James P Cannon

This book is really about now

Ed Strauss reviews The Two Trotskyisms Confront Stalinism The book is an amazing textbook. As a young student in the 1950s, I was reading some of the documents which are in the collection, I was coming in at the tail-end of some of these debates; but we had nothing like this. We could read a few older documents, but we didn’t have much published in book form. I was in the Young Socialist League [YSL], the youth group linked to the Independent Socialist League of Max Shachtman and Hal Draper, in 1954-1958. By that time, the ISL had pretty much given up on recruiting, but the YSL was still...

Orthodox Trotskyism reshaped Trotsky's ideas

Paul Le Blanc’s review of The Two Trotskyisms Confront Stalinism: Fate of the Russian Revolution volume 2 ( Solidarity 388) is a thoughtful and detailed piece. Le Blanc defends The Two Trotskyisms against some on the left who deride the book as pointless obsessing over long-ago spats. He is right to do it: such complaints remind one of Homer Simpson, who, warned that he’s late for English class, sneers “Pff! English, who needs that? I’m never going to England!” The truth is that the two Fate of the Russian Revolution books are about the Trotskyist movement as it is right now. They are not just...

The Leningrad delirium

Among many other things, the new book published by Workers’ Liberty and edited by Sean Matgamna — “The Two Trotskyisms Confront Stalinism” — digs out a dramatic lurch in the “Orthodox” Trotskyist movement in 1941, described in this excerpt. The “Orthodox” were those who stuck to Trotsky’s formula of the Stalinist USSR being a “degenerated workers’ state” while, in the 1940s, the elements in reality on which Trotsky based that formula were changing dramatically. Along the way, they lurched one way and then another, never properly assessing their mistakes. The book argues that the “Heterodox” —...

Beyond the fragments of the Trotskyist movement

Why is the revolutionary left today in such a mess? Why are the politics of the SWP, the Socialist Party, the various Fourth Internationals and most of the splinters, grouplets and fragments so incoherent? When did it start to go wrong for the classical Marxist tradition, which had reached such a flowering with Lenin, Trotsky and other Bolsheviks? And what were the alternatives, the roads not taken or barely trodden, which might help orientate Marxists today in the situation we start from? The AWL’s new book, a second volume of documents from the early Trotskyist movement goes a long way...

The two Trotskyisms

This month marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the murder of Leon Trotsky by an agent of the Stalinist USSR’s secret police. Next month, Workers’ Liberty will publish a second volume of documents from the movement which kept alive and developed the revolutionary socialist politics Trotsky fought for. Just before Trotsky’s death, the American Trotskyist organisation split after a dispute triggered by Stalin’s invasion of Poland. The majority was led by James P Cannon, the minority by Max Shachtman. Shachtman’s “heterodox” side, would later repudiate Trotksy’s analysis of Russia as a...

Speech on the Way to Prison (1943)

This last opportunity to speak to you for a period, comrades, is also the first opportunity I have had to thank you all for the gifts that were presented to me and Rose on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of our movement. We were both given gold watches by the comrades of Local New York. While I will not be able to take the watch with me to Sandstone penitentiary, I will nevertheless be able to take something even more valuable than the watch or any other material gift. That is the memory of your kindness and your friendship. It is always the most important thing in a new situation to...

History of the Trotskyist movement

By the eve of Leon Trotsky’s death in August 1940, the American Trotskyist organisation, which was by far the most important group in the Fourth International, had split. Two currents of Trotskyism had begun the process of complete separation, but only begun. It would take most of a decade before the evolution of two distinct species was complete. For brevity they can be named after their chief proponents, James P Cannon and Max Shachtman. Trotsky’s political relationship to those two currents is one of the things that will concern us here. There is no question where he stood in the actual...

From Shamefacedness to Solid Brass

From Labor Action , 14 July 1941. Those very principled people, the Socialist Workers Party (Cannonites), have re-discovered the “defense of the Soviet Union.” This event occurs under very happy auspices. for them. While Russia was busy grabbing Poland and Finland, they were also for its defense — but not so happily. The masses of people (not to speak of Churchill, Sumner Welles and Alexander Kerensky) were quite annoyed with Stalin in those days, so the principled Cannonites kept their slogan under their hats. In their public press they merely called the invasions a “crime” and “de-emphasised...

Why Marxists Fight Against Political Religion

“The wind that shakes the barley”Catholic Action: A rift in the Iron Curtain, by James P Cannon A Rift in the Religious Iron Curtain :1. From Hollywood To Rome A Rift in the Religious Iron Curtain 2: Church and State A Rift in the Religious Iron Curtain 3: The Protestant Counter-attack Fighting sin or fighting capital? A Debate on Socialism and Religion The truth about Marxism and religion 96. The Left's accommodation with Islam now and the 1960's Stalinist “dialogue between Marxism and Christianity” Catholic Action: A rift in the Iron Curtain

Why Marxists Fight Against Political Religion: the Catholic Church

James P Cannon Catholic Action: A rift in the Iron Curtain, by James P Cannon (1947) The Catholic Church 1: From Hollywood To Rome (1951) The Catholic Church 2: Church and State The Catholic Church 3: The Protestant Counter-attack Max Shachtman Fighting sin or fighting capital? A Debate on Socialism and Religion (1949) Appendices The truth about Marxism and religion The Left's accommodation with Islam now and the 1960's Stalinist “dialogue between Marxism and Christianity” (1967)

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.