1
One of the chief arguments made in favor of the People’s
Front is that through it there can be brought about an alliance between the
working class and the middle classes against the onslaught of extreme reaction,
of fascism. If this argument were true, it would be of great importance; and we
must, therefore, examine it with care.
The middle classes consist of those social groups intermediary
between the two basic classes of modern society, the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. Though it is difficult to define exactly the boundaries of the
middle classes, they evidently include: peasants and small independent farmers;
shop-keepers and small business men; many types of professional workers;
independent artisans; artists and intellectuals; minor executives; etc. These
groups lead in capitalist society an unstable and precarious existence, because
of the ambiguity of their relation to the means of production–they are not in
the full sense either workers or capitalists. They seek, naturally, their
self-preservation, the defense and, if possible, the betterment of their
economic fortunes. But the nature of their social position makes it impossible
for them to develop any independent program for the fulfillment of their
own interests. At bottom, there are only two programs for modern society:
capitalism, the program of the bourgeoisie; and socialism, the program of the
proletariat. There is no third alternative.
Since they can have no independent program of their own, the
middle classes are forced to adopt, after their fashion, the social program of
one or another of the two basic classes. So long as capitalism is progressive
and relatively stable, the middle classes accept capitalism without much
question; and strive only to gain for themselves as large a percentage as
possible of the material benefits of capitalism. But the evolution of
capitalism into its monopoly-imperialist phase, and the recurrent crises,
constantly undermine the economic foundations of the middle classes. Shop
keepers are forced down into employees of chain stores; independent farmers
become share-croppers or farm laborers; various categories of professional
workers are changed into wage workers; artists and intellectuals are put to
work for wages by the government, big corporations, advertising agencies; the
small business men are driven out of business by the big trusts; taxes grow
heavier. The middle classes protest in their feeble and fruitless manner. They
call for anti-monopoly laws; beg for moratoria on farm loans; ask for
anti-chain store legislation; request protection for small enterprises; look
for a shift in taxes to other backs than their own. All their complaints are of
no avail whatever, since the inexorable development of capitalism contains
within itself the extension of monopoly and the ever heavier crushing of the
middle classes.
As the general crisis deepens, the discontent and turmoil in the
middle classes grows ever more turbulent. The middle classes toss back and
forth with increasing restlessness. Hare-brained ideas and theories, fantastic
groups and movements and parties, give expression to the dreams and wishes and
prejudices of the middle-class theoreticians. We know dozens of them in this
country: Utopia, Townsend, Huey Long, back-to-the-land, Humanism,
neo-feudalism, Union Party. . . . The middle classes are seeking a way out of
their impasse. But they have no possible way out of their own. And at last they
must, in whole or in a division, face the ultimate choice: to line up behind
one of the two basic classes and its program, to swing to the side of the
bourgeoisie or the proletariat.
The mere statement of the position of the middle classes in modern
society makes obvious the answer to the problem of “winning” them. They are
looking for a solution, for a “way out,” and they have none of their own to
offer. They grow gradually disgusted and despairing of the pseudo-solutions
proposed by their own ideologists. They are then ready to turn sharply, and to
follow that side which will give them bold, decisive, vigorous leadership,
which in firm accent will show them a way out and a solution. How could it be
otherwise? They themselves are timid, frightened, hesitating; and they would
not turn to a timid and hesitating leadership as a substitute. They themselves
have discovered that bourgeois democracy has merely led them deeper and deeper
into the abyss, and they are searching for something to take its place, not
something to bolster it up again. They do not want a leadership and a program
which will pander to their own prejudices; they have tasted the bitter fruits
of these prejudices, and they look for a new set of ideas, a new direction. The
“alliance between the working class and the middle classes” can be formed only
if the working class holds the leading position in that alliance, only if the
alliance is founded on the clear, frank, unafraid assertion of the
proletarian program–for workers’ power and for socialism. If, on
the contrary, it is the bourgeoisie or their agents that give clear and
uncompromising leadership, while the working class hides its program and gives
way to middle-class prejudices, the middle classes are certain to go over to
the side of the bourgeoisie, to the side that demonstrates that it means
business, that it knows what it wants and is determined to go and get it.
These conclusions are confirmed time after time in every-day
experience. For example, nearly every big strike is an object lesson in the
relation between the proletariat and the middle classes. The newspapers, as
mouthpieces of the bourgeoisie, try always to make the strikers believe that if
they conduct a militantly fought strike, especially if there is any violence,
the “public” (i.e., the middle classes) will be antagonized, and its sympathies
alienated from the strike. The origin of this “friendly” advice, repeated in
every strike situation, should be enough to make it suspect. And, in truth,
exactly the contrary is what normally happens. When the “public” is confronted
with militant, fighting strikers, who make clear that they mean business and
intend to win, the public lines up with the strikers. And why not? The public
naturally wants to be on the winning side; when it sees the strikers acting
like winners, conscious of their own power, it draws appropriate conclusions.
Nor does violence, so long as it does not result in a complete rout of the
strike, change the picture in the least. It may offend the moral feelings of
the public; but when the middle classes see the workers ready to defend their
rights by force as well as by argument, this becomes an additional and
compelling reason for the middle classes to line up alongside them. After all,
they do not want to see proletarian violence turned against themselves. The
1934 strikes of the Toledo Auto-Lite workers and the Minneapolis truck
drivers–both fought with uncompromising militancy–are admirable test cases
for this method of assuring at least sufficient support from the “public.”
It is when the strikers, under the influence of reformist leaders,
begin vacillating, backing down, avoiding struggle, that the public turns its
back on them and swings to the other side. And once again, how natural! When
the public sees that the strikers are not sure of themselves, do not know
exactly what they want or how to get it, the public concludes that it will be
best for its own skin to line up with the bosses–who make no bones about where
they stand. The middle classes love truth and justice, no doubt; but
when it is a question of their own pocketbooks and their own skins, they will
always take care to discover truth and justice and what looks to them like the
winning side.
Great social crises only confirm the same lesson. Above all, the
experience of the Russian Revolution is decisive in teaching us how the middle
classes can be won. Who, indeed, won the middle classes (that is, above all,
the peasantry) in the Russian Revolution? Not at all the People’s Front
parties of the Provisional Government. They–the Social Revolutionaries and the
Mensheviks–had the middle classes to begin with; they formulated their
policies and programs in accordance with middle-class prejudices; and precisely
for that reason, during the course of 1917, they lost the middle classes. The
peasants went over, in their overwhelming majority, to the Bolsheviks. They did
so because the Bolsheviks made clear that they meant business. The Bolsheviks
did not waste time on “the defense of bourgeois democracy” against the
counter-revolution, or about middle-class fear of violence. From start to
finish, in sharp and uncompromising manner, the Bolsheviks put forward the
political program of the proletariat: for Soviet power and for
socialism. They showed the peasants that their needs–peace and land–could be
fulfilled only by adherence to the proletarian program and proletarian
leadership. And the middle classes decided that their best bet was to come
along under the banner of that program.
2
We are thus able to see that the People’s Front conception is
the opposite of Marxism in its approach to the middle classes. Far from winning
the middle classes to the side of the workers, the People’s Front
subordinates the workers to middle-class prejudices. It accepts a program built
out of middle-class illusions–illusions which the middle classes themselves
are beginning to discard, and accepts the leadership of middle-class
politicians. It gives up the independent class action of the workers, through
which alone the revolution can be won, in return for–nothing at all. The
temporary “alliance” superficially achieved in the People’s Front cannot
possibly hold together for any length of time. The middle classes are looking
for a way out; they are unable to find one of their own; the proletariat, by
adopting the People’s Front policy, declines to offer them its socialist
way out; and the middle classes are left ripe for picking by the fascist
demagogues. The fascists are not modest or conciliatory in their approach, nor
do they have any qualms about violence. They shout for the “true revolution,”
condemn bourgeois democracy with contempt, preach a religion of blood and iron
and violence, announce openly their drive for power. However false the
doctrines of the fascists may be, the leadership they offer is bold and
decisive; and the middle classes will follow it unless the leadership offered
by the proletariat is even more bold and more decisive.
Exactly this happened in Germany. It was the class
collaborationist policy of German Social Democracy (combined with the suicidal
sectarianism of the German Communist Party) which left the German middle
classes easy prey for Hitler. The Social Democracy called for defense of the
Weimar Republic exactly when the middle classes had come to learn that they had
nothing further to hope from the Weimar Republic. Hitler called for
“revolution”; and he was, in desperation, believed and followed. Exactly this
is now happening in France. The despairing middle classes of France, their
economic and social position progressively undermined by the French bourgeois
democracy–are instructed by the People’s Front to defend that democracy
with their very lives. As a result, as they learn now that Blum’s
government is just one more version of the same government that has failed them
for so many decades, in increasing numbers they pass over to the camp of the
fascists. The fascists, at any rate, have a program and are not afraid to state
it; they demand and promise a change, a “revolution” even if they are
not too clear as to just what kind it will be.
3
Marxism recognizes, and has always recognized, the crucial
character of this problem of winning the middle classes–not the middle classes
as a whole, which is impossible, but the bulk of their lower strata. Indeed,
Marxism declares that without the support of allies drawn from non-proletarian
social groups, as well as through the aid of anti-imperialist colonial revolts,
the working class cannot succeed and the proletarian revolution is impossible.
But Marxism insists that this alliance can be formed only on the basis of the
independent leadership of the working class, only on the basis of the class
struggle and the proletarian program for workers’ power and for
socialism.
There is nothing hypocritical or dishonest about this conception.
What Marxism says in effect to the middle classes, or at any rate the lower
middle classes, is: you have grave and increasing problems in modern society;
you are unable to solve them through any independent program of your own; they
can be solved only through the proletarian program, only through socialism. You
want jobs, food, security. Through a continuance of capitalism, in whatever
form, you will have less of all of them. Through the workers’ revolution
and through socialism, all of these can be guaranteed, and your basic interests
fulfilled to an ever increasing degree. These claims can be made, and must be
made, because they are true; and because they are the only foundation on which
the middle classes can be won to the side of the proletariat.
The People’s Front is, on the other hand, completely false in
all of its claims. And the Marxist analysis shows that the People’s Front,
far from being able to win the middle classes, must necessarily lose them, will
simply turn over to fascism the mass base which it requires.
Posted: 30 April 2005