A schoolteacher and cricket writer from Trinidad, James moved to England in 1932 and became a leading voice for Caribbean and African independence. His history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins, showed enslaved people as makers of their own history. A dissident Marxist, he trusted ordinary workers to organize themselves more than any party, and he wrote about sport as a mirror of society.
Core ideas
The oppressed make their own history; they are not just its victims
Workers can govern themselves without a ruling party above them
Culture, even cricket, reveals the deepest conflicts of a society
The tradition: Caribbean Marxist
Caribbean Marxism links the critique of capitalism to the struggle against colonialism and slavery. James is its great historian and a defender of self-organization from below.
