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BOOK REVIEW
| Bryan D. Palmer, James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 2007. pp. xx + 542. US $50.00 cloth.
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| Individuals form organisations to pursue a common cause. Other than having an interest in common, there will be a spectrum of personality types attracted to any particular cause. Some will want and/or assume leadership functions, while others will be happy to be directed and perform a myriad of functions determined by leaders. The different personas of leaders may range from a hedonist known for his fondness for cognac, foppish clothes, and revelling in a luscious bourgeois life; a vain person, conservative in dress and romantic in spirit, outwardly expressing propriety at the same time as being inwardly driven by a Messianic complex; a schemer, a veritable Tammany chieftain, feared for the files he keeps on others and genuinely despised by most of his opponents as well as a few of his followers; to a more rough and ready leader, plain spoken, easy going, a person seeking to build consensus amongst the various persons and factions attracted to the cause (pp. 203-4). |
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The common cause which is the subject of this book is the revolutionary Left in America, in the latter part of the nineteenth century to 1928, when a split occurred between Stalinists and Trotskyists. The focus of this study is James P. Cannon. Bryan D. Palmer claims that 'No figure worked more diligently and more persistently to Americanise communism ... [as] the only vehicle capable of driving varied discontents and anti-capitalist impulses forward to a mass revolutionary party' (p. 18). Palmer maintains that because of Cannon's excommunication from the party, following his conversion to Trotskyism, he has been written out of the history of the revolutionary Left in America. This book is designed to overcome this defect. |
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Palmer provides an exhaustive account of Cannon's life and his place in the various machinations of the revolutionary Left. The work is thoroughly researched drawing on a wide range of sources. Almost 30 per cent of the book comprises footnotes and bibliographic material. Besides details concerning Cannon's early life – his drift away from a somewhat dissolute youth into a revolutionary – the book essentially examines the pluralism that existed within leftist forces and the never ending faction fights and power plays between these groups and leaders hungry for power. In turn, such faction fighting is exacerbated by changes in policies emanating from Moscow, following the death of Lenin, as Stalin began his dance with potential competitors and abandoned world revolution for the pursuit of socialism in one country. |
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In essence, this book is little more than a study in the factional fights and splits that existed amongst revolutionary forces in this era. Palmer continually informs us that America, in these years, was not ripe for revolution. Moreover, he documents the oppression of large numbers of 'radicals' by state and vigilante forces. Added to this, state spies had thoroughly penetrated revolutionary and radical groups. Despite the thunderous rhetoric of various comrades there is no hint of attempts to replicate the activities of the Bolsheviks of 1917. |
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Given their inability to bring about revolutionary change, the activities of leading figures were devoted to producing documents about what needed to be done, criticising each other for false thinking, and with increasing inventive. Such invective was further complicated by those wishing to curry favour with glorious Russia; or more correctly, attempting to work out which way the winds were blowing, or were likely to blow, in Moscow. Besides generating mountains of documents, major protagonists then spent time writing memoirs and/or being interviewed and then reminiscing about why they said or did such and such and providing insights about each other at various times in seeking to assert and/or maintain dominance over each other. Palmer has mined this information in a relentless search for any or all nuggets of information in the historical record. He has produced a multi-layered account of the pluralism that existed in American revolutionary forces, from the perspective of one of the protagonists involved in these struggles. |
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| University of Melbourne |
BRAHAM DABSCHECK | |
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