> On Jul 6, 2026, at 15:54, Anthony Teso via groups.io > <[email protected]> wrote: > > 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.
The party's positions are found in the pages of the party organ. There is the courtroom testimony. But I would not privilege one over the other. > 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. I never said "soften" their position or change it. I am not aware of any party decision where the position on the war was changed or modified in any way. But I think it would have been prudent to self-censor by not repeating in the paper the very same slogans that just got 16 party members sentenced to prison. Cannon and much of the early US communist leadership understood the perils of losing public operation. Underground operation made recruitment, education, and party development practically impossible for years. After his release from Leavenworth prison in 1920, Earl Browder had to search weeks to find his comrades and later quipped that “It took me longer to find the party than to get a job” in New York City Palmer, Bryan D.. James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928. > 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. What action on principle are we talking about? > 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. I've seen no evidence of that. > 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. Revolutionary Defeatism, in my view, is a poorly-named restatement of the principles of class struggle. We don't support the capitalist class in an imperialist war or support killing workers in other countries on behalf of our national capitalists. Socialists refuse political support to their own governments, continuing independent class struggle and agitation regardless of the "national emergency," and treating your own capitalist class as the main enemy. But "independent class struggle" changes according to conditions > Mark asks for evidence, so here it is. Grandizo Munis wrote a detailed > critique of the leadership’s actions at the Minneapolis trial. There are two different things. One is the defense presentation at the sedition trial, which most people in and around the party likely did not read at the time. The other is the party organ, which did represent the party's position on a weekly basis to everyone who read it. > 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. I never wrote that it was. I have not read "Socialism on Trial" https://archive.org/details/socialismontrial0000unse_x9y9/mode/2up. But I have read some of the courtroom transcript, which is available in the Marxist Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/index.htm. The section of imperialism covers much of what we have been discussing here, https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/ch02.htm. > 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. I stated as much at the end of my last note on this subject. > What Trotsky did leave was the PMP, which the SWP adopted in September 1940 > because he pushed for it. Was there internal opposition to Trotsky's PMP proposal? It might be that it was adopted mainly because it operationalized revolutionary defeatism. > 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'm not sure what you saying in this last sentence, but I think we are back to our original disagreement, so I won't repeat my arguments. > 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. I mentioned the Anschluss solely because it was as irrelevant to the topic as the incarceration of the Japanese-American population, which happened months later. > 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. I don't see that in my partial reading of the transcript, specifically https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/socialism/ch02.htm > 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. Well, I think we should do both. thanks, Mark -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42344): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42344 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]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
