, James scholar Christian Høgsbjerg explores this eclectic grouping:

The second edition of State Capitalism and World Revolution is rare. OCLC locates one holding, in the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, but it’s also held in the C.L.R. James Papers at Columbia. At the time of writing there is one copy found in the trade at the indomitable Bibliomania in Oakland.

Was the growth of flexible labor and the proliferation of ‘off-the-books’ work an outcome of capitalist counter-attack in response to the mass struggles of the late-Keynesian years, or was it a victory of those same struggles? Was it neither of these entirely, and rather somewhere in-between? These questions, very simplistically put here, took up many column inches in autonomist writing in the 1980s, particularly as militants looked at the mass “refusal of work” in light of the Reagan and Thatcher counter-revolutions.

They were also raised in court in the Italian state’s effort to crush autonomia. Antonio Negri, who had been arrested along with many others on April 7th, 1979, found himself explaining to the state the content of his files that they had confiscated, and the meaning of writings – his and others – contained within. In an interrogation about these writings, a judge asked Negri about so-called “proletarian patrols” (see “Negri’s Interrogation” in Autonomia: Post-Political Politics, here), which led to the following interaction:

This transcript (of which this is only a small clip) was co-translated from Italian to English by Phil Mattera, who had been a participant in New York Struggle Against Work, and was part of the editorial collective that produced the second issue of Zerowork.

The second issue of Emergency was published in 1984 (we were unable to figure out that exact month, but the deadline for submissions for the 3rd issue is noted as July, so likely early in the year). This issue featured cover artwork by the famous visual artist Barbara Kruger. For the second issue the editorial collective had changed and John Merrington was no longer a member (see our notes on the first issue of Emergency here). The journal was still distributed by Pluto Press.

In addition to his work with Zerowork, Mattera had by this point also published pieces in Library Journal, Radical America, and The Nation.

Mattera’s translation of Negri’s interrogation above is relevant here because he would go on to dedicate years of research and writing to the question of what some Italian autonomists would call the “diffused” work, including “off the books” labor and the “underground economy.” Many would emphasize the liberatory aspects they believed it presented. Take, for example, these paragraphs in Lotringer’s interview with Christian Marazzi in the 1980 book Autonomia: Post-Political Politics:

Mattera’s article in this issue of Emergency is ambivalent:

Mattera sees the growth of the underground economy as a development in class struggle, as an outcome of the previous cycle of struggle (including repression), but the ambivalence in this piece is illustrative of the larger crisis that overcame the Marxist left during the early years of neoliberalism – as movements waned (and were repressed), poverty deepened and class composition shifted. In many ways, it appears that Mattera is taking the issues raised by Negri and Marazzi (and many others) and trying to come up with some evidence and grounded answers. This is easier to see in the following year, 1985, when Mattera published his book Off the Books: The Rise of the Underground Economy (Pluto Press).

This issue of Emergency, like the first issue of Emergency, is oddly difficult to come by in the trade and has few institutional holdings, with only two in North America (at Labadie and Harvard, respectively). We have scanned Mattera’s article and posted it to Libcom for interested readers, here.