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American Theses: 80 Years (I-V)
Eighty years after it was adopted, Looking Backward upon the 1946 SWP manifesto "Theses on the American Revolution" authored by seminal Trotskyist James P. Cannon reveals, among other things, that two of his historical observations of the post war milieu which informed the party platform--labor ascendance and American hegemony--have changed. The analysis of the period's preeminent Trotskyist party was right then. But the inheritors of the American leftist tradition must recognize and adapt to the new revolutionary conditions. [1]
Revolutionary optimism based upon a radicalized labor movement represented by a vanguard party was part of Cannon's platform. He wrote the American Theses at the end of a period of increased labor militancy between 1935-46 spurred by the CIO in the growing war economy. The conditions changed (peace in 1945 among other things) and the period of labor militancy ended in 1947. The retrospective introduction [2] explains three of the methods by which America's ruling class ended the period of labor ascendance and reestablished the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
The first two methods were political disorientation. The revolutionary impulse was adsorbed by capitalist liberals and authoritarian Stalinists. The third method, "reconstruction of West European and Japanese capitalism" through programs like the Marshall Plan. This massive public investment in reconstructing (and developing) private industries is indicative of the neoliberal impulse within American Century imperialism which matured as the World Bank and IMF. Neoliberalism also includes off-shoring jobs and capital infrastructure. The Neoliberal period altered the ascendant labor that Cannon saw. Compared to the 1940s, the material conditions of today's labor movement are deindustrialized (service-oriented), disorganized and unrepresented. Psychological observations of the movement are: unconscious and self-destructive.
Cannon's Theses depend on increasing American labor militancy through the vanguard SWP. He defends the "basic revolutionary perspective" in his post facto introduction even though the labor component had evaporated. The decline of labor radicalism after the optimistic "Theses" were published is contrary to the expectation of labor ascendance.
An other condition of the "Theses" that has changed since 1946 is the "dominant world position of American imperialism." Cannon predicted the short term American Century would be buoyed by unsustainable developments, consumptions and expenditures--that the crisis of 1929 were never solved, only the military spending of WWII made it appear over. Since these were precarious conditions the period they allowed was also unstable. Since then, it appears the contradictions of capital, investment and monopoly that caused the global Great Depression in 1929 still haven't been addressed. Instead, a permanent war economy has powered much of the reliable growth and balanced saggy portfolios ever since WWII ended. This war economy allowed American Exceptionalism to appear as material reality but it was debt financed (another indication of the American Century) and basically bankrupted the country, decimated the infrastructure and now holds the 401(k)s of citizens hostage.
Today American imperialism is not hegemonic and American labor is not relevant. Both were replaced (or outsourced) during the Neoliberal period in which the military was privatized and workforce exported. Profits were the only thing made in America by the great corporations of the de-industrial period. It has become common practice to off-shore those too. No longer are there structural checks on aggression nor is there a market for goods made in America. Under these conditions, the vanguard party cannot possibly be made up of American exceptionalists or laborites. This class has missed its historical opportunity to lead the internationalist revolution and now must recede back into the imperial core for the sake of the movement. The American Century is also indicated by a nationalist hubris that Cannon is both fostering and utilizing. From an internationalist perspective: no one wants to take direction from Ugly Americans even if they are bona fide Marxists. The American left cannot lecture the world about funding health care, education or peace without revealing their hypocrisy.
These two conditions--labor ascendance and American hegemony--were integral to the 1946 Trotskyite analysis, program and the subsequent revolutionary socialist programs that have followed. American exceptionalism--notably the unrivaled productive capacity and unquestioned imperial domination--was a short term period allowed by the destroyed world market following WWII. America's Exceptional period was followed by an apparent dialectical opposite: its Neoliberal period.
The party platform of the "Theses" was designed for an American economy developed enough to "direct[ly] impact...all the forces and contradictions that have debilitated the old capitalist countries of Europe." These contradictions--so it goes--become more incongruous as the economy develops more completely. The American economy after WWII was the most developed economy in the and would eventually succumb to the internal contradictions of capitalism (monopolies, labor, etc...). It was also the largest economy in the world so it's socialist revolution (caused by the contradictions of capitalism) would impact global consciousness and material conditions in an unprecedented manner.
That was true when Cannon was writing and American controlled state and corporate entities [3] commanded capital and production worldwide. Today, the BRICS countries control more productive parts of the world economy than the American "free trade" world. The petro-dollar has collapsed. America's sanctions regime has become unwieldy. Freedom of navigation, international criminal courts and the rules based order are no longer relevant concepts to the global population (partially because Americans during their hegemonic century seldom observed them). Under these developmental conditions it is unlikely that the countries and blocs that have eclipsed American power in the modern era will negotiate with Washington in good faith or reverse the generations of sanctions when the capital starts to flow out of New York.
Cannon's observations of material reality meant America's "economic prerequisites for the socialist revolution are fully matured" was true then. But now these prerequisites have degenerated or atrophied or changed since then. The modern absurdist turn of American politics was unlikely in 1946 but is not unprecedented--a fascistic takeover by bouffant moron reality TV star is no different than a dribbling cowboy actor, dancing sketch comedian or failed painter. America appears at times a democracy of Dada-esque nonsense, or of a republic of structurally deformed mechanisms, or the politics of superstructural kabuki facade. The revolutionary potential of this arrangement is controlled by tech oligarchs, intellectual property compilers, venture capitalists and the think-tank staff of incompetent and sometimes decomposing corpses who populate the government.
Until a clear picture of seemingly the self-destructive tendencies of the post-Cold War American body politic emerges it is impractical for any leftist to participate in the electoral system. The recent resurgence of the DSA following "The Squad" (2018) is the legacy of a disoriented group former SWP members who broke from the Trotskyist SWP in 1985 to chase liberal elections. [4] These kids have yet to experience enough elections "stolen" by structural obstacles, dark money, party intervention, illegal surveillance and detention or unfounded innuendo--they still believe in American democracy. But, any student of leftist opportunism from EV Debs to Bernie Sanders can weave a narrative of imprisonments, deportations, executions and character assassinations that nave not moved the proverbial arc of history any closer to social justice since the I.W.W. was the revolutionary organization of the moment.
Many of the Trotskyists that remain after the DSA liberals split have continued to organize as fractions within the bureaucratic labor unions. Organized labor in America has been unfavorable for Trotskyist and revolutionary socialist organization since (at least) Jimmy Hoffa. It appears American organized labor was structured Second International purgatory even as global leftism developed as the Stalinist COMINTERN, Trotskyist Fourth International and "third world" movements like Bolivarianism and Pan-Africanism. Even the "socialist within a country" Stalinists had an internationalist platform through the Warsaw pact. The Maoists came to the aid of the Juche Kims in Korea. The American left didn't have a militant internationalist vitality on the scale of any of these post Second International evolutions of thought. Instead of internationalist democracy America labor developed bureaucratic local trade unions.
Arguably, one reason the American labor movement was so ill-equipped for the displacement of Neoliberalism is because it didn't engage in the same theoretical evolution of historical materialism that happened elsewhere--to include internationalist solidarity. Instead, the American labor movement enriched itself on the spoils of American imperialism. When it became profitable to move the factories and jobs to the recently annexed colonies in Central America and South East Asia there was no "Look for the Union Label" program that could counteract the skyrocketing cost of living--and commensurate wage demand--in America.
General strikes and sit-ins employed by Trotksyists in Minneapolis Teamsters Local 574 (1934)--were the modus operandi to deal with the early failures of FDR's New Deal regime, outlawed and abandoned during WWII. The general strike and sit-down today are not popularly seen as labor tactics as much as civil rights, student movements, pacifism or environmentalism. The bulk of labor that remains in this country are the children of those who split off from the left to cash in on the Military-Industrial Complex. Everybody else--auto, steel, electronics, whatever--is done cheaper and better everywhere else on the planet by former subalterns who were trained by American companies and work machines built to American specs. [5]
In this current paradigm there is no industrial labor force in America to organize. It is a marvel that there is enough of a labor class to maintain the consumer economy. The bulk of radicalism in the modern mode of production are in the so-called knowledge economy. Organizing this bunch of professors, assistants, artists and writers is, of course, bunk cheese nonsense for babies. The only relevant organizing base in the modern American economy is the service sector. Both creatives and servers are legitimate proletarian labor. But, unlike the American Century's industrial mode of production, there is nothing that a service worker makes that can be exported. Also, the creatives working for financial gain are always limited by their proximity to capital and are therefore illegitimate (or at least suspect) as artists. Organizing the rest of the riff-raff--graffiti taggers, limerick writers, street buskers, media pirates and web hackers--might be more of a cultural feat than a proletarian labor problem because these people own the means of their production (free speech, imagination, iconoclasm, etc...).
In the third thesis Canon describes the different economic conditions at the end of each WWI and WWII. After both wars, the American empire was the preeminent economy. WWI didn't upset the "world market" but the European infrastructure that exploited it was wiped out. "American capitalism..." took over--"heavy" and "light" industries expanded into the void left by the European empires. America's "imperial participation" in WWI was an investment that returned "many times...accruing economic gains." WWII, on the other hand, destroyed everything but the Western Hemisphere and the "world market [was] completely disrupted." After WWI, America took over European colonial possessions and the continent became a market for American goods. After WWII, American tax payers reconstructed the European capitalist markets that had been destroyed. Europe in the later context was a "drain" not a market.
The comparison of international (and to a lesser extent internal) market conditions following the two wars from Thesis III reinforces the two main observations of Cannon's analysis--trending labor ascendance and temporary American hegemony--and instructs his followers to organize America's laboring class as the vanguard of the internationalist revolution. This might have been true in the 1940s. Today this class doesn't currently have the numbers, consciousness or experience to be organized--they are lumpen at best and traitorous at worst.
Cannon understands "short lived prosperity" can have unexpected impacts on long term movements. This is how the Trotskyists explain the unlikely American Exceptionalism through a "virgin continent", balanced between farmers and industry, focused on internal market expansion. When these temporary conditions inspired reinterpretations of classical economics and revisions of Marxism. These material conditions changed in 1929 and the new paradigm, that resulted in the Great Depression, still remains. It is military spending, imperial exploitation, austerity and privatization of the commons are the modern short term mechanisms to mask the internal contradictions of capital that have developed within America's political economy. When Cannon was describing a period of American labor preeminence and vanguardism it was a temporary proposition. It has passed. Whatever is the next short-term capitalist boon, perhaps mining asteroids, robotizing surveillance or desalinating the oceans, it will likely not be American investors who profit. It will definitely not be American labor.
The unreliability of the class consciousness which emerged from the Great Depression is hard to explain through materialism. It is almost presents like a psychological block or sleight of hand. It is predictable that labor militancy would rise after 1929. But the disorientation of FDR's New Deal, WWII Americanism and Cold War anti-Stalinism appears to have worked together to impede socialist development. Instead, the dictatorship of bankers has been deemed too big to fail by America's leaders. The threat since 1929 has been to keep funding the banks or American default will bring the world market to a grinding halt. Whether an internal market crisis in America would threaten the world market today is a matter of debate. Like all empires, America's global economic influence will continue to shrink as a percentage of the global market.
Cannon does differentiate between 1929 and the "cyclical crisis" that had come before as a natural part of "capitalist development" which created a productive economy. Instead, the 1929 crisis was a "major historical crisis of capitalism in decay." There was nothing that FDR could do and the "pump-priming", "brain-trusting" and emergency "reforms" couldn't end the crisis of decaying capitalism. WWII ended the Great Depression but didn't fix any of the problems which caused it. These are embedded within American capitalism.
From the 1940s, this argument is valid. But, from the 2020s there are two developments. First, the slow motion decay of the world capitalist market has been accompanied by the "opening" of all sorts of new markets to capitalist exploitation. Some of these new markets have been in Russia, China, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba--formerly, currently or nominally communist countries. The conquest of former socialist governments by late stage capitalist goons is the opposite of Cannon's vision of an ascendant internationalist labor vanguard triumphing over a bloated nationalist bourgeoisie. These are the types of internal contradictions that dialecticians study.
notes:
[1] The theses are not a "conjunctural document" according to the introduction on marxists.org. This means they are not about a temporary aberration of political economy that allows for revolutionary change. This is a method of thought used by Gramsci and also appears appears anarchist instead of Marxist. Trotskyists are infamously plodding in their praxis and dogmatic in their theory. This reputation benefits from long term world views. The anarchist impulse is satisfied in Trotkyists not by revolutionary attentat but instead by an anti-bureaucratic tendency learned from years of opposing Stalinist consolidation. Cannon words this distinction a little differently. The document is not about "tactics" or "strategy" instead it is about the "analysis and perspectives...in the broadest sense" as a shared reality--the "fundamental" and "objective factors that are making for a revolution" upon which future party platforms are based.
[2] The introduction posted to
Cannon, "The Coming American Revolution", The Struggle for Socialism in the "American Century" (Pathfinder Press: New York, 1977), pp. 291, 294.
[3] A great period list of these corporations was compiled by Smedly Butler "Who makes the Profits?" War is Racket 1935, pg. 5-9
In the Theses IV Cannon describes "Sixty Families" that control much of the national wealth. It is reminiscent of the modern "rule of seven bankers" period of Post-Soviet history (1996-2000).
[3] Percy and Lorimer, pg. 3
[4] on Local 574 see Le Blanc, pg. 26-7; on Hoffa see Le Blanc, pg 27.
image source:
"American Communists in Moscow: Max Eastman, James P. Canon, William D. Haywood" (March 1923) Chicago, IL:Soviet Russia Pictorial: Official Organ of the Friends of Soviet Russia Vol. VIII (January-December 1923) pg 45 hosted by Indiana University Library via HathiTrust as "Soviet Russia pictorial v.8 1923"; PD-Public Domain by date.
sources:
Paul Le Blanc "Trotskyism in the United States: The First Fifty Years" in Trotskyism in the United States ed: George Breitman, Paul Le Blanc and Alan Wald; 2nd ed, 2016. pg 9-108.
James P. Cannon "Theses on the American Revolution" adopted by the 12th National Convention of he SWP, November 1946. in Fighting for Socialism in the "American Century" via marxists.org [link] Chippendale NSW: Resistance Books, 2001.
Jim Percy & Doug Lorimer "The Democratic Socialist Party & the Fourth International" Chippendale NSW: Resistance Books, 2001.