of American Communism James P. Cannon was unique among the early leaders of American communism in remaining true to the socialist ideas of his youth. He fought against the rise of stalinism from its very inception, and in 1928 was won to Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition.
Cannon had been in the IWW, an agitator for the syndicalist industrial won over to communism during the west wave of labour radicalism whic swept the world in response to the 1912 Russian revolution. He went on to become a powerful orator and writer, a founder of the American communist movement which was born in 1919, and played a key role in foundmix we vrorkers rarty in 1921 This book includes Cannon's writass on the acoates walca wrackeo te party in the 1920s. He deals with the central question of a Labour Party in to right wing bureaucrat John in the Miners' union, the role of Wor, Lewis order to establish 'stable relations' with the bosses. For example, he began the war on communists in 1923. He took all class struggle phraseology out of the union's constitution, he abolished the check-off in anthracite and smuggled a form of arbitration into offered district agreements. The open reement. In the last negotiations he attack against the union and the loc kout is the answer of the bosses to all of these overtures of Lewis."
Yet Lewis himself played a key role in the formation of the breakawav COl in a split with the conservative AFL bureaucracy.
Art Preis, writing about the rise of industrial trade unions in the Thirties made the following observations in Labor's Giant Step':
"It is doubtful if the CIO would have been formed, or if the industria! as quickly as it did, if not for the exceptional qualities of Lewis. There have been a vile campaign to denigrate and discredit Lewis, to l low-rate his real role. Lewis has many weaknesses - political conservatism, blind belief in capitalism, contempt for union democracy which he shares with virtually all Lewis, with his boldness, his self-reliance, his aggressiveness and courage, stamping him as a man of superior