Markin comment on this series:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
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The Political Evolution of James P. Cannon-A Parable And A Paradox
BOOK REVIEW
James P. Cannon: A Political Tribute, Education For Socialists, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1974
To set the tone for this review here is a little parable, of sorts:
At the beginning of my conscious political career, back in the mist of time, which started out as a youthful liberal Americans For Democratic Action (ADA)-type activist in the early 1960’s I distinctly remember an older liberal politician at some event pointing out someone to me as an American Communist Party member. Apparently that information was passed on to me in order to make me shudder at the mere thought of it. Just as distinctly I remember, despite the continuing residue of the McCarthyite “red scare” at that time, merely shrugging my shoulders as if to say “so what”. Later, as I moved leftward toward a more social-democratic type political stance I was actively seeking out communists in order to form an anti-imperialist united front on Vietnam (although that is putting my politics in that situation in far too sophisticated a manner). Finding a publicly identifiable one then, however, was as scarce as hen’s teeth (if one was looking outside their friendly roost inside, deep inside, the Democratic Party). Finally, as I moved farther left and became radicalized whenever I ran into a Communist Party member at an event I would think- “oh, no there goes our radical edge,” or words to that effect.
Now what does this little parable have to do with a review of a political tribute to an old revolutionary leader, James P. Cannon, at the time of his death in 1974 and about whom I have spilled much ink on in this space defending him as a man who in his prime could have led an American socialist revolution. Well, when I went looking for serious revolutionaries to work in the early 1970s I had the same opinion of the organization that he helped found and nurture, the Socialist Workers Party, as I did toward the Communist Party. In short, whatever virtues Cannon brought to that organization in his prime and whatever lingering loyalties he had to that party by the time of his death the torch had passed to others in other organizations to carry out his work. Such things happen all the time in politics.
Thus this document, put out by the organization that honored his name THEN if not his earlier political history other than in a formal sense, has more value as a slice of radical history than as a trustworthy account of the work of one James P. Cannon. There is a very big disconnect between the work that Cannon reminiscences about here and the actual practice of the SWP, except to use the authority of his name to cover their essentially liberal programmatic efforts. To put it simply the various interviews, conducted mainly in the last year of Cannon’s life, that make up the bulk of this pamphlet are the words of an eighty year old man who is to the LEFT of his party. He is still ever the party loyalist but it is to the history of his party.
There is a very important section in this short pamphlet that every radical should read that contains an interview with Cannon in 1973 about proper class struggle legal defense work. Cannon won his spurs, and solidified his position as an early Communist Party leader, with his leadership of the party’s legal defense arm the International Labor Defense (ILD). Cannon has interesting comments about the role of that organization in the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, the key labor defense struggle of the 1920’s. The main point for today’s radicals to understand is the fundamental principle of left and labor politics codified in the old slogan- “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Moreover, the operational norm for such work is a non-sectarian united front. Everybody works together to win the case at hand while maintaining their own political independent. This, sadly, has been honored more in the breech than in the observance.
I would also note, to reinforce my statement about the aged Cannon above, that his reminisces about the old labor defense days did not gibe with what was the main SWP political program in the early 1970s after the demise of the anti-war movement. At that time, as the Nixon/Watergate issues were heating up, the SWP put forth a campaign exclusively centered on suing the federal government for various violation of its democratic rights throughout its history- the infamous “Watersuit.” While no one on the left denies the need to fight for our own political existence by challenging the government through the legal process when appropriate the whole thrust of the SWP’s work in this period was to continue to cater to the liberals with whom they had become very conformable working with in the anti-war movement. Cannon accepted this program as good coin, at least in the interview. We are not obliged to follow him in that commendation.
This pamphlet also contains a few other interviews of note about the history of the American left and labor movement in the first half of the 20th century. One deals with this various radical figures that Cannon ran across in his long political life, some as associates, and some as opponents. Another deals with the black liberation struggle although not fully enough to warrant comment here. The one I believe worthy of comment is “Youth and The Socialist Movement, Cannon’s understanding of the role of youth in building the movement throughout his long career. This article makes points that should be useful for us to think about today in the Obamian age, an age to a large extent created by the energies of youth looking for a way out of the long night of the Bush years.
Cannon noted that the radicalization of the 1930s was spearheaded mainly by young workers. Students and other middle class youth then were more likely to be “scabs” or political conservatives than allies of the working class. In the radicalization of the 1960s, aided by the surge in college enrollment, the movement was headed by non-working class youth. The impending radicalization of youth in this, the early part of the 21st century, may very well combine both those elements from the beginning. Wouldn’t that be a hell of a fight? That is something the younger James P. Cannon could appreciate. Let me finish with this-at this late date the proper way to pay political tribute to James P. Cannon is to work to build a workers party that fights for a workers government. That would be a very fitting tribute.
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