Contents
Acknowledgments....................xiii
Introduction: The Communist Can(n)on....................1
Questioning American Radicalism....................1
Stalinism: What's in a Name....................4
American Communism: Histories of Ambivalence and Accomplishment....................7
At the Point of Embattled Historiographic Production: The Meanings of Theodore Draper....................8
The Three Drapers....................11
Communist Biography and Stalinism: James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left....................15
1. Rosedale Roots: Facts and Fictions....................21
An American Birth....................21
Fin de Siècle Context: Kansas in a World of Change....................22
In the Shadow of the Irish Diaspora: England and America....................24
The Industrial Frontier....................27
Family Fortunes....................29
A Boy's Life....................31
Meanings....................35
2. Youth's Discoveries....................39
Mothers and Fathers and Adolescent Work....................39
Early Encounters with Socialism....................42
Education and the Discovery of Desire....................45
The Limitations of Rosedale Socialism....................50
3. Hobo Rebel/Homeguard....................52
A Soapbox Apprenticeship....................52
Traveling Man: A Vincent St. John Seasoning....................57
Anarchy in Akron: Rubber Workers and the Mass Strike, 1913....................60
Fast-Train Hoboing and Hell Popping in Peoria....................67
A Solidarity of the Jail Cell:Marriage....................70
Duluth and the Testing of Class-War Leadership: Gunmen, Kidnappings, and Beatings....................71
The Home Front: Cannon Back in Kansas....................75
World War I and Revolutionary Doubt....................78
The Personal Is Political: Radical Manhood....................80
The IWW: The Great Anticipation....................85
4. Red Dawn....................87
1917: Revolution in the East; Repression in the West....................87
Socialist Revival....................89
A Revived Class Struggle....................93
Browder and Cannon....................94
A Revolutionary Press....................96
A Fractious Left Wing....................98
Foreign-Language Federations and the Dialectic of Revolutionary Mobilization....................100
Cannon and the Communist Labor Party....................106
The Agitator's Return: Kansas Coal Fields, 1919....................107
Caught in the Anti-Red Dragnet....................109
5. Underground....................113
A Suit of Clothes....................113
The Divided Communist Underground....................114
Bridgman Brokering: The Emergence of Cannon as a Potential Communist Leader....................117
A Cleveland Sojourn: Challenging Ultraleftism....................121
New York: Bohemians and Clandestine Communists....................126
Cannon, Consolidation, and an Above-Ground Party: Kansas Charm and the Politics of Revolutionary Regroupment....................128
6. Geese in Flight....................135
Founding the Workers' Party....................135
Undergroundism Unreconstructed....................141
Cannon and the Struggle for an Activist Communist Party, 1922....................145
The Birth of the Goose Caucus and the Turn to Moscow....................151
7. Pepper Spray....................166
The Americanizer's Return to America....................166
Cannon on the Road Again: The Push and Pull of Party Assignment....................168
Pogany/Pepper....................175
Communists Outmaneuver Themselves: Farmer-Labor Party Illusions and Intrigues, 1923....................177
Cannon, Foster, and Trade Union Combination, 1923....................188
Pepperism Rampant....................192
The Romance of Politics....................195
The Third National Convention of the Workers' Party, 1923-1924....................199
8. Stalinist Suspensions....................202
Of Factions and Foreign Domination....................202
Labor Organization, Communist Education, and Sustaining Collective Leadership....................206
Blind Spot: "Women's Work"....................208
Race and Revolution....................212
Pepper, Bureaucratism, and Permanent Factionalism....................219
Farmer-Laborism, Again....................222
Factionalism's Enigmatic Fulcrum: Ludwig Lore....................224
Comintern Changes....................225
Bolshevization and Electoral Campaigns....................229
Lore, Escalating Anti-Trotskyism, and Factional Stalemate, 1924....................231
Return to Moscow and Comintern Degeneration, 1925....................235
"Tearing Each Other to Pieces": Factional Gang War....................239
Of Cables and Comintern Men: American Communism's Decisive Subordination....................242
9. Labor Defender....................252
Bolshevization and Leninist Mass Work....................252
Labor Defense and the Shifting Nature of Communist Trade Union Work, 1923-1926....................254
"Professionalizing" Nonsectarian Labor Defense....................260
Press and Propaganda....................268
Class-War Prisoners....................272
Sacco and Vanzetti....................274
Factionalism's Toll, 1927-1928....................280
10. Living with Lovestone....................285
A Cannon Faction to End Factionalism, 1926....................285
Ongoing Stalinization....................291
Regrouping a Collective Leadership....................293
Ruthenberg's Death and the Lovestone Coup....................297
Stalinism and Lovestone Becoming Lovestone, 1927....................299
The Lovestone Regime: A Right Lurch, 1927-1928....................304
11. Expulsion....................316
Cannon and the Corridor Congress, 1928....................316
The Temporary Eclipse of Foster....................321
Cannon and a Canadian: Maurice Spector....................322
Trotsky's Draft Program Surfaces....................323
The Cannon-Dunne Split....................327
A Clandestine Cannon....................328
American Trotskyism Underground....................331
Antoinette Konikow: Boston's Red Birth-Control Advocate and Pioneer Left Oppositionist....................332
Piecing Together Possibilities of an American Left Opposition....................334
Flushing the Trotskyists Out....................336
Before the Court of Lovestone....................338
"Three Generals without an Army": Under Attack....................342
How Communist Party Repression Organized Early American Trotskyism....................344
Chicago and Minneapolis: Centers of a New Movement....................347
Trotskyism and the Communist Party: An Uncertain Future, 1928....................349
Conclusion: James P. Cannon, the United States Revolutionary Movement, and the End of an Age of Innocence....................350
Revolution and Reaction....................350
Communism's First Decade: The End of an Age of Revolutionary Innocence....................351
Stalinism at Work....................353
Cannon and the Struggle for a Left Oppositionist Practice....................355
Cannon's Legacy: The Theory and Practice of Building a Revolutionary Party....................360
Communist Continuity: The Significance of Revolutionary Subjectivity....................364
Notes....................371
Index....................527
Illustrations follow page....................284
