1
The People’s Front has not, of course, advanced as far in the
United States as in France or Spain. In the formal sense, there is not yet in
the United States an established “People’s Front.” The United States is
not faced with a developing revolutionary crisis, as is France, nor is it in
the midst of a Civil War, as is Spain. Though the historical issue for the
United States, as is the case for every nation at the present time, is
socialism vs. capitalism, though only the workers’ revolution and
socialism can solve even a single one of the major problems facing United
States economy; nevertheless the issue is not yet posed in terms of the
immediate struggle for state power. The American proletariat is still faced
primarily with the more elementary immediate demands: the struggle for the
right to organize, for industrial unionism, for the exercise of democratic
rights generally, for a powerful trade union and unemployed movement, for
relief and union conditions, for a conscious mass revolutionary party of
struggle.
But just as the issue of state power can be settled in favor of
the proletariat only by the independent revolutionary class struggle of the
workers, and is lost for the proletariat through the reformist strategy of the
People’s Front; in the same way, at the more elementary stages, the
interests of the proletariat can be served only by the appropriate methods of
class struggle, and are fatally undermined by the class collaborationist
methods of the People’s Front. The People’s Front in this country,
seeping into the labor movement under the sponsorship of the Communist Party,
has made considerable headway; and already its disastrous effects are becoming
apparent in a dozen fields.
2
Up to the present, the best known and most conspicuous result of
the People’s Front strategy emerged during the 1936 election campaign.
From the point of view both of the social composition of his support and
likewise of the political content of his program, Roosevelt was in effect a
People’s Front candidate. No one could doubt that he was a staunch and
outstanding defender of capitalist democracy, nor that the bulk of the
proletariat, the farmers, and the lower strata of the rest of the middle
classes, were solidly behind him. Thus the upholders of the People’s Front
ideology found themselves, willingly or unwillingly, driven into the Roosevelt
camp: either openly, as was the case with many, or, like the Communist Party
itself, through a back-handed and ambiguous formula.
The Communist Party was compelled to define the issue of the
campaign as “Progress vs. Reaction,” “Democracy vs. Fascism.” It had to
discover the forces of fascism in the “Landon-Hearst-Liberty League”
combination. It was then required to raise as the central slogan, “Defeat
Landon at all costs!” And the only realistic interpretation of this slogan–the
interpretation which the majority of even its own sympathizers made–was to
vote for Roosevelt. Browder admits quite openly that this was the central
direction of the Stalinist campaign. In his post-election analysis of the
elections, delivered to the Central Committee of the party, he boasts as
follows: “The first objective was the defeat of Landon. This was accomplished
to a degree far surpassing all expectations . . . this aim we shared with the
largest number of people…. Without exaggerating our role in bringing about
this result, we can safely say that the weight of each individual Communist in
the struggle was far higher, many fold, than that of the members of any other
political group in America.” He apologizes at length for the nominally
independent Communist Party ticket that was in the field. If only “a national
Farmer-Labor party . . .” had “decided to place Roosevelt at the head of the
ticket nationally . . . . Would we have refrained from putting forward our own
independent tickets and supported the Farmer-Labor party ticket even with
Roosevelt at the head? I venture to say that under such circumstances we would
almost surely have done so.”
In point of fact, this was done in many localities either by the
Communist Party officially, or by individual party members. In Minnesota,
Washington, California, the Stalinists supported Farmer-Labor and “progressive”
coalitions with no criticism of the fact that Roosevelt headed their tickets.
In New York, the Stalinists gave full support to the American Labor Party,
which entered the election campaign–as its leaders openly declared–only to
gather labor votes for Roosevelt. Individual Communist Party members joined the
American Labor Party, and spoke from its platforms in support of Roosevelt.
The People’s Front policy dictates a wholly anti-Marxist
analysis of Roosevelt. He can no longer be treated as the chief executive for
the dominant class. Criticism of him can only suggest that he is not responsive
enough in carrying out the “people’s mandate,” that he cannot be relied on
to take progressive steps unless a certain amount of pressure against him is
generated. Even when, after the elections were safely under his belt,
Roosevelt, at the bidding of his masters, ruthlessly cut the WPA rolls, even in
the light of Roosevelt’s attitude toward the auto strikes, the Stalinist
criticism must remain mild and “loyal.” The Communist Party, having abandoned
the revolutionary aim of the overthrow of capitalist society, becomes the
“party of Twentieth Century Americanism”; its purpose as defined by the
People’s Front, is to function within the framework of democratic
capitalism, as a reformist “pressure group.” It must strive to become
“respectable,” to ingratiate itself with the class enemy; to show that in
return for vague promises of friendship for the Soviet Union and polite words
against fascism, it is willing to do its part in smothering the class struggle
and guaranteeing the protection of bourgeois democracy against the threat of
proletarian revolution.
3
A reformist political line cannot be isolated into any
supra-mundane sphere of “pure politics.” It must show its effects on every
arena of the class struggle. We thus find during the past two years a
cumulative development of the People’s Front strategy as applied to
Communist Party activities in the trade unions and unemployed organizations. We
may be sure that during the coming months this development will be carried
unprecedented steps further. The basis of the People’s Front is class
collaboration; and we know from past experience of reformism what this means on
the trade union field.
Are the reactionary trade union bureaucrats agents of the class
enemy within the working class? Do their policies act as the major brake to
militant class consciousness within the unions? This is what Marxism has always
taught, but no one could possibly learn this from the most detailed study of
recent Stalinist literature. Nowhere is there any explanation of, or even
reference to, the social function of the trade union bureaucracy. At the most,
there is occasional personal criticism of some action too gross to ignore; but
even this is kept to a minimum, in the interests of currying favor with the
maximum number of the bureaucrats.
The policy of class collaboration forces the Stalinists to abandon
more and more the fighting struggle for economic demands, and through that
struggle the raising of the level of class consciousness, for the attempt to
come to agreements with the bureaucrats, to settle disputes through deals
behind the scenes, to rely on governmental arbitration boards and mediators.
The Stalinist work in the unions must be subordinated to the great aim of
achieving in this country a mass, classless People’s Front. To secure the
adherence of a union to a Negro Congress, or an American League Conference, or
a Farmer-Labor-Progressive what-not, or a Social Security Assembly is far more
important than to get it to prepare and win a militant strike.
The results are already widely present within the labor movement,
though not yet so widely recognized. In the WPA sit-downs, the Stalinists and
the supervisors together explain why the workers must be peaceful and go home.
In Pennsylvania, the Stalinists declare that the new policy for the
Workers’ Alliance must abandon strikes as a method for “settling
disputes.” At the January unemployed demonstration in Washington, not a single
militant slogan or banner was permitted; the whole demonstration was directed
toward the achievement of a friendly chat with the relief authorities. In the
Federation of Teachers, the general fight against the Boards of Education is
deprecated, dual organizations (such as the Teachers’ Guild in New York)
are met with conciliation, and the open struggle against the A.F.of L.
Executive Council and for the C.I.O. principles is shunted aside. In the
Cafeteria Workers, there is disclosed an ironbound alliance between the
Stalinists and the older racketeers. The furriers, the wild men of the Third
Period, turn respectable, and devote their energies against the progressives
and revolutionaries in the union. Ben Gold, who as leader of the furriers
roared for five years like an untamable lion, now speaks like the mildest lamb.
In the United Textile Workers, the Stalinists at the Convention come to the
rescue of the reactionary officials. On the Pacific Coast, among the Maritime
Unions, the Stalinists last year first tried to put over the I.S.U. proposals
on the Sailors, then attempted to head off the strike, then insisted that it be
delayed until after the elections (so as not to injure Roosevelt) ; and in the
end were forestalled only by the militant stand of the Sailors’ Union.
This trend will continue and increase. The Communist Party, under
the banner of the People’s Front, now functions in the unions more and
more as a reactionary force, and the progressive movement in the unions will
have to be built not along with but in large measure against it.
These conclusions are impressively supported by the Stalinist
policy with respect to the A.F.of L.-C.I.O. struggle. At the present time, as
Marxists have made clear, the progressive movement in the unions must proceed
in accordance with the basic slogans: for industrial unionism; for organization
of the basic mass industries; for a class struggle policy; for trade union
democracy. Every one of these slogans, taken individually or together, dictates
repudiation of the policies and course of the A.F.of L. bureaucracy, and
determined, though of course critical, support of the C.I.O. This follows not
because the C.I.O. as at present constituted and with its present leadership is
the sufficient answer to the needs of the workers (indeed, through its
fundamental class collaborationism and its violation of intra-union democracy,
it acts even now and will in the future increasingly act counter to the needs
of the workers), but because in the light of the real and actual conditions of
the present, the direction of the C.I.O. is the direction of advance for
the labor movement, just as the direction of the A.F.of L. officialdom is the
direction of decay and disintegration. As against the A.F.of L.
bureaucracy, therefore, Marxists must, wholeheartedly and unambiguously,
support the C.I.O. Only such an attitude is at present compatible with
progressive trade unionism.
The Communist party policy for the next period, however, is
formulated around the single slogan of “unity.” “We shall,” Browder says in the
report already referred to, “redouble our efforts in the fight for trade union
unity, for the unity of the American Federation of Labor. … We think that it
would be harmful if any unions were divided, one section going to the C.I.O.,
the other to the A.F.of L. . . . under no conditions do we carry that fight on
in such a way as to make a split in that union. . . . For example, in the
probable organization of some sections of heavy machinery, we will have the
problem of whether these new unions shall go into the Machinists or into some
of the other unions, whether it be the Amalgamated Association, or what not.
Generally, we have been clear on this last question. We refused to use our
forces to carry sections of newly organized workers away from the
jurisdictional claims of the Machinists Union over into some of the industrial
unions, where there was a fear that this would intensify rivalries and sharpen
the split.”
No one will argue against the desirability of trade union unity,
nor will anyone “advocate” splits. Nevertheless, it is always the concrete
content of unity, not unity as an abstract slogan, that is important. And,
under the present circumstances, in the labor movement, the fight for unity
itself can be understood only as a fight under the slogans stated above,
and–translated into organizational terms–for the C.I.O. movement as against
the Executive Council. Such a fight alone makes possible the re-integration of
the A.F.of L. on a basis that would mean an advance and not a defeat; and such
a fight is equally necessary to prevent the C.I.O. officials themselves from
betraying the movement which at present they lead. Re-integration, of course,
may not be possible without capitulation; and if this is the case, then the
workers must be prepared to face the full consequences–prepared to face the
necessity for the building of a new Federation. The conduct of a genuinely
progressive campaign will have laid the basis for such an eventuality.
The “unity” campaign of the Communist Party, on the contrary,
disorients the progressive struggle. It blocks the sharp and fruitful fight
against the policies of the Executive Council, announcing in advance a
willingness to compromise and indeed to capitulate; and at the same time it
contributes to reactionary tendencies on the part of the C.I.O. officials. To
an increasing extent its results will be discovered in one union after
another–as, for that matter, they have already been discovered in a number of
specific instances: for example, in the Maritime Federation of the Pacific, at
the Convention of the Federation of Teachers, and at the A.F.of L. Convention
itself, in each of which instances Stalinist influence smothered clear-cut
support of the C.I.O.
4
In other fields of People’s Front activities, the same
general trend is observable. For example, in youth work. Following the Seventh
Congress of the Comintern, and the subsequent Congress of the Young Communist
International, proposals were made in this country–as elsewhere–for the
liquidation of the proletarian political youth organizations into broad,
classless, non-political” (i.e., People’s Frontist) youth movements. When
the position of the Young Peoples’ Socialist League made this impossible,
the Y.C.L. tried to gain the same end by the creation of the American Youth
Congress on the same People’s Front basis. The Y.C.L. now devotes a major
part of its efforts to conciliating Y.M.C.A. and religious youth groups so as
to maintain a bloc with them against revolutionary socialists. In the student
field, the Y.C.L. consistently attempts to manipulate the American Student
Union into a straight People’s Front program and organizational form.
Most significant of all is the application of the People’s
Front policy to “anti-war work.” Through a multitude of pacifist organizations,
and especially through the directly controlled American League against War and
Fascism, the Stalinists aim at the creation of a “broad, classless,
People’s Front of all those opposed to war.” The class collaborationist
character of the People’s Front policy is strikingly revealed through the
Stalinist attitude in these organizations. They rule out in advance the Marxist
analysis of war as necessarily resulting from the inner conflicts of capitalism
and therefore genuinely opposed only by revolutionary class struggle against
the capitalist order; and, in contrast, maintain that all persons, from
whatever social class or group, whether or not opposed to capitalism, can
“unite” to stop war.
What this “anti-war work” means in actuality is suggested by the
fact that the Stalinists have abandoned attacks on the armament program of
American imperialism; greet the Buenos Aires Conference (a mighty step forward
in this country’s preparations for the coming war) as a great advance
toward “world peace”; and criticize revolutionary socialists as planning to
sell this country out to Japan, when they call for non-support of the
government in the war. The truth is, of course, that through the People’s
Front, the Stalinists are making ready to support the government, and to
recruit the masses for such support, in the new imperialist war.
Posted: 30 April 2005