1
We have seen that the People’s Front is in content equivalent
to class collaboration and coalition government. Consequently, the lessons of
history with respect to class collaboration and coalition government apply with
full force to the People’s Front. It is not my intention to examine these
lessons in detail; but some brief reference is necessary.
The policies of class collaboration are based upon the assumption
that socialism can be achieved by peaceful and orderly evolution within the
framework of capitalist society. By education and organization, it is argued, a
majority of the people can be won to the side of socialism; and a socialist
society can then be introduced by the ballot. The War of 1917, the Russian
Revolution, and the triumph of Hitler have proved that assumption to be utterly
and grotesquely false; but it has, nevertheless, dominated the reformist
parties of the world from shortly after the founding of the Second
International, and still continues to guide their actions.
The influence of class collaboration spread throughout the world
labor movement because it was over a comparatively long period of time able to
show certain concrete achievements. And it could do so, so long as capitalism
as a whole was still in its progressive phase. During the last decades of the
Nineteenth Century, and up to 1914 in this century, capitalism was still a
great expansive force. The trend of capitalist production, in spite of the
recurrent business crises, was upward to ever new heights. As a consequence,
the bourgeoisie was in a position to grant considerable concessions to the
proletariat, for the sake of avoiding an intensification of the class struggle.
Class collaboration was a method of bargaining for these concessions. And
through it, the reformists were able to establish at least to some degree such
benefits for certain strata of the workers (the “labor aristocracy”) as social
insurance, cheap municipal housing, recreation centers, etc.; and to
concentrate on “good government” campaigns which eliminated the grosser forms
of governmental corruption.
However, in actuality, these concessions were simply bribes paid
by the bourgeoisie through the reformist working class leaders in return for a
renunciation of the revolutionary class struggle for workers’ power. These
bribes were accepted at the expense of the independence of the proletariat; and
it could not have been otherwise. The policy of class collaboration made the
workers dependent, not on their own independent class strength, but on the
bourgeoisie; tied them to the bourgeoisie through the bourgeois state. The
reformist leaders became, and could not help becoming, agents of the
bourgeoisie within the working class.
The results became openly apparent in 1914. At the outbreak of the
War, the reformists were confronted with the choice: for or against the
imperialist war; proletarian internationalism or social-patriotism. And since
their whole past policy had bound them within each country to “their own”
bourgeoisie, the reformists went over to the side of the war, and led the
masses to slaughter.
The same process went on during the post-war boom in the
1920’s; and led, and could not help leading, to capitulation before Hitler
as soon as the ruling class decided that the time for fascism had arrived.
Thus class collaboration has always been anti-revolutionary,
anti-Marxist. But now, with the world decline of capitalism as a system, even
the feeble excuse that once was made for it no longer holds. Capitalist
production is no longer expanding, but is progressively drying up. The
bourgeoisie is no longer in a position to make major concessions to the masses.
In order to maintain capitalism and the domination of the bourgeoisie, the
concessions and the “privileges” must be one by one withdrawn; real wages must
be lowered; social benefits cut off. And the methods of class collaboration are
no longer capable even of obtaining the petty bribes. Even immediate demands
and elementary rights can be won and defended by the workers only by the
methods of militant and sharp class struggle. The advance of fascism, the
opening up of a new series of wars and revolutions, have shattered the last
remaining “justification” for the structure of class collaboration.
2
Coalition government is simply the general policy of class
collaboration carried into the parliamentary and governmental sphere. By
entering into a coalition government, or equally by accepting office under
capitalism as a “labor government,” the proletarian parties undertake to
administer the bourgeois state. That is, they become the political executives
for capitalism. There is no way to avoid this; and the intentions and
wishes–however sincere–of the reformist leaders have nothing to do with the
political reality. The state, the governmental mechanism, is, according to
Marxism, the chief executive committee for the dominant class in society; its
function is to ensure the rule of the dominant class, and to uphold the basic
social relations upon which that rule is based. At certain times this function
cannot be carried out when an openly bourgeois party is in office; the masses
may have lost confidence in the bourgeois parties, and be ready to rise in
revolt against a government administered by them. The bourgeoisie then permits
the working-class parties to enter the government to forestall a revolutionary
assault on the capitalist state itself. The working class is thus turned aside
from its proper business of the struggle for power, and deceived by its leaders
into believing that the bourgeois state has become its own government. The
bourgeoisie allows its working-class agents to do its business and maintain its
rule.
The whole meaning of a coalition or “labor” government is clearly
described in a remarkable article which appeared in a private bulletin of the
Union of German Industry (the organization of the big German industrialists)
during the Autumn of 1932, six months before the German bourgeoisie placed
Hitler in power. This article discusses the problem of whether the time has
come for Nazism to be allowed to take over the business of administering German
capitalism. I give the quotation (which I take from The Brown Book of the
Hitler Terror) at some length not merely because of its clarification of
the present point, but because of its further bearing on the whole problem of
the nature and meaning of fascism:
“The problem of consolidating the capitalist regime in post-war
Germany is governed by the fact that the leading section, that is, the
capitalists controlling industry, has become too small to maintain its rule
alone. Unless recourse is to be had to the extremely dangerous weapon of purely
military force, it is necessary for it to link itself with sections which do
not belong to it from a social standpoint, but which can render it the
essential service of anchoring its rule among the people, and thereby becoming
its special or last defender. This last or ‘outermost’ defender of
bourgeois rule, in the first period after the war, was Social Democracy.“National Socialism has to succeed Social Democracy in providing
a mass support for capitalist rule in Germany. . . . Social Democracy had a
special qualification for this task, which up to the present National Socialism
lacks. . . . Thanks to its character as the original party of the workers,
Social Democracy, in addition to its purely political force, also had the much
more valuable and permanent advantage of control over organized labor, and by
paralyzing its revolutionary energies chained it firmly to the capitalist
State….“In the first period of re-consolidation of the capitalist
regime after the war, the working class was divided by the wages, victories and
social-political measures through which the Social Democrats canalized the
revolutionary movement…. The deflection of the revolution into
social-political measures corresponded with the transference of the struggle
from the factories and the streets into Parliament and Cabinets, that is, with
the transformation of the struggle ‘from below’ into concessions
‘from above.’“From then onwards, therefore, the Social Democratic and trade
union bureaucracy, and with them also the section of the workers whom they led,
were closely tied to the capitalist State and participation in its
administration—at least so long as there was anything left of their
post-war victories to defend by these means, and so long as the workers
followed their leadership.“This analysis leads to four important conclusions:
“1. The policy of ‘the lesser evil’ is not merely
tactical, it is the political essence of Social Democracy.“2. The cords which bind the trade union bureaucracy to the
State method ‘from above’ are more compelling than those which bind
them to Marxism, and therefore to Social Democracy; and this holds in relation
to the bourgeois State which wants to draw in this bureaucracy.“3. The links between the trade union bureaucracy and Social
Democracy stand or fall, from a political standpoint, with parliamentarism.“4. The possibility of a Liberal social policy for monopoly
capitalism is conditioned by the existence of an automatic mechanism for the
creation of divisions in the working class. A capitalist regime which adopts a
Liberal social policy must not only be entirely parliamentary, it must also be
based on Social Democracy and must allow Social Democracy to have sufficient
gains to record; a capitalist regime which puts an end to these gains must also
sacrifice parliamentarism and Social Democracy, must create a substitute
for Social Democracy and pass over to a social policy of
constraint.“The process of this transition, in which we are at the moment,
for the reason that the economic crisis has perforce blotted out the gains
referred to, has to pass through the acutely dangerous stage, when, with the
wiping out of these gains, the mechanism for the creation of divisions in the
working class which depended on them also ceases to function, the working class
moves in the direction of Communism, and the capitalist rule approaches the
emergency stage of military dictatorship. . . . The only safeguard from this
acute stage is if the division and holding back of the working class, which the
former mechanism can no longer adequately maintain, is carried out by other and
more direct methods. In this lie the positive opportunities and tasks of
National Socialism. . . .“If National Socialism succeeds in bringing the trade unions
into a social policy of constraint, as Social Democracy formerly succeeded in
bringing them into a Liberal policy, then National Socialism would become the
bearer of one of the functions essential to the future of capitalist rule, and
must necessarily find its place in the State and social system. The danger of a
State capitalist or even socialistic development, which is often urged against
such an incorporation of the trade unions under National Socialist leadership,
will in fact be avoided precisely by these means. . . . There is no third
course between a re-consolidation of capitalist rule and the Communist
revolution.”
There is no avoiding the harsh logic of history. When the
workers’ parties enter a coalition government, or form a labor government
on the basis of the bourgeois state, they thereby necessarily become the
administrators of capitalism. And they must, therefore, act to maintain and
uphold capitalism. In peaceful times, they do this as described in the
quotation, by canalizing the energies of the workers into peaceful paths which
do not threaten the overthrow of the capitalist order. In this way, the
coalition and labor governments of the Scandinavian countries have functioned.
Similarly in the case of the two Labor Party governments formed in Great
Britain: neither was able to take a single step toward socialism; they had to
carry out the mandate of British finance-capital, even to the extent of
upholding the extreme Tory policy in connection with India. It is interesting
to recall a comment of one of the Comintern theoreticians writing in the days
just preceding the People’s Front era:
“When the Labor Party first took over the administration
of the affairs of British imperialism, the MacDonald ‘Labor’
government allowed the laws passed by the Conservatives and directed against
the miners to remain in force; it also set the seal of its whole authority to
the law providing for the lengthening of hours in the mines. When, for the
second time, it became the administrator of the British bourgeoisie, it at once
understood the latter’s program in the matter of ‘a standard of life
for the workers of Great Britain worthy of human beings’ in the same way
as German Social Democracy understood the program of its own bourgeoisie in
regard to this; it promoted capitalist rationalization at the expense of the
workers with all its might; through its peacemakers it permitted the miserable
wages of the whole of the textile workers to be cut in the interest of making
the textile industry capable of competition; by rapid rationalization it
increased unemployment to an unprecedented extent, and prepared the wage cuts
of the sailors and the civil servants, as well as a reduction in the unemployed
dole.”
(Bela Kun, The Second International in
Dissolution.)
But in times of crisis, much more than this must be done. The
coalition or labor government, as the administrator of capitalism, must defend
capitalism if capitalism is attacked. Consequently, it must uphold the
imperialist war policy of the bourgeoisie. And, against the threat of
proletarian revolution, which would overthrow capitalism, it must take steps to
smash the revolution. This is precisely what happens. We discover, for example,
in the post-war revolutions in Germany and Austria, that it is the Social
Democratic parliamentarians who shoot down the revolutionary workers. Quite
literally shoot them down, as the blood of Luxemburg and Liebknecht so
unanswerably testifies.
The reason why a coalition or labor government can never
serve the interests of the proletariat, and must always serve the
interests of the bourgeoisie, is, from the point of view of Marxism, easy
enough to understand. The bourgeois state, its entire apparatus and mechanism,
exists to enforce the rule of the bourgeoisie; and arose historically, out of
the ruins of feudal society, for just that purpose. Consequently, being
designed solely to uphold capitalist property relations and the domination of
the bourgeoisie, the workers can enforce their power politically and achieve
socialism, only through smashing the bourgeois state in its entirety, and
building another type of state, a state based on different historical and
social roots. The proletarian state, since the Russian Revolution, has been
known as a Soviet State: that is, a state based on democratically elected
soviets or councils or committees of the workers and peasants. Exactly what
form these will take in any given country cannot be predicted with certainty
beforehand. But it can be stated with complete assurance that only such a
political structure, involving the complete overthrow of the bourgeois state
machinery, can uphold and enforce the power of the workers.
The classic proofs of the impossibility of the utilization by the
workers of the bourgeois state are to be found in the analyses of the Paris
Commune by Marx and Engels, and in Lenin’s State and Revolution.
The latter work, read today, seems very much like a contemporary polemic
against the entire People’s Front policy.
Lenin quotes Marx and Engels: “One thing especially was proved by
the Commune, viz., that the ‘working class cannot simply lay hold of
the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes’.”
Lenin continues: “Marx’s idea is that the working class must break
up, shatter the ‘ready-made state machinery,’ and not confine
itself merely to taking possession of it.” And Lenin goes on to outline the
kind of state which will replace the “ready-made state machinery.” Lenin’s
whole attack on Kautsky, which occupies a decisive section of this
pamphlet, is focused on Kautsky’s admission of the possibility of the
utilization of the bourgeois state for the benefit of the workers and to
achieve workers’ power. “Kautsky may enjoy the pleasant company of the
Legiens, Davids, Plekhanovs, Potresovs, Tseretelis and Chernovs, who are quite
willing to work for the ‘shifting of the relation of forces within the
state,’ for ‘gaining a majority in parliament, and the conversion of
parliament into the master of the government.’ A most worthy object,
wholly acceptable to the opportunists, in which everything remains within the
framework of a bourgeois parliamentary republic. We shall go forward to a break
with the opportunists; and the whole of the class-conscious proletariat will be
with us–not for a ‘shifting of the relation of forces,’ but for the
overthrow of the bourgeosie, the destruction of bourgeois
parliamentarism, for a democratic republic after the type of the [Paris]
Commune, or a republic of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies,
the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” And he concludes his
broadside against the reformists of the Second International: “Far from
inculcating into the workers’ minds the idea that the time is near when
they are to rise up and smash the old state machinery and substitute for
it a new one, thereby making their political domination the foundation for a
Socialist reconstruction of society, they have actually taught the workers the
direct opposite of this, and represented the ‘conquest of power’ in a
way that left thousands of loopholes for opportunism.”
3
The crucial historical example of a People’s Front
government, up until the recent past, was none other than the Provisional
Government of Kerensky in Russia in 1917. Kerensky’s government in every
respect conformed to the definition of a genuine People’s Front
government. In it were to be found all of the parties of the workers and
peasants, with the exception, of course, of the Bolshevik Party. It was a
government sworn to uphold democracy. And, in August, 1917, it was attacked by
the troops of Kornilov, the then equivalent of a fascist.
Nevertheless, the policy of Lenin, the policy which led to the
success of the first proletarian revolution, was never for one moment based on
political support of the Provisional Government. From the instant of his
arrival in Russia, he fought against all those who in any way gave the
Provisional Government such support (among whom, when Lenin arrived, was to be
found Stalin). Lenin’s policy was based upon the transfer of state power
to the Soviets; and in the final analysis this had to be accomplished not
through, but directly against the Provisional Government. The
Provisional Government had to be smashed in order that proletarian power could
be achieved.
The decisive test of Lenin’s policy came in August, during
the days of Kornilov’s attempted counter-revolution. But, even though the
object of Kornilov’s attack seemed on the surface to be the Kerensky
regime, nevertheless Lenin maintained throughout his position of
“no-confidence” in the Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks pursued an
independent class policy in organizing to meet the immediate threat of
Kornilov, placed no reliance whatever on the government, and kept the workers
and troops under their influence from being subordinated to the government and
its policies. They did this because they knew that the government would try to
betray the workers and the revolution (as indeed Kerensky did in fact try to
do, in negotiating for an agreement with Kornilov), and that the progress of
the revolution would have to go on, after the defeat of Kornilov, to the
overthrow of the government and the transfer of power to the Soviets. “It is no
wonder,” writes Trotsky in his History, “that the masses led by the
Bolsheviks in fighting against Kornilov did not place a moment of trust in
Kerensky. For them it was not a case of defending the government, but of
defending the revolution. So much the more resolute and devoted was their
struggle. . . .” During their hours off duty the sailors came to the prison for
a visit with the imprisoned Kronstadters, and with Trotsky, Raskolnikov and
others. “Isn’t it time to arrest the government?” asked the visitors. “No,
not yet,” was the answer. “Use Kerensky as a gun-rest to shoot Kornilov.
Afterward we will settle with Kerensky.” In June and July these sailors had not
been inclined to pay much attention to revolutionary strategy, but they had
learned much in a short two months. They raised this question of the arrest of
the government rather to test themselves and clear their own consciences. They
themselves were beginning to grasp the inexorable consecutiveness of events.
“In the first half of July, beaten, condemned, slandered; at the end of August,
the trusted defenders of the Winter Palace [the seat of the Provisional
Government] against Kornilovists; at the end of October, they will be shooting
at the Winter Palace with the guns of the Aurora.”
How absolute a gulf between Lenin’s policy, and the policy of
the Stalinists and Socialists today in Spain–the gulf between revolutionary
Marxism and reformist betrayal!
Posted: 30 April 2005