MARXISM AND HISTORY
By Brian Pearce
1959The NewsletterBrian Pearce Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
RECENTLY attention has been given in the Press to the e centenary of William Wilberforce, the campaigner for: the abolition of the slave-trade, which falls this year. This is my excuse for bringing to readers’ notice two books which throw Marxist light upon that episode, one of the most mystified and sentimentalized in our These are ‘The Black Jacobins’ by C. L. R. James (1938) and ‘Capitalism and Slavery’, by Eric E. Williams (1945), the latter being an American publication.
James’s book is primarily a history of the great Negro revolt in the West Indies led by Toussaint Ouverture In his introductory matter he briefly sets out a conception of the struggle around the abolition of the slave-trade which Williams develops more fully and in a wider setting.
It would be useful if readers would send me the titles of books, pamphlets and articles which they have found valuable in convincing others of the materialist conception of history and which may not be as widely known as they should be. A many-sided propaganda for Marxism is among the principal tasks of the Socialist Labour League, and for this we need to ‘mobilize’ alt the material available.