Timeline part 4 (1946-1952)
10 January: First meeting of UN General Assembly opens in London.
Marries Constance Webb (forced to divorce and remarry in 1948 as C.L.R.’s divorce to Juanita Young not recognised).
The Invading Socialist Society (with F. Forest and Ria Stone). New York: Johnson Forest Tendency (1947). Reprinted with new preface, Detroit: Bewick Editions (1972).
12 March: Truman proposes Truman Doctrine.
June: Marshall Plan for European recovery proposed.
Johnson-Forest Tendency re-joins Socialist Workers’ Party, and withdraws from the WP.
15 August: India and Pakistan gain independence from Britain.
‘Trotskyism in the United States, 1940-1947: Balance sheet‘ published by JFT and Workers Party, August 20th
‘Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity’ published as pamphlet by JFT.
‘The American Worker’ published by Johnson Forest Tendency (written by Paul Romano and Grace Lee Boggs).
30 January: Gandhi assassinated in New Delhi.
Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx and Lenin (1948). New edition with Introduction, London: Allison & Busby; Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill (1980).
July: C.L.R. gives a speech titled ‘The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the USA’ to convention of the Socialist Workers Party outlining JFT’s view of the ‘Negro struggle’ having ‘a vitality and validity of its own’.
Deportation proceedings begin against James. From 1948 until his deportation in 1953 James is working on a translation from French of Daniel Guerin’s study of the French Revolution. Copies of the manuscript are housed in the C.L.R. James collection at the University of Trinidad.
Truman ends racial segregation in US military.
C.L.R. James Jnr (“Nobby”) born (4th April)
4 April: Start of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
1 October: Communist People’s Republic of China formally proclaimed by Chairman Mao Zedong.
7 October: German Democratic Republic (East Germany) established under Soviet rule.
South Africa institutionalizes apartheid.
C.L.R. James begins to draft manuscript published posthumously as ‘American Civilization‘ (1993).
Notes on American Civilisation. Typescript [1950], Published as American Civilization, Oxford: Blackwell (1992).
25 June: Korean War begins when North Korean Communist forces invade South Korea.
State Capitalism and World Revolution (1950). Written in Collaboration with Raya Dunayevskaya & Grace Lee. New edition with foreword by James and introduction by Paul Buhle, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr (1986).
McCarthyism begins.
Correspondence Publishing Committee created. Led by C.L.R. James and Martin Glaberman (and including members of Johnson-Forest Tendency). Formally splits from Trotskyist groups.
November:First edition of Correspondence published.
24 December: Libya gains independence.
Letters to Literary Critics. (1952/53 – including Jay Leyda [Melville scholar], Meyer Schapiro [poet, editor, critic], Frank Kermode [UK literary critic]). Published in CLR James Reader.