"Bryan D. Palmer reinterprets the history of labour and the left in the United States during the 1930s through a discussion of the emergence of Trotskyism in the most advanced capitalist country in the world. Focussing on James P. Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism, Palmer builds on his...

Introduction / Jack Barnes -- Tribunes of the people / V.I. Lenin -- Trade unions in the epoch of imperialist decay / Leon Trotsky -- "In Minneapolis we can begin to show the entire country" / Farrell Dobbs, Jack Barnes -- Trade unions : their past, present, and future / Karl Marx.

The organization of Negroes in the Knights of Labor, by S. H. Kessler.--Samuel Gompers and the Negro workers, 1886-1914, by B. Mandel.--Black workers and labor unions in Birmingham, Alabama, 1897-1904, by P. B. Worthman.--Labor conflict and racial violence: the Black worker in Chicago,...