Film Noir Worthy Scandal in the Old SWP : J.P. Cannon's personal secretary a Stalinist spy ?

An “Exemplary Comrade”: The Socialist Workers Party’s 40-year-long cover-up of Stalinist spy Sylvia Callen: Part two

 

I know very little about this inner party scandal of the old SWP . But I will keep reading from credible sources. What material for a classic film noir mystery story !

        It does explain " The Big Sleep " of the socialist movement for the past decades.

          The ruling class can exert enormous pressures on vulnerable socialists ( not quite free from ruling class ties ? ) . There is strength only in CLASS loyalty and ties.
 

  [Weeks later, in April 1960, Cannon wrote a letter from Los Angeles to his wife, Rose Karsner, which is published here for the first time. In a discouraged tone, Cannon wrote:

“I haven’t felt like writing but I am sending this note so that you won’t worry about something possibly being wrong. Spiritually I am tired and have no present ambition to do anything. I spend the time reading stuff that is easy to read, thinking a little, but mostly musing and remembering and reflecting. Most of my musing and remembering these days is sad, and that paralyzes the will to work or even to plan to work later on.
“The memories of work I have already done in the past—not speaking and writing, which was the easiest part and probably all that others really noticed, but carrying people on my back—give me a delayed reaction of spiritual weariness. I feel that I have done all of that heavy work I can do or even want to do again for anybody…
“I don’t want to do anything for anybody—in fact, I can’t—and I don’t want anybody to try to do anything for me except for routine technical things. The most I want from people now is to let me alone, not pull at me or try to push me, and above all not expect me [to] pick them up and inspire them and try to solve their problems.” [44]