James P. Cannon and the Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States, 1928-38

A presentation and discussion with author Bryan D. Palmer

Bryan D. Palmer reinterprets the history of labor and the left in the 1930s in the United States, while considering the emergence of Trotskyism in the most advanced capitalist country in the world. Focusing on Cannon as the founder of American Trotskyism, Palmer builds on his earlier book, James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928 (2007), with a deeply-researched, elegantly-written study of Cannon and the Trotskyist movement in the United States from 1928-38.

Situating this dissident communist movement within the history of class struggle, both national and international, Palmer examines how Cannon and others fought to revive a combative trade unionism, thwart fascism and the drift to war, refuse Stalinism’s many degenerations, and build a new Party and a new International, both of which would be dedicated to reviving and realizing the possibilities of revolutionary socialism. The result is a study that provides a definitive account of the largest and most influential Trotskyist movement in the world in the 1930s, a mobilization whose history recasts understandings of the more extensively-studied experience of United States working-class militancy and the place of the Comintern-affiliated Communist Party within it.

Bryan D. Palmer  is Professor Emeritus and former Canada Research Chair, Canadian Studies, Trent University, Peterborough, Canada. He is former editor of Labour/Le Travail, and has published extensively on the history of labor and the revolutiona3ry left, including the two-volume, Marxism and Historical Practice (Brill, 2015) and the co-authored, Toronto’s Poor: A Rebellious History (Between the Lines, 2016).

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