The Johnson-Forest Tendency

In Detroit, in the late 1940s, the so-called Johnson-Forest tendency (later named Correspondence), a group of socialists led by CLR James and Raya Dunayeskaya, drove itself out of mainstream American Socialism by comparing Soviet control upon workers to the capitalist one. If factory workers were controlled by the State and unable to organise themselves, what was the difference? But fighting for workers' primary right to self-organise also led the group to a scathing critique of American organised labour. This was exemplified in Detroit by the United Automobile Workers (UAW), a liberal union, but one whose potential to inspire societal change was increasingly stifled by internal bureaucracy and by Faustian bargains with the automobile manufacturers.

In its serveral incarnations the group published numerous pamphlets and books for about 20 years, even as internal divisions and splits meant that key components of its were workingly increasingly independently from each other.

CLR James, Raya Duneyaskaya and Grace Lee, State Capitalism and World Revolutions, 1956

CLR James, Grace Lee, Cornelius Castodiaris, Facing Reality, Detroit, 1958.

Notably the group comprised a number of current or former autoworkers, organic intellectuals who developed a political marxist theory from the ground up. Martin Glablerman, Si Owen (Charles Denby) and James Boggs became the most prestigious figures among those who had this background.

Martin Glaberman, Punching Out, 1952

James Boggs, The American Revolution: pages from a negro worker's notebook, 1963

Nico Pizzolato discusses the legacy of the group and in particular of Grace Lee Boggs in the article, The Revolutionary Task of Self-Activity, Viewpoint Magazine, 2016.