United Fronts Yes, Popular Fronts No

The basic distinction between a united front and a popular front is laid out by James Burnham, who was a Trotskyist at the time he wrote the pamphlet “The People’s Front: The New Betrayal.”

We will start with the united front. A united front brings together organizations with distinct and differing programs. It can be organized around any issue serving the interests of workers and oppressed—defense of leftists or anti-ICE activists against state repression; stopping a fascist attack; mobilizing opposition to racist police brutality. At more advanced stages of social crises, united fronts must be formed on such issues as building a workers militia, or creating workers councils (soviets). By uniting in action different elements of the left and workers movement, a united front seeks to bring together the broadest forces possible against the class enemy. The participants in a united front have every right, and indeed the obligation, to criticize the politics of other groups. Thus, a united front allows the communist vanguard to demonstrate in action the superiority of its revolutionary program as against all manner of liberal and legalistic strategies. As Trotsky put it, “March separately, but strike together!” or to put otherwise: unity in action, freedom to criticize.

Now, there exists a vulgar conception of the united front among many left groups who conceive of a united front as some kind of non-aggression pact in which the participants agree not to criticize each other. For revolutionaries to do this would mean to give up their political independence. This is not the conception of the united front as conceived by the Comintern. The Comintern’s “Theses on the Workers’ United Front" stipulates: “The Executive of the Communist International considers that the main condition for this work is for the Communist Party to maintain absolute autonomy and complete independence.... It includes complete freedom in presenting their point of view and in criticizing the opponents of communism.”

The united-front tactic was elaborated by the Communist International in a period of partial revolutionary ebb. There was a massive semi-insurrection in March 1921 in the coalfields in Central Germany when the SPD regional government called in police to suppress combative miners. The majority of the working class, however, did not join the Communist-led workers action, and it failed. There were considerable victimizations. The Comintern recognized that the Communists were still a minority of the working class. Their slogan was “To the conquest of power through a previous conquest of the masses.” The Comintern Theses on the Workers’ United Front—the date was December 1921, not December 1922 as appeared on the Marxist Internet Archive website—sought to intersect the new situation. With the postwar revolutionary wave then ebbing, Communist appeals to the working class to mobilize for the immediate overthrow of capitalism would be ineffective.

The question confronting the Communists was how best to intervene in this situation. The reformist misleaders accused the Communists of being splitters. The Communists could not simply lead the proletariat into battle, because the majority of the workers at the time maintained loyalty to the social democrats and centrists. Party propaganda, as useful as it might be, would not by itself persuade these workers of the need for Communist leadership. Generally speaking, workers are not convinced by ideas alone and need to see in practice that the program proposed by revolutionaries will advance their interests. But there was an opportunity in this situation. In the face of a renewed capitalist offensive, the workers felt the need for defensive struggles and for unifying these struggles. The reformist leaders, although they did not want to wage a serious fight against the bourgeoisie, were under pressure from their working-class base and had to posture that they would fight at least for partial gains. The Communists appealed for a joint struggle—a united front—with the social democrats to fight for the felt demands of the workers. If carried out, this would unify the working class against capitalism. And when the social democrats undermined the struggle, they would prove to the workers that it was the Communists that stood for unity and the social democrats who sabotaged it.

There was considerable debate within the Comintern over the united-front policy. Opponents of the united front claimed it meant a political rapprochement with the social democrats, arguing that it was unprincipled to make any demands of the social democrats because they were class traitors. Trotsky said that of course this was a true characterization of the social democrats, but that the question was how to win over their supporters. This could not be done by refusing to put the reformists to the test. He sharply responded to the opponents of the united front as follows: “It is possible to see in this policy a rapprochement 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.”

The policy pursued by the Comintern in the early 1920s achieved results and served to accrue support to the Communists. Unfortunately, I do not have time to discuss the sequel in this class. I would note that in Germany at the time the Communist Party had the support probably of about one third of the working class, which gave it a considerable amount of leverage. Today of course the left has only minuscule weight in the proletariat. But the united-front tactic retains its value for intervention in the trade unions. An example is the work done by militants in the Amalgamated Transit Union in LA who initiated a united-front coalition last year in defense of two bus drivers fired for stating that they would refuse ICE thugs entry to their buses. Because of pushback from union members the firings were dropped. Among those active in initiating the united-front coalition was the Committee for One Fighting Transit Union (COFTU) which demanded clean reinstatement with full back pay. At a rally called in defense of the drivers, there was a lively debate over the way forward. Some groups, like DSA, argued that LA Metro, the employer, should adopt a “proactive policy” to protect immigrants. But militants like COFTU emphasized that the bosses would not yield to moral pressure and that the point was that the trade unions needed to flex their muscles to stop ICE. Although the workers did not succeed in getting all the discipline defeated, the firing was quashed, which constituted a small victory.

Given how weak and splintered the left is today, it should be obvious why united fronts would be of value in repelling the attacks of the class enemy. Unfortunately, there is a high level of sectarianism on the left. Let’s take an example. The Spartacist League initiated the Open Police Archives campaign as one of the means of regenerating the black movement, which was destroyed by liberalism. From millions of people on the streets a few years ago protesting racist cop murders of George Floyd and others, there is virtually nothing left today. By attaching itself to liberals and the Democratic Party, BLM ensured that nothing substantial benefitting black people would result. Now the liberals have totally turned their backs on black people. OPA is a united front, organized around one central demand: “Open the Police Archives!” OPA is designed to put the liberals and the capitalist politicians on the spot: if they claim to be on the side of black people, then let them prove it—open the archives! Overwhelmingly they won’t do it, and this will serve to expose the fact that they are obstacles to black liberation.

Any leftist or anti-racist should be in favor of opening the police archives and exposing the dirty secrets the cops keep. But in fact, most left organizations have not sought to join OPA. Why is that? Part of it is just knee-jerk sectarianism. But in addition, some argue that they can’t support OPA because it allegedly is a liberal movement. The “proof,” they say, is that some liberals might support opening the police archives. Yes, some do, just as some liberals oppose capital punishment, support abortion rights, etc. That’s not a reason why communists can’t support these things, too. Moreover, it is notable that the leftists who condemn OPA never counterpose a program of their own to combat police brutality.

Now I want to motivate something that might be controversial. In the material advertising this class we wrote, “Many left groups simply will not bloc with non-revolutionary forces or in fact with anyone who disagrees with them—leaving the oppressed divided in the face of attack. But a united front can be concluded with any forces—from union bureaucrats to bourgeois politicians—as long as it serves a specific cause in the interests of the workers and oppressed…” That’s the criterion by which you judge whether a united front is genuine or not.

Let’s delve into this question a little more deeply. The idea that you can never make a bloc with trade-union bureaucrats, liberals or non-revolutionary forces generally invalidates the whole point of the united-front tactic as developed by the Comintern, which is to bring broader forces into struggle than those who are already convinced communists. For example, when the KKK and Nazis tried to march in large cities some years ago, the SL initiated a series of successful united fronts to stop them. In the process we got the endorsements of trade union bureaucrats for our mobilizations. These union officials were hardly revolutionary—almost all of them supported the Democrats. However, they were under pressure from their base, which wanted to do something to stop the racist fascists. So they agreed to endorse our mobilizations, which were based on the united-front call to “stop the fascists.” By and large the bureaucrats did little to organize for them, but their endorsements made it much easier for us to bring union members out. Naturally we distributed our own propaganda as well in these campaigns.

There is a history to the issue of whether one can make a bloc with bourgeois figures. Probably the most famous example is the case of Alfred Dreyfus around the turn of the last century. Dreyfus was Jewish and a captain in the French army. He was framed up as a spy. But it was a total fabrication by the military tops based on vile anti-Semitism. This case split the French workers movement down the middle, with one wing not wanting to defend Dreyfus because he was in the officer corps and another wing which correctly saw that the issue was anti-Semitism. Lenin wrote of the persecution of Dreyfus that it was “one of the thousands of fraudulent tricks of the reactionary military caste” used to attack democratic liberties and fuel anti-Semitism. Lenin recognized that a stronger military caste would ultimately be used against the workers movement. So you had a situation where many Marxists, who of course were careful to distinguish their politics from liberalism, did work alongside liberals to defend an officer in the French army against anti-Semitism and reaction.

One could cite other examples where bourgeois civil-liberty organizations have defended leftist groups. However, here I want to mention another application called the anti-imperialist united front. This is where revolutionaries make a bloc with bourgeois nationalists in oppressed countries against imperialism. So today, for example, although we do not give political support to the Iranian government, we stand with Iran in their war of defense against the U.S. imperialists and the Zionists.

There will be more discussion of this in the fifth class.

The Popular Front

Now we come to the popular front. How does it differ from a united front? As Burnham explains, “The united front consists in an agreement reached between two or more parties and organizations, which have different programs, for joint action on specific issues.” And “Each organization retains intact its entire program; retains the right to put it forward; retains the right to criticize the other organizations in the united front agreement….” But as Burnham explained, “The People’s Front, on the other hand, is not merely, not even primarily, an agreement for joint action on specific issues. It first and foremost involves the acceptance by all members of the People’s Front of a common program…” As Burnham explains, this is an agreement for a common program with the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie. Necessarily this will be a program that defends capitalism, since all wings of the bourgeoisie oppose the socialist program of workers rule. By entering a popular front, a left organization or workers party subordinates itself politically to a wing of the bourgeoisie, sacrificing class independence.

As Trotsky said, “The left centrists seek to present this question as a tactical or even as a technical maneuver, so as to be able to peddle their wares in the shadow of the People’s Front. In reality, the People’s 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” (“The Dutch Section and the International,” 15-16 July 1936).

So how do you fight against the popular front? Instead of supporting a bourgeois popular front versus right wing bourgeois parties, we want to counterpose class against class. As Trotsky suggested, one way to do this is through a tactic of conditional opposition, making electoral support to a workers party contingent on its breaking its bloc with its bourgeois partner.

Burnham’s pamphlet was published in 1937. As a result of the betrayals of both the social democratic and Stalinist parties, Hitler was in power in Germany. Stalin realized that sooner or later this would mean war against the Soviet Union. However, what he did was to abandon even the pretense of making revolutions internationally, which would have been the best defense of the Soviet Union. Instead, the Stalinized Comintern supported the establishment of liberal bourgeois regimes in Britain, France, the U.S. and elsewhere arguing that they would supposedly serve as allies of the USSR against Nazi Germany. Such regimes would also supposedly halt the growing right-wing movement in Europe. The popular front—or People’s Front as it was frequently called at the time—was in fact simply a new name for class collaboration. And it was a disaster, leading to catastrophic defeats, as in Spain.

Unlike the 1930s there are no mass fascist movements today in the West. Nonetheless, the fundamental mechanism whereby the majority of the left subordinates itself to the liberal bourgeoisie is what operates today, just as it did in Burnham’s time. As the liberal world order is crumbling, spearheaded by the decay of U.S. imperialism, there has been a shift to the right. In the absence of an authoritative left wing, discontent with capitalist austerity delivered under liberal auspices has spurred many workers to support right-wing parties and movements. The obvious example in the U.S. is Trump. In the Global South there is India, most of Latin America, etc. In Europe there are examples like Reform in Britain or the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The response of the left in Europe has generally been to support popular-front coalitions as a barrier to the right wing. In Germany, for example, it means support to coalitions like the SPD, Die Linke and the bourgeois Greens as a “firewall” against the AfD. While this might slow down the growth of the right it won’t stop it because these pop-front coalitions continue to alienate workers by implementing austerity policies. Recently, for example, the AfD won big in regional elections in eastern Germany.

In the U.S. there are no mass reformist parties, so the American version of the popular front, since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, has been to build up the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party. This of course is what is going on with the “anybody but Trump” campaign tailed by the left. Trump has lost a lot of his popularity, and it’s possible that the Democrats could win the midterms. However, this would not stop the rightward shift. Trump may be particularly gross but his policies are those of the ruling class more broadly. These policies are fueled by the decline of U.S. imperialism and consequently the need to dump the liberal, democratic niceties of the past. You can see that in how the Democrats have adapted to Trump’s right-wing populism, dumping any mention of black or trans rights, deep-sixing opposition to deportations. The left wing of the Dems carries out capitalist oppression just like other bourgeois politicians. Mamdani, for example, has funded Zionist institutions; retained the racist Zionist police commissioner Jessica Tisch, whose cops have brutalized anti-ICE protesters; seeks to privatize public housing; enforces 24-hour shifts for home care workers, etc.

I want to deal in this session with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The right wing of the DSA explicitly seeks to build up the liberals in the Democratic Party, like Mamdani and AOC. The DSA lefts—the so-called “dirty breakers”—claim to be for a break with the Dems, but crucially not now. Hence, they end up capitulating to the DSA right wing. The DSA is by far the largest socialist organization in the U.S., claiming about 120,000 members. It is necessary to win the base of the DSA, or a substantial part of it, to revolutionary Marxism. It’s clear enough that the politics of the DSA are popular-frontist. But the real issue is how to fight that. You cannot get a hearing from the DSA membership by standing on the sidelines and denouncing their support to the Democrats. That is totally sterile and sectarian.

Communists need to be politically aggressive and interventionist. Let’s go back to the early part of this talk that dealt with the genesis of the united-front tactic. The communists could not simply denounce the social democrats as the murderers of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. That was true but it would not win over the social-democratic workers to communism. It was necessary to intervene with united-front proposals to the social democracy, in order to show in struggle that only the communists could advance the interests of the proletariat. Today it is necessary for revolutionary Marxists to intervene in the ongoing political struggles within the DSA and fight for a clean break with the Democrats.

One of the weapons in the fight to break the popular front is the united front. Three organizations have coalesced inside the DSA in a United Front for a Clean Break. They include the Just Break Already caucus (politically supported by the SL), Labor Militant and International Socialist Alternative (Revolutionary). The basis of the united front is a clean break now from the Dems—expel the Democratic Party electeds from the DSA. The United Front for a Clean Break supports candidates for public office but only if they are against capitalism and run independently of and opposed to the Democrats. People can join this united front without committing to any political organization or even supporting a revolutionary workers party. But as long as the DSA subordinates itself to the Democrats, it is impossible to carry out socialist policies. If a clean break is effected, that would not create a revolutionary party but it would allow a debate on which way forward—reform versus revolution.

To close, the purpose of this introductory class has been to establish the principles with which Marxists approach the united front and oppose the popular front. The next two classes will address how this work was carried out successfully by the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution versus how the failure to break with the popular front in Spain led to the crushing of the workers. Then we will return to the United States. The final session will deal with the anti-imperialist united front, putting emphasis on the struggles in the oppressed countries of the Global South.

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