- Jahrgang 69 (2024)
- Vol. 69 (2024)
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A Dead End of History? C. L. R. James and the Problem-Space of American Trotskyism
Seiten 5 - 26
DOI https://doi.org/10.33675/AMST/2024/1/4
open-access
This publication is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivatives 4.0.
In the view of many who lived through it, World War II undermined the plausibility of historical teleology. At the same time, however, the emergence of the Cold War in the 1940s and 1950s intensified the temptations of teleology, leading many to suggest—explicitly or implicitly—that Soviet-style communism or American-style capitalism represented “the end of history.” How did writers and intellectuals navigate this seemingly contradictory situation? This article explores that question by looking at what it calls “the problem-space” of American Trotskyism, and, in particular, at the work of C. L. R. James. To begin with, it reconstructs a series of questions that preoccupied Trotskyist intellectuals in the United States. Then it demonstrates how James tried to resolve them in collaboration with figures like Grace Lee Boggs and Raya Dunayevskaya. Finally, it uses James’s
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