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Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones
In Left of Karl Marx, Carole Boyce Davies assesses the activism, writing, and legacy of Claudia Jones (1915–1964), a pioneering Afro-Caribbean radical intellectual, dedicated communist, and feminist. Jones is buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery, to the left of Karl Marx—a location that Boyce Davies finds fitting given how Jones expanded Marxism-Leninism to incorporate gender and race in her political critique and activism.
Claudia Cumberbatch Jones was born in Trinidad. In 1924, she moved to New York, where she lived for the next thirty years. She was active in the Communist Party from her early twenties onward. A talented writer and speaker, she traveled throughout the United States lecturing and organizing. In the early 1950s, she wrote a well-known column, “Half the World,” for the Daily Worker. As the U.S. government intensified its efforts to prosecute communists, Jones was arrested several times. She served nearly a year in a U.S. prison before being deported and given asylum by Great Britain in 1955. There she founded The West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News and the Caribbean Carnival, an annual London festival that continues today as the Notting Hill Carnival. Boyce Davies examines Jones’s thought and journalism, her political and community organizing, and poetry that the activist wrote while she was imprisoned. Looking at the contents of the FBI file on Jones, Boyce Davies contrasts Jones’s own narration of her life with the federal government’s. Left of Karl Marx establishes Jones as a significant figure within Caribbean intellectual traditions, black U.S. feminism, and the history of communism.
Claudia Cumberbatch Jones was born in Trinidad. In 1924, she moved to New York, where she lived for the next thirty years. She was active in the Communist Party from her early twenties onward. A talented writer and speaker, she traveled throughout the United States lecturing and organizing. In the early 1950s, she wrote a well-known column, “Half the World,” for the Daily Worker. As the U.S. government intensified its efforts to prosecute communists, Jones was arrested several times. She served nearly a year in a U.S. prison before being deported and given asylum by Great Britain in 1955. There she founded The West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News and the Caribbean Carnival, an annual London festival that continues today as the Notting Hill Carnival. Boyce Davies examines Jones’s thought and journalism, her political and community organizing, and poetry that the activist wrote while she was imprisoned. Looking at the contents of the FBI file on Jones, Boyce Davies contrasts Jones’s own narration of her life with the federal government’s. Left of Karl Marx establishes Jones as a significant figure within Caribbean intellectual traditions, black U.S. feminism, and the history of communism.
311 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2007
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About the author
Carole Boyce Davies
19 books57 followersCarole Boyce Davies is Professor of African–New World Studies and English at Florida International University. She is the author of Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject; the editor of the Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora (forthcoming) and Decolonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies; and a coeditor of The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
January 17, 2024
“The only Black woman among communists tried in the United States, sentenced for crimes against the state, incarcerated, and then deported, Claudia Jones seems to have simply disappeared from major consideration in a range of histories… How could someone who had lived in the United States from the age of eight, who had been so central to Black and communist political organizing throughout the 1930s and 1940s, up to the mid-1950s, simply disappear?”
McCarthyism: the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of treason and subversion, especially when related to socialism, anarchism, and communism. Usually accomplished in a public forum for purposes of propaganda.
Chances are good, especially if you’re a white American and a product of American public schools, that you have never heard mention of Claudia Jones and her contributions to the anti-imperialist movement of the 1940s and 1950s. That’s because the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), verifiable by their own documentation, waged an effective campaign to erase her from our collective consciousness. In Jones’ case, her crimes were her ideas and her ideas were deemed too dangerous for public consumption.
“As a negro woman communist of West Indian descent, I was a thorn in their side in my opposition to Jim Crow racist discrimination against sixteen million Negro Americans in the United States, in my work to redress these grievances, for unity of workers, for women’s rights, and for my general political activity urging the American people to help by their struggles to change the present foreign and domestic policy of the United States.” ~CJ
Carole Boyce Davies’ Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones is much more of an assessment than a description. If you read biographies simply because you want to be entertained, this is not your book. This is a high caliber, university level dissertation. Stay focused and take notes.
“The fine talk about the free flow and exchange of ideas internationally, and about freedom of speech in the U.S. rings false when placed against the desperate attempt to deport me because of my political views. I am proud of my political views because I learned them in American schools. The traditions of democratic struggle exemplified by Franklin, Lincoln, Jefferson, Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth are the ideas that inspired me and my views. Why are they so frightened by the political view of one negro woman?” ~Claudia Jones, 1955
“This rediscovery of Claudia Jones, the individual subject, reinstates a radical Black female intellectual-activist position into a range of African diaspora, left history, and Black feminist debates.” ~Carole Boyce Davies, 2007
McCarthyism: the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of treason and subversion, especially when related to socialism, anarchism, and communism. Usually accomplished in a public forum for purposes of propaganda.
Chances are good, especially if you’re a white American and a product of American public schools, that you have never heard mention of Claudia Jones and her contributions to the anti-imperialist movement of the 1940s and 1950s. That’s because the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), verifiable by their own documentation, waged an effective campaign to erase her from our collective consciousness. In Jones’ case, her crimes were her ideas and her ideas were deemed too dangerous for public consumption.
“As a negro woman communist of West Indian descent, I was a thorn in their side in my opposition to Jim Crow racist discrimination against sixteen million Negro Americans in the United States, in my work to redress these grievances, for unity of workers, for women’s rights, and for my general political activity urging the American people to help by their struggles to change the present foreign and domestic policy of the United States.” ~CJ
Carole Boyce Davies’ Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones is much more of an assessment than a description. If you read biographies simply because you want to be entertained, this is not your book. This is a high caliber, university level dissertation. Stay focused and take notes.
“The fine talk about the free flow and exchange of ideas internationally, and about freedom of speech in the U.S. rings false when placed against the desperate attempt to deport me because of my political views. I am proud of my political views because I learned them in American schools. The traditions of democratic struggle exemplified by Franklin, Lincoln, Jefferson, Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth are the ideas that inspired me and my views. Why are they so frightened by the political view of one negro woman?” ~Claudia Jones, 1955
“This rediscovery of Claudia Jones, the individual subject, reinstates a radical Black female intellectual-activist position into a range of African diaspora, left history, and Black feminist debates.” ~Carole Boyce Davies, 2007
August 10, 2015
While this was definitely an interesting book because of the subject matter, I feel it was lacking a bit in terms of context. The focus is so heavily on Claudia Jones and her actions that it misses the broader context that prompted Claudia to identify as a feminist, a Marxist and an anti-imperialist. What was happening in the world and how did she relate to these events would have been a more interesting focus, in my opinion. The author does touch on that, but it is not made central.
October 24, 2019
Unfortunately, this book about an unjustly neglected American communist adopts the posture of so much cultural studies writing on intellectual history. Instead of telling us what the subject thought, how that thought was formed, where it came from, what was unique or different about it, and what it's influence was, each chapter is essentially a version of "Jones talked about X, and here's why talking about X is important." If you want to understand Jones' thought or her place in American communism, look elsewhere.
Read
August 9, 2017In
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
, Angela Davis writes, "As Carole Boyce Davies has pointed out in her wonderful book on Claudia Jones, Left of Karl Marx, Claudia Jones was one of the leaders of the Negro Youth Congress (the American Negro Youth Congress and the Southern Youth Congress). And I mention Jones both because of her important work in the US and because she became a pivotal figure in the organizing of Caribbean communities here in Britain after she was arrested for the work she did in the US and eventually deported." (p. 66)
I was really interested to read about a Black Communist woman "to the left of Karl Marx" as I've (a) been reading about about our Black and other radical WoC foremothers, (b) been growing increasingly interested in alternatives to capitalism (but still on a break from reading books by white dudes). But the first third of this book was a struggle. (I had not realized before I started reading it that it was a Duke University Press book.)
The beginning part of the book tries to situate Jones, but reading it I felt sort of like I was swimming -- it tries to situate her in relation to so many different things that I didn't actually feel grounded in her, in the specifics of her story.
Chapters 3-4 "Prison Blues" and "Deportation") were much easier for me. Chapter 3 "Prison Blues" focuses on Jones' time in prison, and while I didn't love the focus on her poetry, I could still follow it fairly well. Chapter 3 "Deportation" is self-explanatory and talks largely about the criminalization of being a Communist and the McCarran Act (Internal Security Act of 1950) and the McCarran-Walter Act (Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952) as well as the Smith Act (Alien Registration Act of 1940).
Chapter 5 ("Carnival and Diaspora") talks about her bringing Caribbean carnival to London (having experienced it in Harlem in the 1930s and 1940s) -- specifically in reaction to the racist murder of Kelso Cochrane in Notting Hill in 1959 in response to the 1958 race riots. The chapter spends most of its time first overviewing Jones' continuing connection to Caribbean culture (including her endorsement of material culture, contra some Communists) and then arguing that she really is the one responsible for the London Caribbean Carnival which turned into the Notting Hill Carnival (which then turned into the larger, outdoor London Carnival after her death .. at least I think that's the trajectory; the chapter was not well-structured to help me understand the actual chronological development). I would have preferred the chapter structured differently, more chronologically, but I understand that the author's purpose is primarily to situate Jones in history and argue for her importance, not to write a chronological biography.
Chapter 6 ("Piece Work/Peace Work") starts out largely identifying her as a Communist (based on her testimony and her FBI file) and then shifts to how her politics and activism (her linkage of US war activities to US imperialist intentions, transnational women's organizing, etc.) grew out of and informed her Communism.
I remain interested in Claudia Jones, and I did learn a lot from this book, but it wasn't the biography I was hoping for.
I was really interested to read about a Black Communist woman "to the left of Karl Marx" as I've (a) been reading about about our Black and other radical WoC foremothers, (b) been growing increasingly interested in alternatives to capitalism (but still on a break from reading books by white dudes). But the first third of this book was a struggle. (I had not realized before I started reading it that it was a Duke University Press book.)
The beginning part of the book tries to situate Jones, but reading it I felt sort of like I was swimming -- it tries to situate her in relation to so many different things that I didn't actually feel grounded in her, in the specifics of her story.
Chapters 3-4 "Prison Blues" and "Deportation") were much easier for me. Chapter 3 "Prison Blues" focuses on Jones' time in prison, and while I didn't love the focus on her poetry, I could still follow it fairly well. Chapter 3 "Deportation" is self-explanatory and talks largely about the criminalization of being a Communist and the McCarran Act (Internal Security Act of 1950) and the McCarran-Walter Act (Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952) as well as the Smith Act (Alien Registration Act of 1940).
Chapter 5 ("Carnival and Diaspora") talks about her bringing Caribbean carnival to London (having experienced it in Harlem in the 1930s and 1940s) -- specifically in reaction to the racist murder of Kelso Cochrane in Notting Hill in 1959 in response to the 1958 race riots. The chapter spends most of its time first overviewing Jones' continuing connection to Caribbean culture (including her endorsement of material culture, contra some Communists) and then arguing that she really is the one responsible for the London Caribbean Carnival which turned into the Notting Hill Carnival (which then turned into the larger, outdoor London Carnival after her death .. at least I think that's the trajectory; the chapter was not well-structured to help me understand the actual chronological development). I would have preferred the chapter structured differently, more chronologically, but I understand that the author's purpose is primarily to situate Jones in history and argue for her importance, not to write a chronological biography.
Chapter 6 ("Piece Work/Peace Work") starts out largely identifying her as a Communist (based on her testimony and her FBI file) and then shifts to how her politics and activism (her linkage of US war activities to US imperialist intentions, transnational women's organizing, etc.) grew out of and informed her Communism.
I remain interested in Claudia Jones, and I did learn a lot from this book, but it wasn't the biography I was hoping for.
March 11, 2022
Claudia Jones is truly such an inspiring person in how her actions directly reflected her politics and she did so seemingly flawlessly, one of the first to recognize some of the major talking points regarding black women, communism, feminism, imperialism, white feminism, etc, but the last brought up in a conversation, sadly, proving her right. for anyone interested in feminism, internationalism, anti-imperialism, african/caribbean diaspora, activism and organizing, communism, or marxist-leninism please read this, it’s something so special and inspiring
December 22, 2008
“Claudia Jones was a black woman and a communist, clear about her ideological orientation, as she was about her identity as a black woman writing and doing political work simultaneously.” Those are the opening words to Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones, by Carole Boyce Davies Duke University Press, $22.95. Davies objective yet passionate presentation of the life Claudia Jones, takes the reader on a journey of intimacy. Davies is clear to indicate that her work is not a biography but a study of “one of the most important black radical thinkers, activists and organizers in African diaspora history.” Jones born in Trinidad immigrated to Harlem, New York in 1924 with her family three sisters and an aunt. She attended school and participated in activities of the day she joined the NAACP and participated in Urban League programs. She successfully completed highschool and went to work in industrial trades, laundering, millinery and sales.
Jones died in 1965 and her ashes were interred to the left of the grave of Karl Marx in London. Davies has recovered Jones from the shadow of history giving her a rightful place at the center of scholarship our attention and consumption.
it is the academic in me - check it out
Jones died in 1965 and her ashes were interred to the left of the grave of Karl Marx in London. Davies has recovered Jones from the shadow of history giving her a rightful place at the center of scholarship our attention and consumption.
it is the academic in me - check it out
February 4, 2020
Second reading. An articulate theoretical and political assessment of the life of Claudia Jones from her involvement in communist leagues to her steady advocacy for black women's rights via her situation as a transnational, pan-African feminist.
She deserved to live longer than she did but her work remains even longer with us to guide us on the myriad, multi-levered locations that are central to our mission of self-determination.
She deserved to live longer than she did but her work remains even longer with us to guide us on the myriad, multi-levered locations that are central to our mission of self-determination.
January 21, 2024
Four stars for the content, one for the presentation. It's notable to me that even many of the 4-star reviews here talk about how unpleasant this was to read. IMO that means they have rated it too highly, maybe out of respect for the subject?
This could be a case where I'm just unfairly holding my prior expectations against a book, because I expected a biography but instead got a tedious and baffling academic argument... Baffling because to my knowledge nobody has ever taken the opposite position, but then again I'm so ignorant on the topic that I wouldn't know if they had (then AGAIN that's probably another reason this should have just been a straight biography).
I won't speculate on why Davies decided to go that direction with the subject, but I will note that from the very preface it is conspicuous how she 1) centers herself and 2) criticizes other academics for insufficiently appreciating Claudia Jones. In doing this, Jones in her own story becomes almost secondary to academic point-scoring. We can't just learn about Jones being a journalist, or a feminist, or Caribbean, we have to understand (repetitively over far too many pages) how being each of those things represents the trailblazing epitome of black radicalness. And the implicit message is that Davies herself deserves our highest praise for being the first one to point all this out.
Davies makes basic arguments in very pretentious ways; my favorite was did you know that journalism was an important tool for black radicals? Instead of simply recounting for us Jones's journalistic pursuits, Davies milks those eight words for an entire chapter. Put another way, if Davies had seen Jones not as an admirable human being but purely as unclaimed academic territory, and had hastily rushed to plant her flag as first claimant, she hardly would have written a different book.
I've been running out of patience with academia for years now, and this book is one of the last nails in the coffin. Most bad things about academia are on display here: obfuscation, navel-gazing, arrogance, gate-keeping, self-importance. If you can find me a book that more unnecessarily complicates a more important subject, I'd love to hear about it.
I could only recommend this book if you REALLY like Claudia Jones and have already read a lot about her, or you are curious about her and REALLY like academic writing. For any other readers I think there are at least half a dozen better places to spend your time before trying this book out, depending on your main interest:
On Black radical communism... W.E.B. DuBois or Cedric Robinson
On Black radical feminist communism... Angela Davis
On Caribbean Black radical communism... Walter Rodney or CLR James
On Claudia Jones specifically: not sure but I'd be surprised if there's not an easier and roughly as useful biography as this one out there somewhere
Not Bad Reviews
This could be a case where I'm just unfairly holding my prior expectations against a book, because I expected a biography but instead got a tedious and baffling academic argument... Baffling because to my knowledge nobody has ever taken the opposite position, but then again I'm so ignorant on the topic that I wouldn't know if they had (then AGAIN that's probably another reason this should have just been a straight biography).
I won't speculate on why Davies decided to go that direction with the subject, but I will note that from the very preface it is conspicuous how she 1) centers herself and 2) criticizes other academics for insufficiently appreciating Claudia Jones. In doing this, Jones in her own story becomes almost secondary to academic point-scoring. We can't just learn about Jones being a journalist, or a feminist, or Caribbean, we have to understand (repetitively over far too many pages) how being each of those things represents the trailblazing epitome of black radicalness. And the implicit message is that Davies herself deserves our highest praise for being the first one to point all this out.
Davies makes basic arguments in very pretentious ways; my favorite was did you know that journalism was an important tool for black radicals? Instead of simply recounting for us Jones's journalistic pursuits, Davies milks those eight words for an entire chapter. Put another way, if Davies had seen Jones not as an admirable human being but purely as unclaimed academic territory, and had hastily rushed to plant her flag as first claimant, she hardly would have written a different book.
I've been running out of patience with academia for years now, and this book is one of the last nails in the coffin. Most bad things about academia are on display here: obfuscation, navel-gazing, arrogance, gate-keeping, self-importance. If you can find me a book that more unnecessarily complicates a more important subject, I'd love to hear about it.
I could only recommend this book if you REALLY like Claudia Jones and have already read a lot about her, or you are curious about her and REALLY like academic writing. For any other readers I think there are at least half a dozen better places to spend your time before trying this book out, depending on your main interest:
On Black radical communism... W.E.B. DuBois or Cedric Robinson
On Black radical feminist communism... Angela Davis
On Caribbean Black radical communism... Walter Rodney or CLR James
On Claudia Jones specifically: not sure but I'd be surprised if there's not an easier and roughly as useful biography as this one out there somewhere
Not Bad Reviews
May 9, 2013
Carole Boyce Davies delivers a stunner in Left of Karl Marx, a deft and thorough analytical treatment of the political life of Claudia Jones, "Black Woman Communist of West Indian Descent" Neither Pan-Africanism nor Black Women's Studies can begin to do without this book, not to mention a host of other fields and constituencies. It brilliantly performs the task of resurrection made intellectually necessary when the status-quo takes such important figures away from us and then tries to erase their memory, to boot
We should not be forced to think and struggle in ignorance of Claudia Jones, and now we certainly don't have to with such a powerful and impressive study.
Critically, Boyce Davies treats not just the politics of diaspora, but deportation as well; not just "political" activism, but cultural activism (such as Carnival) as well; not just bookish intellectual production, only, but polemics, speeches and journalism (in the spirit of Ida B. Wells) as well; not just "women's rights" or "worker's rights" or the rights of colonized peoples, but all of the aforementioned and then some. Perhaps most crucially, she recovers the "radical Black female subject" in a fashion that immediately calls for pretenders to the titles of "radical," "Black," etc," to walk the walk talked and walked by Claudia Vera Cumberbatch Jones
We should not be forced to think and struggle in ignorance of Claudia Jones, and now we certainly don't have to with such a powerful and impressive study.
Critically, Boyce Davies treats not just the politics of diaspora, but deportation as well; not just "political" activism, but cultural activism (such as Carnival) as well; not just bookish intellectual production, only, but polemics, speeches and journalism (in the spirit of Ida B. Wells) as well; not just "women's rights" or "worker's rights" or the rights of colonized peoples, but all of the aforementioned and then some. Perhaps most crucially, she recovers the "radical Black female subject" in a fashion that immediately calls for pretenders to the titles of "radical," "Black," etc," to walk the walk talked and walked by Claudia Vera Cumberbatch Jones
June 20, 2021
As a subject Claudia Jones is amazing, she seemed to be a very talented agitator of the oppressed. The book on the other-hand was hard to follow. I have no idea any of the actual order of her life outside of she was born in Trinidad, went to the US at 8 and was deported out of the states after the McCarthy blacklistings, it may have helped to organize this book chronologically, but it's not so much a direct biography but explicitly about her work in advocacy for the communist movement. Which I think is fine, Claudia did dedicate her life to it, I assume she'd want her remembrance to be in reference to her efforts rather than her personal self. Also I did listen on audible rather than read it.
February 23, 2025
I've been meaning to read Left of Karl Marx for a few years now. I've been really looking forward to it, and I had high hopes. I wouldn't say that I disliked it by any stretch, and I learned a decent amount from it, but it just didn't deliver quite as much as I hoped it would and I found myself disappointed.
The description had me thinking this would be a biography with a focus on the political work that took up so much of her adult life, but it really isn't. It's a dissertation that explores Claudia Jones's place in the broader political movements before, during, and after her time. There's a lot of interesting information here, and I really agreed with her politics for the most part, and it gave me a lot to think about. I also enjoyed a few of the more personal chapters, such as the ones exploring the poetry she wrote while imprisoned. It honestly made me wish I had access to a more traditional biography that would give me a more linear narrative of her life to contextualise her works more within her personal experiences rather than in the broader political world.
I listened to the audiobook, which was maybe not the best way to go. The narrator does a mostly serviceable job. Listening on headphones could be jarring because the audio quality would reduce and increase at random intervals, which wasn't noticeable on the occasions I played it through speaker. I usually don't comment on general pronunciations of words because it doesn't really matter if they pronounce something slightly differently than I do, but she does it a lot here in ways that I found very distracting. The word "similarly" is used a LOT in this book, and she pronounces it "simularly" which became very distracting. She pronounced the word "supremacy" like "supreemacy" for most of the book, switched to the correct pronunciation briefly and then switched back to the disorienting way she pronounced it in the first place. She also pronounced some names incorrectly, like Assata.
Overall, this was an interesting book, but it was very dense and academic, and focused more on her place in the broader political world than on her own life in its own context. I also regret going with the audio due to how distracting it was. That said, I would still recommend checking it out for anyone interested in the life and works of Claudia Jones, a brilliant Black feminist communist woman. I hope I get the chance to read a more traditional biography of her some day.
The description had me thinking this would be a biography with a focus on the political work that took up so much of her adult life, but it really isn't. It's a dissertation that explores Claudia Jones's place in the broader political movements before, during, and after her time. There's a lot of interesting information here, and I really agreed with her politics for the most part, and it gave me a lot to think about. I also enjoyed a few of the more personal chapters, such as the ones exploring the poetry she wrote while imprisoned. It honestly made me wish I had access to a more traditional biography that would give me a more linear narrative of her life to contextualise her works more within her personal experiences rather than in the broader political world.
I listened to the audiobook, which was maybe not the best way to go. The narrator does a mostly serviceable job. Listening on headphones could be jarring because the audio quality would reduce and increase at random intervals, which wasn't noticeable on the occasions I played it through speaker. I usually don't comment on general pronunciations of words because it doesn't really matter if they pronounce something slightly differently than I do, but she does it a lot here in ways that I found very distracting. The word "similarly" is used a LOT in this book, and she pronounces it "simularly" which became very distracting. She pronounced the word "supremacy" like "supreemacy" for most of the book, switched to the correct pronunciation briefly and then switched back to the disorienting way she pronounced it in the first place. She also pronounced some names incorrectly, like Assata.
Overall, this was an interesting book, but it was very dense and academic, and focused more on her place in the broader political world than on her own life in its own context. I also regret going with the audio due to how distracting it was. That said, I would still recommend checking it out for anyone interested in the life and works of Claudia Jones, a brilliant Black feminist communist woman. I hope I get the chance to read a more traditional biography of her some day.
December 30, 2024
A book that lets down its own subject matter. Claudia Jones was a black communist way ahead of our time - synthesizing the thesis of super exploitation of black women in american capitalism. She fought and railed against White chauvinism that ultimately has greatly damaged any emancipatory project in north america. She also started carnival in the UK after getting deported there. An extremely important historical figure that should be discussed more.
The author on the other hand seems almost embarrassed of claudia jones communism, and attempts to excuse her beliefs to the reader. The commentary inputs many of the authors views onto what Jones might have believed had she lived longer. The author also gets some things wrong: emphasizing how jones championed the soviet union and Maoist china, in light of their rift, when no such rift had formally come about in claudia jones’ lifetime. Also as another review mentioned, the book fails to really contextualize claudia jones beliefs and positions in the time she held those positions, and instead tends emphasize why such positions are important and then gives an historical excuse if it was a belief the author seems embarrassed claudia jones held. Its a shame because the research required for such a book is monumental.
The author on the other hand seems almost embarrassed of claudia jones communism, and attempts to excuse her beliefs to the reader. The commentary inputs many of the authors views onto what Jones might have believed had she lived longer. The author also gets some things wrong: emphasizing how jones championed the soviet union and Maoist china, in light of their rift, when no such rift had formally come about in claudia jones’ lifetime. Also as another review mentioned, the book fails to really contextualize claudia jones beliefs and positions in the time she held those positions, and instead tends emphasize why such positions are important and then gives an historical excuse if it was a belief the author seems embarrassed claudia jones held. Its a shame because the research required for such a book is monumental.
July 3, 2021
I thought this was excellent. From this book, I've gained a lot of respect for Claudia Jones as a theorist, journalist, poet, and cultural worker. I also took away that Jones should really be regarded as a foundational [Black] feminist thinker. She was so ahead of her time in her writings and analyses.
February 4, 2025
Claudia Jones is most definitely an important figure and has unfortunately been so deliberately marginalised by the powers that be, in and of her time, she has almost been airbrushed from history, almost!
But thanks to people like Angela Davis and in turn, books like this, her life's work, the selfless dedication to humanity are being lifted back from attempted U.S. Imperialist State imposed obscurity and back into the hearts and minds of the people, she worked so tirelessly to defend.
However, the book is not a biography, which it states quite clearly in the introduction, which disappointed me somewhat, as I had gone into it thinking it was. There is a short summery of biographical events in Claudia's life, but the content concentrates more on her ideology and how it effected her environment at any given point in her story.
Carol Boyce Davies's work here, is really quite heavy. Truth be told, probably a bit too heavy for my liking, and it does fall wearisomely into the trap, that unfortunately blights many of these types of books, in that it continuously repeats itself, and Left of Karl Marx was particularly guilty of this annoying habit of repetition.
Nevertheless, I did manage to take quite a fair bit from the book, especially when looking at the issue of identity politics (IP). I've quite often heard people complain about IP, accusing it of being somewhat of a red herring, and how it detracts from the main issue, which is 'class'. Technically they're right, but for me it's a lot more complicated. Especially when you factor in Claudia's well made points about women of colour and their 'superexploitation', where they experience capitalist oppression as black, women and workers, but then the point about 'class' is brought home, when she says, that their emancipation would result in the emancipation of ALL women and men.
When Claudia talks about the 'triple burden' and 'triple oppression', where women of colour are exploited for their race, class and their gender, it's certainly something that’s hard to argue against and definitely gives you something concrete to think about.
It's also extremely scary when you think on the amount of time and energy that went into destroying the lives of people on the left in the United States of America. The FBI's whole raison d'être seems to have been to take down communists and the left in general. Especially when compared to the laissez-faire attitudes the J. Edgar Hoover run organisation had to fascism and the extreme right (see my review of ’Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism’).
Claudia Jones along with many others was arrested three times and incarcerated twice and then deported, under the Smith and McCarren Acts, under the pretence that she was a member of and wrote articles pertaining to, groups and ideologies dedicated to the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government. The evidence the FBI had against her, was flimsy to say the least, to the point of being non existent really! With nothing more than articles and columns she had written for, predominantly The Daily Worker, the official Communist Party USA newspaper, which advocated peace, rights for workers, women and people of colour! In fact, the articles that outraged the US State the most, were pieces she had written advocating nothing more than equality for women! Put simply, it really does just beggar belief that that line of thinking could have been seen as such a threat to the fascist patriarchy and industrial war machine that the U.S. State was and let’s face it, still is.
Unlike the paramilitary extremists on the right, whom were actually stockpiling guns and explosives, training militia, parading in militarized uniforms and spreading insurrectionist propaganda, often in support of foreign powers, the leftist victims of the Smith, & McCarren Acts, McCarthyism, House Un-American Activities Committee and the FBI, to name but a few of the egregiously repressive anti-left wing measures and groups, perpetrated by the U.S. Government, were advocating nothing more than peace and equality!
Un-f*cking-believable!
Claudia Jones was an heroically brave and multitalented woman, and although this book is a bit heavy on the theoretics, I'd still recommend it, for it's most definitely worth a read, as an important lesson in sticking two fingers up at a system that tried to white wash her creative talent from history. Long live Claudia Jones!
But thanks to people like Angela Davis and in turn, books like this, her life's work, the selfless dedication to humanity are being lifted back from attempted U.S. Imperialist State imposed obscurity and back into the hearts and minds of the people, she worked so tirelessly to defend.
However, the book is not a biography, which it states quite clearly in the introduction, which disappointed me somewhat, as I had gone into it thinking it was. There is a short summery of biographical events in Claudia's life, but the content concentrates more on her ideology and how it effected her environment at any given point in her story.
Carol Boyce Davies's work here, is really quite heavy. Truth be told, probably a bit too heavy for my liking, and it does fall wearisomely into the trap, that unfortunately blights many of these types of books, in that it continuously repeats itself, and Left of Karl Marx was particularly guilty of this annoying habit of repetition.
Nevertheless, I did manage to take quite a fair bit from the book, especially when looking at the issue of identity politics (IP). I've quite often heard people complain about IP, accusing it of being somewhat of a red herring, and how it detracts from the main issue, which is 'class'. Technically they're right, but for me it's a lot more complicated. Especially when you factor in Claudia's well made points about women of colour and their 'superexploitation', where they experience capitalist oppression as black, women and workers, but then the point about 'class' is brought home, when she says, that their emancipation would result in the emancipation of ALL women and men.
When Claudia talks about the 'triple burden' and 'triple oppression', where women of colour are exploited for their race, class and their gender, it's certainly something that’s hard to argue against and definitely gives you something concrete to think about.
It's also extremely scary when you think on the amount of time and energy that went into destroying the lives of people on the left in the United States of America. The FBI's whole raison d'être seems to have been to take down communists and the left in general. Especially when compared to the laissez-faire attitudes the J. Edgar Hoover run organisation had to fascism and the extreme right (see my review of ’Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism’).
Claudia Jones along with many others was arrested three times and incarcerated twice and then deported, under the Smith and McCarren Acts, under the pretence that she was a member of and wrote articles pertaining to, groups and ideologies dedicated to the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government. The evidence the FBI had against her, was flimsy to say the least, to the point of being non existent really! With nothing more than articles and columns she had written for, predominantly The Daily Worker, the official Communist Party USA newspaper, which advocated peace, rights for workers, women and people of colour! In fact, the articles that outraged the US State the most, were pieces she had written advocating nothing more than equality for women! Put simply, it really does just beggar belief that that line of thinking could have been seen as such a threat to the fascist patriarchy and industrial war machine that the U.S. State was and let’s face it, still is.
Unlike the paramilitary extremists on the right, whom were actually stockpiling guns and explosives, training militia, parading in militarized uniforms and spreading insurrectionist propaganda, often in support of foreign powers, the leftist victims of the Smith, & McCarren Acts, McCarthyism, House Un-American Activities Committee and the FBI, to name but a few of the egregiously repressive anti-left wing measures and groups, perpetrated by the U.S. Government, were advocating nothing more than peace and equality!
Un-f*cking-believable!
Claudia Jones was an heroically brave and multitalented woman, and although this book is a bit heavy on the theoretics, I'd still recommend it, for it's most definitely worth a read, as an important lesson in sticking two fingers up at a system that tried to white wash her creative talent from history. Long live Claudia Jones!
September 14, 2025
I am so glad this book was recommended to me (on twitter ). It is so easy to get caught in the same four or five names in a period or movement. Schools can pick up on a time like the Harlem Renaissance..but then leave. The world of black immigrants from the islands and black Americans moving to New York did not disappear.
The energy and passion was still there represented by people like Claudia Jones. Like Emma Goldman a couple of generations before Claudia Jones organizes and ends up going to jail and then deported just for the words she says.
The book isn't a simple- she was born, lived, died- type of biography. Given how little has been published about Jones the author takes the time to give the academic framework around discussing her and talks about how she went about getting interviews of people who knew Jones.
I look forward to learning more about this time and the actors involved. This book gives me an in. If you are at all interested in how people out of the power structure organize and fight for dignity and a place in America, in England..this is a must read.
The energy and passion was still there represented by people like Claudia Jones. Like Emma Goldman a couple of generations before Claudia Jones organizes and ends up going to jail and then deported just for the words she says.
The book isn't a simple- she was born, lived, died- type of biography. Given how little has been published about Jones the author takes the time to give the academic framework around discussing her and talks about how she went about getting interviews of people who knew Jones.
I look forward to learning more about this time and the actors involved. This book gives me an in. If you are at all interested in how people out of the power structure organize and fight for dignity and a place in America, in England..this is a must read.
April 13, 2025
“American women bear a heavy responsibility to the millions of our anti-fascist sisters in the world camp of peace, precisely because the threat to world peace stems from the imperialists of our land.”
Written too much like a dissertation but it did leave me more knowledgable of, and hungry for more information regarding, Claudia Jones. This work breaks down her ideas around race, feminism, anti-colonialism, and Marxism-Leninism. Paints her as someone both of and ahead of her time.
Written too much like a dissertation but it did leave me more knowledgable of, and hungry for more information regarding, Claudia Jones. This work breaks down her ideas around race, feminism, anti-colonialism, and Marxism-Leninism. Paints her as someone both of and ahead of her time.
December 18, 2023
I read some iffy reviews before deciding to dive into this one but decided to give it a shot anyways. In the end, my thoughts on the book are pretty similar to many of those reviews. This book doesn't exactly work as a straight biography, doesn't exactly work as a "political biography" (in the spirit of something like Black Bolshevik by Haywood or Du Bois' multiple biographies), and doesn't exactly work as an explanation of Claudia's worldview or ideology.
I am no stranger to academic literature and to academic analysis of historical communist thinkers, but personally found this book to be pretty lacking in terms of applicability to my own self-education and strengthening of my own ideology, and think it works more as a purely academic analysis of Claudia than as any sort of educational material for people seeking political understanding.
If you are going to read this I'd highly recommend having at least some knowledge of black feminist history and black feminist critiques of the white American feminist movement prior to the 1980s, and at least a basic knowledge of Marxism-Leninism. I went in with both and decided to jump ship about a third of the way through, but you may be able to get something out of it. I also attempted to listen to this at audiobook while at work and think you might get a bit more out of it with a print copy and lots of skimming.
I may return to it one day, but have decided to shelve it for now in favor of more pressing readings. Davies apparently has a collection of Claudia's writings that I will be purchasing instead and that will probably give me more of what I'm looking for.
I am no stranger to academic literature and to academic analysis of historical communist thinkers, but personally found this book to be pretty lacking in terms of applicability to my own self-education and strengthening of my own ideology, and think it works more as a purely academic analysis of Claudia than as any sort of educational material for people seeking political understanding.
If you are going to read this I'd highly recommend having at least some knowledge of black feminist history and black feminist critiques of the white American feminist movement prior to the 1980s, and at least a basic knowledge of Marxism-Leninism. I went in with both and decided to jump ship about a third of the way through, but you may be able to get something out of it. I also attempted to listen to this at audiobook while at work and think you might get a bit more out of it with a print copy and lots of skimming.
I may return to it one day, but have decided to shelve it for now in favor of more pressing readings. Davies apparently has a collection of Claudia's writings that I will be purchasing instead and that will probably give me more of what I'm looking for.
November 20, 2022
This is objectively a good book that people should read - and there are ways I wanted more from it. I feel like the author set out to do lots of things and did them adequately but not exceptionally. The book sort of flits between providing biographical info, summarizing Jones' thought and influence as a communist, and placing her in dialogue with contemporary Black feminist thinkers. I kept expecting more than was offered on each front, and by the end of the book kind of had an inkling that maybe it could've been organized in a different way. I don't know what that optimal way would've been, and it probably just means I personally should read more.
This last point isn't too important but I didn't ever feel the title was really earned. It was kind of taken for granted that Marx did not think about gender or race. There wasn't a real in-depth attempt to compare the thought of the two figures. Did Claudia Jones consider herself left of Marx? Or did the author just like that as a title?
This last point isn't too important but I didn't ever feel the title was really earned. It was kind of taken for granted that Marx did not think about gender or race. There wasn't a real in-depth attempt to compare the thought of the two figures. Did Claudia Jones consider herself left of Marx? Or did the author just like that as a title?
October 2, 2022
A formidable research effort by the author. I wasn’t all that impressed by the writing itself. Identical paragraphs would repeat throughout the book, showing patchy editing, and the rhetorical analysis of Jones’ poetry read like homework assignments by a sophomore college student in a literature class. The carnaval section was also way too long. T
The author provides a great account of how Jones left her imprint performing activist and mobilizing work wherever she found herself in life (San Francisco, imprisoned at Ellis Island, on trial in federal court, deported to the UK as a Caribbean-born woman, etc.).
Overall, this is a valuable archive of a nearly forgotten (intentionally so), trailblazing transnational and proto-intersectional Black feminist woman.
The author provides a great account of how Jones left her imprint performing activist and mobilizing work wherever she found herself in life (San Francisco, imprisoned at Ellis Island, on trial in federal court, deported to the UK as a Caribbean-born woman, etc.).
Overall, this is a valuable archive of a nearly forgotten (intentionally so), trailblazing transnational and proto-intersectional Black feminist woman.
September 3, 2023
Excellent but not as much substance as I would have liked
September 3, 2023
I read this for my Black Studies book club. It was an interesting read about someone I had never heard of, but I didn't love the book. I was expecting more of a standard, chronological biography of Jones; instead, the book's six chapters are arranged thematically around Jones' work and political life. This format made it difficult at times to follow.
The biggest struggle I had with really synthesizing this book and Jones' life was to get past my bias towards Jones' Marxist-Leninist ideology and instead take her for what she was: a Black, female leader and organizer at a time when there weren't many, and who tend to be historically looked over. Much of Jones' short life took place prior to what we consider the Civil Rights era and at a time when the Communist Party USA was the only group advocating full equality for Black people. So if you can get past the ideological aspect of Jones, you'll find a fascinating individual who led an exceptional life.
The biggest struggle I had with really synthesizing this book and Jones' life was to get past my bias towards Jones' Marxist-Leninist ideology and instead take her for what she was: a Black, female leader and organizer at a time when there weren't many, and who tend to be historically looked over. Much of Jones' short life took place prior to what we consider the Civil Rights era and at a time when the Communist Party USA was the only group advocating full equality for Black people. So if you can get past the ideological aspect of Jones, you'll find a fascinating individual who led an exceptional life.
Read
September 9, 2022I aspire to write like Carol Boyce Davies! And I think this book will be helpful for my research in many ways in the years to come
Read
April 9, 2009THE DEPORTED
Linda Carty
Review of Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones
By Carole Boyce Davies
Duke University Press
During the 1940’s and ’50s, Claudia Jones, a Caribbean born poet and journalist, was a major theoretician for the Communist Party USA. As a communist, her struggle was on behalf of workers. As an anti-imperialist feminist, she communicated to her party comrades the multiple oppressions experienced by black women. As a radical black woman, she understood that her struggles would always integrate labor, race and women’s rights. In fact, she used her considerable powers of persuasion to advance positions that would subsequently influence the women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s. In this analysis of Jones’ life’s work, Carol Boyce Davies examines how a brilliant and popular public figure could have been so thoroughly erased from historical memory.
In the mid-1920s, at the age of 8, Claudia Jones migrated from Trinidad to Harlem, and her coming of age in pre-civil rights America led to a life of activism. In high school, she joined the Junior NAACP and, at 21, the Communist Party. Jones was imprisoned a number of times for her ideological beliefs and for calling the U.S. to account for its treatment of the poor and its de jure apartheid system. Not even FBI surveillance deterred her from her quest for justice, which, of course, was politically unacceptable; in today’s parlance, the government would call her a threat to national security. After a final incarceration in 1955 for nine months in Alderson Women’s Penitentiary in West Virginia, at the height of the McCarthy era, Claudia Jones was deported to Britain—the only black woman among the communists sentenced for crimes against the state and so punished. She carried her activism across the Atlantic, joined the British Communist Party, and continued her work.
Davies’ words exude a warmth toward Jones that the reader will find infectious. And the mounds of documentation on Jones that she has uncovered leave one perplexed that there has been so little written on a woman who was such a shining light for justice. Today, few feminists, whether activists or academics, make any serious attempts to link their struggles across national, racial or ethnic divides. In Jones, we find one who lived to create a better world for all women. Davies’ beautiful and well documented tribute is named not only for Claudia Jones’ politics, but also for her burial place in London’s Highgate Cemetery—to the left of Marx’s tomb.
---
LINDA CARTY is a professor in the department
of African American Studies
at Syracuse University in New York,
where she teaches courses on gender,
black sexuality and feminism.
Linda Carty
Review of Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones
By Carole Boyce Davies
Duke University Press
During the 1940’s and ’50s, Claudia Jones, a Caribbean born poet and journalist, was a major theoretician for the Communist Party USA. As a communist, her struggle was on behalf of workers. As an anti-imperialist feminist, she communicated to her party comrades the multiple oppressions experienced by black women. As a radical black woman, she understood that her struggles would always integrate labor, race and women’s rights. In fact, she used her considerable powers of persuasion to advance positions that would subsequently influence the women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s. In this analysis of Jones’ life’s work, Carol Boyce Davies examines how a brilliant and popular public figure could have been so thoroughly erased from historical memory.
In the mid-1920s, at the age of 8, Claudia Jones migrated from Trinidad to Harlem, and her coming of age in pre-civil rights America led to a life of activism. In high school, she joined the Junior NAACP and, at 21, the Communist Party. Jones was imprisoned a number of times for her ideological beliefs and for calling the U.S. to account for its treatment of the poor and its de jure apartheid system. Not even FBI surveillance deterred her from her quest for justice, which, of course, was politically unacceptable; in today’s parlance, the government would call her a threat to national security. After a final incarceration in 1955 for nine months in Alderson Women’s Penitentiary in West Virginia, at the height of the McCarthy era, Claudia Jones was deported to Britain—the only black woman among the communists sentenced for crimes against the state and so punished. She carried her activism across the Atlantic, joined the British Communist Party, and continued her work.
Davies’ words exude a warmth toward Jones that the reader will find infectious. And the mounds of documentation on Jones that she has uncovered leave one perplexed that there has been so little written on a woman who was such a shining light for justice. Today, few feminists, whether activists or academics, make any serious attempts to link their struggles across national, racial or ethnic divides. In Jones, we find one who lived to create a better world for all women. Davies’ beautiful and well documented tribute is named not only for Claudia Jones’ politics, but also for her burial place in London’s Highgate Cemetery—to the left of Marx’s tomb.
---
LINDA CARTY is a professor in the department
of African American Studies
at Syracuse University in New York,
where she teaches courses on gender,
black sexuality and feminism.
May 3, 2018
This is an extraordinary book about a little known Black Communist. Claudia Jones was erased from the history books by the U.S. government. She helped change the way racism and sexism were viewed from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. Throughout her life she continued to fight for her beliefs of a socialist society without racism and sexism. Prison, deportation and illness did not stop her. It is must reading for anyone who is interested in the intersection of race and class and communism.
Read
February 7, 2017While Claudia Jones's legacy is maintained in Black British circles (her cultural work includes founding the West Indian Gazette and the West Indian Carnival), she's been incredibly obscured in the US. Jones, a Trinidadian emigrant, lived a majority of her life in the United States. She was deported from the States for her activism (mostly as a member of the Communist Party). This book provides a reading of Jones's work that situate her political life, not only within ideology of communism, but also within Pan-Africanism and Black feminism.
January 9, 2014
I was introduced to a new hero.
April 16, 2025
Unfortunately, I feel as though this book does not deliver in terms of defending its central thesis— that Jones was “left of Marx”. It fails in doing this in two ways:
1. Most of this book is frustratingly apolitical, and rather a description of Jones’s life. While I love a good biography, there were many moments where there was space to more concretely tie events in her life, such as her imprisonment in the US or exile to the UK, to principle of socialism. How does the state, in using dubious charges to get rid of Claudia, illustrate the classic capitalist tropes of war on the working class? Fascism is also mentioned multiple times throughout, but the book misses those opportunities to discuss the class elements of fascism and how they impacted Jones’s politics. All it seems to be doing is telling me that what happened to Jones and what Jones says is important. I don’t get a good grasp on what she actually said, and so it’s quite empty to me.
2. When, towards the end of the book, we started to get more political, I still felt that Jones was not “left of Marx”. Rather, to me it seemed that, as a black woman, she was able to take Marxist ideas and apply them to her own life. This is a perfectly fine and worthy exercise, but to term it as further left than Marx is weird and almost makes it a competition? Why must it be so? She applied Marx’s teachings to her own life, and that’s great. Was she more left than Marx? Who really even cares?
Side note: I disagree with some of her politics. The emphasis on the peasantry in the Chinese revolution is in fact a critique to be had of that period in Chinese history, rather than something to be celebrated as Jones does. Furthermore, it states that, while she was critical of Stalin, she “did not see Stalin as the problem— for her, the enemy was not Stalin but growing US imperialism” (pg 222). Why is the enemy not both?????Stalin killed scores of working class people, so did US imperialism. As socialists, we CANNOT give people like Stalin a pass because he upheld some tenants of Marxism, and was the leader of the Soviet Union. It’s ridiculous, and makes us completely unapproachable.
These things are easy to say in hindsight, I recognize, but it’s not like the cracks weren’t there when Claudia was alive and visiting the USSR / China. One can appreciate Jones’s legacy, and still critique her positions too. I hope that’s what I’ve done here. Ultimately, Davies (author of this book) has given me a fair amount to think about, and for that I am very grateful!
1. Most of this book is frustratingly apolitical, and rather a description of Jones’s life. While I love a good biography, there were many moments where there was space to more concretely tie events in her life, such as her imprisonment in the US or exile to the UK, to principle of socialism. How does the state, in using dubious charges to get rid of Claudia, illustrate the classic capitalist tropes of war on the working class? Fascism is also mentioned multiple times throughout, but the book misses those opportunities to discuss the class elements of fascism and how they impacted Jones’s politics. All it seems to be doing is telling me that what happened to Jones and what Jones says is important. I don’t get a good grasp on what she actually said, and so it’s quite empty to me.
2. When, towards the end of the book, we started to get more political, I still felt that Jones was not “left of Marx”. Rather, to me it seemed that, as a black woman, she was able to take Marxist ideas and apply them to her own life. This is a perfectly fine and worthy exercise, but to term it as further left than Marx is weird and almost makes it a competition? Why must it be so? She applied Marx’s teachings to her own life, and that’s great. Was she more left than Marx? Who really even cares?
Side note: I disagree with some of her politics. The emphasis on the peasantry in the Chinese revolution is in fact a critique to be had of that period in Chinese history, rather than something to be celebrated as Jones does. Furthermore, it states that, while she was critical of Stalin, she “did not see Stalin as the problem— for her, the enemy was not Stalin but growing US imperialism” (pg 222). Why is the enemy not both?????Stalin killed scores of working class people, so did US imperialism. As socialists, we CANNOT give people like Stalin a pass because he upheld some tenants of Marxism, and was the leader of the Soviet Union. It’s ridiculous, and makes us completely unapproachable.
These things are easy to say in hindsight, I recognize, but it’s not like the cracks weren’t there when Claudia was alive and visiting the USSR / China. One can appreciate Jones’s legacy, and still critique her positions too. I hope that’s what I’ve done here. Ultimately, Davies (author of this book) has given me a fair amount to think about, and for that I am very grateful!
March 26, 2024
Sometimes I wonder what compels someone to write a book. This one seemed like it was written out of a genuine and deep admiration for Claudia Jones, and a desire to impart that joy with other academics.
For all the author’s high regard for Claudia Jones, the author does not seem to be writing for the next Claudia Jones (there is an interesting aside in the Introduction where the author justifies her use of non-academic (communist!) sources, such as Jones herself). The book is missing a sense of urgency (Jones certainly considered her writing to be of pressing importance) and of scale — it is nearly claustrophobically focused on Jones, failing to ground her writing in the thinking of her time or to much extent explore her influence on the writers and political movements that came after her.
I’m not convinced that the author really even understands Jones in her context. For example, in Jones’ famous 1950 International Women’s Day speech, Jones affirms solidarity with people facing all types of oppression, linking their struggles with the socialist movement. This, the author claims, is something “more radical than communism”, despite it aligning fully with Lenin’s 1902 work, What Is to Be Done?, a work Jones, as a self-identified Leninist, would have read but that the author seems unaware of. (Relatedly, the title of the book is an allusion to the location of Jones’ gravestone relative to that of Marx, and not a political statement the author argues effectively.) When we come to Jones’ well-documented beliefs with which the author particularly disagrees—Jones’ alignment with the CPUSA’s positions in the 1950s, for example—the author insists this smart, well-read, well-traveled woman has been naively deceived.
Yet for all the minute focus on Jones, it isn’t even an exhaustive one-stop-shop for understanding her experience as a Black socialist woman. Her exclusion from the CPGB due to racial prejudices is briefly mentioned and the reader is pointed towards a work where some other scholar has elaborated it. Academic convention prevents you from stepping on other people’s toes, I suppose. Someone with fewer constraints should write a book on this very deserving thinker.
As a stand-alone chapter to see if you will enjoy the book’s approach to Jones’s writing, I suggest Chapter 4 (“Deportation: The Other Politics of Diaspora”).
March 23, 2022
One of the most incredible books I've ever read. Claudia Jones is understudied as a dynamic Pioneer of pan-africanism. She recreated and redefined the term deportation into something more of a choice to expand transnational African diaspora. This book is highly relevant right now in the year 2022 in the battle against insufficient and hyperbolic arguments claiming critical race theory is taught in K-12 schools, when it isn't. Yet there is a concerted effort, of anti-Black, anti-communist fear mongers attempting to ostracise not actions but ideas, through what Carole Boyce Davies would refer to as "deliberately superficial critical reading." Ironically, Claudia Jones was indicted to serve a year and one day in the women's Alderman's prison for the release of her literature, in particular an article "Women in the Struggle for Peace and Security" that she wrote for International Women's Day.
The McCarran Act along with the FBI were instrumental in contributing to Claudia Jones early demise through incessant repression.
"In one of her early interviews in London, Claudia Jones offers her famous summation on why she was deported...
[Jones] 'I was a victim of the McCarthyite hysteria against independent political ideas in the USA, a hysteria which penalizes anyone who holds ideas contrary to the official pro-war, pre-reactionary, pro-fascist line of the white ruling class of that country.
I was deported from the USA because as a Negro woman Communist of West Indian descent, I was a thorn in their side in my opposition to Jim Crow racist discrimination against 16 million Negro Americans in the United States.
[I was deported for] my work for redress of these grievances, for unity of Negro and white workers, for women’s rights and my general political activity urging the American people to help by their struggles to change the present foreign and domestic policy of the United States.
I was deported and refused an opportunity to complete my American citizenship because I fought for peace, against the huge arms budget which funds should be directed to improving the social needs of the people.
I was deported because I urged the prosecution of lynchers rather than prosecution of Communists and other democratic Americans who oppose the lynchers and big financiers and warmongers, the real advocates of force and violence in the USA.'
The McCarran Act along with the FBI were instrumental in contributing to Claudia Jones early demise through incessant repression.
"In one of her early interviews in London, Claudia Jones offers her famous summation on why she was deported...
[Jones] 'I was a victim of the McCarthyite hysteria against independent political ideas in the USA, a hysteria which penalizes anyone who holds ideas contrary to the official pro-war, pre-reactionary, pro-fascist line of the white ruling class of that country.
I was deported from the USA because as a Negro woman Communist of West Indian descent, I was a thorn in their side in my opposition to Jim Crow racist discrimination against 16 million Negro Americans in the United States.
[I was deported for] my work for redress of these grievances, for unity of Negro and white workers, for women’s rights and my general political activity urging the American people to help by their struggles to change the present foreign and domestic policy of the United States.
I was deported and refused an opportunity to complete my American citizenship because I fought for peace, against the huge arms budget which funds should be directed to improving the social needs of the people.
I was deported because I urged the prosecution of lynchers rather than prosecution of Communists and other democratic Americans who oppose the lynchers and big financiers and warmongers, the real advocates of force and violence in the USA.'
June 6, 2022
Claudia Jones is a very fascinating figure. I enjoyed this book more so because I find Jones so fascinating. I was less drawn by the way Davies frames Jones along a political spectrum, but that was not as integral to the book for me. It’s just part of the way the book is titled and framed. Overall though, I really enjoyed reading this.
I particularly loved the sections on Jones’s role in organizing the Caribbean Carnival, and will perhaps return to reflect on some of that stuff at the beginning of next Lent. I found the work she did organizing cadres of Black women in the CPUSA very interesting, and was really irritated about the way she was received so poorly by British communist circles after being exiled from the United States.
Drawing on the FBI files of Jones was a fascinating way to understand how the American state viewed Black communist women like Jones as a threat to the existing order, and I found the source material included in this book very interesting. And also the material drawn from the West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News provided a very enriching view of Jones and I was particularly interested in her deep interest and friendship with Chinese communists. Just to finish with a fascinating excerpt on Jones meeting Soong Ching-Ling in China:
“Jones’s article about that meeting, ‘‘First Lady of the World: I Talk with Mme Sun Yat-sen,’’ begins with an amplification of the bold claim in her title: ‘‘Madame Soon-Ching-Ling, Vice Chairman of the People’s republic of China, and widow of the famed Sun Yat-Sen, President of the First Democratic Republic of China, may properly be termed the First Lady of the World.’’ The article itself develops a conversation ‘‘about the great achievements in Socialist re-construction in the New China based on its policy of Self-Reliance in the field of agriculture and industrialization in light and heavy industry.’’ Claudia was impressed that Madame Soong Ching Ling was familiar with her imprisonment in the United States and of her work in the West Indian Gazette and related Caribbean organizations. The conversation covered a range of issues, from Claudia’s impressions of China to Madame Soong Ching Ling’s speech in Ceylon, which ‘‘by its clarity and profoundity inspired anti-imperialist fighters enhanced by this confidence in the anti-imperialist, pro peace struggle.’’”
I particularly loved the sections on Jones’s role in organizing the Caribbean Carnival, and will perhaps return to reflect on some of that stuff at the beginning of next Lent. I found the work she did organizing cadres of Black women in the CPUSA very interesting, and was really irritated about the way she was received so poorly by British communist circles after being exiled from the United States.
Drawing on the FBI files of Jones was a fascinating way to understand how the American state viewed Black communist women like Jones as a threat to the existing order, and I found the source material included in this book very interesting. And also the material drawn from the West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News provided a very enriching view of Jones and I was particularly interested in her deep interest and friendship with Chinese communists. Just to finish with a fascinating excerpt on Jones meeting Soong Ching-Ling in China:
“Jones’s article about that meeting, ‘‘First Lady of the World: I Talk with Mme Sun Yat-sen,’’ begins with an amplification of the bold claim in her title: ‘‘Madame Soon-Ching-Ling, Vice Chairman of the People’s republic of China, and widow of the famed Sun Yat-Sen, President of the First Democratic Republic of China, may properly be termed the First Lady of the World.’’ The article itself develops a conversation ‘‘about the great achievements in Socialist re-construction in the New China based on its policy of Self-Reliance in the field of agriculture and industrialization in light and heavy industry.’’ Claudia was impressed that Madame Soong Ching Ling was familiar with her imprisonment in the United States and of her work in the West Indian Gazette and related Caribbean organizations. The conversation covered a range of issues, from Claudia’s impressions of China to Madame Soong Ching Ling’s speech in Ceylon, which ‘‘by its clarity and profoundity inspired anti-imperialist fighters enhanced by this confidence in the anti-imperialist, pro peace struggle.’’”
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