Online text of full essay here.

‘The Struggle For A Proletarian Party’ by James P. Cannon. Internal Bulletin. Socialist Workers Party. Vol. 2 No. 13. April, 1940.

James P. Cannon’s ‘The Struggle For A Proletarian Party’ was one of the last documents of the internal struggle within the Socialist Workers Party that roiled the organization between 1938 and 1940. The dispute on a number of questions, the most profound being the nature of, and orientation to, the Soviet Union ruptured the party the month this was published. A book was published under this title in 1943 which compiled letters, speeches, and documents of the fight in the Party, with this intervention by Cannon its core. It would become a defining text of the SWP for decades. Certainly one of Cannon’s most impactful and enduring works, ‘The Struggle For A Proletarian Party’ was reprinted by the SWP numerous times since.

Contents: The Struggle For A Proletarian Party by James P. Cannon, What the Discussion Has Revealed, A New Stage in the Development of American Trotskyism, Their Method and Ours, The Organisation Question, The Intellectuals and the Workers, The Case of Burnham, The Evil of Combinationism, Abernism: the Case History of a Disease, The Question of the Party Regime, ‘Conservatism, ‘Bureaucratism’, The ‘Clique’ and the ‘Leader Cult’, The Proletarian Orientation. 24 pages.

The U.S. Trotskyist movement began official, semi-regular internal bulletins to host political debate and discussion as the Communist League of America in 1930. In 1931, an International Bulletin was also produced running through 1934 to separate out the international debates. After the formation of Workers Party of the United States bulletins continued. With the entry of the Workers Party into the Socialist Party in the ‘French Turn’ internal bulletins were discontinued. In a reflection of the different size and resources of the CP, the CLA-WP-SWP bulletins were largely mimeographed rather than printed. A new set of Bulletins for internal discussion of the newly formed SWP in January of 1938 were produced, as well as another International Bulletin for discussion of the founding of the Fourth International. As a whole, these bulletins, unlike the internal bulletin of the CP, focus on long-form debate and internal discussion of Party resolutions and policy with the movement’s top leaders and thinkers contributing. Often, before congresses or plenums, special bulletins would be printed to host the relevant debate. The International Bulletins contain many of Trotsky’s and other international voices’ first English-language translations. Often those voice used pseudonyms, Crux is Trotsky. An invaluable resource for students of US Communism, Trotskyism, and the larger US workers’ movement.

PDF of original bulletin: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/swp-us/idb/swp-1938-45/v02n13-1940-ib.pdf