Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 12:12:42 -0400 From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki) 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 ------------------------------------------------------- Check Out My HomePage where you can, Read or download the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara, Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball! And Now the International Communist League Page! Just push on the "Spartacist" Button. Or Get The Latest Issue of, COCKROACH, a zine for poor and working-class people. NEW! "RADIO TIME" In cooperation with Stratfacts, Bob Malecki will be giving occasional reports to Stratfacts Radio audiences in the United States. Text for these reports now on line. http://www.algonet.se/~malecki ------------------------------------------------------- --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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