In Honor Of The King Of The Folk-Singing Hard-Living Hobos The Late Utah Phillips -From The Archives- The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States- American Socialist Workers Party Leader (And Old Wobblie) James P.Cannon-The I.W.W. ( Industrial Workers Of The World-Wobblies)(1955)

Click on the headline to link to a James P. Cannon Internet Archives online copy of The I.W.W. ( Industrial Workers Of The World-Wobblies)(1955)

Markin comment on this series:

Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.

Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.

As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.

From The Pen Of American Communist Party Founder And Trotskyist Leader James P. Cannon

From The Pen Of American Communist Party Founder And Trotskyist Leader James P. Cannon

Click below to link to the “James P. Cannon Internet Archives.”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/index.htm

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Frank Jackman comment on founding member James P. Cannon and the early American Communist Party taken from a book review, James P. Cannon and the Early American Communist Party, on the “American Left History” blog:

If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for you.

At the beginning of the 21st century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent ‘death of communism’ it may seem fantastic and utopian to today’s militants that early in the 20th century many anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American socialist revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.

For those not familiar with this period a helpful introduction by the editors gives an analysis of the important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some of the now more obscure personalities (a helpful biographical glossary is provided), where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party.

These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third- party bourgeois candidates;trade union policy; class-war prisoner defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal disputes in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period.

In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? I would argue that the period under study represented Cannon’s apprenticeship. Although the hothouse politics of the early party clarified some of the issues of revolutionary strategy for him I believe that it was not until he linked up with Trotsky in the late 1920’s that he became the kind of leader who could lead a revolution. Of course, since Cannon never got a serious opportunity to lead revolutionary struggles in America this is mainly reduced to speculation on my part. Later books written by him make the case better. One thing is sure- in his prime he had the instincts to want to lead a revolution.

As an addition to the historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to the two-volume set by Theodore Draper - The Roots of American Communism and Soviet Russia and American Communism- the definitive study on the early history of the American Communist Party. It is also a useful companion to Cannon’s own The First Ten Years of American Communism. I would add that this is something of a labor of love on the part of the editors. This book was published at a time when the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was in full swing and anything related to Communist studies was deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America. Now is the time to study this history.

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BOOK REVIEW

NOTEBOOK OF AN AGITATOR- JAMES P. CANNON, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1971

If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. 

This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.

In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, especially after his long collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the 1920’s when he was a leader of the American Communist Party to the red-baiting years after World War II- started with his leadership of the fight against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and then later against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. Cannon won his spurs in those fights and in his struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.

I note here that among socialists, particularly the non-Stalinist socialists of those days, there was controversy on what to do and, more importantly, what forces socialists should support. If you want to find a more profound response initiated by revolutionary socialists to the social and labor problems of those days than is evident in today’s leftist responses to such issues Cannon’s writings here will assist you. I draw your attention to the early part of the book when Cannon led the Communist-initiated International Labor Defense (ILD), most famously around the fight to save the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti here in Massachusetts. That campaign put the Communist Party on the map for many workers and others unfamiliar with the party’s work. For my perspective the early class-war prisoner defense work was exemplary.

The issue of class-war prisoners is one that is close to my heart. I support the work of the Partisan Defense Committee, Box 99 Canal Street Station, New York, N.Y 10013, an organization which traces its roots and policy to Cannon’s ILD. That policy is based on an old labor slogan- ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ therefore I would like to write a few words here on Cannon’s conception of the nature of the work. As noted above, Cannon (along with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern and Cannon’s long time companion Rose Karsner who would later be expelled from American Communist Party for Trotskyism with him and who helped him form what would eventually become the Socialist Workers Party) was assigned by the party in 1925 to set up the American section of the International Red Aid known here as the International Labor Defense.

It is important to note here that Cannon’s selection as leader of the ILD was insisted on by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) because of his pre-war association with that organization and with the prodding of “Big Bill’ Haywood, the famous labor organizer exiled in Moscow. Since many of the militants still languishing in prison were anarchists or syndicalists the selection of Cannon was important. The ILD’s most famous early case was that of the heroic anarchist workers, Sacco and Vanzetti. The lessons learned in that campaign show the way forward in class-war prisoner defense.

I believe that it was Trotsky who noted that, except in the immediate pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, the tasks of militants revolve around the struggle to win democratic and other partial demands. The case of class-war legal defense falls in that category with the added impetus of getting the prisoners back into the class struggle as quickly as possible. The task then is to get them out of prison by mass action for their release. Without going into the details of the Sacco and Vanzetti case the two workers had been awaiting execution for a number of years and had been languishing in jail. As is the nature of death penalty cases various appeals on various grounds were tried and failed and they were then in imminent danger of execution.

Other forces outside the labor movement were also interested in the Sacco and Vanzetti case based on obtaining clemency, reduction of their sentences to life imprisonment or a new trial. The ILD’s position was to try to win their release by mass action- demonstrations, strikes and other forms of mass mobilization. This strategy obviously also included, in a subordinate position, any legal strategies that might be helpful to win their freedom. In this effort the stated goal of the organization was to organize non-sectarian class defense but also not to rely on the legal system alone portraying it as a simple miscarriage of justice. The organization publicized the case worldwide, held conferences, demonstrations and strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti. Although the campaign was not successful and the pair were executed in 1927 it stands as a model for class war prisoner defense. Needless to say, the names Sacco and Vanzetti continue to be honored to this day wherever militants fight against this system.

I also suggest a close look at Cannon’s articles in the early 1950’s. Some of them are solely of historical interest around the effects of the red purges on the organized labor movement at the start of the Cold War. Others, however, around health insurance, labor standards, the role of the media and the separation of church and state read as if they were written in 2014 That’s a sorry statement to have to make any way one looks at it.

***The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States- American Socialist Workers Party Leader James P.Cannon-On Eugene V. Debs And The Idea Of The Party Of The Whole Working Class

Click on the headline to link to a James P. Cannon Internet Archives online copy of On Eugene V. Debs And The Idea Of The Party Of The Whole Working Class

Markin comment on this series:

Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.

Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.

As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.

The Labor Party Question In The United States- An Historical Overview-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government

Click on the headline to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for an online copy of his 1940s documents on the labor party question in the United States in his time.


These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.

I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
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The subject today is the Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that is hardly applicable here now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that remark is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) government to make our programmatic point more inclusive.]

For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost, and us) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets (workers councils, factory committees, etc.) as an expression of state power. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare off the masses. And that is the nut. Those of us who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need for to have an independent organized expression fighting programmatically for their class interests. And we, they, need it pronto.

That program, the program that we as revolutionaries would fight for, would, as it evolved, center on demands, yes, demands, that would go from day to day needs to the struggle for state power. Today focusing on massive job programs at union wages and benefits to get people back to work, workers control of production as a way to spread the available work around, the historic slogan of 30 for 40, nationalization of the banks and other financial institutions under workers control, a home foreclosure moratorium, and debt for homeowners and students. Obviously more demands come to mind but those listed are sufficient to show our direction.

Now there have historically been many efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly, when capitalism began to become the driving norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, merely reformist, and the like (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.

Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.

The real unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we could recognize though really comes with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reformist division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals, and, ah, the dough wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them against radical solutions (breaking from the bourgeois parties and electoralism). Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on this movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster, later the titular head of the Communist Party, were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).

Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you. Later the Socialist Workers Party essentially took the same stance.)

So much then for the historical aspects of the workers party question. The real question, the real lessons, for revolutionaries posed by all of this is really something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party (us, again) today (and again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).

America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s, probably not (even with no Stalinist ALP siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing about. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the main ticket. We, even in America are not historically pre-determined to go the old time British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass- based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) Cannon stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.

Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s Socialist Alternative Labor Party archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started.

[A reference back to the American Communist Party’s work in the 1920s may be informative here. As mentioned above there was some confusion, no, a lot of confusion back then about building a labor party base on workers and farmers, a two -class party. While the demands of both groups may in some cases overlap farmers, except for farm hands, are small capitalists on the land. We need a program for such potential allies, petty bourgeois allies, but their demands are subordinate to labor’s in a workers’ party. Fast forward to today and it is entirely possible, especially in light of the recent Occupy experiences, that some vague popular frontist trans-class movement might develop like the Labor Non-Partisan League that the labor skates put forward in the 1930s as a catch basin for all kinds of political tendencies. We, of course, would work in such formations fighting of a revolutionary perspective but this is not what we advocate for now.]


Earlier this year AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready. While at the moment tactics like a great regroupment of left forces, a united front with labor militants, or entry in other labor organizations for the purpose of pushing the workers party are premature we should be ready.

And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point in the 1940s documents about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals (us, yet again) can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will “united front” the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.

A Non-Communist View Of The Formation Of The American Communsit Party- Thedore Draper's "The Roots Of American Communism- A Book Review

Click on the headline to link to the James P.Cannon Internet Archives segment, Notes To An Historian, as a welcome supplement to Theodore Draper's important work.

BOOK REVIEW

THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM, THEODORE DRAPER, The Viking Press, New York, 1957

As an addition to the historical record of the period from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to the formation and consolidation of the legal, open party in 1923 The Roots of American Communism and its companion volume detailing the period from 1923 to 1929-Soviet Russia and American Communism (which will be reviewed separately) – is the definitive scholarly study on the early history of the American Communist Party. The author, an ex-communist but at the time of writing an anti-communist, unlike other former communists nevertheless does a thorough job or presenting the personalities and issues in a reasonably straightforward manner. Given that these volumes were researched and published during the heart of the Cold War hysteria against the Soviet Union in the 1950’s this is not faint praise.

Also useful for this period in conjunction with these two volumes and to round them out, from the pro-Communist partisan perspective of one of the main leaders, is James P. Cannon’s The First Ten Years of American Communism and the Prometheus Research Library’s James P. Cannon and the Early Communist Movement. Absent from Mr. Draper’s analysis is any real feel for why the early leaders and rank and file of the party put themselves on the line, faced harassment, imprisonment or worst to create an American Bolshevik party. While there is no dearth of memoirs of other participants in the early movement, Cannon’s analysis most honestly fills that gap.

That said, why must militants read these works today? After the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe anything positively related to Communist studies has been deeply discounted in the academy and in bourgeois politics. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America when it became merely a tool of Soviet diplomacy in the late 1920s. Now is the time for militants to study the mistakes and draw the lessons of that history.

For those not familiar with this period a few helpful introductory chapters by Mr. Draper give an analysis of the forces that made up the radical scene prior to World War I. Those forces included the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), independent syndicalists influenced by the French movement and the anti-war left-wing of the Socialist party, including various foreign language federations. Thus, in its formative period the American party (or parties, to be more correct) gathered all those fresh elements which responded to the Bolshevik victory in Russia in 1917, saw it as the wave of the future and wanted to establish that kind of socialism here. As this reviewer has noted elsewhere, while those diffuse forces proved to be difficult to organize, this mix provided for a better internal party life than, say, in England where the Celtic and anarcho-syndicalist elements were not recruited resulting in a ‘stillborn’ party.

Mr. Draper also addresses the various important faction fights which occurred inside the party. To make sense of this is sometimes no simple task. That overview also highlights some of the now more obscure personalities, where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party. These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois candidates; trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party.

This presentation makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull the party in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that American rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal disputes in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period. That subject is more fully addressed in the second volume. Read this book.

***From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-From The Pen Of American Communist LeaderJames P. Cannon At The End-"Youth And The Socialist Movement"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American Communist leader (CP and SWP) James P. Cannon.

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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Youth and the Socialist Movement

Rich Finkel, National Secretary of the Young Socialist Alliance, had the following discussion with James P. Cannon on March 15, 1974, in Los Angeles.

Finkel: On my tour this spring, I've already visited Texas, Arizona and part of California. I get the impression that many students who were active during the height of the antiwar movement and the Black struggle haven't quite figured out what kind of role they can play in a period of different dimensions, opportunities and problems, such as we are facing right now.
Cannon: I think it's very important for us to adopt a completely realistic view of the situation and adjust to the changed consciousness and at­titude on the campus. The party is tested just as much by times like this as by times of an up­swing in activity.

During the fifties, we lived so long in hard times, I think some of the old-timers found it difficult to adjust to the big upsurge we had during the Vietnam war.

It should be made a point of our educational propaganda that a revolutionist's spirit and at­titude is not determined by the popular mood of the moment. We have a historical view and we don't allow the movement to fade away when it runs into changed times, which can happen as we know from experience.

You're acquainted with my pamphlet, America's Road to Socialism? It's a series of six lectures given at the height of the McCarthyite period in the fall of 1952, when reaction seemed to reign supreme. There were practically no actions of any kind. So we decided on the lectures as a deliberate party action. They were given here in Los An­geles as a series of forums on what socialism means. What socialist America will look like. We had a regular attendance of 100, give or take a few, at each lecture.

Don't you find that the young people you talk to have a great interest in what socialism is, what it will look like and so on? There's a temptation in a period of upswing of activities to neglect the exposition of our fundamental program in its historical perspective. But I can recall from
my youth, which was in the heyday of the So­cialist Party! in this country —the Debs2 period — that seemed to be the question that most interested people who were contacted around the party. What is this socialism? What will it look like? How will it come about? And so on. And I think that's true today too, if you really probe the minds of young people.

Finkel: We've noticed that quite a bit. I think one of the stimulants right now is the energy crisis. People know that the oil monopolies prevail. They see what capitalism does, and they ask, "What is socialism? How do we organize it? How do we get there?"

We get more of these questions about socialism today than we did during the antiwar movement. I think that the questions are different at this par­ticular period —more fundamental. With the Water­gate revelations, people want to know, "How can we organize government without corruption? Is it possible?"

Your pamphlet, America's Road to Socialism, was one of the first things I read when I joined the YSA in 1968. It was an old copy, but it an­swered a lot of questions I had. I think that's true for many YSA members.

Could you explain a little about some of the previous experiences of the workers movement with youth groups? That's one of the questions that we often get in the YSA. What happened with the Wobblies? How did the Socialist and Communist parties build their youth organizations? What were their problems and successes?

Cannon: First of all, we've got to understand that the past of the radical and revolutionary movement in this country is part of our heritage — both with its positive and negative sides. We have to know about that. Our new members should be thoroughly schooled in our exposition and analy­sis of the preceding movements — their strong points and their errors which we are trying to correct as a result of experience and greater know­ledge that we've gained from other sources, most importantly from the Russian revolution.

Finkel: Did young people play a special role in the Wobblies or in the early Socialist Party? Were there student members? What sort of role did the radicalizing youth find in the socialist movement?
Cannon: The IWW itself was predominantly a young workers movement. It had no special youth organization. The drive and idealism of youth were a large part of its power and its merit, but again, it had no separate youth organization. There was no need for it as far as anybody could see. There was not even any talk of it.

In the West particularly, the IWW was predomi­nantly a movement of migratory workers. They had to be young because it was a hard life. In the Midwest, for example, the harvest would start early in Texas and Oklahoma, and a great mass of migratory workers traveled by freight train down to the centers where the hiring took place and worked a few weeks or a month —whatever it took to finish the harvest.

Then they rode north by freight until they ended up in Minnesota and the Dakotas. That would be the whole summer long. And there would be rail­road construction work and things of that kind. Migratory workers, as they were called, were some­thing like the harvest pickers of today, except that they were all single men in those days. The wheat fields of Texas and Oklahoma would just be harvested about the time it was getting ripe in Kansas, and then in Nebraska and so on.

Another big source of their membership was the lumber woods of the Northwest. That con­stituency consisted of the same type of workers. And in the East in the textile mills, the IWW at one time had a strong movement, many strikes, mostly of young foreign-born and women workers.

Socialist youth organizations

Finkel: What were the first socialist youth or­ganizations in this country?

Cannon: Well, to my recollection, there have been several histories written of the socialist move­ment which I think I mentioned in my book, The First Ten Years of American Communism. Up until the thirties, the socialist movement didn't amount to much on the campuses. There was a pretty sharp division between students and work­ers in those days. College boys came from the better-off classes and didn't associate with the workers.

The first manifestation of a ripple of the move­ment on the colleges came when Jack London and Upton Sinclair, who were the two literary heroes of the movement at that time, gave some lectures at Yale or Harvard or a place like that on so­cialism—"How I Became a Socialist" and so on.
They received a favorable response, and the result of it was the formation of what I think was called the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. It was a very thin movement because the percentage of people going to college was not great in those days.

Colleges were by no means the center of radicalization. Just the contrary. They were the center of conservatism. The Intercollegiate Socialist So­ciety, I think, later changed its name to the League for Industrial Democracy (LID). It still exists, doesn't it?

Finkel: Yes. In fact, SDS —the Students for a Democratic Society — was originally the youth group of LID. Prior to 1959, I think, it was called the Student League for Industrial Democracy. But in 1964 the LID disowned it, because SDS wouldn't exclude groups like the YSA from an antiwar march it was planning in Washington, D.C.

Cannon: Anyway, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society became sort of a gentlemen's socialist club on the campuses. They called it the country club of the movement. The real movement itself had virtually nothing on the campuses. I don't know the exact year when the Young People's Socialist League4 was formed. You can probably check it in the history books, but it didn't really amount to much before the thirties when there was an upsurge of interest in political questions during the depression. Campus radicalism was at that time dominated by the Communist Party. The Socialists were quite a secondary factor, but they were largely swamped by the Communist Party.

There's been of course a great, fundamental change since then. One of the big changes to note is the percentage of people going to college now. I don't know the statistics, but you can easily check it. I think you'll find that the difference is practically qualitative.

In the old days of the IWW, anybody who'd been to high school was an exception. The average worker was lucky enough to finish grade school, get some kind of job, and that was it. But various factors, including the development of technology and the improved standard of living, greatly ex­panded the college population. Have you ever thought of that or have you ever read anything about it? Tremendous expansion.

For example, we've had here in our household over the last number of years 15 or 20 people who've lived here with me. There are two people here now. Six months ago there were two others. I think every single one of them had been to college. They were all working. They have either finished college or have had some college ex­perience, but they're working. And I guess a large percentage of those who attend college today go to work not as managers of prosperous family empires, but as workers in the labor force.

In 1919 Harvard students-had a great holiday going to Lawrence to help break a strike^ there. You can hardly imagine such a thing today.

The same thing happened in England in the general strike of 1926. There was a big move­ment recruiting strikebreakers from universities and prep schools and so on. They tried to help break the general strike.

Student radicalism in the '30s

In the thirties during the depression, that was the first time I ever noticed — the first time it came to general public attention —that there was a great rumbling on campus. The Communist Party had a very strong student membership. The Socialist Party too. We had a few, but nothing numerically significant.

The CP developed an antiwar movement on the campuses during the depression years. They ab­sorbed to a large extent the young socialists, the YPSL people, in a broader movement called the League Against War and Fascism.
The big problem for a person going to college then was what you were going to do after you got out There was no job to go to. That was the fate of many of them.

I remember Ted Draper, the author of The Roots of American Communism, told me that he con­centrated on the humanities courses in college rather than on the courses that would equip him for some kind of technical job. He said, "What was the use? Everybody knew there was no job to go to." He was preparing himself to be a writer.

An odd little story about the Socialist Party and the Communist Party is the story of the Draper brothers. You've heard of Hal Draper, the peren­nial YPSL? He's the brother of Ted Draper, the historian. Hal Draper was the Socialist, and the Socialists had a rather militant left wing in those days. He was one of the outstanding leaders of YPSL, and Ted Draper was one of the outstanding leaders of the Stalinists in the New York college community.

I was told that a big feature of that period was the debates between the two Draper brothers over questions of policy, war and so on. Hal Draper was a left-wing Socialist and Ted Draper was a Stalinist. In those days many Socialists stood to the left of the Stalinists.

A great many of those young people recruited by the Stalinists came out of college — either as graduates or dropouts. The Communist Party dominated a big unemployment movement, the Unemployed Councils. And young CP members who had acquired certain skills on the campuses in the organization of the movement—learning how to speak at meetings, make motions and do other things which the average person is afraid to even think of—went into the unemployment movement where they got further experience in organizational work.

When a slight upturn in industry came in the mid-thirties, they were sent into the factories. Many of these leaders of the Stalinist movement, as well as the Socialist Party to a lesser extent, became prominent. Some of their leaders in auto and other mass production industries began as former stu­dents, former Unemployed Council workers. I bet if a statistical record could be made, a large per­centage of their most dynamic and influential peo­ple had had some experience on the colleges, as well as in the Unemployed Councils.

I always think of that whenever I hear this chatter of the sectarian groups who make a hue and cry about leaving the campus and getting into the factories. Theoretically if s all right in the long run, because you certainly can't make a rev­olution on the campuses. For one reason, they don't have the industrial power. But workers re­cruited and convinced of the historical trend toward socialism and committed to it—and who have also had the benefit of a college education and experience in college organizations —can become very effective leaders in the mass movement of the workers.

And the same holds true for the unemployment movement, which will become, in my opinion, a big phenomenon in a period of serious economic crisis in this country.

I think we should think of our work on the campuses as preparatory work for the coming upsurge of the workers movement, in which the people who were recruited and trained as social­ists can play a great role. Both their education and their experience in organization will be very im­portant factors and can be extremely advantageous in a surging new movement of workers—whether in unemployed movements or in unions or both.

Organizational independence

Finkel: How did the YPSL and the Young Com­munists organize? Were they independent of the Socialist Party and the Communist Party? Were they controlled from the top down?

Cannon: They were completely controlled. The theory of the Communist youth organization as laid down in Russia by the Bolsheviks was ap­plied only on paper here. The formula was an organization of young people politically subordi­nate, but organizationally independent of the party. That was the formula. But in practice it didn't amount to much here. The control of the party was pretty absolute—as you see it now in the Communist Party.

The Young Communist League in my day in the twenties played no independent role. It was an appendage of the party. And the able young people in it were only too eager to get through with their YCL experience and get into the party, into the party faction fights where the real action was.

Max Shachtman, for instance, was the editor of the Young Worker, which was the Young Com­munist League paper. And Martin Abern was na­tional secretary. As I say, they considered them­selves as going through an apprenticeship. Their real interest was in the party. They belonged to the Cannon faction, as it was called, in the early twenties.

I didn't take much interest in YPSL in the twen­ties, so I can't speak from direct experience. But I think it was pretty much the same thing. Sort of shepherded by the party.

YPSL broke loose in the thirties. The YPSLs turned left politically faster than the Socialist Party. So that when we came to the showdown in 1937 — at the time we were in the Socialist Party6—at the national convention held in Philadelphia, the Trotskyists had a majority in YPSL, and we took a majority of YPSL with us.

I think YPSL at that time had about 1,000 members. Hal Draper was the national secretary, and he stayed with us a few years and then went out with the Shachtmanites. He remained a YPSL at heart. The last I heard of him, he was still operating on the campus.

YSA a new phenomenon

The Young Socialist Alliance of today is an entirely new phenomenon, as far as my experience can judge, by its composition, its general activity and in practically every other way.

The earlier youth movements were not nearly as serious as the party itself. A great many of them seemed really to be playing with ideas for awhile before turning their attention to some career. I used to hear the expression "career-oriented." That meant that they were not aiming to fight the rest of their lives for socialism; they were look­ing for a good job or profession or something of that sort.

This was true even of the left-wing young so­cialists that we recruited in 1937. The great ma­jority were not serious. The Shachtman and Burn-ham gang took the majority of them and they were fully entitled to them because they weren't made for a serious party.
Our youth movement of today benefits greatly from the tradition that we carried over with us from the Communist Party —the Leninist con­cepts of the movement. A serious movement of people who join and commit themselves to fight for socialism under any circumstances. And the conception of a professional staff.

This concept was not originated in America. It came entirely from the Bolsheviks like many of our other best ideas. I don't know how big a staff we now have in the party and the youth movement, but in the movement before the Russian revolution everything was a very casual affair. The national office consisted of a national secre­tary, a couple of stenographers, a bookkeeper and a lecture bureau and that was about it The IWW national office consisted of a general sec­retary, Vincent St John, in the days when I used to go there. SL John, a stenographer and a book­keeper and that was it

Finkel That was all?

How the IWW was organized

Cannon: That was the national office of the IWW. There was a tremendous movement of what was called the "decentralizers," who thought even that was too damn big of a bureaucracy to have hang­ing around their necks. They conducted a bitter fight to transform the national office into simply a communications center where the locals would send communications that would be forwarded to others. In 1913 we had a knock-down-drag-out fight at the convention with the decentralizers.

In addition to the national office of St John, the stenographer and the bookkeeper, you see, there was a General Executive Board of I think seven members who met about once every three months. The rest of the time they went out as field organizers, sometimes on the payroll, some­times not, according to how the finances stood out in the field.

And the decentralizers howled their heads off at the 1913 convention (that's the last one I at­tended) demanding that the organization be de­centralized and that all power be in the hands of the rank and file. The rank and file meant the locals. Each local for itself. They should com­municate with each other through the national office, sending letters to Chicago. And Chicago would forward a copy. On such things they ar­gued for days and days.

Well, they were defeated by St. John, who had an overwhelming personality. He was an organiz­er of the first quality and knew that organization required some centralization. And then St. John was succeeded by Bill Haywood7 —in 1914 I think.

Haywood went to prison in 1918, and the de-centralizers took over by a quiet operation in 1919. They adopted a motion that the national officers, the national secretary and the national organizer (who was not in the office but out in the field all the time) and any other national of­ficials should serve only one term. Just about the time they got their hands into their jobs, they'd be out and the new force would come in. And that was one, but not the main reason I think, for the decline of the IWW after the big persecu­tion8 during the First World War and the prison terms of the top leaders and so on.

I think there's some kind of myth or legend about the IWW which is entertained maybe by a lot of students. They've heard so much about it. And there was a wonderful militancy in the IWW.

But the IWW after the big persecution where hundreds were jailed, after 1920 or 1921, had no action whatever in the industrial field that any­body can recall. When the time came for the IWW project of industrial unions to be realized, it came from below in the mass production industries and the IWW was standing on the sidelines with their mouths open.9 They had nothing to do with it except as participants under different auspices.

Finkel: One of the questions we often get is how students can be effective. They don't see the work­ing class in motion and they often wonder what difference it makes or matters if they join the YSA. It's very abstract to them. How would you an­swer a question like that?

Cannon: Well, I would say a good beginning is to adopt a historical view of society. Try to get a clear idea of where we came from and where from all indications we're heading.

And the second would be, as a beginning, to read my pamphlet America's Road to Socialism and get the beginning of a concept of the historical collision that's in the making and that's not so far away. Students today are going to face such crises that they will see that any plan they've made for a settled, secure and a quiet career of making a lot of money is not in the cards any­more.

Things are going to blow up. There's either go­ing to be a revolution that transforms the whole social system or there isn't going to be anything left.

And we don't need to say that with any exag­geration or hysteria at all. That's what practically all scholars and other observers of society take for granted. One of the most common expressions you read in historical prognoses these days is "In the future, if there is to be a future of the hu­man race, it has to be different."

If you think, on top of everything else, that they've already got enough atomic weapons of var­ious kinds that can reach all points on the globe at the push of a button — enough to destroy the whole human race seven or eight times over. And if you think that every time there's any sign of a sharp international crisis everybody gets apprehensive about who's going to drop the first atom bomb and what will follow it, then you realize that the old slogan of the days before the First World War — that is, the historical perspective is either socialism or barbarism — is even more true today.

Today everybody with any knowledge of things will have to admit that the perspective is either socialism or annihilation. That's even worse than barbarism, because theoretically you can recover from a new barbarism. But nobody's yet recovered from the ashes of atomic destruction.

I believe that young people are particularly re­sponsive to discussions of that kind. And that's not some pipe dream at all. These are the demon­strable facts of life in the year 1974. The only worthwhile thing for a young person to commit herself or himself to is a movement to make pos­sible the continuation of the human race and its further evolution, development and progress. That can be stated seriously as a practical proposi­tion. "That's the way it is," as Walter Cronkite says when he winds up his evening news.

We couldn't say that with such assurance in the old days. One of the hardest things to answer was, "Well it's a good idea, but we'll never realize it. People will never agree to it." or "It's a hundred years away, so what's the use of worrying about it?"

But that's not the case today. The young genera­tion you're talking to is going to see it one way or another. And you may be able to decide. That's really a terrific thought—that one single person may make the difference.

I heard on TV several years ago an interview with the philosopher Bertrand Russell who was greatly disturbed about the development of atomic weapons and was agitated about the danger of them. He had accumulated considerable knowledge of atomic weapons' potential for destruction.

He was asked, "What do you consider is your main concern?" He hesitated a moment, and he said, "I want to see the human race continue." And then he was asked, "And what do you think are the odds?" He replied, "About four to six as I see it right now" — about four to six, for the chances of the human race continuing. The next question was, "What can we do about it?" And he said, "The only thing I know is to keep work­ing and struggling to change the odds."

I always thought of this as a very perceptive statement of the dilemma facing the young genera­tion today. Not at all what it was 50 or 100 years ago. In some of my last speeches before I fell into retirement, so to speak, I quoted this along with opinions of other informed people. I found a great response to that formulation and developed it further.

I said, "Suppose by our efforts we can push the odds up to 50-50, which is easily conceivable. By our efforts we can make it five to five instead of four to six! There's a point where one feather on one side of the scale or the other can make a difference on the basic question. It doesn't matter who we are, or where we're situated, or what we do; any one of us can make that difference."

It's a sobering formulation, isn't it? And yet, I personally feel that it is not at all a fantastic for­mulation. I feel that the human race is at the point where it's got to decide and hasn't too much time to do it. I'm almost certain it's going to be de­cided one way or another in the lifetime of the new generation entering the world of political action.

And then you should consider that the human race hasn't yet had a real chance to show what it's capable of doing. It has been the victim throughout the millenia of the social system that it has been born into. Humanity has done pretty well in coping with the problems of nature, of science and technology, but we have not yet gained control of our own social system. Nobody knows what's possible. But we can say all things are pos­sible if we had an organized, consciously directed and planned organization of society and produc­tion.

It just staggers the mind to think of what could be done if everybody in the world had access to all the knowledge that has been accumulated over the ages and had an opportunity to develop the latent talents that everybody has to a greater or lesser extent. How much waste in the social system could be eliminated and converted to con­structive uses! Good God! Just think, in this coun­try we throw away $80 billion a year on weapons of destruction. Just that alone, to say nothing of what we throw away on useless advertising, dirty tricks and things of that sort in politics. God almighty!

And then, as Trotsky said in one of his articles in Literature and Revolution, humanity under so­cialism for the first time will begin to understand itself and to consciously develop to its best capac­ity. That's never been done. That requires a change in the social system. And he predicted that we will develop the human race to the point where the average person reaches the height of an Aristotle, or a Goethe or a Marx, and beyond that, new peaks will rise.

Well, I think a young person listening to those arguments will have a hard time coming up with an answer to them. You've got to pose the ques­tion flatly: that there's a danger that the human race may not continue; and if it's going to con­tinue it's got to take control of its own social system and reorganize it and plan and eliminate the constant day-to-day danger of annihilation.

Finkel: Then they ask you how do you do it?

Cannon: Well, we're not going to say it's an easy thing to do. It's a lifetime job for each and every­one of us. But the thing that inspires one's life and makes it worth living in the face of all this calami­tous danger everywhere, uncertainties and insecuri­ty, is to commit yourself to an effort to change it. And not to belittle oneself and think you don't count. You may be the decisive factor.

Finkel: Thank you very much, Jim.

Cannon: Thank you for giving me a chance to sound off. I don't get on the soapbox much any more these days. If I can convey any sug­gestion to you it's this —the longer you live in this fight, the more determined you are to try to win it and the more confident you are that the human race will survive.
*********

5th ANNUAL NEW ENGLAND SOCIALIST CONFERENCE APRIL 14TH-15TH SATURDAY AND SUNDAY-IN CAMBRIDGE

5th ANNUAL NEW ENGLAND SOCIALIST CONFERENCE APRIL 14TH-15TH SATURDAY AND SUNDAY)-IN CAMBRIDGE

The Democracy Center

45 Mt Auburn Street, Cambridge MA

Short Walk from Harvard Sq T Stop

* FEATURED EVENTS *

DISCUSSION • SHOULD THE LEFT SUPPORT DEMOCRATS?

FORUM • INTERNATIONAL CRISIS AND THE FIGHT AGAINST THE 1%

FORUM - SOCIALISM FAQS

-Labor Donated-

WORKSHOPS INCLUDE:

Dismantling Sexist Culture

Racism, Prisons and Police Brutality

Book Launch: Lessons of Wisconsin

For further details, see

Boston.SocialistAlternative.org
as the event approaches.

Call: 774-454-9060

Email: Boston@SocialistAlternative.org Visit: SocialistWorld.net or

SocialistAlternative.org

The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States- 1930s American Socialist Workers Party Leader Max Shachtman-Footnote for Historians(1938) (How Not To Build A Labor Party, Part I )

Click on the headline to link to a Max Shachtman Internet Archives online copy of Footnote for Historians

Markin comment on this series:

Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.

Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.

As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
*********
Markin comment on this article:

Max Shachtman knew how to "speak" Marxism back in the 1930s and believe it. Later he could speak that language only at Sunday picnics and the like as he drifted back into the warm embrace of American imperialism.

The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States- 1930s American Socialist Workers Party Leader Max Shachtman-Prospects for a Labor Party(1937)

Click on the headline to link to a Max Shachtman Internet Archives online copy of Prospects for a Labor Party(1937)

Markin comment on this series:

Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.

Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.

As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
********
Markin comment on this article:

Max Shachtman knew how to "speak" Marxism back in the 1930s and believe it. Later he could speak that language only at Sunday picnics and the like as he drifted back into the warm embrace of American imperialism.

The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States- American Socialist Workers Party Leader James P.Cannon-Early Years of the American Communist Movement-Birth of the Communist Party

Click on the headline to link to a James P. Cannon Internet Archives online copy of Early Years of the American Communist Movement-Birth of the Communist Party

Markin comment on this series:

Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.

Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.

As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
*********
James P. Cannon
Early Years of the American Communist Movement
Letters to a Historian


[First Letter]

Source: Fourth International, Vol.15 No.3, Summer 1954, pp.91-92.
Original bound volumes of Fourth International and microfilm provided by the NYU Tamiment Labor Libraries.
Transcription & Mark-up: Andrew Pollack/Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 2, 1954

Dear Sir:

I received your letter stating that you are working on a history of the American communist movement. I am interested in your project and am willing to give you all the help I can.

Your task will not be easy, for you will be traveling in an undiscovered country where most of the visible road signs are painted upside down and point in the wrong directions. All the reports that I have come across, both from the renegades and from the official apologists, are slanted and falsified. The objective historian will have to keep up a double guard in searching for the truth among all the conflicting reports.

The Stalinists are not only the most systematic and dedicated liars that history has yet produced; they have also won the flattering complement of imitation from the professional anti-Stalinists. The history of American communism is one subject on which different liars, for different reasons in each case, have had a field day.

However, most of the essential facts are matters Of record. The trouble begins with the interpretation; and I doubt very much whether an historian, even with the best will in the world, could render a true report and make the facts understandable without a correct explanation of what happened and why.

As you already know, I have touched on the pioneer days of American communism, in my book, The History of American Trotskyism. During the past year I have made other references to this period in connection with the current discussion in our movement. The party resolution on American Stalinism and Our Attitude Toward It, which appeared in the May-June 1953 issue of Fourth International, was written by me.

I speak there also of the early period of the Communist Party, and have made other references in other articles and letters published in the course of our discussion. All this material can be made available to you. I intend to return to the subject again at greater length later on, for I am of the definite opinion that an understanding of the pioneer days of American communism is essential to the education of the new generation of American revolutionists.

My writings on the early history of American communism are mainly designed to illustrate my basic thesis, which as far as I know, has not been expounded by anyone else. This thesis can be briefly stated as follows:

The Communist Party originally was a revolutionary organization. All the original leaders of the early Communist Party, who later split into three permanent factions within the party, began as American revolutionists with a perspective of revolution in this country. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been in the movement in the first place and wouldn’t have split with the reformist socialists to organize the Communist Party.

Even if it is maintained that some of these leaders were careerists – a contention their later evolution tends to support – it still remains to be explained why they sought careers in the communist movement and not in the business or professional worlds, or in bourgeois politics, or in the trade union officialdom. Opportunities in these fields were open to at least some of them, and were deliberately cast aside at the time.

In my opinion, the course of the leaders of American communism in its pioneer days, a course which entailed deprivations, hazards and penalties, can be explained only by the assumption that they were revolutionists to begin with; and that even the careerists among them believed in the future of the workers’ revolution in America and wished to ally themselves with this future.

It is needless to add that the rank and file of the party, who had no personal interests to serve, were animated by revolutionary convictions. By that I mean, they were believers in the perspective of revolution in this country, for I do not know any other kind of revolutionists.

The American Communist Party did not begin with Stalinism. The Stalinization of the party was rather the end result of a process of degeneration which began during the long boom of the Twenties. The protracted prosperity of that period, which came to be taken for permanence by the great mass of American people of all classes, did not fail to affect the Communist Party itself. It softened up the leading cadres of that party, and undermined their original confidence in the perspectives of a revolution in this country. This prepared them, eventually, for an easy acceptance of the Stalinist theory of “socialism in one country.”

For those who accepted this theory, Russia, as the “one country” of the victorious revolution, became a substitute for the American revolution. Thereafter, the Communist Party in this country adopted as its primary a task the “defense of the Soviet Union” by pressure methods of one kind or another on American foreign policy, without any perspective of a revolution of their own. All the subsequent twists and turns of Communist policy in the United States, which appears so irrational to others, had this central motivation – the subordination of the struggle for a revolution in the United States to the “defense” of a revolution in another country.

That explains the frenzied radicalism of the party in the first years of the economic crisis of the Thirties, when American foreign policy was hostile to the Soviet diplomacy; the reconciliation with Roosevelt after he recognized the Soviet Union and oriented toward a diplomatic rapprochement with the Kremlin; the split with Roosevelt during the Stalin-Hitler pact, and the later fervent reconciliation and the unrestrained jingoism of the American Stalinists when Washington allied itself with the Kremlin in the war.

The present policy of the Communist Party, its subordination of the class struggle to a pacifistic “peace” campaign, and its decision to ally itself at all costs with the Democratic Party, has the same consistent motivation as all the previous turns of policy.

The degeneration of the Communist Party began when it abandoned the perspective of revolution in this country, and converted itself into a pressure group and cheering squad for the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia – which it mistakenly took to be the custodian of a revolution “in another country.”

I shouldn’t neglect to add the final point of my thesis: The degeneration of the Communist Party is not to be explained by the summary conclusion that the leaders were a pack of scoundrels to begin with; although a considerable percentage of them – those who became Stalinists as well as those who became renegades – turned out eventually to be scoundrels of championship caliber; but by the circumstance that they fell victim to a fake theory and a false perspective.

What happened to the Communist Party would happen without fail to any other party, including our own, if it should abandon its struggle for a social revolution in this country, as the realistic perspective of our epoch, and degrade itself to the role of sympathizer of revolutions in other countries.

I firmly believe that American revolutionists should indeed sympathize with revolutions in other lands, and try to help them in every way they can. But the best way to do that is to build a party with a confident perspective of a revolution in this country.

Without that perspective, a Communist or Socialist party belies its name. It ceases to be a help and becomes a hindrance to the revolutionary workers’ cause in its own country. And its sympathy for other revolutions isn’t worth much either.

That, in my opinion, is the true and correct explanation of the Rise and Fall of the American Communist Party.

Yours truly,
James P. Cannon