Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Communist Can(n)on
Questioning American Radicalism
Stalinism: What¿s in a Name
American Communism: Histories of Ambivalence and
Accomplishment
At the Point of Embattled Historiographic Production: The
Meanings of Theodore Draper
The Three Drapers
Communist Biography and Stalinism: James P. Cannon and the
Origins of the American Revolutionary Left
1. Rosedale Roots: Facts and Fictions
An American Birth
Fin-de-Siècle Context: Kansas in a World of Change
In the Shadow of the Irish Diaspora: England and America
The Industrial Frontier
Family Fortunes
A Boy¿s Life
Meanings
2. Youth¿s Discoveries
Mothers and Fathers and Adolescent Work
Early Encounters with Socialism
Education and the Discovery of Desire
The Limitations of Rosedale Socialism
3. Hobo Rebel/Homeguard
A Soapbox Apprenticeship
Traveling Man: A Vincent St. John Seasoning
Anarchy in Akron: Rubber Workers and the Mass Strike, 1913
Fast-Train Hoboing and Hell Popping in Peoria
A Solidarity of the Jail Cell: Marriage
Duluth and the Testing of Class-War Leadership: Gunmen,
Kidnappings, and Beatings
The Home Front: Cannon Back in Kansas
World War I and Revolutionary Doubt
The Personal Is Political: Radical Manhood
The IWW: The Great Anticipation
4. Red Dawn
1917: Revolution in the East; Repression in the West
Socialist Revival
A Revived Class Struggle
Browder and Cannon
A Revolutionary Press
A Fractious Left Wing
Foreign-Language Federations and the Dialectic of
Revolutionary Mobilization
Cannon and the Communist Labor Party
The Agitator¿s Return: Kansas Coal Fields, 1919
Caught in the Anti-Red Dragnet
5. Underground
A Suit of Clothes
The Divided Communist Underground
Bridgman Brokering: The Emergence of Cannon as a Potential
Communist Leader
A Cleveland Sojourn: Challenging Ultraleftism
New York: Bohemians and Clandestine Communists
Cannon, Consolidation, and an Above-Ground Party: Kansas
Charm and the Politics of Revolutionary Regroupment
6. Geese in Flight
Founding the Workers¿ Party
Undergroundism Unreconstructed
Cannon and the Struggle for an Activist Communist Party,
1922
The Birth of the Goose Caucus and the Turn to Moscow
7. Pepper Spray
The Americanizer¿s Return to America
Cannon on the Road Again: The Push and Pull of Party
Assignment
Pogany/Pepper
Communists Outmaneuver Themselves: Farmer-Labor Party
Illusions and Intrigues, 1923
Cannon, Foster, and Trade Union Combination, 1923
Pepperism Rampant
The Romance of Politics
The Third National Convention of the Workers¿ Party,
1923¿1924
8. Stalinist Suspensions
Of Factions and Foreign Domination
Labor Organization, Communist Education, and Sustaining
Collective Leadership
Blind Spot: ¿Women¿s Work¿
Race and Revolution
Pepper, Bureaucratism, and Permanent Factionalism
Farmer-Laborism, Again
Factionalism¿s Enigmatic Fulcrum: Ludwig Lore
Comintern Changes
Bolshevization and Electoral Campaigns
Lore, Escalating Anti-Trotskyism, and Factional Stalemate,
1924
Return to Moscow and Comintern Degeneration, 1925
¿Tearing Each Other to Pieces¿: Factional Gang War
Of Cables and Comintern Men: American Communism¿s Decisive
Subordination
9. Labor Defender
Bolshevization and Leninist Mass Work
Labor Defense and the Shifting Nature of Communist Trade
Union Work, 1923¿1926
¿Professionalizing¿ Nonsectarian Labor Defense
Press and Propaganda
Class-War Prisoners
Sacco and Vanzetti
Factionalism¿s Toll, 1927¿1928
10. Living with Lovestone
A Cannon Faction to End Factionalism, 1926
Ongoing Stalinization
Regrouping a Collective Leadership
Ruthenberg¿s Death and the Lovestone Coup
Stalinism and Lovestone Becoming Lovestone, 1927
The Lovestone Regime: A Right Lurch, 1927¿1928
11. Expulsion
Cannon and the Corridor Congress, 1928
The Temporary Eclipse of Foster
Cannon and a Canadian: Maurice Spector
Trotsky¿s Draft Program Surfaces
The Cannon-Dunne Split
A Clandestine Cannon
American Trotskyism Underground
Antoinette Konikow: Boston¿s Red Birth-Control Advocate and
Pioneer Left Oppositionist
Piecing Together Possibilities of an American Left
Opposition
Flushing the Trotskyists Out
Before the Court of Lovestone
¿Three Generals without an Army¿: Under Attack
How Communist Party Repression Organized Early American
Trotskyism
Chicago and Minneapolis: Centers of a New Movement
Trotskyism and the Communist Party: An Uncertain Future,
1928
Conclusion: James P. Cannon, the United States Revolutionary
Movement, and the End of an Age of Innocence
Revolution and Reaction
Communism¿s First Decade: The End of an Age of Revolutionary
Innocence
Stalinism at Work
Cannon and the Struggle for a Left Oppositionist Practice
Cannon¿s Legacy: The Theory and Practice of Building a
Revolutionary Party
Communist Continuity: The Significance of Revolutionary
Subjectivity
Notes
Index