CLR James’ lesson: Change the system

Williams was one of James’ students who would gather in James’ Washington apartment in the United States on Saturdays to discuss Marxism and current affairs.

According to Williams, James would open each discussion with the same phrase: “Young men, you want to see change in the Caribbean? Well let me tell you this. If you cannot change the system, the system will change you.” Williams believed James had grown very cautious about revolutionary leadership, and wanted to emphasize that the “movement” of the revolution should be more important than who leads it.

He put forward that this was a result of being disappointed in the change seen in revolutionaries like Haiti’s Toussaint L’Ouverture, Kwame Nkrumah, of Ghana, and Dr Eric Williams, TT’s first prime minister, after they had won their respective revolutions. Weighing in on this point was UWI historian Dr Jerome Teelucksingh, who advised young people who want to see change that they should “be careful of counter revolutions.” Toussaint, Dr Eric Williams, and Nkrumah all appeared to fail James after being met with the challenges of actually governing. One way young people, especially in Trinidad and Tobago, can avoid this is by building strong relationships across relationships across racial, political, and ideological lines, the historian observed.

“If you look at his relationships, he was close to Basdeo Panday in the Workers and Farmers Party and he was also friends with Raffique Shah,” said Teelucksingh.

Movement for Social Justice leader David Abdulah chimed in that James’ lesson for younger people is that the power for change lies in the common man.

“Over the last few years of James’ life, he was preoccupied with the idea of power lying in the streets,” said Abdulah.

The title of the documentary film, Every Cook Can Govern borrows from James’ book of the same name.

Its central point, according to Abdulah, was that every individual in the society has the power to influence the society in which they exist. Other panellists included OWTU’s Ozzi Warrick as chair, and Ceri Dingle, the producer, director and editor of the documentary.

Dingle warned against looking to James as a “bible for all the answers” to our modern problems, and encouraged instead to see the value of the man’s commitment to principles and activism. “He was a 20th century revolutionary who cannot tell us what to do, but he can tell us how to look at the world and analyse it and critique it.” Echoing Dingle’s point about James’ method of analysis, Williams told a brief story.

“On this very day in 1976, it was a Saturday, we were gathered in his (James’) apartment. A Trini student said, ‘today is Republic Day, you know’ and James turned to him and asked, ‘What exactly does that mean?’” It was to be the third and final screening of the documentary, but according to one festival coordinator, it will be aired again after the festival is over due to popular demand.