I share your admiration of James P. Cannon, Mark, and am often reminded of his droll remark that “when I die, I want my gravestone to read: ’Here lies James P. Cannon, who should be remembered not for what he has done, but for what he has had to put up with'.” :)
If Cannon was an “opportunist" for calling on the US state to delegate military training to the trade unions rather than calling for its revolutionary overthrow than so was his mentor (and Michael P’s). Shortly before he was murdered in August 1940, Trotsky outlined what became known as the Proletarian Military Policy: "There is only one way of avoiding the war – that is the overthrow of this society”, he stated. "However, as we are too weak for this task,.we must say: 'the war is inevitable, so let us have an organized workers’ program for the war. It is absolutely correct that in the first period we will have an explosion of chauvinistic patriotism, and that we will be isolated even more than now, and that this period of activity will inevitably be limited by repressions, but we must adapt ourselves to the situation. That is why it would be doubly stupid to present a purely abstract pacifist position today; the feeling the masses have is that it is necessary to defend themselves. We must say: 'Roosevelt (or Willkie) says it is necessary to defend the country; good! Only it must be our country, not that of the 60 families and their Wall Street. The army must be under our own command; we must have our own officers, who will be loyal to us.' In this way we can find an approach to the masses that will not push them away from us, and thus to prepare for the second step – a more revolutionary one.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/08/american.htm Of course, the PMP was never accepted by the mass of militant workers, soldiers, and intellectuals and the revolutionary crisis expected to issue from the war never arrived. Both Cannon and Trotsky are presently LOL at the suggestion that an even bolder policy of revolutionary defeatism - the defeat of the Roosevelt administration and the conquest of state power by the SWP in the midst of “an explosion of chauvinistic patriotism” - was the more principled and realistic option facing the movement. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42255): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42255 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]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
