The term "popular front" -dating back to the bitter struggles of the /930s - has now emerged at the centre of debates on the way forward for the Socialist Alliance (see pages /8-19). But what exactly IS a popular front? And who - if anyone - is looking to build one today? JOHN LISTER delves into the history books to find some answers.
in today's debates, the phrase "popular front" has been loosely used as a dismissive shorthand by sections of the far left to describe an alliance between the left and radical sections of the Muslim community.
While the phrase will mean little or nothing to young people and others fresh to political activity, the inference is that such an alliance in some ways echoes the reactionary alliances forged by Communist Parties (CP's) in Europe from 1934 onwards, in the aftermath of Hitler's rise to power in Germany.
And a further inference is that - as proved the case with the original Popular Fronts - any alliance between socialists and cross-class, politically heterogeneous forces must inevitably represent a political retreat by the socialists and the subordination of at least aspects of their programme.
However before such comparisons can be made, and such sweeping conclusions drawn, we have to look at the context in which the Popular Front policy was first adopted, and the content of that policy.
The concept of a "united front", Through which the our to and
minority could reach out to and win the confidence of the millions of workers who had not yet broken politically from mass social democratic parties was first developed as a key tactic of the early Communist International (Comintern)..
This had been formed in 1919 as Lenin, Trotsky and the leaders of the victorious Russian revolution of 1917 attempted to spread the lessons of that revolution and inspire the building of revolutionary parties and movements around the world.
Its first two Congresses, held in the midst of a continuing revolutionary upsurge, had focused on establishing the political independence of Communism and Communist Parties from the wretched "social patriotism" of the social democratic parties, which had without exception sided with their "own" bourgeoisies and renounced internationalism during the First World War.
But the third and fourth Congresses of the Comintern, reflecting greater maturity and depth of analysis, recognised the need for the revolutionaries to go beyond the denunciation of social democracy, and develop tactics and policies through which they could mobilise side by side with the often militant as-yet not revolutionary layers of the working class.
At the centre of this was the notion of the "united front", through which the Communist Parties were urged to put down demands on the social democratic leaders and their parties to join forces with the Communists in struggle for popular working class and anti-capitalist demands.
Such a tactic offered a win-win sceStated Fone was Tormed, and
united front was formed, and workers mobilised in action, they would learn at first hand through experience the limitations of reformist demands and their own leaders, and the need for more bold, and revolutionary leadership.
If the proposed unity was rejected, this would expose the unwillingness of the social democratic leaders to fight for the perceived needs of the working class: it would increase the chances of angry rank and file social democratic workers recognising the need to break from their old allegiances and line up with the Communists.
The Popular Front, developed 15 years ••• .... To implement the new line required a wrenching Uturn for CPs, which had for seven years upheld an ultraleft policy. later, represented the complete opposite of this revolutionary approach. It was a tactic of seeking alliances not with the parties and organisations of the militant working class majority, but with so-called 'democratic, "liberal" and "radical" parties of the ruling class.
The basis of the 'unity' was not to be the dass struggle demands that could unite and mobilise the workers in joint struggles, but the most feeble reformist platform, tailored to fit within the bounds of capitalism - even at a time when economic and political crisis had brought a sharpening of class struggle, and the rise of fascist gangs in many coun tries of Europe.
forming Popular Fronts, the Communist Parties (CPs) were following the policies set out by Stalin and the bureaucracy that since the early 1920s had hijacked and monopolised the leadership of the once-revolutionary Comintern.
Again and again - and most tragically of all in Spain, where it brought the defeat of the revolution and the victory of Franco's fascists - the "Popular Front" policy proved a disaster for the working class.
They tied the most militant and revolutionary workers to the coat-tails of timid and often outright reactionary parties which rejected any socialist programme, but were more than ready to accommodate to capitalism. Indeed these parties were more afraid of a militant and combative working class than they were of fascist gangs and the prospect of authoritarian rule
To implement the new line required a wrenching U-turn for CPs, which had for seven years upheld a relentless, ruinously sectarian, ultra-left policy.
The Kremlin - and Stalin's Comintern -had proclaimed in 1927 that the worldwide class struggle had entered a "Third Period" of "class against class". Even if we set aside the grossly inaccurate assessment of the period which underlies this analysis, such a definition led to an even worse and more destructive error.
While revolutionaries have always argued that reformist social democratic parties are pro-capitalist (Lenin's famous phrase describing the Labour Party as a "bourgeois workers' party") the early Comintern had learned the need to recognise them as a
Under the "Third Period" policy Commiey was discarded andr denounced the mass social democratic parties (such as the Labour Party in Britain) as "social fascists"... who they claimed were worse than the 'normal' fascists, because of their influence working under cover in the workers' movement.
The most catastrophic consequences of this policy had precisely been Hitler's rise to power in Germany, where the division created by the Communist Party's sectarianism, coupled with the conservatism of the bureaucracy of the social democrats, had split the immensely powerful German working class movement, and in effect left it defenceless against the Nazis.
Leon Trotsky, the former leader of the Red Army, had been exiled from the Soviet Union after Stalin consolidated control of a new bureaucracy in the Kremlin.
With a minority of supporters, upholding the best traditions of revolutionary Marxism, Trotsky had tirelessly warned throughout the years of mounting German crisis that the key to defeating Hitler was for the Communists to abandon the notion of "social fascism" and as a party to demand that the SPD leaders form a united front.
Together the two parties could have pre sented a strong enough alternative to win over sections of the middle class which we being attracted to Hitler. Acting together they could have defeated fascism.
Against this, the only 'unity' the German CP (the KPD) would countenance was piecemeal unity "from below" - combining their vicious denunciations of the SPD with calls to individual rank and file social democrats to break from their party and join the KPD in constructing a revolutionary' united front, which would exclude their leaders, since the SPD was "not a working class party".
This sectarian line of the KPD effechook at che Spoon or die
hook, since the Communists did not even pretend to ask them to form a united front, leaving them free to follow their own instincts towards collaboration with the capitalists.
In the spring of 1933, as Hitler and his forces took control, the divided labour movement was crushed, its leaders jailed or
What clearly shocked Trotsky to the core was the fact that even this monumental defeat of the world's most powerful working class movement did not trigger any debate or self-criticism within the Stalinistled Comintern. No lessons were learned. At first even the ultra-left line remained intact: the KPD's policy was endorsed, and the Social Democrats blamed for Hitler's
But after the Nazi victory, the Soviet Union was now faced by a new powerful, reactionary enemy in Europe. Stalin, who had coined the notion of building "socialism in a single country," implying his readiness to seek a form of coexistence with capitalism in the rest of the world, had systematically used the Comintern and Communist Parties as tools of Soviet foreign policy.
He now looked for allies among Germany's imperialist rivals -notably France. In place of "class against class", the new Comintern line involved showing how useful and supportive the CPs could be for bourgeois democracy
The CPs which had spent years denouncing social democrats as 'social fascists were now required to seek 'unity' - NOT with the millions of workers who supported and voted for the social democrats and social democratic trade unions, but with the 'social fascist leaders they had insisted were not even part of the workers' movement, but also with other people previously denounced as 'fascists' - the leaders of (generally small and marginal) "anti-fascist" parties of the capitalist class, and other "progressive sections of the bourgeoisie."
In place of the maximalist, ultra-left policies and slogans they had put forward up to 1934, the CPs switched to embrace the reactionary values of class collaboration and nationalism. In France and Italy the call for "national unity" was even extended to fascist movements whose "patriotism" was seen as a common element.
The Popular Front was endorsed as an international policy for all CPs at the Comintern's Seventh Congress in 1935, where the policy was described as a "transitional approach to socialism" - though in practice any reference to socialism had been discarded as a preliminary to the search for the "broadest possible alliance."
The first "People's Front" - or "Popular Front" began in France in 1934 with the formation of a 'united front against fascism between the CP and Socialist Party in July followed in October by an appeal by CP leader Thorez for the bourgeois Radica Party (then supporting the right wing Doumergue government, and until a few months earlier denounced as "fascist" by the CP) to join an alliance.
The following May, after both CP and SP had registered gains in local elections, a sec. tion of the Radicals was persuaded to join the new People's Front, which was launched soon afterwards: they were not even asked to leave the right wing coalition government of Laval, whose policies the Popular Front nonetheless proclaimed to be a political gift to the fascists
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Stalin signs a death warrant for one of the victims of the notorious Moscow Trials which purged even more old Bolshevik leaders in the mid 1930s
n the same month came the diplomatic
results Stalin had wanted from the
whole People's Front exercise: a Franco-Soviet Pact, under which French Social Democrats promised to defend the Soviet Union - and the Communists promised to defend the French bourgeois Republic. This again underlined the strict limits within which the People's Front was prepared to challenge the existing right wing government: instead of leading the workers forward it acted as a brake on struggles that might otherwise have escalated.
In July 1935 the People's Front staged a huge demonstration in Paris, just ten days before the People's Front line was adopted at what proved to be the seventh and final Congress of the Comintern. There it was announced that the struggle with fascism had entered the road of 'democratic coalition' and 'patriotism'.
Trotsky, writing shortly afterwards, accurately predicted that any government elected on the platform of the People's Front would be "merely a brief episode", and that "when it falls, it will bring down the 'People's Front".
That autumn the French Socialist Party began expulsions of Trotskyists.
The following May the French People's Front won the elections, and in the midst of a massive nationwide strike wave, the Popular Front government was formed under the premiership of Socialist Party leader Leon Blum, who immediately announced the importance of keeping within the limits of capitalist order.
Two months later Blum's government opted to remain 'neutral' between the Republican forces and General Franco's fascists in Spain. By June 1937, just a year after taking office, the French People's Front government fell from office: two months later the French Premier Daladier (a Radical, once touted as a possible Prime Minister for the People's Front, and formerty Blum's Defence Minister) joined with British Prime Minister Chamberlain in signing a pact with Hitler:
n Spain, a Popular Front was elected to
office in February 1936, under Azana,
a capitalist politician. The Front's programme was backed by two left bourgeois parties, the Socialist Party, the Socialist
the General Workers Union the Communist Party, the Syndicalist Party and the centrist Workers Party of Marxist Unification' (the POUM).
The POUM's leader Andreas Nin had previously been loosely associated with Trotsky's International Left Opposition, and Trotsky had challenged Nin's previous ultraleft sectarian position against the Socialist Party: the failure to conduct any fight within the ranks of that party left it open to the Stalinists, whose organisation merged with the Socialist Party in 1936, pushing it further to the right.
Responding to the Popular Front programme, Trotsky pointed to the absence of any socialist or anti-capitalist content, and commented:
"The former Spanish "Left Communists" have turned into a mere tail of the "left" bourgeoisie. It is hard to conceive of a more ignominious downfall!
"How ironic is the name "Marxist Unification"... with the bourgeoisie."
Dismissing claims that the Popular Front had arisen in response to national conditions in Spain, Trotsky pointed out that:
"It does not differ in the least from the "Popular Front" in France, Czechoslovakia, Brazil, or China."
The Popular Front's lack of any socialist or anti-capitalist policies meant that it was quite unable to offer a radical programme to win the Spanish peasantry who were becoming the base for Franco's fascist agitation.
When the fascist rising itself began in July 1936, the Popular Front failed to arm or mobilise the workers: instead the Spanish Republic attempted to fight a conventional war, with the Communist Party the most determined defenders of capitalist power and property.
The end result when the bourgeois republic finally gave up the fight in 1939, was a labour movement brutally smashed amid massive bloodshed, and the establishment of a fascist dictatorship which lasted until the mid 1970s.
Immediately after the surrender of the Spanish Republic came the conclusive proof that Stalin was pursuing an agenda which had nothing to do with the working class or the struggle for socialism. In August 1939, just before the start of World War 2 came news of the signing of a pact between the USSR and Hitler's Nazi Germany - a pact which Stalin so naively trusted that it almost led to the military defeat of the Soviet Union when Hitler discarded it and invaded two years later.
While these experiences of the Popular Front in France and Spain exposed its limitations in the starkest fashion at high points of mass revolutionary struggle, the consistent content of Popular Fronts in every country was to subordinate the policies, programme and organisational independence of working class parties to vague pacts and alliances with often marginal bourgeois parties and formations.
In Britain, for example, the policies of the Popular Front resulted in the Communist Party issuing calls for "mass conferences of all social, Christian and political organisations in the depressed areas." The CP staged "keep fit" conferences involving "Boys Brigade, Scouts, Ramblers Association, Bible Class and Girl Guides" -organisations the CP had previously seen as opposed to the working class.
In the USA on July 4, Stalinists seeking to demonstrate their patriotic credentials marched holding aloft pictures of Lenin and - George Washington.
The strand of class collaboration establshed in what had orignaly
been revolutionary Marxist parties proved an enduring feature of Stalinism. Of course Communist Parties were instructed - in line with the Stalin-Hitler Pact - to oppose the Allied War effort against Nazi Germany. But when this line abruptly changed following Hitler's invasion of the USSR, the Communist Parties readily switched to a full-scale policy of collaboration with the bourgeois war effort - and the class collaborationist line continued after the war.
What has all this to do with today's debates about the possibility of a political alliance between the Socialist Alliance and sections of the Muslim communities, in the aftermath of the vast anti-war movement that has radicalised and mobilised new layers of Muslim youth? socla stre
For those seeking reasons to criticise the Socialist Alliance, and to denounce various groupings within it as 'opportunist, it is convenient to promote the idea that any link with Muslim organisations must necessarily mean the 'popular frontist' subordination of socialist policies to this, that or the other element of religious bigotry.
But as the historical examples show, Popular Fronts were not just accidental or opportunist errors: they were consciously driven, created by Communist Parties acting in accordance with a definite plan. They were deliberately structured to involve parties of the bourgeoisie, and deliberately centred on a bourgeois, not a socialist programme
No section of the Socialist Alliance has embraced any such programme: the Alliance's election manifesto in 200 set out a clear socialist framework on a very wide range of issues.
Nor is there any modern-day equivalent of the Comintern, or any other external forces are seeking to create a Popular Front. Anyone in and around the labour movement in Britain who wants to link up with 'radical' sections of the bourgeoisie, simply has to join New Labour: Tony Blair, in office, is offering the chance to do just that.
If anything the biggest problem for the British left, for so many years, is how to find a principled basis on which to reach out and work with radicalising forces to its immediate right - and how to make the left itself reflective of the wider population and its most oppressed layers, reaching more women, more young people, and more from black and other ethnic minorities.
The leftist danger, of restricting ed front from below" - repeated ince September 2003 23 International resistance premature pronouncements •ot thi "death" of social democracy, and expecting radicalising forces first to break from their leaders and organisations, and simply to rally around explicitly socialist banners - has stunted the growth of the left in the past.
While a militant minority will respond to such messages, the majority require a more active and interventionist approach to build confidence in a new leadership and expose the definitive bankruptcy of the old.
Of course there are also obvious wrong to build a united front with Muslim - or any other - organisations if this involved abandoning key elements of the programme, whether for socialist reconstruction of society, or for sexual liberation.
Success is not guaranteed: but it cannot be wrong in principle to look for ways in which organisations that have already lined up against imperialist war can be drawn into other activities alongside the socialists.
Even if we ignore the large Muslim working class which might be reached through such initiatives, and (bizarrely) assume that the entire community is "middle class" surely the correct method of approach is more analogous that which Trotsky coun terposed to the Popular Front in a much more polarised situation in France:
"The proletariat says to the peasants and petty bourgeoisie of the cities: "We are struggling for power. Here is our programme. We are ready to discuss with you changes in this programme. We will employ violence only against big capital and its lackeys; but with you toilers, we desire to conduct an alliance on the basis of a given programme."
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24 soclalst n ce September 2003