In the first years of the consolidation of the Communist movement-that is, you may say, from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 until the organization of the Communist Party in this country two years later, and even for a year or two after that-the chief labor was the factional struggle against opportunist socialism, then represented by the Socialist Party. This internal struggle eventually led to a split and the formation of a separate organization, the Communist Party. There the program had been worked out and there, within the Socialist Party, the original cadres were shaped. As a matter of fact, the formal launching of the Party in September 1919, was simply the organizational culmination of a protracted struggle inside the Socialist Party. It was from the Socialist Party that the great body of Communist troops came. The Communist Party, which took organizational form in 1919, was originally the Left Wing of the Socialist Party. It grew out of the movement of the revolutionary workers in America in the pre-war and war-time period. The Communist Party itself grew out of the preceding movement, the Socialist Party, and, in part, the Industrial Workers of the World.
It arose directly from the Communist Party of the United States. Our movement which we call Trotskyism, now crystallized in the Socialist Workers Party, did not spring full-blown from nowhere. Despite all perversions and betrayals which have disoriented the movement from time to time, a new force has always arisen, a new element has come forward to put it back on the right course that is, on the course of orthodox Marxism.
Marxism has never lacked authentic representatives. That is, the uninterrupted continuity of the revolutionary Marxist movement. When you study the particular period I am going to speak about in this course-the last thirteen years-or any other period since the time of Marx and Engels, one thing is observable. No doubt, in reading the literature of the Trotskyist movement in this country, you frequently noted the repeated statements that we have no new revelation: Trotskyism is not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival, of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and practised in the Russian revolution and in the early days of the Communist International.īolshevism itself was also a revival, a restoration, of genuine Marxism after this doctrine had been corrupted by the opportunists of the Second International, who culminated their betrayal of the proletariat by supporting the imperialist governments in the World War of 1914-18. Our public speaking activity as avowed Trotskyists really began here in this Labor Temple, thirteen, nearly fourteen, years ago. The speech was given not without some difficulties, for the Stalinists tried to break up our meeting by physical force. It was right here in this auditorium at the beginning of our historic fight in 1928 that I made the first public speech in defense of Trotsky and the Russian Opposition. It seems rather appropriate, Comrades, to give a course of lectures on the history of American Trotskyism in this Labor Temple. Subsequent issues of Fourth International will carry some of the other chapters of this book which fills a long-felt gap in the basic documents of the revolutionary socialist movement in the United States. The material contained in the first chapter was originally presented as a lecture in New York City on March 18, 1942. Cannon’s new book The History of American Trotskyism, scheduled for early spring publication by Pioneer Publishers. Original bound volumes of Fourth International and microfilm provided by the NYU Tamiment Labor Libraries.ĮDITOR’S NOTE: Reprinted below is the first chapter of James P. Source: Fourth International, February 1944. Letters to a Historian Fourth International February 1944 The First Days of American Communism James P.
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