James P. Cannon: An introduction

It is a bit strange responding to an article written 17 years ago by someone you may or may not be dead, for all I know. It is a bit like arguing with a ghost, given that the DSP is no longer in existence and that a part of its old leadership claims to be its historical continuity (in an other party) and that the other part of its old leadership is building, by Cannon's definition, a centrist catchall. One wonders what is the political reasoning by the editors of LINKS in reprinting this, and for what purpose.

However, here goes. As one who was a member of the Canadian section of the Fourth International, and who left it at the start of the looney turn to industry in 1976, I have more than a little interest in the subject of the degeneration of the SWP, and more importantly, as a result of a long period of reflection, on the root causes of of the failure of Cannonism and its proclaimed "Leninist Strategy of Party Building", not only in North America but in all the advanced capitalist countries.

Comrade Holmes has written a marvalous presentation of Cannon's life, and has indeed defined the essence of Cannonism in the five points outlined by him. I am going to look at each of these five points from the point of view of constructing a mass revolutionary movement, and whether or not these essential points help or hinder that process.

1. An unyielding commitment to the socialist revolution.... This platitude applies not only to Cannonites, but extends from revolutionary Marxism through Maoism to various petite bourgeois sects and tendencies of a non-Marxist variety. That is, that the need for constructing a socialist society to save humanity from capitalist barbarism is not an exclusive preserve of the Cannonites.

2. Only the working class can make this revolution, the irreplaceable instrument is the vanguard party. Here Cannonism is wrong on both counts. In Yugoslavia,China and Vietnam (and now, maybe in Nepal) the revolution was made by the peasantry, although both were lead by revolutionary parties of a non-Trotskyist tendency, while in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, the revolution was neither of a working class leadership nor was it lead by a vanguard party: the political leadership instrument in all three cases was a multi-class alliance, a revolutionary front.

Comrade Holmes has tried to qualify this discrepancy by the following phrase:..."it is the Leninist revolutionary perspective applied to an advance capitalist country." This however, was not the view of Cannon nor was it the view of the SWP and the International Committee which it lead during the split years in the Fourth International, that is between 1953 and 1964, when Cannon was still alive and active in the SWP. It was during this time when the "Leninist Startegy of Party Building became the mantra to be used against the "Pabloite liquidationists", that is against those who disagreed with Cannon on how to construct a revolutionary instrument for the masses. It was also the mantra used against the majority of the Fourth International in the debate on armed struggle and the concept of the "armed party".

Against the supposed "foquismo" of the majority, was poised "The Leninist Strategy of Party Building", not only in the advanced capitalist countries, but to be applied everywhere, at all times and in all circumstances. This is an historical fact which Comrade Holmes gets wrong.

3. The building of a revolutionary party has to be a consistent and conscious process, and cannot be left to a spontaneous appearance. This is so abstract as to be platitudinous. If one is to do any thing, or to achieve any thing, then it must be done consistently and consciously if success in the endevour is to be realized. This goes without saying. So, if the central political activity is to build any political party, it must be done consciously and consistently. This presupposes that the central political activity of revolutionaries is to build revolutionary parties. For the Cannonites, it is.

4. The comments in regards to point three are equally applied to point four which says: pay attention to details and get your team together. Again elementary points in building any type of organisation, Cannonite or not. Obviously, this was something missing in the transition from the Cannon team to the Barnes team in the SWP. A great deal of "credit" for this must fall on the shoulders of Joe Hansen. Or perhaps this was Hansen at his "consistent" and "conscious" best.

However, the notion of assembling the "team to lead the revolution" is a deluded fantasy at best and at worst is the cause of the messianic cults of personality around which microscopic "internationals" proliferate: Pablo, Posadas, Moreno, Cannon/Barnes, Healy, Lambert, etc. all trying to be a new Lenin, each with their groupascules in a handful of countries.

But this notion of building "the team" to lead the revolution flows naturally from the essence of Cannonism; which is that the duty of revolutionaries is to build the revolutionary party. All else becomes subordinated to this task.

From that comes a reluctance to question the line of the leadership (after all, don't we all want to be team players and be part of "the team").From that flows an instrumentalist approach to popular movements, that is to say that real mass movements and organizations are used as recruiting grounds for "the party", and that control of these organizations does not arise necessarily from real political leadership, but by false majorities, manipulated meetings and agendas, etc.

5. The democratic centralist model which was supposedly existing in Lenin's time with the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Party, and to which Cannon supposedly adhered has two problems. The first is that it didn't exist, accept on paper. The debates and counter debates within the Bolshevik wing were printed editorially in newspapers, pamphlets or articles in the party and sometimes non-party press.

The best example of this was the appeal by Lenin over the head of the Central Committee to the party rank and file on the question of the nature of the revolution, that is, the famous April theses. This however, was no rare occurance. Open and public debate regarding the line of the party was the norm in the Bolshevik organisations (there were actually many different Bolshevik committees, which during the February to October period arose spontaneously throughout regions of the Soviet Union where no Bolshevik organiser had ever set foot).

It was precisely this LACK of open honest and spirited debate within the SWP at the time of the Barnes transition which lead to the degeneration of the SWP. The pretext for this was the tendency struggle within the Fourth International between the Mandelites and the Cannonites-Morenoites (more "-ites" than you can shake a stick at). Hansen and company used this opportunity to whip the troops into line, and began expelling supporters of the majority tendency from the SWP. If I remember correctly, the DSP at that time was aligned with the SWP and the international minority. It is to its credit that it didn't follow the SWP down the same road.

The leadership of the SWP was able to do this because of the history within the SWP as to how to defeat oppositional tendencies. Cannon continually refered to all those who opposed his political analysis as some sort of non-proletarian elements- petite bourgeois academics, shiftless cosmopolitans without working class roots, etc. In effect, he set himself up as the interpreter of working class revolutionaries, those on his team, and any who opposed him were by definition not working class revolutionists. If you were with Cannon, you were a "worker Bolshevik"- really, this was the term used by the Cannon/Barnes team to describe how the cadre of the SWP and its Canadian branch, the Revolutionary Workers League, was to be remade. If you were not, then you were obviously not cut out for "the team."

And by extension, if you were politicaly active on the left but not part of the SWP you were certainly not part of the revolutionary party. It is this atitude which is really at the heart of Cannonism: with us or against us.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the revolution. The political descendents of Max Shachtman are to be found all over the globe in the form of the International Socialists (which is the largest Trotskyist organisation in the United States (how's that for some political irony). The Cochranites are still active in Detroit and elsewhere. The Socialist Party of America has revived and running a fine comrade for the US senate, in the person of Dan Blotz. The Pabloites are active around the globe in the form of the International Marxist Tendency. And those of us who are Trotskyists and followers of the political ideas of CLR James are to be found around the globe, building socialism from below.

The fundamental flaw in the thinking of Cannon and those he inspires is to be found in the Second Declaration of Havana: the duty of the revolutionaries is to make the REVOLUTION. For the Cannonites it is to build The Revolutionary Party.

This not just a difference in emphasis. It is an acknowledgment that the political instrument for the emancipation of the working class will be built by the workers, with the leadership of that instrument arising from those "organic intellectuals" of the working class, through the revolutionary struggles of the working class as Gramsci argued.

It is a recognition that while one may hold conceptions of how the class struggle should unfold, these may be wrong and ones views will have to be adjusted accordingly. It is a recognition that others on the left who hold different views are not by definition class enemies, petite bourgeois elements without a working class world view, etc. ad naseum. It is a recognition that some may falter, and some others shall arise. It is a recognition that the methods of Paolo Freire are more apropos than the caricatures of Leninism , it is most of all a recognition that the contributions of all are valuable, though they may not all be correct.

But most of all, it is a recognition that a revolutionary's first duty is to organize and lead struggles which will find ways of unleashing the creative potential of the masses to solve their problems the way they want them solved, that is, to deepen the process for the self organization of the masses in struggle.

This response is not in any way meant to denigrate the personal legacy of Jim Cannon. He was a product of his circumstances, and these exceptional circumstances produced an exceptional political leader. Comrade Holmes is right in saying that studying Cannon's work as an important historical record is a worthwhile task.

However, because Cannon is as clear on his conception of what constitutes valid political work, it is necessary to be equally clear in questioning his very premises. The one tendency fight which Comrade Holmes fails to include in his introduction was the Johnson-Forrest tendency: this is the fight between the great Caribbean revolutionary CLR James and Cannon. It was the fight not over political lines (as was the Shachtman-Abern tendency) but over political conceptions of how revolutionaries and revolutionary organisations should act in the class struggle. It is this tendency struggle which is being played out today between those revolutionaries who devote their energy to the "Leninist Strategy of Party Building", and those who devote their energy to building the revolution from below. Those who are building from below are revolutionaries who can be found in and outside parties, who can be found in barrios and factories, who are leading struggles of workers and peasants, who are teaching volunteer literacy programs and acting as barefoot doctors, who sit and play endless games of cards to learn from elders, and who help Mothers carry babies to a clinic. They come in all colours, have a myriad of sexual orientations, are modest in their demeanor and work for the revolution with a great sense of love.

They are the real revolutionary vanguard, and are found by the millions throughout the world. It is these cadres who make up the world party of socialist revolution, many are in the political spectrum known as Trotskyism, many are not.

Unlike Cannon, I believe that the all those who are willing to sacrifice and struggle for the socialist revolution are in my party, or I in theirs. With the Internet acting as "the collective organiser" we can share the experiences and stories of the global class struggle, we can share our analysis with others who will have a different take on things, and we can learn from each other. We will quickly sort out the social liberals from the socialist revolutionaries, for the latter are known for what they do, the former by what they don't, and for them there is no hiding place. We can out the lies, and shout out the truth around the globe. This in building the mass revolutionary movement, a revolutionary spirit and a revolutionary and socialist ethic.

Like Debs, I believe in unity, but Revolutionary Unity. Not unity with the betrayers of the working class, for they killed Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebnicht, but unity with all those who through their actions and commitment are willing to bring about a new society from the ashes of the old.

Cannonism, because of its fundamentally flawed premises, stands as an obstacle to that type of Revolutionary Unity. In Argentina today, there are 23 different Trotskyist organizations all claiming to be the nucleus of THE revolutionary party, each one building THE leadership team for the revolution, carefully selecting ,mixing and matching the cadres in the various leadership positions so as to provide true proletarian leadership.

Many, because of Nauhel Moreno's political alliance with the SWP, all claim to be following the Cannonist model. All claim adherence to the legacy of the transitional program, the first four congresses of the Comintern, all give at least lip service to the notions of proletarian democracy, and so forth. What keeps these comrades apart is straight sectarianism, which is impulsed by the notions that a fight over this or that issue is really a fight over the proletarian line or the petite bourgeois line, either in or between organizations.

This hogwash can be traced directly back to the type of fights Cannon mounted within the SWP, which were raised to the level of theoretical ritual in order to justify his team maintaining power. What Cannon and those who would emulate him failed to realize is that the harder you squeeze the sand, the less sand you have.

Almost all political disagreement are over tactics, which arise in the context of an analysis of this or that conjuncture or situation, and which history sooner or later will prove or disprove. A difference in analysis has nothing whatsoever to do with the class background of those providing the analysis, or whether one is succumbing or not to bourgeois pressures. Was Lenin succumbing to bourgeois pressure when he formulated "the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" vs. Trotsky's formulation of the "dictatorship of the proletariat". Indeed, is Olivier Bescancenot and Francois Sabado succumbing to petite bourgeois pressure to drop the term of the proletarian dictatorship from the program of the New Anticapitalist party. Or are they adjusting the language to more effectively explain to workers the need for the workers to take power through their own government and to build society the way they would like it.

To some on the left this question matters greatly, for it signals the end of the LCR's quest to build a vanguard party of the Leninist Bolshevik type. To most vanguard workers, they are more interested in the ideas of the NPA to help them win power, not the formulas they use.

So the question to comrade Holmes on this point is pretty straight forward: has the French Trotskyist movement, represented by the LCR and its ideological place within the New Anticapitalist Party, abandoned revolutionary Marxism? Has Alain Krivine and crew thrown Lenin overboard? Are they the ultimate Pabloite liquidationists?

To even pose the questions this way sinks to the level of petty sectarianism which, while common amongst Cannonite sects, does nothing to advance the cause of the workers one millimeter forward. Not one. And for this Cannonism is a great part of the problem, not the solution.

This was written in response to John Percy back in 2003, when he was still a leader of the Australian DSP in its hard Cannonite phase.

Reply to John Percy on building a revolutionary party

posted to www.marxmail.org on June 11, 2003

These are comments on selected portions of an article titled "Looking backward, looking forward: Pointers to building a revolutionary party" by Australian DSP leader John Percy. Mostly I have limited myself to areas of disagreement and find much that is positive in this piece, including the Socialist Alliance initiative and some refreshingly modest insights on building new internationals, etc.

http://www.dsp.org.au/links/back/issue23/Percy.htm

JOHN PERCY: The idea of a revolutionary socialist party, or one taking any cues from the Bolshevik experience, is also hotly contested in the milieu, the "party" of former members of parties, reformed Leninists who've seen the error of their ways. Many people pass through revolutionary parties, here and around the world. The revolution is a great devourer of people, that's a fact, and this can be intense in difficult objective situations in which we are pushing uphill. Some comrades tire out, some have bad experiences, and some get other priorities in their lives. Most move on, some adapt to the prevailing political orthodoxy, but some still haven't settled with their past in the revolutionary party and for a while can spend a good part of their political activity attacking their own past by attacking those still actively building a party.

The Marxism List based in the US has many people with this sort of background and outlook, who have espoused or developed a description of their perspective as "anti-Zinovievist", although I haven't seen any attempt by them to clearly distinguish themselves from anti-Leninism. Really, that's what they are, even if they feel better hiding behind Zinoviev.

COMMENT: John is missing the point. There really is no such thing as "Leninism". This was a term coined in the 3rd International almost based on a caricature of the Bolshevik Party. Lenin was sensitive to what he perceived as a kind of schematic understanding of the Bolshevik Party early on:

"At the third congress in 1921 we adopted a resolution on the structure of communist parties and the methods and content of their activities. It is an excellent resolution, but it is almost entirely Russian, that is to say, everything in it is taken from Russian conditions. That is its good side, but it is also its bad side, bad because scarcely a single foreigner--I am convinced of this, and I have just re-read it-can read it. Firstly, it is too long, fifty paragraphs or more. Foreigners cannot usually read items of that length. Secondly, if they do read it, they cannot understand it, precisely because it is too Russian...it is permeated and imbued with a Russian spirit. Thirdly, if there is by chance a foreigner who can understand it, he cannot apply it...My impression is that we have committed a gross error in passing that resolution, blocking our own road to further progress. As I said, the resolution is excellent, and I subscribe to every one of the fifty paragraphs. But I must say that we have not yet discovered the form in which to present our Russian experience to foreigners, and for that reason the resolution has remained a dead letter. If we do not discover it, we shall not go forward."

Lenin's misgivings were prescient for within 3 years these "Russian" tendencies had only deepened. By 1924 the Comintern had ratified a version of "Leninism" that was totally at odds with the living historic example of the Bolshevik Party. To single out just a few examples where the two diverge:

1. The Bolsheviks carried out their debates publicly. As editor of a major Bolshevik newspaper, Bukharin hammered away at Lenin's position on the national question. This is documented in great detail in Stephen Cohen's political biography of Bukharin. Not only that--horrors of horrors--they often voted against each other in the mass movement. In John Reed's "10 Days that Shook the World", there is a reference to divided votes among party members over key questions such as whether to expropriate the bourgeois press. At a November 17th 1917 mass meeting, Lenin called for the confiscation of the capitalist newspapers. Reed quotes him: "If the first revolution had the right to suppress the Monarchist papers, then we have the right to suppress the bourgeois press." He continues: "Then the vote. The resolution of Larin and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries was defeated by 31 to 22; the Lenin motion was carried by 34 to 24. Among the minority were the Bolsheviki Riazanov and Lozovsky, who declared that it was impossible for them to vote against any restriction on the freedom of the press." So you have a kind of cognitive dissonance at work here. For "Leninists" like John Percy, these facts might suggest that the historic Bolshevik Party was a beta product and that only after the rules of conduct for building Bolshevik Parties was codified at the 1924 Comintern world conference did you end up a production version. It was only after I saw the self-destruction of the SWP, which was built on Cannon's strict adherence to the 1924 party-building formulae, that I decided to review the history of these organizational norms. I eventually came to the conclusion that we had to GO BACK TO BOLSHEVISM and dump the schematic, formulaic "improvements" that has led to sect and cult formations time after time.

2. The Bolsheviks were much more relaxed on questions of internal discipline than is the case in "Leninist" parties today. To my knowledge, the only person ever expelled from Lenin's party was Bogdanov, about whom there is little doubt that he had broken with Marxism. Even after Zinoviev and Kamenev broke discipline and denounced the party's decision to take power, they were not expelled. In "Leninist" parties, expulsions happen routinely over simple political differences. For example, the SWP expelled Proletarian Orientation Tendency members right and left after the 1971 convention, who were simply arguing in favor of the kind of "workerist" turn that the SWP eventually decided on some 5 or so years later. I have heard DSP (and WWP) members argue that expulsions almost never happen in their own organization. But discipline can take a variety of forms. You can employ the stick, but you can also enforce a kind of ideological uniformity through peer pressure. Members will be reluctant to vote against the party line because that will earn them the reputation of being "suspect". This in fact is how the CP's kept its membership in line most of the time. And the Trotskyists are no different. In 1978 the NYC SWP leadership was trying to "motivate" some members, including me, to quit their middle-class jobs, move out of NYC and go into industry. I thought the politics behind this, which was based on a overprojection of the tempo of the class struggle, was flawed but that did not stop me from getting up at a branch meeting and announcing that the American factories were ripe for recruitment to the revolutionary party. The desire to be accepted is a deeply human need, but it is a dagger at the heart of the revolutionary party. As Marx once said in a letter to Ruge, we need a "ruthless criticism of all that exists", starting with positions submitted to the membership of a revolutionary party.

3. The Bolsheviks were far more ideologically heterogeneous than is the case in "Leninist" parties. When Lenin argued in favor of an all-Russia Marxist organization, he saw Iskra as a way to unite the scattered forces and provide a platform for debate so that a program for the Russian revolution could take shape. In "What is to be Done", he wrote:

"Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation. Otherwise our unity will be purely fictitious...We do not intend to make our publication a mere store-house of various views. On the contrary, we shall conduct it in the spirit of a strictly defined tendency. This tendency can be expressed by the word Marxism. ... Only in this way will it be possible to establish a genuinely all-Russian, Social- Democratic organ. Only such a publication will be capable of leading the movement on the high road of political struggle."

You'll note that Lenin did not call for a party based on an interpretation of some historical questions, such as the class nature of the USSR under Stalin, etc. He wanted to unite *Marxists*. This conception is radically different from the Leninist "improvement".

JOHN PERCY: This argument is belied both by common sense—the required instrument isn't going to spring ready-made from the ground when the revolutionary situation matures, especially since revolutionary situations can be quite short and arise quite rapidly. It's also belied by our experience: without our perspective of building a Leninist party, we wouldn't have the team of cadres, the wealth of experience, the resources and tools such as Green Left Weekly that we have today. It's also belied by the whole practice of the Bolshevik party, still our best and most successful example of a revolutionary workers' party.

It's also explicitly answered by Lenin, for example, when he wrote after the 1905 revolution, during a particularly demoralising downturn in the Russian workers' struggle. He answered those who argued that you didn't need a party in a period like this, that later, when the struggle revived and it wasn't so difficult, it would be appropriate to build a party: "Whoever finds the work tedious, whoever does not understand the need for preserving and developing the revolutionary principles of Social-Democratic tactics in this phase too, on this bend of the road, is taking the name of Marxism in vain".

COMMENT: This is an argument that was drummed into my head when I joined the Trotskyist movement, that you cannot have a successful revolution without a revolutionary party. When you stop and think about it, this is what can be regarded as a tautology. Unfortunately, the real question before us is not whether we need a revolutionary party or not, but how to build one. In Cuba, during the late 1950s, THERE WAS NO REVOLUTIONARY PARTY according to the definition understood by DSP leaders. In fact, there is little doubt that if Fidel Castro had sat down with James P. Cannon's "Struggle for a Proletarian Party" and tried to apply its "lessons" as the Percy brothers did in Australia, we might be seeing Batista's son running the country, or some variant.

JOHN PERCY: So while we are always attempting to build a party as the advanced detachment of the working class, we realise that the party is not just a society for the preservation of the truth, but a process of continually testing and developing ways to go forward. It's certainly ridiculous just to proclaim that we're the party, or to act as though we're already such a party when there's so far to go. But such a party is still necessary—a real Leninist party, not a caricature. And we continually test our course in practice and try again.

COMMENT: Of course, what John has not come to grips with is the clash between these sensible words and the party-building traditions that the DSP adheres to. At the 1944 SWP convention, Morris Stein, who was regarded as one of James P. Cannon's top lieutenants, told the convention:

"We are monopolists in the field of politics. We can't stand any competition. We can tolerate no rivals. The working class, to make the revolution can do it only through one party and one program. This is the lesson of the Russian Revolution. That is the lesson of all history since the October Revolution. Isn't that a fact? This is why we are out to destroy every single party in the field that makes any pretense of being a working-class revolutionary party. Ours is the only correct program that can lead to revolution. Everything else is deception, treachery. We are monopolists in politics and we operate like monopolists."

My experience tells me that despite your best intentions, you cannot avoid thinking in these terms as long as you view your organizational tasks within the framework set down by James P. Cannon.

JOHN PERCY: The classic case in recent left history is the Cuban Revolution, an example we use in our party to illustrate the difference between currents that responded to reality, and currents that refuse to recognise facts, even in the form of an actual revolution. The 1959 Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement was not expected or understood by any of the Trotskyist currents. However, as the revolution unfolded, some, such as the US Socialist Workers Party, and leaders of the European International Secretariat of the Fourth International, such as Ernest Mandel, (the FI having split in 1953) were able to recognise what was happening and welcome and support it. Others, such as the Socialist Labour League in Britain led by Gerry Healy, refused to support it—it wasn't led by a Trotskyist party! (Other currents outside the FI framework, such as the state capitalist current led by Tony Cliff, were also hamstrung by their theory, and were unwilling to adjust their schema.)

COMMENT: Of course, the real challenge to Trotskyists, and those who retain committed to its "Leninist" organizational principles whether or not they agree with permanent revolution, is to come to grips with how a true vanguard was formed in Cuba. It started by throwing out all the schemas found in books like "Struggle for a Proletarian Party".

JOHN PERCY: Another more recent case is the implementation of the "turn to industry" in the Fourth International in the late 1970s. This turn was initiated by the US SWP, and followed by others in the FI, including our own party, still in the FI at the time. The arguments for the turn were based on the prediction of a working-class upsurge in the advanced capitalist countries, of which there were some signs. In this scenario, the working class, especially in the US, would move to centre stage, and revolutionaries would have to be alongside workers in the coming struggles. We carried out that turn, with some positive results and useful experiences, although of course there were costs too. When it became clear that the predicted working-class upsurge on which the turn was predicated was not occurring, we made adjustments, allowing us to quickly step up our political work among students, and in the varied campaigns and movements. But the US SWP refused to face facts, persisted in their turn, even "deepening" it, rolling it out again and again (I think they're in their fourth turn now). That's not the only factor contributing to the degeneration of the US SWP, but it was a major contribution—their refusal to face facts, and all the political distortions that flowed from that.

COMMENT: It was a sign of the health of the DSP that it rejected this workerist schema that the SWP tried to force down its throat. I would only hope that they dig deeper into the kind of internal culture that made such a counter-productive policy possible. I would suggest that this goes with the territory in "Leninist" formations and will eventually bite you in the ass, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.

JOHN PERCY: Lenin argued that a revolutionary party "is worthy of its name only when it guides in deed the movement of a revolutionary class".10 And again, "It is not enough to call ourselves the `vanguard', the advanced contingent; we must act in such a way that all the other contingents recognise and are obliged to admit that we are marching in the vanguard".

(clip)

Revolutionaries have to win that leading role, not "exercise" it, as the Socialist Party of Australia, now the CPA, and so many other little groups argue. You don't become a vanguard through a franchise. As Fidel Castro said in 1967:

Anyone can give themselves the name of "eagle" without having a single feather on their back. In the same way, there are people who call themselves communists without having a single communist hair on their heads. The international communist movement, to our way of thinking, is not a church. It is not a religious sect or a Masonic lodge that obliges us to hallow any weakness, any deviation; that obliges us to follow a policy of a mutual admiration with all kinds of reformists and pseudo-revolutionaries.

COMMENT: This is a pretty good section, even if it closely parallels something that a tired, petit-bourgeois, ex-Leninist like myself wrote--including the same exact quote from Castro.

JOHN PERCY: Over the years of our experience in building the DSP, we've developed a better understanding of how a revolutionary party operates. We adopted democratic centralism as our method of operating, but perhaps initially had a tendency to see it as a set of rules, a constitution. We developed a better understanding of the principles involved as we matured, and had more experience in actually building a party.

Simply defined, it's full freedom of discussion, and unity in action. "In the heat of battle … no criticism whatever can be permitted in [the party's] ranks", Lenin wrote. But before the call for action, the broadest possible discussion was needed. Understood properly, this is common sense, but it is vital for a successful revolutionary party.

COMMENT: This is okay as far as it goes. But discussion related to a specific action such as whether to participate in civil disobedience or not just scratches the surface. The big problem for "Leninist" organizations is that democratic centralism has tended to spill over into areas that it does not belong in. For example, is it breaking discipline for "Leninist" party members to challenge an *analysis* found in the party paper? In the American SWP and other such groups, party members are required to defend the line put forward in the newspaper or other official publications between party conventions, when they will have the opportunity to argue for a new line. This means that if an SWP member thought that the return of Elian Gonzalez to his father under the auspices of the INS was a good thing, he or she would have to keep it to themselves. In a nutshell, I have found that this encourages ideological slavishness of the kind that can in extreme instances lead to cult-like formations. As I stated above, we need ruthless criticism of all that exists, including party publications. Now I have heard one ex-member of the DSP, who still supports the party strongly, say here that the DSP does not discipline its members in this fashion, but I afraid that peer pressure of the kind I described above might play the same role.

Just a note to make it clear to cdes that "Bob Lyons" is not "Lyons" from the old SWG/GST in Canada - that was me, this is somebody else.

Sorry cde Ross, but this is my real name and I am from Canada, and a member of the Newsocialist network, and a former member of the YS/LSA and RMG, among other things (bush pilot, trade union organizer, NDP MLA, etc.)

The comments below are excerpted from an article I wrote criticising the Australian far left's organisational templates (especially the DSP of which I was a member from 1993-2009)

Loose Cannon
I am inherently skeptical of theories of “leadership building” and “organisational theory” on the left. The leadership requirements of a small isolated group of socialists are too removed from the broader situation, and become impossibly abstract when theorised. Timeless, eternal theories can seem very attractive, but only seek to draw the group’s attention further from the reality they (at least nominally) aspire to influence. Internal logic too easily replaces the need to correspond to reality. This is what has happened to the left’s organisational methods over the last 20 years or so. At worst, you end up with a cult-of-the-organisation, and there are seeds of that unattractive outcome in all the existing organised left.

To name one bad political influence, many have misused an insight of the 20th century US socialist James P. Cannon on leadership. In “Factional Struggle and Party Leadership”, Cannon wrote that “I believe, that just as truly as the problem of the party is the problem the working class has to solve before the struggle against capitalism can be definitively successful – the problem of the party is the problem of the leadership of the party.”

Cannon’s insight may be true in some senses, but if you interpret it in a reductionist sense (meaning all we have to do is train a party leadership) you end up with a introverted sect believing its day will come and it just has to prepare the leadership for that day. Not all the left groups study Cannon, but most still practice some version of this error.

(...)
Who wants to be a follower?
One of the more amusing moments of the DSP’s recent faction fight was when Melbourne branch assigned one minority and one majority supporter to work together in a campaign. The minority supporter demanded to know which of the two was “heading up” the DSP’s intervention. So if you ask two socialists to work together, they need to know who is in charge… wouldn’t the anarchists love that one!

The practical outcome of the “leadership-building” theory is that a section of the organisation are reduced to being followers: you can’t have leaders without followers. That term is of course avoided: they are up-and-coming leaders, leaders in training, loyal members doing our work. Of course our leadership is “inclusive”. We can even pay lip service to the IWW aspiration that all members are leaders, but in practice what happens is that a heirarchy is established with leaders and followers. It’s not about authoritarianism (although that can develop); it’s about where and how the decision making discussions happen.

At worst, the leadership can act like a clique (or permanent, undeclared faction) which manipulates the structure to maintain its position. Ideas are formulated at the top level, who then go to convince or instruct each lower body of their correctness, right down to the general membership. Of course, any member can voice a different opinion, but when you have the weight of a huge leadership pyramid coming down behind an idea, an individual member is unlikely to change much in a meeting.

And the leadership pyramid often is huge. Branch executive bodies in the DSP have often comprised half or even more of the active branch members. Too many chiefs, not enough indians! This leadership group formulate the proposals to put to the branch and act as a bloc in branch meetings. This method is common on the left. Actual clique activity was not the norm within the DSP leadership as far as I could see in my 17 years of membership, but the leadership structure and methods tend to replicate clique leadership problems regardless.

Since the internal leadership of a left group is usually so powerful (and often self-important, collectively if not individually), it can also hand-pick who is let into its own ranks in the same way it can swing the members behind its decisions. All the rhetoric about “inclusive” leadership and the most democratic of elections in branches do not negate the pressure of argument coming down from the leadership above in discussion and decision making and even voting. Having said that, the problem is not usually who gets elected, but how the elected body functions after that. It is a discussionocracy: those most involved in the discussions tend to be those most comfortable with the long discussions of leadership bodies, with the time or articulation skills, and they motivate to their ranks those most like themselves. But this does not necessarily reflect the most activist members, leading in struggles.

(...)
Homogenised... and pasteurised?
The DSP took pride in its long period through the 1980s and 1990s without serious faction fights, and in the level of “ideological homogeneity” which it had maintained. As the group on the left that paid the most attention to intensive Marxist education, with a one-month Party School (and schools of up to six months in the 1980s, held in a dedicated party-school building) ideological homogeneity is to be expected in some degree. But ideological homogeneity – a common reading of the ideas of Lenin, or the course of the Cuban revolution – can’t explain the homogeneity of practical discussion in branches where reports from the leadership are nearly always adopted without serious debate, where alternative proposals from the “rank-and-file” are rare (and even more rarely followed through).

The amount of attention paid to ideological “homogeneity” has its own overheads: it takes a lot of time to educate members on matters of history and theory. Yet as useful as a knowledge of history is, it does not automatically produce the ability to understand and relate to the present. And there is always the risk that the chosen historical lineage might be missing something. As a Philippine revolutionary once explained, in the Communist Party of the Philippines members were only ever allowed to read Lenin “with a Mao condom”, i.e. as quoted and interpreted by Mao. This problem applies to a lot of the left if you replace Mao with Cliff, Cannon, or whoever.

And in this atmosphere of homogeneity, real debate – over history or over current tactics – is difficult. Many leave left groups without ever really giving their reason: it’s hard to break out of group-think, it’s hard to know where your genuine disagreement trails off into negativity and many would rather just leave it behind them. Others who do express differences are often excused by, or accused of, “demoralisation” meaning that their opinion is allegedly worth little because of its subjective coloration. That denigrating response is called “poisoning the well” and is considered a dishonest ad hominem method of debate, but sadly, many of the leftists educated on so much detail of Lenin and Trotsky are not aware of such “everyday” subtleties. (I think even football players know it – having coined the phrase “play the ball, not the man!”)

Ideological homogeneity is a hallmark of left propaganda groups. In the best cases, it is achieved through rigorous education, but when idealised, it is another false friend: if real-world, current-day differences arise, it suddenly becomes apparent that the most ardent Leninists and Trotskyists and so on can come up with as many different assessments of the situation as individual members.

Propaganda with the narrow aim of self-promotion, and an heirarchical “leadership” cult-of-the-organisation go together. They share a commitment to the abstract ideal rather than the living experience. A young inexperienced activist can become an instant “leader” because of the organisation’s decision, because of their ability to organise their co-thinkers in the group, and articulate its propaganda, without needing any ability to relate to normal people outside. Insofar as this gives new members confidence, it is useful, but without the corrective of political interaction outside the organisation such “leadership building” is mostly an exercise in building a house of cards.

"Cannonism" should be neither idealised nor demonised. Everything depends on how it is applied in practice.

It seems to me that in the 1960s and early 1970s the US SWP did a pretty good job. It played a key role in building the movement against the war in Vietnam. It defended Cuba which was under severe attack from United States imperialism. It also supported a range of other movements such as the black struggle, womens liberation and gay liberation. As a result the party grew.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s the SWP made some major political errors, which set in motion a process of degeneration.

There is no recipe book, whether written by Cannon or by his critics, that guarantees against such mistakes.

Chris Slee

More on Cannon

By Chris Slee

In response to the debate about Cannon in Links, I re-read Cannon's pamphlet "The Revolutionary Party: its role in the struggle for socialism" (Pathfinder Press 1971).

The pamphlet contains a mixture of correct and mistaken ideas. It includes some assertions that are clearly wrong. However these do not originate with Cannon but with Trotsky.

The pamphlet also includes some statements about party-building that are correct in principle, but which can lead to sectarian errors if interpreted one-sidedly or applied wrongly. (Of course, the same could be said of Lenin).

Cannon argues that the need for a revolutionary vanguard party arises from the uneven political consciousness of the working class. He says that those workers and intellectuals who "grasp the requirements for revolutionary action...sooner than the bulk of the proletariat" must organise in a party to educate and lead the rest of the working class: "The earliest formations of advanced workers committed to socialism, and their intellectual associates..., must first organize themselves around a definite body of scientific doctrine, class tradition, and experience, and work out a correct political program in order to then organize and lead the big battalions of revolutionary forces" (p. 4).

I think this general argument is correct. But one potential problem with the above passage is that the reader may assume that once the "correct" program has been developed, there is no need to re-examine it in the light of new experience.

Another potential problem is that an over-emphasis on the "correctness" of doctrine and program may lead to unnecessary splits in the revolutionary movement.

Cannon says that while the vanguard party "begins as a minority of its class", it "should aim at all times to reach, move and win the broadest masses" (p.4). The work of the US SWP in building the movement against the Vietnam war as broadly as possible around clear demands was a good example of this.

Cannon says that: "The vanguard party cannot be proclaimed by sectarian fiat or be created overnight. Its leadership and membership are selected and sifted out by tests and trials in the mass movement, and in the internal controversies and sharp conflicts over the critical policy questions raised at every turn in the class struggle" (p. 7).

This is a correct general statement, but a one-sided emphasis on "sharp conflicts" can lead to unnecessary splits. An Australian example was the split in the Socialist Workers League in 1972 over revolutionary strategy in Latin America, which both sides later agreed was an unnecessary split.

The most clearly incorrect statement in the pamphlet is a quotation from Trotsky: "...the crisis of proletarian leadership...can be resolved only by the Fourth International". (p. 8)

Today, 72 years after its formation, the FI has not yet led any successful revolutions, whereas some other organisations (e.g. the Chinese and Vietnamese communist parties, and the July 26 Movement in Cuba) have done so.

Of course, we must recognise that some of these revolutions were led by deeply flawed organisations and created deeply flawed post-revolutionary states (e.g. China).

We should also recognise that some of the sections of the Fourth International have played a very positive role in a range of struggles. Nevertheless the idea that the FI will lead the world revolution seems, at this stage, extremely unlikely.

To be fair to Trotsky, he did acknowledge that forces other than the FI might perhaps play some role in making revolutions. In the Transitional Program he wrote: "...one cannot categorically deny in advance the theoretical possibility that, under the influence of completely exceptional circumstances (war, defeat, financial crash, mass revolutionary pressure, etc), the petty-bourgeois parties including the Stalinists may go further than they themselves wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie".

Cannon cites the above quotation, and adds: "In the postwar years these exceptional conditions in the more backward countries have been the prostration and collapse of the most corrupt colonial bourgeoisies, the weaknesses of the old imperialist powers in Europe and of Japan, and the mighty upsurge of the indigenous peasant and proletarian masses. Certain Communist leaderships were confronted with the alternatives of being crushed by reaction, outflanked by the revolutionary forces, or taking command of the national liberation and anticapitalist struggles. After some hesitation and vacillation, and against the Kremlin's advice, the Communist leaders in Yugoslavia, China and Vietnam took the latter course and led the proletariat and peasantry to power" (p. 9).

However, to cite "exceptional conditions" as an explanation for why revolutions were led by non-Trotskyist forces, while Trotskyists have not succeeded in leading revolutions, seems very inadequate.

Cannon says that: "The deformations of the regimes emanating from the revolutionary movements headed by the Stalinized parties, and the opportunism and sectarianism exhibited by their leaderships since assuming power, notably in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia and China, demonstrate that the need for organizing genuine Marxist parties is not ended with the overthrow of capitalist domination. The building of such political formations can become equally urgent as the result of the bureaucratic degeneration and deformation of postcapitalist states...." (p. 10).

Trotsky's analysis of the degeneration of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent extension of this analysis by the Trotskyist movement to apply to other post-revolutionary states, were important contributions to Marxist theory. However the FI did not succeed in building Marxist parties that could lead revolutions to replace the Stalinist regimes by democratic workers states.

Cannon goes on to discuss Cuba: "....the example of Cuba is often brought forward as proof that no party at all is required in the struggle for power, or that any kind of improvised political outfit will do the job. First of all, this involves a misconstruction of the political history of the Cuban revolution. The July 26 Movement had a small, close-knit nucleus of leaders, subjected to military discipline by the imperatives of armed combat. They had to construct a broader leadership in the heat of civil war against Batista. Once the Cuban freedom fighters had become sovereign in the country, they found not only that they could not dispense with a vanguard party, but that they desperately needed one. They have therefore proceded to construct one along Marxist lines and are still engaged in that task nine years after their victory." (p. 10-11)

Here Cannon makes some valid and important points, but the fact remains that the July 26 Movement, which led the successful struggle against the Batista dictatorship, was not a Marxist party (though some of its key leaders and cadres were Marxists).

Cannon goes on to discuss the struggle in the imperialist countries. He points out that the ruling class in these countries is much stronger than the ruling class in the oppressed colonial countries, and says: "Here the injunction to build revolutionary Marxist parties is absolutely unconditional" (p. 11)

He does however admit that: "The difficulties encountered by the Trotskyist vanguard over the past three decades show that there are no easy or simple recipes for solving the multiple problems posed by this necessity". (p. 11)

The experience of subsequent decades has confirmed that there are indeed "no easy or simple recipes". Nobody has yet made a successful revolution in an advanced capitalist country without a significant feudal legacy, so nobody has yet proven in practice that they have the answer. We still need to discover how to build mass revolutionary socialist parties in such countries.

Some of those who would like a "simple recipe" may think that Cannon's writings provide it. I don't think so. Nevertheless, the US SWP, prior to its degeneration, was one of the better attempts at building a revolutionary party in an imperialist country, so it is worth studying the writings of a man who played a key role in leading it.

In "The History of American Trotskyism" (Pathfinder Press 1972), Cannon says that: "Both splits and unifications are methods of developing the revolutionary party. Each, under given circumstances, can be either progressive or reactionary in its consequences. The general popular sentiment for unification all the time has no more political value than a preference for a continual process of splitting which you see taking place interminably in the purist sectarian groups....Splits are sometimes absolutely necessary for the clarification of programmatic ideas and for the selection of forces in order to make a new start on a clear basis". (p. 189)

As a general statement this is correct. But in the Trotskyist movement the main problem has not been a reluctance to split but a reluctance to unite.

In the 1984 book "The Struggle for Socialism in the Imperialist Epoch" (a resolution of the Socialist Workers Party, which was at that time the Australian section of the Fourth International, and which was later to be renamed the Democratic Socialist Party), we said that the Trotskyist movement was affected by "an inescapable pressure on small, isolated groups to retreat into the endless elaboration of the written program as a substitute for active involvement in the class struggle" (p. 93), and often had "an attitude towards other class-struggle or revolutionary currents that downplays their achievements and seeks for programmatic differences rather than practical agreements". (p. 95)

In an effort to break with this negative side of the Trotskyist tradition, the DSP took a range of inititatives for left unity, including the establishment of Green Left Weekly as a formally non-party paper, and the creation of Socialist Alliance.

But at the same time, we did not abandon the "Cannonist" ideas about the importance of a serious approach to party-building. Neither left unity nor involvement in mass struggles should be counterposed to the need to pay a lot of attention to party-building work.