James Cannon, Letters from Prison, Pathfinder Press, £1.45.
'My Party method: not merely to learn, think and do, myself, but to organize others to learn, think and do.'
In 1944, James Cannon, leader of the Socialists Workers' Party of the USA, was imprisoned with seventeen other Trotskyists for their opposition to the imperialist war.
They stood alone in this opposition—'In the last war there were hundreds of labour and socialist war prisoners; this time our party alone is represented'—but Cannon was not demoralized. From his cell he wrote this series of letters to his wife which were, in effect, attempts to help guide and direct the SWP, deprived as it was of its more experienced leaders.
In this collection, Cannon takes up and discusses a whole series of problems concerned with what he called 'the troublesome "organization question"... (which) is nothing less than the central question of our whole epoch—the question of the party'. Much of this has relevance today, not only in combating petty-bourgeois sloppiness 'but in building an organization which can respond to the needs of the present period, where new mass vanguard of radicalizing the workers is forming'.
Cannon set the SWP, in a situation of considerable radicalization of the working class, the task of 'popularising unadulterated Marxism'. A key tool in such a task he saw correctly as the newspaper. As well as discussing in detail how to organize a sales campaign and a subscription campaign, he writes at such length on the turn the newspaper had to make from a left-circle propaganda paper to 'a combination paper', which had to serve the needs of the growing number of new readers, the developing Trotskyists, and the educated party militants all at the same time.
He stresses the need to brighten up the paper and 'make it accessible to tired workers... always keep in mind the new and young readers for whom the paper must be made attractive'.
Cannon also writes at length about the kind of educational programme he sees as necessary for the growing party. For him the conscious education and training of leadership 'represents the conquest of method and design over laissez faire in the most important question of the party, ie. the question of leadership'. In this, his hopes and plans for a national 'Trotsky school'—a sort of revolutionary university for workers—were never fully realized. However, another of his prerequisites for the growth of the party, a flourishing, planned publishing house, has surely been realized in Pathfinder Press.
To help the party organize the ongoing faction struggle with Morrow and Goldman, Cannon refers to the lessons learnt during the crucial struggle and split with the Burnham/Shachtman opposition in 1939-40. He has some very sound advice about faction struggles and their importance: 'If they are conducted properly, new people learn faster and more firmly in factional conflicts than in any other way'. [illegible] tactics of such struggles: 'It should be deliberate policy to remove each and every . . . minor grievance by sweeping concessions, in order to clear the way for a discussion of the political issues. The concessions will cut the ground from under the opposition. The new members will be reassured'.
Unfortunately, the book is rather thin on political analysis of the period, though some time is spent on a reappraisal of one of the cornerstones of Trotskyist politics—the defence of the Soviet Union. What does come over clearly is one of the weaknesses of Cannon's thought, which has had its influence on large sections of the Trotskyist movement.
This is what one could call the separation of the 'organization question', the question of building the party and the internal conditions for this task, from the external political intervention of the organization.
In these writings there always appears to be something of a gap between the problem of building the party, as a separate activity, and the political analysis and intervention of that party. This incorrect division is seen clearly in such statements as: 'To the militant worker, who has an instinct for organized struggle, strong leadership and firm discipline are the most attractive features of a party' (my emphasis).
The question of whether the party has the correct politics in action in the everyday struggles of the class here seems relegated to a trivial side-issue or taken for granted.
Despite this weakness, however, the book stands as a testament of struggle to one of the greatest revolutionaries since the hey-day of the Third International. It should be read by all concerned with the serious application of revolutionary politics.