4. The Black International as Social Movement Wave: C.L.R. James’s History of Pan-African Revolt

This chapter examines and explores the question of Marxism's possible contribution to such a 'rethinking of received wisdom' through the lens of the 'black international'. It evokes a sense of how James's creative fusion of Marxist scholarship and political activism ensured that A History of Negro Revolt represented, in the words of Rodney, 'a mine of ideas advancing far ahead of its time'. James concluded his discussion of revolutionary black internationalism in A History of Negro Revolt with a discussion of the spontaneous mass strike of copper-miners in Northern Rhodesia (what is now Zambia) in May 1935, which he considered to be of immense historical portent and significance. Keywords: A History of Negro Revolt ; black internationalism; class-struggle pan-Africanism; marxist theory; social movement