The book is not solely about the past, noted Prairie, but about how best to take advantage of the openings that exist today to build proletarian parties as part of an international communist movement.

Some 75 people attended the meeting, held at the hall of the Greek Workers’ Association. Participants traveled to the event from Quebec City, Toronto, and Vancouver, as well as New York, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, and Paris. Among those who participated were members of the Communist League and Young Socialists in Canada, an activist in the Haitian community in Montreal, a student from Niger in West Africa, a worker from the Congo who is currently living in Toronto, and Socialist Workers Party and YS members from the United States.

The theme of the meeting was summed up in a banner hanging behind the speakers platform that read, "Build the Communist League and Young Socialists. Build the world communist movement." In addition to hearing a panel of speakers, participants enjoyed an excellent post-meeting dinner and dance.

The fact that the meeting was taking place in Quebec, home to millions of French-speaking members of the Quebecois nationality, represented an important milestone for the political work of the Communist League and Young Socialists. Having political literature available in French as well as English is essential for the construction of a nationwide revolutionary party in Canada.

Through many years of consistent work, the communist movement has published and kept in print six issues of Nouvelle Internationale in French, and a dozen titles by Pathfinder Press. This has made it possible for communist parties in other countries to reach out to working people whose first language is French, as well as to step up the distribution of revolutionary literature in France and other French-speaking countries.

"This is the first book published in French by Cannon, a proletarian revolutionist whose activity in the labor movement spanned six decades," said Prairie. "It is a central part of the continuity of the communist movement, as it describes the efforts to build an international communist organization in the great class battles and conflicts of the 20th century: the Bolshevik revolution of 1917; the rise of the Communist International and its degeneration under Stalin; the efforts of the supporters of Leon Trotsky such as Maurice Spector in Canada and Cannon in the United States to build a new international; the Great Depression; the tremendous workers’ upsurge in the 1930s; the rise of fascism; and the Second World War."

Prairie pointed to a front page article in the Montreal daily Le Devoir, which reported that every summer in Quebec 14,000 young people under the age of 18--many recruited through the primary schools--work in the fields harvesting cucumbers for Can$4 an hour and strawberries for as little as $2 a day at piece rate. He contrasted this extreme profit-gouging to the social relations that exist today in Cuba, where massive marches on June 13 in Havana and cities throughout that country brought millions of Cubans into the streets to reaffirm their socialist revolution and reject recent slanders by U.S. president George Bush.

"On the one hand you have the exploitation capitalism has to offer and, on the other, the future for humanity that socialism represents." The battle between these perspectives, said Prairie, "is the same battle described in Cannon’s book."

Co-chairing the event along with Prairie was Nancy Séguin, a sewing machine operator in Vancouver and a leader of the YS in Canada. Séguin pointed to the openings that exist for getting Pathfinder books into the hands of revolutionary fighters around the world.

She recently participated in a conference on "Socialism, the alternative for the world and Haiti," held in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. "In the two days of the conference 53 books, mostly in French, were sold to the young people who attended," she said. "This thirst for revolutionary answers was also evident at the World Festival of Youth and Students held in Algeria in August 2001."

Séguin also described the massive demonstrations led by the unions in British Columbia against plans to slash the jobs of government employees by one-third and to institute major changes in the labor code, including lengthening the workweek and drastically cutting the minimum wage, as well as the fight by Native peoples in defense of their rights. "The Communist League and Young Socialists are part of these fights as we root ourselves more in workers districts," she said.

An attractive photo display highlighting the participation of communist workers in some of these struggles in Canada and around the world was featured prominently at the meeting. The pictures also showed the renovation work by volunteers in the new Pathfinder bookstore in the Montreal workers district of Villeray.

"The publication of this book will help us to organize a summer school in the three basic languages of our movement--English, Spanish, and French," stated Prairie. "This is important because it enables working-class fighters, regardless of their national origin, to study these ideas in the language in which they’re most comfortable."  
 
Next steps in publishing program
Prairie outlined the ambitious next steps in Pathfinder’s French-language publishing program. The schedule calls for the publication by the end of the summer of the second edition of The Changing Face of U.S. Politics, including a new preface; and of Their Trotsky and Ours in book form with a new introduction; and the production of the second edition of Thomas Sankara Speaks, incorporating photo pages (known in the book trade as a "photo signature") by the end of the year. Cannon’s Struggle for a Proletarian Party will appear at the beginning of 2003. Also in the works for later next year are Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs and a new issue of Nouvelle Internationale.

L’histoire du trotskysme américain is to be followed by a Spanish edition of the book to be published in July together with a new English-language edition.

Both these titles will include the photo signature first compiled for the French translation. The 25 pages of photographs span the years of the Russian Revolution of 1917 to the beginning of World War II in 1939. Enlarged reproductions of these photos and the accompanying captions were displayed to striking effect around the meeting hall.

The 12 talks recorded in The History of American Trotskyism were given in the spring of 1942 in a workers’ hall in New York. The book was first published in June 1944 in the midst of World War II. At the time, Cannon and other central leaders of the Socialist Workers Party were serving jail terms after being convicted under the thought-control Smith Act for their revolutionary ideas. Cannon departed prison seven months later, resuming his role in leading the party.

In the book Cannon recounts the story of how he and Maurice Spector, a leader of the Communist Party in Canada, received copies of Trotsky’s critique of Stalin’s draft program for the Communist International in their capacity as members of the program commission at the Sixth Congress held in Moscow in 1928. While it was accidental that both these revolutionists found themselves on this commission, certain experiences were necessary for Trotsky’s views to get their attention.

Cannon later recalled that after reading Trotsky’s document what had struck him most was how sloppy he had gotten over the previous several years in thinking about politics from a world perspective. You can’t fight effectively in any country without starting with a world program, he explained.

In the foreword to the 1929 edition of The Third International After Lenin, Trotsky wrote about the discussion that ensued at the program commission meeting, which had a big impact on both Cannon and Spector.

"At the congress, the Program Commission posed the question of what was to be done with a critique whose author had not only been excluded from the Communist International but exiled to Central Asia," wrote Trotsky, referring to himself. "Some timid and isolated voices were raised to say that one should also learn from one’s opponents and that correct thoughts remained correct, independently of who formulated them. However a much stronger group prevailed, almost without resistance or struggle. A respectable old lady--she was formerly Clara Zetkin [1857-1933, a longtime leader of the German labor movement]--said that no ideas emanating from Trotsky could be considered correct. She was merely carrying out a task given her behind the scenes. Assigning dishonorable tasks to people of unchallengeable reputation is the Stalin system."  
 
Openings to promote book in France
Flying in from Paris to participate on the panel was Derek Jeffers, an auto worker in the Peugeot plant and a member of the General Confederation of Workers. "This book appears for the first time in France at a time when a new government has been installed with the aim of reestablishing the competitivity of French imperialism," stated Jeffers, who together with several other supporters in France helped to translate and edit L’histoire du trotskysme américain and other Pathfinder French-language publications.

"It comes out at a time when the French bourgeoisie is preparing to deepen its offensive against workers in France with attacks on retirement rights, health and unemployment insurance, and by reinforcing the repressive arsenal of the state," said Jeffers. "But these attacks have sparked resistance involving demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of workers as well as strikes."

Jeffers described the political openings to distribute revolutionary literature in France. Pathfinder books have been placed in 25 bookstores in the Paris area, he noted. Five times the number of books were placed in these stores in 2001 as in the previous year.

"There are lessons for today’s fighters on every page of The History of American Trotskyism," stated Jeffers. "As with The Changing Face of U.S. Politics and Their Trotsky and Ours, the publication and distribution of this book can contribute a lot to a new generation of fighters who are looking for Marxism, for communism. It can help those fighters to avoid getting sidetracked" by those who in the name of communism and of Trotskyism called for a vote for the Gaullist candidate, incumbent French president Jacques Chirac, in the recent presidential elections.  
 
Reaching out to young people in Quebec
"This book is extremely important for us," said Alexandre Lampron, a leader of the Young Socialists in Quebec who also spoke at the meeting. Having L’histoire du trotskysme américain available, he said, gives socialists the opportunity to reach out to workers and young people in Quebec where the substantial majority of people speak French.

"The issue of national oppression is a life-and-death question for the Young Socialists in Canada," said Lampron. "Many young Quebecois stubbornly refuse to learn English in the mandatory English classes in school because it’s presented as the way to get ahead. The Québécois are discriminated against at all levels and English is still the language of advancement."

Lampron pointed to how the YS in Canada joins with others inside and outside Quebec in campaigning for Quebec independence, and how these efforts are part of building an international communist movement.

Lampron said he was particularly struck by the chapter of L’histoire describing the strikes and battles of the Teamsters union in Minneapolis in 1934. "At first, I looked at this chapter as a recipe for conducting a good strike," he said. "But what it really shows is how we can act as revolutionaries and class conscious workers to prepare for the big struggles that are coming."

Lampron described how members of the Young Socialists in Canada have gotten jobs in the garment industry and in meatpacking plants to be part of the efforts to build industrial fractions of the communist movement in these industries. Two days earlier 60 workers at the garment plant where Lampron works had been hospitalized after breathing toxic fumes. Some 3,000 others had been evacuated. For two hours the cops who were called kept the workers from leaving the parking lot and escaping the source of the danger.  
 
‘Historic step’ for communist movement
Another featured speaker at the event was Jack Barnes, national secretary of the SWP in the United States, the party founded by Cannon and other proletarian revolutionists. Barnes is the author of the preface to the new book.

The meeting marked a "historic step" in building the communist movement," said Barnes. He described the event as a celebration of the Communist League and the Young Socialists in Canada, and of the supporters of the movement, including those in France and Belgium, who had contributed to the publication of the new book.

The gigantic step forward taken in producing this title, he noted, "will prevent us from ever again publishing a new book of importance except in three languages."

It will also be less and less possible to produce a book without a photo signature. "These photos allow you to sit down with any fighter, whatever their language, and discuss what’s in this book," said Barnes. "You can have a whole class on just one picture."

To illustrate this point, Barnes referred to the photo of Nazi storm troopers taking over a union hall in Berlin in 1933. They’re doing it as a very casual thing, he noted, just strolling into the hall. This underlines Cannon’s point that "fascism triumphed without even a scuffle in the streets." This, he said, "is the worse and most demoralizing of defeats--a defeat without a battle."

Barnes emphasized the importance of the subtitle of the book, "Report of a participant." Like so many of the works of Lenin, which were also the accounts of a participant involved in building a revolutionary party, this book is the "generalization of practical activity. In fact analysis is impossible without this," he said.

The book has two main themes, said Barnes. One is the great change in the world brought about by the 1917 events in Russia, in which the Bolsheviks demonstrated how to make a socialist revolution, defend it, and selflessly offer it to the world. The second theme involves the fact that the book was written by a participant in the class struggle, recording experiences and lessons for fellow fighters who are communist and for those who don’t yet know they’re communist, he said.  
 
Proletarian social movement
In his remarks introducing Barnes, Michel Prairie drew an analogy between the period of isolation of the communist movement from 1928–32 that Cannon called the "dog days," and the experiences of the communist movement during the retreat of the labor movement in the 1990s. "We are perhaps today in a period like that of 1932 when the labor movement began showing signs of renewed activity," he said.

The book being celebrated at the meeting, said Barnes, helps prepare workers and youth to face the kind of period that is unfolding. Today, as in 1932, it is possible to see the initial elements of a proletarian social movement that are necessary to transform the union movement.

Although there are no social movements of the proletariat today, there are individual fighters who are not only involved in particular fights but who also show up at other struggles, the SWP leader said. No one knows, he emphasized, how long it will take to go from a period like that of 1932 to the kind of rapid developments seen in 1934, when major strikes in Toledo, Minneapolis, and San Francisco paved the way for the labor upsurge that built the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO).

Great changes are not just opportunities for a revolutionary party, but can also lead to it being shattered, said Barnes. "Any party not completely proletarianized and prepared will shatter in the face of these opportunities."  
U.S. rulers plan preemptive strikes
The SWP national secretary also commented on some key developments in world politics. In several major speeches presented by U.S. ruling class spokespeople over the past couple of weeks, including President George Bush’s address at West Point on June 1 and a couple of talks presented by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a course of action was unambiguously laid out towards taking preemptive action against north Korea, Iraq, and Iran, said Barnes. These countries, described by Bush as the "axis of evil," have been singled out for attack because they have the economic capacity and technical ability to develop and deploy intermediate range intercontinental ballistic missiles and pose a challenge to U.S. imperialism’s drive to dominate the world.

"We must assume the U.S. rulers will do what they say," Barnes said. Washington intends to take preemptive action, knowing, for example, that the Koreans have tested missiles that can reach Alaska, and the Iranians already have missiles that can reach Europe.

This is being put together simultaneously with the U.S. rulers’ approach to "precrime," said Barnes. The rulers’ "preemptive strike" at home is aimed at stopping someone before they even prepare to commit a crime. Among the steps they’re taking are the detention without charges of U.S. citizens as well as noncitizens, and fingerprinting visitors to the United States.

"The fight to carry out preemptive strikes against the enemy abroad is an extension of their strikes against the enemy at home," he said.

The SWP leader commented on the bourgeois propaganda campaign around the danger of "dirty bombs." Working people should never forget "that there was a time when dirty, filthy bombs were used," said Barnes, dropped by the U.S. rulers themselves on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. These bombs "had even more of an effect afterwards" in killing and maiming tens of thousands of people.

In the Middle East, in the face of decades of brutality, "wave after wave of courageous young people will not stop fighting. But they cannot find a program to fight effectively," said Barnes. This is one example of the remaining effect today of the Stalinist record of blocking the road toward forging a revolutionary leadership. As a result, many Palestinian fighters who step forward are organized by one or another radical bourgeois outfit--backed by regimes in Syria, Iran, or Iraq--and diverted from a course of building revolutionary organizations, he said.

Although there are communist nuclei in only a few countries in the world today--a world communist movement will only be built through the "blood and hell of the coming decades," Barnes noted--the resistance of working people will continue. "The book translation and publication program presents the record of fighters, learning a fighting tradition, and renewing our fights. "This is our preemptive work" for the battles that are coming, he said.

Meeting participants responded enthusiastically to a fund pitch to help finance the next steps of the French publishing program, contributing some $1,300 to this effort.

Róger Calero from New York and Patricia O’Beirne from Toronto contributed to this article.
 

Volunteers have also had quite a bit of success visiting high school libraries in the Toronto area. So far seven have ordered Pathfinder books. One school librarian ordered 83 titles at a total value of $1,600. BR> 
 

Related article:
Additions to political arsenal  
 
 
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