Strengths and Weaknesses of Cannonism

Strengths and Weaknesses of Cannonism
Written by Frank Wainwright


As we prepare the reproclamation Congress of the Fourth International, it is important for us to undertake a re-evaluation of “Cannonism”.1 “Cannonism” has to be understood in a contradictory way. The strength of “Cannonism”—to which we shall return—lies in Cannon’s having constructed and preserved a Trotskyist organisation, related to the processes of the class struggle in the United States and which acquired an implantation and experience which cannot be disputed.

Cannon’s strength lay in his educating one generation, and even several generations, of cadres on the basis of fidelity to the programme and especially, after the death of Trotsky, putting into operation the orientation which Trotsky defined as to the attitude towards the imperialist war. From this point of view, Socialism on Trial, the text of Cannon’s defence at the trial of the Minneapolis 16 in 1941, remains at one and the same time one of the most pedagogic and the most popular presentations of Marxism adapted to the situation in the United States, and the expression of internationalist principle in a situation when such a position was not an easy one to defend.

It has frequently been stressed in our movement that the principal weakness of “Cannonism” was that at different stages in the history of the Fourth International and of the SWP itself, Cannon did not always accept his responsibilities from the standpoint of the construction of the Fourth International. This tendency had already appeared during Trotsky’s life-time. It expressed itself, particularly after the end of World War II, precisely on the question of the military policy of the SWP. This policy had been the object of criticism on the part of important elements in the Fourth International, starting with Pablo,2 and in particular had been the object of a regular polemic on the part of Munis. However, it is significant that, at the Second World Congress of the Fourth International in 1948, the discussion on the balance sheet of ten years of the Fourth International (and such years, including the whole of the Second World War and what followed it!) took up, overall, barely an hour, including translations, and that in particular the balance-sheet of the military policy of the SWP was not raised, either by its detractors or by the leaders of the SWP itself.

Nonetheless, the SWP has always placed great importance on this question. In particular, Socialism on Trial had always formed part of the fundamental materials for educating and forming the militants of the SWP. Socialism on Trial includes both the polemic by Munis and the reply of Cannon to Munis.

But this question had been exclusively adopted by the leaders of the SWP as an element in the education of the cadres of the SWP itself. At the 1948 World Congress, the attitude of the leaders of the SWP clearly showed that the necessary generalisation of the principled questions raised in this discussion, questions necessary to the education of the cadres of the whole Fourth International, the repercussions of which could be important in many of the sections, did not seem to the SWP leadership to be part of their responsibilities.

We also find these tendencies to “national-Trotskyism” at different stages in the life of the SWP. It is particularly significant to remember how the SWP leadership acted in the crisis of 1950-53. As long as it did not seem to be threatened in its own existence, the leadership of the SWP not only refused to intervene in the developing crisis, but it politically supported the destructive activity of Pablo and then of Pablo and Mandel in the leadership of the Fourth international. We remember the letter of Daniel Renard, in the name of the majority of the Central Committee of the French section, to the leadership of the SWP, which was nothing less than an appeal for help against the liquidationist maneuvers of Pablo, Mandel et al.—a letter which remained unanswered on the part of the SWP.

In the end, it was only when the liquidationist offensive of Pablo and Mandel had extended to the internal life itself of the SWP that the leadership of the SWP reacted. It is significant to reread the report which the SWP leadership presented to the Plenum in August 1953 at the moment of the split. This report makes very little reference to Pablo and his course towards destroying the Fourth International. It is principally devoted to Clark and Cochrane,3 that is, to the North-American consequences and the North-American expression of the liquidationist offensive. In the stages which followed, the leadership of the SWP followed a consistent line in this regard:

In the 1950s and early 1960s, the leadership of the SWP did not take in hand the effective leadership of the International Committee which had come into existence in 1953;
In 1963, the SWP accepted a “reunification” with the liquidators of Trotskyism that barred discussion of the political questions that had led to the split of 1953 and that remained unresolved;
In the 1970s, an internal struggle developed in the United Secretariat following the 1969 USec “World Congress” around the question of the guerrilla strategy, then on that of the balance sheet of the Cultural Revolution in China, the strategy for the construction of parties in Europe, the theory of new vanguards. This internal struggle was to reach its height in relation to the development of the Portuguese Revolution in 1974-75.
What is constant throughout is that at each stage the SWP was led to pose the questions about the Fourth International from the starting point of the consequences, good or bad from its point of view, for the existence of the SWP. Moreover, this refusal to accept its responsibilities at the international level is what was to lead it to dissolve the Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction4 in 1977, in circumstances which we have discussed elsewhere. The dissolution of the LTF was to hasten the process of degeneration of the SWP toward an openly Castroist and pro-Stalinist course, starting from the era of the 1970s, to end with suppressing any reference to the Fourth International or to Trotskyism altogether.

This national-Trotskyist component of the SWP’s political activity, a component which became more acute as the years passed, is, of course, to be placed in relation to the difficult conditions which have attended the activity itself of the SWP at many stages. The Cold War, the witchhunt, the extremely brutal repression of militant workers and, therefore, against the Trotskyist militants in the workplaces at the end of the 1940s and in the 1950s, and the serious isolation with which the SWP has been surrounded—all these have borne down by no means lightly on the SWP. Nonetheless, this situation is derived, equally, from the subjective weaknesses of the SWP leadership and in particular from the subjective weaknesses of “Cannonism.”

There is one aspect which has perhaps not been sufficiently brought to light in earlier studies: This is the correspondence between the tendencies to national-Trotskyism in the leadership of the SWP and their renunciation in practice of the perspective which Trotsky outlined of the struggle for the Labor Party and the Black Party. Here, also, it is not a matter of proceeding in a schematic way. The conditions for bringing about the orientation towards the Labor Party and the Black Party have not always been visible, which is the least that we can say.

During the periods of isolation, of reaction, this orientation was extremely difficult to express in a concrete, practical way. Nonetheless, without re-writing history, it is indispensable to begin by reviewing the way in which Trotsky worked this orientation out; in what practical conditions, including dialogue with the SWP, was he led to work it out, and then what were the practical conditions or its application or non-application which have marked the question for the last fifty years.

Trotsky’s consistent orientation, in relation to the United States as to other countries, always was to try to arrive at the ways and means which would permit the militants of the Fourth International to break out of their isolation, in relation to the unfolding processes in the working class and its organisations, so as to enable them to link themselves with layers of the workers’ movement in the process of becoming radicalised—in brief, to develop the appropriate transitional forms in the construction of the revolutionary party of the Fourth International.

This preoccupation was perhaps still greater for Trotsky for the United States than for other countries, in relation to his appreciation of the delay in the political development of American working class and consequently the greater difficulties with which the Trotskyist militants found themselves confronted. For example, at the time the perspective of temporary entry by the Trotskyist militants into the Socialist Party was being debated, Trotsky was led to reply to a series of objections, among which was the objection that the American Socialist Party was small and that its social composition was bad. Trotsky replied:

The Socialist Party in the United States is not small by chance; the political regroupment of the proletarian vanguard advances in America with terrifying slowness. Already Engels had had to come to grips with this problem, but we must not forget that the fundamental factors which make the crystallisation of a revolutionary vanguard difficult in America do not operate exclusively against the Socialist Party, but also against us, and that, despite the change in the economic conditions, the psychological inertia which the trade unions have transformed into a tradition cannot be overcome immediately. (“Defence of the Position Adopted on the United States,” Oeuvres, Vol. 8, February 1936)

Trotsky added:

The cohesive force of the larger parties is much more important than that of the small ones; one does not break so easily with a mass party. This explains in part why in France we have been able to keep relatively few new elements when we were excluded. Since the American (Socialist) is not exactly a real mass party, our influence can show itself to be much more decisive there. We can evaluate the practical possibilities as modestly as one pleases, but no one will dispute that the Workers Party and the Spartacus League can double the number of their members. Even a gain of 50% would not be without importance in the present situation. (Ibid.)

To those who opposed the entry into the Socialist Party and who opposed this perspective with some other way, Trotsky replied: “This other way has in any case been tested and has revealed itself to be a permanent crisis.” In 1936, Trotsky saw the principal danger threatening the revolutionary vanguard as sectarian self-isolation, self-proclamation cut off from any attempt to link up with the processes of radicalisation that were going on, however modest they might be.

Trotsky had the support of the Cannon-Shachtman fraction in this battle to enter the Socialist Party, against the sectarian tendencies of Muste, Oehler, etc. But we shall return to this question, which was to find a continuity in the history of the SWP. In 1936, likewise, Trotsky identified a question which is at the centre of the whole fight to construct the Fourth International in the United States, and laid stress on the following contradiction:

The past of America is filled with strikes and heroic leadership, but without political crystallisation. There is now a change in the objective situation, which must produce a change in the state of mind of the workers, perhaps in six months or six years, we cannot know. (“Problem of Entry in the United States,” February 8, 1936, Oeuvres, Volume 8)

We can say in a certain way that this contradiction between the sharpness of the class struggle in the United States, the appearance of “heroic leadership” and the absence of “political crystallisation” has remained unresolved first and foremost for objective reasons. The policy of betrayal of the Communist International was to close the road to the construction of an independent political representation of the working class, as we shall see, and, during World War II this obstacle was to be strengthened to the point that despite the every important progress which the Trotskyists were to make during World War II and the real strengthening which they experienced at its end, this road was generally to be closed to them.

In a certain way we can say that today as well, the present condition of America is full of strikes and that the question which is posed is that of “political crystallisation.” Investigating this question was a constant preoccupation for Trotsky. Analysing the crisis in the United States, he wrote:

At the depth of the crisis, the American working class remained essentially passive. This was the result in part of the objective violence of the blows to which it was exposed after a long period of prosperity. It was also due in part to this subjective factor, which meant that, because of the particular conditions of the American development, the working class was entering the crisis with small, weak organisations in the political as well as the economic domain.

Since 1933, however, the history of the American working class is characterised by nearly uninterrupted activity and combativity. Dogged, persistent efforts to organise, which often culminated in the most heroic strike struggles, were often undertaken by the workers, including those in the key industries such as steel, auto, rubber, public utilities and shipping, where in the past the trade union movement had never been able to strike roots.

The effects of this new stage in the development of American capitalism and of the pressure of the masses express themselves in the polemic which is developing at the present time in the American Federation of Labor, the deepest and the most embittered of the polemics in the whole history of this conservative institution. The leaders of some of the largest affiliated unions—such as John L. Lewis of the miners—frontally attack the traditional policy of the craft unions of the federation, and demand that the workers in the mass production industries have the right to organise in industrial unions and be recruited to them.

Inside the A.F. of L., they formed a committee for organising the industrial unions, the C.I.O., in order to help the workers in the most important industries to organise on an industrial basis. They refused to accept the demand from the executive of the A.F. of L. that they dissolve the C.I.O. and are now engaged in preparations for a campaign to organise in heavy industry. However, there can be no doubt that a vast movement for organisation and strikes in a key industry cannot be considered today in the United States as a purely trade union question. It leads of necessity to a conflict with the bourgeois class in general and with the state apparatus, and this implies the deepest social consequences. (“On the United States of America”, July 1936, Oeuvres, Volume 10)

Trotsky reviewed the obstacles which the American working class faced, and stressed what he called “the Stalinist policy of betrayal”, which expressed itself particularly in the fact that “the American Communist Party uncritically supports the ‘progressive’ trade union bureaucrats, and collaborates often with the most reactionary elements in the trade unions”. (Ibid.)

In particular, the fact that “even though in the presidential elections the Communist Party of the United States stands its own candidates and in that way supports the illusion that it is independent and its revolutionary phraseology, in reality, by its support for the trade union leaders who want to draw the workers over to the side of Roosevelt and by its attacks on the Republican Party as the only ‘real, direct agency’ of fascism and war, it helps Roosevelt”. (Ibid.)

This analysis naturally led Trotsky to confirm that the entry into the Socialist Party had been correct; that party had just broken from its ultra-right wing and had seen new tendencies entering it, which expressed even partially the radicalisation of the working class. It was always in relation to these processes at work that Trotsky tried to think out how the Trotskyists could link themselves to them. In the spring of 1937, for example, he warned the American Trotskyist militants against what he called “a certain adaptation, an opportunist line” in the Socialist Party (“The Danger of Adaptation,” May 25, 1937, Oeuvres, Volume 14). He made his point of view clear when he expressed the opinion that it was necessary “to get ready to jump over the remains of the Socialist Party”, and added:

I am not talking here about our work in the trade unions, especially in the C.I.O. This in a general way is the most important of the tasks which await us, but it requires that we be independent, as a condition for free, courageous activity in strikes and the unions. (“The Situation in the Socialist Party and Our Next Tasks,” June 1937, Oeuvres, Volume 14).

It was at this same time that Trotsky began to stress two weaknesses in the work of the American section. On the one hand, there was the weakness of its participation in the construction of the Fourth International. He wrote in a letter to Cannon:

You remember that at the last conference Shachtman was chosen as a member of the Executive Committee [of the movement for the Fourth International]. The American section has never participated in the work of the International Secretariat and you hardly reply to the letters from Europe. This has led in Europe to an atmosphere of doubt, even of suspicion about the American section.… To ensure the success of the Conference [to found the Fourth International], it is absolutely necessary that the American section take part in all the preparatory work starting today. There must be financial support, however modest, on its part. (“Some Suggestions,” September 11, 1937, Oeuvres, Vol. 14)

There is in this passage a warning against any spirit of a sect, any temptation to regard the American organisation as the sole proprietor of the revealed truth, turning its back on the search for the transition in the construction of the party.

The Struggle for a Labor Party

This preoccupation was to become more and more essential in the eyes of Trotsky, to the degree that the necessity to struggle for a Labor Party was to become clearer. He opened this perspective cautiously at the beginning, when he wrote:

The masses of the workers and perhaps of the farmers will, it seems to me, seek a new political orientation under the successive blows.…The crisis will without doubt strengthen all the tendencies towards an independent Labor Party. The attitude of John L. Lewis is completely symptomatic in this connection. To be sure, we do not have to change our principled position about a Labor Party, but this general conception, which we have expressed and defended in our press many times can become insufficient. A current in favour of a Labor Party can for a whole period absorb all the progressive and semi-revolutionary tendencies in the proletariat. In these conditions, the collapse of the Communist Party can mean that it dissolves itself into the Labor Party. We cannot, and naturally do not wish to remain apart. This does not mean that we shall necessarily enter a labor party, or that we shall prepare for such a possibility or that we shall begin to fight for it. That would be pure quixotry. A Labor Party would naturally be based in the trade unions, particularly in the C.I.O. Our preparation for this perspective can and should consist now in a systematic effort to penetrate into the interior of the trade unions and take part in mass work. (“The Recession in the United States and the New Orientation”, October 2, 1937, Oeuvres, Volume 15)

Trotsky’s reservations with regard to the slogan of the Labor Party came from the fact that, in the preceding period, the perspective of a Farmer-Labor Party had periodically been raised by the Stalinists and certain elements of the Social-Democracy and would have had the content of an American form of Popular Front, as Trotsky explained on many occasions. But what Trotsky described as the new element (namely the radicalisation in the C.I.O. and hence the search by a layer of the trade union leadership for an independent political orientation) and, on the other hand, the collapse of the Stalinist Party, opened up the possibility, as he said, that such a Labor Party could for a period absorb the progressive and semi-revolutionary tendencies in the proletariat. Hence the need to seek a place prudently in this perspective, and to prepare first of all and above all for it by mass work and implantation in the trade union organisations.

At this stage, Trotsky did not exclude that a Labor Party could assume the functions of a Popular Front in the United States , but it would be in a special relationship, which he explained in the following way:

In the United States, the Popular Front has taken the form of Rooseveltism, that is, the vote of the radicals, the Socialists and the Communists for Roosevelt. But the new crisis is going to deal Rooseveltism a blow like that which the last crisis dealt to Hooverism. What will take the place of the Popular Front of Roosevelt? Not an immediate polarisation of the extremes as in France, I think. The American political system has democratic ‘reserves,’ which have already been used up in France. The most important is the possibility of a Labor Party being constructed under the aegis of La Guardia, Green plus Lewis, or probably plus a more advanced variation, that of Lewis plus Browder. In this sense, the crisis in the United States can mean, not the end of the Popular Front, but its realisation on the left and we cannot underestimate this variant. (“To Prepare the International Conference,” October 20, 1937, Oeuvres, Volume 15)

I think it is important to include Trotsky’s remark about the greater “democratic reserves” in the United States than in France at this time and, therefore, about the possible stage to be considered of a Labor Party as “a realisation on the left of the Popular Front”. Let us emphasise that this realisation on the left does not mean idealising such a Labor Party. The hypothesis that such a Labor Party could be constructed under the aegis of La Guardia—who, after all, was mayor of New York and a Republican and who was trying to put together an alliance against the Democrats with the “progressives” in his party—found its manifestation in the support of the trade unions and in the American Labor Party in New York.

In the same way, the hypothesis of the “Green plus Lewis” combination (that is, the leader of the A.F. of L. plus that of the C.I.O.) or perhaps that of “Lewis plus Browder” (that is, the leader of the C.I.O. plus that of the Communist Party) clearly shows that, for Trotsky, the search for the transition is the search for forward steps, however limited they may be, on the road of the break with the bourgeoisie. In particular, Trotsky did not exclude that one of the forms that this might adopt would be the break of the bureaucratic and completely corrupt leaders of the A.F.L. or C.I.O. or of Stalinist leaders from their traditional support for the Democratic Party.

The axis of the Labor Party was rapidly to become a central question in Trotsky’s analysis. This elaboration took place always in relation to implantation in the trade unions, and, in particular, to the need to devote great stress to what happens in the C.I.O. This is a question to which, in several letters, he emphasises that the American supporters of the Fourth International are paying insufficient attention.

In 1938, Trotsky was to have many discussions on the question of the Labor Party with the leaders of the SWP. At the beginning, it has to be pointed out, the leader most open to the perspective of progress in this direction was Cannon, even though he showed a certain number of reservations about the attitude which the Trotskyists should take in the unions in relation to the Labor Non-Partisan League (LNPL), which presented itself as being an initiative toward independent political action by the unions, led especially by John L. Lewis and the leader of the Printers’ Union in the A.F.L. Shachtman and others showed themselves more than hostile to this perspective. In the discussion which opened in 1938, Trotsky reviewed the history of the debate among the American Trotskyists. He said:

When the Communist League of America studied this question for the first time seven or eight years ago, whether we were going to be for a Labor Party or not, whether we were going to be taking an initiative on this point, the general feeling at the time was not to do it, and this was quite correct. The perspective of development was not clear. I think that the majority of us hoped that our organisation would develop more quickly, and, from another angle, I do not think that anyone in our ranks during this period foresaw the appearance of the C.I.O. at the speed and with the power which happened. In our perspective, we have over-estimated the possibility of development of our party at the expense of the Stalinists, on the one hand, and, on the other, we did not see this powerful trade union movement and rapid decline of American capitalism. (“Discussions on the Labor Party,” March 21, 1938, Oeuvres, Volume 17)

Trotsky pointed out that the perspective at that time was changed with the development of the workers’ strikes and the appearance of the C.I.O. with its 3 million members. He put the point clearly:

Are we for the creation of a reformist Labor Party? No! Are we for a policy which would give to the trade unions the possibility of throwing their weight into the balance? Yes! It could become a reformist party, that depends on the development. Here the question of programme is posed, as I pointed out yesterday, and I am going to emphasise it today. We must have a programme of transitional demands, the most advanced of which is the demand for the workers and farmers’ government. (Ibid.)

This means that Trotsky saw the struggle for the Labor Party in the trade unions as a struggle connected with defining and working out the programme necessary for such a Labor Party. On that line, Trotsky believed that it was necessary—unreservedly—to support the movement toward independent political action which was expressing itself in the trade unions. To the question which Cannon posed: “Are we proposing to the trade unions that they should support Labor’s Non-Partisan League?”, he replied:

Yes. I think so. Naturally, we shall take our first step so as to accumulate experience in practical work and not get ourselves involved in abstract formulae, but rather develop a concrete programme of action and of demands in the sense that the transitional programme emerges in the conditions of capitalism today and that it leads directly beyond the limits of capitalism. (Ibid.)

The struggle for the Labor Party excludes any dissolution of the Trotskyist organisation:

The dissolution of our organisation is absolutely excluded. We show clearly that we have organisation, our press, etc. Comrade Dunne says that we cannot yet call on the trade unions to support the SWP. Why? Because we are too weak. We cannot say to the workers: ‘Wait until we become more influential and more powerful’; before we intervene in the movement as it is. (Ibid.)

Then Trotsky answered two objections. He replied to Shachtman, who saw in the proposed orientation a movement towards a reformist Labor Party:

What exists in the United States exists everywhere in the world, that is, this disproportion between the objective factors and the subjective factors. It has never been as sharp as now. We have in the United States a movement of the masses to overcome this disproportion, a movement which goes from Green to Lewis, from Walter to La Guardia; the problem is to overcome this fundamental contradiction.

The Communist Party plays in the United States the same role as in France, but on a more modest scale. Rooseveltism here replaces the Popular Frontism in France. In these conditions, our party has to recognise this contradiction and help the workers to overcome it. What are our tasks? The strategic tasks consist of helping the masses to adapt their political and psychological thinking to the objective situation, to overcome the traditional prejudices of the American workers, to adapt their state of mind to the objective situation of the social crisis of the whole system. In this situation, and taking into consideration our limited experience, then taking into consideration the creation of the C.I.O., the succession of strikes etc., we have been quite correct to be more optimistic and more aggressive in our strategy, and to put forward slogans which do not form part of the vocabulary of the American working class. (“Discussion to Summarise on Transitional Demands”, March 23, 1938, Oeuvres, volume 17.)

At the same period, Trotsky wrote:

The question of the Labor Party has never been a question of principle for the Marxist revolutionaries. We have always started from the concrete political situation and the tendencies of its development. Some years before the crisis of 1929 and even later when the C.I.O. appeared, we could hope that the revolutionary party, that is, the Bolshevik Party, could develop in the United States in parallel with the radicalisation of the working class and perhaps succeed in becoming head of it. In these conditions, it would have been absurd to make abstract propaganda in favour of a Labor Party, the existence of which had not yet been announced. Since then, none the less, the situation has radically changed and we would have no excuse for ignoring the fact. The trade unions which are developing powerfully in the conditions of the deepening of the crisis of capitalism will thrust themselves forward all the more irresistibly on the road of political struggle and therefore on that of the crystallisation of a Labor Party. If the official leaders of the unions, despite the imperious call of the situation and of the growing pressure of the masses, preserve a reserved position on the question of a Labor Party, this is just because the depth of the social crisis of bourgeois society now gives the Labor Party question now infinitely greater sharpness than in the preceding periods.

None the less, we can forecast with sufficient confidence that the resistance of the bureaucracy will be broken. The movement in favour of a Labor Party will continue to grow. A revolutionary organisation which had a negative position, or which stood back from it and waited to see what would happen, would doom itself to isolation and sectarian degeneration. The Socialist Workers Party, a section of the Fourth International, clearly understands the fact that, for unfavourable historical reasons, its own development has lagged much behind the radicalisation of broad layers of the American proletariat, and that it is precisely for that reason that the creation of a Labor Party is placed on the agenda by the whole course of development. (“The Problem of the Labor party”, April 1938, Oeuvres, volume 17.)

When and how the Labor Party will be formed, what stages and what splits it will have to go through, history will determine. When the SWP defends the Labor Party against the attacks of the bourgeoisie, it does not wish to take upon itself the responsibility for this party. The SWP maintains a critical attitude towards the Labor Party at every stage of its development. It supports the progressive tendencies against the reactionary tendencies and at the same time pitilessly criticises the two-faced character of these progressive tendencies. For the SWP, the Labor Party should become on the one hand a field for recruiting revolutionary elements, and on the other hand a transmission belt for influencing ever wider circles of workers. By its very nature, the Labor Party cannot preserve its progressive significance for more than a relatively short period of transition. The subsequent aggravation of the revolutionary situation will inevitably lead to the shell of the Labor Party being broken and will permit the Socialist Workers Party to rally the revolutionary vanguard of the American proletariat round the banner of the Fourth International. (Ibid.)

We shall return later to the parallel which can be established with the situation today; in particular whether it is correct that the Labor Party can preserve its progressive significance only for a relatively short transition period. It will be necessary for us to appraise the situation today, the consequences of the collapse of Stalinism, of the conservative character of the leaders of the American trade unions—and in addition of the crisis of the SWP. Today the development necessarily will adopt the way forward of such a Labor Party, as Trotsky pointed to it, but with necessarily different speed, to be a field of recruitment and a transmission belt to influence ever wider circles of workers. The aim being effectively to gather the revolutionary vanguard of the American proletariat round the banner, that is to say, the programme.

Trotsky regarded the Labor Party question as corresponding to “a specifically American situation” (“The Americans at the conference”, May 25, 1938, Oeuvres, volume 17). He thought fit to refer continually to it in the discussion, to overcome the hesitation of the American organisation on the necessity of the Labor Party. He replied to one objection, an early one, according to which nothing proved that there was a general desire for such a party:

I cannot appreciate whether there exists a desire for a Labor Party, because I have neither personal observation nor personal information, but it does not seem to me that the degree to which the leaders or the rank and file of the unions are disposed or inclined to form such a party is a decisive question.…We cannot measure the state of mind otherwise than in action if the slogan is placed on the agenda.

But what we can say is that the objective situation is absolutely determinant. The trade unions as trade unions can only have defensive action and lose members as the crisis worsens and unemployment grows. Their funds fall while the tasks which they have to carry out with these ever-diminishing resources grow greater. This is a fact which no one can change.…I say, in connection with this what I have already said about the programme of transitional demands as a whole. The problem is not the state of mind of the masses, but the objective situation. Our task is to confront the backward material of the masses with the tasks which are determined by the objective facts and not by their psychology. It is the same for the particular question of the Labor Party. If the class struggle is not crushed, if it does not give place to demoralisation, then the movement will find a new channel, and this channel will be political; this is the fundamental argument for this slogan. (“Discussion on the Labor Party”, May 31, 1938, Oeuvres, volume 17).

Trotsky went on:

What does it mean, that we are certain that the working class and the trade unions are going to cling to the slogan of the Labor Party? No! We are not certain that the working people will cling to this slogan. We are starting a struggle, but we are not certain of victory. We can say that our slogan corresponds to the objective situation, which the best elements will understand and that the more backward, who will not understand it, will discredit themselves.…The necessity for a workers’ political party is given by the objective conditions, but our party is too small and lacks the authority to recruit the working people in its own ranks. This is why we say to the workers, to the masses: “You must have a party.” But we cannot tell them then and there to join our party. In a mass meeting, 500 will agree that a Labor Party is necessary, but only five will agree to join our party, which shows that the Labor Party slogan is a slogan for agitation, while the second is for the vanguard.

Should we use the two slogans or only one? I say, use both! The former, for an independent Labor Party, prepares the arena for our own party, it helps the workers, it prepares them to go forward, it opens the road for our party, such is the meaning of this slogan.…We have to show the workers what this party has to be, an independent party, not for Roosevelt or La Follette, a machine for the workers themselves, this is why we must have our own candidates on the electoral field.” (Ibid.)

Trotsky added: “The proposal for a Labor Party does not form part of the programme of transitional demands: it forms a special proposition.” (Ibid.)

He went on: “To the question, in the trade union, do we defend a Labor Party and vote ‘for’?” He answered: “Why not?”

In the case of the trade unions, when the question is raised, I speak and say that the necessity for a Labor Party is completely proved by every event. It has been shown that economic action does not suffice, that we need political action. In a trade union, I shall say that what counts is the content of the Labor Party and that is why I reserve my right to speak about its programme, but I shall vote “for”. (Ibid.)

We have seen that in Trotsky’s mind the Labor Party perspective was directly linked, at one and the same time, to the process of radicalisation in the working class and the appearance of the C.I.O., and to the development of the economic and social crisis in the United States itself. In 1938, when the premises for an apparent recovery in the American economy were being outlined, Trotsky was led to question himself about the validity of the Labor Party slogan, in a situation which would no longer be marked by a crisis of imminent collapse of American capitalism:

To be sure, the C.I.O., in a new period of prosperity, would have a new possibility of developing. In this sense, we may suppose that the improvement in the state of the economy would defer the question of the Labor Party until later. Not that it would lose its propaganda importance, but it would lose its immediate relevance. Therefore we can prepare the progressive elements for this idea and be ready at the approach of the crisis which will not be long in coming. (“First Discussion on the Labor Party”, July 20, 1938, Oeuvres, volume 18.)

But Trotsky added:

A new recovery would mean that the definitive crisis, the definitive conflicts, are postponed for several years, despite sharp conflicts during the rise itself. We have the greatest interest in gaining more time, because we are weak and the workers in the United States are not ready. But even a fresh revival would allow us only very, very little time—the disproportion between the mentality and the methods of the American workers in the social crisis, this disproportion is terrifying. None the less, I have the impression that we must give some concrete examples of success and not restrict ourselves to good theoretical advice. (Ibid.)

We have there a very important element in Trotsky’s method of thinking about the Labor Party, to which the SWP throughout its history, and a fortiori Socialist Action, have substantially turned their backs. To be sure, says Trotsky, in a period of recovery of economic prosperity, in which the factors of crisis would be less acute, the question of the Labor party could take on a more propagandist character. He added, however, that this must not prevent us from preparing the progressive elements for this idea, because the crisis will not be long in coming.

But he also added something else: Even during a period of economic prosperity in which, as a result, the points of support would be less obvious and less apparent to concretise the perspective of the Labor Party, it is important to have “concrete examples of success and not to confine ourselves to good theoretical advice,” because even in a situation like that, we shall have little, little time, at any rate if we relate this to what he wrote about the disproportion between the thinking of the American workers and the perspectives of the social crisis.

We have an important element there. The leaders of Socialist Action have at all times advanced two arguments against any proposal to concretise the struggle for the Labor Party. On the one hand, they say, we have too small, too weak a group numerically to be able to harness ourselves to this task. But, above all, they invoke the objective situation, that is to say, the slow rhythms of development of the economic, social and political situation, the backwardness of the American working class, to justify their argument that no concrete initiative, however partial, could be taken on the territory of the struggle for the Labor Party.

This attitude on the part of the leaders of Socialist Action was nothing but the theoretical expression, pushed to its extreme, of the consistent policy of the SWP over decades. And, as we can see, it is the opposite of Trotsky’s method; even the backwardness of the American working class, even the slower rhythms of its radicalisation, even the small size of its organisation, do not in any way reduce the central, decisive character of winning successes—let us put it another way, partial realisations—which make it possible to prepare the vanguard for its tasks in the crisis which lies ahead.

There is a fundamental difference between the method of Trotsky and that of the leaders of Socialist Action and what formerly was the method of the SWP to a large extent. This difference is concentrated on the question of objectivism. At no time did Trotsky base the possibility for the Fourth International to undertake the forms of regroupment, even limited ones, on the road to the construction of the Labor Party (that is, of the solution of the crisis of humanity, which is the crisis of the revolutionary leadership of the proletariat) exclusively on a change in the objective conditions.

We know that the orientation towards the Labor Party immediately aroused great opposition in the SWP. A large majority of the youth in the SWP and others likewise polemicised in the internal bulletins in 1938 against the perspective which Trotsky opened. Art Preis, a Trotskyist militant and the historian of the C.I.O., wrote in his book, Labor’s Giant Step:

The Labor Non-Partisan League was presented at the time of its formation as a step towards workers’ independent political action. Its principal purpose was, however, completely the opposite. It was brought into existence to be a bridge for diverting from independent political action hundreds of thousands of trade unionists who habitually voted socialist or communist and who at that period were demanding a Labor Party.

What is significant in this method is that, instead of finding support on the contradiction which existed between the claim of the LNPL that it was opening the road to independent political action and the orientation of the Stalinist leaders, who did not want to open up this perspective, instead of utilising this contradiction, Preis rejected out of hand the LNPL as simply an obstacle to any movement towards the Labor Party.

Trotsky’s method was completely the opposite. He tried in the discussion with the leaders of the SWP to show that it was necessary to relate to the ambiguous regroupments which announced that a Labor Party was necessary—regroupments that were very closely tied up with the Stalinists and had a Popular Front nature—and to play upon and utilise this contradiction, especially in the trade union movement, to promote an effective movement towards the Labor Party. In his polemic against the opposition (which was also a polemic against the reservations of the SWP leadership), he wrote:

To sum up the attitude of the opposition, it presents the Labor Party as a substitute for the SWP and as a surrender of our independence. To the degree that our experience with the Labor Party continues, they are not ready to accept this experience, nor the lessons which flow from it. For example, the experience of Minneapolis, with our militants in the trade unions, already linked with the Farmer-Labor Party. What should they do? Should they decline to be delegates to the Farmer-Labor Party? Should we isolate ourselves in the trade union? We concluded that we could not. Nor could we isolate ourselves from the experience in Minneapolis, where we had the possibility of having delegates to the congress of the Labor Party. If we had had a correct orientation earlier towards the Labor Party, we would have been able to carry on a great campaign of agitation, to settle accounts with the Stalinists since they did not even push their own organisation, the LNPL, forward. They were in the process of completely dissolving it in New Jersey.

Why did they do that in New Jersey? This, precisely, was a place where they could not stand a Popular Front candidate. Here, if the Stalinists had entered into some kind of campaign for a Labor Party, they would have been obliged to present independent candidates and to force them to adopt some kind of genuine programme against fascism. They would not have known how to get out of this. This precisely is why they were against it. They could not put on foot any kind of Popular Front. We should have been ready to emphasise all that, when the delegates of the unions met, the delegates of sixty unions altogether. We were left behind, and we must recognise it.” (“Second Discussion on the Labor Party in U.S.A., July 23, 1938, Oeuvres, volume 18.)

Trotsky went on to analyse the strategic character of the struggle for the Labor Party in the United States. He explained:

The most important fact that we must emphasise is the profound difference in relation to the situation of the working class in Europe which exists in America. In Europe the question of a party for the workers is regarded as a necessity. It is common ground for the vanguard of the working class and for a broad layer of the masses themselves. In the United States the situation is completely different. In France, political agitation consists of the Communist Party trying to win the workers or of the Socialist Party trying to win the workers, and every conscious or half-conscious worker is confronted with a choice.…In the United States, the first step in political education is that the working class needs a party, its own party. You may say that this first step ought to have been taken five or ten years ago. Yes, theoretically, that is true. But, to the extent that the working people were more or less satisfied with the trade union apparatus or even lived without it, propaganda in favour of a workers’ party remained more or less theoretical and abstract, and coincided with the propaganda of certain centrist and Communist groups, etc.

Now this situation has changed.… Agitation for a party of the working class is now no longer abstract, but, on the contrary, a very concrete step in the forward march of the workers organised in the trade unions, in the first place and of those who are not organised at all. In the second place, it is a completely concrete task, determined by the economic and social conditions. It would be absurd for us to say that, because a new party is being born out of the political unification of the trade unions, this will necessarily be opportunist.

We are not going to appeal to the workers to take this step in the same way as in other countries. Of course, if we had a choice in reality between a reformist party and a revolutionary party, we would immediately show that our place is in the latter. But a party is absolutely necessary. This for us is the only road in this situation. To say that we are going to combat opportunism as we shall, of course, combat opportunism today and tomorrow, especially if the party of the working class has been organised, by checking a progressive step which can give rise to opportunism, is a completely reactionary policy; sectarianism often is reactionary because it places itself in opposition to the necessary action of the working class.

We can imagine, under a schematic form, three kinds of Labor Party in the United States in the coming period. The first type, a loose, opportunist and confused party; the second possibility, an opportunist but fairly centralised party, led by fakers and careerists; the third possibility is a centralised revolutionary party. “We do not expect to have a clear, pure type. There will be different stages, different combinations, different parties, different types of Labor Parties. But in order to present the situation and our tasks more clearly, we can consider these three types.

If the party is loose enough in its organisation to let us enter it, it would be stupid not to enter. If we enter with the possibility of working there as a party, it will be because the Labor Party is an opportunist party with fairly slack connections. The fact that such party accepts us signifies in itself that the opportunists are not strong enough to keep us out. That, in a certain way, signifies favourable conditions for us.…And then, it can be a Labor Party in a less critical situation, a less disturbed environment, calmer, quieter conditions, with the predominance of reactionary conservative leaders, with a more or less centralised apparatus, which will exclude us as a party. In that case, we would, of course, continue to exist as a party outside such an opportunist party, and we would consider only the possibility of penetrating such a party, but as a party we would remain outside such a centralised, opportunist party.

If we become the dominant tendency in the Labor Party, a revolutionary tendency with leaders who are with us and ideas which are ours, then we would become supporters of centralising this party with its loose organisational linkages, we would insist that the workers eliminate the fakers, etc. This is the third type, the third stage of the evolution, the stage in which our party dissolves itself in this Labor Party, in a way which determines the character of this Labor Party. At the first stage, we say: “Working people, you need your own party. (Ibid.)

Labor Party: The Question of the Power and the Independence of the Working Class

In Trotsky’s mind, the question of the Labor Party is directly bound up with that of the struggle for power. He explained, in a discussion with a trade union leader:

The first step is clear. All the trade unions must come together to create their Labor party. Not a party controlled by Roosevelt or La Guardia, which would have nothing but the name of Labor about it, but a genuinely independent political organisation of the working class. Only such a party can attract to itself the ruined farmers, the small artisans, the small shopkeepers.

But in order to realise this task, it is necessary to continue to fight mercilessly against the banks, the trusts, the monopolies, and their political agents, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The role of the Labor Party is to take power into its hands, complete power, and to restore the economy to order. This pre-supposes organising the whole national economy according to a rational plan, that is, a plan which has its aim not to raise the profits of a handful of exploiters, not to defend the profits of a handful of exploiters, but to protect the material and moral interests of 130,000,000 people. (“The Trade Unions and the Social Crisis in the United States, September 29, 1938, Oeuvres, volume 19.)

In the course of the year 1938, the leadership of the SWP organised an internal discussion on the question of the Labor Party. This discussion closed with a referendum among the members of the SWP. Trotsky wrote as follows to James P. Cannon on this subject: “The referendum does not seem to me to have been a very happy invention. The discussion seems to have given rise to some difficulty in the party. You can only surmount all that by action. It seems to me that it is time to show directly to the party how we must act on this question. I have had here two long discussions with an organiser of the Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, and I have summarised our discussion in an article which does its best to place the question on its true political level.

It is now being translated, and they will send it to you at the same time as this letter. But it is quite clear that an article is nothing if the party does not begin serious work in the unions with the slogan that the workers must take the state into their hands and that, for that purpose, they need their own independent Labor Party.

An energetic step in this direction would certainly dissipate all the misunderstandings and discontents and would drive the party forward. On this question, as on the others, it is absolutely necessary to give to our propaganda and agitation a more concentrated and systematic character. For example, it is necessary to direct all the local committees to present within a month to the national committee a brief report on their links to the unions, the possibility of work in the unions and especially agitation in the unions in favor of an independent Labor Party.

The danger is that the question of the Labor Party becomes a purely abstract one. The basis of our activity is the unions. The question of the Labor Party can take on flesh and blood only to the extent that we are rooted in the unions. A serious beginning of our work in the unions has led us to the slogan of Labor Party. We must now use it so that we can root the party still more deeply in the unions. (“Problems of the SWP”, October 5, 1938, Oeuvres, volume 19.)

There can be no disputing that in this letter Trotsky is emphasising not the opposition to the Labor Party in the SWP, but what seemed to him to be the difficulty of the leadership itself in connection with the Labor Party. To be sure, the leadership did come out in favour of a Labor Party in the referendum which it organised, but Trotsky warned against the growing tendency to make the Labor Party an abstraction, an academic discussion. He insisted on the necessity for energetic, practical steps in that direction. There can be no doubt that Trotsky’s criticism of Cannon raised real problems. Between the end of 1938 and the year 1940 hardly anything significant was done on the road to the Labor Party. We shall return to this.

On this point, it is significant to examine the way in which James P. Cannon addressed the question of the Labor Party in his evidence at the Minneapolis trial. Let us repeat, the defence by Cannon in this trial, published under the title Socialism on Trial, is a model both of defending and of illustrating a genuinely internationalist position in the difficult situation of the early stages of an imperialist war and, at the same time, of simply and pedagogically explaining the fundamental principles of Marxism.

Let us repeat, also, that Socialism on Trial remains one of the strongest aspects of the contribution of Cannon and the SWP leadership, of what they brought to the construction of the Fourth International. But we cannot fail to mention that one of the weaknesses of the defence presented at the Minneapolis Trial lies precisely in this question of the Labor Party. It would be stupid to blame Cannon and the SWP leadership for not having made this question the centre of their political activity during the imperialist war. It is certain that during this period the practical possibilities of going forward towards forming a Labor Party were more than reduced and even non-existent. But we know that, under the judge’s questions, Cannon was led to explain the history of the SWP before the outbreak of the imperialist war and to explain the general principles of the policy of the SWP.

Cannon himself, moreover, laid stress on the situation in which his statement was being made in his reply to the polemics by Munis in May 1942: “What were the specific tasks, what were the techniques of propaganda which were imposed on us in this situation? It seems to us that the reply to this is evident. Our job was to obtain the widest audience for our ideas from the platform which the trial offered us. These ideas had themselves to be simplified as much as possible, so as to be accessible to working people and required to be illustrated as much as possible by familiar examples drawn from American history.

We had to address the working people, not in a general way, nor an abstract way, but as they exist in reality in the United States, during that year 1941. We had to recognise that the forms of democracy and of the legality of the party greatly facilitate this propaganda work and must not be underestimated. It was not our job to make the work of the attorney-general easier, but on the contrary, to make it more difficult, and this had to be done in such a way as did not lead us to renouncing our principles. Such were the considerations which guided our work in this trial. (“A Reply”, by James P. Cannon, published in Socialism on Trial)

Within a framework of method which is perfectly correct, within which Cannon defended the principles in a situation which was imposed upon him, in what way was he led to approach the perspective of the Labor Party? In the first case, he stated, in reply to a question from the judge about the history of the SWP, that one of the motives for the break from the Socialist Party during the entrist period was precisely the question of the support which the Socialist Party gave to the La Guardia candidature in New York. He explained:

We opposed this support, on the basis of the fact that it was a violation of socialist principles to support a candidate of a capitalist party. La Guardia was, in fact, the candidate of the Republican and the Fusion parties and equally of the Labor Party. (Socialism on Trial, p.20.)

There we have, we see, an expression which differs slightly from the way in which Trotsky approached the question, but that is not the essential thing. When Cannon was asked about what was called the modification of principle of the SWP, a declaration of principle which had been adopted in January 1938 and suspended by a special congress of the SWP in December 1940, he explained:

I would say that the principal reason for this modification was the adoption by Congress of the law known as the Voorhees act, which struck at parties belonging to international organisations. This was the principal reason. Other, subsidiary reasons intervened, namely that during the same period the party had changed its position on the question of the Labor Party.

And, in reply to the question, “Can you summarise for us the nature of the change on the question of the Labor Party?”, Cannon said:

It concerned a change, to an opposite direction, at the moment when we adopted the declaration [La Vérité/The Truth, January 1938]. We had rejected support for proposals directed towards organising a Labor Party, that is, a party based on the trade unions. But during the summer of 1938, we changed our position and reached the conclusion that this movement could have more progressive advantages than disadvantages.

He replied to a question from the judge about the method used to prepare for this change:

The national committee of the SWP adopted a resolution which made public the fact that it was changing its position. This resolution was sent to the members of the party in the internal bulletin, and a discussion period, of sixty days I believe, was opened, in which everyone could express their opinion for or against the change of position. This was discussed very widely in the party. In fact, not all the members of the national committee were in agreement with this change of position. At the end of the discussion period, a referendum was organised among the members and a majority voted in favour of the amended resolution.

Except for this historical recollection, it is significant that in the hundred-odd pages of Socialism on Trial Cannon does not think it necessary to mention the orientation towards the Labor Party, which confirms in a certain way that during this pre-war period it retained for the SWP the abstract, academic character against which Trotsky had warned.

Cannon replied as follows to the questions of the judge in an exchange on the electoral policy of the SWP. The question which was put ran: “What is the attitude of the party towards elections?” Cannon replied: “Our party stands candidates wherever it is able to take part in elections. We wage extremely energetic campaigns during these elections and in general to the best of our capacity, within the limits which our resources impose on us, we take part in electoral campaigns.” (He then quoted a certain number of electoral campaigns in which the SWP had stood candidates). To the question, “Is the party ever supporting other candidates?”, he replied:

Yes. In cases where we have no candidate, it is our policy regularly to support the candidates of other workers’ parties or of a Labor or Farmer-Labor Party. We support them in a critical way, that is, we do not accept responsibility for their programme, but we vote for them and we call for votes for them, while we explain that we do not approve their programme. We support them against the candidates of the Democratic and Republican Parties.

Cannon gave the example of the support given, for example, to the candidate of the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota, and made clear that this support had been given “in every case in which we could not have candidates of our own party, where we have likewise supported candidates of the American Labor Party in New York in similar circumstances.”

What seems to me to be significant about this passage is the extremely restrictive way in which the question of the candidatures is treated. It is correct to stand candidates, but at the same time the method analysed by Trotsky (which we have seen in the preceding discussions) aimed at examining the possibilities to propose that independent workers’ candidates be put up, as part of the process of construction of the Labor Party. And Trotsky emphasised the place which Trotskyists ought to occupy in this activity. Indeed, the political orientation of the Trotskyist party in the United States should have been, in this period and equally after World War Two and still today, formulated in a slightly different way, namely, that in the strategic struggle for the Labor Party, we work in all circumstances to try to ensure real independent working-class candidatures, as mileposts on the road of the independent political organisation of the proletariat and as active participants in these processes on the road of a Labor Party. That, moreover, in all the circumstances where this is not possible, we present SWP candidates within the limits of what is possible.

As we have seen, Cannon approaches these matters in the opposite way. Candidatures of the SWP everywhere, and, in default, support—which is correct in that case—for all workers’ candidatures which oppose Democrat and Republican candidates, even if we do not support their programme.

But, in a certain way, what disappears here is the transition and, in particular, the utilisation of the election in the transition. It would be incorrect to believe that this formulation was due to the conditions in which Cannon made this declaration: if we examine the whole subsequent history of the SWP, it has been principally marked, even exclusively, by a policy of systematically standing candidates in elections. This had a perfectly justified aspect because it demonstrated the need for independent workers’ candidatures by rejecting the Democrat-Republican alternative. But, apparently, it led to failing to explore every possibility of struggle based in trade union organisations for independent workers’ candidatures. This characteristic feature in the attitudes of the SWP has reappeared in a caricatured way in the activity of Socialist Action.

For example, we know that Socialist Action possesses a certain influence in the trade union movement in California, but has never fought consistently for independent workers’ candidatures supported by sectors of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. that are breaking from the Democratic Party. The policy of Socialist Action, reproducing the earlier policy of the SWP, has always consisted of presenting candidates within the limits of its means, particularly for mayor of San Francisco or other elective positions in that city.

There is, of course a qualitative threshold between the position of Socialist Action in 1991 and the way in which Cannon approached the same question in the Minneapolis Trial in 1941. But there is also a line of descent, and element of continuity, from one to the other.

About Continuity

What happened at the end of the 1940s and at the beginning of the 1950s is a turning-point in the history of the SWP. It had experienced a powerful development and made strong implantation in the workers’ movement, in the trade unions and in particular among Blacks during World War Two and the years which followed it. Then the SWP suffered very severe blows, inflicted by the American government and the bourgeoisie within the framework of McCarthyism.

Today it is difficult to imagine how severe were the blows inflicted upon it. The systematic persecution of its members in their workplaces, the involvement of the leaders of the trade union organisations in the witchhunt was directed at first against the militants of the Communist Party of the United States and then very widely at the militants of the SWP.

They were driven out of the workplaces, lost their jobs, politically persecuted, isolated by the trade union apparatus itself. The SWP experienced an extremely difficult situation. In this situation, it is clear that the development of Pabloism on the scale of the Fourth International had its echo in the development of the Cochran current, the “Cochranites,” within the SWP.

The Cochranites had represented a sector implanted in the working class and important positions in the trade union movement. They had the characteristic that, under the pressure of the extremely difficult conditions imposed by McCarthyism at the beginning of the 1950s, they tended to express theoretically the necessity to operate a retreat in the building of the party. For example, they opposed standing candidates in elections, to the extent that this required going to seek signatures to be able to stand candidatures. They believed that the working class was at that stage too reactionary for any candidature to have the slightest interest, just as they believed it to be impossible to have a mass campaign to sell The Militant and get subscriptions for the paper.

It cannot be disputed that this Cochranite faction exerted an important pressure internally on the SWP, and that it naturally fell in with the Pabloite offensive at the level of the Fourth International. It is important to stress this in order to appreciate several aspects of the way in which the leadership of the SWP behaved in this crisis and aspects which were to have importance in what followed.

The first element to be brought out is the way in which the leadership of the SWP reacted to the crisis of the Fourth International. As we know, the leadership of the SWP remained deaf to the appeals of the French section, when the latter was excluded by Pablo because it refused to dissolve itself in the Stalinist apparatus. There are two elements to be noticed in this attitude on the part of the SWP leadership. On the one hand, there are the objective conditions of political struggle in the United States which led Cannon and the SWP leadership to believe that they must concentrate the greatest part of the resources and their efforts on preserving the party in the United States, and these objective conditions cannot be disputed.

But, on the other hand, there was the fact that, in order to be able to preserve the party, there was the illusion that it was possible to make an agreement with Pablo and that it would be best to close their eyes to the policy of liquidating the Fourth International which Pablo was advocating. The SWP leadership had to wait for the attack of the Clark/Cochran faction inside the SWP, and the support which Pablo gave to this current, for the leadership of the SWP to react.

Cannon did his utmost to separate the struggle against the Cochran faction in the United States from the struggle against Pablo. At the national congress of the SWP in July 1952, in answer to a contribution which had linked the national and the international questions, he indicated that he did not agree with Pablo’s formulation about “centuries of transition” and “centuries of degenerate workers’ state”. But he added:

No more today than yesterday do I appreciate the attempt to put into opposition to each other two lines of thought in our international movement: one characterised by Pabloism and the other, for lack of a better name, as Cannonism. No, I assure you, such a line of demarcation does not exist. Personally, I admire and appreciate the work and the thought which comrade Pablo has devoted to the construction of our international movement. I am not alone. I think that the whole Fourth International shares this viewpoint, as this has been demonstrated by the fact that our World Congress, with a representation larger, I believe, than we ever had before, coming from the four corners of the earth, found itself to be in fundamental agreement with him [with Pablo —Ed.] ...

I regard Pablo as an orthodox Marxist, an orthodox Trotskyist, who tries to put into application the teachings of Marx and of Trotsky and to apply them in the new processes which never before appeared in the world. That is the way in which Pablo has to be regarded, and I do not like to see personalised attacks on him. (“Conclusion of the Political Report”, Congress of the SWP, July 17, 1952, published in Speeches to the Party)

In the same closing speech, after having emphasised the content of the disagreements with Pablo always as being on this question of “centuries of transition”, Cannon gave a warning:

All these are questions which we can discuss calmly when we have the time and we have ceased to fight against the enemies of the Fourth International, who try to discredit the decisions of the Third World Congress and try to present Pablo as a Stalinist agent, trying to transform the Fourth International into a kind of trap for revolutionary Marxists to lead them back on to the territory of Stalinism. All that are slanders, all that is a distorted representation of the facts, and I refuse to give any support whatever to this offensive, directly or indirectly. (Ibid.)

At the moment when Cannon was speaking in this way, the majority of the P.C.I. in France had been expelled for several months by Pablo from the Fourth International. However, for Cannon, Pablo was still the model of orthodox Trotskyism. At any rate, that is what he declared. Did he really believe it? A little under a year later, Cannon was to give another version of the facts. Meanwhile, the crisis was to have sharpened within the SWP. The Cochranite fraction, encouraged by Pablo, had engaged in a life and death struggle within the SWP. Within the framework of these events, Cannon was to give a new version of the events.

For anyone who wishes to understand what are the strengths and the weaknesses of “Cannonism”, it is essential to re-read the speech entitled “Internationalism and the SWP”, a speech delivered at a meeting of the majority tendency in New York on May 18, 1953. On that date the battle was raging within the SWP. It was a factional struggle which in the following months was to end in flagrant breaches of party discipline by the Cochranites, which ended with their being justifiably expelled in the autumn of 1953.

A year and a half had gone by since the French Section had been bureaucratically excluded from the Fourth International. For the first time, Cannon spoke in public on this question. How did he do it? The whole axis of the speech is the struggle against Cochran, against Cochranism as an expression of an American phenomenon within the SWP. In passing, he questions Pablo on one matter, that of organisational methods. On the subject of the French Section, he says:

… [D]isagreement appeared in relation to the developments in the French party. Some months after the World Congress, we heard it said that there had been a split or a partial split in the P.C.I. The International Secretariat had intervened, had deposed the majority of the Central Committee and had appointed a representative of the I.S. as an impartial chairperson on a parity committee.…We have absolutely no sympathy on the political level with the French majority, who in my opinion are refusing to implement the decisions of the World Congress. But we ask ourselves the question: how is it going to be possible to construct an International, if you think it possible in this way to undermine a leadership elected by a national section?

This quotation is extremely interesting, because it points to two things. On the one hand, if we accept that it really was effectively the position of Cannon and of the SWP leadership, it is significant that this position was kept secret for a year and a half and that the SWP leadership did not intervene in any way against the exclusion of the French Section. But, on the other hand, we shall notice the care with which Cannon excludes all political content from his demarcation from Pablo. He restates his political disagreement with the majority of the French P.C.I. He does not in the slightest degree relate Pablo’s bureaucratic methods to the political content, the revisionist liquidationism, of which they were the organisational expression. He acts purely and simply in the situation to warn Pablo and the I.S. not to try to intervene in the American organisation.

The whole of Cannon’s method is given in the following passage from his speech:

When the situation developed and worsened in France, Renard, one of the leaders of the French majority, appealed to me in a letter. I did not reply to this letter for months. I did not see how I could write on this French question without referring to the organisational monstrosity, which the International Secretariat had committed.

Cannon’s admission is honest. He explicitly and deliberately refused to answer Renard’s appeal and overlooked the destructive attack on the French Section.

On the political plane, in the same speech, he justifies his refusal to combat Pabloism by saying that, in a situation in which there were attacks on Pablo from the outside, it was not desirable to enter into open conflict with him inside the Fourth International. In the same speech, Cannon indicates that a number of the militants of the SWP have been disoriented by Pablo’s thesis about “centuries of transition”, and that a number of militants have questioned him and said: “What good is it for us to go on fighting to build the party and to sell the paper if this has to go on for centuries of transition?” And Cannon explained: “These militants were right, but we had decided not to join this battle in the French manner.”

There we have what was consistent in Cannon’s position throughout the crisis of 1950-53. The position was to delay, to avoid as far as possible, to try to avoid up to the last minute the political confrontation with Pablo. Cannon had the illusion that he was going to be able to preserve the SWP by settling accounts with the Cochran faction, while in a certain sense letting the crisis of dislocation of the Fourth International play itself out. Here is the first major demonstration of a national-Trotskyist point of view. The fate of the SWP was directly dependent on the fate of the Fourth International. But Cannon did not know, or did not care, to take that into consideration at that time.

Cannon replied to the question: “... whether, in one way or another, [he] opposed the Third World Congress?”, in a very significant way in his speech to the plenum of the national committee of the SWP, at the end of May 1953 (published in Speeches to the Party). In a long speech in his defence, he mentions various aspects in order to prove the contrary: his loyalty to the decisions of the Third Congress, to its resolutions and to the leadership of the Fourth International in the control of Pablo.

Among the six proofs of his loyalty which he advances, he again mentioned explicitly that the way in which he replied to Renard should be counted as evidence of loyalty on the part of the SWP leadership to the decisions of the Third World Congress. In particular, he pointed out the following:

What did I say to Daniel Renard? This is what I wrote to him: ‘We judge the policy of the leaders of the International on the basis of the line which they have worked out in its official documents. In the recent period, there has been discussion about the documents of the Third World Congress and the Tenth Plenum. We see no trace of revisionism in these documents. We believe that these documents are absolutely Trotskyist.’ That is what I wrote to comrade Renard about the Third World Congress. Not the reply of a demagogue, taking part in a factional struggle, but an intervention to help the leadership of the International in the struggle inside the French party. And I made clear that it was the unanimous opinion of the leadership of the SWP, that the authors of the quoted documents had done a great service to the movement of the Fourth International.

It was only after the expulsion of the Cochranites in November 1953 that Cannon raised explicitly the responsibility of Pablo in the split organised by the Cochranites. In his speech to the plenum of the national committee of November 2-3, 1953, twenty-four hours after the expulsion of the Cochranites (published in Speeches to the Party), Cannon explained:

Our break with Pabloism, as we see it clearly today, is concentrated on one point: the question of the party. What appears clearly today in our eyes is that we have seen the development of Pabloism in action. The essence of Pabloite revisionism is to overthrow, to sweep away, that part of Trotskyism which today is the most vital, the conception that the crisis of humanity is the crisis of the leadership of the workers’ movement, concentrated in the question of the party.

Pabloism seeks not only to overthrow Trotskyism, it seeks to overthrow what in Trotskyism comes from what Trotsky learned from Lenin [that is, the question of the party —Ed.].

From that moment onwards, Cannon was to undertake a regular and well-justified critique of the political and organisational content of Pabloism. But it is astounding to note that this criticism appeared immediately after the break with the Cochranites. It was the direct result of it, which is to say that it came in as one element of the defence of the SWP against the destructive attack of which it was the object, of the SWP as an American party and, flowing from that, it came in taking a position at the level of the International, but always subordinated to the attitude taken up of the viewpoint of the American SWP.

There we have completely what is at stake for the American Trotskyists. The problem is to contribute to the struggle for the reproclamation of the Fourth International by drawing out to the end the lessons and the balance-sheet of “Cannonism”. We should emphasise that at the very moment of the break with Pablo the leadership of the SWP was led to re-evaluate the possibility of struggle for a Labor Party. It is in his speech at the Sixth Congress of the SWP in November 1954 that Cannon explained that, in relation to the witchhunt, to the blows struck at the working class, etc.

… [T]here is no prospect, as far as we can judge, if we put aside an unpredictable explosion, of the workers turning towards a Labor Party in the next two years. This corresponds to reality, this requires that we amend our slogan, which was ‘Build a Labor Party Now’, and devote ourselves to a pedagogical explanation, according to which the workers should orient themselves towards an independent policy as a class and construct their own party, but leaving aside the consequences for immediate activity of such an orientation. Our principal task for the next two years is to explain patiently the principles of the class struggle on the political level and to recruit class-conscious militants to the party. That is the greatest revolutionary task for our epoch, it is the work of preparing for the future.

And further on:

Our slogan for a Labor Party is at the present time a propaganda slogan. Taking account of the present situation, it cannot be a slogan for activity any more than a slogan for agitation for the next period.

It would be necessary to go on to a precise re-evaluation of this turn by the SWP leadership at the end of 1954. On the one hand, it was broadly founded on a real appreciation of the political situation at that moment, and it is certain that at that precise moment the struggle for the Labor Party necessarily took on in its essence an aspect of explanation and propaganda. But, at the same time, the division, the rigid wall which Cannon erected between what had to do on the one hand with propaganda for a Labor Party, which he regarded as being possible, and on the other hand practical activity, played an important role in the evolution and the drift of the SWP.

In fact, even in the moments when the working class is in retreat or the moments when there are political persecutions, the tasks which have to do with propaganda can at every instant even over a limited area lead on to forms of practical activity, of materialisation of a transitional approach, even when they are extremely limited.

The French section itself has experienced this, for example, that it is possible to find materialisations, even though they may be limited, on a general line which is that of working out the transition in the construction of the party: the CLADO, the Committees for the Workers’ Alliance, later the MPPT, but even when we were dealing with areas limited in time and space, at particular points, they were the materialisation of the fact that the Trotskyists, even when they were very few in numbers and in a difficult situation, always seek to pass from their position of propaganda to the territory of practical realisation.

When the Cannon leadership erected a rigid wall separating the propaganda tasks from the possibilities of practical materialisation, and that in relation even to the attitude observed in the International, it encouraged something which later became theoretically expressed by the leadership of the SWP over a long period, and then by Socialist Action.5 This was the idea according to which, while their tasks are confined to propaganda, the struggle for the Labor Party is reduced to declaring in principle that the Labor Party is necessary without any materialisation, any practical activity.

The corollary of this position was to be the tendency to adaptation to every form of radicalisation in different sectors. We would need to study in detail the attitude of the SWP in relation to Malcolm X and then to the Black Panthers. It is, for example, very clear if you re-read George Breitmann’s introductions to Malcolm X’s books that there is the combination of two factors: on the one hand and rightly there is great attention paid to these phenomena of radicalisation among the North American Blacks, a proper dialogue with Malcolm X or with these political currents.

But in a more general way, when we re-read the documents of the SWP about Malcolm X, they are marked by an adaptation to the political positions of Malcolm X. And this for an evident reason. The renunciation of the practical struggle for a Labor Party led the leaders of the SWP in the dialogue with Malcolm X not to pose directly the question of the struggle for a Black Party, linked with the more general struggle for a Labor Party. This is an objectivist position, which is powerless to have real influence in the processes of crystallisation towards a Labor Party, integrating the Black Party as one particular determinant.

In a more general way, a development would be necessary on the question of the position of the SWP towards the Black Party. It cannot be denied, when we return to the body of the discussion of Trotsky with the leaders of the SWP on this question that, still more than on the question of the Labor Party, the leadership of the SWP put up a lively resistance to the political orientation which Trotsky proposed and never really assimilated it. This is the reason why, every time that it found itself confronted by phenomena which permitted it to open the way to the formation of a Black Party, whether they had to deal with Malcolm X, or later with the Black Panthers, or at the end of the 1970’s when the NBIPP was founded, the SWP always oscillated between an attitude of opportunist adaptation and a sectarian policy.

If we review each of these episodes, the line of the SWP never was one of helping to go as far as possible to the limit in the formation of a mass Black Party by practical help, while preserving its political independence, that is to say, linking it to the question of the Labor Party. Its attitude was either one of pure and simple adaptation, as towards Malcolm X, or a mixture of adaptation and then sectarian denunciation, as was the case with the Black Panthers, or an attitude which we can call “plucking the game”, and, finally, a sectarian attitude. We can see this in their attitude to the NBIPP, in which the cadres of the SWP in fact tried to take more than their share and played a part in the process which saw this regroupment break up.

While there were extremely important waves of radicalisation among the Blacks in the United States, we cannot accept that the policy of the SWP was a source of help or a point of support for going towards the formation of a Black Party. To be sure, there are internal documents and political statements by the SWP which pose the question relatively correctly. Here we may mention the documents entitled Freedom Now, or the reply of Gus Horowitz to Mandel in 1971 on the question of Black nationalism. These texts should be attentively studied, as well as the experience of 1979-1980 in the NBIPP. But none the less the fact remains that, when the SWP in the 1960’s and at the beginning of the 1970’s had, with its youth organisation, an organised political force of over 2,000 members, including its youth organisation, while it had a not-negligible implantation including moreover in certain sectors of the Black movement, its orientation never was that of practical application of a transitional line in party building.



This means that what was already an excessive, dangerous formalisation in Cannon’s speech at the 1954 Congress had then become a theoretical line, a constant feature of the leadership of the SWP, which never stopped being repeated including during the 1970’s: since our orientation cannot go beyond general propaganda and therefore propaganda for a Labor Party, the leadership of the SWP really believed that it had no responsibility for assisting the independent regroupment of the class in the Labor Party and in the independent political expression for the Blacks in the Black Party. And, very clearly, the axis of a balance-sheet of the strengths and weaknesses of “Cannonism” should bear on an exact, precise, reasoned evaluation of the fact that a close link binds the tendency to national-Trotskyism to its renunciation of the struggle for a workers’ party in the United States. For example, it is clear that the refusal to take up its responsibilities at the level of the Fourth International and the opportunist adaptation to the Castro leadership directly nourished the unprincipled re-unification of 1963.

Let us take one example, the question of the elections. The SWP has always defended the correct principle that it was necessary to have independent workers’ candidates in elections and has consistently expressed this orientation in systematically presenting the candidates of the SWP at every level. To be sure, during the 1950’s and at the beginning of the 1960’s there were few opportunities to work for independent workers’ candidates or independent Black candidates to declare themselves. None the less, if we are not to re-write history, it is certain that from the middle 1960s through the 1970s, opportunities existed, in relation to the processes which were developing in the working class and among the Blacks, to work for groupings presenting independent Black candidates or independent workers’ candidates, and that this was never the preoccupation and the policy of the SWP leadership.

It is clear that Socialist Action was to offer a caricatured version of all the characteristics of the SWP on this level, and that its leadership has always opposed any attempt to express the orientation towards a Labor Party in a practical way. In a more general way, it would be necessary to develop two other aspects. On the one hand the characteristic which is common to all the national-Trotskyist currents which have emerged from the crisis of the Fourth International. This is their renunciation of the struggle for the transition, for the construction of the workers’ party, transition towards the construction of the Fourth International, that is to say, renunciation of practical application of the strategic orientation of the Transitional Programme, according to which the crisis of humanity is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership of the proletariat.

In different forms, this is a characteristic common to the SWP, Healy and Moreno, who all were led to regard their party as the definitive reply to the question of the reconstruction of a revolutionary leadership of the proletariat, who all, in different forms have been led to a self-proclamatory, sectarian policy, claiming to solve the crisis of the leadership of the proletariat within the limits of one country alone and claiming to solve it by the simple linear growth of their own organisation. This failure to understand the transition cannot avoid a failure to understand the meaning of the struggle for the united front. But it has had the result, as a corollary consequence, which ought to be studied, that, in “failing to occupy the territory” of the struggle for the transition, the space has been left for obstacles to the construction of the independent workers’ party to develop.

For example, in the United States, it is clear that when there was the break with the Cochranites, the question of the Labor Party occupied a central position, from one angle: in the name of the struggle for the Labor Party, acting fraudulently under this flag, the Cochranites spoke in favour of the disappearance of the SWP as such. Cannon’s defence of the SWP, which was essential, tended to bend the stick in the other direction. But it could easily have been corrected later on if the Fourth International had not been destroyed as an international organisational framework. But the national response of the SWP had the consequence that, when other opportunities offered themselves of the detachment of currents seeking confusedly (and not without links with the bureaucracy) the road for independent regroupments, the SWP was always opposed and therefore left the field open to others.

Let us take the example of the current known as Labor Notes. This is a left wing of the trade union bureaucracy. But it is a left wing which has the peculiarity that it is structured largely under the influence of the Shachtmanites. The fact is: Labor Notes could influence a current of thousands of trade union cadres when it came out, though, to be sure, in a formal way, organised conferences and issued a bulletin calling for a Labor Party. It is certain that this territory was all the more easily occupied by the Shachtmanites because it had been abandoned by the SWP.

Similarly in a different form, the place occupied by “Militant” on its opportunistic line in Britain has been facilitated by the degeneration of Healy and the way in which he believed that he had definitively settled the question of the Labour Party. And it is probable that coming developments in Argentina, for example, of differentiations in the Peronist bureaucracy and of splits in these currents will reveal the disastrous results of the policies of Moreno on this point. Therefore, here is an element on which we should place great emphasis. “At the end of the day” all of this is the product of the crisis of the International, and brings us back to our tasks, to the struggle for the Workers’ International, to Barcelona, etc.

The other element which we must bring to light is that, since Socialist Organizer was formed, in its two-months’ existence, it is striking to note how far this small group, with limited means, has been able to achieve in the way of stable relations and of political discussion, without sectarianism and without opportunism, both with currents of Black militants as well as currents around OCAW leader Tony Mazzocchi who are fighting for the Labor Party. It is striking to note that the place which this group occupies is not that of one of the 200 political groups of the ultra-left in America, but that it already and from now on occupies a different place. That their journal sells a thousand copies, that there have been gathered 200 subscribers, that it is replete with interviews with Black leaders, with trade union leaders, that even in a limited way we are linked to the Labor Party Advocates current (linked with Black militants), that we are in a position to exert an influence, modestly still, in the direction of independent workers’ candidatures and independent Black candidatures for the coming elections—this is the expression of the fact and confirmation that it is by starting from the orientation of the International, from the struggle aimed at the reproclamation of the Fourth International in the struggle for the workers’ international, starting from this framework, that we are in a position to begin again the struggle to construct a Trotskyist party in the United States in its true framework, which is that of the struggle, which is not simply propagandist but practical, for the workers’ party and the Black party.

In the same way, the outline of a first joint initiative of Mexicans, Canadians and Americans against the North American Free Trade Treaty shows how the concrete, practical questions of the class struggle are bound up in an international framework, starting from a shared position of principle, a framework for work and campaigning which was worked out at Barcelona.

Notes

1 The term “Cannonism” is not a scientific designation. It is generally used to mean the methods and the political axis which flowed from the thought and the activity of James P. Cannon, a leader of the American Communist Party who joined Trotsky and the International Left Opposition in 1927. He was the founder and builder of the American organisation, the Socialist Workers Party. He died in 1974.

2 Pablo, whose real name was Michel Raptis, was the leader of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International. It was his pro-Stalinist policy which was to lead to the dislocating crisis of the Fourth International in 1953.

3 Cochran was the spokesperson of the liquidationist positions of Pablo within the SWP.

4 The Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction was an international fraction impelled by the SWP, which, while developing a whole series of correct positions, ran into its own limitations in its refusal to put into question the framework of the Unified Secretariat, with the result that positions of defence of Trotskyism could exist there side by side with positions of liquidation of Trotskyism.

5 Socialist Action is an American organisation linked with the Unified Secretariat; after having gone through a development “to the left” like the SWP, it drew back and revised its own positions in order to remain within the Unified Secretariat (see Vérité No. 3).