Lessons from the French Popular Froni

Scan page 6

Stalin signs a death warrant during the Moscow Trials Bourgeois political rule issue, were firmly opposed Repeated scandals Stalinist leader Thorez, surrounded the centre writing in l. Humanite said Radical government of it would be a great error and Daladier, elected in 1932. contrary to the Leninist And since those elections view of social democracy as fascist groups had been the main moral support of The 1930's are an extremely important period for the workers' movement today to study. First came the defeat of the strongest section of the European working class by Hitler in Germany.

This was at least in part caused by the third period" politics of the Stalinist parties, which, from 1928 to 1934, refused to work with other workers' organisations against fascism.

But then followed a new right wing form of betrayal, whereby the social democratic and Stalinist parties robbed the working class of its independence by forming 'Popular Fronts' with bourgeois parties, in a 'democratic alliance' against Historic betrayals The parallels with today Italy and the 'unity of the left' in France, but also in the Popular Frontist approach of the Anti-Nazi League and the MGinitiated Committees Against Racism and The next few articles are designed to give readers some understanding of the historic betrayals in France and Spain in the 1930's, and also of the difficulties encountered by the small Trotskyist sections in swimming against the tide at that time, trying to chart out a revolutionary course and build a new International in the Bolshevik tradition.

Demonstrations

They also aim to show the background to Trotsky's important writings, Whither France, Crisis in the French Section and The Spanish The articles on trance deal first with the birth of the Popular Front from February _1934 to the elections in May 1936, and secondly with the period of Popular Front government from May 1936 until November 1938.

The events of February 1934 saw the two great classes in France poised against each other.

On February 6 a political coup organised jointly by Fascist, Bonapartist and Royalist forces overthrew Daladier, the centre-Radical President, replacing him with the right wing Doumergue, while fascists burned buses in celebration.

The working class responded with one day strikes and, despite a police ban, massive turnouts on demonstrations called by the CP on February 9 and by the Socialists (SFIO) on February 10. Fifteen thousand marched at Vincennes, 100,000 at Marseilles.

Ominously similar

The preconditions for fascism looked ominously similar to Germany.

The economic crisis, which had set in later than in the other main imperialist countries, and which reached its sharpest point in 1932, reduced living standards by 35% between 1930-35. Even by 1938 production levels were only 75% of their 1929 levels. was also in crisis. developing fast.

United front

On the other hand that very defeat in Germany decisively altered the political situation in Burope.

Determined to fend off further such attacks, the French working class was demanding that its organisations form a united front.

It had in any case responded militantly to the employers' offensive of rationalisation and lock out, particularly in the huge miners' and textile workers' strikes in 1931.

Even in April 1934 the leadership of both the main workers" parties the Socialists and the CP, although divided on the to forming a united front. the bourgeoisie.

Meanwhile fascist attacks continued and some leadino workers' representatives were murdered Suddenly on May 31, the CP put out a call to the SFIO for joint action. Within a month an agreement for 'organic unity' had been made and. Thorez, previously sectarian and dormatirallv ultra left uugmancany began to make patriotic speeches.

Liquidation

Doriot, another CP leading member even went so far as to propose the liquidation of the CP, by fusing the Socialists and CP in a single United Proletarian Party.

The perspectiv e of the CP in the united front was not however to give the revolutionary lead in action that was necessary to defeat Rather it was tor mınımal demands grounds that the situation was non-revolumonary and ad r sar. aa J that 'extremism' would frighten away large sections of the petty bourgeoisie.

Formal alliance

• But the betrayals of the united front were minor compared with the much greater ones of the Popular Front, the actual tying of the proletariat to the policies of the bourgeoisie through formal alliances.

The Popular Front was formally declared on June 1935, accompanied by massive demonstrations, in which the 'Marseillaise' alternated with the 'International'.

But already in October 1934 the CP had begun making overtures to the Radical Socialists, bourgeois party.

And in the municipal elections in May 1935, Socialists, Communists and Radicals, made an electoral pact, agréeing to stand down in the second round for each others best placed candidates.

Comintern

The decision to make this fundamental turn to class collaboration a hundred and eighty degrees different from the 'social fascist' phase from 192834, came not from a struggle in the French CP, or from local considerations but from the dictate of the Comintern.

Having allowed Hitler to come to power Stalin was now extremely concerned to defend the: USSR from fascist invasion.

Rather than appealing to the European proletariat his solution was To make alliances with the European bourgeoisie.

Hitler's victory In May 1935 the StalinLaval five year mutual assistance pact was announced. Stalinists have always argued, and continue to do so, that the pact was necessary to defend the USSR against Hitler.

Amenable

It illustrates well the counter-revolutionary effects of the policy of 'socialism in one country' For if the Stalin-Laval pact was to mean anything, the French working class must remain amenable to Laval, and the French CP must be seen to be ensuring that.

And so throughout the pre-revolutionary summer and autumn of 1935 the CP refused to mobilise the working class against Laval's hated 'decree-law' austerity measures, police repression, limitations on the freedom of the press, laws attacking workers' defence organisations, or to act against French militarism and savage colonial policies.

In August when violent strikes, riots and mutinies broke out in Brest, Le Havre Toulon and Limoges in protest against yet another round of public spending cuts, the CP, having insisted on the 'non-revolutionary character of the period was acutely embarrassed.

The strikes were so militant that five workers were shot and hundreds injured before they could be brought to an end.

Dissolution

In December both Thorez and Blum openly supported Laval's call for the dissolution of all armed groups; including the groups of armed workers who were the only force actively and courageously fighting fascists.

Throughout the autumn Laval was kept in power only by the vote of the Radical Party, with whom the CP was in alliance.

When Laval was finall! forced to retire in January

Scan page 7

:.ALIST PRESS. Weinesias I¿June, 19-§ n 1933 changed conditions 1936 it was in spite of rather than because of the Another "consequence of the Popular Front was the CP's orientation to the "middle ground', the petty bourgeoisie, on whom the Popular Front centred.. "anyone who wishes to join in order to defend republican liberties and the peace"

Soon the CP was concentrating on recruiting to its own ranks the middle classes, . peasants, intellectuals and civil servants.

In the spring a formal appeal was made to the Catholics 'for a reconciliation of the peopli of France! Clearly the characteristics of trocommunism are noi ist recent phenomena.

Trotsky's guidance io he French section in this period was particularly useful, given that he had experienced first hand both the 1905 and the 1917 revolution in Russia.

His most famous writings on . France were directed against the betrayals of the He was in fact living in France between August 1933 and his deportation in July 1934, and Whither France and Once Again Whither France. were written in November 1934 and March 1935 respectively.

They put forward the policies necessary to defeat fascism, explain why the CP minimal programme would lead to the destruction of the workers' movement and explain the content and consequences of the Popular Front.

Urgency

They are written with a great sense of urgency, a full recognition of the dangers surrounding the working class, but also of the revolutionary mood of workers which is being diverted and thwarted.

Trotsky assesses objective economic situation and the workers" state of consciousness in an opposite way from the CP.

He begins with the stark fact that the intensity of the crisis means that bourgeois democracy cannot continue, that there remain only two roads, socialism or fascism. And whereas the Stalinists emphasised the 'fear of the middle layers and the relative quiescence of the working class, Trotsky maintained that both were eager for action, that the period was pre-revolutionary-as revolutionary as can be, granted the non-revolutionary policies of the working class parties"

It was precisely the activity of the fascists that attracted the petty-bourgeoisie.

They were looking for desperate solutions to their predicament and fast losing faith in the established democratic parties.

Workers too would rapidly become demoralised by weak leadership.

There are two main pillars to the strategy he puts forward-the need for a political offensive (a struggle for power)' and an 'active defence • army (militias).' Echo A revolutionary offensive under the Siogan 'the conquest of power , and the name of socialism, 'will awaken an echo so powerful as to exceede the most optimistic expectations' Given the depth of the crisis, the employers could only be forced to concede anything if they were faced with the danger of losing everything.

But the Stalinists' insistance on minimal demands were self fulfilling prophecy:

"The masses make hardly any response to appeals for strikes on economic grounds. The masses wait for and demand other more efficacious methods' It was the responsibility the revolutionary party provide a lead.

'One should not think that the radicalisation of the masses will proceed by itself, automatically. The working class waits for the initiativeon the part of its organisation' Even over workers militias Trotsky said, "There will be scorn-the first steps too will be inexperienced and maladroit. But the initiative must necessarily come from above. The party can and must provide the initial cadres'.

Valuable The French Trotskyist section, La Ligue Communiste (LC), was too small to influence the course of events significantly.

Nevertheless a study of their attempts to stand out against the great weight of betrayal of the Social Democrats and Stalinists, to launch themselves into the struggles of the working class rather than remaining an intellectual sect, and the fight against centrism within their ranks make valuable lessons for Trotskyists today.

In many respects the problems remain the same.

Numbering about sixty members the LC ran a regular newspaper, La Verite, and a theoretical journal, Lutte Des Classes.

Throughout this period 1933-36 the LC called for direct united front action against fascist attacks and centred on the need for a seizure of power. In 1933 they were calling for workers' militias to be formed by trade unionists, members of co-ops and sports clubs and youth, and repeatedly in 1933 they urged workers to force the Socialists to take power and called for a 'bloc against the government of exploiters' They hammered home the parallels with Germany and attacked L 'Humanite and Le Populaire, the CP and SFIO papers, for failing to lead any action against the fascist upsurge.

Soviets

The leaflets they handed out in the February events of 1934 called for workers militias and:

'Instead of municipal councils build workers' soviets, instead of the bourgeois parliament, build a workers' parliament' In May 1934 they put out '10 Commandments' which included calls on urban and agricultural workers to organise together, for 'no commercial secrets' ', for worker and peasant control over production, for workers to oppose their own committees to the rotten parliament and concluded 'all this poses the necessity of taking power, don't forget it!

The problem facing the Trotskyist movement at this time was how to break out of its small, mainly intellectual petty bourgeois base.

Decomposition Trotsky's proposal, made in the summer of 1934, was that they should enter the SFIO. He argued that the centrism of the SFIO, based on the decomposition of reformism, was in an unstable and transitory state.

Many of its militant members must be seeking the road of revolution. The centrism of the CP, deriving from the decomposition of Bolshevism, he considered more obdurate.

Trotsky's idea met sharp opposition in the LC, and the vote was only carried by 66 to 41. Pierre Naville thought there would: be nothing to draw out and said he would rather leave and Pierre Frank considered the policy 'treacherous' These leaders were the very members. who. once in the SFIO, succumbed most rapidly to centrism, and refused to leave the following summer.

The youth however, were prepared to make a short sharp entry, anner unfurled' Entry tactic • In: September the LC joined the SFIO as the Groupe Bolshevik-Leniniste (GBL); and in fact this entry tactic, which became known as the 'French turn' was highly successful.

Within a year their membership had grown to 300. The youth, the Jeunesse Socialiste Revolutionnaire (JSR) with their paper Revolution, made particularly big gains, especially in the area of the Seine Federation.

The main orientation of the GBL was to left sections in the SFIO and chiefly to Bataille Socialiste, lead they proposed forming a committee for revolutionary socialist action.

This would carry out united action to create people's militias, put a general strike on the agenda of each section and organise meetings between socialist and communist branches (rayons) to prepare united action.

The main slogan of La Verite, which was kept as an independent paper within the SFIO; was for people's militias.

The local groups they had been instrumental in forming, Toujours Pret Pour Servir (TPPS-Always Ready to Serve) made considerable impact at the fascist anniversary rally of the 1934 February coup.

By 1935 the CP and SP were calling for Popular Front committees. The GBL took this up and said they should be immediately established, but on the following programme: an immediate amnesty; 40 hour week without loss of salary and unemployment pay; workers' control over production, an end to commercial secrets, an inventory of the wealth of big business; nationalisation of big industry and of banks, easy credit for peasants and Popular Front leaders in 1.936 small businessmen, political rights for soldiers, the abolition of the two year military service, cutting of the war budget; the arrest ot fascist leaders, organisation of workers' militias and arming of the proletariat.

Continued

----- pull-quotes -----

In this first part of a series on the lessons of the Popular Front governments of the 1930s Pru Chamberlayne looks at the conditions which led to the establishment of the Popular Front government in France in 1936

are striking, not just in the 'historic compromise" in