AUT: Notes on Dialectics

["Chris Hurl" <munkah@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

hey all,

I just finished CLR James' book, "Notes on Dialectics", and I was hoping to maybe open up a little discussion on the book.  Has anyone else read it?  Now I don't know much about James.  I have read bits and pieces of "Facing Reality" and a few other tidbits but I do not have a firm grasp on his stuff.

It seems to me in "Notes", that while James has decidedly moved away from any inkling of Trotskyism {"It is trotskyism therefore which has the greatest doubt in the capacity, the historical capacity of the proletariat" (212), he continues to assert the importance of the Leninist legacy, as a key moment in pushing beyond the Second International.  James seems to argue that, at his best, Lenin adopted a very dialectical method.

In his analysis of Leninism, he adopts Lenin's analysis from "State and Revolution", in which Lenin asserts that once all workers become the State, the State will wither away. And he takes this up in very dialectical fashion:

"The party as we have known it must disappear.  It will disappear.  It is disappearing.  It will disappear as the state will disappear.  the whole labouring population becomes the state.  That is the disappearance of the state.  It can have no other meaning.  It withers away by expanding to such a degree that it is transformed into its opposite.  And the party does the same.  The state withers away and the party withers away.  But for the proletariat the most important, the primary thing is the withering away of the party.  For if the party does not wither away, the state never will" (176).

It seems to me that, at this point, James straddles Leninism.  He continues to assert the importance of a theoretically-inclined "leadership", something that he put emphasis on through his "Correspondence" and "Facing Reality" but seems to argue that this leadership must be flexible, based on the changing circumstances of the proletariat.  He argues that the Trotskyists remain stiff and inflexible and have largely become disconnected from these struggles (which also struck me in reading the Trots critique of Negri where they fall back on their ever-fetishized Party).

But I guess my question is, to what extent does James escape the Leninist layout?  For instance, I have seen the quote above used as proof of his anti-vanguardist leanings, and yet he argues that the party only withers away by "expanding to such a degree that it is transformed into its opposite".  Hence, the necessity to first build and consolidate a single party.

any thoughts?

--chris





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