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

Bryan D. Palmer is Professor Emeritus and former Canada Research Chair, Canadian Studies, Trent University, Peterborough, Canada. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, former editor of Labour/Le Travail, and has published extensively on the history of labour and the revolutionary left, including the two-volume, Marxism and Historical Practice (Haymarket, 2016) and the co-authored, Toronto's Poor: A Rebellious History (Between the Lines, 2016).

• Preface and AcknowledgmentsList of FiguresIntroduction: James P. Cannon and the “Prince’s Favors”1  Hope and the Dog Days2  Historiography’s House of Mirrors3  Mirror Image Refusals4  Analytic Alternative5  Cannon and the History of American Trotskyism1 An American Left Opposition1  Exile off Main Street2  Stalinism Consolidating3  Stalinist Slow Dancing: Guile4  Picking up the Pace: Gangsterism5  Recruiting the American Left Opposition: Three Phases6  Cannon: Caretaker of the Original Left Opposition Cadre7  Recruitment’s Second Phase: Stalinism’s Heavy Hand8  “An Army of a Million People”: Hungarians, Italians, Finns, and Immigrant Birth Controllers9  A Publication Program10  The Founding of the Communist League of America (Opposition)2 Dog Days1  Downturn: Economic Depression2  “Left Turn”: Revolutionary Politics and the Third Period3  Dimensions of Cannon’s Crisis: Material Being4  Dimensions of Cannon’s Crisis: Reconstituted Families and Domestic Complications5  Dimensions of Cannon’s Crisis: Rose Karsner’s Break-Down6  Cannon’s Collapsing World: The Personal Becomes Political7  The Weisbord Whirlwind8  Branch Bickerings: New York Cliquism and Youth Recruits9  Factional Waystation: June 1932, National Committee Plenum10  Factionalism Internationalized: The Turn to Europe11  International Intervention12  Dog Days Denouement: New Turns13  Internal Ironies3 Daylight: Analysis and Action1  1933–34: Past, Present, and Future2  Context:Revival/Reorientation3  The Long and Trying March Back to a Labor Party Perspective4  Black Oppression in America: National Self-Determination vs. The Revolutionary Struggle for Equality5  The Momentum of Mobilizations: Unemployed and Labor Defense Work6  Miner Militants: Cannon’s “Bona Fide Proletarians”7  B.J. Field: A Napoleon among New York’s French Chefs8  Dawn of a New Left Opposition Day4 Minneapolis Militants1  General Strike2  Class Relations in Minneapolis3  Trotskyists among the Teamsters: Propagandistic Old Moles4  January Thaw; February Cold Snap: The Coal Yards on Strike5  Lessons of the Coal Yards Strike6  Strike Preparations: Unemployed Agitations and Industrial Unionism7  Overcoming “Bureaucratic Obstacles”8  The Ladies/Women’s Auxiliary9  Rebel Outpost: 1900 Chicago Avenue10  The Tribune Alley Plot and the Battle of Deputies Run11  May 1934: Settlement Secured; Victory Postponed12  Stalinist Slurs13  Farmer-Labor Two Class Hybrid vs Class Struggle Perspective14  Interlude15  Toward the July Days16  A Strike Declared; A Plot Exposed17  Bloody Friday18  Labor’s Martyr: Henry B. Ness19  Martial Law/Red Scare20  Olson: The Defective “Merits” of a Progressive Pragmatism21  Standing Fast: Satire and Solidarity22  Mediation’s Meanderings23  Sudden and Unexpected Victory5 Entryism1  1934: Militancy and Marginalization’s Movement2  The French Turn3  Cannon, Trotsky, and the Preparatory Ground of Entryism: Transcending the “Organic Unity” Imbroglio4  Fusion with the Musteites5  Building the Party amid Fusion’s Fallouts6  Anticipating the French Turn7  Americanizing the French Turn: Factions and Combinations8  The Intensification of Oehlerite Sectarianism9  Ousting the Oehlerites10  Socialist Party Schisms and Workers Party Entry11  Prelude to Entry: Cannon in Harness and Muste’s Conversions12  Entryism & Subordination13  A Farmer-Labor Detour and the Return of the Oehlerite Repressed14  Entry Proclaimed15  Cannon in California: The “Foot Loose Rebel” and the Agitational Road16  Entryist Estrangement17  The Return of the Prodigal Agitator18  Reaction from Above19  The End of Entry20  Assessing the French Turn in America6 Trials, Tragedies, and Trade Unions1  1937’s Imperative: Assimilating Revolution’s Recruits2  The Origins of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky3  The Non-partisan Origins of Trotsky’s Defense4  Dancing with Dewey5  Trotsky’s Testimony6  Carleton Beals and Stalinism at Work in the Preliminary Sub-commission7  Delimitation by Default8  Social-Democratic Delimitation9  Brand Barcelona on Centrist Foreheads: Trotskyism and the Spanish Civil War10  Trotskyism Finds its “Sea Legs”: Cannon and the Maritime Federation of the Pacific11  Frame-Up in Minneapolis: Who Killed Patrick J. Corcoran?12  Trotskyism on the Line: Footholds in Mass Production and the CIOConclusion: Party/InternationalReferencesIndex

“Like Palmer’s earlier works, this book is imbued with the spirit of the struggles it brings alive. A scholarly goldmine, its contribution is not just to the studying and writing of labour revolutionary history, but to the task of making it.” —S. Sándor John, Labour / Le Travail