Socialism on Trial
By James P Cannon
Resistance Books, 1999
200 pages, $17.95
Available at Resistance bookshops (see page 2) or order at <http://www.resistancebooks.com>
REVIEW BY JON PICCINI AND STELLA RIETHMULLER
The Howard government used its Senate majority to force a raft of supposedly anti-terror legislation through parliament in December on the vague pretext of terrorists threatening the Australian way of life. One of the most disturbing components of these new laws is the changes to sedition legislation, making it an offence, punishable by seven years in jail, to provide support or assistance to the enemies of Australia's armed forces. It does not take much investigation to see through this legislation. It is an attack on the right of anti-war activists to oppose Australian military interventions around the world.
Governments attempting to use sedition legislation to silence their opponents is nothing new. A prime example was the trial of US Socialist Workers Party leaders in 1941. This is the subject of James P. Cannon's Socialism on Trial.
Cannon was a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party, its national secretary and a key figure in US socialist politics for over half a century. The SWP was legally targeted by the US government in 1941 as Washington prepared to enter World War II.
A group of 28 socialists and unionists, most of them members of the SWP, were charged under the 1861 Sedition Act with seeking "to bring about ... whenever the time seemed propitious, an armed revolution" in the US. The defendants were also charged under the newly passed Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act), with seeking to overthrow the government and spread insubordination within the armed forces.
The SWP leaders refused to follow the legal advice provided by their lawyers and, rather than water-down their socialist ideas, used the courtroom as a podium to explain the ideas of socialism in a popular way. At the same time however, the defendants tried to highlight the unconstitutionality of the Sedition and Smith acts, and appealed for their right to free speech under the US Bill of Rights.
Socialism on Trial has particular relevance for Australia today. While the SWP was faced with the very urgent task of fighting for the right to exist, it successfully turned the trial into an argument for socialism.
James P Cannon, in "Defence Policy in the Minneapolis Trial: Political Principles and Propaganda Methods", an essay published in Socialism On Trial along with Cannon's courtroom testimony, said "The task was to get a hearing for our ideas from the forum of the trial. These ideas had to be simplified as much as possible, made plausible to the workers and illustrated wherever possible, by American history. We had to address ourselves to the workers not in general, not as an abstraction, but as they exist in reality in the US in the year 1941."
Resistance Books' edition of Socialism on Trial includes the touching "Speech on the Way to Prison", in which Cannon says, "In this time, when the people of the world, and the people of America among them, needed one thing more than anything else — to know the truth — they were fed on lies. All those in public life, all the political parties; all the preachers, priests, and rabbis; all the intellectuals who had promised to instruct and educate and inform the youth — they all betrayed the people of America; they sold them out and went over to the camp of the liars and deceivers. Our party alone did not betray, did not sell out. We Trotskyists told the truth. That is the reason, and the only reason, we are on our way to prison."
Socialism on Trial is a timely reminder that government attempts to silence the left and progressive forces must be strenuously fought, even at the cost of personal liberty. It is both an inspiring and engaging work, with important lessons for activists in "war on terror" Australia today.
From Green Left Weekly, March 1, 2006.
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