Vol. 81/No. 1 January 2, 2017
(Books of the Month column)
Class struggle will pose question of power. Who will win?
Below is an excerpt from America’s Road to Socialism by James P. Cannon, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for December. Cannon, a founder of the communist movement in the U.S., was national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party when he gave the five-part series of public forums in Los Angeles in December 1952 and January 1953 that make up the book. Cannon explains that the crisis of capitalism will inevitably lead to giant class battles and the decisive question will be whether the working class has the leadership to take political power. Copyright © 1975 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
The tumultuous developments of the class struggle, under conditions of a developing social cri-sis, will explode in all directions, in all phases. The various prospective developments on the political and economic fields can be put into separate compartments, and dealt with serially, only for convenience in a lecture. But in real life — this is not a fabricated prognosis, but a deduction from the history of the development of revolutionary crises everywhere in all past times — in real life, when the social crisis strikes, and especially when it develops and deepens, the developments will be simultaneous, interacting on each other in all fields. This is what history tells us.
Under Roosevelt and Truman, the labor leaders’ support of the imperialist government has been absolute and unconditional — and given in advance for any kind of crime on the international field. What was that monstrous policy of all the labor fakers based on? It was based on the purely selfish calculation that they, and a section of the American workers, would share in the spoils of world conquest. For that, they were willing to betray the world and all the people in it. They thought America’s foreign policy could be like England’s foreign policy in the nineteenth century, and yield the same results. By their conquest and enslavement of colonies and subject peoples, England’s capitalists became so rich that they could afford, out of the superprofits, to throw a few crumbs to the bureaucracy and aristocracy of labor, and by that they bought its support. It was the promise and prospect of such a sharing in the spoils that bought the American labor leaders’ support of American foreign policy. …
These labor “statesmen” will not be fit for leadership in the new situation, any more than the old AFL skates were fit for the leadership of the insurgent movement of the workers in the mass production industries in the sit-down strikes of the thirties. There will be no bargaining tables. No government boards to settle things amicably, recognize the union and give the workers a few more cents. That’s not going to be the bosses’ program at all. They don’t want to give a few more cents; they don’t want to recognize unions. They want to knock the hell out of the unions, so the workers will have no means of defense against the cutting of wages and living standards. That’s what is in the cards. No friendly compromises at the bargaining tables, but only mass battles and mass tests of strength.
The workers, under such conditions, must and will turn to militancy and throw up leaders of a new mold, just as the workers in the thirties threw up new trade-union leaders out of the ranks. And it is in just such a situation, when class collaboration is out the window and the class struggle is on the agenda, that the supreme expression of the class struggle, the revolutionary Marxist party, will get a hearing and become the mentor of the militant new staff of leaders arising out of the shops and the factories.
That’s the prospective change on the side of the working class — a change toward a new militancy, a new leadership, and the revolutionary political party rising in influence and power by virtue of its character and its program. And on the other side, the capitalists must and will discard all temporizing measures, cast off the democratic facade which they can no longer afford, and turn to wholesale violence against the workers. …
Now who will win? Upon the answer to that question, in my opinion, the fate of mankind will depend. Trotsky once referred to America as “the foundry where the fate of man will be forged.” That fate is going to be forged in the social crisis and the coming showdown battle between the workers and fascist capitalists for mastery of this land.
Who will win, in this greatest battle of all time, and of all places? That side, I say, will win which deserves to win. That side will win which has the will to win, and the consciousness that no compromise is possible. Power is on the side of the workers. They are an absolute majority of the population. And their strategic social position in industry multiplies the importance of their numerical majority at least a hundred times. Power is on their side. All they need is will, the confidence, the consciousness, the leadership — and the party which believes in the revolutionary victory, and consciously and deliberately prepares for it in advance by theoretical study and serious organization.
Will the workers find these things when they need them in the showdown, when the struggle for power will be decided? That is the question. We think they will. We think the workers and colonial peoples, in revolution throughout the world, will powerfully influence the American workers by their example. When all the world is in revolution, the American workers will remember their own ancestry and take fire too.
We think the American workers, who have never been Quakers, will demonstrate unexampled energy, courage, and decision when it becomes clear that their own destiny is at stake. We think they will find the consciousness, and therewith the leadership, for victory in the struggle for power. …
That’s why we belong to the Socialist Workers Party. That’s why we’re building it up. That’s why we’re inviting you to join us in the great work of preparation for the great tomorrow.
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home