The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's Notebook

by James Boggs

James Boggs, born in Marion Junction, Alabama in 1919, never dreamed of becoming President or a locomotive engineer. He grew up in a world where the white folks are gentlemen by day and Ku Klux Klanners at night. Marion Junction is in Dallas County where as late as 1963, although African-Americans made up over 57 percent of the total county population of 57,000, only 130 were registered voters. After graduating from Dunbar High School in Bessemer, Alabama, in 1937, Boggs took the first freight train north, bumming his way through the western part of the country, working in the hop fields of the state of Washington, cutting ice in Minnesota, and finally ending up in Detroit where he worked on WPA until the Second World War gave him a chance to enter the Chrysler auto plant. Both a keen analysis of U.S. society and a passionate call for revolutionary struggle, The American Revolution has been translated into French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese.

Genres: Politics, History, Race, Nonfiction, Labor, United States, Theory

148 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

really good

[Devin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible read from Marxist/Third-Worldist auto worker and revolutionist James Boggs; at a time when the Black Power movement had not yet been launched and the Black liberation struggle was largely in the Civil Rights Movement, James Boggs lays out a foreshadowing of what was to come [and what is to come] regarding the union, the rise of automation, and Black Liberation. Then effortlessly, he connects all of these together, based around a thesis that Black people are the most oppressed in a rapidly automating world, and that it is Black people who will lead a world revolution.

James Boggs was not afraid to take on the anti-Blackness of even white Marxists -- he correctly confirms that many white Marxists have throughout the last century, recognized the Black question as only a question of race, and of race, class, and nationality. He says that even white Marxists who claim Black-white worker solidarity have not fully considered the economic struggles that are unique to Black people, especially in the rise of automation, and how white workers are still part of the autocratic, white supremacist system and do benefit from that. And finally, that many white Marxists fear a Black-led Revolution for fear that it will make white workers turn against white Marxists, and that these fears arise from the belief of the social revolution should be white-led. The goal to render whitness as obsolete is a necessary component to Boggs' words, and he executes these theories incredibly, and I love it. It's a shame I don't hear about him as much as Fanon, Claudia Jones, CLR James, etc.

For the first chapter or so, a decent knowledge of the AFL-CIO, UAW, and 1930s and 1940s union history would be helpful.

ALSO, despite my high praise of Boggs, his Third Worldist approach disregards the USSR under Stalin as being "bureaucratic" and murderous; neither are true. But he was formerly a Trotskyist so i'm not too surprised ; though he thankfully denounced that later.

[Malik Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book. A fascinating man. James Bogg, a Black radical with a deep understanding of the structural position of Blacks in America. He understands, in a word, Black people are generally disregarded and always excluded. In this book he begins to chart the task of the present American revolution, a revolution led by those always excluded, a revolution that can not and refuses to accept the conditions set by a hegemonic, American way of life.

I'm thinking this work as it relates to the ideas of Sylvia Winter and Frantz Fanon, to know what it means to think the world and what it means to be (create) human, anew. This book is forward looking. Boggs is constantly pursuing the elaboration of a theory to build politically and organizationally conscious modes of living (as opposed to just modes of production, in the Marxian sense).

I've appreciated his approach to Black Power which refuses reactionary and ahistorical politics in favor of historically rooted, scientific analysis of time, place and conditions. Indeed, James Boggs calls himself a revolutionist (and not a revolutionary).

All of his analysis I can't see myself fully agreeing with, primarily because I, too, understand our time and place and conditions have changed. As such, to speak of a society that is nearing full unemployment, as he does, seems hyperbolic. As metaphor, however, it captures an essential truth about the tiered and layered presence of Black suffering and death.

I want to re-read this book, for sure. As I said, it and he is fascinating. If for no other reason than his confident approach to theorizing, I want to continue to think about how his politics informs and is informed by a Black radical tradition.

[Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea · Rating 4 out of 5]

An accessible and interesting account of labor and radical politics from the point of view of a socialist in the early 1960's. I read about Boggs while reading Grace Lee Boggs' autobiography "Living for Change." One thing that kept coming up was how similar Boggs' time was to our current situation with the economy, the wars, and the possibility for revolution.

[Michael Skora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is certainly dated in some areas, but reckons with some seriously conundrums that those striving for revolution in the United States must take seriously such as the ubiquity of cheap consumer goods, how exploited labor is less and less socialized and the reactionary role that unions and liberal rights organizations can take in directing struggle.

Radicals must always remain cognizant that “all organizations that spring up in a capitalist society and do not take absolute power, but rather fight only on one tangential or essential aspect of that society are eventually incorporated into capitalist society.” (25)

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

prescient!!!

[T]

I would highly recommend the seventh chapter of this book. It stands pretty well independently from the rest of the book, except for his argument’s dependence on the futility of organized labor, which is established elsewhere. In this chapter, Boggs points to the historic and contemporary Black struggle. This struggle is against an exclusionary way of life and for human rights, so it is beneficial to everyone, although it is necessarily led by Black people. This is a fact that is being continuously borne out (compare the moderate gains of BLM to empty-handed Occupy).

Otherwise, this book is at its best when describing lumpenproletarianization and the consequent end of organized labor’s usefulness: automation has decreased the total amount of socially necessary labor, leaving former-workers without jobs, and unions only represent the employed, but even there they fail because they have been co-opted by capital. We have since seen a proliferation of nonessential labor in the US, which has kept unemployment low, but this can be Boggsian-ly treated as busy-work.

Boggs also writes persuasively about the need to decouple the right to live from productivity, which I do not oppose, but am hesitant to accept the primary or total importance of. Boggs sees the efficiency of the factories and the abundance they produce. From this, he deduces that workers in the US need not work as much as they do and, moreover, US society could even become workless! However, this ignores the hidden, super-exploitative labor happening abroad that makes US luxury possible. I am not familiar enough with the history of globalized production to actually object to Boggs’ claims about what he saw in the 60’s, but one cannot argue in the 21st Century, “the US is wealthy enough to provide these things to citizens” without affirming the inhumane treatment of non-citizens. (On this I would refer readers to Imperialism in the Twenty-first Century by John Smith, which was also published by Monthly Review!) Boggs’ aforementioned argument for the primacy of Black liberation is not dependent on this, though, and it is a quick enough read that I would recommend it regardless.

[Shanel Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful. Powerful. Powerful read. The late James Boggs critique of the American education system is both ingenious and fascinating. All of his observations and ideologies is exactly what the world is missing. What I found most interesting though is that he came home and wrote these essays after long days working at a Chrysler plant. How many people today working would come home to be an activist, teacher and writer for the sake of other people? All of his writing is still relevant today. Him and his late wife Grace were civil rights pioneers and geniuses humbly amongst us. Proud to have been exposed to their legacy and work.

[Güel Almeréida · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely essential

[Doreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can I say read twice? The first time I rather carelessly rushed through this slim book so I renewed my library copy and read again. Published in 1963, the book's main currents still remain relevant even more so in a post-Occupy US where economic demands highlighted the errors of capitalism most specifically its free market economy that has congealed power in the few rather than the many. Current politics on both sides of the aisle are fed by corporate interests and if not for Bernie Sanders even bringing up the US is becoming an oligarchy, we all would still be blindsided by incrementalism as a political philosophy that brings little or perhaps just surface change.

How I digress.

Boggs provides a brilliant dissection of contemporary American political life covering topics from the death of unions and the rise of automation (since this book was published we live in a world where we impatiently wait for more services and labor to be automated, from auto-driving cars to digital waiters in large cities such as NY, self-banking as duh, self-promotion of our commodities, art, and labor a given, and in my own profession, bot grading), the US as a warfare and police state, the need for a universal basic income, the exploitation and dehumanization of African Americans under Jim Crow, American imperialism, and a critique of American Marxism--all of this done well, done thoroughly in 80 pages.

His understanding of American empire, especially its use of exceptionalism to cloak the horrors that lurk within "The white workers were an aristocracy which benefited first and always from the exploitation of Negroes," and beyond,its borders,"it was obvious that the economic and political life of Latin America revolved around the Yankee sun," is applicable today when we consider the rise of state violence and the militarization of police being used against primarily African Americans as well as Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and currently Venezuela, for instance, as it was when he was writing on the eve of the US involvement in Vietnam as well as ramping up its military to quell any social and economic unrest in the Caribbean as well as South and Central America.

Even as Boggs paints a grim portrait of contemporary politics with no mincing of caustic words directed at the American left who excluded African Americans and the question of race from their agenda, the unions, esp. AFL-CIO that were bought out by management, and the peace movement whose interests he argues were not interested in confronting racial inequality in the US and abroad as well as the war economy that fuels American imperialism, he does stress there is the possibility for change. That change he claims lies within each of us, "to assume responsibility"... and "to use as much creative imagination in politics as up to now they have used in production." His claim we are mired in our love of things, of commodities and that in buying those things, we also buy into the American illusion of freedom seems very much still a part of our consumer ethos that 55 years later wants things ever cheaper thanks to globalization and its attendant offshore, cheap labor.

[Comrade Zupa Ogórkowa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice little intro to the early works of James Boggs. He contributes to the analysis of the fracturing of the working class and their allegiances/revolutionary potential starting with unionized workers specifically those under the CIO- he details the limitations of these workers given their economist politics and their lack of interest in seizing power in the workforce, being content with concessions of improved wages and working hours which ultimately leads to reactionary politics. He also writes on automation and the resulting “lumpen” proletariat (though he doesn’t use this term) of unemployed displaced by machines and the revolutionary potential of those permanently in the reserve army of labour. He critiques unions for failing to have solidarity with the unemployed and to only advocate for their membership. Lastly he writes on the condition and militancy of the black people in the US and the potential of their mass movements- written in 1963 this essay predates the black power movement and clearly James Boggs could see where things were heading. Though some of what he says is often reproduced by other authors and will be points you’ve come across many times, he also includes questions which I’m yet to see many Marxists touch on and are thoughts I’ve had myself: what do the “oppressed” have to fight for in the west when what they already have materially is what the wretched of the earth in the global south are struggling and dying to just have crumbs of? How do we have a revolutionary movement when the proletarians of the global north already have so much materially?

Limitations of this work include his hyperbolic claims that automation would make everyone unemployed in a few years- statements like this and his somewhat superficial analyses feel characteristic of someone’s early work. I’m excited to read what he has to say with a more developed writing style and analysis. He also was a Trotskyist at this point, which he later abandoned, and so typical anti-Stalin statements.

[Jnoub101 · Rating 5 out of 5]

A prescient book to say the least. Boggs writes to us from a 1960s that feel more relevant than ever. Discussing the rise and fall of the CIO along, the development of post-war automation, and the nascent Civil Rights Movement, Boggs carefully and exquisitely offers a historical materialist, and eye witness, analysis of all three. The author refuses to participate in the particularism and/or fatalism common to Marxists of his day. Rejecting developmentalist arguments which state that the furthering of the productive forces of capitalism, with worker input via the unions, is historically progressive, just as vigorously as he rejects any analysis of work that does not tie directly with a critique of capitalist society. To Boggs, such critiques must, necessarily be one in the same.

The one lingering critique I held was one I shared with Sweezy, who wrote the introduction to the Essay. Namely, that Boggs is a bit ahead of himself when he proclaims the immanent doom of the working class. Clearly automation has not replaced the working masses with the unemployed masses. People in the early 21st century are working as much and more than they did in the 50s and 60s. However, it is notable that Boggs himself describes the necessity for Capitalism to place those workers left behind in jobs, even potentially useless jobs, to maintain the functionality of the system. So perhaps this critique is more of authorial rhetoric rather than intellectual precision.

In conclusion, this work is a splendid example of Marxian analysis. One which has influenced the cutting edge of Marxism since, especially the Italian Workerist movement.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the 'The American Revolution', Boggs presents a new critical way of thinking, based upon his experiences as a black autoworker in Detroit and a member of the 'Correspondence Publishing Committee', that theorises about the decline of industrial USA and the effect that will have on the revolutionary subjects of today. Parts of this book are breathtaking, given it was written in 1963, in how he predicts some of the social and technical changes that would occur later in the 20th Century, and his theory of the class of 'outsiders', made up of black Americans, women and the un/underemployed, as being the new revolutionary subject, is an interesting one. However, whilst I see the revolutionary potential and importance of the struggles of these groups as constituting autonomous parts of the global class struggle, I believe Boggs too quickly rejects the working-class as a relevant social force in society, and comes to some conclusions around automation that have proven incorrect in the years since he wrote this text. However, overall this is a fantastic book that still has a lot to give us today.

[Abe · Rating 3 out of 5]

All I knew about the author is that he was a trot and that he was married to Grace Lee Boggs (who I also knew very little about). I say this to say I didn’t really expect him to push the political line he does in this book. In truth I got this as a quick May Day read I assumed, based on the title, it was gonna be a first hand account of factory life. Needless to say it was manifestly not that - it’s, from what I’ve read something like a break up letter to his old political allies. It works on this level I think if you come in expecting a complete and totally fleshed out system of thought to be laid out here you aren’t going to get it. As an exposition it does the job well enough it’s basically split between his views on automation, permanent war economy, and general third worldism. Again these don’t get a full treatment it’s mostly just presenting them so how well these hold up is up for the audience to decide.

[Rain Sailing · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most interesting parts of Boggs’ analysis for me were his emphasis on the development and politics of ‘the Outsiders’ and Black workers. While I believe that Boggs overstates the uniqueness of the technological revolution he witnessed, his point about the increasing growth of the reserve army of labor predicts later writings by Eldridge Cleaver and other Black Panthers about the revolutionary potential of the lumpen proletariat. In fact, Boggs’ seems to be a early proponent of what is now termed ‘fully luxury automated communism’.

Boggs’ position on the leading role of the Black liberation struggle also anticipates the maturing of the Black Power movement. By taking Black nationalism seriously as a ideological and material force he understands the class nature of the Black nationalist organizations which tend to represent the lowest strata of the American working class.

[Lilly Irani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prescient about how automation transforms the relationship between workers, the company, and critically the union. Foreshadows what politics might look like if it recognizes that most of the world's people are well beyond what organized capital needs to accumulate profit. Also recognizes early on the way the tech workers who manage the tech orient to their work differently than other workers in the plant.

["Nico" · Rating 4 out of 5]

What the author lacks in theory they make up for in their rich knowledge of history, particularly of the American labour movement and it's relationship with African diaspora which constitutes it's most advanced revolutionary strata.

[Sandeep · Rating 5 out of 5]

The intro + the Outsiders. Woah.

[Jeff McLeod · Rating 4 out of 5]

presents the problems of automation and the Black struggle in a very coherent way as challenges for American Marxists to respond to

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boggs developed in The American Revolution a personal and theoretically advanced account of postwar capitalism in the United States from the perspective of the working class. In his strongest moments, Boggs described in historic and autobiographical terms the destruction of the union as an organ of working-class self-activity by the development of the union itself and the role of the labor bureaucracy in the maintenance of the imperialist labor aristocracy. (His analysis here has been observed to closely resemble that of Italian operaismo, to which he owed a very similar pool of influences). Boggs was also clearsighted in his radical account of the class struggle and racism, to which he saw that the first phase of class war will be within the working class, as a struggle against the reactionary workers.

Boggs also made rudimentary errors. Especially in the early chapters, Boggs made a series of dubious claims about the inapplicability of Marx's original analysis after automation. None of it stands, even on its own terms, and it leads Boggs to very strange conclusions. The introduction talks about the Boggs's split with CLR James following his deportation, and it being motivated in part by the Boggs' observed fallibility of Marx. The introduction describes CLR as an unreasonable dogmatist, but it seems much more accurate that he, having a much closer familiarity with Marx, saw through the errors made in their reasoning, and they, out of frustration with him, broke away. It's hard to not sympathize with CLR over Boggs in that sense.