James P. Cannon, 1890-1974: A fighter for socialism in America

Scan page 11

SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 1984 11 On the occasion of a 60th birthday celebration for James P. Cannon and Rose Karsner (Jim's companion and political collaborator), Cannon asked himself a key question that many an aging revolutionary fighter has asked: What have I accomplished? Answering himself, Jim said:

"There I can tell you that I have perhaps made a more objective judgment than you have. I am one man who took seriously the injunction of the Greek philosophers: man, know thyself. And if I don't know myself, l've come as close to it as a man can. Because 1 know myself, I don't claim great accomplishments. I am well aware of all the negligences and faults. I can't, in good conscience, stand up and say that I did the best I knew; I only did the best I could. That's quite a difference...!

am human and therefore fallible and prone to error and even folly, like all others...I did the best I could."

(Speeches for Socialism, Pathfinder Press, p. 257)

In an article, "Trotsky on America, Cannon wrote: "In the hundred years of the modern movement of workers' emancipation we know only four genuinely creative minds. These are the masters of scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, and their great disciples, Lenin and Trotsky."

As we can see, Cannon was a modest and very honest man. He claimed no originality in the field of socialist theory. He called himself an agitator and a teacher. But he was much more than that. "I did the best I could"' he said. But, as I hope to show in this brief sketch, that "best" was more than enough to assure for James P. Cannon a special place in American socialist and labor history, and also in the history of the Fourth International, the world party of socialist revolution founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938.

A working-class leader Cannon was an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) from 1911 to 1918 and was active in the left wing of the American Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs. He was one of the young leaders who founded the American Communist Party in 1919. He was elected to its political committee and served on the presidium of the Communist International in Moscow from 1922 to 1925.

In the IWW he served his apprenticeship under the great "Wobbly" leaders, "Big Bill" Haywood and Vincent St. John. In the Communist International he worked with Lenin, Trotsky, and other leaders of the Russian Revolution.

In the great class struggles that took place during and after World War I, the only revolution that succeeded was the Russian, led by Lenin and Trotsky. As the smoke cleared, backward Russia stood alone, isolated, devastated by war and civil war. The pressure on its leadership was tremendous.

Gradually, a self-serving bureaucracy, led by Joseph Stalin, developed. It lost confidence in the ability of the world working class to extend the revoAsher Harer was a founding member of the SWP. He served on the national committee of the SWP for 20 years and was a long-time collaborator of James P. Cannon. lution. It sought instead accommodations with world imperialism: "We'll lay off world revolution if you lay off us."

In time, this strategy led to the Stalin-Hitler Pact of 1939, which marked the opening of World War II.

Lenin and Trotsky saw what was happening and formed a bloc against Stalin. But Lenin died in 1924. Trotsky's Left Opposition was defeated. In 1928 Trotsky was exiled, hounded from one country to another, and in 1940 assassinated by a Stalinist agent in Mexico.

In 1928 Cannon was a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the Communist International in Moscow. Almost by accident, he and a Canadian delegate, Maurice Spector, came into possession of exiled Trotsky's "Draft Program of the Communist International—A Criticism of Fundamentals."

They decided that Trotsky was right—but didn't dare say so at the time.

Back in America they spoke out and were promptly expelled. They proceeded to set up political organizations to support Trotsky.

Trotsky and Cannon

In 1933 Hitler came to power in Germany, without the million-membered CP putting up a serious struggle against him.

Now it was clear that the Communist International (also known as the Third International) was unreformable-that it had become basically counterrevolutionary under Stalin. Trotsky called for the formation of a new international to combat and replace the Stalinist international. Five years were to pass before this took place.

In 1938, Trotsky, now in Mexico, began a collaborative relationship with the American Trotskyists, led by Cannon. He "adopted the American party [the Socialist Workers Party] as his own? Cannon often remarked. Trotsky, like Cannon, considered the founding of the SWP to be one of the great achievements of the American working class and of the Fourth International.

When Trotsky wrote the program for the new international, "The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International,' he asked the SWP to adopt it and present it to the founding conference of the Fourth International in Europe in the fall of 1938.

In addition, he asked that Cannon be sent to Europe to help organize the conference. Cannon did so—under Trotsky's direction.

While Cannon was in Europe, Trotsky wrote to "l did the best I could," he sald. But that 'best' was more than enough to assure a speclal place in history.

Rose Karsner: "Dear Comrade Rose, It seems Jim is doing an excellent job in Europe. I regret very much that we don't have a couple of Jims more., At least one for Europe... » (Writings of Leon Trotsky 193738, Pathfinder Press, p. 448).

Cannon said that "Trotsky thought more highly of me and valued me far more highly than I value myself...."

The truth is that Trotsky considered Cannon to be a master organizer, a party-builder, and also an internationalist who always took a world view of problems.

And Cannon saw internationalism as Lenin and Trotsky did: international collaboration and mutual support with interchange of ideas and criticism, but with each national section independent in decision-making; tied together by a common adherence to Marxist program and strategic world outlook.

As Joseph Hansen said, Cannon felt that "it was a revolutionist's first duty to master the affairs of one's own country. Over the years he had seen too many instances of individuals, especially those with intellectual pretensions, who shirk their first duty, covering up their dereliction by becoming pseudoexperts on the affairs of other countries."

("James P. Cannon, Internationalist, Socialist Workers Party Educational Bulletin)

Cannon made it his life's work to build a centralized, disciplined working-class party, fully democratic in decision-making-but with one face to its enemies and opponents. His goal was a mass Leninist party that could take on the American capitalist class and establish a socialist America. His "American Theses" (1946) laid out the basic strategic line to accomplish this goal.

Trotsky called America "the foundry in which the fate of man is to be forged."

He stated that "in the last historic analysis all the problems of our planet will be decided on American soil."

Cannon agreed. He said, "What other countries need from us, above all else, is one small but good revolution in the United States."

He recognized the destructive power of the American imperialist colossus astride the world, armed with the most technology and nuclear weapons. He insisted that no revolution anywhere in the world— from Latin America, to Cuba, to Russia itself-was safe until American capitalism was toppled.

The SWP's new course It is a tragedy that the present leadership of the SWP, the party founded by Cannon and to which he dedicated most of his life, has begun to turn its back on the revolutionary traditions that Cannon stood for. The SWP's sectarian and abstentionist attitude toward the trade unions and the antiwar movement, for example, stands in stark contrast to the practice of the SWP under Cannon. (See Socialist Action Information Bulletins.) In the process, many proven concepts of Lenin and Trotsky on the strategy of world revolution and the methods of party building are being jettisoned. In fact, Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution has now come under attack from the current SWP leaders.

Those of us in the SWP who sounded a warning to reverse this trend were framed up and expelled, just as Cannon was expelled from the Communist Party in 1928. Socialist Action, a public faction of the SWP, was founded by expelled members of the SWP in order to defend the party against the destructive course of its present leadership. Socialist Action was formed to defend the basic ideas of Trotskyism and the Fourth International. In that sense, James P. Cannon, chief architect of the strategy of the American revolution, stands in our ranks.

A life dedicated to socialism Unlike Lenin, Cannon never lived to see his revolution. As the struggle went on, he knew that this would be the case. That didn't bother him. In a speech at his 60th birthday, he said:

"I decided to be a socialist and to live as a socialist insofar as physical restrictions would permit, even within capitalist society. And having that philosphy, I have felt that every little thing I contributed from day to day to the struggle for the socialist goal of the future was a vindication of my own life that day, and that every day was a victory. If one has that conception of socialism, and lives by it, he does not need to wait for the final victory of socialism.

He has his own share of socialism as he goes along....And here with you tonight, in the midst of friends and comrades, I feel like a privileged citizen of that good society of the free and equal, of that future which Jack London so beautifully described as 'the golden future, when there will be no servants, naught but the service of love." (Speeches for Socialism, p. 261)

Several times, in conversations with Jim, I raised the question of his autobiography-when was he going to write it? He would answer each time, "I'm thinking about it-but you know, that's a big job. But I'm thinking about it."

But he never did.

Jim's political history, of course, is in his books, starting with The Struggle for a Proletarian Party (1943). But strictly speaking, there is no autobiography or biography, at least not all in one place.

Jim was a very private person. But in personal conversations and letters to friends, he did talk about his personal life. In two books, Letters from Prison (written while he and other leaders of the SWP were in prison for opposing World War II) and in James P. Cannon As We Knew Him, you will discover the complexity and humanity of this remarkable man, his knowledge of great literature, especially poetry, and the deep love he had for those closest to him.

In these books-and I should add Notebook of an Agitator-you will also encounter the angry James P. Cannon, possessed by what he called "that holy emotion of rebels and revolutionists, about injustice, oppression, lies and hypocrisy."

Jim was not a dispassionate observer of the human condition; he was a participant in the struggle to change the world.

James P. Cannon was the original American Trotskyist; the best representative, so far, of the type of American revolutionary that will bring socialism to America.