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James P. Cannon Quotes

1890–1974 United States

James P. Cannon (February 11, 1890 – August 21, 1974) was an American Marxist and Trotskyist leader.

United States
Activists
Non-fiction authors
Trotskyists

Also known as: Cannon, James P.

Random James P. Cannon quote

7 quotes

The workers of America have power enough to topple the structure of capitalism at home and to lift the whole world with them when they rise.

The economic prerequisites for the socialist revolution are fully matured in the US. The political premises are likewise far more advanced than might appear on the surface.

This knowledge will not fall from heaven; it will be acquired only by those who have the mind and the will to study, as Marx required of his first disciples. Wilhelm Liebknecht’s little volume of reminiscences will be an aid and stimulus in this direction. It ought to have a place on the bookshelf of every revolutionary worker.

Trotskyism is not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and practiced in the Russian revolution and in the early days of the Communist International.

These monster cities we live in today are blights of modern society. They will certainly give way to planned cities interlinked to the countryside. Everybody will live with the natural advantages of the country and the cultural associations of the town.

The party must fight with all its power and with every necessary strategy against the attempt to isolate it and throw its energy back upon itself. The party must also conduct a resolute struggle against the tendency to construe “party work” only in the sense of inner party work as well as against the tendency to make an artificial separation between mass work and inner party work.

Unite the Party! (1925)

The Bolshevization of the party in this sense means the final ideological victory of Marxism and Leninism, or in other words, of Marxism in the period of imperialism and the epoch of the proletarian revolution, and to reject the Marxism of the Second International and the remnants of the elements of syndicalism.

The Bolshevization of the Party (1924)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: James P. Cannon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.