James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928

Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Communist Can(n)on
	Questioning American Radicalism
	Stalinism: What’s in a Name
	American Communism: Histories of Ambivalence and Accomplishment
	At the Point of Embattled Historiographic Production: The Meanings of Theodore Draper
	The Three Drapers
	Communist Biography and Stalinism: James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left
1. Rosedale Roots: Facts and Fictions
	An American Birth
	Fin de Siècle Context: Kansas in a World of Change
	In the Shadow of the Irish Diaspora: England and America
	The Industrial Frontier
	Family Fortunes
	A Boy’s Life
	Meanings
2. Youth’s Discoveries
	Mothers and Fathers and Adolescent Work
	Early Encounters with Socialism
	Education and the Discovery of Desire
	The Limitations of Rosedale Socialism
3. Hobo Rebel/Homeguard
	A Soapbox Apprenticeship
	Traveling Man: A Vincent St. John Seasoning
	Anarchy in Akron: Rubber Workers and the Mass Strike, 1913
	Fast-Train Hoboing and Hell Popping in Peoria
	A Solidarity of the Jail Cell: Marriage
	Duluth and the Testing of Class-War Leadership: Gunmen, Kidnappings, and Beatings
	The Home Front: Cannon Back in Kansas
	World War I and Revolutionary Doubt
	The Personal Is Political: Radical Manhood
	The IWW: The Great Anticipation
4. Red Dawn
	1917: Revolution in the East; Repression in the West
	Socialist Revival
	A Revived Class Struggle
	Browder and Cannon
	A Revolutionary Press
	A Fractious Left Wing
	Foreign-Language Federations and the Dialectic of Revolutionary Mobilization
	Cannon and the Communist Labor Party
	The Agitator’s Return: Kansas Coal Fields, 1919
	Caught in the Anti-Red Dragnet
5. Underground
	A Suit of Clothes
	The Divided Communist Underground
	Bridgman Brokering: The Emergence of Cannon as a Potential Communist Leader
	A Cleveland Sojourn: Challenging Ultraleftism
	New York: Bohemians and Clandestine Communists
	Cannon, Consolidation, and an Above-Ground Party: Kansas Charm and the Politics of Revolutionary Regroupment
6. Geese in Flight
	Founding the Workers’ Party
	Undergroundism Unreconstructed
	Cannon and the Struggle for an Activist Communist Party, 1922
	The Birth of the Goose Caucus and the Turn to Moscow
7. Pepper Spray
	The Americanizer’s Return to America
	Cannon on the Road Again: The Push and Pull of Party Assignment
	Pogany/Pepper
	Communists Outmaneuver Themselves: Farmer-Labor Party Illusions and Intrigues, 1923
	Cannon, Foster, and Trade Union Combination, 1923
	Pepperism Rampant
	The Romance of Politics
	The Third National Convention of the Workers’ Party, 1923–1924
8. Stalinist Suspensions
	Of Factions and Foreign Domination
	Labor Organization, Communist Education, and Sustaining Collective Leadership
	Blind Spot: “Women’s Work”
	Race and Revolution
	Pepper, Bureaucratism, and Permanent Factionalism
	Farmer-Laborism, Again
	Factionalism’s Enigmatic Fulcrum: Ludwig Lore
	Comintern Changes
	Bolshevization and Electoral Campaigns
	Lore, Escalating Anti-Trotskyism, and Factional Stalemate, 1924
	Return to Moscow and Comintern Degeneration, 1925
	“Tearing Each Other to Pieces”: Factional Gang War
	Of Cables and Comintern Men: American Communism’s Decisive Subordination
9. Labor Defender
	Bolshevization and Leninist Mass Work
	Labor Defense and the Shifting Nature of Communist Trade Union Work, 1923–1926
	“Professionalizing” Nonsectarian Labor Defense
	Press and Propaganda
	Class-War Prisoners
	Sacco and Vanzetti
	Factionalism’s Toll, 1927–1928
10. Living with Lovestone
	A Cannon Faction to End Factionalism, 1926
	Ongoing Stalinization
	Regrouping a Collective Leadership
	Ruthenberg’s Death and the Lovestone Coup
	Stalinism and Lovestone Becoming Lovestone, 1927
	The Lovestone Regime: A Right Lurch, 1927–1928
11. Expulsion
	Cannon and the Corridor Congress, 1928
	The Temporary Eclipse of Foster
	Cannon and a Canadian: Maurice Spector
	Trotsky’s Draft Program Surfaces
	The Cannon-Dunne Split
	A Clandestine Cannon
	American Trotskyism Underground
	Antoinette Konikow: Boston’s Red Birth-Control Advocate and Pioneer Left Oppositionist
	Piecing Together Possibilities of an American Left Opposition
	Flushing the Trotskyists Out
	Before the Court of Lovestone
	“Three Generals without an Army”: Under Attack
	How Communist Party Repression Organized Early American Trotskyism
	Chicago and Minneapolis: Centers of a New Movement
	Trotskyism and the Communist Party: An Uncertain Future, 1928
Conclusion: James P. Cannon, the United States Revolutionary Movement, and the End of an Age of Innocence
	Revolution and Reaction
	Communism’s First Decade: The End of an Age of Revolutionary Innocence
	Stalinism at Work
	Cannon and the Struggle for a Left Oppositionist Practice
	Cannon’s Legacy: The Theory and Practice of Building a Revolutionary Party
	Communist Continuity: The Significance of Revolutionary Subjectivity
Notes
Index
Illustrations