Facing Reality

The New Society: Where to Look for it & How to Bring it Closer

by C.L.R. James and Grace C. Lee

with an introduction by John H. Bracey
with contributions by Cornelius Castoriadis

Publication date: April 2006
Paperback: $18.00

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Written in collaboration with Cornelius Castoriadis and Grace Lee, James examines the practical process of social revolution in the modern world. Inspired by the October 1956 Hungarian workers' revolution against Stalinist oppression, as well as the wildcat strikes of U.S. workers (against Capital and the union bureaucracies), James and his co-authors looked ahead to the rise of new mass emancipatory movements by African Americans and anti-colonialist/anti-imperialist currents in Africa and Asia. Virtually alone among the radical texts of the time, Facing Reality, first published in 1958 by Marty Glaberman, rejected modern society's mania for "conquering nature," and welcomed women's struggles "for new relations between the sexes." A true masterpiece, and still one of the finest expositions of workers' self-emancipation around. This new 21st-century edition includes a new introduction by James's longtime friend, John H Bracey, situating the book in its 1950s/60s context, and accentuating its continued relevance in our time.

"Springing forth from the utopian flames of self-emancipation kindled by the workers councils of the Hungarian Revolution, this pivotal book offers a socialist indictment of the miserabilism of state capitalism and calls for the ongoing rejection of both vanguardism and the bureaucratic rationalism of state power." [Ron Sakolsky]

Every purchase of Noel Ignatiev’s memoir Acceptable Men comes with a 40% discount on Facing Reality and The Lesson of the Hour. Use the check out code KERR, and read them—as they are meant to be—in conversation.

Acceptable Men: Life in the Largest Steel Mill in the World

Noel Ignatiev was heavily influenced by the politics of C.L.R. James, a Trinidadian scholar, revolutionary, and activist from the 1930s through 1980s. A key aspect of James’s ideas was that the new socialist society exists in the experience and actions of the working class in this society. In Facing Reality, which James wrote with Cornelius Castoriadis and Grace Lee, he developed this idea in relation to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In conclusion, James wrote: “[The revolutionary organization’s] task is to recognize and record. It can do this only by plunging into the great mass of people and meeting the new society that is there.” That is how Noel saw his task as a steelworker and in everything else.

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Paperback: $12
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