My purpose is to take on the doubters and the cynics, the middle-class thinkers, the academics, the petit bourgeois currents among students, young radicals, labour bureaucrats, and the NDP brass. None of them believe the Canadian working class can make a revolution and overthrow capitalism in Canada.
Our lives and our work in Socialist Action are based on the proposition that they are wrong. That is what I aim to show.
V.I. Lenin, and his famous book “What is to Be Done?”, are hated by the entire political establishment. Even scholars who consider themselves Marxists are uncomfortable with Lenin. Why? Because Lenin built a party that led a socialist revolution. He proved that workers could overthrow capitalism.
Thursday, April 22 4 p.m. PT, 7 p.m. EST, “James P. Cannon and the Foundations of Trotskyism” featuring Bryan Palmer, Emeritus Professor of History at Trent University, Ontario, and author of “James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left 1890-1928”. Host: Elizabeth Byce. Discussants: Jeff Mackler, national secretary, Socialist Action – USA.
Grace Carlson was the only female member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) (predecessor organization of Socialist Action) to be convicted and sentenced under the notorious anti-communist Smith Act of 1940. She was sentenced to sixteen months in the Federal Correctional Facility For Women in Alderson, West Virginia. The trial and convictions of the 17 male leaders of the SWP is a well known part of Trotskyist history. All 18 leaders were convicted of allegedly trying to overthrow the U.S. government by force and violence on the eve of the U.S entrance into World War II . (See “Socialism On Trial” by James P. Cannon).
Socialist Action 
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