The Lessons of the Popular Front - Militant Study Guide (1980?)

A recording of a debate between Lynn Walsh of the CWI and a Representative of the Communist Party over the 'Lessons of Chile', recorded in 1980, can be heard here.

A recording of a speech made by Lynn Walsh in 1981 on the French Popular Front of 1936 can be heard here.

Posted below are articles from the Marxist Study Guide on Spain, France and Chile.

 

INTRODUCTION

To Leon Trotsky the theory of the Popular Front was a "strike-breaking conspiracy." An alliance between the parties of the working class and those of 'liberal' capitalism - Radicals in France in 1935, Republicans in Spain in 1931 and again in 1936.

The Communist International dominated completely by Stalin and the Russian bureaucracy since the late 1920's, was the popular front's most fervent advocates in the thirties. Throwing overboard the criminally insane policy of 'social fascism' under which anyone not in the CP was proclaimed a fascist, and which allowed Hitler's peaceful takeover, the Comintern's Seventh Congress in 1935 embraced everyone who said they opposed fascism
in the popular front.

But politically the alliance was always on the terms of the liberal capitalists. Socialism, land reform, indeed any radical measures were always postponed in favour of preserving the unity of the popular front against reaction and fascism. But it meant the workers movement fought fascism with hands tied behind its back. It was prevented from offering the middle-class and peasants, who may have looked towards reaction in desperation in the midst of the economic crisis, a social programme to alleviate their burdens. The popular front politically disarmed the proletariat.

One of the main justifications put forward for it, was that it brought together the working class and middle class in one strengthened force against reaction. Popular frontism abuses the natural instinct of workers for unity. The liberal politicians whose policies dominated the popular front were not the representatives of the middle class. Rather as defenders of capitalism which exploits everyone except the ruling class itself, they were the political exploiters of the middle class. The intermediate layers between the main classes could only be securely won to the side of the working class by a programme of land to the peasants and financial security for the small businessmen, shopkeepers, etc., which would only have been possible on the basis of full socialism. 
The Popular Front which could not go beyond the limits of capitalism, when in government only served to disappoint workers and middle class who had placed their hopes in it. Then behind the back of the popular front the main sections of the capitalist class prepared the forces of reaction which could utilise the disillusion in all the parties of the Popular Front, especially in the workers parties, to bloodily crush the workers movement. And when the counter-revolution moved, the liberal capitalists were always shown to be more afraid of the resistance of an armed working class, than of the triumph of fascism.

In the inter-war period popular frontism was the penultimate stage for capitalism in resisting revolution. Its inevitable failure only gave way to vicious counter-revolution.

The classical period of popular front ism was the nineteen thirties, but it has not disappeared. In Britain it appears in the programme of the 'Communist Party' as the Broad Democratic Alliance. Today in Chile as the workers' parties are re-emerging to fight the dictatorship, their leaders are trying to tie them to the coat-tails of various capitalist groupings that now support a return to democracy, seeing continued military rule becoming a threat to their system.

In Sri Lanka the Popular Front Government of 1970 of the old workers' parties and the SLFP, the party of 'liberal' capitalism, paved the way in 1977 for the semi-bonapartist government of J.R. Jayawardene.

For Trotsky in the thirties the popular front was the major strategical question. Everywhere that it has had a decisive influence on the actions of the workers' parties it has led to defeat. The Russian popular front government between April and October 1917 would also have led to a bloody defeat, had there not been a Marxist alternative in the Bolsheviks that won the majority of workers to the independent programme of socialism. The dangerous theory of the popular front is still important for all Marxists to understand.

40 YEARS AFTER THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR (1936-1976) by Lynn Walsh (Militant 315)

Forty years ago, on the 18th July 1936, General Franco launched the military revolt which began three years of civil war and drowned the Spanish Revolution in blood. For Europe, the defeat of the Spanish workers and the strengthening of fascism meant a fatal step nearer to world war. For the Spanish people, it meant the inauguration of a totalitarian regime which lasted nearly four decades. With the help of the Western democracies, Spanish fascism survived the downfall of Mussolini and Hitler and declined into senility with its leader. Today, another generation of Spanish workers is engaged in renewed struggle against its tattered remnants.

The fascist revolt was based mainly on the army. The Falange, which was modelled on Mussolini's and Hitler's organisations and drew its. support from rightward moving middle class layers, was used as an auxiliary, But it was to the officer caste, part and parcel of the ruling class, that the big landlords and capitalists, the oligarchs and Monarchists, looked for salvation when the Popular Front won the elections in February 1936. They were not afraid of the respectable leaders of the Republican government that was formed, but of the "anarchy" let loose by its formation-by which they meant the spontaneous movement of the workers and rural labourers to seize the gains promised before the elections.

Some form of military revolt against the government was inevitable. It was simply a question of the generals waiting for the right moment. The government and the Popular Front leaders were well aware that a military conspiracy was afoot. In May, the right wing Socialist Party leader, Prieto wrote: "General Franco, being young, gifted, having a network of friends in the army, is the man who, at a given moment, has it in him to lead such a movement (of military insurrection) with maximum probable success because of the prestige he enjoys." Yet. incredibly, he went on to add: "I do not dare to attribute to General Franco any such designs"!

In a feeble attempt to head of a coup d'etat, the government simply offered to pension off, on full pay, any officers who wanted to retire. Ten thousand accepted - but it did not prevent many of them joining Franco later. The most reactionary officers stayed and prepared. Azana's government then tried to keep control over the army by shuffling around the generals it feared most. As in Chile under Allende's Popular Unity government, such timid measures made no difference. Officers with constitutional scruples were ignored by the conspirators, later to be pushed aside and in some cases executed. General Mola was sent by the government to Morocco-where he organised for the rising of the Foreign Legion on 17th July, which was the springboard for the rising in Spain. Franco was sent to the Canaries-from where he co-ordinated the entire conspiracy.

Franco

Because of Franco's success, the example of Spain is often used to "prove" the impossibility of workers taking, power: "The army will always crush any attempt at social revolution." A closer look at what happened, however, shows that it was the political factors, not the power of the army, which was decisive.

It cannot be said that Franco's success was due to the strength of the right. The fascists had little popular support to begin with. They had to rely on Moorish mercenaries and Italian reinforcements. But the workers, who in most areas rose against the fascists as soon as they realised the danger, and could easily have smashed the revolt, were hamstrung by the leaders of the mass organisations. Concerned above all to preserve Republican "legality", the workers' leaders refused to arm the workers until the rebels had already gained a vital foothold in the country.

When he was informed of the uprising in Morocco, the Prime Minister is reported to have said: "They're rising? Very well, I shall go to bed," Neither the government nor the leaders of the mass parties made any attempt to alert the workers.

In fact, they even suppressed news of the rising until it leaked out. They thus squandered the precious few days by which the sailors, who overwhelmingly rose against their officers and took over the fleet, delayed the crossing of Mola's forces from Morocco.

The rebels, or the Movimiento as they claimed to be called, quickly seized control of Seville and Cordoba in the South. and Galicia and Navarre in the North. Navarre was the traditional stronghold of the reactionary Carlists who welcomed the rebels with open arms. Elsewhere, however, the fascists' success or failure was less predictable.

Where the rebels could rely on the police, the Civil Guard and the local garrison, and where the workers' leaders allowed themselves to be duped by false promises of loyalty from the officials and officers, the fascists were able to seize their enemies' organisations and take control. The key to the outcome of the early fighting lay not so much in the actions of the rebels as in the reactions of the unions and the workers' parties and their ability to mobilise and arm the workers. This depended decisively on the political outlook of the workers' organisations.

Each time the leaders held back the workers on the basis of hollow promises from the officers and each time they delayed the arming of the workers out of respect for Republican legality, the right-wing rebels prevailed. On the other hand, wherever the workers ignored their leaders, brushed aside the "legitimate" authorities, acted quickly, seized arms, and set about the destruction of the army, the Movimiento was decisively repulsed.

No Arms

In the key industrial areas, like Barcelona, the workers - particularly those organised in the UGT (Socialist TU) and the CNT (Anarchist TU) - opened secret arms caches or stormed the barracks for weapons, and improvised workers' militias. In other areas, like Malaga, the workers had practically no arms, but still quelled the revolt by determined action: they set fire to the' houses surrounding the barracks and sprayed the rebels with dynamite, forcing them to surrender.

The generals' attempted pronunciamento - their attempt to take over in a few days - had failed. They had taken nearly a third of Spain, but none of the major industrial or commercial centres. They were no longer faced merely with a weak Popular Front government, but with a workers' revolution sparked off by their own revolt, Now the generals could only come to power through civil war. If they subsequently succeeded it was because the revolution, luckily for them, was derailed, not because of their own strength.

In Republican Spain there was now dual power. Caught between its insurgent army and the armed masses, the old state shattered to pieces. The helpless Republican government was suspended in mid air. Real authority passed to the organs of workers' power-juntas, councils, committees, etc.- which were based on workers' control of the factories, services and big estates, and on the anti-fascist militias
thrown up by the workers' organisations.

The workers' councils extended the social gains of the workers - wages, conditions, welfare-and began the systematic organisation of food supply and defence. But to fight a war against the fascists - a single, centralised authority was essential. In the areas the councils ruled, but nationally they were still forced to go to the paralysed official government for credits, essential imports, and arms.

Azana

Admitting the impotence of the government, which had even secretly continued to try to negotiate a compromise with the rebel generals, Azana resigned. This baldly posed the question of power: Either a workers' government based on the councils and committees and taking on the revolutionary task of carrying through a socialist transformation; or a new Popular Front government, based on a liberal programme and pledged to respect property and Republican legality.

The tragedy of the Spanish revolution was that in 1936 the leaders of the workers' parties chose the latter course, when only the first could have succeeded. The leaders of the workers' organisations allowed themselves to be used as the "last card", as Azana put it, to save the threatened capitalist system. In September, Largo Caballero, leader of the socialist UGT - though he had himself previously called for a "workers' government" to take power-eventually threw his considerable prestige with the left behind new Popular Front government.

The government, with Caballero as Prime Minister, included Socialists, Communists, and five Republicans - middle-class representatives of capitalism who were to act as a brake on the government, limiting it to "the defence of democracy".

The Communist party, reflecting pressure from Moscow, was unreservedly in favour of "Republican legality". "We wish to fight only for a democratic republic with a broad social content", stated the party's general secretary: "There can be no question at present of a dictatorship of the proletariat or of socialism, but only of a struggle of democracy against fascism."

The "Communist" leaders argued that the non-socialist programme of the Popular Front would be a guarantee of "respectability" for the middle class in Spain and the big powers abroad. But the middle class were long passed caring about mere constitutional forms, and the big powers were not prepared to help even a struggling democracy. At home, as abroad, the "moderate" programme of the Popular Front neither reassured the reactionaries, nor sufficiently inspired the left. The Popular Front had a remorseless and fatal logic. To restore the authority of the old government apparatus, the Popular Front leaders had to undermine the power of the workers' councils. The gradual dissolution of the organs of workers' power was inevitably accompanied by the restriction of social advances, and then the erosion of gains that went beyond the bound of "legality".

All this played into the hands of Franco and the fascists. The driving force of the workers' and peasants' armies was switched off. The incredible heroism of the militants who threw themselves against the fascist armies could not compensate for the fundamental political mistakes of their leaders. The turn towards a purely military struggle against the fascists, awaiting military success before the struggle for socialism was resumed, tipped the balance against the Republican and socialist forces.

Internationally, things were certainly against the Spanish workers in 1936. Mussolini and Hitler naturally backed Franco with money, arms, men and aircraft. The Western democracies used the idea of "non-intervention", intended to preserve the existing balance of power, to ban military aid to the Republican side. Germany and Italy had no objection to joining the "Non-intervention Committee" - but they continued their arms deliveries to the Spanish fascists. Once the social revolution took second place to military strategy, this unequal military balance took an increasingly heavy toll on the Republican forces.

Stalin, who by this time had completely buried the internationalism of the October Revolution, also subscribed to the idea of "non-intervention". But soon the Soviet Union, too, was sending arms to Spain. For this support, however, the workers had to pay a heavy price.

Stalin

The conservative policy of "socialism in one country," which reflected the narrow interests of the privileged bureaucracy on which Stalin's power rested, led to a policy of attempted
compromise with the western "democratic" powers. So as not to upset them, Stalin supported in Spain not workers' power, but, according to the French Communist paper 'L'Humanite' (3/8/36), "the defence of Republican law and order, through respect for property. "

In truth, Stalin was mortally afraid of the effects of a genuine revolution in Spain on his own regime. As it was, even with the defeat of the Spanish proletariat, the repercussions of the
civil war were one of the main factors behind the Moscow "trials" in 1937 in which the last of the Old Bolsheviks were purged. Success for the workers in Spain, as Stalin instinctively realised, would have broken the disastrous isolation of the Russian Revolution and sounded the bureaucracy's death knell. Yet because the Republican side desperately needed Russian arms and there was no viable Marxist party able to provide an alternative to the Popular Front government, Moscow's policy prevailed. The Spanish Communist party became an instrument of Russian foreign policy, a border guard for the bureaucracy rather than the vanguard of the workers.

The heroic volunteers of the International Brigades could not do the work of mass revolutionary armies. In any case, they too were soon merged with regular regiments. Brigades which opposed this because of their opposition to the policies of the Popular Front were starved of arms.

Stalin sent enough arms to keep the Republican armies going, but not enough for success. Russian officers and secret police agents took control of the government and the army. By the end of the civil war, the Republican state had taken on many of the totalitarian features of Stalin's own regime.

Now it is different. The revolution beginning to unfold in Spain is part and parcel of an entirely new international situation.

Not only are the remains of Franco's regime crumbling to pieces under the onslaught of mass strikes and demonstrations, but all Europe's other fascist or bonapartist regimes - Caetano in Portugal, the Junta in Greece - have also been swept away. The strengthening of the working class during the post-war boom prepared the conditions for a swing to the left throughout the capitalist world.

Because of the denial of democracy, the police repression, and the barbarous exploitation of the Franco regime, the demands of the Spanish workers for trade union and political rights and a living wage have taken on a revolutionary significance. But the struggle in Spain is paralleled by movements of the workers in all the main capitalist countries. The opening of the Spanish revolution marks the beginning of a new period of radicalisation and revolution, not a period of defeats as in 1936.

"Detente"

In 1936 the Spanish workers faced intervention by Mussolini and Hitler. The inability of the United States, the main bastion of capitalism today, to intervene directly against the Portuguese or Angolan revolutions shows the impotence of imperialism at the present time. Kissinger may storm about the possibility of Communists entering the government in France or Italy, but what can he really do to halt the swing to the left?

On the other hand, there is also no possibility of the Russian bureaucracy intervening to sabotage socialist revolution in Spain as it did in 1936-39. Moscow is still just as afraid of a
successful revolutionary movement in an advanced European country with a powerful working class, as its "detente" with US imperialism, aimed to preserve the status quo, indicates. But the Western Communist parties are no longer willing instruments of the Russian leaders. The recent meeting of European Communist parties in East Berlin underlined the complete degeneration of these parties, which have completely abandoned any pretence to internationalism in favour of their own different "national roads".

The Spanish Communist party, like, the French and Italian parties, has openly renounced a Marxist programme and perspective in favour of "historic compromise" with the enemies of the working class and an "advanced democracy"- a revival of the 1936 "democratic republic with a broad social content"!

In other words, forty years after Franco's rising, the leaders of the CP still have not learned the lesson of the Popular Front's disastrous defeat! Although it is no longer simply an agency of the Russian leadership, in so far as it has an influence, because of its clandestine organisation and its undeserved historic association with Marxism and the October revolution, the Spanish Communist party, unless its rank and file redirect it to Marxist ideas, will be a serious obstacle on the road to socialism.

The objective conditions for socialist revolution are now much more favourable than in 1936. The ruling class is demoralised and split. Its main props, the army and the church, are bent and broken. The sections of the middle class are completely opposed to the regime and sympathetic to the workers. The working class, strengthened by the rapid industrial growth of the last decade, are much more powerful than in 1930. Yet the CP leaders have again given up socialist aims in favour of Popular Frontism.

Raising the idea of a "Freedom Pact" in 1970 (a broad democratic alliance against fascism), Carrillo, the leader of the Spanish CP openly declared: "The party will join with no
matter what political group, even those who fought us in the past and with groups who will undoubtedly fight us in the future." ("L'Humanite" 3/12/70). In 1974 the Carlists, the intellectual Popular Socialist party, and a motley collection of ex-fascists and latter-day converts to democracy joined the Communist party in the formation of the Democratic Junta, described by the CP as "a temporary convergence of working class and neo-capitalist forces" (L'Unita 6/9/74). The Junta adopted a programme of limited democratic demands. It was nothing if not a reincarnation of the Popular Front.

Even if fascism was on the ascendant, as in 1936, instead of crumbling away, as at present, what would be the use of "liberal" Monarchists, "democratic" ex-fascists, and newly converted! "social democrats" in a struggle? The history of the civil war shows that they are completely unreliable allies as far as the workers are concerned. Any "unity" with these elements is completely hollow and does immeasurable harm because of the confusion spread among the workers by the idea of an alliance with them. Instead of being warned against "groups who will undoubtedly fight against us in the future", the workers are lulled to sleep. Only unity of the workers' organisations, based on Marxist policies, can take the working class forward.  

But why should these bourgeois personalities and political cliques ("neo-capitalist forces") give their support to the Democratic Junta (or the equally mistaken Democratic Convergence, initiated by the leaders of the Socialist party?) Clearly, the more far-sighted representatives of Spanish capitalism see the need for liberalisation to prevent an even bigger explosion. They want a controlled transition to parliamentary institutions as a means of ensuring the survival of capitalism. They also understand the advantages of attempting to head off the workers' movement by supporting a broad alliance-like the Popular Front in 1936- in which the workers' leaders are tied down to limited democratic aims.

At the same time, because of the weakness of big business and the enormous power of the workers', some of the representatives of capitalism who would have turned to Franco to smash the Popular Front and socialism in 1936 are today obliged to lean on the workers' leaders once again embroiled in Popular Frontism to restrain and divert the radicalisation of the growing labour movement.

What future can there be, after all, for democracy on the basis of capitalism? Even during the sunny boom period Spanish capitalism was unable to shed its fascist skin. With an acute crisis at home and an adverse climate internationally, how will big business be able to afford to meet the economic demands that will automatically flow from the workers' struggle for the right to trade union organisation and political freedom? The fundamental antagonism between the "liberal" capitalists and the workers will be brought out into the open, and big business will in the future, without a doubt, once again move towards a totalitarian solution.

Vitoria

The Spanish workers' "celebrated", the anniversary of Franco's revolt with mass demonstrations demanding a full political amnesty for political prisoners. Thousands of troops and armed police failed to prevent the demonstrations, which were banned. Every week there are fresh strikes, despite continued repression. Everywhere, the workers are instinctively linking up the immediate demands for democratic rights with the economic demands of the class. In areas such, as Vitoria, where there has been a series of general strikes, the workers have understood the need to take power in order to guarantee liberty and solve the economic problems. The indomitable courage and commitment to a socialist society of the civil war generation is being reborn in struggle today. But another generation must not be wasted by bloody defeats. The lessons of the past must be learnt. The pernicious influence of the absolutely disastrous, fatal ideas of Popular Frontism must be completely destroyed. This time the movement must be guided by the ideas of Marxism. The day-to-day struggles must be linked to an independent struggle for workers' power and a Socialist Spain.

From the Spanish Revolution 1931-39 by Trotsky 

The question of questions at present is the Popular Front.

The left centrists seek to present this question as a tactical or even as a technical manoeuvre, so as to be able to peddle their wares in the shadow of the Popular Front. In reality, the Popular Front is the main question of proletarian class strategy for this epoch. It also offers the best criterion for the difference between Bolshevism and Menshevism. For it is often forgotten that the greatest historical example of the Popular Front is the February 1917 revolution. From February to October, the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, who represent a very good parallel to the "Communists" and the Social Democrats, were in the closest alliance and in a permanent coalition with the bourgeois party of the Cadets, together with whom they formed a series of coalition governments. Under the sign of this Popular Front stood the whole mass of the people, including the workers', peasants', and soldiers' councils. To be sure, the Bolsheviks participated in the councils. But they did not make the slightest concession to the Popular Front. Their demand was to break this Popular Front, to destroy the alliance with the Cadets, and to create a genuine workers' and peasants' government.

All the Popular Fronts in Europe are only a pale copy and often a caricature of the Russian Popular Front of 1917, which could, after all, lay claim to a much greater justification for its existence, for it was still a question of the struggle against czarism and the remnants of feudalism. 

While there cannot be either an intermediary revolution or an intermediary regime, there can and will be intermediary mass actions, strikes, demonstrations, clashes with the police and the troops, tumultuous revolutionary convulsions in which the communists will naturally be in the front ranks of the fight. What may be the historical meaning of those intermediary fights? On the one hand, they may introduce democratic changes in the bourgeois republican regime. On the other hand, they will prepare the masses to conquer power in order to create a proletarian regime.

The participation of the communists in these fights, and above all their participation in the leadership of these struggles, requires of them not only a clear understanding of the development of the revolution a. a whole, but also the capacity to put forward at the right moment sharp, specific, fighting slogans that by themselves don't derive from the "program" but are dictated by the circumstances of the day and lead the masses forward.

The enormous role of the Bolshevik slogan "Down with the ten capitalist ministers" is well known. That slogan was adopted in 1917 at the time of the coalition between the conciliators and the bourgeois liberals. The masses still trusted the Socialist conciliators but even the most trusting masses always have an instinctive distrust of the bourgeoisie, of the exploiters, and of the capitalists. It is upon this distrust that the tactic of the Bolsheviks was based during that specific period. We didn't say "Down with the Socialist ministers," we didn't even advance the slogan "Down with the Provisional Government" as a fighting slogan of the moment, but instead we hammered incessantly on the same theme: "Down with the ten capitalist ministers." This slogan played an enormous role, because it gave the masses the opportunity to learn from their own experience that the Socialist conciliators thought much more of the capitalist ministers than of the working masses.

Slogans of that type are best fitted for the present stage of the Spanish revolution. The proletarian vanguard is fully interested in pushing the Spanish Socialists to take power into their hands. For that to happen, it is necessary to split the coalition. The present task is the fight to drive the bourgeois ministers from the coalition. The achievement of this task even in part is conceivable only in connection with important political events, under pressure of new mass movements, and so on. Thus, in Russia, under the constant pressure of the masses, first Guchkov and Miliukov, then Prince Lvov, were ousted from the from the coalition government; Kerensky was put at the head of the government; the number of "Socialists" in the government rose, and so on. After Lenin's arrival, the Bolshevik Party did not solidarize itself for one moment with Kerensky and the conciliators, but it helped the masses to push the bourgeoisie out of power and to test the government of the conciliators in practice. That was an indispensable stage in the Bolshevik rise to power.

Trotsky: I explained it. We refused categorically to enter the Kerensky government, but the Bolsheviks were the best fighters against Kornilov. Not only that, the best soldiers and sailors were Bolsheviks. During the insurrection of Kornilov, Kerensky must go to the sailors of the Baltic fleet and demand of them to defend them in the Winter Palace. I was at that time in prison. They took him to the guard, and sent a delegation to me to ask me what must be done: to arrest Kerensky or defend him? That is a historical fact. I said: "Yes, you must guard him very well now; tomorrow we will arrest him.'

The left centrists as well as the incurable ultra-lefts often cite the example of Bolshevik policy in the Kerensky-Kornilov conflict, without understanding anything about it. The POUM says: "But the Bolsheviks fought alongside Kerensky." The ultra-lefts reply: "But the Bolsheviks refused to give Kerensky their confidence even under the threat of Kornilov." Both are right ... halfway; that is, both are completely wrong.

The Bolsheviks did not remain neutral between the camp of Kerensky and that of Kornilov. They fought in the first camp against the second. They accepted the official command as long as they were not sufficiently strong to overthrow it. It was precisely in the month of August, with the Kornilov uprising, that a prodigious upswing of the Bolsheviks began. This upswing was made possible only thanks to the double-edged Bolshevik policy. While participating in the front line of the struggle against Kornilov, the Bolsheviks did not take the slightest responsibility for the policy of Kerensky, On the contrary, they denounced him as responsible for the reactionary attack and as incapable of overcoming it. 

From the "Civil War in Spain" by Felix Morrow

I. THE TREACHERY OF THE PEOPLE'S FRONT GOVERNMENT

Azana and the People's Front government answered the counter-revolution by attempting to come to terms with it. Hopelessly compromised by their People's Front policy, the Stalinists have attempted to explain away this treachery by inventing a distinction between 'weak' republicans like Barrios and 'strong' ones like Azana. The truth is that Azana led the attempt to compromise with the fascist generals and that all the republican groups were implicated in his move.

Here, collected from El Socialista and Claridad, are the indisputable facts: 
On the morning of July 17, General Franco, having seized Morocco, radioed his manifesto to the garrisons. It was received at the naval station near Madrid by a loyal operator and promptly revealed to the Minister of the Navy. But the government did not divulge the news until 9 o'clock of the 18th; and then it issued only a reassuring note that Spain was completely under government control. Two other notes were issued by the government later in the day, the last at 3.15 p.m., when the government had full and positive information of the scope of the rising, including the seizure of Seville. Yet that final note said:
The Government speaks again in order to confirm the absolute tranquillity of the whole Peninsula. The Government acknowledges the offers of support which it has received from the workers' organizations and, while being grateful for them, declares that the best aid that can be given to the Government is to guarantee the normality of daily life in order to set a high example of serenity and of confidence in the means of the military strength of the State. Thanks to the foresighted means adopted by the authorities, a broad movement of aggression against the republic may be deemed to have been broken up; it has found no assistance in the Peninsula and has only succeeded in securing followers in a fraction or the army in Morocco .... These measures, together with the customary orders to the forces in Morocco who are labouring to overcome the rising, permit us to affirm that the action of the Government will be sufficient to re-establish normality. (Claridad, July 18.)

Having thus refused to arm the workers and justified its treacherous refusal by this incredibly dishonest note, the cabinet of Azana went into an all-night conference. There Azana had Quiroga's cabinet of Azana's Left Republicans resign; and appointed as Premier the former lieutenant of Lerroux, Martinez Barrios, head of the Republican Union Party. Barrios and Azana picked a 'respectable' cabinet of Barrios men and Right Wing Republicans outside the People's Front. This cabinet, too was committed to refusing to arm the workers.

Rather than arm the workers - their allies in the People's Front who had put them into power! - Azana and the republicans were preparing to make peace with the fascists at the expense of the workers. Had Azana carried out his plan, the fascists would have conquered Spain.

But in the very hours that the ministers huddled together in the presidential palace, the proletariat was already mobilizing. In Madrid itself the Socialist Youth militia was distributing its scant store of arms; was throwing up barricades on key streets and around the Montana barracks; was organizing its patrols for house to house seizures of reactionaries; at midnight had launched the first attack on the barracks. In Barcelona, remembering the treachery in October 1934 of this same President of Catalonia, Companys, the CNT and POUM (‘Workers Party') militants had stormed several government arms depots on the afternoon of the 18th. By the time the garrison revolted, at one the next morning, the armed workers had surrounded the troops in an iron ring, arming eager recruits with equipment seized from the fascists and with whatever could be confiscated from the department stores; later the militia seized the regular arsenals. The Asturian miners had outfitted a column of six thousand for a march on Madrid before the ministerial crisis was well over. In Malaga, strategic port opposite Morocco, the ingenious workers, unarmed, had surrounded the reactionary garrison with a wall of gasoline-fired houses and barricades. In Valencia, refused arms by the Madrid governor, the workers prepared to face the troops with barricades, cobble-stones and kitchen-knives - until their comrades within the garrison shot the officers and gave arms to the workers. In a word: without so much as a by your leave to the government, the proletariat had begun a war to the death against the fascists. Companys and Azana found themselves confronted by the first regiments of the Red Army of the Spanish proletariat.

The Azana-Barrios scheme for a deal with the fascist generals collapsed because the workers had prevented it. And for no other reason! Thanks only to their utter distrust of the government the masses were able to prevent their betrayal. Independent mobilization under their own leadership, with their own banners - only this prevented the victory of fascism.
 
Thus it was that, side by side with the formal power still held by the government, there arose the 'unofficial' but far more substantial power of the armed proletariat - the 'dual power', Lenin called it. One power, that of Azana and Companys, was already too weak to challenge the existence of the other; the other, that of the armed proletariat, was not yet strong enough. not yet conscious enough of the necessity, to dispense with the existence of the other. The phenomenon of 'dual power' has accompanied all proletarian revolutions; it signifies that the class struggle is about to reach the point where either one or the other must become undisputed master; it is a critical balancing of alternatives on a razor edge; a long period of equilibrium is out of the question, either one or the other must soon prevail!

The crushing of the counter-revolution will make infinitely more likely the establishment of a workers' and peasants' government. The interests of the bourgeoisie are not therefore served by a victory over the fascist generals: the true interests of Spanish capitalism lie in a victory of the counter-revolution or what is the same thing, a compromise with it. That is why the People's Front government behaved so treacherously in the first days of the counter-revolution. That is why the People's Front government continued to behave treacherously thereafter. Surrounded by armed workers, the republicans dared not openly go over to the enemy; but their policy, at the front and in the rear, permitted the counter-revolution success after success. This was the plain meaning of the change of government after the fall of Irun. It was clear enough in the statement to the press by a spokesman for the Caballero cabinet, who ... dwelt at length on the improvement of the morale of the militia by Largo Caballero's assumption of the premiership last week: 'They know now that they are being directed intelligently ... they know that if they die, it will not be the fault of the haphazard and weak-kneed command which characterized the last administration. We shall now take the offensive and attack the Rebels where they are weak, where we want to attack them instead of, as before, attacking where they are strong and able to repel us.' (New York Times. September 7.)

If so damning an indictment of the Azana-Giral government is made by those who will yet have to explain to the proletariat why they permitted such a government to direct the struggle for the first seven weeks, the whole truth must be much, much worse.

The ostensible justification for the People's Front was that it secured the aid of the republicans against counter-revolutionary fascism. The People's Front, however, served the opposite function: it prevented the proletariat from tearing away from the republican politicians the petty-bourgeoisie who, in all victorious revolutions, throw in their lot with the proletariat when they see it determinedly striking out for a new and rich life under a new social order. The People's Front subordinated both the petty-bourgeoisie and the proletarian masses to the treacherous leadership of the bourgeois politicians. Only the dual power or the proletariat has so far prevented the victory of reaction.

2. THE DUAL POWER IN CATALONIA

Precisely in Catalonia, where the People's Front was weakest, the dual power has developed most decisively, and made the four Catalonian provinces the most impregnable fortress of the civil war.

The CNT and the FAI (Iberian Anarchist Federation), leading most of the Catalonian proletariat and much of the peasantry, was never part of the People's Front. The POUM, after much vacillation, finally broke with the People's Front, made a sharp turn to the left, and with extraordinary rapidity grew into a mass party in Catalonia in the two months of civil war. Thus, the only proletarian adherents to the People's Front in Catalonia are the UGT, incomparably weaker here than the CNT, and the Stalinist organization, the so-called 'United Socialist Party'. Far from weakening its capacities for struggle, as the People's Front apologists had been declaring, it was this relative freedom from bourgeois ties that enabled the Catalonian masses to conquer the counter-revolution at home and to come to the aid of the rest of Spain. Herein lies a profound lesson for those who still believe in the People's Front!

The Catalonian proletariat understands that civil war must be fought by revolutionary methods and not under the slogans of bourgeois democracy. It understands that civil war cannot be fought by military methods alone but that the political methods, arousing the great masses to action, can even take the army away from its reactionary officers. It directs the struggle, at the front and in the rear, not through agencies of the government but through organs controlled by the proletarian organizations.

The 'Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias of Catalonia' directs the struggle. The anarchists have three representatives for the CNT and two for the FAI. The UGT was given three, though it is small, to encourage similar organization elsewhere. The POUM has one, the peasant organization one, and the Stalinists one. The left bourgeois parties have four, making a total of fifteen. In actuality, the Central Committee is dominated by the CNT, the FAI and the POUM.

For these have a programme so fundamentally different from that of Madrid, that the UGT and the Stalinists are dragged along only because they fear to be cast aside, and the left bourgeoisie because they are at the mercy of the armed proletariat. That programme is identical with that raised by the Bolsheviks in August 1917 in the struggle against Kornilov's counter-revolution:

Workers' control of production. arousing the highest pitch of initiative and enthusiasm of the proletariat. Mobilization of the armed masses, independent of government control. Vigilance against betrayal by the government and no renunciation, not for a moment, of the sharpest criticism of it. And the drawing into the struggle of the peasantry by the only slogan which can vitalize the starving and backward countryside: LAND TO THOSE WHO TILL IT.'

As soon as the counter-revolution began, the CNT took over all transportation, public utilities and big industrial plants. Democratic control is ensured by election of factory committees based on proportional representation. Such committees have also been set up to control production in those shops and factories still privately owned.

Direction of economic life is now in the hands of the 'Council of Economy' which, while still linked to the old order, finds itself compelled at least to talk about socialistic measures. It has five members from the anarcho-syndicalists, one from the POUM, one from the UGT and one from the Catalonian government. On August 19, it issued its programme, which includes: collectivization of landed estates to be run by landworkers' unions; collectivization of public utilities, transportation and big industry; collectivization of establishments abandoned by their owners; workers' control of banks until they are nationalized: workers' control of all establishments continuing under private ownership; absorption of unemployed in collectivized agriculture and industry; electrification of Catalonia; monopoly of foreign trade to protect the new economic order.

In the midst of civil war the factory committees are demonstrating the superiority of proletarian methods of production. The CNT -UGT committee running the railways and subways reports that by eliminating high salaries of directors, sinecures and waste, tens of thousands of pesetas have been saved, wages of most workers raised to create equalization of pay, extension of the lines is planned, fares will be reduced, trains run on time, and the six-hour day will soon be introduced!

The metal plants have been transformed into munitions works, the automobile factories are producing armoured cars and airplanes. The latest dispatches show that the Madrid government depends greatly on Catalonia for these all-important war supplies. A considerable part of the forces protecting the Madrid front were despatched there by the Catalonian militia.

The Catalonian militia marched into Aragon as an army of social liberation. They have been able to paralyze the mobility of the reactionary army by rousing the peasantry as the Madrid forces have been unable to. Arriving in a village, the militia committees sponsor the election of a village anti-Fascist committee, to which are turned over all the large estates, and the crops, supplies, cattle, tools, tractors etc. belonging to big landowners and reactionaries. The village committee organizes production on the new basis and creates a village militia to carry out socialization and fight reaction. Captured reactionaries are placed before the general assembly of the village for trial. All property titles, mortgages and debt documents in the official records go into a bonfire. Having thus transformed the world of the village, the Catalonian columns can go forward, secure in the knowledge that every village so dealt with is a fortress of the revolution!

The Catalonian government continues to exist, passes decrees approving the steps taken by the proletariat, pretends that it is leading the struggle. The Madrid government abets this pretence by consulting with Companys, but then it must go on to transact all business with the militia and factory committees. At the end of July Companys made a 'clever' attempt to recoup power by reorganizing the Catalonian cabinet, three members of the Stalinist 'United Socialist Party' entering it. But this manoeuvre fell through in a few days. The anarcho-syndicalists served notice on the Stalinists that they considered their entry into the cabinet as disruption of the proletarian bloc and the Stalinists were compelled to resign from the cabinet. Such little influence as the government still has, by virtue of its representation in the Council of Economy and the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias, will undoubtedly tend to disappear as these organs, in accordance with the proposal of the POUM, are broadened into elective bodies of delegates from the militia and factories. The revolutionary course of the Catalonian proletariat and its consequent successes in production and at the front constitute the most damning indictment of the Popular Front policy which is still being pursued in Madrid. Only on the road taken by the Catalonian proletariat can the Spanish masses defeat the counter-revolution!

THE FRENCH POPULAR FRONT 1936 by Peter Taaffe (From Militant 407 & 408)

In Britain in the 1930s the ruling class pressurised the renegade Ramsay McDonald to form a "National government" with the Tories and Liberals. The same conditions as pre-war are now re-appearing in Western Europe.

CP theoreticians invariably appeal to the writing of Lenin to justify this tactic . Yet running like a red thread throughout Lenin's writings is an explicit denunciation of the policy of alliances with the liberal capitalists.

Clear position

On March 6, 1917, from Switzerland, just after the February Revolution, Lenin wrote to the Bolsheviks in Russia: "Our tactic: absolute lack of confidence: no support to the new government; no support of Kerensky especially." The Provisional Government was the equivalent of the latter-day Popular Front - an alliance of the leaders of one of the workers’ and peasants' parties, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, with the Liberal capitalists.

Some of Lenin's erstwhile followers, such as Stalin and Kamenev, through the Bolshevik newspaper 'Pravda', were prepared to give support to this government: "in so far as it struggled against reaction or counter-revolution." Lenin compared this to preaching against sin to a brothel keeper!
 
In his famous 'Letters from Afar' he piteously condemns the , policy of Stalin and Kamenev - and by implication the present leaders of the CPs in Western Europe. He wrote: "He who says that the workers' must support the new government in the struggle against Tsarist reaction is a traitor to the workers, a traitor to the cause of the working class, to the cause of peace. For actually. precisely this new government is already bound hand and foot by imperialist capital, by the imperialist policy of war and plunder."
 
Lenin never at any time justified a programmatic bloc with the leaders of middle class parties as a means of winning the little men of town and country to the side of the working class. On the contrary, the history of Bolshevism is a history of a war against such notions, not just in Russia either.
 
When Millerand, the French Socialist party leader, formed a bloc with the leaders of the Radical Socialist Party at the turn of the century, he was condemned by Lenin. The Radical Socialist Party was characterised by Lenin as "the most vicious and consummate representatives of finance capital, the political exploiter of the peasants and middle class." The way to win the middle class, said Lenin, was not in a coalition with these "political exploiters" but by unmasking them before their followers, and by demonstrating in action that only the working class was capable of solving their problems.

In Russia in 1917 this policy - implacably opposed to the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary versions of the Popular Front - succeeded in winning the peasantry to the side of the working class. In Spain and in France in 1936 the “strike breaking conspiracy" of the Popular Front succeeded only in pushing the peasantry and the middle class into indifference and opposition.

Lenin was sometimes prepared to co-operate with the Liberals on practical or technical matters such as the transport of revolutionary literature, joint action against the fascist Black Hundreds, etc. He was prepared under certain conditions to have common voting lists on the second ballot with the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. But at no time did the Bolsheviks form a programmatic bloc, have common organisations, or subordinate themselves to the Russian "Republicans" or "Radicals",

Lenin revised

In a shamefaced way, Eric Hobsbawn is prepared to concede that the idea of the Popular Front flies in the face of all of Lenin's teaching: “... coalitions of communists with social democrats and certain middle-class parties which were not seen as the immediate preliminary to revolution and working class power. Such governments had always been condemned by the revolutionary left" ('Marxism Today', July 1977). But, argues our sage, it was entirely justified by the "new situation" which had developed in France and Spain pre-war. Elsewhere, 'Militant' has detailed the catastrophic role of the Popular Front in Spain. But in the light of recent events, Eric Hobsbawn and Monty Johnstone have attempted to refurbish the image of the French Popular Front of 1936.

In reality, the titanic sit-down strikes of May-June 1936 stand as a crushing condemnation of the policy of Popular Frontism. Between 1931 and 1936 the French working class had seen their already meagre wages reduced by an average of 30%. Their growing radicalisation was reflected in the elections of 1936. The Popular Front received over 5 million votes compared to the 4 million for the right wing National Front. The revolutionary ferment amongst the masses was reflected in the Radical Party's loss of a half million votes, its reduction to third place in votes, while at the same time the Communist Party doubled its vote to 1½ million.

This dramatic collapse of the Radicals is airily dismissed by Monty Johnstone. Seeking to justify the CP leaders' alliance with the Radicals he writes: "Whilst the Radicals were to lose one half million votes ... the one and a half million votes that they received showed that they were still a force to be reckoned with ... whereas between them the Socialists and Communists obtained only 218 out of 618 seats, the Popular Front as a whole won an absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies with 378 seats."

He does not mention, of course, the gross bias towards the Radicals in the allocation of seats within the Popular Front. Thus on the first ballot they got 25 Seats, yet on the Second Ballot, entirely due to the concessions given by the CP and SP leaders, they got 116 seats. Throughout the election campaign moreover, the CP leaders covered the Radicals with a revolutionary aura - in complete contradistinction to Lenin who used elections to unmask liberal capitalists before their middle class supporters.

Sit-down strikes

The Radicals openly boasted that they would be a brake on the "excesses" of the socialist ministers. Thus the Radical leader Daladier declared: "Whatever may be said to the contrary, the Front Populaire programme is really impregnated with the true Radical spirit" ('Manchester Guardian'. 23rd May 1936). This programme promised important reforms such as the 40-hour week but came out only for the nationalisation of war industries and the banks.

But the suspicion of the masses - and their doubts about the willingness of their own leaders to implement the Popular Front programme - was shown in the events which followed the election. Thus on 25th May, 1936, half a million workers marched past the spot where the Communards were shot "carrying red banners and wearing red flowers, and including many women and children many of them in perambulators” ... ('Manchester Guardian'). The procession was nearly two miles long and lasted from early afternoon till late evening.

Then, in the last week of May and the first two weeks of June, a mighty wave of sit-in strikes was begun by the French working class. Beginning with the metal workers in Paris, all corners of France and all layers of the working class joined in. On the eve of the strike trade union membership stood at 1.200.000, just 20% of the labour force. Yet upwards of 3 million joined the strike. For the first time in French history the trade unions ran out of membership cards! All those workers, the most exploited and sceptical, were roused to their feet by the sit-in strikes. The horror of international capitalism is reflected in the reports of the British press at the time. The 'Manchester Guardian' reporting on the strike in the department stores and the pleasure-spots of the rich' said: "Paris Coty's perfumery workshops; the Galerie Lafayette; all the chocolate factories ... the drivers of the 'black Marias' in Paris struck today and prison vans had to be driven by police inspectors ... the Trois Quartiers and other department stores were declared 'occupied' by the employees this morning ... six thousand persons, including 3,500 women, are employed by Galerie Lafayette" (June 4th 1936).

Opportunity

On 11 June the same newspaper reported: "Coachwork factories in Paris, several cinemas and two or three dressmaking firms which were 'occupied' by the 'midinettes' went on strike today ... the stable lads have 'occupied' the racing stables and several hundred undertaker societies and tombstone manufacturers have joined in the movement. .. The syndicate of concierges has asked for holiday with pay and automatic buttons for opening front doors at night"!

The loss of production was bad enough, but the occupations and strikes began to affect the stomachs of the rich: "The rather abrupt manner in which the waiters' strike began in some of the restaurants while some of the customers were in the middle of lunch was rather unpleasant" ('Manchester Guardian' 12 June, 1936)

The Times reported on 11 June that: "The lifeboat men on the Seine have put up a notice to say that they are on strike and forbidding passers-by to throw themselves into the water. Another warns that so long as the strike continues - only mothers-in-law will be saved! Nor did religion escape: to the consternation of the local priest workmen engaged on redecoration at the church of St Vessaine went on strike, occupied the church and slept in the confessional boxes for the duration. 

At the same time, "even the rural areas are now infected by the strike virus and in the Seine-et-Oise Department 3,500 agricultural workers joined in" ('The Times', 11 June, 1936). In the ports, sailors marched through the towns with arms linked singing the 'Internationale', and the police fraternised with the workers.

Here was a unique opportunity for the French working class to have taken power peacefully! The forces of French
capitalism were completely paralysed. Not so! declare the latter-day attorneys for the pre-war CP leaders - Monty
Johnstone and Co. The sit-in strikes, they assert, were concerned not with "politics" but merely with wages and conditions. On the contrary, in May/Jue 1936, the French working class was groping in the direction of power. All the serious capitalist commentators at the time show this. The 'Manchester Guardian' reporter wrote on 30 May, 1936, at a time when the sit-in strikes were beginning to spread: "The Conservative press is greatly disturbed. The 'Intransigent' declared: 'In short the Ministry of the Masses is trying to take the place of the Front Populaire'."

Even more striking are the comments of one picket to the same reporter: 'Our boss,' he said, 'has been treating us as dictators. Well I told him that we preferred this sort of dictatorship within the framework of a democratic regime to the dictatorship of Hitler and Mussolini." How much wisdom there is in the simple words of this French worker.

But the leaders of the French workers' parties were terrified by these developments, which had taken them by surprise and were threatening to get out of control: "Several Communist deputies to whom I spoke were visibly embarrassed and alarmed. They declared the strike to be 'untimely', described it as an uncontrollable mass movement, and declined all responsibility for it" ('Manchester Guardian 3 June, 1930). 

But, objects Monty Johnstone, any attempt of the French working class to take power would have led to "Colonel de la Rocque of the fascistic Croix de Feu with his 300,000 supporters trained for civil war by 60,000 officers of the reserve" (Marxism Today November 1975). This is the usual trick of the Labour and Communist Party leaders who attempt to frighten the working class with "civil, war" should they attempt to take power. Exactly the same tactics were used by the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary leaders prior to the October Revolution.

Lenin answered them as follows: "To fear the resistance of the capitalists and yet to call oneself a revolutionary, to wish to be regarded as a revolutionary, isn't that disgraceful? ... it (the capitalist class) will repeat the Kornilov (the Russian equivalent of de la Rocque) revolt ... No gentlemen, you will not fool the workers. It will not be a civil war but a hopeless revolt of a handful of Komilovites ... But when every labourer, every unemployed worker, every cook, every ruined peasant, sees, not from newspapers, but with his own eyes that the workers' state is not cringing to wealth but is helping the poor ... that the land is being transferred to the working-people and the factories and banks are being placed under the control of the workers, no capitalist forces, no forces of
world finance capital will vanquish the people's revolution: on the contrary, the socialist revolution will triumph all over the world ('Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?' - Lenin's emphasis.)

Futile

In reality, the relationship of forces in France in 1936 was a thousand times more favourable than in Russia in' 1917. The fascists were completely impotent, as were the police and the army. The workers openly ridiculed the Croix de Feu during the occupations. At the massive Renault works, for instance, the "Manchester Guardian" reported the comments of a young worker: "One of the best shows we put on (during the occupation) was the magnificent trial of Colonel de la Rocque, If you could have only seen de la Rocque (an effigy) locked up in a big cage resting on two drum sticks with heavy chains round his wrists and 'crying 'Pity me Pity me" as he was condemned to death. A dummy of de la Rocque with the swastika and Croix de Feu armlets was then hung and burnt"

Monty Johnson may speculate on the possible use of the fascists and police against the workers but the capitalists were quite clear on the futility of such methods. Thus 'The Times' remarked on May 28th: "Police were called out in large numbers but when the management looked over the situation and particularly the extent of the support of the men in the whole locality of the factories they were forced to request that the police be not sent into action."

Army useless

Nor could the army be used against the workers. The French army was a conscript army, as it is today. Demonstrations and upheavals were sweeping through the barracks precisely at this time, with the conscripts demanding amongst other things the reduction of army service to one year. At the Socialist Party Conference,which took place in the midst of the sit-ins for instance the leader of the left Marcel Pivert, "demanded the immediate restoration of one year service ... and read telegrams of support from the rank and file of provincial garrisons." ("The Times" 1st June 1936).

Any attempt by the French ruling class to use the army against the working class would have resulted in it splitting in their hands. Like their Spanish brothers one month later, the French workers and peasants in uniform would have paralysed the attempt of the officers to use the army against their fathers, brothers and sisters,

But, argues Monty Johnstone: “Across the Rhine stood Nazi Germany allied to Fascist Italy in the south-east, both getting ready to help France smash Republican Spain, whilst the British bankers used every form of pressure to give them a free hand to do so.' In a much less favourable situation than France in 1936, with the actual armed intervention of imperialism, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were not deterred from taking power. The Russian Revolution detonated revolutions throughout Europe.

The reports in the British Communist Party's "Daily Worker" perhaps inadvertently give the lie to Johnstone's arguments.' Speaking of the effects of French events in Germany, it reported on June 16th. "The Nazi press at first "played up" the strikes saying they were an example of the. 'chaos' from 'Bolshevik' influence in France. After a few days it became noticeable that workers were beginning to say they saw the huge gains won by the strikers as an example it might be a good one to follow."

If the German workers were inspired just by wage increases gained by their French brothers and sisters, imagine the effect on them of the Socialist Revolution.

Both Hitler and Mussolini would have been overthrown. The Spanish workers, who rose and were initially victorious in four fifths of Spain just one month later would have joined, as would the working class throughout Europe. On June 8th the Daily Worker itself had a banner headline: "Huge Strikes Sweep Over Western Europe." The Belgian workers under the direct influence of the French strikes came out in a huge strike wave, with street battles between workers and police in all the main cities of Belgium.

There is no doubt that if the French working class would have succeeded in carrying through the socialist revolution - which was entirely possible in 1936, the workers and peasants' throughout Europe would have followed suit. The May /June sit-in strikes in 1936 could have become the overture to the Socialist United States of the Continent.

No Lenin

The ruling class of France, of Europe, together with their shadows within the labour movement, were paralysed by
fear, some of them believing that the hour of their downfall had arrived. For instance Leon Blum remarked: "I am being spoken of as a Kerenskv who is preparing the way for a Lenin” But there was no Lenin to be found in the ranks of the French Communist Party leaders.

The method, the programme and the tactics of Lenin were a book sealed with seven seals so far as the French CP leaders were concerned. They bent every effort to derail the movement of the masses. In the process enormous suspicion and hostility towards these leaders developed, at least amongst the advanced workers.

Thus over a headline which said "Revolutionary Temper of Men In the Engineering Works'" the 'Manchester Guardian' reported: "The revolutionary temper .. .is undeniable as may be seen by the extraordinary incident that occurred at Renaults yesterday. The local Communist deputy who urged the strikers to resume work on the basis of Monday's agreement ... was howled down and driven out of the works. There is no doubt that not only the CGT but even the Communist leaders have no control and no authority over the strikers of several engineering concerns. (12th June, 1936)

Seeing power slip from the hands of his class and no doubt gnashing his teeth one worker commented: "It is strange to think that in a few days everything may go back to 'normal' and Renault will come into their own again; and the posters and drawings and flags and wireless set and everything will be gone. Foremen will be able to order you about and glare." (Manchester Guardian 3rd June).

The French capitalists were forced to give wage increases and concede the 40-hour week, at least in words, as the price of getting the strike called off. The CP leader Thorez declared: "One must know how to stop a strike-that is, as soon as the essential demands have been satisfied." (Manchester Guardian, 13 June).

But what the capitalists gave with the left hand they took back with the right later on. The wage increases were gradually cancelled out through inflation. No sooner was the ink dry on the agreement than the individual employers began to resist the implementation of the reforms. But 'The Times' urged the, French capitalists to bide their time: "The general terms of Monday's settlement are being resisted in detail, with the risk that disappointment following apparent victory may produce a fiercer temper in the working class than a period of waiting would have done." (June 1936)

Power for the French working class was there for the taking in 1936, but for the treacherous role of the workers' leaders, particularly the Communist Party leaders. Hiding behind the Popular Front, the French capitalists prepared their revenge. Later thousands of militants were victimised. In October 1936 further sit-ins took place and this time the police were used to evict the strikers.

The French capitalists moreover, heaped on the shoulders of the working class the responsibility for inflation, thereby alienating the middle class from the workers. Trotsky had warned of such developments in June 1936. This shows the futility of attempting to win the middle class on a programme which does not go beyond the framework of capitalism. By taking power, by taking over the assets of the 200 families and establishing a planned economy, the French working class would have shown in action that it was the only force capable of solving the problems of the middle layers.

A planned economy would have allowed for cancellation of the debts of the small men in town and country and the extension of cheap credit and aid. The social reserves of reaction would have been completely undermined. Instead Leon Blum was forced out of the premiership of the Popular Front government in 1937 and the Socialists were completely excluded in 1938. The French working class, as with their Spanish brothers and sisters, were thus delivered into the arms of Fascism. The French Popular Front prepared the way for the enslavement of the working class by the Nazis and their French collaborators in the Vichy regime.

In the immediate post-war period, the European capitalists used the Communist and Socialist party leaders through the medium of coalition government to save themselves from the wrath of the masses. When the danger had passed, however, the CP and socialist leaders were unceremoniously booted out.

Even Eric Hobsbawn admits, "the governments of anti-fascist unity in Western Europe could get rid of their Communists whenever they wished, and in any case kept them in subordinate positions where they took the blame for unpopular government policies, eg as ministers of labour." But Hobsbawn is incapable of drawing the necessary conclusions from this.

The legacy of the Popular Front is one of defeats - sometimes bloody and terrible, as in Chile. Monty Johnstone tries to refute this by pointing to the elimination of landlordism and capitalism in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of war. Here there was a "striking success" for the Popular Front! In reality, it was nothing of the kind. The Stalinists formed a coalition, not with the liberal capitalists, but with the 'shadow of the capitalists.' The quisling capitalists had fled with the advance of the Red army. Real power - the army, and the police - were in the hands of the Stalinists. These "Popular Fronts" or "National Fronts" were merely a screen to mask this. When the "shadow" began to take on some substance, the Stalinists leaned on the working class and completely eliminated the last vestiges of capitalism. (See Ted Grant's "The Marxist Theory of the State" to be republished soon.)

New and even viler versions of the Popular Front are taking shape in Europe in the period into which we are moving. In Italy for instance, the Communist Party even abandoned the Popular Front in favour of a "National Front". It has proposed an "historic compromise" with a party to the right of the Tory party in Britain. The right wing Christian Democratic Party has been linked to a number of military plots and Fascist conspiracies in the past ten years. Yet the PCI leaders have recently expressed their preparedness to serve in a
government even with Fanfani.

This vicious reactionary, when he was Prime Minister, used the divorce referendum to prepare a shift to the right and a link up with the Neo-Fascists! They justify this by pointing to the defeat in Chile! Allende was overthrown, it seems, because he failed to link up with the Christian Democratic Party, thereby alienating the middle class! There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.

Not in alliance with the "political exploiters" of the middle class stratum, but only by linking the struggles of the urban and rural middle class together in action could the middle layers have been won to the side of the working class in Chile. In turn this would have meant the carrying through of the socialist revolution. Half measures and prevarication gave reaction the opportunity of ensnaring the support of at least a section of the middle class and preparing the way for a bloody retribution against the Chilean workers and peasants.

But the 1970s are not the 1930s, or even the 1940s. The Italian, French and Spanish working class are immeasurably stronger than in the past. Stalinism no longer exercises a mesmeric effect on the rank and file of the Communist Parties. Once a Popular Front comes to power there will be enormous repercussions within the ranks of these organisations. The CP leaders will inevitably attempt to apply the brake to the movement of the masses, as the early period of the Portuguese revolution demonstrated. They proclaimed their faith in the "socialist revolution" only after the masses' had themselves compelled the government to nationalise most of industry.

On the basis of the great events which impend in Europe, the rank and file of the Communist and Socialist Parties will see that only disaster lies at the end of the road of the 'Popular' or 'National' Fronts. The workers in these organisations will seek a return to a programme capable of giving them victory in the struggle to eliminate capitalism. As a step towards this, the advanced workers must absorb the lessons of past popular fronts in order to prevent catastrophe in the struggles which are now opening up. 

CHILE - LESSONS OF THE COUP by Roger Silverman
(From Militant 519)

Bitterly angry at the crushing Allende's "Popular Unity" government under the military jackboot, the Chilean working class has fought back heroically against staggering odds.

They have opposed to the machine-guns, tanks and planes of the Generals the rage of a class cheated of victory. Thousands have died defending their occupied factories, or defiantly facing military assassination squads, determined at whatever sacrifice to ensure that the ape-men of the new junta, with their promises to "eradicate the Marxist cancer from Chile", at least meet the fiercest resistance in destroying the gains of the last three years. 


When Allende was elected President in September 1970, the world held its breath. Were the ringing phrases of his election programme to be implemented within the framework of the
existing constitution? Were the "workers, peasants, office workers and intellectuals" (in the words Allende chose to use when on a visit to Moscow) to become "masters of Chile"?


It became fashionable in left-wing circles to talk of "the Chilean experiment" and in Britain the Tribune left and the Communist Party, gave unqualified approval to Allende's programme. It was to be the living refutation of those “defeatists” and “ultra-leftists” who argued that no fundamental changes could be made in the social system without mobilising the oppressed against capitalism. 


FALSE PROGRAMME


Tragically, the "experiment" has failed. And politically conscious workers all over the world will be searching for an explanation. Socialists have a responsibility to look back hard and honestly over the past three years. If the lessons of these events are learned in time, the Chilean workers will not have suffered in vain. 


The world's Communist Parties, in the eyes of millions of militant workers, bear the authority of the Russian revolution. And, since these were the most theoretically consistent supporters of Allende’s programme, they above all need to re-examine their arguments. We intend to compare our position on Chile with that of the Communist Party to help to get to the truth - how can such catastrophes be avoided elsewhere? 


The Morning Star celebrated the third anniversary of Allende's election with the words: "When Chile's "Popular Unity" government took office In September 1970, many people did not give it 3 months of existence, let alone 3 years". That was on September 5, 1973. It had exactly one week more to live! 


Why was it overthrown? According to the Morning Star, because of the "plots of imperialism and the CIA". Undoubtedly the CIA played a part In the coup, although even then only as an auxiliary to the home-grown Chilean reaction. But that is tantamount to saying: the revolution would have gone off beautifully if only it hadn't been for the ruling class! If the capitalists were not hell-bent on retaining their power, the socialist revolution would not only be easy, it would be unnecessary. 


When the Russian workers took power in October 1917, 21 Imperialist armies poured Into Russia to crush them. But the Internationalist propaganda of the Bolsheviks had an electric effect on the invading troops and the world revolution was enormously strengthened. 


Certainly, the fault is not that of the workers. They responded magnificently to the challenge. In enthusiastically carrying out in spontaneous deeds the fine words of Allende's programme, in taking over factories and landed estates, in voting by the million and marching by the tens of thousands for the government, and finally in fighting and dying for it, the workers and poor peasants have demonstrated their loyalty.

If socialism itself is not a sentimental dream, then there is only one conclusion: the leadership and programme of the workers' organisations was false. And that is our conviction. The workers were led like lambs to the slaughter by the utterly false programme of their leaders. 


What was the "Popular Unity"? Far from an ingenious new experiment, it was an alliance of conflicting interests, a rotten collaboration of workers' parties, striving for a new society, with Liberal parties, financed by Big Business to exploit the votes of the middle classes. 


It was another version of the Kerensky Provisional Government that issued from the February Revolution in Russia, the "Popular Front" governments of Spain and France in the 1930's, the "united Left" of Greece in the 1960's, the "Broad Left" of Uruguay up to the present time, and countless others. 


Never in history have such alliances made any lasting gains for the workers - all of them have led to bloody defeats, except in Russia where there was a Bolshevik Party that won the masse away from such a programme, saved them from defeat at the hands of Kornilov's counter-revolution by mobilising them for the socialist revolution.


The "Popular Unity" was a coalition of the two workers' parties, Communists, and to their left, the Socialists - both nominally "Marxist-Leninist" - together with no less than six small liberal splinter-groups which had very little electoral support and acted mainly as a millstone around the necks of the workers' parties. 


FATAL CONCESSIONS 


It "united" this assortment of incompatible parties, and imagined that in this way it could unite their supporters. But the only way to win the middle class to the side of the workers, especially In the nightmare of current inflation in Chile, is by bold deeds, exposing the role of the banks and the monopolies, and demonstrating to them the enormous superiority of a planned economy. But the "Popular Unity" descended every time to the lowest common denominator, giving a veto not only to the bourgeois parties inside the coalition but also in effect to the biggest opposition party in Congress, the Christian Democrats, who at every turn blackmailed the government, and who are now supporting the counter-revolutionary junta. 


Allende only became President on the basis of a fatal concession. He promised the Christian Democrats "freedom of the Press" - which in practice allowed the Press tycoons to pour out a daily stream of lies, filth and slander - and above all he promised that he would allow no "unconstitutional in the strength of the army, navy, air force or national police would be made except by laws passed by Congress". 


STATE MACHINE 


This meant that throughout the period of his office the whole state apparatus remained firmly in the hands of the ruling class; the Congress, which sabotaged his proposals at every turn; the Judiciary and Supreme Court, which overruled him constantly and which Allende in June publicly accused of "partiality in the administration of justice". And, of course the armed forces which have just crushed his government underfoot. 


What programme did AIlende hope to carry through in these conditions? The immediate aim of the “Popular Unity" was to "strengthen democracy". This was the kind of woolly verbiage that Lenin time and again castigated. History knows only of two kinds of democracy. There is capitalist democracy, which ( in Lenin's words) “is bound to remain restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and a deception for the exploited, for the poor". ("The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky") And there is proletarian democracy, which must be based on workers' councils, election of officials with the right of recall, an armed people, average skilled workers' wages for all administrators, rotation of state duties and so on (The State and Revolution). 


Any talk of "real democracy" under capitalism is dangerous. "There is not a single state" wrote Lenin, "however democratic, which has no loopholes ... in its constitution' guaranteeing the bourgeoisie the possibility of despatching troops, against the workers ... in case of a 'violation of public order' and actually in case the exploited class 'violates' its position of' slavery and tries to behave in a non-slavish manner". The Chilean coup confirms these words. 


AIlende had a long-term aim, too, to “install a new system of power in which the working class and the people who are the ones who really exercise power". This was 'to be achieved within the Constitution? Yes, according to Luis Corvalan, Secretary General of the Chilean Communist Party, writing in World Marxist Review in November 1972: "in the conditions prevailing in our country, changes cannot be effected according to the classical pattern of revolutions. They can be effected only within the frame of the law". 


Such words fly in the face, not only of Lenin, but of Marx and Engels too, to say nothing of elementary human reason. It was Marx and Engels who patiently explained, in an introduction to an edition of their basic statement "The Communist Manifesto"- "One thing' especially was proved by the (Paris) Commune, namely that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes". 


Marx wrote to Kugelmann that the task of the revolution is "no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it, and this is essential for every real people's revolution". 


Engels spelt it out again: "From the very outset the Commune had to recognise that the working class, once in power, could not go on managing with the old state machinery; that In order not to lose again its only just won supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery previously used against it itself, and on the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment" (Introduction to "Civil War in France"). The "Popular Unity" did neither. 


RULERS' RESISTANCE 


Undoubtedly great reforms were introduced by Allende's government. When the American copper mines were nationalised, it had the support of 93% of the population. The wage increases, land reforms, and welfare handouts ensured loyal support. In the municipal elections of 1971, the "Popular Unity" candidates won 49.7% of the votes, compared to 36% in the 1970 Presidential elections. Even after the crippling business strikes and the soaring of Inflation to over 300%, the UP won 44% of votes in the congressional elections of March 1973. The nationalisation of the mines, the banks and sections of industry were great steps forward for the Chilean working class. And yet all its hopes have come to nothing.


The ruling class cannot be expected to hand over its wealth voluntarily. Lenin wrote: “In every profound revolution, the prolonged, stubborn and desperate resistance of the exploiters ... is a rule. Never ... will the exploiters submit to the decision of the exploited majority, without trying to make o use of their advantages in a last desperate battle”

It hardly needs a Lenin to explain this. Even Labour MP Eric Heffer wrote in Labour Monthly (May 1972): "No ruling class anywhere in the world are going to give up their power without a struggle ... and Chile is no exception". 
Unfortunately, he concluded, like Allende and the Chilean CP: “The army, air force and navy have remained in support of the elected government. It is to be hoped (!) that they will continue to do so". 


"LOYAL ARMY" 


Militant can be proud to republish its many articles on Chile over the last three years. As early as March 1971 we headed an article "Chilean Crisis - Arm the workers Against Reaction". We called then and in subsequent articles for workers' councils and a workers' militia to be "systematically organised to clear the Fascists off the streets, to guard against army coups and to provide the basis for a class appeal to the troops" (March 1973). Let us compare this with the statements of the Communist Party. 


Luis Corvalan, again, wrote an article headed "Chile: The People Take Over" in World Marxist Review in December 1970, which began quite correctly with a description of the enthusiasm of the oppressed at Allende's election. He continued: "This atmosphere of approval and solidarity, plus the legitimacy of the election victory which no one can challenge, and the powerful impact of world socialism, explain why US Imperialism and Latin American reaction will find themselves compelled to accept the situation in Chile". 


In the past the capitalists have had no scruples about flouting both the wishes of the people and the "legitimacy" of election results. Of Chile they have made no exception. Only the "compulsion" of a mass force mobilised against them could have prevented the coup, while through officer caste they retained control of the armed forces. 


But Carvalan had some "explanations" about this too. The Chilean armed forces, apparently, were unique: they "retained their spirit of professionalism, their respect for the constitution and the law". It would be wrong to say, he said, "that they are loyal servants of the imperialists and the upper classes. Our ground troops and navy were constituted in the fight for independence. Privates and NCOs in all the three arms come from a poor social background (don't those of all armies? - RS) and nearly (!) all the officers from the middle strata. The oligarchy and the prosperous bourgeoisie have long stopped choosing a military career for their sons". 


Naturally the capitalists don't do any fighting themselves; they control the army through the middle class officers whom they have imbued with a capitalist outlook through the schools, the press, the military academies etc. But that is not all ... "These days no social institution Is indifferent to the social storm raging all over the world, and the tragedy of the hundreds of millions of poverty-stricken people. The attitude of the armed forces of the Dominican Republic and the progressive nature of the military government in Peru (!) show that a dogmatic (!) approach to the army is no longer valid." 


The world's social storms will obviously have an effect. But they will push the different strata of the forces in opposite directions. The peasants of the rank and file could have been won only by a class appeal to set up revolutionary committees and turn their guns against the officer caste. But in case you thought Corvalan had entirely dropped what he calls a "dogmatic" approach to the army, he concedes that "the military establishment, too, needs change" - only to add hastily: "but that change should not be imposed on it" ! 


Countless examples could be given of similar soothing lullabies, all just as criminally stupid. Corvalan yet again wrote in World Marxist Review (November 1972): “in spite of their diversity, the military have common moral values: respect for the Constitution and the law, and loyalty to the elected government"; the same Corvalan - let us remind ourselves, General Secretary of the Chilean “COMMUNIST” Party, wrote in t he Morning Star of 29 December 1970: "To hold that armed confrontation is certain implies the immediate formation of armed people's militia. In the present situation that would be equivalent to a mark of defiance of the army ... It must be won to the cause of progress in Chile and not pushed onto the other side of the barricades". 


WARNINGS UNHEEDED 


As it turned out, the Army needed no pushing! To talk of winning the officer caste - the armed watchdog of the ruling class – to the side of the workers was monstrous for a self-styled “Marxist” and workers’ leader. 


Allende’s government, far from "provoking" or "defying" the officers, grovelled before them. Its first act was to raise the officers' salaries, in the hope of buying their gratitude. When Marx, Engels and Lenin had urged the necessity of abolishing the privileges of the state officialdom. 


In Militant International Review (January 1972) we published an article under the title "Chile - the Threatening Catastrophe" containing the following paragraph: "Allende's slavish respect for authority - in the form of an Army jackboot - will not save his skin when conditions permit the counter-revolution to raise its head. The tops of the army, police and civil service are linked by a thousand threads with the landlords, bankers and capitalists ... The passive sympathy of the soldiers will be of no avail unless the hold of the officer caste is broken. Yet AIlende persists in propping up the General Staff with his own authority”.


It was not merely a matter of theory. The counter-revolution was prepared under the very noses of the government. In 1972, wrongly anticipating a "Broad Left" election victory in Uruguay, the Morning Star published an optimistic article entitled "First Chile, then Uruguay". The reality was to turn out just the opposite: armed counter-revolution in "first Uruguay then Chile" ! But the experience of the Uruguayan workers was a closed book to the leaders of their Chilean brothers. 


The Christian Democratic leader Frei toured the world urging an economic boycott of Chile - and yet Allende was in permanent negotiations with his party in Congress. This was the party which voted with the ultra-right National Party accusing Allende of "violating the Constitution" and "reminding" the army of their "duty to protect the constitution", thus openly inviting an armed coup. 


OFFICERS' CONTEMPT 


The army C in C General Schneider was assassinated by Fascist gunmen in order to prevent Allende's election in 1970. A 2000 man force was recruited to sabotage transport, water, gas and power. Repeated attempts were made on Allende's life. Massive "strikes" were organised by the lorry-owners and shopkeepers, and the highly-paid copper miners, and demonstrations were held of middle class housewives demanding Allende's resignation. The owners of the large estates slaughtered livestock and refused to plant grain and even stockpiled machine guns. The CIA/ITT plot was unmasked. 


Again and again, trade unionists and supporters of the government went mown down by the assassins of the Fascist "Fatherland and Freedom" gang. And at every blow from the Right big concessions were wanted by Allende. Left Ministers were sacked and replaced by Generals, laws were revoked, reforms were dropped by the same Allende who was so bold when criticising the "irresponsibility" and "anarchy" of workers occupying factories, or peasants taking over landed estates.

Such blindness would be enough to make the very stones weep! Sam Russell reported in the Morning Star (10 July 1973) - "Chile's Popular Unity government has emerged strengthened and toughened (!) after the defeat of the latest and most dangerous attempt to overthrow it". 


In reality AIlende knew how 'strong' and 'tough' the government was. Allende's "Marxist" apologist Regis Debray has described the fatalistic reaction of AIlende to the June 29 coup. "Next day... he discovered that he could count on only four generals out of 22 ... Salvador, in high spirits ... sat us round a camembert and told us about his interview the night before with a plotting General, the Air Force Commander, whom he had appointed Minister of Transport in order to neutralise him (!)... For several months this (state) apparatus had been out of control and was sliding gradually into open insubordination' ... Allende was no longer making any plans further than 48 hours ahead". 


When the Socialist leader AItamirano urged AIlende to mobilise the masses, quite correctly arguing that "the best way to bring about a confrontation and make It even bloodier Is to turn your back on it", Allende retorted: "And how many masses does it take to stop a tank?" In other words, despite the rhetoric about the "Ioyalty" of the armed forces, Allende in reality had no faith in the soldiers' and sailors' response to a clear class appeal, let alone the "loyalty" of the Generals! All he was concerned about was the "dignity"' of his own defeat. "I shan't let myself be bundled onto an aircraft in my pyjamas, and I shan't ask for asylum in some embassy". To the workers of Chile, it made no difference what noble gestures Allende made; what mattered was his blatant betrayal in the face of the Generals' plots. 


Allende's concessions were accompanied by empty rhetoric. In November Allende stated that our enemies wish to use reactionary violence, we shall reply first of all with laws and justice, and If need be, also with revolutionary violence". On May Day, he threatened to "appeal to the law, to the armed forces, and if necessary to the people's parliament, a people's assembly ..." 


On June 24, Allende "asked his supporters to seek a dialogue with those opposition groups which also wanted the country's transformation" (i.e. the Christian Democrats who covered up their sabotage with flowery speeches) and “issued a warning against classifying the armed forces as 'reactionary' and thus preventing them from being a dynamic face In Chile's development". 


Five days later came the open attempt at a putsch by the naval officers on June 29 1973. Due to their haste and failure to consult their counterparts in the other sections of the armed forces, this attempt failed. A golden opportunity was given to the workers' organisations, a precious breathing-space in which to open their eyes to the menace looming ahead and prepare a workers' militia and organise committees of soldiers, sailors and airmen. Surely after that, the lesson was learned? 


On the contrary, Luis Corvalan again made a speech (reprinted in' Marxism Today, September 1973) in which he praised "the prompt and determined action by the Commander in Chief of the Army, the loyalty of the armed forces and the police", and replied to suggestions that the CP were in favour of organising a workers' militia: "No sirs! We continue to support the absolutely professional character of the armed institutions. Their enemies are not in the ranks of the people but in the reactionary camp". 


Allende took advantage of his short new lease of life ... to beg the armed forces to come back into the Cabinet. Allende’s last desperate bid for survival at any cost was to revoke all those decrees of nationalisation that had not been explicitly approved by Congress. The more obsequious Allende's concessions, the more contemptuously the Generals spat on his government. And when they felt ready they put it out of its misery like a man squashing a flea. 


Even the thirteenth-hour call to arms issued by the Socialist Party radio station was misconceived. By calling on the workers to occupy the factories and shoot out at the troops from inside, rather than defend street barricades, they were in effect cutting the troops off from the contagion of a class appeal. 


And nothing can "better illustrate the utter degeneracy of the CP than the treachery of Godoy, "Communist" Minister of Labour in Allende's Cabinet, who, carried its policy to its logical conclusion after the coup by calling for "an end to extremism of right and left and for effort and discipline from the working class". 


Why do we dwell on the crimes and blunders of the Chilean workers' leaders? Because exactly the same fate awaits the workers of other countries If the lessons of Chile are not taken to heart. In France, we have seen the "Popular Union" bring the Socialists and Communists into alliance with the so-called "Left" Radicals. In Italy the CP are prepared to ally with "progressive sections" of the capitalist Christian Democratic Party. And In Spain - SPAIN of all places, where "Popular Frontism" led directly to the slaughter of a million workers and peasants by Franco's Fascist armies - the CP are supporting a "Freedom Pact" of "all genuine oppositionists from Communists to Conservatives and Monarchists". If these policies continue unchecked, they will cause new disasters for the working class movement. 


The real anxiety of the capitalists is revealed in The Observer (16/9/73) which wrote: "Unwittingly, the Chilean Generals have made a formidable case for armed revolution rather than for peaceful evolution towards socialist democracy." 


LIFE AND DEATH 


If any of our readers consider this irrelevant to the British Labour movement, they should read the article by Tribune Labour MP Eric Heffer in Labour Monthly (May 1972). Under the heading "Chile's peaceful road to Socialism", Heffer praised the "Chilean experiment" and then revealed "One day I would hope we could have a Labour government with just as radical a programme. If we do have such a government we will be faced with the same problems". 


One day, and maybe quite soon, we may very well have such a government. The resolutions on this year's Labour Party conference agenda reflect the enormous pressure from the ranks for a sweeping programme of nationalisation. Let none of us doubt the reaction of the ruling class in this country too. We have published ample material in Militant exposing the plans of the Tory Party for armed attacks on the Labour movement In the future. Brigadier Kitson has made no secret of his strategic studies in the political role of the armed forces. The Times' leader-writers and certain Tory MPs have given full warning of "authoritarian" measures unless the trade unions show "responsibility" 


It would be suicidal to trust in British "democratic traditions". Chile too had just such a reputation. The only way a government committed to overthrow capitalism can succeed is if it mobilises the full power of the Labour movement and turn its back on class collaborationism in any form. Marxism is a life and death question for the working class.

QUESTIONS

1) What is a popular front?

2) In the 1930's, surely the only way to defeat the rising tide of fascism was through
a unified broad alliance of all those sections of society opposed to it?

3) The ruling class will never hand over power - the only thing to do is to alongside
the most progressive amongst them. The popular front is a step towards this.

4) Revolution inevitably leads to war - better to rule alongside the liberal wing of
the ruling class than enter into open conflict.

5) In Chile, 1970, Allende had no option but to enter into the Popular Unity Government -
the CP and SP were each in a minority in the government, but as the PUG, he held the
majority.

Results of elections of 4.9.70: 
Allende (PUG) 1,075,616
Alessandri (National Party) 1,036,278
Tomic (Christian Democrats) 824,849

(The PUG coalition included not only the CP and SP but six small parties and
grouplets of 'liberals').

6) Marxist should take part in popular fronts, using their position in it to show
it up for what it is.

7) Marxists should take part in popular fronts: by entering into an alliance with the
1iberal representatives of the middle classes, it would be possible to win them
over to our ideas.

8) In Russia,1917, the slogan put forward by the Bolsheviks in connection with the
Provisional Government was "Down with the 10 capitalist ministers". Surely, the
slogan “Down with the Provisional Government" would have been clearer?

9) The popular front should be seen as a step towards a workers government, not a
concession of joint rule with the capitalists - as such, we should fight for a
Broad Democratic Alliance of all those forces in society which have 'progressive'
ideas (eg. In Britain, those who are opposed to Thatcherism).

10) Was Mitterand’s government a popular front - how did it differ from the popular
front of the 1930's?