C.L.R. James; Marxist Philosopher, Author Expelled From U.S. in 1953

C. L. R. James, the Marxist philosopher, cricket scholar and international activist whose elegant yet simplistic style produced literary works ranging from a book on the Haitian revolution to a biography of Herman Melville, has died at his London home.

The Associated Press reported Friday that he died Wednesday at age 88 in south London’s primarily black Brixton District. He reportedly had a chest infection.

In an obituary published Friday, the London newspaper The Independent called him “probably the most versatile and accomplished Afro-American intellectual of the 20th Century.”

He was both adviser and adversary to such world figures as Paul Robeson, Leon Trotsky and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.

Deported to England

And he became a cause celebre in the United States in 1953 when--at the height of the McCarthy era--he was deported to England.

Privately he was a soft-spoken man, highly mannered with a small voice capable of charming even the most quarrelsome opponent. But his literary persona was one of indignant critic.

He was credited with influencing many of the postwar independence movements in Africa and the Caribbean where he was born Cyril Lionel Robert James in Chaguanas, Trinidad, the son of a teacher-father and a mother with a thirst for reading.

His values were shaped by the poverty about him even though his family lived a middle-class existence.

James’ love for cricket developed from the games he used to watch from his living room window and culminated in 1963 when he wrote “Beyond a Boundary,” an examination of the social significance of that popular sport. It told of cricketers of African descent bringing glory to an English game.

Educated at Queen’s Royal College, one of the former British colony’s top schools, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of English literature (he had memorized much of “Vanity Fair” at age 10) and a respectable command of Latin and ancient Greek.

Wrote About Lower Class

He began writing about the lives of the Trinidadian lower class in a series of short stories that hinted of the Marxist path he was to follow.

He left Trinidad in 1932 at the urging of fellow Trinidadian Learie Constantine, later Lord Constantine, who was then a professional cricketer and became a political leader in Britain.

James went to stay with Constantine and published his first book, “Life of Captain Cipriani,” soon after his arrival.

The book, about a Trinidadian politician agitating on behalf of working-class people there, was one of the first to urge self-determination for West Indians. Its publication led to his introduction to the Marxists who were to influence the remainder of James’ life.

He became a committed Marxist, argued with Trotsky over the importance of independence for blacks but took Trotsky’s side in the dispute over Stalinism. His “World Revolution, 1917-1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International” was an outgrowth of that period.

James’ best-known book, “The Black Jacobins,” was published in 1938. With the rise of fascism and the 1936 Italian invasion of Ethiopia as background, it told of black revolt in Haiti against French rule during the French Revolution at the end of the 18th Century.

Soon after publication of “The Black Jacobins,” which won wide acclaim, James went to the United States. He had established a close relationship in London with black American singer and political activist Paul Robeson with whom he worked for many years on African and American black issues.

James spent 15 years in America, organizing auto workers in Detroit and sharecroppers in the South. By now Trotsky had been assassinated, and James formed a new Trotskyite political organization that eventually was to provoke the country.

He was interned and eventually expelled from the United States in 1953. During his internment he wrote “Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In.”

James returned to Trinidad from England in 1958 at the invitation of Dr. Eric Williams, the chief minister, to edit his party’s newspaper and later became secretary of the West Indies Federal Labor Party.

But Williams found James’ outspoken Marxism politically threatening and soon forced him back to England.

As the political climate in America eased in the 1960s, James was permitted back for a series of college lecture tours.

He later returned to live in Britain, where a group of admirers, mostly young and black, gathered around him, heralding him as a sage. Among his most recent writings was “At the Rendezvous of Victory,” which included an essay on the Solidarity movement in Poland.