James P. Cannon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Cannon (center) in Moscow in 1922

James Patrick Cannon (born February 11, 1890 in Rosedale , Kansas , † August 21, 1974 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American communist and important Trotskyist .

Life

Born in Rosedale, Kansas, he first became a member of the Industrial Workers of the World and then joined the Socialist Party of America .

He was hostile to the First World War , and in 1917 mobilized for the Russian Revolution . In 1919 he was a founding member of the Communist Party of the USA and from 1919 to 1928 its chairman.

In the 1920s he was responsible for the International Labor Defense and made it a powerful organization.

Conversion to Trotskyism

In 1928 Cannon read a criticism of the direction of the Communist International ( Comintern ) by Leon Trotsky , which was erroneously disseminated by the Comintern. Trotsky's arguments convinced him and he attempted to build a left opposition within the Communist Party. This led to his expulsion from the party. He then founded the Communist League of America with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern and was co-editor of the newspaper "The Militant" (The Activist). They declared themselves an external faction of the Workers (Communist) Party.

Overshadowed by the collapse of the Comintern in the face of Nazi Germany , they came to the conclusion with Trotsky that the Comintern can no longer be reformed and they started the struggle to build a new International, the Fourth International .

This resulted in Cannon and his organization, the Communist League of America, merging with Abraham J. Mustes American Workers Party and later joining the Socialist Party of America (SPA) as a faction. Joining the Socialist Party was controversial within Cannon's organization, and a part that was against joining formed their own party, the Revolutionary Workers League , led by Hugo Oehler . In 1937, after Cannon's faction had a large number of members from the SPA's youth organization, the Young People's Socialist League , they left the party and formed the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), of which Cannon was the first to lead Secretary recorded.

Cannon was also a leading figure in the international Trotskyist movement and he visited Great Britain in 1938 with the intention of uniting the divided Trotskyist factions. The result was a poorly patched union, the Revolutionary Socialist League , which quickly disintegrated.

During the Second World War

In 1940, Cannon's comrade-in-arms Max Shachtman left the SWP with just under half of the members to form the Workers Party. One of the main questions of a previous controversy was the political attitude towards Soviet Russia . The SWP experienced another crisis during World War II when Cannon and other members were arrested under the Smith Act . Even in prison, Cannon's influence on the SWP was unbroken and he even changed the entire party line after the Warsaw Uprising .

After the war

He resumed leadership of the SWP after the war, but his influence waned when he left the post of National Secretary in 1953 and retired in California in the mid-1950s. He was involved in the emerging divisions within the SWP and the Fourth International that developed in 1952. However, he later took no sides in the various factional disputes between 1963 and 1965, except to denounce the formation of groups among his former supporters in the document "Do not Strangle The Party". He died in retirement in 1974.

He was an active revolutionary journalist and many of his articles were collected in a number of books. The most famous of these were Notebook of an Agitator and The Struggle for a Proletarian Party (only the latter was translated into German).

Works

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Cannon, James P.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cannon, James Patrick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American communist and Trotskyist
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Rosedale , Kansas
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 1974
Place of death Los Angeles , California