Re: DSP on Cannon (Re: Camejo's article)

[Mark Lause <lause@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The American split was different.  There were three major "communist"
factions in sympathy with the Bolsheviks.  Draper's book is pretty good
on it.

The US Socialist organization had taken a strong antiwar stance, and the
Left had arguably won a majority of the membership by 1919.  The Hillquit
leadership set aside the results of a membership vote.  Cannon was in the
faction that wanted to make the fight over control of the party, along
with John Reed (a la the movie REDS).  Later, this became the Communist
Labor Party.

The entire Michigan organization got bounced in the course of all this.
This became the Proletarian Party.

Then, there were the Russian language groups believed they would get the
franchise from the revolutionary government and split right away and
started a Communist Party.  Their surviving documents make it quite clear
that they believed he process of splitting to be a kind of scientific
refinement, which had to take place in order to reach the exactly right
conclusion...after which, presumably, presto: a mass revolutionary party
appears.

For reasons of control, the international movement...expecially by the
mid 1920s favored this last, politically sickest version of American
communism.  Not surprising that the entire thing was stillborn in the US.

Solidarity!
Mark L.






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