****************************************************** Reply to Mark and Michael on Cannon, the SWP, and 1941 ******************************************************
Mark wants Michael to provide proof of the SWP’s wartime opportunism and suggests looking in the Militant archive. That’s a fair request. The answer is simple: the evidence exists and is published, but it is not where either of you expect it to be. First, here’s where Michael is correct. Mark’s defense of the SWP uses a common argument: since repression is real and people are furious, the party should soften its position. This logic isn’t about the details. It was used by the SPD in August 1914, when arrest lists were ready, and the army wanted to use them. The SFIO used it during a real German invasion, which the U.S. never experienced. This way of thinking fits any leadership that prioritizes survival over clarity. Michael is right that leaders of the Second International used this same reasoning to justify giving in, and Mark hasn’t responded. Asking again and again what 1914 has to do with this misses the point. The analogy is important. If the SWP acted on principle, that principle should be stated in a way that wouldn’t also justify what Ebert did. Mark hasn’t done that. Second, here’s where Mark is right. Michael claims people were scared and angry only because of American media propaganda, not real events. But that just reverses the same mistake. There were 2,400 deaths, four battleships sunk, and many people feared the West Coast could be attacked next. That was a real situation. At the time, workers didn’t see a difference between the U.S. Navy and the country itself, and we shouldn’t try to separate them now. Michael criticizes Mark for explaining people’s thinking by simply referring to it, but then he does the same by blaming the media. Neither view is materialist. In December 1941, real events shaped people’s views. The real question is whether the party’s position changed because of these events. Third, I don’t agree with how both of you are framing this issue. You both use revolutionary defeatism as the main test of principle, then argue about whether the SWP met that standard or had a reason not to. Michael wants the party press to sound more radical, while Mark argues for an exception because of repression. Hal Draper pointed out seventy years ago that the defeat slogan from 1914 and 1915 was confusing, and even Lenin moved away from it. What really matters is refusing to give political support to the imperialist war; hoping for military defeat and counting how many risky statements appear in the paper are distractions. If you focus on that, the real historical question about the SWP becomes clear, and those involved openly debated it at the time. Mark asks for evidence, so here it is. Grandizo Munis wrote a detailed critique of the leadership’s actions at the Minneapolis trial. He argued that Cannon’s testimony downplayed the party’s revolutionary positions, described expropriation as a compensated purchase, and explained the party’s opposition to the war in a way meant to reassure rather than educate. Cannon replied at length in “Defense Policy in the Minneapolis Trial.” Pioneer Publishers printed both sides of the exchange in 1942, showing the party took the disagreement seriously. This fact alone disproves the idea that the charge of adaptation was invented later or is just a smear. Cannon treated Munis as a comrade with a real concern, not as someone spreading lies. Whether Cannon’s answer is sufficiently adequate enough is the real debate, and it’s about testimony and political stance, not about how quickly the Militant published a statement. Michael repeats the weaker version of the critique, which lets Mark point to the archive with confidence. The stronger version was written in 1942 by a Trotskyist who supported the defense and read the transcript. The second piece of evidence is the Proletarian Military Policy. Here, Mark’s mention of Trotsky actually works against him. Trotsky was killed in August 1940, sixteen months before Pearl Harbor, so he never saw how things played out during the war or read the trial testimony. He can’t be used as a witness for either side. What Trotsky did leave was the PMP, which the SWP adopted in September 1940 because he pushed for it. If the SWP adjusted to the antifascist mood of American workers, that change didn’t start with the indictment or with cautious editing. It started with a policy calling for trade union control of military training during the state’s war mobilization, implemented before Pearl Harbor. That’s the real issue, and it involves Trotsky as much as Cannon. Bringing up Trotsky doesn’t settle the SWP’s war policy debate; it actually raises more questions. I won’t discuss the Anschluss comparison because it doesn’t add anything here. I also agree with Mark that we should discuss the topic of Gaza somewhere else. The real issue isn’t whether Cannon repeated slogans that could have gotten him indicted while he was already under indictment. No one expects a leader to volunteer for prison. The real question is whether the political line, the PMP before the war, and the way the trial was handled maintained a clear refusal to support the imperialist war, or if that position was softened to align with workers’ views. That’s the main point, and there are actual texts by Munis and Cannon on this issue. I’d rather see this thread focus on reading those texts instead of debating when newspaper statements were made. Tony -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42341): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42341 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]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
