James P. Cannon and the Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States, 1928-38 / / Bryan D. Palmer.

• Superior document: Historical Materialism Book Series ; 232
• VerfasserIn: Palmer, Bryan D.,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden;, Boston : : BRILL,, 2021.
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Historical Materialism Book Series ; 232.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource.

Bryan D. Palmer reinterprets the history of labour and the left in the United States during the 1930s through a discussion of the emergence of Trotskyism in the most advanced capitalist country in the world. Focussing on James P. Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism, Palmer builds on his previously published and award-winning book, James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928 (2007), with a deeply-researched and elegantly-written study of Cannon and the Trotskyist movement in the United States from 1928-38. Situating this dissident communist movement within the history of class struggle, both national and international, Palmer examines how Cannon and others fought to revive a combative trade unionism, thwart fascism and the drift to war, refuse Stalinism's many degenerations, and build a new Party and a new International, both of which would be dedicating to reviving and realizing the possibilities of revolutionary socialism. The result is a study that provides a definitive account of the largest and most influential Trotskyist movement in the world in the 1930s, a mobilization whose history recasts understandings of the more extensively-studied experience of United States working-class militancy and the place of the Comintern-affiliated Communist Party within it.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments -- List of Figures -- Introduction: James P. Cannon and the "Prince's Favors" -- Hope and the Dog Days -- Historiography's House of Mirrors -- Mirror Image Refusals -- Analytic Alternative -- Cannon and the History of American Trotskyism -- 1 An American Left Opposition -- Exile Off Main Street -- Stalinism Consolidating -- Stalinist Slow Dancing: Guile -- Picking up the Pace: Gangsterism -- Recruiting the American Left Opposition: Three Phases -- Cannon: Caretaker of the Original Left Opposition Cadre -- Recruitment's Second Phase: Stalinism's Heavy Hand -- "An Army of a Million People": Hungarians, Italians, Finns, and Immigrant Birth Controllers -- A Publication Program -- The Founding of the Communist League of America (Opposition) -- 2 Dog Days -- Downturn: Economic Depression -- "Left Turn": Revolutionary Politics and the Third Period -- Dimensions of Cannon's Crisis: Material Being -- Dimensions of Cannon's Crisis: Reconstituted Families and Domestic Complications -- Dimensions of Cannon's Crisis: Rose Karsner's Break-Down -- Cannon's Collapsing World: The Personal Becomes Political -- The Weisbord Whirlwind -- Branch Bickerings: New York Cliquism and Youth Recruits -- Factional Waystation: June 1932, National Committee Plenum -- Factionalism Internationalized: The Turn to Europe -- International Intervention -- Dog Days Denouement: New Turns -- Internal Ironies -- 3 Daylight: Analysis and Action -- 1933-34: Past, Present, and Future -- Context: Revival/Reorientation -- The Long and Trying March Back to a Labor Party Perspective -- Black Oppression in America: National Self-Determination vs. The Revolutionary Struggle for Equality -- The Momentum of Mobilizations: Unemployed and Labor Defense Work -- Miner Militants: Cannon's "Bona Fide Proletarians" -- B.J. Field: A Napoleon among New York's French Chefs -- Dawn of a New Left Opposition Day -- 4 Minneapolis Militants -- General Strike -- Class Relations in Minneapolis -- Trotskyists among the Teamsters: Propagandistic Old Moles -- January Thaw; February Cold Snap: The Coal Yards on Strike -- Lessons of the Coal Yards Strike.

Strike Preparations: Unemployed Agitations and Industrial Unionism -- Overcoming "Bureaucratic Obstacles" -- The Ladies/Women's Auxiliary -- Rebel Outpost: 1900 Chicago Avenue -- The Tribune Alley Plot and the Battle of Deputies Run -- May 1934: Settlement Secured; Victory Postponed -- Stalinist Slurs -- Farmer-Labor Two Class Hybrid vs Class Struggle Perspective -- Interlude -- Toward the July Days -- A Strike Declared; A Plot Exposed -- Bloody Friday -- Labor's Martyr: Henry B. Ness -- Martial Law/Red Scare -- Olson: The Defective "Merits" of a Progressive Pragmatism -- Standing Fast: Satire and Solidarity -- Mediation's Meanderings -- Sudden and Unexpected Victory -- 5 Entryism -- 1934: Militancy and Marginalization's Movement -- The French Turn -- Cannon, Trotsky, and the Preparatory Ground of Entryism: Transcending the "Organic Unity" Imbroglio -- Fusion with the Musteites -- Building the Party amid Fusion's Fallouts -- Anticipating the French Turn -- Americanizing the French Turn: Factions and Combinations -- The Intensification of Oehlerite Sectarianism -- Ousting the Oehlerites -- Socialist Party Schisms and Workers Party Entry -- Prelude to Entry: Cannon in Harness and Muste's Conversions -- Entryism & Subordination -- A Farmer-Labor Detour and the Return of the Oehlerite Repressed -- Entry Proclaimed -- Cannon in California: The "Foot Loose Rebel" and the Agitational Road -- Entryist Estrangement -- The Return of the Prodigal Agitator -- Reaction from Above -- The End of Entry -- Assessing the French Turn in America -- 6 Trials, Tragedies, and Trade Unions -- 1937's Imperative: Assimilating Revolution's Recruits -- The Origins of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky -- The Non-Partisan Origins of Trotsky's Defense -- Dancing with Dewey -- Trotsky's Testimony -- Carleton Beals and Stalinism at Work in the Preliminary Sub-Commission -- Delimitation by Default -- Social-Democratic Delimitation -- Brand Barcelona on Centrist Foreheads: Trotskyism and the Spanish Civil War -- Trotskyism Finds its "Sea Legs": Cannon and the Maritime Federation of the Pacific -- Frame-Up in Minneapolis: Who Killed Patrick J. Corcoran? -- Trotskyism on the Line: Footholds in Mass Production and the CIO -- Conclusion: Party/International -- References -- Index.