Introdução à obra e à vida de C.L.R. James, ou da atualidade da revolução como realização do individuo social

The article aims to provide a critical introduction to the work and life of C.L.R. James, one of the fathers of revolutionary Marxist pan-Africanism and of the workerist critique of Stalinism and the bureaucratization of the workers' movement. Author of some masterpieces that revolutionized the historiography on slavery, such as The Black Jacobins (1938), and the studies on Caribbean and USA - such as Beyond a Boundary (1963) and Notes on American Civilization (1950) -, its importance is widely recognized in English language studies, which have also underlined its fundamental contribution to the birth of autonomous marxism, and post-colonial, Atlantic and cultural studies. This contribution did not take place through generic cultural influence, but often through the direct cultural and political training of researchers who were actives in groups organized by James and his collaborators, such as, for example, in the case of George Rawick, George Caffentzis, Selma James, Silvia Federici, Peter Linebaugh, and others. Likewise, its role was relevant in the formation of Kwame Nkrumah and other activists of the decolonization in Africa, as well as in that of the militants who in the 1960s animated the workerist groups of black radicalism in the USA or of radical feminism in the USA and in Italy. The article tries to provide a comprehensive picture of the multiple fields of intellectual and political activity of C.L.R. James, but it focuses mainly on his theoretical and organizational contribution to the Pan-Africanist movement, to the critique of Stalinism and Trotskyism and to the growth of the organization of class autonomy. The article contains a short biography of C.L.R. James and is accompanied by a bibliography of his main works - in which the modifications made in the various editions of the same are reported - and of the monographic studies on C.L.R. James.