Portrait of a revolutionary known as Contadora (Colombia, Mexico,
Panama, Venezuela) which is putting up a rather feeble resistance to the US policy of aggression in Central America.
But, basically Betancur heads a Liberal-Conservative government that still rules in the manner of the Frente Nacional, August 1984 is the tenth anniversary of the death of James P. Cannon. since the official two-party system con- Cannon was a founder of American Communism and a central figure in tinues to dominate the political life of the party until 1928. Subsequently he established the American Trotskythe country. The deal between the two ist movement and was the most important leader of the Socialist Workers big bourgeois parties sets the tune for Party for several decades. Following is a biographical sketch that will also the means of communication and, by introduce the readers of International Viewpoint to books by Cannon that fraudulent means, it controls elections. contain additional information about his life and ideas. Workers fight back
James Patrick Cannon was born in
Martin Abern, formed a bloc with William
Z. Foster's group against the faction of
Charles Ruthenberg and Jay Lovestone
Some important regional and city- Rosedale, Kansas, on February 11, 1890, over such issues as the attitude toward wide strikes took place recently in the the son of Irish immigrants raised in a labor party, trade union strategy and southwest of Antioquia and in Narino. Workers protesting against price rises in the public services and the abandonment of any social policies in these
There were large mobilisations against the government's education policies and in defence of state education. There were strikes on the docks and in the textile industry. In telecommunications and the administrative services, the judiciary and other state services there were stoppages and protests.
The actions, led by the union federaation FENALTRASE, defeated the government's wage control policy. This is a sign that new struggles can develop in the future. At the same time, the process of drawing together a unified, democratic, pluralist trade-union movement on a class struggle basis is gathering momentum.
During the municipal and provincial elections on March 11, the Colombian left presented a joint electoral platform called the Democratic Front. This bloc advanced working class, anti-imperialist demands. It called for trade-union and civil rights, for a negotiated truce, for dialogue and a democratic peace, for a single union confederation and for solidarity with Nicaragua, Salvador, Grenada and Cuba.
Unity of the left, excluding Conservatives and Liberals, was achieved in most areas of the country, except the towns of Barranquilla and Narino, where the Communist Party allied itself with the Liberals. The unity achieved by the left was a big political victory. It could undoubtedly develop and help to consolidate a policy of independence from the official two-party system and to promote popular and revolutionary action that we hope would carry over into the fight for political reform, for democracy and into the anti-imperialist battles on the agenda today. This orientation could be expressed in the 1986 presidential elections by presenting a mass political alternative based on mobilisation. International Viewpoint 16 July 1984
England. His father, John Cannon, worked as a laborer in a foundry and introduced his son James to the Irish nationKnights of Labor, the Populists and the
Leaving school to start work at age twelve, Cannon was propelled into radical politics by the Haywood-PettiboneMoyer defense case. He briefly returned to high school but left again to become a traveling organizer for the WW and a follower of Vincent St. John. He later joined the Socialist Party, replacing Earl Browder as editor of Workers' World in Kansas when Browder was sent to prison during World War I.
Cannon quickly became a leader of the left wing of the Socialist Party. Following the 1919 expulsion of the left wing, he joined the Communist Labor Party led by John Reed
When the United Communist Party was formed in the spring of 1920, he was elected to its central committee and assigned as organizer of the party's St. Louis-Southern Illinois District.
Toward the end of 1920 he moved to Cleveland to edit The Toiler, a party organ, and in 1921 he transferred to New York to participate in the top leadership of the party. After an internal struggle to create a legal party and end the under.
existence of the Communist movement, Cannon was elected person of the national committee of the
Party, the new above-ground
In 1922-23 he served on the Presidium of the Communist International in Moscow, and between 1925 and 1928 he headed International Labor Defense. In licized the cases of the Centralia prisonand the McNamara Brothers. He also organized the International Labor Defense's Sacco-Vanzetti campaign.
During these years Cannon's group of followers, including Max Shachtman and tactics, the location of the national office and the nature and composition of the party leadership. Cannon's reminisof this period were later published as The First Ten Years of American Communism (New York: Lyle Stuart,
In the summer of 1982 he attended the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International where he received a translation of Trotsky's "Criticism of the Draft Program of the Communist Inter-
Won over to the ideas of Trotsky's Left Opposition, Cannon and his followers were expelled from the Ameriican party in October for circulating
Cannon described the first decade of the American Trotskyist movement in The History of American Trotskyism (New York: Pioneer, 1944). Along with Schatman and Abern he founded the Communist League of America (Left Opposition) in mid-1929, and began publishing the Militant newspaper. They had only a hundred followers at first, but doubled their size over the next several years. A theoretical magazine, New International, was launched in 1934.
That same year members of the Communist League of America were in the leadership of the sensational Minneapolis Teamster strikes, and Cannon traveled there to provide political guidance. This success helped pave the way for a fusion of the Communist League of America with A. J. Muste's American Workers Party at the end of 1934. The new organization was called the Workers Party of the United States and its newspaper was called the New Militant.
In the spring of 1936 Cannon lead the Trotskyists into the Socialist Party and then moved to California where he edited the Socialist Party paper Labour Action. When the Trotskyists were expelled from the Socialist Party in mid-1937, Cannon returned to New York. The Trotskyists founded the Socialist Workers Party in January 1938 with Cannon as national
25
secretary. The following autumn he participated in the founding of the Fourth International in Paris and was elected to the International Executive Committee. The Trotskyist movement had by now grown to over a thousand and had considerable authority in certain sections of the labor movement as well as among New York intellectuals grouped around the literary magazine Partisan Review.
In the fall of 1939 a dispute erupted between factions led by Shachtman and Cannon over questions relating to actions
In addition to having the unique capacity to hold a small party together for several decades under difficult circumstances, Cannon was a talented populizer of socialist ideas in his lectures and writings. This can be seen in a collection of his public talks, speeches for socialism (New York: Merit, 1971), and of his journalism, Notebook of an Agitator
(New York: Pioneer, 1958). Additional information about Cannon can be found in the following books: Les Evans, editor, James P. Cannon as We Knew Him (New York: Pathfinder, 1976); and Theodore Draper, The Roots of American Communism (New York: Viking 1957) and American Communism and Soviet Russia (New York: Viking, 1960).