There Is No Peace: 60 Years Since End of World War II

The Popular Front was based on programmatic alliances of workers’ parties with liberal bourgeois parties. During World War II, Communist parties worldwide followed this line by supporting Washington and other “Allied” imperialist powers in their war with their “Axis” rivals.

In 1936 a revolutionary upsurge in France opened up the possibility for workers and farmers to contend for political power. The Communist and Socialist parties, however, blocked that opening by subordinating the struggles of working people to a Popular Front alliance with capitalists.  
 
October 1917 Russian Revolution
In October 1917 the Bolshevik party led working people in Russia to carry out the first revolution in history that brought to power a workers and farmers government, overturned capitalist rule, and advanced the worldwide struggle for socialism.

By the mid-1920s, however, a rising bureaucratic caste in the Soviet workers state, headed by Joseph Stalin, reversed the Bolsheviks’ proletarian internationalist course. It imposed a line of subordinating the interests of working people to some “progressive” wing of the capitalist class in country after country, in order to serve the diplomatic maneuvers of the privileged bureaucracy.

Writing in the April 16 issue of the People’s Weekly World, which reflects the views of the Communist Party USA, CP national chairman Sam Webb defended this perspective. He cited Georgi Dimitrov, who in 1935 laid down the Popular Front line on behalf of the Stalin-led Communist International.

At that time, “fascism was gathering its forces in Germany, Italy and elsewhere,” Webb wrote. “That made it all the more imperative that communists shed themselves of simplistic concepts of the revolutionary process like ‘class against class,’ skipping intermediate stages of struggle.”

That argument is a rationalization for the CPUSA’s decades-long course of supporting one of the two main parties of the U.S. ruling class, the Democrats, against the Republicans.

The Stalinist line went through many twists and turns. After a period of supporting liberal bourgeois politicians who might secure diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union by capitalist governments, in 1928 Moscow lurched into an ultraleft course, the “third period.”  
 
Disaster in Germany
That led to disaster in Germany. Instead of fighting for a united front of workers organizations to defeat the rising fascist movement, the German Communists—following Stalin’s line—focused their fire on the Social Democratic Party as the “main enemy.” This course allowed Hitler’s National Socialists to take power without a struggle—a major defeat for the working class worldwide.

Instead of returning to the Leninist policy of the workers’ united front, however, the Stalinized Communist International called for support to “democratic” imperialist governments under the banner of an “antifascist people’s front.” At the Comintern’s Seventh—and last—Congress in July-August 1935, Dimitrov presented this new line.

In its early years the Comintern had advocated the united front as a perspective of workers parties joining in action, independent of the capitalist parties, to defend immediate needs of the working class against the employers. That tactic was employed to advance the line of march of workers and farmers toward taking state power.

Dimitrov gave lip service to the united front, but the content of his report was its negation: a “wide general front of the people against fascism.” In the name of “broadening out” the coalition to farmers, it called for including capitalist parties.

The Stalinist leader pointed favorably to the example of the French Communist Party, which earlier in 1935 had launched a Popular Front coalition with the Socialist Party and the liberal bourgeois Radical Party.  
 
Labor upsurge in France
In France the social crisis had been sharpening since Feb. 4, 1934, when fascists and royalists staged violent demonstrations and attempted a coup. Radical Party prime minister Edouard Daladier resigned and was replaced by the rightist Gaston Doumergue.

In face of rising fascist attacks, a working-class radicalization deepened. Fearful of this growing unrest, sections of the ruling class began to consider the fascist alternative, already in power in Germany. French imperialism also began to rearm, preparing for the coming imperialist war.

Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, then living in exile in France, called for united-front actions by the mass Socialist and Communist parties and for the formation of workers militias to mobilize against the fascist threat. He collaborated closely with the Communist League, which fought for the revolutionary internationalist perspective followed by Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

The French Communist Party pushed for a Popular Front, arguing that it could prevent war and stave off fascism at home.  
 
Popular Front line in France
The parties of the Popular Front won the April-May parliamentary elections. On June 4, 1936, Socialist Party leader León Blum became prime minister and formed a Popular Front government. The governing alliance was pro-capitalist, because otherwise the Radicals would not participate.

A deep working-class upsurge erupted. Metalworkers in Paris went on strike and a wave of factory occupations involving 2 million workers spread nationwide.

This prerevolutionary situation opened up the possibility for working people, with proper leadership, to organize a fight to take power. Trotsky and the Communist League called for ousting the bourgeois politicians from the Popular Front regime and organizing a workers and farmers government.

The CP and SP, however, corralled working people within the bounds of capitalism. The Communist Party mobilized its cadres against the upsurge. CP leader Maurice Thorez declared on June 11, 1936, “It is necessary to know when to end a strike.”

Fearful of revolution, the capitalists made numerous concessions in return for demobilizing workers, including a 40-hour workweek (down from 48 hours), wage increases of 7-15 percent, and two-week paid vacations.

In response to the worsening economic crisis, the Blum government sharply devalued the franc, postponed promised retirement pensions and cost-of-living wage increases, and cut public works. In March 1937 the government unleashed the police against an antifascist workers’ march, killing four demonstrators.

The Popular Front government collapsed in June 1937, unable to satisfy the demands of workers while losing its attractiveness for capitalists as a source of stability. The Radical Party, which became the ruling party, turned on its former allies, ruthlessly suppressing the workers movement.  
 
Rightist Vichy regime
The actions of the French Stalinists and social democrats dealt a big blow to the workers movement internationally. The disaster of the Popular Front paved the way for French imperialism’s entry into World War II and later to the imposition of the rightist Vichy regime during the German imperialist occupation of France.

The lesson of this experience is that such an outcome was not inevitable. The example set by the Russian Revolution under the leadership of the Bolshevik party points the road forward. That is the road of working people organizing a revolutionary movement that is independent of—not subordinate to—the bosses and their parties, and that leads to overturning capitalist rule.

A subsequent article will describe how the Popular Front line was carried out in Spain.
 
 
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How bosses’ war profiteering cost GIs’ lives in World War II  
 
 
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