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He opposed World War I from an internationalist position and rallied to the Russian Revolution in 1917. In 1919, he became a founding member of the Workers (Communist) Party (now known as Communist Party USA) and was part of its leadership from its earliest days serving as Party Chairman from 1919 to 1928 (the position was actually secondary to that of general secretary.
In the factionalised CPUSA in the 1920s Cannon was responsible for the International Labor Defense organisation from which he built a power base. His followers were loosely organised in the so-called FosterWilliam Zebulon Foster ( February 25 1891- September 1 1961), known as William Z. Foster was the long time general secretary of the Communist Party USA and trade union leader. Foster was born in Taunton, Massachusetts. His family moved to Philadelphia.-Cannon faction which looked to "native" American workers in the unions.
In 1928Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s Years: 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 See also 1928 in aviation 1928 in film 1928 in literature 1928 in mu, Cannon read a critique of the direction of the Communist International written by Trotsky which the Comintern had mistakenly circulated. He was convinced of the arguments, and attempted to form a Left Opposition within the W(C)P. This resulted in his expulsion. He then founded the Communist League of AmericaThe Communist League of America (Left Opposition was founded by James P. Cannon, Max Shachtman and Martin Abern in 1928 after their expulsion from the Communist Party USA for Trotskyism. The CLA (LO) was the United States section of Leon Trotsky's Interna with Max ShachtmanMax Shachtman ( September 10 1904 1972) is best known as an American Trotskyist theorist. After leaving the pro-Soviet Communist Party, Shachtman was a leader of the Socialist Workers Party and was the editor of its theoretical journal New International'' and Martin AbernMartin Abern born Martin Abramowitz (December 2nd 1898 ? 1949) was a Trotskyist politician. Born in Romania, he moved to Minneapolis in 1903 and joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1914. He refused to join the US Army during World War I and as a, and started publishing The Militant . It declared itself to be an external faction of the W(C)P.
Following the collapse of the CominternMoscow and Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) in May 1919. The slogan at the top says "proletarians of all countries, unite!" The Comintern (from Com munist Intern ational), also known as the Third International was an international Communist organization f in the face of Nazism in Germany they concluded with Trotsky that the Comintern could not be reformed and embarked on a struggle to build a new International and new parties.
This led Cannon and the CL to fuse with AJ Muste's American Workers Party and later, with their augmented forces, to join the Socialist Party of America as a faction. This led to an internal struggle with a faction which opposed fusing with the Socialist Party and which went on to form the Revolutionary Workers League , led by Hugo Oehler . In 1937 having recruited large numbers of people from the SPUSA's youth group, the Young People's Socialist League , they left the SPUSA and formed the Socialist Workers Party. Cannon became its first secretary.
Cannon was also a leading figure in the internatinal Trotskyist movement and visited Britain in 1938 with the intention of aiding the unfication of the competing British groups. The result was a patched together unification, the Revolutionary Socialist League, which rapidly disintegrated.
In 1940 Cannon's co-leader of the SWP, Max Shachtman, left with a large part of the membership to form the Workers Party. One of the key questions in this controversy was the political attitude to be adopted with reference to Russia. Contrary to popular legend, however, this was not the question that directly led to the split. Another blow was suffered during World War Two when Cannon was jailed under the Smith Act along with other SWPers. Even in jail however his influence on the SWP was strong and he wrote to change the party line on the Warsaw Rising.
Following the war Cannon resumed leadership of the SWP, but this role declined as he left the post of national secretary in 1953, and retired to California in the mid-1950s. However he was very much involved in the splits which developed in both the SWP and the Fourth International in 1952. He took no part in the various factional disputes that developed between 1963 and 1965, except to decry certain factionalism among his erstwhile supporters in a document entitled Do Not Strangle The Party. He died in 1975 in retirement.
A profuse revolutionary journalist, many of his articles have been collected in a series of books, the best known of which are Notebook of an Agitator and The Struggle for a Proletarian Party.
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