Building the Revolutionary Party: An introduction to James P. Cannon
New Course Publications, 1997
100pp., $7.95
Review by Pip Hinman
Full-time revolutionaries are mostly stereotyped as being narrow and dogmatic. But to read anything of James P. Cannon, arguably the most significant figure on the US left in this century, shows how insupportable this characterisation is.
James P. Cannon, 1890-1974, was a pioneer of the Communist Party of the United States and one of its central leaders in the 1920s, after experience in the early Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
He broke with the Stalinised CP in 1928 and founded the US Trotskyist movement, playing a central role in building it for the next three decades. Cannon's commitment to socialism stemmed from his conviction that capitalism had failed the majority and that humankind was both capable and creative enough to organise things differently.
Cannon is one of the few socialist leaders who has left a richly documented experience of building a revolutionary party in an advanced capitalist country.
Despite his enormous contribution to the struggle for socialism, Cannon is not widely known. This is why, as Dave Holmes puts it in the introduction to this book, "it is important to introduce a new generation of socialist activists to the life and work of the incomparable James P. Cannon".
"Cannon's writings contain so many acute and incisive analyses and insights. But they also convey so much of the socialist outlook and values which sustained him throughout his long life of activism."
To complete the assessment of Cannon and "Cannonism", an article by Doug Lorimer puts the case that the degeneration in the 1970s of the US Socialist Workers Party (which Cannon helped to found) into a sectarian outfit under the leadership of Jack Barnes was caused by a departure from Cannon's political methodology, not the result of it.
'Cannonism'
Cannon's main contribution was his clarity on why revolutionary parties have to be built in the advanced capitalist world. Having lived through the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and failure of leaderships such as the German Social Democratic Party, he knew that the advanced capitalist countries would have to play a leading role in the international struggle for socialism.
Cannon recognised that only the working class organised and led by a "vanguard" party can make this revolution.
Cannon's legacy has to be rescued not only from the sectarianism of the present-day US SWP. It also has to be defended against those on the left who claim to follow the Cannon tradition but argue that building a revolutionary party is not on the agenda today.
For example, Marxist academic Paul Le Blanc argues that while a lot can be learned from Cannon's life (Lenin and the Revolutionary Party, Humanities Press International, 1990) sufficient opportunities for the party to base itself in the working class do not now exist. Because of this, any attempt to build a party as Cannon did would inevitably be an exercise in sectarianism.
Cannon explicitly rejected this argument in the 1950s, when he said it wasn't good enough to be in favour of a party "to be constructed some time in the future by some people whose names and address are unknown, as a result of further development of the spontaneous process. That is dead wrong because the very idea of a party — large or small — presupposes a program and therefore consciousness ...
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Against sectarianism
Cannon was also against sectarianism. "I know that sectarianism — in one form or another — is an ever-present danger to any small organization of revolutionists condemned to isolation by circumstances beyond their control, regardless of their original wishes and intentions. The moment such an organization ceases to think of itself as part of the working class, which can realize its aims only with and through the working class, and to conduct itself accordingly, it is done for."
Further, he adds: "Every tendency, direct or indirect, of a small revolutionary party to construct a world of its own, outside and apart from the real movement of workers in the class struggle, is sectarian ..."
Maintaining that intimate connection to the working class was anything but easy. When Cannon and a handful of others, convinced of the correctness of the Russian Left Opposition led by Trotsky, broke from the Stalinised US Communist Party in the late 1920s, they went through a difficult period of forced isolation.
Cannon and some 100-200 comrades faced a daily barrage from the CP's Daily Worker, accusing them of selling out to US imperialism and denouncing them as counter-revolutionaries.
But Cannon did not swerve from his commitment to build the Communist League of America, as the party was then called. "Tenacity, tenacity, tenacity", was Trotsky's advice in an article he wrote to the US revolutionaries at the time.
Later, during World War II, Cannon and the Socialist Workers Party faced another major test. Cannon and other party leaders were indicted and tried on charges of "seditious conspiracy"; some, including Cannon, went to prison. Cannon used his courtroom appearance to explain the principles and aims of revolutionary socialism.
Cannon, who espoused the need for revolutionaries to be first and foremost internationalists, to collaborate internationally and reap the benefits of other ideas and experiences, was also a great believer in what he called "revolutionary continuity".
Cannon was conscious of continuing the revolutionary tradition begun by Marx and Lenin: "... we solemnly based ourselves on the continuity of the revolutionary movement", he stated in 1966, when explaining the reasons for the survival of the Socialist Workers Party.
Party democracy
An important aspect of Cannonism, which this booklet takes up in some detail, is party democracy. Cannon knew that a democratic internal life was the party's best protection against sectarianism. While he was a part of a number of splits and fusions, not all of which were immediately welcomed by other party leaders, he went to great lengths to ensure that as many as possible were convinced of the next steps.
In the 1939-40 fight against those in the SWP around James Burnham and Max Shachtman who no longer wanted to defend the Soviet Union against imperialism, Cannon urged caution on those who wanted to force an immediate split. With an eye on educating the younger generation, a long and democratic party discussion was held before the split, in which some 40% of the party left.
Later in the 1960s, when Cannon was already concerned at some organisational moves the SWP leadership was considering, he stressed, " ... democratic centralism must be applied flexibly. At least ninety per cent of the emphasis should be placed on the democratic side and not on any crackpot schemes to 'streamline' the party to the point where questions are unwelcome and criticism and discussion stifled.
"That is a prescription to kill the party before it gets a chance to show how it can handle and assimilate an expanding membership of young people who don't know it all to start with, but have to learn and grow in the course of explication and discussion in a free, democratic atmosphere."
There's no doubt that this booklet, put out by the Democratic Socialist Party's publishing house, inspires further study of Cannon's life and works. Since its origins in the 1970s, the DSP has been constructed on a foundation of Cannonism, albeit adapted to Australian conditions. Building a Revolutionary Party should inspire a new generation to commit themselves to the struggle as Cannon did.