Popular Front: Not a Tactic But a Crime
'The Main Question of Proletarian Class Strategy'
The following quotations were originally
printed in Spartacist No.27-28 (Winter 1979-1980) published by the
then-revolutionary international Spartacist tendency.
The question of questions at present is
the Peoples Front. The left centrists seek to present this question as a
tactical or even as a technical maneuver, so as to be able to peddle their
wares in the shadow of the Peoples Front. In reality, the Peoples
Front is the main question of proletarian class strategy for this epoch.
It also offers the best criterion for the difference between Bolshevism and
Menshevism. For it is often forgotten that the greatest historical example of
the Peoples Front is the February 1917 revolution. From February to
October, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, who represent a very good
parallel to the Communists and Social Democrats, were in the
closest alliance and in a permanent coalition with the bourgeois party of the
Cadets, together with whom they formed a series of coalition governments. Under
the sign of this Peoples Front stood the whole mass of the people,
including the workers, peasants, and soldiers councils. To be
sure, the Bolsheviks participated in the councils. But they did not make the
slightest concession to the Peoples Front. Their demand was to break
this Peoples Front, to destroy the alliance with the Cadets, and to
create a genuine workers and peasants government.
All the Peoples Fronts in Europe are
only a pale copy and often a caricature of the Russian Peoples Front of
1917, which could after all lay claim to a much greater justification for its
existence, for it was still a question of the struggle against czarism and the
remnants of feudalism. Leon Trotsky, The Dutch Section
and the International (15-16 July 1936), in Writings of Leon Trotsky
(1935-36), [emphasis in original]
For the proletariat, through its parties,
to give up its own independent program means to give up its independent
functioning as a class. And this is precisely the meaning of the Peoples
Front. In the Peoples Front the proletariat renounces its class
independence, gives up its class aimsthe only aims, as
Marxism teaches, which can serve its interests....The Peoples Front is
thus thoroughly and irrevocably non-proletarian, anti-proletarian.
By its very nature, the Peoples
Front must be so. The establishment of the Peoples Front, by definition,
requires agreement on a common program between the working-class and
non-working-class parties. But the non-proletarian parties cannot agree to the
proletarian programthe program of revolutionary socialismwithout
ceasing to be what they are....
The Peoples Front, understood in its
fundamentals, is the major form of the preparation among the masses for the
achievement of national unity within the democratic nations in support of the
coming war. Under the slogans of the Peoples Front, the masses will march
forth to fight for their own imperialism....
Thus, the Peoples Front is the
contemporary version of social-patriotism, the new form in which the betrayal
of 1914 is to be repeated. James Burnham, The Peoples
Front: The New Betrayal (1937) [emphasis in original]
26. Reformist-Dissidents [the followers
of Jean Longuet] are the agency of the Left Bloc within the working
class. Their success will be the greater, all the less the working class as a
whole is seized by the idea and practice of the united front against the
bourgeoisie. Layers of workers, disoriented by the war and by the tardiness of
the revolution, may venture to support the Left Bloc as a lesser
evil, in the belief that they do not thereby risk anything at all, or because
they see no other road at present.
27. One of the most reliable methods of
counteracting inside the working class the moods and ideas of the Left
Bloc, i.e., a bloc between the workers and a certain section of the
bourgeoisie against another section of the bourgeoisie, is through promoting
persistently and resolutely the idea of a bloc between all the sections of
the working class against the whole bourgeoisie....
31. The indicated method could be
similarly employed and not without success in relation to parliamentary and
municipal activities. We say to the masses, The Dissidents, because they
do not want the revolution, have split the mass of the workers. It would be
insanity to count on their helping the proletarian revolution. But we are
ready, inside and outside the parliament, to enter into certain practical
agreements with them, provided they agree, in those cases where one must choose
between the known interests of the bourgeoisie and the definite demands of the
proletariat, to support the latter in action. The Dissidents can be capable of
such actions only if they renounce their ties with the parties of the
bourgeoisie, that is, the Left Bloc and its bourgeois
discipline.
If the Dissidents were capable of
accepting these conditions, then their worker-followers would be quickly
absorbed by the Communist Party. Just because of this, the Dissidents will not
agree to these conditions. In other words, to the clearly and precisely posed
question whether they choose a bloc with the bourgeoisie or a bloc with the
proletariatin the concrete and specific conditions of mass
strugglethey will be compelled to reply that they prefer a bloc with the
bourgeoisie. Such an answer will not pass with impunity among the proletarian
reserves on whom they are counting. Leon Trotsky, On the
United Front (2 March 1922), in The First Five Years of the Communist
International , Vol. 2 [emphasis in original]
The job of the cartel [the cartel
de la gauche, or Left Bloc, in France] always consisted in
putting a brake upon the mass movement, directing it into the channels
of class collaboration. This is precisely the job of the Peoples Front as
well. The difference between themand not an unimportant oneis that
the traditional cartel was applied during the comparatively peaceful and stable
epochs of the parliamentary regime. Now, however, when the masses are impatient
and explosive, a more imposing brake is needed, with the participation of the
Communists....
The coming parliamentary elections, no
matter what their outcome, will not in themselves bring any serious
changes into the situation: the voters, in the final analysis, are confronted
with the choice between an arbiter of the type of Laval and an arbiter of the
type of Herriot-Daladier. But inasmuch as Herriot has peacefully collaborated
with Laval, and Daladier has supported them both, the difference between them
is entirely insignificant, if measured by the scale of the tasks set by
history. Leon Trotsky, France at the Turning Point
(28 March 1936), [emphasis in original]
The July days [in Spain] deepen and supplement the
lessons of the June days in France with exceptional force. For the second time
in five years the coalition of the labor parties with the Radical bourgeoisie
has brought the revolution to the edge of the abyss. Incapable of solving a
single one of the tasks posed by the revolutionsince all these tasks boil
down to one, namely, the crushing of the bourgeoisiethe Peoples
Front renders the existence of the bourgeois regime impossible and thereby
provokes the fascist coup detat. By lulling the workers and peasants with
parliamentary illusions, by paralyzing their will to struggle, the
Peoples Front creates favorable conditions for the victory of fascism.
The policy of coalition with the bourgeoisie must be paid for by the
proletariat with years of new torments and sacrifice, if not by decades of
fascist terror. Leon Trotsky, The New Revolutionary
Upsurge and the Tasks of the Fourth International, July 1936
What was inexcusably criminal on the part of the
[Spanish] Socialist party, the Communist party and the Maurin-Nin party of
Marxist Unification was not only that they wrote a common
program with the discredited bourgeois partieswhich was bad
enoughand that thereby, politically speaking, they appeared before the
masses in one party with the bourgeoisie, but that this common
program was dictated and written by the bourgeoisie, and that in every
other respect the joint partyunder the pseudonym of the
Peoples Frontwas dominated by the bourgeoisie.
Max Shachtman, The Spanish Elections and the Peoples
Front, New Militant, 14 March 1936 [emphasis in original]
In France the Popular Front took shape as the
union on a reformist program of the working-class parties with the great
middle-class Radical-Socialist Party. There were no such parties in
the United States, but the same social forces nevertheless operated under
similar conditions, and the United States equivalent of the Popular Front was
simply the New Deal Roosevelt Democratic Party.
Editors Comments, New International,
December 1938
It is the specific question of LaFollette
and LaGuardia. The movements backing them are not dreams, but the genuine,
homespun authentic American type of Farmer-Labor and
Labor Party. And what sort of movements are they? About this no
elaborate argument is needed. Are they anti-capitalist? Not one of
their leaders would dream of pretending so. They are dedicated heart and soul
to the preservation of capitalism.... Are they free of all entanglements
with capitalist parties...? How absurd: their chief task in 1936 was to
gather votes for Roosevelt. Do they run genuine representatives of the
proletariat for office? LaFollette and LaGuardia are the answer.
The Farmer-Labor Progressive Federation
and the American Labor Party are both vicious muddles of class collaboration,
Popular Frontism, outworn Populism and atavistic liberalism, the docile
instruments of labor bureaucrats and careerist progressive
capitalist politicians.
Support of these movements at the present
time in actuality represents the perspective of the liquidation of independent
working-class politics. That is the long and short of it.
A Manifesto to the Members of the Socialist Party,
Socialist Appeal, 14 August 1937 |