Raya Dunayevskaya and CLR James Selected Works

Raya Dunayevskaya (aka Rae Spiegel) was Trotsky's secretary until she split off to form her own school of thought "News & Letters Committees" who, after her death in 1987, still published a newspaper (currently in online form).

She was a Marxist-Humanist and spent a lot of time on racial, and much later, LGBT issues. While her activism and dedication to social justice was admirable, her books really weren't. She sparred with Trotsky at one point over whether the USSR was a "state-capitalist" society rather than a "degenerate workers' state".

CLR James was an Afro-Trindadian Trotskyist Humanist, from Dunayevskaya's group. He focused extensively on Black Marxism. His most enduring book is "Black Jacobins" on the slave revolt that led to the founding of Haiti, though he was famous for books on the sport of "Cricket" during his lifetime.

His understanding of Marxist theory is at times limited, but his skill as a historian is deft and his own lived experience of post-coloniality is quite vast. "Black Jacobins" is a rather interesting, extraordinarily well-written, and occasionally inaccurate, book.

CLR James is a highly influential figure in Post-Colonial Marxism.

Collected here are selected works of both individuals.