Building the Revolutionary Party Under North American Conditions

The following is a summary of a presentation by Adam Shils, a leading member of Socialist Action-USA, Chicago, delivered last night at the University of Toronto campus and sponsored by the Toronto branch of Socialist Action.

The introductory seminar for SA's Education for Activists conference, Shils' presentation was centered around the work of James P. Cannon (1890-1974), legendary American Trotskyist and leader of the Socialist Workers' Party. Its specific focus was Cannon's tireless efforts at building a revolutionary movement in the unique conditions of the world's richest, most powerful capitalist state. As a comrade of mine at Fightback recently suggested, the United States of America has always represented "the big prize" for the world socialist movement, and Cannon was acutely aware of this fact, believing that American workers had a special role to play in the world revolution (it's ironic how anti-imperialists have our own unique brand of American exceptionalism).

Shils began was the observation that during the Cold War, both sides - the USA and the USSR - agreed that Stalinism was communism - or as Shils put it, that "the counterfeit was the real article." In that sense, their views on James P. Cannon were similar. Many thought then, as now, that Cannon represented a sort of bureaucratic intolerance, whereas Shils went on to argue that the man was far more pragmatic than such accusations give him credit for.

After getting his start in radical politics through the International Workers of the World (or "Wobblies"), Cannon became a central leader in the Communist Party of the United States of America following the international convulsions of 1917. As the 1920s wore on and Stalin consolidated power in the Soviet Union, Cannon became a significant supporter of the Left Opposition and eventually sided with the Trotskyist faction, after such views had become anathema in international Communist parties. Cannon helped found the Socialist Workers Party in the 1930s, but was imprisoned under the Smith Act during the Second World War. He continued to work with the SWP until his retirement in the 1960s.

Shils minced no words in reflecting on the current state of revolutionary politics here. These are hard times, he admitted, for North American socialists. We face a difficult objective situation in the class struggle, and it was in the interest of combating this weakness that his presentation focused on 10 points from the life of James P. Cannon that we might use to orient ourselves.

1) The Party and the organization of revolutionaries

In true Leninist form, Cannon recognized the superiority, indeed the necessity, of planned revolutionary activity. The struggle of the masses would be more effective with a conscious plan, the only real way to navigate the complexities of the class struggle. In his 1903 polemic "Where to Begin?", Lenin argued:

The building of a fighting organisation and the conduct of political agitation are essential under any “drab, peaceful” circumstances, in any period, no matter how marked by a “declining revolutionary spirit”; moreover, it is precisely in such periods and under such circumstances that work of this kind is particularly necessary, since it is too late to form the organisation in times of explosion and outbursts.

As Cannon himself stated, "the art of politics is knowing what to do next."

2) Always have a precise and accurate view of reality

There is an easy tendency in low-level socialist organizations to get ahead of the actual, objective conditions of working class struggle. Cannon counselled us not to get overexcited, for nothing is gained by creating a world of fantasy contrary to the real state of working class consciousness.

3) Maintaining a programmatic compass

Cannon stressed that the first task of an effective revolutionary movement was having a coherent view of the world, learning from past mistakes, and planning revolutionary strategy for eventual victory.

4) Flexibility of organizational forms

Once one has developed a fully fleshed-out Marxist worldview, there are many different possible strategies. For example, during the birth pangs of Trotskyism, Cannon held that most advanced workers were still members of the CPUSA. Hence Trotskyists initially remained a faction within the larger Communist Party until its adherents were driven out, violently in some cases. When the possibility of winning over CP members was no longer a realistic strategy (i.e. by the early to mid-1930s), Cannon helped establish a new force, the Workers Party of the United States, in Toledo, Ohio. The new party played a not-insignicant role in contemporary Toronto and Minneapolis strikes.

A third stage began in 1936. Careful of charting his revolutionary course, Cannon constantly monitored the workers' movement. Noting the growth of leftism in the Socialist Party of America (at this time analogous to the Canadian NDP), he pushed his followers into joining that party while always maintaining their strong Marxist approach.

Conversely, by 1938, with the radicalization of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), Cannon decided that the best way of approaching American workers was via an independent party. This new strategy resulted in the formation of the Socialist Workers Party.

As Cannon argued, it is by no means contradictory to be for a revolutionary party while simultaneously finding new avenues for the workers' movement. Indeed, it is common sense.

5) How to handle disputes within the workers' movement

If everyone agrees, what you have is not a party, but a cult - especially in small socialist organizations during periods of low social struggle. Cannon urged that we avoid diversionary internecine struggles by always stressing the big questions. In 1946, following the Second World War, two prominent SWP leaders, Felix Morrow and Albert Goldman, had differing perspectives on the pace of the class struggle, but those larger questions were lost in a myriad of secondary political quibbles. Cannon's response:

The political issues which were latent in the struggle from the beginning have broken through in full flower finally at this plenum. These are important issues, in the discussions of which not only our party but the whole International will be educated. You can’t learn much just from expulsions, [or] from personal fights, except that one person is good, another bad, etc. That only creates demoralization and discouragement. But from the discussion of great political questions — the French constitution, the national question in Europe, the theses of the international conference, wages and prices — from the discussion of such questions the whole new generation of party members can learn great lessons. And we want that discussion.

Effective revolutionaries must put aside petty administrative questions and secondary gossip, and focus on the key issues of the class struggle.

6) How the dangers of isolation can be conquered

A highly important question, especially for a movement dedicated to changing the world. Cannon proffered two main ways of avoiding isolation from the larger workers' movement. Firstly, socialists must develop strategies of conscious calm inside the revolutionary movement, by understanding societal pressures on the movement and by not feuding with other sects. Conscious safeguards to understand pressures (e.g. anti-communist blacklisting) must be readily available.

Secondly, revolutionary groups should always attempt to break out of isolation. The late 1920s were a low point for American Trotskyists, who were physically removed from Communist Party meetings and lost influence among the larger workers' movement. Following a meeting in southern Illinois with other Trotskyists, Cannon felt on his return trip aboard a Greyhound bus as if he were in a science-fiction film and had just returned from another dimension, so powerful was the effect on him of breaking out of isolation. Reading a contemporary copy of the Chicago Tribune, featuring an article on the rise of Hitler, Cannon believed that the isolation of the American Trotskyists was finally ending.

Note: the arguments against isolation help justify entryist tactics such as working within the NDP. If I took any lessons from "Left-Wing" Communism, An Infantile Disorder, it's that revolutionary socialists should use any and all available means to advance the class struggle.

7) Always focus attention frontally and centrally on the organized labour movement and the working class.

Post-1917, there was an overoptimistic wave of extreme radicalization within international Communist parties: for example, in Brooklyn in 1922, activists handed out leaflets urging the creation of soviets. Cannon rejected tactics that were out of sync with the prevailing beliefs of workers, and directed his followers to become active in mass organizations of the working class. In order to have any chance of success, revolutionaries must work from within the workers' movement, not from the outside.

8) The importance of democratic discussion

By the 1960s, the SWP was a small but healthy party. Members had reunited with the rest of the Fourth International in 1963. They realized early on the potential of Malcolm X and black nationalism. They backed the antiwar movement, assisted civil rights activists in the South, and so on. Yet Cannon still believed the SWP had developed a tendency towards excessive bureaucratism. In a selection of letters published in leaflet form with the title "Don't Strangle the Party!", Cannon made the point that if a party can survive for years without any factional disputes, this was not necessarily the sign of a healthy party, but rather one deep in doctrinal slumber. An active party requires open democratic debate.

9) Openness to new revolutionary forms and strategies

During the period between 1960 and 1963, Cannon surprised many through his openness towards new forms of struggle, such as the Cuban revolution, that he believed his party could work with. Contemporary letters regarding the reunification of the Fourth International stress his view that Trotsky never envisaged the International as monolithic, but rather as a broad-based international movement which could reach out and study the realities of the world struggle for true socialism.

10) The profoundly democratic nature of the socialism we fight for

This was a constant theme in Cannon's life, one that is incredibly important from the vantage point of 2010, in which communism and socialism are still viewed as antiquated, failed ideologies following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of China into an authoritarian capitalist state. The ongoing crisis of capitalism requires widespread publicizing of the transcendent democratic alternative we offer.

In concluding his lecture, Shils said James Cannon dedicated his life to four central questions: i) How to fight against society's multiple injustices? ii) What organization can best lead to victory? iii) How can we prepare for this future victory? iv) What can we do today? His answer to all these questions was one and the same: build a revolutionary party.

In the discussion that followed, I asked Shils how the revolutionary left could overcome the divisions I saw evident in the myriad groups that made up the Toronto socialist scene (Fightback, Socialist Action, the International Bolshevik Tendency, the Trotskyist League, etc.). Shils responded by restating Cannon's strategy - that we should find and concentrate on the issues we agree upon: opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, freeing Mumia abu-Jamal, supporting strikes, supporting unionization drives, fighting for immigrant rights, etc. If we can work together on these key issues, then fruitful discussion on the disagreements of TODAY (rather than obscure issues "our grandfathers fought over") can begin. Given the current weakness of the socialist movement in North America, Trotsky's tactic of a United Front is the only real way to overcome those divisions at the moment.