The Popular Front

It was a cruel irony, given the success of the Nazis, that the period beginning in late 1929 with the collapse of the New York stock exchange should be hailed in communist circles as heralding the final agony of capitalism. Nevertheless, Moscow’s reaction was far from one of unalloyed rejoicing. Apart from its immediate problems of the famine conditions following in the wake of forced collectivization, the USSR still needed economic and technological links with the advanced capitalist countries to further its own development. The crash of 1929 not only threatened those links but also opened the door to a hysterical capitalist lashing-out against the Soviet Union. Accordingly, the search for allies among the capitalist countries became an urgent necessity for the Kremlin. At the same time as this external context constrained the revolutionary role of the Comintern, that organization was already bitterly divided by arguments as to its best strategy. Hard-liners claimed that the communists should smash the Social Democratic heresy, make revolution, and thereby incapacitate the enemies of the motherland of socialism. Realists argued that, in the face of fascist aggression, communists should seek collaboration with other more moderate leftwing elements. Inevitably, these debates centred on Germany.

The Comintern was puzzled by Hitler’s anti-capitalist rhetoric and deceived by his hostility to the same western powers who were seen to be the USSR’s main enemies. Comintern thinking on Germany was also severely restricted by the identification of Social Democracy with ‘social fascism’. The KPD itself was especially sectarian in its conviction that ‘objectively’ the SPD was a more formidable defender of capitalism than the ‘doomed’

Nazis. A number of factors eventually imposed a more flexible view. Growing evidence of Hitler’s long-term anti-Soviet ambitions coincided with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria to persuade Moscow that France would be a better ally than Germany. At the same time, the appalling truth of what Hitler’s victory meant for the workers’ movement boosted spontaneous rank-and-file pressure in many countries —particularly France and Spain—for a more flexible united front policy. Accordingly, the Comintern came around belatedly to endorsing the existing movement towards unity on the left in Europe and adopting the Popular Front as its own.

The evolution towards the adoption of Popular Frontism for individual national communist parties was closely linked to the policy’s international utility for the USSR. The Moscow leadership was less concerned with the advantages of a broad interclass alliance to French or Spanish communists than with the possibility that left-leaning democratic governments might contemplate alliances with the Soviet Union against expansionist Nazism. The notion of Popular Front as espoused by the Comintern at the VII Congress in July-August 1935 was a volte-face. With little explanation and less recantation, the divisive ‘social fascism’ line was replaced by a strategy of class collaboration. However, that line’s validity was undermined by the ultimate incompatibility between the economic aspirations of the Front’s component class elements. The rank and file hoped for more radical social and economic change than Popular Front governments considered acceptable or realistic. The radicalism of the French and Spanish popular masses embarrassed Moscow. Given the wider needs of Soviet policy, it was crucial that the communists did not let revolutionism get out of hand to a point where it would alarm the French bourgeoisie or the British who had investments in Spain. Accordingly, communist moderation came to exceed that of the French and Spanish socialists.

The policy of Popular Front was effective only in France and Spain. The left in both countries was greatly affected by the events in Austria in February 1934 when the moderate SPO (Sozialdemokratische Partei Osterreichs —Social Democratic Party of Austria) was eventually driven to violence in order to defend the constitution of the Republic against the attrition of democracy, civil liberties, and social legislation by the right-wing Engelbert Dollfuss. In France, the left was aware of the mistakes made in Italy and Germany and thus avoided the divisions of Italian and German comrades and did not underestimate the strength of fascism. The impact of the depression had come later in France, but was still harsh, albeit less severe than in Germany, the United States, or Britain. With industrial production stagnating, a process worsened by the government’s deflationary policies, unemployment and wage cuts fostered working-class militancy and the emergence of a wide range of uncoordinated ultra-right-wing groups.

The main groups on the French left were the Radicals under Edouard Daladier, the Socialist SFIO (Section Frangaise de l’ln-ternationale Ouvriere) under Leon Blum, and the intransigently Stalinist Communist Party, the PCF, under the leadership of a bureaucratic thug, Maurice Thorez. After previously denouncing the socialists as ‘social fascists’, the PCF led the move to a broad anti-fascist coalition from February 1934 onwards. After the police crushed a PCF demonstration in Paris with gratuitous violence, SFIO and PCF workers collaborated spontaneously in marches all over France. The process was accelerated by signals from Moscow, prompted by news of what was happening in Germany. Thorez, on instructions from the Comintern, put his weight behind a plan for a common front and, by June 1934, a suspicious SFIO agreed to a ‘joint pact of unity of action’ which was soon called Le Front Populaire. By July 1935, the Radicals had reluctantly joined the joint committee known as the Rassemblement Populaire — for a massive 14 July 1935 Bastille Day demonstration involving 500,000 people. The Comintern VII Congress in July and August 1935 approved the Popular Front strategy, a decision which was not unconnected with the signing of the Franco-Soviet Pact in May

1935.

With a moderate electoral programme, and much encouraged by the electoral victory of the Spanish Popular Front in February 1936, the French Popular Front won the elections of April

1936.  However, even before the 64-year-old Leon Blum took power, a colossal spontaneous general strike broke out. In all, 2 million workers organized occupations and sit-ins and there were more strikes in one month than in the previous fifteen years. The events initially took place in an optimistic spirit of carnival with concerts in the factories. However, the communists were too concerned about the international situation to take the risk of encouraging a revolutionary situation and weakening France. On 5 June 1936, Blum took over with the communists refusing to participate in government. He resolved the strikes with the compromise known as the Matignon Agreements by which the working class received 15 per cent pay rises and compulsory collective bargaining was introduced. There was a massive increase of unionization. The number of union members at Renault plants shot from 700 (out of 33,000 workers) to 31,000 by the end of 1936. On ii August French war industries were nationalized. As many as 133 laws in 73 days added up to an apparent threat to the established order. Like their German counterparts when faced with the social achievements of the Weimar Republic, the French employers were determined to fight back.

The strikes and the subsequent Popular Front legislation had polarized France. The mood of optimism and unity dissolved especially after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War on 18 July. French businessmen, alarmed for the fate of their $135 million-worth of investments in Spain, saw the events in Spain as an opportunity to save France from her own Popular Front. Initially, Blum was inclined to help the sister regime in Spain. However, the French right-wing press portrayed his plans as irresponsible warmongering by a Jewish freemason. With both the Quai d’Or-say and Whitehall fearful that help for the Republic might tip Hitler and Mussolini into helping the Spanish rebels, Blum was pushed towards a policy of non-intervention. Blum had to face the hostility of the PCF but he remained convinced that non-intervention was in the interests of the Spanish Republic and had prevented a general European war. Like the British statesmen who took a similar view, Blum was unaware of just how far the Spanish war strengthened the German and Italian challenge to Anglo-French hegemony.