Weekly Worker 573 Thursday April 21 2005

Stalinism versus Trotskyism

Alan Davis of the International Bolshevik Tendency responds to Mike Macnair on the popular front

In his article ‘Communists and the popular front’, comrade Mike Macnair addresses a very important question (Weekly Worker March 31). ‘Popular fronts’ (a term introduced by the 7th Congress of the Stalinised Comintern in 1935) are programmatic blocs, usually for governmental power, between workers’ organisations and representatives of the bourgeoisie. As a multi-class political alliance, the popular front is ostensibly based on the ‘common interests’ of the workers’ movement and a section of the capitalists. Popular fronts often take the form of parliamentary or electoral blocs, but cross-class, single-issue coalitions (such as the Stop the War Coalition) are essentially analogous. In each case the workers’ organisations must limit their activities and demands to what is acceptable to their bourgeois partners.

Comrade Macnair attacks the International Bolshevik Tendency’s opposition to popular-frontist formations as “sectarian abstention” and claims that our position “expresses in a clear way a view common among Trotskyists”. In fact, on this question the position of most groups claiming to be Trotskyist is considerably closer to that of the CPGB than the IBT.

While Macnair does a competent job of describing the ignominious role of the Stalinists in pushing the popular front (or ‘peoples’ front’) policy, he misrepresents Trotsky’s view and completely ignores the fundamental question of the Bolshevik attitude toward class-collaborationism. Macnair suggests that Trotsky’s opposition to popular frontism hinged on the danger of fascism: “What Trotsky says about the popular front in France is that in the decay of capitalism there is an underlying tendency towards fascism ... For this reason a coalition with the radicals and so on is unacceptable, precisely because it threatens to be the antechamber to fascism.” Later on, Macnair characterises the IBT’s opposition to the popular front similarly: “The IBT argues that the people’s front is the antechamber to fascism and the biggest danger to the working class, and therefore the Marxists must preserve a pure line by standing apart from the popular-frontist parties.”

At best, this is one-sided. It is of course true that Trotsky warned of the literally fatal consequences of the popular front for the workers’ movements of Europe in the 1930s, when, in Spain and France, the popular front was indeed the “antechamber to fascism”. But Trotsky’s opposition to the popular front strategy was not predicated on the existence of the imminent danger of fascism. Intransigent hostility to class-collaborationism has always separated Bolshevism from all varieties of centrism and reformism:

“The question of questions at present is the popular front. The left centrists seek to present this question as a tactical or even as a technical manoeuvre, so as to be able to peddle their wares in the shadow of the popular front. In reality, the popular 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 popular front is the February 1917 revolution” (L Trotsky, ‘The POUM and the popular front’, July 16 1936).

Trotskyists oppose popular frontism because we understand that the proletariat can never triumph so long as it remains chained to the bourgeoisie through class-collaboration. The precondition for the Bolshevik victory in 1917 was flat opposition to Kerensky’s government on the grounds that it was a cross-class formation that could only represent the interests of the exploiters. Since 1917 the necessity of proletarian political independence from the ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie has also been repeatedly demonstrated by the defeats that have resulted from class-collaboration. An early example was the brutal beheading of the 1927 Chinese revolution as a result of Stalin’s policy of subordinating the Chinese Communist Party to the bourgeois-nationalist Guomindang.

Comrade Macnair asserts that in the 1930s Trotsky did not advise his supporters to “stand apart from the popular-frontist parties”, but, “On the contrary, he advised them to join the socialist parties, which were participating in the people’s front, and to work with other leftists within them to oppose the coalition policy.” Comrade Macnair says nothing about the fact that the Trotskyists adamantly refused to lend any political support to those who participated in multi-class formations and broke with the Spanish POUM in the 1930s over just this question:

“The POUM is merely slavishly conducting the same policy that the 7th Congress of the Comintern foisted on all its sections, absolutely independently of their ‘national peculiarities’. The real difference in the Spanish policy this time lies only in the fact that a section of the London international has also adhered officially to the bloc with the bourgeoisie. So much the worse for it. As far as we are concerned, we prefer clarity. In Spain, genuine revolutionists will no doubt be found who will mercilessly expose the betrayal of Maurin, Nin, Andrade, and their associates, and lay the foundation for the Spanish section of the Fourth International!” (L Trotsky, ‘The treachery of the POUM’, January 23 1936).

The CPGB has a much more ‘flexible’ attitude toward Marxist principles. For example, Peter Manson advocates voting for Socialist Workers Party members running in the cross-class Respect coalition on the grounds that, if elected, they would “hopefully ... act as workers’ tribunes in parliament, on the picket line, in the press” (Weekly Worker March 24). If pigs could fly!

In the late 1980s we had an exchange on this question with Workers Power (see Trotskyist Bulletin No3). Like the CPGB, Workers Power advocated voting for working class elements in a popular front. They rationalised this revisionism with references to Trotsky’s writings in the 1930s. But this does not stand close examination. For example, in the aftermath of the June 1936 strikes in France, Trotsky forcefully argued that any sort of political support for reformist and centrist workers’ parties must be conditional upon their breaking with the bourgeoisie:

“The first step to an alliance with the petty bourgeoisie is the breaking up of the bloc with the bourgeois radicals in France and Spain, the bloc with the catholics and liberals in Belgium, etc. It is necessary to explain this truth, on the basis of experience, to every socialist and communist worker. Such is the central task of the moment. The struggle against reformism and Stalinism is at the present stage a struggle above all against a bloc with the bourgeoisie. For the honest unity of the workers, against dishonest unity with the exploiters! Bourgeoisie out of the people’s front! Down with the capitalist ministers!” (L Trotsky, ‘The new revolutionary upsurge and the tasks of the Fourth International’, July 1936).

The demand to oust the capitalist ministers was a direct reference to Lenin’s call on the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries in 1917. The Bolsheviks made it clear that a precondition for any sort of critical support to the government was a break with the capitalist elements: ie, the destruction of the cross-class bloc.

This is the approach that Marxists take to popular-frontist formations such as Respect. Communists are certainly not averse to entering larger working-class formations to fight for their ideas, nor to extending critical support to reformist workers’ parties that draw a crude class line electorally. Such tactics can be valuable in exposing the insufficiency of the reformists’ programme and winning new adherents to Bolshevism. But a reformist workers’ party that has entered into a popular front has undertaken in advance to limit the struggles of the working class to what is tolerable to the bourgeoisie (ie, they have undertaken to betray their base). To extend political support to reformist parties in a popular front is to endorse the ‘tactic’ of class-collaboration and thus to renounce proletarian political independence, the central axis of Marxist politics. George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia contains a vivid description of the counterrevolutionary function of the popular front in Spain in 1936-37.

Trotsky taught us to “speak the truth to the masses, no matter how bitter it may be”. The key to the victory of the October revolution, the only successful workers’ revolution in history, was the Bolsheviks’ struggle for working class political independence from the bourgeoisie. Conversely, the search for ‘popular unity’ with the ‘progressive’ wing of the bourgeoisie has produced an unbroken chain of defeats for the workers’ movement.

Comrade Macnair may believe that in contemporary Britain political support to popular-frontist candidates is merely a tactical question because the ruling class has little need to resort to “violent reaction”. But such an approach can only tighten the ideological chains that bind workers to their exploiters. ‘Communist’ organisations that abandon the fundamental principles of Marxist politics for ‘tactical’ reasons effectively forsake the struggle for socialism and help set the stage for future defeats.

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