RE: [Marxism] Trotsky and Cannon

["Mark Lause" <MLause@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Given Tim Wolhforth's position at the time anything he wrote _The
Struggle for Marxism in the United States_ was going to be guided by his
faith in the Apostolic Succession from Marx to Lenin to Trotsky to Gerry
Healy's version of Trotskyism.  That said, he did an unexpectedly better
job than anybody had a realistic right to expect.

His assessment of James Cannon and of Cannon's dawning awareness of
Trotsky's struggle in the USSR was, if not brilliant, exceptionally
enlightening.  Here, too, though Wolhforth's argument is weakened by the
fact that he was already nailed to a conclusion by his premises...before
having to make such an argument.  In particular, I don't think Cannon
was anti-intellectual.  Central to Cannon's revolutionary belief was the
idea that organization would be needed to make a revolution, that even a
small organization was preferable to no organization, and that even a
small organization isolated from the masses, riddled with agents, and
suffering compounded deformations as the years rolled by would be better
than nothing. The result of this approach leaves institutional loyalties
too often come to overshadow the ideas that should keep the group
coherent.  Wohlforth shares too much of this faith (or did in 1971) to
see this emphasis on "the party" at the expense of the ideas that are
supposed to hold the party together as anything other than
"anti-intellectualism."  Would that it were so simple.

Solidarity!
Mark L.







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