Three booklets by C. L. R. James, published by Facing Reality

First Edition. Three booklets, from 4 to 35 pp. each. 8vo and 4to. See individual descriptions below. Good. General minor toning, light wear, scant chipping at edges, but overall clear and intact, especially considering age and quality of materials. [2728]

Collection of three rare booklets by the great Trinidadian Marxist writer and political historian C. L. R. James, all published by Facing Reality. Taking its name from a 1956 collaborative book by James, Grace Lee Boggs and Pierre Chaulieu, Facing Reality was a small Michigan-based leftist group and publishing project led primarily by Martin Glaberman from 1962 to 1970. Facing Reality was founded to publish and promote James's theories and writings in the wake of ideological splits with the abovementioned co-authors as well as other former collaborators like Raya Dunayevskaya, who together with James had earlier constituted the "Johnson–Forest tendency" (after pseudonyms used by James and Dunayevskaya respectively). The present collection of booklets therefore represent an important and pivotal phase of James's writing and career, as also reflected in a series of records titled "Publishing: Johnson–Forest through Facing Reality" in the C. L. R. James Papers at Columbia University. The individual booklets included here are as follows: [1] Lenin, Trotsky and the Vanguard Party. Detroit: Facing Reality, 1964. 7 pp., offset on newsprint saddle stapled in printed self wrappers. A small booklet collecting three previously-published articles on Bolshevism and vanguardism by James; [2] From DuBois to Fanon. n.p. [Detroit: Facing Reality], n.d. [ca. 1967]. Single sheet folded to make 4 pp. letter-size pamphlet, offset on commercial stock. Cover lists distribution by three Michigan-based organizations: B.L.F.I. (Black Liberation Front International, an MSU student group); Pan African Institute for Self Reliance; and F.F.R.P. (Friends of Facing Reality Publications). Reproduces the text of a talk by James on the two titular Black intellectuals; [3] Black Studies and the Contemporary Student. Detroit: Friends of Facing Reality Publications, 1969. 35 pp., mimeograph on letter-size commercial stock, side stapled in stiff mimeograph printed wrappers. Text of a lecture and Q&A by James on the teaching of Black Studies in academia.