Documents 3 to 17 and 19 to 24 originally published in Internal Bulletins of the SWP and the International Bulletins of the International Committee
The split in the SWP, which Cannon threatened from the very opening of the fight in February, 1952, has now been carried through by his caucus. By his own testimony, he vied repeatedly to quarantine and drive out of the party the leaders of the opposition, but for almost two years, he was thwarted by the 'waverers, 'weaklings,' and 'grandmothers of the male sex -- to use his own words -- on the National Committee. Finally, by dint of unremitting and unrestrained factional effort, he whipped his own caucus into shape, the full fruits of which was the calling of the National Committee into a plenary session on November 7, and, as the first order of business, expelling the Minority leaders in something less than half an hour, while demanding a McCarthyite 'loyalty oath' from the rest of the membership. One has to go to the Stalinist movement for any comparison with this high-handed, bureaucratic outrage.
Cannon has been hatching, maneuvering, contriving, conspiring, intriguing for almost two years to expel the Minority leaders -- and at the final execution of his criminal project, he could only offer the flimsiest of pretexts, or more accurately, no pretext at all, if we disregard the slanderous, lying bombast about our alleged 'strike-breaking.'
The purpose of this charge is to distract attention from the clear record that the Cannon caucus has cut out the Minority representatives from all participation and direction of party activity and work, and has been actively lining up its cohorts for the past five weeks to jam through the split at the plenum. The wheels were set in motion when the PC at its September 30 meeting decided to call a plenum, but refused to inform us about, a) the purpose of the plenum; b) the agenda of the plenum; c) the number of points on the agenda; d) what resolutions, or documents, or motions, or suggestions would be submitted, or whether anything would be submitted; e) the line of the plenum documents, if any; f) what reporters would report, or ought to prepare, on what topics, etc.
This piece of arrogant usurpation was followed up in the next weeks by completely circumventing, ignoring and excluding our representatives from all decisions, and directing party affairs without any reference to us. The October 30 public meeting -- like many other projects -- was organized on the basis that the 25-year tradition was the private monopoly of the Cannon caucus. We concluded that we would no longer be supine victims of these unilateral, strong-arm tactics that had repeatedly been used on the Minority, and decided not to attend the open meeting, as an organized protest -- long overdue --against the dictatorial methods of the Cannon machine.
How the Peace Agreement Was Broken
Actually, the present split was implicit as soon as the Cannon caucus leaders cynically tore up the peace agreement signed by both sides at the May 1953 plenum. You will all recall that at the final sessions of this plenum, Cannon reversed his previous course of 'no compromise' and 'war to the death' on the Minority and proposed a peace agreement to us. We accepted the proposals in good faith. The agreement recognized the existence of faction formations, proposed to organize collaboration in the leadership, and to continue the discussion in a more moderate and restrained form. But the ink was scarcely dry on our respective signatures than the Majority leaders made a mockery of the supposed agreement and the proposed collaboration.
A few weeks after the May plenum, the Cannon leaders declared war on us in New York out of a clear sky. They started a drive to purge Bartell and his administration from leadership of the New York local. They brusquely rejected every one of our conciliatory proposals. They rejected every one of our conciliatory proposals. They introduced a new concept of authoritarian organization that the Majority caucus has to have the 'power' in a local administration, in effect, barring members of a minority from holding positions of responsibility in the localities while loyally carrying out party decisions. This crude campaign to dump Bartell and the other New York local leaders was a political reprisal, pure and simple, as the record of the comrades involved was an admittedly excellent one.
At the same time we learned that immediately with the conclusion of the May plenum, Cannon, the new 'Foreign Secretary' of the Majority caucus stepped up a character-assassination campaign against Pablo. In his speech to the Majority caucus in New York on May 18 Cannon admitted: 'We have no tangible evidence to prove that there is any conspiracy against us, or any actions against us, on the international field. Yet immediately after the plenum, he accused Pablo in a private poison-pen letter to 'Dear Tom', dated June 4, of instigating a 'power fight' in the SWP. He proposed to 'Dear Tom' to help organize an international faction on the 'principled' basis of who is for or against Cannon; in other words, as a clique, which intends to formulate its political platform as it goes along.
The collaboration called for in the May plenum agreement had been from the first -- as practiced by the Cannon faction leaders -- an empty gesture, with no positive content. The Majority leaders made their decisions in their private caucus meetings, and then came into the Secretariat or the PC and read off their decisions to us. There was no give-and-take. The'collaboration' was strictly limited to permitting us to make counter-motions or amendments, and then voting our propositions down. The degenerate Hasten clique ran its two-bit dictatorship in the British RCP by excluding the Minority from the Political Committee. The same monolithic purpose was achieved by the Cannon caucus -- except with a little more finesse.
The Cannonites arrogated to themselves the right to proclaim by fit the 'party line' on any and all questions without submitting their caucus decisions for adoption by any legal party body. As the PC Minority Statement of October 5 showed, this was the way they set party policy on recent developments in the USSR, as on most other questions, and at the same time suppressed articles of the Minority on the same subject matter. They opened the magazine by private caucus decision to attacks on the Minority -- under the same compulsion that pushed the Shachtmanites in 1940 to justify themselves before Stalinophobe public opinion -- but would not print the Minority polemics against the Majority. They adopted no clearcut official positions, but preferred to operate under the hazy banner of a 'general party line' which, in practice, they interpreted as license to write and do anything they pleased.
The fundamental causes for the smash-up of the May peace agreement derived not from accidents, incidents, or misunderstandings but the political disorientation and degeneration of the 'Old Trotskyists' of the Cannon faction.
The nature of the Cannon Faction
The present Cannon faction was gangrenous at its very birth. It consolidated itself from the start, not on the basis of a secure political platform, which it lacked, but on prestige, tradition, seniority, personal loyalties and sentimental attachments.
The Cannon caucus leaders openly voiced the concept at the May plenum that the faction debate constituted only a naked 'power struggle' on both sides, and they triumphantly announced that they had emerged as the victors in the 'power struggle. They thereby flaunted their degeneration in the party's face and attempted to legitimitize their concept of personal leadership and clique politics.
The Cannon caucus leaders never honoured the agreement to which they adhered at the May plenum. It proved beyond them. They demonstrated in life that they were too ingrown and politically disoriented, too thoroughly indoctrinated with mysticism about their 'ordained leadership, ' and hypnotized with crackpot notions of'power' to actually understand what it meant to practice collaboration with another party tendency or faction. They made speeches on holiday occasions about 'Leninist organization principles', but they did not understand them, and they rejected them when put to the test.
But no clique can long survive in the Trotskyist movement without filling its political vacuity with some program. So we observed that as the pre-plenum discussion progressed, the Cannon caucus was hardening its scholastic traits, providing 'theoretical' grounding for its ultimatistic approach, deepening its sectarian habits of thought, political outlook and positions. With the split, the Cannonites are due to emerge as the new De Leonism of the American radical movement.
On the international field, what began as a personal intrigue against Pablo has developed into a full-blown campaign to dynamite the International, and furnish a rallying centre for all the conservative, retrogressive, sectarian tendencies, based upon the past. Cannon's attempt to blow up the International organization, and give by indirection, intrigue and subterfuge de facto leadership to the Cannon caucus, and convert the other parties into satellites, is probably as infamous and irresponsible an intrigue as has ever been launched in the history of world Trotskyism. This rupture with internationalism stems from the ever-growing hostility of his caucus toward the policies of world Trotskyism. It has broken with all the main lines of the Third World Congress, a fact underlined by the recent Stein document and the PC Majority 'preliminary draft.' His caucus has reversed its former attitude and effected a reapproachment with the Stalinophobe-sectarian Bleibtreu group in France. The SWP press has been subverted into a Cannon caucus sheet and polemical pennae against the policies of world Trotskyism. This up-and-down-the-line political break is climaxed with Cannon's drive to split the International.
The New Sectarianism
The new sectarianism reflects no trend of circles in the American labour movement, or even of American radicalism, but arises out of the petrification of the 'old Trotskyists,' who have succumbed to a quarter-century of isolation, and who have taken refuge in a makebelieve world of their own creation, getting a vicarious thrill of playing at 'revolution.' When the 'Old Guard' -- as it denominates itself went through with its project to cut itself off from the last remaining sources of critical public opinion represented by the opposition and our co-thinkers abroad, it signified that ossification had conquered.
The present Cannon faction -- the museum pieces of the 'Old Guard' combined with the Weiss contingent of YPSL's -- has no future in the American labour movement. Its old role as populizer of Trotsky's programme and snuggle is played out. It will be engulfed by the events of our epoch as were the 'old Wobblies' three decades ago, who were not able to understand in their time die new world of the Russian Revolution and the post First World War period, and could not comprehend the new problems and tasks imposed on revolutionists.
The future in this country, as elsewhere, is with the mainstream of world Trotskyism which understands the new epoch, and the tasks of revolutionists in fusing themselves with other left-wing forces as they arise in the course of the coming radicalization and class battles. Thus, and only thus, will be formed the mass revolutionary party of tomorrow and will be validated Trotsky's programme and struggle.
We Represent the Future
When the Cannon caucus expelled us from the SWP, they cut the heart out of the party. Because it is we who understand the reality of this world, and this country, and this labour movement, and the correct tactic for Marxists in the present scene. And because with us -- a third of the organization -- come the overwhelming portion of the working class cadre, the flower of a decade and a half of unexampled experiences and rich participation in the class struggles of this country, men and women who carved a rich tradition in sectors of the broad labour movement. Our group will cut a path for itself in the next struggles and developments. The Cannonites represent the dead past. We represent the future.
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Last updated 17.8.2003