In Love and Struggle by Ward Stephen M.;

Author:Ward, Stephen M.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press

A Return to London and the Return of Correspondence

Correspondence was also to be a vehicle for this intervention. However, the paper was to be a different type of intervention, and it brought its own set of challenges and potentially competing imperatives. While the group exchanged transatlantic letters analyzing Ghana and Montgomery during the spring of 1957, the American comrades, and especially those in Detroit, also worked on relaunching Correspondence as a biweekly newspaper. Indeed, the planning of the paper became a consistent topic in these letters alongside discussion of the Ghana book and the Hungary pamphlet, and the relationship between the two endeavors—moving Correspondence from “Discussion Bulletins” to a weekly paper, on one hand, and carrying out a writing program of books and pamphlets on the other—proved to be a source of contention. At issue was the group’s capacity to simultaneously publish the paper and carry out its other writing projects, and how best to relate them to each other. The paper’s function was to cover current affairs and global political developments, document popular protest, and give voice to the experiences and perspectives of ordinary people. The books and pamphlets, by contrast, were theoretical works designed to project in the most direct sense the organization’s politics. As C. L. R. wrote of the proposed Ghana book, “We shall put forward our whole program in a most concrete context.”51

Jimmy and C. L. R. again found themselves articulating competing visions of the group’s work. For C. L. R., the paper and the theoretical work were in fact two parts of a whole; the organization could and should pursue the two simultaneously. However, he gave the books and pamphlets priority over Correspondence, believing that new global political realities had created the opportunity for projects like the Ghana book to find a receptive readership and earn wide distribution. This, in turn, would generate a broad-based international audience for the group’s ideas. “Once we get the larger books out,” he explained, “they will read the paper.”52 By “they” C. L. R. meant colonial peoples as well as European and American workers, all of whom “have to be prepared for the next great upheaval along the lines of Hungary and to know what side to take immediately.”53 They would be searching for the type of theoretical insights that the Ghana book and the Hungary pamphlet would deliver, C. L. R. insisted. Therefore, these works would help the group “meet the reception that is waiting for us.” This was yet another expression of his unbounded confidence in the group’s analysis of the contemporary world political situation. “You never can tell when the break will come,” he wrote in a letter to the membership. “The thing is to see it and seize it, in fact sometimes to push out into the darkness confident that events are shaping and will come to meet you.”54

Jimmy made a less favorable assessment of the group’s ability to navigate these events. During a discussion of C. L. R.’s letters, Jimmy gave his view that “the organization goes to pieces every time something new is proposed.

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