[The following is the message sent from the elected leadership of the Fourth International and read at the Political Tribute to Jim Cannon.]
The death of Jim Cannon is a loss not only to the revolutionary Marxist movement in the United States, but to the world struggle for socialist revolution as well. Throughout his life Cannon embodied the best American traditions of militant class struggle, and combined those traditions with the recognition of the need for constructing the instrument essential for the victory of the proletarian revolution: the Leninist party and the revolutionary international.
He was able to play a crucial role in transforming that theoretical recognition into reality, fighting all his life to build that party in the strongest bastion of world imperialism.
From the IWW to the Socialist Party left wing, from the original American Communist Party to the International Labor Defense and the fight to free class-struggle prisoners like Sacco and Vanzetti, from the struggle in the Communist Party in defense of the Trotskyist program of revolutionary Marxism to the fight for a new party and a new international, from the days of his intimate collaboration with Leon Trotsky and the establishment of the Socialist Workers Party to the decades of activity in building and strengthening that party - Cannon was always guided by the profound conviction that without revolutionary leadership the struggle of the workers for a socialist world would be in vain.
Neither the Palmer raids nor the Smith Act trials, nor the McCarthyite witch-hunt, nor the constant and severe pressure of the American ruling class was able to deter him from acting resolutely on that conviction.
His more than six decades of revolutionary activity stand as an inspiration to the new forces in the world now rallying to the program and banner of the Fourth International. It is an inspiration that is not merely moral but practical as well, offering the richest lessons for the new generation of revolutionary fighters.
We all mourn the loss of this comrade and we pledge ourselves to continue the fight for the program, party, and goals to which Jim dedicated his long and fruitful life.
United Secretariat of the Fourth International held the party together in anticipation of a more favorable political climate. This began to appear in the 1960s. The 1,250 socialists who, at the time of his death, were gathered in Oberlin, Ohio, for the 1974 Socialist Activists and Educational Conference testify to the success of his effort to lay a solid basis for a revolutionary-socialist party in the United States.
In the tradition of the American 1108
Trotskyist movement, the conference at Oberlin held a "Political Tribute to Jim Cannon," at which party leaders and activists who had worked with Cannon during his long career paid homage to his contributions to the socialist movement.
Speakers at the meeting were Jack Barnes, national chairman of the Socialist Workers party; Karolyn Kerry, a comrade and co-worker of Cannon's for forty years; Andrew Pulley, national chairman of the Young Socialist Alliance; Peggy Brundy, one of a team of comrades who lived in the Cannon household during the last few years, sharing the chores and helping organize Cannon's work; Joseph Hansen, the editor of Intercontinental Press; and George Novack, collaborator with Cannon in the revolutionary-socialist movement for forty-one years. (Each of the speeches is reprinted in a special section of the September 6 Militant. Joseph Hansen's speech is also reprinted elsewhere in this issue.)
By the time the meeting of tribute was held, messages and telegrams from Cannon's comrades and friends had begun to arrive from around the world. Among those read at the meeting were messages from the elected leadership of the Fourth International (see box) and from Peng Shu-tse and Chen Pi-lan, founding members of the Chinese Communist party and the Fourth International.
In addition, the chairman of the meeting, Jack Barnes, singled out a from one message in sentence particular, because, he said, "it augurs so well for the future of Jim's contributions to party building all around the world."
The last sentence of this message, from the Frankfurt Gruppe Internationale Marxisten (Frankfurt members of the International Marxist Group, German section of the Fourth International), read: "We pledge to transmit Jim Cannon's message to the German working class by making a special effort to translate and publish his most valuable contributions to our common fight in Germany."
The editors of The Militant plan to publish other messages in coming issues as well as other material concerning the life and activities of Cannon.
The Oberlin meeting concluded by launching a financial campaign - the James P. Cannon Party-Building Fund - to help move forward the struggle to build the revolutionary-socialist party to which Cannon dedicated his life. Participants at the meeting contributed or pledged more than $50,000 toward this effort.
Readers who wish to share in this effort are invited to send their contributions to the James P. Cannon Party- Building Fund, 14 Charles Lane, New York, N. Y. 10014.