C.L.R. James (1901-1989), native of Trinidad, is perhaps the most libertarian revolutionary thinker of both the Pan-African and international labor movements in the twentieth century. Best known as the author of The Black Jacobins (1938), the classic account of Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution, and Beyond A Boundary (1963), a semi-autobiographical meditation on the game of cricket, his intellectual legacies in the fields of history and literature are well established. In contrast, aspects of his political thought have yet to be examined with equal care. This study through original research in primary sources will introduce two unique propositions about the life and work of C.L.R. James. First, the foundation of his political philosophy is direct democracy and workers self-management. Second, inquiring variously about the presence, function, contours, and absence of direct democracy and workers self-management in C.L.R. James' political thought on national liberation struggles challenges the horizons of radical democratic theory and radical Africana political thought in the twentieth century.

This study will make an original intervention in scholarly fields by placing C.L.R. James' political thought on direct democracy and workers self-management, as embodied by his adage “every cook can govern,” in conversation with Black freedom struggles of Africa, the African Diaspora, and the Third World. Examining C.L.R. James' ideas inspired by the Age of the CIO, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Rousseau, Jules Michelet, the French and Russian Revolutions, Eastern Europe, and Ancient Athens; unique vantages will be offered on James' relationship to the Black Power Movement in the USA, The Sixth Pan-African Congress, and Federation and Party Politics in the Caribbean. C.L.R. James' outlook on Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana and Julius Nyerere's Tanzania will be explored along with unexpected and illuminating vistas on Cuba, China, Kenya, Ethiopia, India and the Indo-Caribbean. In examining these national liberation struggles we will inquire if C.L.R. James' political thought is a means to enchant popular self-management at the expense of nation-states and ruling elites or assist the nationalist middle classes in retaining state power at ordinary people's expense.