"As weeks and weeks went by, I didn't hear a single one of the defendants say a single word of loyalty to this government and this flag...." So declared the federal judge as he sentenced 18 leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and labor movement to prison for opposing WWII on the day the U.S. entered it.
The loyalty of these leaders was to the working class of the world. This meant opposing their own ruling class and its government, and leading a movement to replace it with a workers and farmers government.
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Here are more than thirty speeches, given over four decades and documenting sixty years of labor and radical history. They cover an extraordinary range of topics: the relationship of socialism and democracy, the struggle against war, the famous Minneapolis Labor Case, Trotskyism and Stalinism, the fortunes of the Russian revolution, and the road ahead for revolutionary youth. (from the back cover)
This volume of the writings and speeches of veteran communist and socialist leader James P. Cannon traces the response of the Socialist Workers Party to the challenge of the postwar world. Cannon and the American Trotskyists rejected the idea that American imperialism would be unshakeable for a whole historic period, or that the struggle for socialism was outmoded. Included here are Cannon's writings on the 1945-46 strike wave; the rebuilding of Trotskyists parties in Europe; the beginning of the cold war; and the SWP's assessment of the Soviet Union and Stalinism - what remained progressive in the USSR and what must be opposed by champions of socialist democracy.
James P. Cannon (1890-1974) was a unique figure in American socialist and labor history. He was an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World from 1911 to 1918, and a member of the left wing of the Socialist Party. In 1919 he became a founding leader of the American Communist Party, was elected to its Political Committee, and served on the Presidium of the Communist International in Moscow in 1922-23, where he worked with Trotsky, Zinoviev, and other Communist leaders. Won to Trotsky's side in 1928 in the dispute with Stalin, Cannon was expelled from the CP and founded the American Trotskyist movement, represented since 1938 by the Socialist Workers Party. (from the back cover)