1
On February 6, 1934, gangs of fascists, reactionaries and
royalists–for the most part young students and irresponsible sons of
noblemen–rioted in Paris, across the river from the Chamber of Deputies. Less
than a week later, on the 12th, the working class replied in its own way,
spontaneously, by a vast general strike.
These events were of the highest symptomatic importance. They
demonstrated, beyond any shadow of doubt, that the crisis in France had reached
a point where it could no longer be quieted down, much less solved, by legal
and parliamentary means. They showed that the issue was leaving the halls of
the Chamber of Deputies and moving out into the streets and the factories; that
events in France were progressing relentlessly toward a revolutionary climax;
that within the next few years the fate of France–fascist France or a
workers’ France–was to be decided.
The underlying causes are, of course, to be sought in the status
of French economy. The peculiar conditions of French economy–the already
accomplished devaluation of its currency, the comparative absence of gigantic
industrial enterprises, the methods of French agriculture and the large number
of well cultivated small holdings, the huge gold reserve, and the advantages
still at that time accruing to France from the terms of the Versailles
Treaty–had delayed the impact of the world crisis. However, when the crisis,
belatedly, hit France, these same peculiar conditions, aggravated by the
collapse of the Versailles system, undermined the resiliency of French economy,
and made it impossible for France to share proportionately in the world upturn
that began in 1933. In 1935, for example, production in France as compared with
production in 1928-29 was lower than in the case of any other great power. The
truth is that France has reached an impasse. There are only two roads: the
salvation of French economy through the workers’ revolution and socialism;
or the solidification of disintegration by the straitjacket of Fascism.
These conclusions, so incontrovertible in the light of any
objective analysis of French conditions, were, however, reached only by the
bourgeoisie and by the revolutionary Marxists, the latter tragically weak in
numbers and influence. The bourgeoisie drew appropriate conclusions and began
carefully and systematically to prepare for the transition to fascism, just as
the German bourgeoisie had done before them; began to take steps to take the
fascist movement out of the hands of the students and light-minded aristocrats,
and to search for a serious mass base; and began to make ready the arms, the
pistols and clubs and machine guns and airplanes through which the issue would
be finally decided.
The Marxists, also, drew appropriate conclusions. They called for
a direct perspective leading to the conquest of power. They called for a
concentration on the work of preparing the class forces, and a reduction of
parliamentary activities to a secondary level. They called for a united front
of mass struggle; for the building of a workers’ militia able to defend
the proletarian interests; for steps to be taken toward the formation of
committees in the factories and shops, on the land, and in the armed forces;
for the transfer of the focus of struggle to these committees, with the aim,
when the revolutionary crisis reached its climax, of the transfer of power to
the committees: that is, with the aim of the transfer of power to a Soviet
State. They called for broad mass actions, for boldness and decision, for the
sharpening of the class struggle. These were and continue to be their slogans;
and in them alone is the hope of the French working class.
The reformist leadership of the Socialist Party of France, on the
other hand, and the Stalinists, just then turning reformist under the impulse
of the new orientation of the Comintern, had quite different views. The depth
of the crisis made no impression on their shielded eyes. The approach of a
revolutionary situation? Mere fantasy. Workers’ militia and factory
committees? Only the delusions and idiotic provocations of sectarian minds. The
real business was to defend the great French democracy, to “rehabilitate”
democratic capitalism, to protect it against its enemies. And their brains were
little concerned with the enemy within, with the French counter-revolution; the
great enemy was without–Hitler and German Nazism.
In the summer of 1934 the Socialist and Communist Parties
concluded what they called a United Front–the widely heralded “Front
Unique.” But this was in actuality at the farthest remove from the genuine
united front of action on specific issues. It was, first, a “non-aggression
pact” whereby the two parties gave up the indispensable right of mutual
criticism; and, second, an agreement on certain purely defensive measures
whereby French, “democracy” could be protected. This, however, was only the
beginning.
The key to French internal politics is to be found in the
Radical-Socialist Party. This is the great Center party of French capitalism,
in 1934 the largest party in France, the firm and unwavering defender of
capitalist property rights. Its propaganda appeal is addressed chiefly to the
middle classes, and among them it has found the bulk of its membership,
promising them the scraps and leavings from the capitalist table. In normal
times, for many decades, the Radical Party has usually formed the government,
at one period in a coalition with the right, at the next in a coalition with
the left (ordinarily with the Socialist Party), balancing itself delicately
between the forces. It is a party shot through and through with corruption and
venality of every sort. In 1934, the measure of this corruption was beginning
to be widely known through a series of scandals; and, more fundamentally, the
pressure of the crisis was teaching the middle classes that the program of the
Radical Party had nothing further to offer them, that they had to abandon their
traditional loyalty, and seek another way out. It was a Radical government that
held office on February 6th; and in the face of the disorderly demonstration of
the impotent young students and aristocrats, the Radicals showed how much
courage and determination they had in the “struggle against fascism.”
The Radicals turned tail and ran; they immediately resigned the government, and
hid in fright their political faces.
The proper conclusions were obvious. The problem of winning the
lower strata of the middle classes in France to the side of the fight against
fascism and for socialism was nothing else than the problem of winning them
away from the Radical Party. The crisis and the conduct of the Radical
Party had made this, politically speaking, a comparatively simple problem. Its
program and its leadership were completely discredited before the masses. A
bold and independent class policy on the part of the proletarian parties would
simply have destroyed the Radical Party; with the bulk of the lower strata of
its former supporters going over to the side of the workers’ parties, its
upper strata going over to the fascists. And, in point of fact, in spite of
the policy of the workers’ parties, this has happened and is
happening. The Radical Party is falling apart (as indicated by its tremendous
drop in votes during 1935 and still more in 1936); but its disintegration is
most dangerously delayed, and the parties of the right–their bold policies
contrasting so sharply with the spineless policies of the left–derive benefits
from the disintegration out of all proportion to what might so easily be the
case.
In direct opposition to the Marxist–indeed, the simple
commonsense–answer to the question of strategy toward the Radical Party, the
entire policies of both the Communist and Socialist Parties have been oriented
toward conciliation to, bolstering up of the Radical Party. This is, in
substance, the organizational form of the People’s Front in France
established formally in 1935: the coalition of the Communist, Socialist, and
Radical Parties. And, since the entire perspective of the workers’ parties
is directed toward the maintenance of the coalition with the Radicals, it
necessarily follows that the policy of the People’s Front as a whole is
dominated by the Radicals, since to break with the policy of the Radicals would
at once bring about the breakup of the People’s Front. The Radicals hold
the whip hand. Their own necks have been saved by the prestige loaned them
through their alliance with the workers’ parties; they have a time longer
to fasten their prejudices on the minds of the masses–the whole People’s
Front ideology being built out of their prejudices; while, in increasing
numbers, the masses, disgusted with the emptiness of the program of the “left,”
pass over to the camp of the fascists.
There could be no other result from the People’s Front
policy. The People’s Front is designed to “save capitalist democracy from
fascism.” But to save and defend capitalist democracy is merely the traditional
policy of the Radicals–a policy proved utterly untenable by history, by 1934,
and half-understood as untenable by ever growing numbers among the masses. The
People’s Front simply took over the policy of the Radicals, and offers it
as a solution under the cover of a new name. The program of the People’s
Front is just the program of the Radicals re-written (and could not be anything
else, since then the Radicals would not have signed it). It is in fact somewhat
to the right of Roosevelt’s New Deal program. It features planks on
“good government,” League of Nations, public works, better organization of
credit and banking, “democratic reform” of taxation, “against unemployment,”
rise in commodity prices, and (most revealing) “measures . . . being taken to
safeguard the interests of the small shareholder.” (Doubtless the last
provision is particularly appealing to the “bourgeois-minded” French
proletarian.)
What lies back of this shameful capitulation to the Radicals? The
reasons can be briefly stated: In return for the capitulation, the Stalinists
were granted the votes of the Radicals for the Franco-Soviet Pact. The
reformist Socialist Party of France has always had, at bottom, the program of
the defense of capitalist democracy; it has merely propagated this program
within the working class, dividing labors with the Radical Party, which
propagated it within the middle classes. In the time of crisis, therefore, the
Socialist Party lines up with its natural political kin. To reformism, fascism
or the proletarian revolution are equally deathblows; and through the
People’s Front the Socialist Party, like the Communist Party, tries to
avoid both the one and the other. And in the case of both of the workers’
parties, they find in their coalition with the Radicals in the People’s
Front the means of preparation for the coming war: the war in which they
propose to line up the French masses for French imperialism against German
imperialism–the Stalinists in order to carry out Stalin’s conception of
“defense of the Soviet Union,” the Socialists because reformism, tied by its
whole nature to the bourgeois democratic state, is on all crucial occasions the
agent of the bourgeoisie.
2
The fruits of the People’s Front policy, the policy of
collaboration with the Radicals, the policy of class collaboration, have not
been long in ripening. In general terms, the great crime of the People’s
Front has been its complete disorientation of the French proletariat. The
People’s Front has prevented the working class from preparing and carrying
out its revolutionary class struggle for power–the only possible solution from
the point of view of the proletariat; and instead has deceived the working
class into putting reliance on class collaboration, on bourgeois democracy, on
the capitalist state. That is, the People’s Front teaches the working
class to rely on the good will of the class enemy, and to renounce the
strengthening of its independent force.
In 1935, the Stalinists, with their eyes on their Radical
colleagues, repudiated the great strikes at Toulon and Brest as “provocations.”
The People’s Front urges the workers to sing the Marseillaise and carry
the tri-color, and not to be too forward with the Internationale and the red
flag. The People’s Front hails the pitiful parliamentary victories in the
1935 municipal elections as a major blow against fascism; and greets the
majority in the 1936 elections for the Chamber of Deputies as a triumph. Under
the compulsion of the logic of their policy, the People’s Fronters abandon
all struggle against the two-year conscription laws, and become wholehearted
supporters of the armament program of French imperialism.
But the People’s Front has at any rate been a great obstacle
to fascism? Not in the least. Fascism has continued its development unhampered
by the People’s Front, at the tempo dictated by finance-capital and the
given relation of forces. In 1934 the fascist movement in France was not
sufficiently deep and serious; it was led and composed of the froth of society,
and was not the basis of a great mass movement. The general strike of February
12th–the independent class action of the workers–struck it a blow,
and it recoiled; and it was held further in check by the shipyard strikes in
1935. But it recoiled only to gather new strength and to prepare more
adequately. It won serious mass leaders of consequence, like the renegade
communist, Doriot. In 1936, it again received a temporary set-back: not from
the elections (for the fascists are well aware that the issue will not be
decided in parliament, and in any case the Right increased its vote in the same
amount as did the Left, both at the expense of the Center), but from the mighty
and spontaneous general strike in June. Once again fascism goes forward, this
time on the main road; it laughs at the statutes passed “outlawing” its
organizations, merely changing names; and it feeds delightedly off the
weaknesses, contradictions, and failures of the People’s Front and the
People’s Front government.
In the Spring of 1936 the People’s Front took over the
government. What is the record? In the face of the tremendous June strikes,
involving 8,000,000 or more workers, and begun by the workers without a word of
leadership from the People’s Front parties, the Blum government, together
with its Radical and Stalinist supporters, stood aghast, frightened, breathless
at the sweep of the masses. They explained to the workers that “they must know
how to end a strike as well as how to begin one” (to quote the words of the
Stalinist leader). Like true reformists, they acted in the manner described by
the theorist of German finance-capital (in the same quotation I have given in
Chapter III). “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’.” They
passed a series of laws, in agreement with the bourgeoisie–then in strategic
retreat before the mass offensive–to show the workers that real benefits came
to them not through struggle but through the beneficence of “their” government.
And already, during these short months, the concessions to the workers, where
not directly sabotaged by the capitalists, have been more than wiped out by the
increase in the cost of living, resulting from the devaluation and other
inflationary measures, which the government has been forced by economic
compulsion to carry out.
The Blum government is a capitalist government, like all coalition
governments; and as such it administers the affairs of French imperialism. In
the interests of French imperialism, to protect the remnants of the Versailles
settlement, it has undertaken an unprecedented armament program. How revealing
to read in the New York Times of February 3rd of this year that
all parties of the People’s Front voted for the military budget.
(Even at the time of the Seventh Congress, Dimitroff argued that the Communists
in France would not support the military budget.) All likewise voted for the
military loan to Poland, which nation is now completing its transformation to
fascism. The Blum government engineered the hypocritical “Neutrality Pact” in
the Spanish crisis, actively blocked aid to the Spanish workers, and is now in
the forefront of the international boycott. It passes laws restricting freedom
and speech and assembly, and instituting compulsory arbitration; and sends
Mobile Guards against strikers. It suppressed an incipient revolt in Syria, and
continues in French Indo-China a régime which jails and tortures
revolutionists. It suppresses issues of revolutionary journals in France (two
issues, for example, of Lutte des Classes) and imprisons French
revolutionists. Blum cables personal congratulations to Roosevelt on his
victory in November. All parties of the People’s Front announce the
complete solidarity of all true Frenchmen against the threat of Germany; all
vie with each other in super-patriotism, and the greatest scandal of the year
arises when a Socialist is accused of not having been sufficiently patriotic in
the last war–the charge against Salengro, which the People’s Front so
indignantly repudiated. The Stalinists, through Thorez, call for the
transformation of the People’s Front into a “French Front.” And this last
is the most revealing of all: for through the People’s Front, there is
being prepared in France the complete “national front,” once again national
unity, as in 1914, behind French imperialism in the coming war.
In all these weak, docile, spineless months, the People’s
Front has to its credit only one bold and vigorous action. This occurred in
January, when French Morocco, key colony of French imperialism, was menaced by
Germany. At once, without a moment’s hesitation, the People’s Front
sprang to the helm, ordered the fleet to sail, and stood by to defend with the
lives of the masses the booty of the French bourgeoisie.
But underneath the façade of the People’s Front, deep
down among the masses, the crisis continues and extends. After a lull following
the June strikes, the workers are once more in motion. New strikes, not yet
wide and general as in June, break out day by day; and now they are fought not
in the holiday spirit of June, but in grim and bitter earnest. The great class
armies are, under the impact of the impassable crisis, slowly aligning, in
spite of everything the People’s Front can or will do. In the end, the
issue will have to be met. Out of it will come either a fascist triumph, and
the setting back of the European proletariat for decades to come, or the
proletarian revolution. But to achieve the latter the workers must, learning
from their experience, break utterly with the false, debilitating and
treacherous policy of the People’s Front; and take the road of
revolutionary class struggle for power and for socialism. Without this, victory
is impossible, fascism is inevitable.
Posted: 30 April 2005