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A Treasure
Trove for Socialist Organziers: “James P. Cannon As We Knew Him”
by Barry Weisleder / January 2007
“James P. Cannon As We Knew Him” by Thirty-Three
Comrades, Friends and Relatives
(Pathfinder Press, 1976, New York, 288 pages).
This re-discovered book is a very pleasant surprise
indeed. I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in the connection between
revolutionary socialist principles, programme and organization. During my
vacation reading time, I approached it as a light literary bridge between
weightier tomes. I imagined it as a collection of tributes and accolades by
admirers, but found it to be much more than that.
“James P. Cannon As We Knew Him” critically probes the
character and political mind of a modest, selfless, intensely private man
who was one of the greatest revolutionary leaders ever to emerge in the USA. At the same time the book is a storehouse
of history and ideas essential to today's task of carrying out the work
that it's protagonist first shouldered so long ago. Though first published
over thirty years ago, it remains freshly relevant and a must-read for
young militants in 2007.
Jim Cannon joined the Socialist Party in 1908 and the
Industrial Workers of the World three years later. He was a founding leader
of the Communist Party USA in 1921, and
later the Socialist Workers' Party. In the end he wanted above all to pass
along the lessons he learned as a pioneer and practitioner of revolutionary
working class organization. These lessons span an array of categories.
One area concerns the art of getting the most out of
fellow activists. Cannon taught: Don't write off people because of passing
disagreements, incidental mistakes, or personal weaknesses. The job of a
leader is to find out what people can do and to get them to do it.
Recognize that you've got to work with what you've got. No one is perfect.
Moreover, someone who possesses character and integrity should be forgiven
a lot of faults.
Here are a few more lessons from Cannon's class struggle
school of experience.
Give credit for achievement and dedication, regardless
whether the same individuals end up betraying their ideals. Some folks just
get overwhelmed and diverted by forces they do not understand.
Always be firm in programmatic clarity and principles,
but flexible in tactics.
Be prepared to swim against the stream. Be prepared to
deal with the inevitable twists and turns in the situation, for
circumstances which are not of our making and which are seldom favourable.
What about the role of intellectuals in the
revolutionary workers' movement? They can be useful to the movement
provided that they comply with its requirements. Those intellectuals who
hesitate half-way between the class alternatives posed by the struggle in
society turn out to be more of a problem than an asset.
“Always remember where you are, what the task is, what
the ground rules are. And when you're fighting the class enemy on the class
enemy's ground, proceed accordingly”, a lesson famously applied by Cannon
in the 1941 Minneapolis trial under the
repressive 'Smith Act'. “Socialism on Trial” is the book that contains his
court testimony – a invaluable introduction to the ABCs of socialism.
Should civil liberties matter to critics of bourgeois
democracy and its inherent falsehoods? Absolutely. Fight for the right to
function as a legal party, because that's the way you reach people.
Defend all victims of capitalist oppression on our side
of the class line. Do not try to push your own line (as a substitute for a
common platform) and thereby alienate those who might otherwise join in the
defense.
Value the indispensability of dedicated activists
(cadres) in the process of revolutionary party building. Be watchful of
trends in the workers' movement and take initiatives aimed at gaining
cadres and training them for the bigger tasks at hand.
Be mindful of concrete conditions and the likely impact
of considered tactics. Cannon, despite his enormous respect for Leon
Trotsky, opposed the latter's recommendation of critical support for the
CP-USA in the 1940 presidential election, notwithstanding its then
significant base. Cannon pointed to workers' widespread detestation of the
CP's class collaboration and its gangster-like attacks on its political
opponents, which made common campaign work impossible.
Principles are not an abstraction, and must be applied
with tactical wisdom and flexibility. Against opponents of entry into the
reformist Socialist Party in 1936, Cannon pointed out that rigid ultra
leftism and organizational fetishism can seriously restrict a party's
freedom to make the tactical moves necessary to consolidate all potentially
revolutionary militants on a Marxist programme, and build a workers' combat
party.
Too much attention to routine can make it hard to
recognize new conditions and easy to miss opportunities for expanded
political action and organizational growth. But lack of attention or
indifference to routine can also lead to political and organizational
mistakes.
According to his comrades, Cannon was not the best
self-organized, most disciplined or capable administrator, but he
successfully paced himself. He always rose to the needs of the occasion.
His great strength resided in his historical perspective and his ability to
discern qualitative distinctions. For instance, his admiration for
revolutionary labour unionists did not deter him from stressing the
weaknesses and mistakes of syndicalism – its incapacity to address the
political needs of the working class, to build a party capable of
overcoming the treachery of the Stalinists and the old-line labour bureaucrats,
and to extend the struggle against the employer class beyond the confines
of a single union, or one industry, or even a country as powerful as the United States.
When the union movement became politically dormant,
Cannon, the veteran proletarian organizer, argued for renewed attention to
campus work. He knew to go where the action is.
For him, the main question facing the workers' movement
was that of the revolutionary party, and the main question facing the party
was always one of leadership. He devoted enormous attention to various
aspects of party organization. He clarified the nature of the question of
organization. He addressed the correct way to select and renew leadership,
and how to handle the problem of cliques and unprincipled groupings in the
movement.
He put the task of formulating a correct programme
foremost. This is followed by 'what to do next', the question of tactics.
Cannon absorbed the centrality of programme as a witness
to the tragic degeneration of the Communist International. Somewhat by
accident, as a delegate to its Sixth World Congress in 1928, he came into
possession of Leon Trotsky's “Criticism of the Draft Program of the
Communist International”. It became the programme of the American section
of the International Left Opposition and was published in the very first
editions of the Militant. Veteran SWP leader Tom Kerry wrote, “From that
time forward, to Jim Cannon, Leninism and Trotskyism were synonymous.”
Confidence in the working class to make a revolution,
and confidence in comrades' ability to learn and to lead, imbued Cannon's
general outlook. Revolutionary optimism is indispensable, because, as he
stated in his report to the 1946 SWP convention, “He who doubts the
socialist revolution in America does not believe in the survival of human
civilization, for there is no other way to save it. And there is no power
that can save it but the all-mighty working class of the United States.”
Cannon regarded democracy as both an end and a means –
indispensable to building a party of critically-minded, self-activating
workers.
Don't seek martyrdom, insisted Cannon, but expect to go
to jail for your views. “The path to freedom leads through a prison.”
Recognition of that fact, however, does not for a moment imply fatalism or
any passive acceptance of state curtailment of rights. Organize on the
broadest possible basis to restore and extend freedom and liberties.
When Cannon, Farrell Dobbs and sixteen other leaders of
the SWP were incarcerated for a year at Minnesota's Sandstone Prison for
their anti-imperialist views, they devoted themselves to political study
and discussion. Cannon authored a steady stream of political analysis,
strategy and party building wisdom. This material was subsequently
published as “Letters from Prison” (1968). Included are a range of
proposals for annual educational conferences, a party school, and newspaper
subscription drives. One model for the latter was the “trailblazer team”
consisting of comrades who would travel from city to city and state to
state, selling Militant subs to new readers, taking the paper to picket
lines, demonstrations, even going door to door.
In later writings there is detailed advice on how to
organize a speaker's tour, including how to select a good title for a talk,
promote the speaker's qualifications, publicize the event, appeal to select
constituencies, and use the party newspaper to report on the tour's
progress.
Cannon was renown as one of the greatest public speakers
in his day. I find it oddly reassuring to learn that it was common for him
to draft and re-work his major speeches five times before delivery.
The full text sat in front of him on the lectern, but thanks to ample
rehearsal, he appeared to speak without reference to it. Brilliance can be
created, according to plan.
Jim learned the ramifications of leadership from the
tragic example of the great Eugene Debs, who turned his back to the
internal disputes of the Socialist Party of the United
States. He learned that a leader must engage at all levels, from the
organizational issues of the day, all the way to the fight against
unprincipled factions -- otherwise lesser figures will run the machine and
shape the policies, to the detriment of all.
Resisting self-delusion is a permanent challenge.
Sectarians can hold sway in a tiny organization that is not well connected
to reality. “A small group,” he once told Fred Halstead, “can get
themselves in a room and talk themselves into almost anything. You always
have to test against the real world, the one out there with all those other
people in it.”
But acute awareness of political reality, possession of
a proper sense of proportion, does not imply hiding one's light under a
bushel. To organize effectively it is necessary to think big and act
boldly. Cannon wrote to Reba Hansen, one of his secretaries and a party
leader in her own right, “inspiration is a good half of any serious
endeavor – the motor part”.
Inspiration must be ratified by professionalism in
performance, including attention to detail, insistence on accuracy and
neatness, all aimed at fostering a party image of efficiency and
seriousness that conveys a true capacity to deliver the high quality
campaigns it inspires people to join.
Political clarity is crucial, but external party work
should not take a back seat to internal political struggle. “It takes a
real Bolshevik to combine the two, and not to neglect either.”
In 1966, at the age of seventy-six, fourteen years after
he retired from the daily leadership, Cannon sounded the alarm against
“tightening the centralization” of the party. He said the SWP was already
too tight, and warned against a proposal to amend its constitution to alter
the Control Commission, a rank and file appeal body elected at convention, so
that it would be appointed by the top leadership body, the Political
Committee. Cannon wrote that retaining the right of members to appeal
suspension or expulsion is an important democratic protection, not unlike
the well-known Bill of Rights, which he hoped “will be incorporated, in
large part at least, in the Constitution of the Workers' Republic”.
“In the present political climate and with the present
changing composition of the party, 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.”
Given what happened to the SWP in the 1980s, when most
of its veteran cadres were expelled on pretexts designed to conceal the
real reason, namely their adherence to the Trotskyist progamme, including
the strategy of Permanent Revolution, and given subsequent developments which
reduced the SWP to a sect mumbling sideline criticisms at the mass movement
opposing the war in Iraq, could Cannon's
warning have been more prophetic or more pertinent?
This is one more good reason to become well acquainted
with this fine little storehouse of revolutionary wisdom. The challenge, of
course, is not just to interpret it, but to apply it.
Issues From 1996-2003:
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