The ‘Theses on Comintern Tactics’ agreed by the Fourth Congress centred on the need - in the current economic and political conjuncture - to apply the ‘united front tactic’ that had been set out in earlier 'Theses' agreed by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) at the end of 1921 as a method “designed to give Communist agitation a base in the unified mass activity of the proletariat”.
The Fourth Congress Theses summed up the ‘united front tactic’ as “simply an initiative whereby the Communists propose to join with all workers belonging to other parties and groups and all unaligned workers in a common struggle to defend the immediate, basic interests of the working class against the bourgeoisie. Every action, for even the most trivial everyday demand, can lead to revolutionary awareness and revolutionary education; it is the experience of struggle that will convince workers of the inevitability of revolution and the historic importance of Communism”.
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| Trotsky speaking at the Fourth Congress |
1921 ECCI Theses on the United Front
The 1921 ECCI Theses had noted that, alongside growing respect for the Communist Party amongst the most militant workers, “the new layers of politically inexperienced workers just coming into activity long to achieve the unification of all the workers’ parties and even of all the workers’ organisations in general, hoping in this way to strengthen opposition to the capitalist offensive”. They still harboured illusions of an easier road than revolution and so supported the reformist ‘socialist’ parties but wanted to see them fighting together alongside the Communists. “To that extent, this mood is progressive”, recognising that, through the experience of serious mass action, these workers will begin to learn “that reformism is an illusion and that compromise is fatal”.
The ECCI Theses pointed out that the leaders of those ‘socialist’ parties and internationals also preach unity – but in words only. In reality, they were “bringing splits, confusion and organised sabotage to the struggle of the working masses.” While, “for the inexperienced sections of workers just becoming politically aware, the slogan of the united front is a genuine expression of their very real desire to rally the forces of the oppressed class against the capitalist attack”, for these reformist leaders it represents “a new attempt to deceive the workers and a new way of drawing them onto the old path of class collaboration.”
Whilst fully recognising the different interests for which the slogan could therefore be applied, the ECCI concluded that, in order to build on the Third Congress slogan of ‘To the Masses’ - to extend its influence amongst the wider working class and to involve it in struggle - the situation required “the Communist Parties and the Communist International as a whole support the slogan of a united workers’ front and take the initiative on this question into their own hands”.
How the tactic should be applied concretely depended on the particular conditions in each country. For example, the ECCI recommended that:
In Germany, the slogan of a united workers’ front, plus raising the possibility of supporting a “united workers’ government” would help “the Party can group around itself all the anarchist and syndicalist elements standing aside from the mass struggle.”
In France, where most of the politically organised workers already supported the CP, the tactic should be applied a little differently, but, while knowing that the reformist trade union leaders will be seeking to betray workers’ struggles, “the revolutionary elements of the French working class must still approach the reformists before the start of every mass strike, revolutionary demonstration or any other spontaneous mass action, asking them to support the workers' initiative, and must systematically expose the reformists when they refuse to support the revolutionary struggle of the workers”. However, the ECCI cautioned that, in doing so, the CP must not give up its political independence and should not participate in an electoral ‘left-bloc’ with the reformists.
In Britain, the CP had been seeking to become a Labour Party affiliated organisation, but the reformist Labour leaders had denied it. Britain was “an exception … since unusual conditions have made the Labour Party in Britain a kind of general workers’ association for the whole country”. Therefore the ECCI called on the British Communists to “launch a vigorous campaign for their admittance to the Labour Party … to extend their influence to the rank-and-file of the working masses, using the slogan of a united revolutionary front against the capitalists”.
The advice on Sweden – where a reformist socialist had been elected prime Minister but needed Communist support to secure his majority - is instructive for how a small bloc of genuinely socialist MPs might need to act today. The ECCI advised that “the Communist fraction in the Swedish parliament may, in certain circumstances, agree to support the Menshevik ministry of Branting, as was correctly done by the German Communists in some of the provincial governments of Germany…. However, this certainly does not imply that the Swedish Communists should limit their independence in the slightest, or avoid exposing the character of the Menshevik government”.
Indeed, the Theses concluded by stressing that any agreement for a united front with reformist workers’ parties must absolutely always be based on “the absolute autonomy and complete independence of every Communist Party entering into any agreement … and its freedom to present its own views and its criticisms of those who oppose the Communists”. It gave a reminder of how the Bolsheviks had often made agreements with the Mensheviks, in part from the pressure from the workers for ‘unity’, putting forward the slogan for “unity from below”.
But the ECCI recognised that in some sections of the International, centrist ideas still had a significant influence and that “there may be tendencies which amount to the dissolution of the Communist Parties and groups into a formless united bloc”. Other, more genuine forces might also be pushed in that direction as a reaction to some of the equally mistaken ultra-left attitudes also present in some of the sections. However, the correct application of the united from tactic could help internally consolidate the Communist Parties “both by re-educating through experience impatient or sectarian Left elements and by ridding the Parties of reformist ballast”. It also stressed that the united workers’ front must also embrace anarchist and syndicalist workers as well as those from reformist ‘socialist’ political parties and unions federations.
1922 Fourth Congress Resolution
Th 1922 Congress resolution (the ‘Theses on Comintern Tactics’) restressed the points from the ECCI Theses – which were attached as an appendix to it.
It emphasised that, against the overall picture of capitalist decline, tactics had to also take into account ‘conjunctural fluctuations’ such as the limited industrial revival then being experienced in the global capitalist economy, but one being made at the expense of the working class through a worsening of pay, conditions and rights. But those attacks were forcing ever new layers of workers into struggle and making it harder for the trade-union bureaucrats to collaborate with the employers. The united front tactic would, of course, help the Communists to expose such treachery, including the attempts by the ‘Amsterdam International’ trade union leaders to attempt to expel Communists and split the union movement.
The rise of fascism, most notably in Italy, also required the Communist Parties to “be at the head of the working class in the fight against the fascist gangs … extremely active in setting up united fronts on the question and must make use of illegal methods of organisation”.
The resolution stressed that “the Communist International requires that all Communist Parties and groups adhere strictly to the united front tactic, because in the present period it is the only way of guiding Communists in the right direction, towards winning the majority of workers. … At present the reformists need a split, while the Communists are interested in uniting all the forces of the working class against capital”.
However, repeating the warning in the ECCI Theses, the resolution also stressed that “Any attempt by the Second International to interpret the united front as an organisational fusion of all the ‘workers’ parties’ must of course be categorically repudiated” and that the Communist Parties must retain complete freedom of action. “In the same way the united front tactic has nothing to do with the so-called ‘electoral combinations’ of leaders in pursuit of one or another parliamentary aim”.
The resolution stressed that the united front tactic shouldn’t just be agitational but organisational too, building “organisational footholds among the working masses themselves (factory committees, supervisory commissions … action committees, etc). ... ‘from below’”. Every serious Communist Party needed to have strong ‘cells’ in the key workplaces and ensure that those workplaces had factory committees/workers’ councils.
The resolution also discussed the appropriateness of raising the associated demand of “a workers’ government (or a workers’ and peasants’ government)”. This would be particularly important in counties where the crisis means that the workers’ parties could, indeed, find themselves in a majority. It stressed that, as opposed to the reformists’ attempts to call for a coalition with bourgeois parties, “Communists propose a united front involving all workers, and a coalition of all workers’ parties around economic and political issues, which will fight and finally overthrow bourgeois power”.
Such a workers’ government would inevitably be born out of struggle but, even if brought to power through a parliamentary majority, would “from its very first days come up against extremely strong resistance from the bourgeoisie.” It would need, as its basic tasks, to organise against counter-revolution, including arming the workers to ensure its defeat (one of the lessons of Chile 1973 …), and to ensure “control over production, shift the main burden of taxation onto the propertied classes.”
“In certain circumstances, Communists must declare themselves ready to form a workers’ government with non-Communist workers’ parties and workers’ organisations. However, they should do so only if there are guarantees that the workers’ government will conduct a real struggle against the bourgeoisie of the kind already outlined”. It would also require the Communist Party insisting that it had an unconditional right to independent agitation and being certain that its parliamentary representatives were under full control of the Party as a whole.
It warned that Communists have to remember that “every bourgeois government is simultaneously a capitalist government, but not every workers’ government is a truly proletarian, socialist government”. Nevertheless a ‘liberal’ workers’ government – perhaps along the lines of a Labour Party government coming to power in Britain (as it did in 1924) - would still be an “important starting-point”. Where, with the proviso of the guarantees laid out above, Communists give support to a non-Communist workers’ government, “the Communists will still openly declare to the masses that the workers’ government can be neither won nor maintained without a revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie”.
Dealing with Differences
The final section of the Fourth Congress resolution noted that the ‘united front tactic wasn’t an ‘optional’ policy for individual sections to choose whether to adopt but, as one of the tactical decisions taken by the Congress and ECCI, would become one of the ‘twenty-one conditions’ of membership of the International.
In practice, many of the sections of the International had leaderships that didn’t fully take on board the tactical decisions and guidance being put forward by the World Congresses and some of the Fourth Congress resolutions noted specific examples of differences and gave guidance on how to proceed where sections were split over the correct tactics to follow.
For example, the Spanish, Italian and French parties had all voted in opposition to the ‘united front tactic’ at an extended meeting of the ECCI to concretize how the strategy should be applied, held at the start of 1922. In practice, as noted by the resolution on the Communist Party of Spain, the Spanish section had applied the tactic successfully in intervening in strike struggles, a tactic that now needed to be applied consistently in seeking to win the support of the best anarcho-syndicalist workers, and campaign for the unity of the Spanish trade union movement.
The differences amongst the various factions of the Communist Party of France were more significant. They were over far more than just the ‘united front’ but also far more than can be adequately covered in this post.
Just to give one example of the issues, Trotsky’s December 1922 ‘Report on the Fourth Congress’ explains why the Congress resolution on France insisted that “that nine-tenths of the candidates for all electoral posts … be selected from among workers and peasants directly from the workbench or the plough”. But that was necessary to redirect the Party “in a country where entire legions of intellectuals, lawyers, careerists flock to the gates of various parties whenever they sniff the scent of a mandate, and all the more so a prospect of power”. The Congress also had to instruct the Party to expel any member who continued to be a member of the Freemasons!
A more detailed analysis of this ‘Party crisis’, and the decisions reached by the ECCI to try and resolve it, are outlined in several articles by Trotsky, written both before and after the Fourth Congress (see Volume Two of ‘The First Five Years of the Communist International’), and in the resolutions at the Congress itself.
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