Notebook of an Agitator
Copyright © 1958, 1973, 1993 Pathfinder Press
Contents
Preface to the first edition
13
James P. Cannon
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Part 1: International Labor Defense, 1926–1928
For Sacco and Vanzetti
With all our strength for Sacco and Vanzetti!
Who can save Sacco and Vanzetti?
The international campaign for Sacco and Vanzetti
From the Supreme Court of the capitalists
to the supreme court of the laboring masses
A speech for Sacco and Vanzetti
Death, commutation or freedom?
No illusions!
New developments—new dangers
Class against class in the Sacco and Vanzetti case
The murder of Sacco and Vanzetti
A living monument to Sacco and Vanzetti
Frank Little
The cause that passes through a prison
The second annual conference of the
International Labor Defense Eugene V. Debs C.E. Ruthenberg The cause of the martyrs
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21
22
24
28
30
35
38
41
44
48
50
57
63
68
75
80
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Notebook of an Agitator
Copyright © 1958, 1973, 1993 Pathfinder Press
A Christmas fund of our own
William D. Haywood
Tom Mooney’s appeal
A visit with Billings at Folsom Prison
A talk with the Centralia prisoners
89
91
97
99
103
Part 2: Minneapolis, 1934
Strike call of Local 574
‘. . . If it takes all summer’
Eternal vigilance
Spilling the dirt—a bughouse fable
Drivers’ strike reveals workers’ great resources
Thanks to Pine County farmers
The secret of Local 574
What the union means
113
117
120
124
127
129
131
134
Part 3: San Francisco, 1936–1937
Is everybody happy?
The maritime strike
In the spirit of the pioneers
Deeper into the unions
The color of arsenic—and just as poisonous
Four days that shook the waterfront
The champion from far away
After the maritime strike
139
141
146
150
152
157
163
170
Part 4: New York City, 1940–1952
Bandiera Rossa
Union boy gets raise
Finland and Greece
Good-by, Tom Mooney!
The tribe of the Philistines
A letter to Elizabeth
What do they know about Jesus?
Think it over, Mr. Dubinsky
178
180
184
188
191
197
200
202
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Notebook of an Agitator
Copyright © 1958, 1973, 1993 Pathfinder Press
The lynching of ‘Monsieur Verdoux’
The mad dog of the labor movement
The treason of the intellectuals
A blood transfusion
Farewell to a socialist pioneer
A rift in the iron curtain
The two Americas
Sixtieth birthday speech
205
210
217
224
226
229
236
241
The Korean War
A letter to the President and members of the Congress 251
Second letter to the President and
254
members of the Congress
Third letter to the President and
256
members of the Congress
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The Big Wheel
1. The mind molders at work
2. The men who mold people’s minds
3. What is a man profited?
4. The writer and the people
259
263
267
271
To the men who gave their skin
A welcome to visiting preachers
What goes on here?
Barbary Shore
The incident at Little Rock
From Karl Marx to the Fourth of July
275
278
281
284
291
295
The Stalinist ideology
1. Back in the packing house
2. The art of lying
3. The importance of loving Stalin
4. The bureaucratic mentality
5. The revolutionist and the bureaucrat
300
303
308
312
316
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Notebook of an Agitator
Copyright © 1958, 1973, 1993 Pathfinder Press
The importance of justice
1. Speaking of trials and confessions
2. The matter of justice
3. The dirt on their own doorstep
4. Justice in the U.S.A.
321
325
329
334
The prize fighters
1. Murder in the Garden
2. A dead man’s decision
337
340
Crime and criminals
1. A petition for Harry Gross
2. Crime and politics
3. They strain at a gnat
4. The big swindle
344
348
352
358
The Catholic Church
1. From Hollywood to Rome
2. Church and state
3. The Protestant counter-attack
363
367
371
Stalinists and unionists
1. Some chickens come home to roost
2. A trade-union episode
3. The tragic story
377
381
385
Whittaker Chambers’ revelation
1. The informer as hero
2. False witness
3. The informer’s message
389
393
397
Tentative action on the civil rights front
The battle of Koje Island
The doctor’s dilemma
402
405
409
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Labor and foreign policy
How we won Grace Carlson and how we lost her
412
416
Part 5: Los Angeles, 1954
The case of the legless veteran
‘The irrepressible conflict’
In honor of Laura Gray
Notes for a historian
423
429
433
438
Fascism and the workers’ movement
1. Notes on American fascism
2. Perspectives of American fascism
3. First principles in the struggle against fascism
4. A new Declaration of Independence
5. Fascism and the Labor Party
6. Implications of the Labor Party
443
446
451
455
459
462
Joseph Vanzler
466
Glossary
471
Index
485
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Notebook of an Agitator
Copyright © 1958, 1973, 1993 Pathfinder Press
Preface to the first edition
This book consists of a selection of articles written for various
publications in various places over a stretch of thirty years.
They begin with the campaign to save Sacco and Vanzetti
from the electric chair in Massachusetts and end in 1956
with a memorial tribute to an attractive intellectual figure,
a friend and collaborator of the author, who gave his best
years to the socialist movement.
As the title of the book indicates, the articles are definitely
partisan. James P. Cannon has been in the thick of the fight
for socialism since 1910. His apprenticeship was served in the
IWW under Vincent St. John. With the Russian Revolution of
1917 he became a Leninist, participated in the founding of the
American Communist party, and was soon recognized as one
of its top leaders. Along with others of like view, he was summarily expelled in 1928 at the Kremlin’s insistence when, in
the struggle against the then new phenomenon of Stalinism, he
defended the position of Leon Trotsky. The expelled grouping,
continuing to defend the program of revolutionary socialism,
developed eventually into the Socialist Workers Party.
In 1941 Cannon was one of the defendants in the Minneapolis labor case. For opposition to imperialist war and advocacy
of socialism, he and seventeen others, including prominent
Minneapolis union officials, were sentenced to Federal prison
for terms varying from a year and a day to sixteen months.
The case attracted nation-wide attention, as the victims were
the first ones under the notorious Smith Act.
Notebook of an Agitator is a sampling of socialist journalism at its best. Objective, factual reporting in the light of
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Notebook of an Agitator
Copyright © 1958, 1973, 1993 Pathfinder Press
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Marxist analysis is inspired with the insistence upon action
that a participant in the class struggle is bound to feel. For
one of Cannon’s outlook, this, of course, means action calculated as to its effectiveness. That is why we see, for example,
in the articles on Sacco and Vanzetti scathing indictment of
the frame-up of these two anarchist workers combined with
cool political consideration as to the best course to take in
winning their freedom. Cannon, it should be mentioned, was
not speaking as a side-line commentator but as the National
Secretary of the International Labor Defense and a key figure
in arousing the nation-wide protest movement that sought
to save the two famous victims of capitalist “justice.”
Of the many strike struggles in which Cannon has been
involved, two are represented here. In the 1934 battles that
converted Minneapolis from an open-shop to a union town,
he writes as a spokesman of the union forces that successfully stood off the strikebreaking combination of employers,
police, national guard, government officials and top union
bureaucrats. In the 1936–37 West Coast maritime strike, as
editor of the San Francisco socialist newspaper Labor Action,
he takes a hard look at the Stalinist-influenced strategy that
endangered one of the most powerful, but quietest, strikes
the country has ever seen.
The final two sections, covering the longest period, are the
most varied. The prize fighters, the intellectuals, the movies,
the Korean war, the Catholic Church, Stalinist ideology, American fascism, visiting preachers, crime and criminals, a blood
transfusion, the Fourth of July . . . these are typical topics.
What do such disparate subjects have in common from
the viewpoint of a socialist agitator? Or, putting it another
way, what’s different about the socialist approach to them?
If these questions interest you, try the Notebook of an Agitator for the answers. I can recommend the search as both
stimulating and rewarding.
Joseph Hansen
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Notebook of an Agitator
Copyright © 1958, 1973, 1993 Pathfinder Press
James P. Cannon
James Patrick Cannon was born in Rosedale, Kansas, on
February 11, 1890, into a working-class family. He joined
the Socialist Party in 1908 and the Industrial Workers of
the World in 1911. In the IWW Cannon worked with Vincent St. John, William “Big Bill” Haywood, and Frank Little,
organizing, writing, and speaking in defense of striking
workers. A leader of the Socialist Party left wing after the
Russian Revolution, he became a founder of the communist
movement in the United States in September 1919 and was
elected to the Central Committee of the United Communist Party in 1920. When the Workers Party was founded in
1921 as the legal arm of the communist movement, Cannon
was elected its national chairman. One of the key leaders of
the CP during its first decade, he served on the Presidium
of the Communist International in Moscow (1922–23) and
was executive secretary of the International Labor Defense
(1925–28).
While attending the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern in 1928, Cannon was won over to the fight, led by
Leon Trotsky, to continue Lenin’s battle against the counterrevolutionary policies of a growing privileged social layer
headed by Joseph Stalin. Expelled from the CP later that
year he became, with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern, a
founding leader of the Communist League of America and
served as editor of its newspaper, the Militant.
Cannon was a founder of the Socialist Workers Party in
January 1938 and a participant in the founding conference
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of the Fourth International held in France later that year,
where he was elected to its International Executive Committee. Convicted in 1941 with seventeen other leaders of the
SWP and of the Midwest Teamster strikes and organizing
drives for opposing the imperialist aims of the U.S. government in World War II, Cannon served thirteen months at
Sandstone penitentiary in 1944–45.
Cannon was the national secretary of the SWP from 1938
until 1953. Thereafter he was the party’s national chairman, and later national chairman emeritus until his death
on August 21, 1974.
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