Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 12:12:42 -0400
Subject: M-G: The Cannon article!


James P. Cannonism, By Owen Gager.
>From Spartacist:  A Marxist Journal Vol 3 No 1 1973. 

Well Dave, I read the above article on Cannon you sent me.

What am I surpose to say. OK I defend Cannon as being a Trotskyist. However, 
I do believe that he did not as Trotsky pay enough attention to the 
International as he should have.

But this is far from the arguements put forth in the article and no 
justification for the politics that many of the groups represent today.

Many of his arguements appear to be superfiscal in a sense trying to blame 
the SWP and Cannon for Pabloism. Things like moving the office from New York 
to Detroit can be countered with the ICL perspective of moving the office of 
the International to Berlin which historically is in away the rightful 
place.Where as I think that the people fighting to be and "authority" 
immediately after the war with trotsky being dead connected to a generation 
shift of the more abrupt sort (the physical liquidation of the senior cadre 
in Europe) connected to the enormous pressure of the world and how it looked 
politically during this period.

In fact going back I am quite sure that all made some pretty horrible 
mistakes. The point is then some made less then others! Just as after the 
demise of the SWP of Cannon ( Healy going off the deep end) we saw a sharp 
shift to the right by all those claiming to be Trotskyist and even more so 
if we take the so called "Trotskyists" from the end of the war till today.

So I think that we have to look at this in a long perspective and see who 
did what and where connected to where they are now! Definitely no 
organisation has been entirely right. But the point is that I side with the 
anti Pabloites in this historic struggle despite their mistakes. With the 
demise first of Cannon's SWP in the direction of reformism and not to soon 
after Healy taking off to fucking Mars the only thing left in fact in the so 
called west was the Spartacists and their small group of smart asses 
fighting against the stream..

I could turn this around and pose the question of just why it was Cadre 
coming out of the SWP, earlier some from the Shactmanites, mainly in the 
United States that was the little band who desperately tried to keep up the 
programatic continuity?

Because at least for me this was and still is the case. In fact groups like 
yours can certainly thank Robinson and company for a whole fucking lot. 
Naturally we could go into the fact and this is true that the Spartacists or 
even better the remnants of Trotskyism unfortunately were very isolated and 
even more so when Healy took the dive. This even made it a more American 
centered tendency. To a certain extent I think it true that the Sparts did 
in the first years try and run every group like the American group.But it 
was not any kind of sinister plot but the hard facts of life that that is 
all there was to build from. THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE LEFT!

One should give them credit that they were determined to fight for the 
reforging of the f.I. and building parties or groups in every country of the 
world. Despite the American centeredness almost forced on to them. With the 
entire former International with Pablo or the SWP disppearing of into outer 
space and the Healyites soon after!

And this is certainly still a problem today with the American center. But 
when and if the tendency becomes more then a large propaganda group this 
will change otherwise something is seriously wrong. But we are certainly not 
their yet..

In the final analisis as we move beyond both the post war destruction of 
Trotskyism and in fact also Stalinism and Maoism connected to a new round of 
imperialist rivilry with the possibility of wars and revolutions many of the 
barriers in fact have been removed in a sense. Unfortunatel in a very 
negative sense. We are going to be forced to go back to classical and 
orthodox Bolshevism and in fact Trotskyism to confront the coming crisis and 
hopefully a lot of the polemical smoke and programmatic questions will 
become far more clear.

It will be that and the possibility of victory or a fucking missmash swamp 
of politics around the the leftovers of the last period or the orthodox hard 
Bolsheviks militants must be forced to choose between..

In fact we are beginning already to see a myriad of groups breaking away 
from the USEC, Healy's ex International and many different groups in Latin 
America a bit to the left but very very confused. But these are people under 
pressure of capitalist counter-revolution and attacks all across the line 
are seeing that these organisations do not represent Trotskyism. So perhaps 
the pendle is beginning to shift in the other direction with the deepening 
of the crisis. 

Another interesting development is that there are myriad of groups talking 
about "revolutionary regroupment" something that only a few years ago was 
those horrible sparts. 

History is going to force serious people hopefully in one way or another 
because events are going to prevent people from standing with their fingers 
up thier ass. And for me this is the Lenin, Trotsky, Cannon and Spartacist 
Tradition..No other way can I see a way out. So you pick sides and roll up 
your sleeves and fight like hell..

Out of all this let us hope that and FI will be reforged on a firm 
programmatic basis
because if we fail this time around..............

Warm regards
Bob Malecki
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