Hi Michael > On Jun 30, 2026, at 03:24, RKOB via groups.io <[email protected]> > wrote: > > 3. Mark asked about what were, in my opinion, the mistakes of > Cannon and the SWP? Tony did already answer but let me add a few thoughts. > Before doing so, I want to emphasize that there is criticism and criticism. I > resp. the RCIT consider Cannon and the SWP as revolutionaries at that time – > revolutionaries who made certain opportunistic mistakes.
References are useful for documenting assertions about what you consider opportunistic mistakes. > Unsurprisingly, there existed a strong chauvinist sentiment among the masses > in the first phase of the war (this was pro-U.S. imperialist consciousness, > not so much “anti-fascist”). Pro-imperialist consciousness? The country was attacked by Japan. People were fearful and angry. The issue wasn't just false consciousness but material conditions. > The SWP adapted to this. When the war began after the attack on Pearl > Harbour, it took the party several weeks to publish a statement about the > U.S. entering the war! And this was only after oppositionists in the party > (inspired by the Spanish-Mexican Trotskyist Grandizo Munis) protested against > the silence. The attack on Pearl Harbor was in December 1941. Five months earlier, in July 1971, Cannon along with most of the central leadership of the SWP and Teamsters Local 544 were put under federal indictment. Many of these activists led the Minneapolis General Strike seven years earlier. This was the first step by which the FBI replaced the socialist leadership of the long-distance truckers union with the US Italian mob. They were in dire straits and threatened with having the party declared illegal. Cannon dealt with that in 1919 and the early 20s when the early communists went underground. So the leadership are indicted and facing prison for advocating revolutionary defeatism, the country has been attacked and is wildly prowar, working people are looking for answers so they won't be overrun by foreign adversaries, and you are quibbling that the Militant newspaper was not strident enough in presenting a revolutionary-defeatist line. Do you really think think this was the time to repeat in the party organ the same statements that got them indicted? That was a time when a delusional leadership could end up wrecking the entire organization; the class enemy had the overwhelming advantage, the leadership were facing prison for exercising their constitutional rights, the party's civil-libertarian allies were stymied by the popular mood, and a clear-headed leadership chose to preserve the ability to fight in the future rather than have the entire organization destroyed. In other words, they didn't do what Hamas did. > And then, such statement was first published in the January 1942 issue of > "Fourth International", the theoretical organ of the party. It was not > published in the party's newspaper, "The Militant", despite the wider > circulation of that paper. Furthermore, this statement ignored the defeatist > line which Trotsky had emphasised in the Transitional Program and other key > documents of the Fourth International. All of this is probably online. Why do I have to hunt for it when you're the one making assertions? > During his trial, Cannon answered the question “Is it true that the party is > as equally opposed to Hitler as it is to the capitalist claims of the United > States?” as follows: “That is unanswerable. We consider Hitler and Hitlerism > the greatest enemy of mankind. We want to wipe it off the face of the earth. > The reason we do not support a declaration of war by American arms is because > we do not believe the American capitalists can defeat Hitler and fascism. We > think Hitlerism can be destroyed only be conducting a war under the > leadership of the workers". (James P. Cannon: Socialism on Trial, p.52) https://www.dsp-rsp.org/sites/default/files/documents/socialism-on-trial-james-p-cannon-1999.pdf > So, this was clearly a deviation from Liebknecht’s/Lenin’s position that the > main enemy for American workers is at home (and not in Germany)! So should the Bolsheviks have called for "Land, Bread, Defeat" instead of "Land, Bread, Peace"? Don't you find it a bit suspicious that they are calling for peace instead of defeat? It's like the Zimmerwald conference never happened. They obviously became pacifists because they used the term "peace." No, of course not. Only sectarians ignore the concerns and fears that are foremost in people's minds when constructing their socialist messages. The message that the bourgeoisie cannot defend them but there is a force that they can look to, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, always seemed reasonable to me, but I was not there. > Furthermore, he criticised America’s imperialist war because he doubted that > it could achieve defeating Nazi-Germany – something which was obviously > nonsense. I don't think you know what he truly believed. They had to walk a line between being principled and being stupid. > So, since Roosevelt proved capable to defeat Hitler, should socialists have > corrected their position into support for the U.S. war?! Hey, you just kicked the shit out of that straw man! > Mark suggests that Cannon said this when he was on trial threatened with > years of imprisonment. Since I stood myself twice at political trials, I am > fully aware of the issue of legal considerations. James P Cannon played an important role in the Industrial Workers of the World, both in the field and in the IWW central office; he was a left-wing socialist leader prior to WWI; he co-founded the US Communist Party; Cannon personally recruited labor leader William Z. Foster as general secretary, and organized the International Labor Defense that famously defended Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro Boys, and other cases that positioned the CPUSA to become the organization it grew into during the 1930s. He suffered expulsion in 1928 from the party he built, and then he helped to build the party that Trotsky called "his party," the party that eventually led the Minneapolis General Strike in 1934. James P. Cannon spent 16 months in a US penitentiary for opposing US entry into the imperialist war. I don't think you should compare yourself to James P. Cannon. Mark -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42246): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42246 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/119987077/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
