Notebook of an Agitator

A traveling organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World before and during World War I, James P. Cannon was a leader of the communist movement in the United States following the Russian revolution of October 1917. He was expelled from the Communist Party in 1928 for supporting Leon Trotsky's fight to continue V.I. Lenin's course for building a communist movement. A founding leader of the Socialist Workers Party, Cannon served as its national secretary and then national chairman until his death in 1974. In these writings, Cannon brings to life individuals and episodes from battles of the working-class movement against the employers and their cops and courts - a history rich in lessons for today's fights. He also takes up a host of other topics: boxing; the church hierarchy; Charlie Chaplin; medicine-as-business; informers; and a turning point in the battle against Jim Crow in Little Rock, Arkansas.