| Title | : | Pages from a Black Radical's Notebook: A James Boggs Reader |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0814332560 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780814332566 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 416 |
| Publication | : | First published November 1, 2010 |
Pages from a Black Radical's Notebook is arranged in four chronological parts that document Boggs's activism and writing. Part 1 presents columns from Correspondence newspaper written during the 1950s and early 1960s. Part 2 presents the complete text of Boggs's first book, The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's Notebook, his most widely known work. In part 3, "Black Power-Promise, Pitfalls, and Legacies," Ward collects essays, pamphlets, and speeches that reflect Boggs's participation in and analysis of the origins, growth, and demise of the Black Power movement. Part 4 comprises pieces written in the last decade of Boggs's life, during the 1980s through the early 1990s. An introduction by Ward provides a detailed overview of Boggs's life and career, and an afterword by Grace Lee Boggs, James Boggs's wife and political partner, concludes this volume.
Pages from a Black Radical's Notebook documents Boggs's personal trajectory of political engagement and offers a unique perspective on radical social movements and the African American struggle for civil rights in the post-World War II years. Readers interested in political and ideological struggles of the twentieth century will find Pages from a Black Radical's Notebook to be fascinating reading.
Pages from a Black Radical's Notebook: A James Boggs Reader Reviews
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4.5 stars [seriously Goodreads, can you start doing half-stars like Letterboxd?].
2 notes:
• this book is actually 735 pages. Not sure why its only 425 on here.
• this is a full collection of Boggs' work so a lot of stuff here, i already read. So I skipped about 200-250 pages.
James Boggs died the year before i was born, so I wasn't alive to actually witness his impact in real time, but I imagine he was very controversial, and probably would have pissed me off with a lot of his viewpoints. But also, he would have made me think, consider, and reconsider almost everything. James Boggs can be so aggravating to read, but he was brilliant. A militant Black socialist and theoretician, his writings on race and class are indispensable to every socialist.
Although he broke with CLR James [one of the few Trots I can actually stand] and moved away from a hard-line Trotskyist view, to a Third-Worldist view [though Boggs later denounces that title too], its hard to pinpoint exactly where James Boggs sat, politically. He himself admits that he uses Marx's method of dialectics in thinking, and it is true and evident in his writing, but his content and views on international affairs sometimes borders on that old Trotskyist line. Nonetheless, his writings on Black self-determination, revolutionary socialism, and criticisms of the most radical trends of the day in respective eras, are tantamount in Marxist political education.
At times in his writings he does contradict himself, but in his life he made himself open to criticism and critique from all kinds of people,.most notably his wife Grace Lee Boggs. It can be frustrating when he does contradict himself, but most of the time I found myself understanding what he was trying to get at, or he himself would clarify his point in the end.
Even in his later years, when he moved away from militant socialist writing, to involved community activist, the Streak of critiquing empire and racism still remained. On the other side of that coin lies a big complaint I have about James Boggs: he unfortunately maintains the line that the United States would continue to exist after a socialist revolution; i think, from what I've read, that many non-Indigenous Marxist writers from the early-mid 20th centuries, did carry this belief as they did not have a proper formula on anti-colonialism, and/or decolonization.
Overall, I highly recommend this book for socialist education. Critiques and all. It is an incredibly valuable read. -
This is a must read for anyone doing activism work in an urban or rural community. Lessons from James Boggs organizing experience in Detroit is a phenomenal way to gather an understanding of a new way to organize and educate the world. Comprised of many different short journal essays, this is an easy eye-opening read for the casual reader and an enlightening read to any intellectual.
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This book is an ediot for James Boggs' writings from his writings for Marxist-Humanist journal *Correspondence* to his book *the American Revolution* to the period afterwards discussing the issues the black movement was facing & then his last period, discussing mostly the issues of Detroit locally.
I found the writings for Crrespondence & the ones focused on Detroit at the end of his life less useful. I think the discussion of how we have to deal with education, boredom, etc. is useful, and I think there are some general good pieces on the necessity of cosntructing communities and the like. I found that useful, but lots was very specific to the area & so less enlightening.
The American Revolution, which is reproduced fully in the book, is a very interesting but also critique-worth book. The main assumption of the book is that automation has created an ever increasing underclass/surplus population -- & that this underclass constitutes the revolutionary subject, not the working class.
I think there is useful elements in his analysis of automation & I think his comments on how the black struggle is i. racial, ii. class-based and iii. national is very enlightening & how they interplay. It's very much worth reading, however the position that automation will increase the surplus population didn't seem to have been true at all, so I think that's very much worth critiquing.
I found his writings addressing the black movement very good in how to think about nationalism as a specific stage of the revolution & which has to be moved beyond, as it unites petty bourgeoisie, proletariat, etc., but which holds back the struggle through encapsulating it & not realising that a socialist struggle is necessary, which has to take power not just for ex. in the black part of the cities, but in the entire city.
All in all, there's much worth reading, and much I found less useful (though more useful for ppl in Detroit & related cities, likely). -
An honestly incredible account of so many fascinating historical periods in the Black liberation and labor struggles of the 20th century. Analysis highly relevant today! I like his writing much more than that of his partner Grace Lee Boggs
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Born out of the black radical tradition is helpful to understand solution from every corner to help us navigate this insidious racism America finds its self time and time again.
