The non-fiction works of C. L. R. James (1901-1989) [pen-name J. R. Johnson] include World Revolution (1937), a history of the rise and fall of the Communist International, and The Black Jacobins: Toussaint l’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938), a history of the Haitian Revolution.
James came into contact with the Fourth International in Britain in 1934. In 1938-39, he toured the US at the request of the Socialist Workers Party to build support among black workers, speaking about the colonial struggle of oppressed peoples. He spent April 1939 in discussion with Leon Trotsky in Coyoacan over the “Negro question.”
As J. R. Johnson and with Raya Dunayevskaya (Forest), from the 1940s C. L. R. James rejected Trotsky’s analysis of the Soviet Union, embraced state capitalism, and moved more openly to nationalism.