BEST BOOK ABOUT THE POST-WWII WORLD; 'AMERICAN CENTURY' | The Struggle for Socialism in the American...

Post World War II Socialist Blahs | The Struggle for Socialism in the American Century: Writings and Speeches, 1945-1947 | James P. Cannon

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	• The Struggle for Socialism in the American Century: Writings and Speeches, 1945-1947 James P. Cannon Pathfinder Press, 1977 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews
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highly recommended

What future is our present?

Now forgotten by most people, after World War II, this country saw one of the biggest upsurges of struggle by working people against capitalism in its history. There was a seemingly unstoppable strike wave. Hundreds of thousands of troops and sailors in Europe and Asia demonstrated demanding to be sent home and not to war against the Chinese Revolution and other enemies of American big business. Within the labor movement and civil rights groups like the NAACP youth, local fights for civil rights spread that would lay the basis for the struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. The Socialist Workers Party that had been persecuted during the War gained hundreds and hundreds of members, mostly African Americans and trade unionists.
This book encapsulates the political struggle that broke out in the party. What is the future for the workers movement given the big changes after the war? Were the outbreak of struggles, the new signs of action by Blacks and Mexican Americans, and the opposition to Washington's War signs of a revolutionary future for America, or a passing phase?
Cannon and the majority of the party's leadership answered this question by developing the American Theses, which examined the basic contradictions of American imperialism, how its national and international advances during and after the war would eventually lead to deeper struggles, and even a revolution in America. Cannon explains the realities of the revolutionary future and building a real workers party against dispirited middle class elements who were caving in to the might of American imperialism and becoming anticommunism.
As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the deepening economic crisis workers in this country and around the world face, show, we are in the future Cannon pointed to. American imperialism cannot solve its problems. It can only inflict them on working people around the world. Now more than ever, we need to build a revolutionary movement of working people and oppressed nationalities as Cannon explains in this book.
Like everything Cannon writes, there is so much wit, witticism, and plain wisdom here that The Struggle for Socialism in the American Century is a very enjoyable read.

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BEST BOOK ABOUT THE POST-WWII WORLD; 'AMERICAN CENTURY'

At the end of World War II the rulers of the United States proclaimed the "American Century." Their aim was a global empire dominated by American technology and capital. To many, it seemed that the epoch of socialist revolutions opened by the Bolshevik uprising of October 1917 in Russia had ended with the formation of two great oppressive world powers; the United States, representing old-line imperialism, and the Soviet Union, where capitalism had been swept away by a socialist revolution only to be replaced with a new tyranny. What place was there in the postwar world for revolutionary Marxists, striving to construct Leninist, working class political parties to fight for a genuine socialist society?

This volume of the writings and speeches of veteran communist and socialist leader James P. Cannon traces the response of the Socialist Workers Party to the challenge of the postwar world. Cannon and the American Trotskyists rejected the idea that American imperialism would be unshakeable for a whole historic period, or that the struggle for socialism was outmoded. Included here are Cannon's writings on the 1945-46 strike wave; the rebuilding of Trotskyists parties in Europe; the beginning of the cold war; and the SWP's assessment of the Soviet Union and Stalinism - what remained progressive in the USSR and what must be opposed by champions of socialist democracy.

James P. Cannon (1890-1974) was a unique figure in American socialist and labor history. He was an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World from 1911 to 1918, and a member of the left wing of the Socialist Party. In 1919 he became a founding leader of the American Communist Party, was elected to its Political Committee, and served on the Presidium of the Communist International in Moscow in 1922-23, where he worked with Trotsky, Zinoviev, and other Communist leaders. Won to Trotsky's side in 1928 in the dispute with Stalin, Cannon was expelled from the CP and founded the American Trotskyist movement, represented since 1938 by the Socialist Workers Party. (from the back cover)

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Post World War II Socialist Blahs

If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to the victorious American (mainly) outcome to World War II then this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that were published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), in the 1970's, a few years after his death in 1974. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series on this important American Communist.

In their introduction here the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of this book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon's leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist SWP so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show?

This is certainly a continuation of the period of Cannon's political maturation after a long journeymanship working with Trotsky. The period under discussion starts as Cannon reaches his mid 50's, shortly after his release from federal prison for his principled (along with 17 other leaders of the SWP and Minneapolis Teamsters Union) opposition to America's entry into World War II. The party at that time needed to adjust strategy in order to come to terms with the ramifications of a victorious American imperialism in that war, some internal opposition (to be discussed below) from those who wanted to, again, fight out the "Russian" question that seemingly had been firmly resolved in 1940 and the fight to determine whether it was appropriate to "unite" with that opposition that split from the party and formed its own organization (also addressed below). One thing is sure- in his prime which, arguably, includes this period Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so.

It is almost axiomatic in the Marxist movement to state that war is the mother of revolution. Certainly the experiences of World War I would serve those formed by those years as a signpost. Trotsky, in his various manifestoes, pamphlets and other writings from shortly before the outbreak of World War II in Europe until his murder by a Stalinist assassin in Mexico in 1940 hammered away on this theme. With the proviso that the forces around the Fourth International, including importantly the SWP, had to redouble their efforts at programmatic clarity and cadre recruitment in order to take advantage of the post-war possibilities (if not before).

It is that spirit that animated the worldview of the SWP in the immediate post-war period. The party had been recruiting based on its black liberation perspective and its opposition to the various Communist Party and AFL and CIO labor bureaucracy efforts to enforce a war time no strike pledge. There were other empirical examples such as increased readership and efforts in the GI movement that further buttressed their upbeat prognosis. Moreover, as a practical matter, in the hard, hard tasks of trying to create a new society by overturning the old one completely revolutionaries better be animated, at least in part, by optimism.

That said, the post-war program prognosis got totally undermined from the beginning by the virulent campaign by the American ruling class to clamp down on "reds", especially in light of the foreign policy disputes with an emergent and militarily strong Soviet Union and the domestic fights by organized labor for wage increases to play catch up after the wage stagnations of the war period. Reading the SWP programmatic notes of this period, the rather Pollyannaish expectations in light of what really happened and a certain denial of reality did not stand the party in good stead for the oncoming "red scare" that effectively politically defeated a whole generation of militants- Stalinist, Trotskyist and others- for at least a decade. We, those of us who came of political age later, have faced other such periods such as during the Reagan years and partially in the 9/11 period where we were also isolated so we are painfully aware of that optimistic/ pessimistic dichotomy that runs through every revolutionary movement.

Many of the articles in this book center around Cannon's leadership of the fight against an internal opposition, the so-called Morrow-Goldman faction, that formed based on an reflexive anti-Sovietism, a conciliation toward American imperialism and, more importantly, a craven desire to forge unity with the previously-mentioned 1940 anti-Soviet opposition that split from the SWP and formed the Workers Party, led by former Cannon associate Max Shachtman, with a rightward social democratic orientation. Moreover, the glue that held the whole cabal together was the inevitable question of the party "regime", meaning always the leadership of one James P. Cannon.

In the American revolutionary socialist milieu the so-called "Russian question", that is, practically, the need for militants to military defend the Soviet Union as the blemished but fundamental example of the baseline for socialist evolution was fought out in the SWP in 1939-40. The results were that a significant minority of the party, led by Shachtman, split and formed the Workers Party. During the war years both organizations led very separate and different existences. In the immediate post-war period, at a time when the question of defense of the Soviet Union was NOT a burning issue there was considerable talk about a unification of the two organizations. This is the impact of the so-called Morrow-Goldman dispute that takes up much of this book. In the end no unification came about, nor was one truly possible under any rational standard of political discourse, especially as the American-led anti-Soviet Cold war heated up with the introduction of the Truman Doctrine and the ratcheting up of the "reds scare". The later personal fates of Morrow and Goldman (and Shachtman's and his various organizational incarnations, as well) as apologists for American imperialists only highlight the differences between Cannon's party of the Russian Revolution and Shachtman's "State Department" socialism- that is craven support for every American imperialist adventure they could get their hands on.

Although this dispute, seemingly, is strictly for insiders or aficionados of the esoterica of extreme left-wing politics there are many points made by Cannon that still ring true today for those of us who still wish to create a revolutionary party capable of making the revolution. Those include the role of the press as a party organizer (Cannon gives a very good description of prior socialist practice in this regard.), a serious attitude toward the question of unification and splits as a means for creating a revolutionary party unlike the SWP-WP fiasco, the very different tasks and obligations that confront a propaganda group as a opposed to a mass party (and the former's stronger need to have a homogenous political and organizational line) and, most importantly, as has been true since 1917 a correct evaluation of that thorny "Russian Question". Although defense of the Soviet Union is not an issue today that issue is still with us in the form of the question of China (and other non-capitalist states like Cuba). China is that Russian Question for today's militants. For a still relevant analysis of what to do (and what not to do) about Stalinism in its Chinese form Cannon's long article here "American Stalinism and Anti-Stalinism" reads, in part, like it was written today.

That said, let's place Cannon in prospective. Earl Browder, William Z. Foster, Jay Lovestone, Max Shachtman, Albert Glotzer, these now obscure names who were political associates of James P. Cannon's at various stages of his political development as a communist. Some became hardened Stalinist leaders; some became hardened social democratic leaders but a comparison of the political profiles of them shows that they lacked one thing that Cannon did not. That evident capacity to lead a socialist revolution in America, if circumstances arose to permit such a fight. No one can read Cannon's works from early in his career as a rising Communist functionary in the 1920's through to his adherence to Trotsky and not notice that here was a man who was trying to work these problems through. Of course, to his opponents, particularly those who one way or the other split from the Trotskyist movement and who always placed their opposition in the context of the abhorrence of the "regime" meaning basically they could not do just as they pleased he was like their worst political nightmare. They, in turn, however had not problems touting the virtues of American imperialism when the political situation warranted their essentially literary inputs thereafter.

Finally, no one has to take Cannon for a political saint to realize that on the record the various "regimes" that he ran based on a workers cadre would cause the so-called `free spirits" to chaff at his acknowledged policy of not suffering fools gladly (if at all). This reviewer having personally been in and around, as a youth, various Stalinist organizations before coming over to Trotskyism knows that the mere fact that there were vigorous factions and other political oppositions INSIDE the SWP and that they survived leaves the charges of Cannon as a Stalinist, or better, a Zinovievist, as so much hot air. Read Cannon's Struggle For A Proletarian Party along with this book to see what I mean.

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Fighting Workers Confront the Myth of the "American Century"

Looking forward to Washington's expected victory in World War II, Time magazine in 1941 proclaimed a vision of postwar peace and prosperity under U.S. hegemony dubbed the "American Century." The Socialist Workers Party proclaimed a different point of view.
The SWP said the U.S. victory over its imperialist rivals in Germany and Japan would, instead, accelerate an economic and social crisis of capitalism on a world scale. This crisis would plunge millions into deeper poverty as well as foster the outbreak of new imperialist wars.
This, in turn, would propel a critical new revolutionary force onto the stage of history: the U.S. working class. Workers here in their millions would awaken politically and join the worldwide struggle for socialism, the SWP insisted, just as earlier, during the 1930s, they had achieved trade-union consciousness in massive numbers. Far from being monolithic, the U.S. is a class-divided society whose workers and farmers are a potentially powerful ally of those fighting imperialism around the world.
The SWP's 1946 "American Theses" (whose preparation and contents are a central focus of this book) anticipated that this crisis and revolutionary upsurge would emerge more rapidly than it has. But it's clear from today's vantage point that the "American Century" had already begun to decline before it could arise. The bloody history of wars from Korea to Vietnam, the anticommunist witch hunt of the 1950s, the heroic struggle for Black rights, are just a few of the developments that expose the contradictory reality of the post World War II boom.
The economic and political analysis the SWP made in 1946-47 offers an uncannily accurate view of what can be seen unfolding since the 1987 stock market crash signaled the actual beginning of the big downward segment of the curve of capitalist development that the SWP had expected to take place sooner.
The book's description of the SWP's efforts during this time to build a party rooted in the industrial unions and capable of leading the next phase of the struggle should be food for thought to those opposed to Washington's arrogant brutality and war making today. We can be grateful that the efforts of Cannon and other leaders have ensured the ongoing survival of such a party and the availability through Pathfinder books like this one of its legacy to new generations of fighters.

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Invaluable Book

In January 1945, James P Cannon, veteran communist and Socialist Workers Party leader was released from Sandstone Penitentiary where he and 17 other members of the SWP and the Minneapolis Teamsters Union served prison terms as a result of their opposition to World War II.

Through Cannon's speeches and writings you get a feel for the new world relationship of forces taking shape: the domination of the United States in the postwar period and the debate over perspectives for socialism that unfolded in the international revolutionary Marxist movement as a result.

Cannon and the Socialist Workers Party rejected the idea that U.S. imperialism would be unshakeable for the whole historic period to come, or that the struggle for socialism had become outmoded. They argued that the U.S imperialists would not subvert the laws of history, abolish the class struggle or dominate all peoples of the world.

This book of Cannon's writings and speeches traces the response of the Socialist Workers Party to these challenges of the postwar world. One of the greatest things about this book is that Cannon's answers to the questions that the debate centered on, serve as important lessons that are as valuable to those who want to participate in the fight for socialism today, as they were to the fighters who prepared the party for such a fight then.

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The challenges posed by the post-World War II labor upsurge, the rapid expansion of openings for the communist movement, and the subsequent ebb in face of the stabilization of U.S. capitalism and the employers' antilabor offensive and witch-hunt.
Photos, cartoons by Laura Gray, notes, glossary, index.

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