The tactic of the united front
By HARRY SLOAN TO WIN the working class away from its traditional. reformist leaderships and organisations, and build a truly mass, Marxist party capable of leading the socialist revolution needs much more than banner-waving. propaganda and proclamations.
A new party must prove its relevance to the working class -involve itself in the many day-to-day struggles against exploitative employers, anti-union laws, police violence, racist attacks and the many facets of sexual oppression
It must establish its credentials as front line fighters, unite those in conflict, sharing their struggles but not their illusions; it must play a conscious role of deepening and drawing the political lessons from these struggles, uncovering the inadequacy and betrayals of the trade union bureaucrats, reformist and "Communist Party" politicians, and putting forward consistent class struggle tactics and demands.
This might seem so elementary that it hardly merits explanation: but the small, divided and politically confused segments that represent the present-day British Marxist movement bear witness to the fact that these lessons have yet to be fully learned or applied to the British labour movement.
Even as Neil Kinnock - aided and abetted by elements from both sides of the splintered British "Communist Party" — wages a growing witch-hunt against the hard left, using the sterile propagandists of Militant as a convenieht pretext, an objective appraisal of the size and strength of British revolutionary Marxism suggest that there is a long, long way to go before the social democratic leaders are really faced with any serious Marxist threat.
Time and again in the history of British Marxism, the urge simply to raise the red banner, substituting denunciations and propaganda against the Labour Party and union bureaucrats for serious work designed to win a real base of support in the and ultra-leftism abopings berge and small
Even at its highest and healthiest point, the British Communist Party never attained a scale that really merited the label "mass party" in the eyes of the early leaders of the Communist International.
All of the political weaknesses and problems of the British CP were compounded by the rise of Stalin and the bureaucratic caste he represented to the leadership of the Russian Party and the Comintern,
Yet despite the strengthening in the post-war period of a hard left in the British labour movement politically well to the left of the Stalinised CP few of these currents have assimilated the early warnings of the Comintern against sectarianism and abstract propagandism.
The proionged decade of deluded self-proclamation of the WRP as "the mass revolutionary party" (with at the very high point in 1973 only 3,000 members and virtually no organised work within the trade unions or broader labour movement) has partially broken with the expulsion of founding leader Gerry Healy. Meanwhile the equally wrong-headed and sectarian SW has for years been urging militant workers simply to leave the Labour Party to Neil Kinnock, and directed their energies towards grouping trade unionists in such a way as to divert from any real political fight against the union bureaucracy. Militant preaches "socialism" via a Labour government passing an "Enabling Act" for nationalisation, while refusing to involve its supporters in day-to-day struggles in the unions or most of the active campaigns in the Labour Party.
The question is not simply one of size. Large numbers can as the WRP, SWP and Militant have shown - be led in just as sectarian a fashion as a small grouping.
The history of the Comintern shows that even when in the massive upsurge following World War I revoluSocialist Viewpoint No. 10 February 1985 p28
Fighting sectarianism
Lenin in Red Square tionaries stood at the head of new mass parties formed as a result of splits in the old reformist parties and trade unions, the task of winning a majority of the working class to revolutionary action was one which preoccupied the leaders of the Communist International.
In today's situation, where the revolutionary movement is much smaller as a component of the workers' movement as a whole, and itself politically split and disorientated - lacking even the unitying authority provided by the Russian Revolution and the early Comintern - the problems of winning support for the Marxist programme are even more pressing.
But even at the high point of the Comintern the political solutions put foward by Lenin, Trotsky and others
"A parliamentary socialist organisation or a propaganda sect can remain for decades within one and the same framework which assures it a few parliamentary posts or a certain outlet for pamphlets. But the party of socialist revolution is obliged to learn in action how to fuse together the majority of the working class, utilising to this end every
The outlived groupings and factions are interested in preserving intact and immutable all the barriers dividing the working class into segments. We, on the other hand, have a vital stake in pulling down these barriers of conservatism and in teaching the working class to follow our example. Herein lies the whole meaning of the united front policy, a meaning which derives directly from the social revolutionary essence of
(Leon Trotsky: "From the ECCI to the Paris Convention of the French Comunist Party, 1922", in The First Five Years of the Communist International [New Park ed] Vol 2 were panacea.
blueprints could would automatically raw leadership,
War I and the ships be steeled and tested wage a political struggle of revolutionary zeal
-ков from left over syndicalism.
of the Comintern, Lenin produced the stinging polemic Left Wing Communism, an ing from the prestige and experience of the successful Russian Revolution,
Lenin took up need to root the Communist Parties in all the daily struggles of the working class. He was particularly firm on the need for a sober appraisal of the mood and militancy of the working class, rejecting reliance on narrow layers of the most active and committed minority.
the need for Marxists to utilise every possible avenue to reach the masses
- rejecting ultra left abstentionism from Parliamentary from work in unions, and condemning those "Left
Communists"
who hand manoeuvre with other political paropportunity for mass action that opens up.
our party."
p168):
Socialist Viewpoint No. 10 February 1985 p29
No simple be offered which resolve the political weaknesses of the new and thrown forward by the struggles of the mass movements of workers followed the end of World example of the Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution of 1917. Only through a combination of developing theory and practical experience could the necessary leader-
Immediately after the formation of the new International in 1919, Lenin began to recognise the necessity to against ultra-left and sectarian politics which led away from practical interventions and towards abstract propagandism - whether this arose from an excess among raw worker militants (such as Gallacher and others around the shop stewards movement in Britain), or from fundamentally flawed political theories anarchism and
In advance of the Second Congress
Infantile Disorder, distributed to every delegate. Arguthe cudgels for the any superficial
Left Wing Communism insists upon elections and reactionary trade rejected out of any kind of compromise
ties. Lenin continually draws the line between on the one hand obligatory tactical, organisational manoeuvies to create the best Marxist agitation, and on the other hand impermissable political concesprinciple or revolutionary leadership was its ability to distinguish between these different types of "compromise" build a party on that basis.
A further section on the situation in Britain argued the case for a new British Communist Party to seek affiliation to the Labour Party and rejected sectarian and ultra left tendencies among the founders of the new CP. Lenin stressed above all the imthrough propaganda alone:
"Victory cannot be won with a vanguard alone. To throw only the vanguard into the decisive battle. before the entire class the broad masses, have taken up a position either of direct support for the vanguard, or pathetic neutrality towards it and of precluded support for the enemy. would be not merely foolish but criminal. Propaganda and agitation alone are not enough for an entire class, the broad masses of the working people, those oppressed by capital, to take up such a stand. For that, the masses must have their own political experience. (...)
The immediate objective of the class conscious vanguard of the international working class movement, i.e., the Communist parties, groups and trends. is to be able to ead the broad masses (who are still, for the most part, apathetic. ridden) to their new position."
"cannot be reached without the liquidation of Left doctrinairism and without a full elimination of its errors."
So evenwhile the Second Congress tightened up the political basis of the new International, (adopting Lenin's rigorous "21 Theses" on Conditions of Admission to the Communist International, designed to purge the new Parties of reformist elements) Lenin and Trotsky serious perspective towards winning and mobilising sections of workers then unorganised or still under reformist leaderships.
By the Third Congress, the Comintern acknowledged the new, slower tempo of revolutionary struggle following the post-war upheavals, in a situation where the capitalist class continued to exploit each and every oportunity to inflict defeats and setbacks on the labour movement.
In this new phase of the struggle, Lenin and Trotsky continued to urge the Communist Parties to take the fight into the mass organisations of the working class, in particular the trade unions:
fundamental task of the Communist Party in the current crisis is to lead the present defensive struggles of the proletariat. to extend their scope, to deepen them. to unify them, and in harmony with the march of events. to transform them into decisive political strug gles for the ultimate goal.
"Whether the revolutionary movement develops in the next period at a swift or slow tempo, the Communist party must in either case remain the party of action. It stands at the head of the struggling masses; it tirmly and clearly tormulates its fighting slogans, exposing and sweeping aside all the equivocal slogans of the Social Democracy. which are always based on compromise and concilia-
(Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congresses of the Communist International, (Ink Links) pp202-3).
This same Third Congress adopted the lengthy Theses on Tactics whích began to elaborate a detailed series of demands centred on workers' coneach designed to link up with and develop defensive trade union political content:
"The Communist Parties do not put forward minimum programmes which could serve to strengthen and improve the tottering foundaof capitalism. munists' main aim is to destroy the capitalist system. But in order to achieve their aim the Communist Parties must put forward demands expressing the immediate needs of
The Communists must organize mass campaigns to fight for these demands regardless of whether they are compatible with the continuation of the capitalist system. The Communist Parties should be concerned not with the viability competitive capitalist industry or the stability of the capitalist economy, but with proleterian poverty, which cannot must not be endured any
If the demands put forward by the Communists correspond to the Immediate needs of the broad proletarian masses, and if the masses are convinced that they cannot go on living unless their demands are met. then the struggle around these issues becomes the starting point of the struggle for in place of the minimum programme of the centrists and reformists, the Communist International offers a struggle for the concrete demands of the proletariat which.
their totality challenge power of the bourgeoisie, organize the proletariat and mark out the Socialist Viewpoint No. 10 February 1985p30 different stages of the struggle for its dictatorship. Even before the broad masses consciously understand the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat, they can respond to each of the indidividual demands.
As more and more people are drawn into the struggle around these demands and as the needs of the masses come into conflict with the needs of capitalist society, the working class will come to realize that if it wants to live, capitalism will have to die. This realization will be the main motivation in their struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat. The task of the Communist Parties is to extend, deepen and unity the struggle around these concrete demands."
Within these Theses are set out what were later to be taken up by Trotsky and developed as "transitional demands" in the founding programmatic documents of the Fourth International in the 1930s. And the Third Congress also adopted extensive theses on methods and forms of work among women.
Between the Third and Fourth Con-
"The most proletariat — the Paris Commune — was nothing else but a bloc of all the organizations and shadings within the French working class, united against the bourgeoisie. If, despite the establishment of the united front, the Commune was quickly crushed, then the explanation for this is above all to be found in the fact that the united front did not have at its left flank a genuine revolutionary, disciplined and resolute organization, capable of quickly gaining leadership in the fire of events."
gresses, the Comintern leaders pressed home the logic of these earlier positions and emphasised the importance for Communist Parties ticularly the French party and those faced with a major political split within the labour movement - taking the initiative in the fight for united action and a united working class front on basic issues facing the working class.
glorious page in the history of the French
Trotsky in particular argued at length in explaining the basis for the united front:
"The problem of the united front
- despite the fact that a split is inevitable in this epoch between the various political organisations basing themselves on the working class grows out of the urgent need to secure for the working class the possibility of a united front in Socialist Viewpoint No. 10 February 1985 p3l the struggle against capitalism."
(On the United Front, in First Five
Years, Vol 2p92)
The tactic of the united front is seen here primarily as a means of advancing the class struggle, of enabling workers to make political development in the course of their struggles which would of course benefit the Communists, for whom the class struggle at its sharpest was home territory, while it is anathema to the reformist bureaucrats and politicians - as Neil Kinnock so ably confirms even today.
"The greater is the mass drawn into the movement, the higher its self-confidence rises. all the more self-confident will that mass movement be and all the more resolutely will it be capable of marching forward, however modest may be the initial slogans of struggle. And this means that the growth of the mass aspects of the movement tends to radicalize it, and creates much more favorable conditions for the slogans, methods of struggle, and. In general, the leading role of the Communist Party.
The reformists dread the revolutionary potential of the mass movement; their beloved arena is the parliamentary tribune, the trade union bureaus. the arbitration boards. the ministerial antechambers.
On the contrary, we are, apart from all other considerations, interested in dragging the reformists from their asylums [places of refuge - H.S.] and placing them alongside ourselves before the eyes of the struggling masses. With a correct tactic we stand only to gain from this. A Communist who doubts or fears this resembles a swimmer who has approved the theses on the best method of swimming but dares not plunge into the water.
(On the United Front pp 94-95)
Only as an incidental feature of this whole approach was the united front tactic seen as a device simply to "expose" and denounce the reformist leaders who refused to engage in joint action.
Trotsky was at pains to explain that, even though the united front tactic was ruled out only in those countries where the Communist Party was of insignificant size or where it already dominated the whole labour movement, it was not by any means simply a craving to reverse the historic split which had separated Communists from social democracy.
Marx and Engels in the early days of the working class movement had expected that the revolutionaries could operate as a distinct tendency within a single broad workers' party.
"The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which
pushes forward all others; on the other hand. theoretically. they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march. the conditions. and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement."
(Communist Manifesto, Section II)
In similar fashion to the early Comintern leaders, Marx and Engels saw the leading role of Communists being established through concrete experiences of the advanced workers in the course of actual struggle rather
The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims. for the enforcement of the momentary interest of the working class: but in the movement of the present they also represent and take care of the future of the movement."
(Communist Manifesto, Section IV)
But the scale and impact of the bureaucratisation democratic parties, and the extent to which their leaders became sucked in to the reformist politics of parliamentary democracy surpassed the worst expectations of Marx and Engels. The mass workers' parties of the Second International degenerated from class struggle origins to a miserable class collaborationist nadir with the vote of a majority of each one of the national perialist ruling class on the eve of World War I.
Prior to this Lenin had taken the lead in transforming the hard political theories and class struggle conceptions of Marxism into a hard organisational form with the development of what became the Bolshevik party structure, based on the discipline of democratic centralism and the principled opposition to class collaboration. At the watershed 1903 Congress of the Russian party of the Second International, the RSDLP, the break between the "Bolsheviks" (literally "majority") and "Mensheviks i (minority) took place over the apparently organisational detail of party rules and statutes. The Mensheviks then, like today's Labour Party right wing opportunists, made a principle out of their individual 'rights" to follow whatever they liked, irrespective of party decisions. Lenin insisted upon a party that would have a rigid discipline in carrying out the policies of the majority and the decisions of the elected leadership, while allowing full freedom of democratic discussion within its ranks. It was Lenin's party, based on its fight for proletarian discipline, which proved itself in October 1917 as the only Marxist leadership capable of taking and holding state power and overthrowing capitalism - which the Mensheviks for the most part displayed themselves on the other side of the
Karl Marx barricades, seeking to preserve the capitalist "Provisional Government"
The political split between reformism and Marxism was therefore no accident, and the issues involved centre on the political independence of the working class. But plainly while the majority of workers, for reason, remain loyal to reformist leaders, there will be no socialist revolution. The united front policy derives from that central question. As Trotsky put it:
"If the Communist Party did not seek for organizational avenues to the end that at every given moment joint, coordinated action between the Communist and the nonCommunist (including the Social Democratic) working masses were possible, it would have thereby laid bare its own incapacithe majority of the working class. It would degenerate
Communist society but never develop into a party for the conquest of power."
(On the United Front, p 93
In answer to those who ask if the united front policy extends only to the workers, and should exclude the reformist leaders, Trotsky points out:
"If we were able simply to unite working masses around our own banner or around our practical slogans, and skip over reformist organizations, whether party trade union. that would of course be the best thing in the world. But then the very question of the united would not exist in its present form."
(ibid)
But if the Communist Parties make appeals for joint action with the reformist parties and reformist leaders does this not imply a "softer" line towards reformism. Is this a political compromise? Trotsky's answer was a firm "no": Socialist Viewpoint No. 10 February 1985 p32
"It is possible to see in this policy a rapproachement with the reformists only from the standpoint of a journalist who believes that he rids himself of reformism by ritualistically criticizing it without ever leaving his editorial office but who is fearful of clashing with the reformists before the eyes of the working masses and giving the latter an opportunity to appraise the Communist and the reformist on the equal plane of the mass struggle.
(p96)
The only way it would represent a political compromise would be if the Communist Party in any way renounced its own independent line or its right to criticise the other elements in the united front. This would be impermissable: it would in ellect abandon the gains made in the original break from the reformist parties.
"We participate in a united front but do not for a single moment become dissolved in it. We function in the united front as an independent detachment."
(p96)
Indeed it is clear from the Comintern position on the united front that it is seen as a means through which the Communist Parties will grow in membership and influence, not by any means as an opportunist "sinking of differences" or peaceful coexistence with social democracy.
In the event, of course, the political degeneration of the Soviet leadership under Stalin's bureaucratic domination after 1924, and the failure of key Communist Parties - especially the German party - to assimilate the method and content of the united front tactic, meant that it was never really tested in the way argued for by Trotsky.
Though the German Communists (KPD) in 1922 successfully drew Socialist Party militants to a major Berlin conference of factory delegates, and attempted to build from this a network of Control Committees" to supervise production, distribution and prices, a strong sectarian left wing in the KPD continued to resist the united front tactic. Events moved faster than the development of an adequate ledership of the KPD producing a major defeat for the working class in the "failed October" of 1923
By 1925 onwards, Stalin's influence began to make itself felt in the abandonment of the political independence of the British Communist Party to the fake "left" bureaucrats of the TUC's Anglo-Russian Committee - turning the united front from a road to the masses into a link up with the traitors of the 1926 General Strike.
In China, the abandonment of any class analysis of the bourgeois nationalist leadership of Chiang Kai Shek led to the Communist Party be-
Only political fight ing ordered to dissolve into the bourgeois Kuomintang quently butchered by Chiang. The proletarian "united front" had been turned by Stalin into a parody alliance with the hangmen of the revolution.
The abrupt turn in foreign policy following 1927, with the proclamation that a period of relative stability had been succeeded by a "Third Period" of class" heralded a further series of grotesque Stalinist attacks united front tactic. Social democrats were branded "social fascists". Germany. where unreconstructed sectarianism was again: head, KPD militants themselves thrown into fronts" with fascists against social democrats! This scandalous period of political treachery divided powerful German workers' movement in the face of Hitler's offensive.
The changing requirements Stalin's foreign policy after 1935 brought yet another caricature of the united front tactic: this time the strategy of the "popular front" - a supposed alliance between the workers and the fascist" "democratic" bourgeoisie, quite obviously on a programme acceptable to the capitalists. bankruptcy of this new was confirmed by the crushing defeat of the Spanish working class in 1939.
The Trotskyist movement was built on the basis of the political method
WRP crisis
Expelled: Gerry Healy and subse-
- an capitalist
"class against the on
In given its found
"united the fight developed in the first four Conof gresses of the Comintern, and in a bitter struggle against Stalinism.
absurd embraced from the outset the need for transitional demands to advance and deepen the daily struggles of the working class, the importance of the fight for workers control, and the
"antivital role of the united front.
The the Trotskyist movement since its formal launch in 1938 has not been able orientation to build parties of sufficient size and weight in the workers movement to apply the tactic of the united front as enviseaged in
By JOHN LISTER
Far from settling any political issues.
the autumn of former leader Gerry
Healy from the Workers Revolutionary Party, along with his closest supporters, has opened up a fierce but politically confused factional warfare within the WRP involving sections of the old leadership.
Socialist Viewpoint No. 10 February 1985 p33 bankruptcy initiatives.
worker remains
Trotsky: develop programme in practical union
But with few localised exceptions ing class, the
Comintern can break hold of Healyism!
expulsions, flurry last expulsion much bitter
Healy
Line.
documents. For a mere handful of
Marxists to make grand proposals tor "joint action" with mass reformist or Stalinist parties is seen by the workers as a quixotic gesture: reformist leaders by no means expose their by ignoring such
The method however of seeking to root the Marxist movement in the trade unions and every one of the daily struggles of the working class, to win leadership positions and win recruits by proving our credentials in the fight, is one which valid for much smaller organisations. The programme of transitional demands, and the constant struggle to maximise the chances of workers learning political lessons in actual struggle are equally crucial to us today. The ability to work cooperatively yet on an independent political basis with other tendencies, and with sections of the left trade and Labour leadership is crucial if the tiny forces of Marxism are to become mass forces.
Serious work along these lines, in a situation shaped by the crisis of social democracy, the political polarisation of the trade unions and the desperate plight of whole sections of the workcan create the kind of political developments which will build the basis of a mass party — and then perhaps British Marxist can try, over 60 years on, to carry out the Comintern tactic of the united front.
Internally, there have been further
La succession of Inconclusive special conferences, and of internal discussion documents. Publicly, there has been polemic and exchanges of insults between the WRP majority and the expelled Healyite forces. A broadside of writs fired by Vanessa Redgrave as flagship of the fleet has inflicted major damage on the top-heavy apparatus of the WRP, sinking the daily News