Trotskyism Today no. 4

TROTSKYISM

REVOLUTIONARY

A GREAT

by Tim Wolforth In this edition of "Trotskyism Today" we publish the first part Tim Wolforth, of an article by the former National Secretary of Workers League (sym- the US the section of pathising Committee of the International Fourth International). Wolforth wrote the article in reply Banda of the a series by Mike to Revolutionary Party, British Workers published in Workers Press in October entitled James P. Cannon: A 1974, pioneer critical assessment of Trotskyist. We have many points of disagreement with Comrade Wolforth. But on at least one point we are certainly agreed.

to be set straight on The record has the life and achievements of Cannon who was truly a "great revolutionary".

We agree also that this question is for American not simply one the Trotskyists. The history Workers Party in the USA is Socialist central the history of world Trotskyism. For this reason we reprint ma of a more

TODAY *

JAMES P. CANNON 1890-1974

IN DEFENCE OF

serious study of some of the questions it raises, and in order to broaden and develop the discussion on the history of the Fourth International as begun in our document Fourth International: Problems and Tasks. A fuller response to Wolforth's views, taking up some of our political differences with his article, will appear (together with the second part) in the Socialist Press 27. Supplement to In reading this first part, however, we must not forget that Wolforth's position at times sharply reflects the difficult under which he

COMEOIN

of the effectively driven out WaS the WRP General Workers League by Secretary in the end months of 1974.

It is clear that in the aftermath of this experience, Wolforth's attitudes to certain issues had not been clearly this and objectively reworked when Some article written.

DOSLUOLS

was reflect lingering traces of Healyism - of Wolforth's and some a foretaste present shift towards the US Socialist Workers Party. In particular we disagree with his one-sided analysis of youth work, James P. Cannon in 1938. which appears in the later passages in the article, and also the rather slanted view he gives of the 1953 split in the International, where Fourth role in Cannon's an portrays excessively favourable light (especially in view of Cannon's and the SWP's positions the subsequent on International). And we feel Wolforth has deliberately underplayed his own role in creating the same one-sided to Cannon as he now approach criticises in Banda. But most of all we disagree with the way in which Wolforth has now moved from this necessary re-examination of the life and work of Cannon, to public statements expressing support for the present-day Socialist Workers Party of the USA which in its policies in many ways represents only the palest negation of Cannon's long fight for a revolutionary combat party based firmly in the bedrock of the US labour movement.

We will expand on these questions and detail some of the background to Wolforth's removal from the Workers in the next edition of League Trotskyism Today. Sp.

NUMBER 4

JANUARY 14th. 1976. and the history of of James P. Cannon The question American Trotskyism has been a central concern of mine since my earliest days in the movement in 1955 and 1956 when I broke with Max Shachtman, joined the Socialist Party, and contributed to the founding of the Workers Shachtman Young Alliance. The fight with Socialist required a whole assessment of this history, particularly of Marxism and Cannon's Struggle Trotsky's In Defence For A Proletarian Party. In that period this history was taken very seriously and those two works were considered in the SWP, together with Cannon's History of American Trotskyism, as the "bibles" of the movement.

I recognised that it was insufficient to break with over his right-wing policies and empirically Shachtman historical study of the Shachtmanite inaugurated an movement, which produced What Makes Shachtman Run!, the only history of that movement. I also made a study of Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed, coming to a position of defence of the workers states and complete hostility to Stalinism, from which I have never budged.

The ensuing years were important particularly for an understanding American communist early movement. It was in this period that Theodore Draper wrote his two invaluable volumes on early communism and Cannon compiled the material later published as James the First Years Of American. Communism.

This Ten material only made it more clear that those who wished to seriously prepare for the future struggle of the American working class must first understand the past development of the working class movement and its relationship to the international workers movement.

It was the 1961-63 struggle which broke out within the ranks of the International Committee over reunification with the United Secretariat forces (the remnants of the original group around Pablo from which the International Committee had split in 1953) which raised so sharply the Cannon and the relationship between the issue of James Fourth Trotskyist movement and the American International as a whole. At that time Gerry Healy insisted that any reunification with Pabloism required first of all a full and frank discussion of the causes of the original split with Pablo in 1953 In February 1963 I was called over to England, as l would be many times after that date, for consultations This was my first such trip. The central question WE discussed was precisely the history of the SWP.

I undertook a whole study of the history of Americar Trotskyism. This study produced The Struggle For Marxism United States. This book remains, ten years after i in the was written, the only history of American Trotskyism from its origins to today. This intervention on the part of Gerry Healy had beneficial effect on the development of our movement it the United States - the American Committee for the Fourtl International and later the Workers League. Our movemen a continuous struggle to understand thi was built in history. We did not always achieve a proper understandin but it was always our central concern. In 1971, when w first gathered young workers around our party, we held special school in the Catskills devoted to the history of th Fourth International. The pamphlet Towards A History o The Fourth International was a product of that school When in 1973 we organised trail-blazing teams in th industrial Midwest to set up new branches in cities whic socialist mayors, massive votes for Debs, th had seen earliest efforts of pioneer American Communists (the Dail of a Cleveland paper, th Worker was the outgrowth foiler), and the great sit-down strikes of the 1930s, o comrades studied Cannon's speeches To The Partv.

I believe it is safe to say that no other movement in an country devoted as much effort as we did to an educatio of our cadres in the history of the movements which ha preceded us. We thought that in so doing we were acting a part of an international development. It now appears tha this kind of study only took place within our own ranks The rest of the International Committee was insulate completely from it. What Gerry Healy proposed that we do, he himself never undertook. This is true in two related senses. Gerr Healy never undertook an education of his cadres in th true history of British Trotskyism nor were they educate in a history of American Trotskyism. The two question were, in any event, completely intertwined. Because th British movement grew up primarily after the death o Trotsky, it was very much the product of the post-Trotsk Fourth International. While the British comrades played an active role in th European Secretariat and collaborated closely with Pabl

Page 2 for several years, the real strengths of British Trotskyism Gerry Healy's collaboration with James P came from Cannon and the American SWP. It was Cannon who aided Healy when he broke from the centrist anti-internationalist Workers International League and brought a small but critically important group into the official section of the Fourth International during the war period. It was Cannon the supported Healy his struggle against who in petty-bourgeois Haston group during the post-war years when Pablo was giving covert support to this rotten group.

And, of course, it was Cannon again who Healy followed in making his own break with Pablo in the process and ensuring the continuity of Trotskyism in England It was Cannon who wrote to Gerry Healy in 1953: "If one were to undertake to write the real history of British Trotskyism, he would have to set the starting point (Cannon's emphasis) as the day and date on which your group finally tore itself loose from the Haston regime and started its own independent work. What happened before that is nothing but a series of squandered opportunities, material for the pre-history of British Trotskyism.

Why is it that Gerry Healy never undertook that task to write the real history of British Trotskyism? Why is it he never educated his movement in the real history of Ameri- can Trotskyism? Certainly it was not because of lack of intellectual forces to help with the work for in that respect our small group was far more impoverished (our history of Trotskyism was written when we had nine American men can only be that Gerry Healy approached this history factionally and subjectively. He did not wish it to be known that he, Gerry Healy, had made among his membership many mistakes in his life, that he, Gerry Healy, owed so his political to James P.Cannon who was now much opponent, and that the organization which he today oppos- ed had in the past made such a major contribution to the development of the Fourth International. It could only be that Healy, who urged us to do what he would not do, who urged his own members to study such distant events as the Cromwellian period, trained a whole generation of British Trotskyists in ignorance of their own history and with only the history of the Fourth distorted picture of a most International. Once Healy freed himself in this fashion from the grip of history (history of course continued to exist outside of Healy's head and is already placing Healy in his proper sub- jective historical dustbin) he could act as he saw fit - that is arbitrarily, subjectively. At the same time the study of of historical method was abstracted out the Marxist development, separated from political practice and political idealist fashion used as a whip to program, and in an maintain a little sect.

RESPONSIBILITY

But the crime was even greater. After all, the responsib- ility which fell to Healy in 1961-63 was for more than his immediate supporters. All who aspire to a leadership role in have a responsibility for revolutionaries in any country How could the confusion within the ranks of all countries. the United Secretariat be sorted out, how could the healthy forces in the SWP be reached, if their own history with its accomplishments was factionally distorted and positive they faced only a factional hostility? The ill-conceived and unprepared unification of 1963 was not just the responsibi- lity of the SWP leadership. Gerry Healy made his own contribution through his refusal to fight for the real, true and objective history of the Fourth International, and to fight consistently and non-factionally for the cadres of the

SWP

We, who were within the SWP, found ourselves in a most difficult position. Gerry Healy in 1962 correctly urged us to fight for the majority within the SWP, to orient towards the forces around Farrell Dobbs and Tom Kerry, to avoid factional issues which would create a distance from those forces, and to remain as long as possible within the SWP as loyal party builders. We attempted to carry out just such a policy and broke with Robertson over precisely those iss- ues. But meantime back in England Healy was conducting a polemic of another character a polemic so factional that it contradicted the tactical line we in the U.S., in good faith, sought to carry out. The result was that we remained isola- ted within the SWP and important cadres - including the SWP leadership - were never reached this article makes clear, our pre-occupation with As James P.Cannon is not a matter of parochial concern within the history of our own country, important as that country may be to the future of socialism internationally. The SWP was the only real party with a trained indigenous leader- ship to emerge in the 1930s in the Fourth International.

For this reason its history is very much at the heart of the development of the Fourth International. Ignorance of its history is ignorance of the history of the Fourth Interna- tional. Such ignorance is today the situation in most count- ries of the world.

NEGLIGENT

The European sections of the United Secretariat were and are largely dominated by the Mandel-Frank forces who than Gerry Healy to keep this have reasons even more history from their membership. The former French section the OCI, has also been criminally negligent in of the IC, this respect. Even Trotsky's classic In Defence of Marxism was available only as a fragment until the last two or three still To knowledge Cannon's writings are our years. unknown in the major languages of the world outside English though we are happy to hear that a section of the Struggle for a Proletarian Party is now being published in French in Canada. The new young cadres who have turned to Trotskyism all over the world are today almost totally ignorant of this vital history and its critical lessons for con- structing a Trotskyist movement today.

The SWP has made an important contribution recentiv in two important publishing projects. The first is the publi cation of Cannon's Speeches To The Party, his writings on the Cochran fight and perhaps his most important work.

Second is the publication as part of the Education For Socialists series of all the documents and much of the corr- espondence from both sides of the split in 1953.

This polemic with Banda is more than a polemic with Banda. It is an attempt to develop an understandingof the history of American Trotskyism and its relationship with the Fourth International free of Healy's factional distor- tions which also found expression in my own early writings, particularly The Struggle for Marxism in the United States.

wish to draw the reader's attention to two more recently early period - Towards A History of the Fourth Interna- of Trotskyism tional and In Defense An Answer 10 Our History. Both of these were written Those Who Vilify with the approval and encouragement of Gerry Healy fact he read over and made corrections on the text of the latter pamphlet, but the articles never were run in the were the pamphlets distributed in Workers Press nor England. Again we were encouraged in a certain objectivity to our own history as long as that objectivity never crossed the Atlantic Ocean. There is anther interesting side to these pamphlets.

They contained polemics against David Fender and Philip Pasan who represented small tendencies which broke from the SWP claiming to represent a left wing and orthodox alternative to the SWP. The position taken in the pamphlets was that they represented nothing of the kind because of their slanders of the early history of the Fourth interna- 1953 split with Pablo. Today Healy tional including the has joined the ranks of Pasan and Fender and we are forced to make the same political judgment of him.

James P. Cannon was a great revolutionary.

This was Trotsky's opinion and it is ours. He deserves an objective More important, the young cadres of the move- history. ment internationally can only be trained for the tremend- ous tasks we now face with such a history.

We hope this assists in a process of study of this history which article must now go on in all countries. It is, together with each of our efforts to build the Trotskyist movement, the best way I know of paying tribute to Cannon during this, the year or his death. LICHtE The Method of Historical Materialism Marx always insisted that we enter history backwards.

This, of course, creates great difficulties for comprehending developments under study developed history the forwards, not backwards. What this means is that whether we wish to be conscious not, all historical writing begins from the aDouL Il O1 present and this element cannot be removed from historical writing. It is the events of the present which shape the very questions which compel us to study history for the answers.

The present forces us to move backward into history. The historical questions under discussion are therefore always contemporary. As we move backward into history, we must understand that our movement into history is contradictory in direc- tion to the movement of the events we are studying. Unless this is grasped we distort the past. A distorted past is useless for any scientific insights that may help us confront present problems. It is the events of the 1970s which compel us to try to understand the 1930s. But the events of the 1930s were events which preceded the 1930s, not by Shaped by the today's events. Once we ignore this, we ignore materialism and go over to the idealist school of history.

ARBITRARY

The idealist approaches history in a completely arbitrary manner. Ihose who lived in the past are judged as if thev had experienced all that we of the present have exper- Pixed notions of historv are clung to and historical Tenced. "fact" dug up to justify these abstract notions. History thus of the present rather than

DECOUICS

TUS BIECHOT

objective and scientific understanding of how change took piace then so we can learn more of how we can change the Trotskyism Today, Wednesday 14th. January 1976 A Critical Assessment of a Pioneer Trotskyist represents idealist history at its worst. It is the clearest expression of the break of the Workers Revolutionary Party leadership with Marxism and its embracing of idealism.

The American workers movement has been character- ised historically not by one but by two complementary types of political activity. First there has been the bitter class struggle of masses of impoverished workers seeking union organisations. American labour history is as violent as any in the world. This bitter class struggle against powerful and ruthless monopoly capitalists produced such radical organisations as the Industrial Workers of the World. The IWW was typical, but by no means the only, expression of activist class struggle tendency within the this radical American workers movement.

The great weakness of this tendency was its hostility to theory and even in some cases to political activity of any This expressed a methodological concession to the sort. pragmatism of the American capitalist class.

The hostile the revolutionary IW attitude towards politics within paralleled that within the right-wing reformist AFL.

Top left, Healy, WRP General Secretary Left, Wohlforth, above, Banda.

another trend in American radical- There was, however, Marx and Engels came into ism. This was sectarianism.

sharp conflict with the early German-American Marxist over this They urged the movement in America issue. German-Americans to abandon their aloofness from the rest of the American working class and find a road to the mass of American workers. Adherence to Marxist doctrine was not enough. The German-Americans had to find a way for that doctrine to live in the actual movement of American workers - a movement which would by no means simply follow European patterns.

Daniel DeLeon continued the tradition of these early German-Americans transforming their movement into a completely ossified sect - the Socialist Labor Party. two tendencies were complementary in that in These one tendency theory was developed only in its abstract and metaphysical form separated from practice, while in the other tendency practice flourished but was never negated against previously developed theory. No organisation in the early history of the American workers movement brought struggle of practice together as a unity and theory and Theory develop isolated from the opposites. could not The actual experiences in struggle of masses of workers.

beyond the struggle of masses of workers could not go without a theoretical bounds of American capitalism development. It is of considerable importance to note that these two Communist tendencies found an expression in the early movement. James P. Cannon was very much in the thick of the struggles which broke out among these tendencies. An of these divisions, the role of Cannon in understanding them, and the role of Lenin and Trotsky, is essential to an understanding of Cannon and American Trotskyism. First it must be noted that the divisions within the early Communist movement were not a simple and direct devel- opment of the old division between the SLP of Daniel DeLeon and the IWW. Very little came out of the old SLP into the new Communist Party. (Actually there was only a small group led by Dr. Julius Hammer and his son Armand, the present President of Occidental Petroleum.) However.

the case of the IWW was verv different. A large number of Wobblies and those influenced by the Wobblies joined the new CP and were to play important roles within it.

This is not an accidental development. The "theorists" of the SLP were actually extremely conservative people, distant from the American working class. It was among the fighters of the IWW, as well as of the Socialist Party. despite their poverty in theory, that a layer developed responding to the Russian Revolution.

However, another group eloped which was to play a

A fresco by Mexican artist Diego Rivera, showing Lenin and Trotsky, with delegates to the Third International, reviewing the Trotskyism Today, Wednesday 14th. January 1976 A fresco by Mexican artist Diego Rivera, showing Lenin and Trotsky Red Army. Rivera's work is an indication of the enormous impact of Russian federation. These federations were made up of immigrant workers who responded to revolution in their homeland as well as to the class oppression and discrimina- tion they faced in America. However, the federations were dominated by centrist politicians content to preach the most revolutionary doctrine in their little foreign language groups - just as long as they did not have to practise revol- utionary conduct in the broad American labor movement.

They were the most orthodox of men - and the most conservative. James P. Cannon was part of the tendency within the CP which came out of the IWW and the SP and which fought for a turn to the American working class as a whole. He, together with William Z. Foster and others, fought to break the sectarian stranglehold that the foreign language federa- tions had on the early CP. As the record clearly shows, Lenin and Trotsky intervened in the American movement politically on a number of occasions to support the political positions of the Cannon-Foster tendency against those of the foreign language group. (3) It is this actual history that Michael Banda seeks to twist and distort to justify both his own political action as well as Gerry Healy's today. Banda quotes Cannon in this vein: "We were convinced that it was impossible to build a movement in this country without a leadership in control more intimately acquainted with and related to the native movement of American workers." (4) He then draws the following conclusion from Cannon's remarks: "This theme recurs in different forms in Cannon's speeches and writings and in one example took the curious- ly provincial form of opposing Chicago - a 100% Midwest - to 'cosmopolitan' New York as the center of the city revolutionary party. remarks an organic provincialism "Cannon's betray with an ingrained indifference to dialectical combined The point at issue was not the national origins of theory. the leaders, but the struggle for dialectical materialism as against the prevailing idealist and pragmatic outlook in America. Their native origins did not prevent the majority Browder, leadership, Foster, the native American W. Dunne. Minor and others, from capitulating Lovestone, abiectly to Stalinism." (5) This represents a terrible slander of Cannon and a distor- foreign Cannon was not critical of the tion of history. •language federations because of the national origins of their leaders. It was a question of their sect-like existence and The conservative politics that led him to criticize them.

absurdity of Banda's slander is made clearer when one looks at Cannon's closest political associates. These included Karl Arne Swabeck of Danish of Swedish origin, Scoglund origin, Max Schachtman and Martin Abern, both New York Jews.

DEFENDED

was it that Lenin and Trotsky defended Cannon Why against the foreign language federations? Perhaps because actual life and thinking of the they felt that a grasp of the mass of workers of a country is a necessary precondition for the building of a revolutionary movement within it.

was how Marx and Engels approached the Certainly this German-Americans of their day.

When Banda discusses the issue of Chicago, he betrays d Trotsky, with delegates to the Third International, reviewing the workers and intellectuals impact of the Russian Revolution on only his own ignorance of the United States of that period Chicago was then, and is to some extent now, a city of immigrants. Its importance lies in its location at the centre of the country, which was extremely helpful in those days of poor transportation, for building a truly national move- of heavy the great concentration Furthermore, ment. industry in Chicago and nearby Great Lakes cities was also of importance. Then, as well as now, the strip from Mil- waukee to Buffalo is the industrial heartland of America.

It does not necessarily flow from this that a revolution- ary party must have its national headquarters in Chicago.

The old IWW and the SP did. The new CP did not. How- ever, it is not a mere matter of provincialism to make such a proposal. Furthermore, there can be no denying the great influence of the petty bourgeoisie on radical politics partic- ularly in New York City. Evidence of this was most sharply seen in the struggle with the Schactman-Burnham faction in the SWP in 1940. It is still a factor in American working class politics. Michael Banda's criticism of Cannon's role in the early Communist Party is not a matter of a single isolated quote.

It comprises the entire first two parts of his five part series.

A study of this material makes it clear that these sections were written primarily to make this single polemic point: "original sin" lay in his efforts to root the that Cannon's early Communists in the American working class move- ment.

LABOR PARTY

Let us examine how he proceeds to develop this point in series on the labor party his discussion in Part Two of the Cannon had a tendency to be question. Banda notes that preoccupied with the American question while showing a general lack of interest in international questions within the Communist International. This. of course, was true. Cannon himself makes this self-criticism of his conduct during that period, as well as the conduct of all the American factions of that day. Then Banda quotes Cannon in 1923: «The American movement has no counterpart anywhere else in the world, and any attempt to meet its problem by the simple process of finding a European analogy will not The key to the American problem can only be succeed. found in a thorough examination of the peculiar American situation. Our Marxist outlook, confirmed by the history of the movement in Europe, provides us with some general principles to go by, but there is no pattern, made to order fits America today." from European experience, that Banda then comments on this quote: "Cannon here betrays a complete lack of understanding of the active and revolutionary side of reflection. He saw theory in the same way that a ship's captain sees naviga- tional points of reference on a map - 'some general princ iples', nothing more. The 'peculiar American situation' can by empirical improvisation. Here the grasped only concession to American pragmatism is barely concealed and This also explains the failure of spontaneity takes over. Cannon and the early CP leaders fully to grasp the signifi cance of Lenin and Trotsky's demand for a labor party.

This, after all, was not a 'peculiar' American institution but a 'European analogy' " (7) Once again we see Banda's tendency to direct correct criticisms of Cannon's theoretical weaknesses in order to nake very incorrect points. Cannon was not a developec Marxist in 1923. He did tend to see Marxism in a very fixed combined with his own empirical way which was to be he was an American revolu- improvisations. Nevertheless, tionist in the process of learning, of developing, as part of an international movement. And 1923 was a relatively early date in this development.

PRINCIPLES

principles is, however, Cannon says about What incorrect. Principles are expressed through practice and are developed precisely in a continuous conflict with new exp- eriences in practice. There is, therefore, rich content in the European experience for American revolutionists then well as now. In fact, principles can only be expressed in this concrete form. Nonetheless Cannon is 100% correct when he said: «There is no pattern, made to order from European exper- ience. that fits America today" . That is as true today as it was when it was written in 1923 may be made clearer if we turn to the refers to: the labor party question. No one days of the American CP favored a labor th After all the IWW had opposed all political party both the rieht and the left wings of the Social- acting actual labor parties as so much ist noosed on the question to the early Page 3 Cannon's generation. (8) the impetus for the labor party demand came Thus, from Lenin and Trot-ky. As Cannon explains in The First Ten Years of American Communism, the idea first came to the American Communists because of Lenin's position concerning the need to support the reformist labor party in England. (9) The labor party slogan was then taken up by the Cannon-Foster group as a subordinate part of their cam- paign against the sectarian foreign language faction which was insisting on the underground party. The Cannon-Foster position was then endorsed by the Comintern in 1922 Between 1922 and 1924, a genuine labor party move- developed in the United States led by important ment elements from the trade unions. The trade union movement then was experiencing the effects of economic conditions face today. It was those conditions similar to those we which prepared the way for the Great Depression. The Communist Party, supported by the Comintern, intervened vigorously in this development.

this situation was transformed into a fiasco be However the manoeuvrings of John Pepper, a Hungarian adventurer who had connections with Zinoviev. By 1924, the labor party movement was split, with the CP controlling an empty form with very few independent trade unionists in it, while Pepper had swung the CP behind the bourgeois- liberal LaFollette Progressive Party campaign. Cannon and this Moscow by Trotsky, opposed Foster, supported in campaign and the whole Pepper regime.

Pepper had the support of Lovestone, the inheritor of the old right wing around the foreign language federations.

By 1925, the situation in the Comintern had begun to to function change. The Comintern was beginning as a national parties in the various factional instrument in support of the leading faction within the Russian party.

Even though by this time the Cannon-Foster forces had a the Comintern clear majority within the American party, imposed a leadership minority led by the from Ruthenberg-Lovestone forces. In the process of carrying out this change in leadership, the labor party question was transformed into a factional issue.

William Z. Foster The Cannon-Foster bloc, noting the waning of the labor party movement in the unions and the debacle over the Pro- proposed dropping the slogan altogether.

Casion later felt that there waference are on He believed that this issue between himself and Foster. Foster simply wanted to eliminate all political questions in while for him it was a tactical matter based on the unions, the ebb in the actual labor party movement. (10) However, regardless of this fact, it is now clear to us that on this question. While position Cannon took a wrong abandonment of the rump labor correctly favoring the artificial organizational formation and other any party approaches, he should have insisted on a continuing propa- ganda campaign for the labor party. This was indeed a reflection of the pragmatic approach.

However, the Lovestone-Ruthenberg forces took the labor party issue up and were supported by the Comintern as a factional issue against the Cannon-Foster group. For them it was a cover for their involvement in the Lafollette debacle and part of a right turn, a reflection in America of emerge as a Stalin-Bukharin bloc later within what would the USSR. If we look at this actual history, we can grasp better the relationship between Cannon, Marxism and the interna- tional movement. First the impulse for a labor party policy did come from abroad - as did the impulse for an approach to the Blacks and other questions vital to building a revolu- The Marxists in Europe tionary movement in America. of the American situation understood the peculiarities better than the Americans of that day.

But it was the peculiarities the Comintern grasped. It fought throughout this period against those who sought to formally and by analogy transpose into America Russian experiences like soviets and the like. Lenin and Trotsky insisted on a struggle to grasp the peculiar development of the working class in each specific country. There is no short cut to this process. Nothing can be built in one country by adaptation to forms developed in another country. This is as true of the labor party question as any other. A labor party in America will not develop as it did in England. It will develop differently Next, it is not accidental that one faction - the Cannon learned from the Comintern on thi Foster faction - question while the other faction - the foreign language group - opposed the labor party while distinguishing them selves as the greatest adapters of European analogies. Marx ism is after all the scientific expression of the interests of the working class. Those rooted in the working class, turned into it. represent the revolutionary material out of which Marxism can develop. There is no guarantee that this devel opment will take place. But Marxism never, never, never develops among the sectarians, the formalists, the circle builders, the centrist radical phrasemongers.

Banda to state that, after all, members of the For Cannon-Foster "Americanizing" Stalinists became group only proves that a turn into the working class is insufficient

May 1934: scenes from the bitter fighting during the Minneapolis Teamsters' strike for union recognition. Two pickets were killed.

Page 4 revolutionist. However, the fact that Trotskyism emerged "Americanizers" and not from the foreign lang- from the uage sects is not an accidental phenomenon but one of the greatest significance to us today. After all, American Trot- skyism was the only serious Trotskyist movement to dev- elop in the 1930s. As we assess its weaknesses, let us also seek to understand why it existed at all.

The extremity of Banda's factionalism over this labor party question is expressed in what he says on the Inter- national Labor Defense: "Although the influence of the ILD campaign on Sacco and Vanzetti was considerable, its political impact was neg- ligible, because it never raised at any time Lenin's sugges- tion of creating a political alternative to the two-party system - a labor party based on the unions." (11) Banda here confuses the role of a defence committee and that of a revolutionary party. The Communist Party did fight for a labor party during various periods in the 1920s and Cannon was very much a part of that fight. But a as Cannon labor defence is broader than a party. It must, insisted in that period, base itself on the working class but at the same time be open to all political tendencies, unions etc. in the working class. This, we might add, is exactly the way the Workers League ran the Farinas defence which also never advocated a labor party. (12) Farinas, of course, spoke for the party on the labor party and many other issues. Now we turn to the most absurd slander of all - Banda's assessment of why it was James P. Cannon broke with the Stalinists to join Trotskyism in the first place. Here Banda spits upon the very origins of our movement. Here is what Banda states: "It is however a debatable point whether Cannon real- ized the real significance of Trotsky's critique.

He never subsequently explained what 'doubts' were resolved by the 'criticism'. It is more probable that Cannon, representing a class tendency in the party, could not reach a compromise with Foster and Lovestone, who were supported by Stalin, and that this drove him empirically to seek the help of Trotsky." (13) There is nothing debatable at all here. The facts speak differently. Lovestone and Foster were in two opposing tendencies at the time. The Foster tendency was aligned with the Cannon tendency. At the very Comintern meeting in 1928 when Cannon was won over to Trotskyism, there were plenty of signs of a shift in Kremlin policy in favour of Cannon and Foster. There was no indication of any against Cannon. This is why Kremlin action directed Cannon's adherence to Trotskyism came as such a shock to the Kremlin and even his allies within the CP.

To talk about seeking "the help of Trotsky" is absurd on the face of it. Not only did Cannon not have any contact with Trotsky in that period, as Trotsky was isolated in Alma Ata, but even the slightest connection with Trotsky meant suicide politically for anyone in the Comintern in those davs. The result of Cannon's support to Trotsky was to isolate him more than he had ever been in his political life to that day. He was to suffer the most fantastic political and personal tribulations because of this action and he could not help but know that at the time.

Why could not a man who chose Lenin and Trotsky and the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 choose Trotsky in 1928?

between Trotsky's theories and Was there no connection the actual needs of American workers which Cannon could see? school of We now get to the heart of the Banda historical idealism. James P. Cannon is seen as a fixed entity - an American pragmatist hostile to Marxism. This fixed no doubt gotten in birth, reremained with characteristic, to his death when he abandoned Marxism. Here, him change, contradiction and actual development is denied.

Marxist theory itself is seen as an esoteric philosophical exercise.

IDEALIST

This position of Banda's represents a real turn to idealist philosophy, to a form of neo-Hegelianism. This can be seen from the following: "The separation of theory and practice - to be precise, extract to posit practice on theory and the refusal knowledge from this conflict - has been the hallmark of the Cannon, however, American radical movement.

created Lenin in his own image. In his later writings he saw Lenin's most enduring conquest as the disciplined combat but neglected Lenin's truly historic vanguard party, the Marxist theory of cognition, of which contribution to the Bolshevik Party was an integral and vital part". (14) question of critical This raises immmediately a importance. vanguard party Is the disciplined combat Lenin's most enduring conquest or is it simply a part and expression of his "truly historic contribution to the Marxist theory of cognition"? Does the study of method exist for the purpose of better constructing the revolutionary party or do we construct the revolutionary party in order to refine our philosophical method? Banda, in subordinating the revolutionary party to the development of philosophy, breaks completely with materialism and embraces idealism.

note that modern British philosophy has been We may marked by a suffocating return to idealism.

Holding this position, Banda never explains exactly how one learns to posit living practice on theory, to develop a mastery of the Marxist method. Is it through some esoteric mental gymnastics removed from the construction of the party in the working class? Or is it precisely in the actual practice of the party. There is another question raised by this statement of Banda's. The "truly historic contribution to the Marxist theory of cognition" was of course made by Marx and not by Lenin. It was Marx who, together with Engels, made one of the world's greatest intellectual discoveries when he Marx rooted Hegel's dialectics in the material world. accomplished this task not as a philospohical exercise but through the development of the Marxist method in his masterful Capital and in his practice in founding the First International. made important contributions to the Marxist Lenin theory of cognition, but primarily as a defender of Marxist materialism. Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, a book which Banda should definitely study, represents a critically important defence of materialism against a new school of bourgeois idealist thought. Together with Plekanor's indispensable Pevointionaries. His Philosophical Notebabls, teadin by fo means a finished work, is extremely useful as a materialist guide to Hegel. But neither book represents any real development bevond the contributions of Marx and Hegel in philosophical matters.

May 1934: scenes from the bitter fighting during the Minneapolis Tea represented a profound development beyond Marx in a revolutionary period which permitted such a development.

This is expressed in such writings as What Is To Be Done?

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, State and Revolution and Imperialism. All this combined with the continuous, often disheartening, and work of gathering and training prepared the way for the Russian Revolution. This cadres, Revolution was the triumphal test of Marxism in practice and a great leap for all mankind which is still shaping history. All this can, of course, be viewed as a contribution to the theory of cognition once we realize that after Marx scientific cognition cannot be separated from practice. But to view it this way is to strip cognition of the richness and concreteness of what is cognized, that is to separate out the of knowledge from knowledge itself.

This means theory really a return to pre-Marxian metaphysics which sees a philosophy" isolated from the whole separate field for process of scientific knowledge and human practice.

Mike Banda's assessment of the American Trotskyist movement in the days when Trotsky was alive is as of the early Communist one-sided as his assessment He begins with his conclusions - the role movement. Cannon played in his last years. History for Banda is nothing more than the search of past evidence which shows the roots of later development. But real history is not a matter of the continuous development of a tendency from birth to full flowering. In between there is contradictory movement, other tendencies and occasionally the real hope of a changed and powerful movement.

In seeking to understand American Trotskyism in the 1930s, we must look for more than the roots of the revisionism of the 1960s. We must seek to understand why this movement developed the strength that it did in the 1930s, why it was the only national section to build a press consistently published, serious apparatus and a and trained cadre, a sizeable proletarian membership, record of leading mass struggles of the working class. We must also ask ourselves why was it that the resistance to Pabloism internationally came from the Cannon leadership and why this resistance was decisive in establishing the International Committee itself?

What Banda refuses to grasp is the change which took place in Cannon in his turn to Trotsky in 1928, Cannon did turn first and foremost to international questions in this period. Every issue of the Militant was devoted to China, to Germany, to all the isues of the international Communist represented a change for Cannon, movement. This development quite unknown in the circles of the American and IWW movements that he had originated from.

Cannon himself noted this change in his History Of American Trotskyism: "I think one of the most important lessons that the Fourth International taught us is that in the modern epoch you cannot build a revolutionary political party solely on a You international national basis. must begin with an program, and on that basis you build national sections" (15) Cannon took a correct act in siding with Trotsky in 1928. Few others internationally took such a decision. His past history prepared him for that act in the sense of his commitment to the working class. But in many other ways it did not prepare him at all. He had much to learn in those early days. It is amazing that he developed as far as he did We must also realise that Cannon's party was at least partly like the other parties in the Fourth International in that period. It was made up primarily of middle class radical elements who were critics of Stalinism. They were by and large not revolutionary material. They were centrists by nature, conservative by inclination; nevertheless this was development indispensable the of an stage in revolutionary movement in America. That Cannon survived what he called "the dog days" is itself to his credit. Few revolutionaries did. The early Trotskyist movement was built on principles.

It was educated in a continuous struggle over international issues. It learned greatly from Trotsky. At the same time, Trotskyist Cannon brought important qualities to the movement. These were qualities no other national section Trotskyism Today, Wednesday 14th. January 1976 apolis Teamsters' strike for union recognition. Iwo pickets were killed.

Trotsky and Natalia December 1932.

Cannon brought with him into the Trotskyist movement decades of experience mass work in the American in He won at the beginning the support of a working class. small but critically important grouping of working class revolutionaries, largely in Minneapolis. In addition he had serious training and experience as a party builder in the Communist Party under the tutelage of the Comintern in its best days. He was in 1928 no simple Wobbly or Debsian socialist. It would explain nothing to attribute to Trotsky's intervention everything that was healthy in the American movement and to Cannon's contribution only a negative praginatism. After all Trotsky paid far greater attention to the German party and the French party but nothing ever emerged in the way of leadership or cadre in either country.

The American party built through a relationship was between a serious proletarian leadership around Cannon, with some history behind it, and Trotsky. This leadership from that section of old Communist emerged the movement closest to the working class which, at the same time, was determined to build a Leninist party.

Such a leadership could not develop out of adaptations to European experiences. A leadership of workers can never be imported into a country. This is why all the cries of the bourgeoisie about the export of revolution are so phony. A leadership must develop out of the conditions within a part- icular country througha common struggle with revolution- Such a leadership aries organised on an international scale.

must carry with it all the difficulties and weaknesses, as well as the strengths of its own working class. If this were not the case, it then would be completely separated from and thus out of touch with that working class. Such a leadership develops into a Marxist leadership through a con- these tendencies which tinuous internal stryggle against naturally and spontaneously develop in and around the party. In America, that requires a struggle against pragmat- ism. It does not mean finding a leadership which, through some mystical process, is purified ahead of time.

Actually this entire series was written by Banda as a rationalization for the Workers Revolutionary Party's (i.e.

Gerry Healy) tactics which have had such a devastating of the impact on the Workers League. The leadership Workers League was created in a very different period than Cannon's. It never had the opportunity to participate in mass working class struggles. Nevertheless, it was an indig- enous leadership, which had been formed over 20 years and which had a principled history and embodied a great deal of experience. with a This leadership built up a sizable movement, regular press, a cadre of some training, and the beginnings of a serious penetration of the American working class. This was not simply the accomplishment of myself and leading comrades. However, it was not done simply by the British alone. There is not another section like it in the Interna- tional Committee todav. Only in the United States did such a party develop outside of England.

Healy and Banda intervened in the Workers League to change this leadership, to remove it in a completely capric- They substitute leadership set up ious manner. a adaptors of simple followers of the British. They displayed none of the patience in the development of a leadership Trotskv's interventions in the which characterized movement in the U.S. and in other countries. They had abandoned in practice Marxism for idealism.

The Banda a dishonest attempt to justify such a disastrous series is policy. CONTINUED IN TROTSKYISM TODAY No. 5.