The part I referred to is in the concluding chapter of Lenin’s Two Tactics of Social Democracy.

The first is what Lenin describes as insufficient truism: “One side, they say, lays special emphasis on the ordinary, current, everyday work, on the necessity of developing propaganda and agitation, of preparing forces, deepening the movement, etc., while the other side lays emphasis on the militant, general political, revolutionary tasks of the movement, points to the necessity of armed insurrection, advances the slogans: for a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship, for a provisional revolutionary government. Neither one side nor the other should exaggerate, they say; extremes are bad, both here and there (and, generally speaking, everywhere in the world), etc., etc.”

Lenin elaborates further on this divide:

“That is how matters really stand with regard to the question of the two trends in Social-Democratic tactics. The revolutionary period has called forth new tasks, which only the totally blind can fail to see. And some Social-Democrats unhesitatingly recognise these tasks and place them on the order of the day, declaring: the armed insurrection brooks no delay, prepare yourselves for it immediately and energetically, remember that it is indispensable for a decisive victory, issue the slogans of a republic, of a provisional government, of a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. Others, however, draw back, mark time, write prefaces instead of giving slogans; instead of pointing to the new while confirming the old, they chew this old tediously and at great length, inventing pretexts to avoid the new, unable to determine the conditions for a decisive victory or to issue the slogans which alone are in line with the striving to attain complete victory.”

While Cannon might be accused of falling into the second “preface-writing” group, and therefore lose favor in a direct reading of Lenin, the fact remains that Lenin sees this as a recurring trend within Social Democracy. Cannon may have “avoided the new”, and chewed at “length on the old” by declining to further prosecute the agents in the SWP, but it is also possible to argue the other way.

It is obvious and an old concept, especially in the post-war period, that agents of imperialist governments and the counter-revolution should not be accepted in the ranks of the party and especially not the leadership. Why should he rehash this concept forever, if the real task was to break from Stalinism and reformism while seeking to lead the upsurge in the worker’s movement in a revolutionary direction rather than embroil the party in an endless legal process in a bourgeois court with a Stalinist accomplice to assassination. If he could rid the party of this agent without creating a drawn out affair, this would allow Cannon to address the new issues of the geographic expansion of Stalinism and the consequent illusion created within Pabloism of a progressive side to be attributed to Stalinism and Stalinist states and parties. The dependence of Cannon on Sylvia Callen would create a false impression that the Fourth International and the workers’ movement in general depends on Stalinism for protection and organizational growth.