James P. Cannon (1890-1974) helped build the American revolutionary left. Reared in a radical Midwestern household, he served a class struggle apprenticeship in the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the underground communist movement. From the founding of the Workers Party in 1921, Cannon guided the forces of United States communism. Increasingly disappointed in the international and domestic leadership of the revolutionary movement, Cannon eventually embraced Trotsky's criticisms of emerging Stalinism. When he was expelled from the Workers (Communist) Party in 1928, a particular age of U.S. radicalism had come to an end, but another was just beginning. Bryan D. Palmer's magisterial study is both a biographical treatment of Cannon's formative years as well as a richly detailed and passionately argued examination of a pivotal epoch of American radicalism. Meticulously and imaginatively researched, it brings to life a major figure in the underappreciated United States revolutionary tradition. It also recasts our understanding of those movements Cannon championed, from the Wobblies and Left-Wing of the Socialist Party to early communism and its decline under Stalinization.
"Bryan D. Palmer reinterprets the history of labour and the left in the United States during the 1930s through a discussion of the emergence of Trotskyism in the most advanced capitalist country in the world.
Marxism and Historical Practice bring together essays written by one of the major Marxist historians of the last fifty years
The two volumes of Marxism and Historical Practice bring together essays written by one of the major Marxist historians of the last fifty years.
Marxism and Historical Practice bring together essays written by one of the major Marxist historians of the last fifty years.
Can workers win? Bryan D. Palmer presents a detailed account of the Minneapolis teamsters' strikes of 1934 to suggest that working-class victories are possible, however bad the circumstances.
The Great Recession was the largest crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression and the largest crisis in neoliberalism to date, sending shockwaves throughout the global economy. States scrambled to...
By exploring these works through the organizing figure of crime during and after the age of high imperialism, Thompson challenges and modifies commonplace definitions of modernism, postmodernism, and popular or mass culture.
In this highly readable and thought-provoking work, Nick Dyer-Witheford assesses the relevance of Marxism in our time and demonstrates how the information age, far from transcending the historic conflict between capital and its laboring ...
Can workers win? Bryan D. Palmer presents a detailed account of the Minneapolis teamsters' strikes of 1934 to suggest that working-class victories are possible, however bad the circumstances.
Focusing on the ways in which literary or critical theory is being promoted within the field of social history, this book argues that the reliance on poststructuralism with its reification of discourse and avoidance of the structures of ...