49. the genesis of freedom
A review of 'Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones', by Carole Boyce Davies.
As i have mentioned before, i have become increasingly unwell over the last few months, struggling with chronic pain and fatigue issues, and i am finding myself increasingly unable to work as much as i have in the past. i am still in conversation with my bosses about what this means, but it looks like i will be taking a hit to my income soon. As such, i am hoping to write more and to make some extra money from my writing. This is newsletter is the first of what i hope will be a regular habit of longer book reviews in a more public format. If you would like to support me and my writing you can either make a one time donation via my ko-fi (link) or you can subscribe to my patreon for monthly payments here (link). i will not be putting any of my writing behind a patreon-paywall, it will all still be available for free via this substack, the patreon is just for convenience. If you yourself are short of cash, please don’t worry too much, i am still working and will be fine. Anyway.
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The political life of Claudia Jones, as the subtitle of Davies’ book runs, is near overwhelming in its breadth and sophistication. Traversing Trinidad, the united states, great britain, China, and the USSR, with work in journalism, poetry, and mass labour struggles, Jones was a pivotal figure in a wide range of settings over the course of her (relatively) short life. Carole Boyce Davies argues that in many ways, Jones’ work prefigured the theorising and struggles of later, better known generations of Black feminists in the 70s and 80s, with her synthesis of Marxism-Leninism with Black self-determination and an emphasis on the pivotal role of Black women in revolutionary struggle prefiguring later articulations of ‘intersectionality’ (Crenshaw) or ‘identity politics’ (Combahee River Collective).
It is clear from Davies’ scholarship in Left of Karl Marx that Jones represented a link between the waves of organising inspired by the successs of the Russian Revolution in the interwar period, and successive waves of struggle inspired by the upsurge of anti-colonial movements, culminating in Black Power in the late 60s, in the aftermath of the second world war. Jones herself joined the CPUSA in 1936, drawn to them by their agitation on behalf of the Scottsboro boys and by their articulation of intertwined fascist and imperialist aggression in the italian invasion of Ethiopia. She would remain committed to Communism until the end of her life in london, 1964, visiting both the Soviet Union and China, even if the CPGB received her coldly following her deportation from the u.s. in 1955. These tensions with the CPGB and her attraction to the Chinese Revolution in many ways prefigured the way that many Black communists articulated their critiques of white chauvinism in the established Communist parties via Maoism in the 60s and 70s (her life partner in london, A. Manchanda, would be highly active in such tendencies following her death). For Jones, however, she continued her work in spite of such tensions, opting instead to inculcate alternative networks of Afro-Caribbean culture and organising that would be deeply formative for the next generation of Black radicals in the u.k.
The problem with Left of Karl Marx, however, is that Davies seems to have struggled to corral the breadth of Jones’ life and her work into a single clearly structured book. Each chapter is devoted to a particular theme, in itself a relatively innocuous decision; in practice, however, this thematic organisation lacks a driving theoretical argument that might replace a biographical-chronological account of Jones’ life. Instead, the text meanders from these biographical details and her written statements, taking long detours through various debates in Black studies, yet often returning to the same rhetorical commonplaces and pieces of evidence (one single passage from a source on the Notting Hill Riots is quoted 3-4 times, twice in the same chapter!). It is not that these debates are not often interesting, but that they are more citations, placing Jones in a particular lineage of contemporary Black thought, than full explanations of the significance of different positions and what Jones might suggest for them. The results may be highly useful to a scholar looking to integrate Jones into existing syllabi, but it seems confusing as an interpretation of Jones’ work in itself.
Even more unfortunately, it can sometimes seem like these contemporary lineages occasionally crowd out explanations of Jones’ own positions and context. Davies notes, for example, that Jones was instrumental in developing and defending the ‘Black Belt’ thesis, arguing for self-determination for a distinct Black nation in the southern u.s., a controversial CPUSA policy of the mid 30s. However, though Davies of course stresses the significance of this policy as an articulation of Black autonomy within Communist politics, the actual content of the Black Belt thesis is never explained. The relevance of this distinct form of revolutionary nationalism, not only to later generations of Black nationalism on both sides of the Atlantic, but also to her other positions on the equality of women, on the short-lived West Indian Federation, and on Black identity and culture within great britain, are nowhere to be found in this book. Though Jones’ relevance for debates about Paul Gilroy’s theories of cultural transmission in The Black Atlantic are fascinating, it is a shame to hear more about this than about the theoretical arguments she herself advanced in her own context.
It is hard not to think that at least some of Davies’ limitations here are related to her dismissals of ‘Stalinism’ and the concommitant downplaying of ‘Stalinism’ as it applies to Jones. i don’t want to get bogged down in the Stalin debate, which seems like a waste of time in this context, but rather than insisting that members of the Communist movement in the 30s and 40s couldn’t possibly have been shaped by something as apparently evil as Stalinism, it might be better to ask what indepedent and creative thinkers of the period gained from engaging in Moscow-aligned circuits of theory and organisation.
The strongest chapter in the book is also, coincidentally, the shortest; ‘Carnival and Diaspora: Caribbean Community, Happiness, and Activism’, discussing Jones’ community work in london following her deportation, and especially her founding of the Notting Hill Caribbean Carnival in 1959. This was apparently a controversial project, with many of her comrades considering something as frivolous as a carnival an unsuitable waste of energy in such urgent circumstances as the escalating white terror against migrant communities in late 50s britain. “But Jones,” Davies writes;
clearly felt that Caribbean traditions had much to offer the world in terms of creating a culture of human happiness over the ignorance and pain of racism, and indeed that it was a people’s culture that provided them with the basis for acquiring their freedom.
Jones always acted from the principle that economics, politics, and culture were inextricably linked. She was, for example, critical of the “cultural barriers” that the Communist Party instituted and that, therefore, did not allow access for the people who deserved the relationship the most. This was one feature of her critique of racial exclusions in the Communist Party USA, which would become more salient in London and the CPGB, with its inability to respect black women of her experience, much less to recruit black women from the community.
It was her emphasis on culture, “as a series of normative practices”, that governed her approach in the united kingdom and that allowed for new circuits of revolutionary mobilisations and thinking to develop around her. What is especially intriguing is that this emphasis on culture seems in many ways to foreshadow the insights of such key Black thinkers on the british new left as Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy. Is it possible that the emphases of ‘cultural studies’ as it emerged from such figures in britain in the 1980s owes some of its formative influence to Claudia Jones and her lessons from an earlier phase of revolutionary nationalism? Davies is silent, but it’s a fascinating possibility.
In summary, Davies has procuded a fascinating counter-archive to the protracted attempts at state erasure of Claudia Jones’ work as a lynchpin between Communism, Black autonomy, and women’s struggles. Her attempts to articulate Jones’ significance to contemporary debates is admirable, but in practice produces a convoluted text that may discourage many readers that might otherwise benefit from it.
If you’re looking to learn more about what i’ve discussed in this review, as well as Left of Karl Marx, i can recommend the following suggestions;
Beyond Contaiment, a collection of writings by Claudia Jones, also compiled by Carole Boyce Davies. i would strongly recommend this, probably even more so than Left of Karl Marx, as the first work to start on to learn about Jones’ life and work.
Black Bolshevik, the autobiography of Harry Hays, another key architect of the Black Belt thesis in the CPUSA. Hays would also later be attracted to Maoism and he pulls no punches on white chauvinism in the history of american communism.
Abhimanyu Manchanda Remembered is a website devoted to Jones’ partner, Manchanda, and documents his key aspects of his life and work, including the period following Claudia’s death. Manchanda was more embroiled in sectarian polemics than Jones and this should be kept in mind when reading on the site, but it’s a useful resource. (link)
‘The Life and Times of the First New Left’ by Stuart Hall is a useful account of the factors that would shape the later trajectories of these early reactions against the CPGB. (link)
Rock in the Water is a play by Winsome Pinnock, about Jones’ life, apparently including the controversy over the carnival. i’ve struggled to find a full recording or copy of the text but you can listen to this extract on the national theatre website. (link)
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The title of this piece comes from an article written by Jones for the first Notting Hill Carnival in 1959.
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