The first part of the chapter - see our previous issue – on anti-fascism and the Popular Front in Vercesi’s text, The Tactics of the Comintern, had dealt specifically with the Comintern policy following Hitler’s accession to power in Germany; with the shift from the “struggle against social fascism” to that of “anti-fascism”, as a moment of the advance of counter-revolution and the historic defeat of the international proletariat. This second part, published in Prometeo #7, May-June 1947, addresses the ensuing situation in Europe. In particular, it revisits the bloody defeat of the 1934 Vienna proletarian insurrection in Austria, and the political defeats that concluded the May-June 1936 strike waves in France and Belgium for the international proletariat. In so doing, it dispels the myth, still alive and well today, of the strikes of May-June 1936 and the Popular Front in France. The final chapter of the text we shall be publishing in the next issue deals with the final defeat that definitively paved the way for World War 2, with the massacre of the proletariat in the Spanish Civil War.

There is another topical interest in this section. The text reminds us how the march towards generalized imperialist war is accompanied by, and requires, an exacerbation and radicalization of the language of bourgeois political forces, be they left or right, extreme right or left. The result, more or less depending on the country and circumstances, is growing political instability. The parallels with what is happening today are striking. The political lessons that, through Vercesi’s pen, the Communist Left of Italy was able to draw remain totally valid for orienting oneself, defining and establishing lines of proletarian defense in the period ahead – while anticipating and working towards the possibility of moving from defense to class offensive against the bourgeoisie and its state apparatus.

The Tactics of Anti-Fascism and the Popular Front (1934-38 - second part

We have seen in the first parts of this chapter, in what the essence of the Comintern’s new curve-ball from “social-fascism” to “anti-fascism” consisted. The economic crisis which first appeared in New York in 1929 and then spread to all countries had found no other solution after 1934 than the preparation of the second imperialist war. In correspondence with the economic reality that imposed on capitalism the need for the radical solution of war, the communist parties had also to become extreme, having become instruments of counterrevolution and accomplices of the other bourgeois forces, whether they be fascist, socialist or democratic. If previously the communist parties oriented their moves towards an inevitable defeat, now they channel their energies into the outlet of their respective capitalist States.

Just as the theory of social-fascism had no direct bearing on countries not threatened by a fascist attack, and its international character resulted from the fact that Germany – where this tactic was of decisive importance – was at that time the pivot of world capitalist evolution, so did the new anti-fascist tactic have no direct impact on the countries where fascism was firmly established (Germany, Italy), but it was of great importance in France at first, and then in Spain, i.e. in the two countries where not only where the classes there engaged in furious struggle, but where an apparatus for keeping international order was being developed, which was to work to its full capacity during the 1939-45 war.

In the course of this period (1934-38) the particular character of the political evolution in which we are still immersed in becomes apparent for the first time. Contrary to what generally happened in all countries and particularly in 1898-1905 in Russia, when the impetuous strikes generated the affirmation of the class party, the powerful Austrian, French, Belgian and Spanish movements not only did not determine the affirmation of a proletarian and Marxist vanguard, but leave the Italian communist left, which remained faithful to the revolutionary postulates of internationalism against the anti-fascist war and of the destruction of the capitalist State and of the founding of the proletarian dictatorship against the participation or the influence of the State in an anti-fascist direction, in fatal isolation.

Parallel to the success of the maneuver that was supposed to lead the capitalist State to tighten its tentacles on the masses and its movements, we witness the detachment between these movements and the vanguard, if not the total non-existence of the latter. The events confirm in an unequivocal way the thesis masterfully developed by Lenin in “What Is To Be Done?”, that the socialist consciousness cannot be the spontaneous result of the masses and their movements, but is rather the result of the importation in their very core of the class consciousness elaborated by the Marxist vanguard. The fact that this vanguard is unable to influence situations of great social tension, in which huge masses take part in an armed struggle, as was the case in Spain, does not alter in any way the Marxist doctrine, which does not consider that the proletarian class exists because a social and political bloc passes to the armed struggle against the one in power, but it only directs the proletarian class if its objectives and postulates are those of the developing social agitation. In the case where the masses go into struggle for objectives which, not being theirs, can only be those of the capitalist enemy, this social convulsion is but a moment in the confused and antagonistic development of the capitalist historical cycle which – to use an expression of Marx – has not yet matured the material conditions of its negation.

Marxist analysis allows us to understand that if social-fascism was a tactic that was inevitably meant to facilitate and accompany Hitler’s victory in January 1933, the tactic of anti-fascism was even more critically the case, because its objective went far beyond and from falsely siding with the masses in their struggle, still nonetheless explicitly against the capitalist State, it passed, with the tactic of anti-fascism, to advocate the integration of the masses in the core of the anti-fascist capitalist State.

It is not strange that, in the face of such a powerful and formidable capitalist organization comprising democrats, social-democrats, fascists and communist parties, the resistance of the Austrian proletariat in February 1934, which at times took on heroic aspects, was not capable of even putting a dent to the evolution of world events that had been definitively consecrated by the violent degeneration of the Soviet State, which had become, under the leadership of Stalin, an effective instrument of world counterrevolution.

On February 12, when the proletarians of Vienna rebelled, it was the very Christian Dolfuss who had the cannons aimed at the workers’ city of Vienna, the “Karl Marx” district, but behind these cannons stood the Second and Third International. The former had constantly restrained the proletarian reactions against Dolfuss’ plan of corporatist organization, the latter, which had previously excelled in mounting international demonstrations set up on purely artificial bases, let the proletarians be slaughtered and took care not to launch an appeal to the proletarians of all countries to show their solidarity in favor of the Austrian proletariat.

In the first days the organs of the Belgian and French socialist parties try to appropriate the heroism of the Vienna insurgents, but a few days later the synchronization is perfect.

Bauer and Deutsch, the leaders of the Schutzbund (the paramilitary organization of Austrian social-democracy) in a February 18 interview with the organ of Belgian social democracy, “Le Peuple”, stated:

“For many months our comrades had endured provocations of all sorts, always hoping that the government would not push things to the brink so that a final collision could be avoided. But the last provocation, that of Linz, brought the exasperation of our comrades to a boiling point. It is known, in fact, that the Heimwehren had threatened the governorship of Linz with resignation from their functions and with the decapitation of all municipalities with a socialist majority. It is understood that on Monday morning, when the Heimwehren attacked the Linz People’s House at gunpoint, our comrades refused to allow themselves to be disarmed and defended themselves energetically. In consequence, the Central Directorate of the Party could only obey this signal of struggle. That is why it launched the order for the general strike and the mobilization of the “Schutzbund”. This purely proletarian explosion was not at all in the political line of Austrian and international social democracy. They were perfectly aligned on the front of a diplomatic action of the left-wing French government, whose foreign minister Paul Boncour wanted to make the Austrian workers’ movement serve the interests of the French State: this was meant to hinder Hitler’s expansionism and was supported – at that time – even by Mussolini who, in July 1934, when Dolfuss was assassinated by the Nazi Pianezza, made the inconsequential (for Hitler) blunder of sending Italian divisions to the Brenner Pass.

A few days before the insurrection in Vienna, on February 6, 1934, Paris was the scene of important events. The political scene had for some time been soiled by all the scandalous pornography about collusion between financial adventurers, high State officials and government personnel, particularly those of the left-wing parties. There is no need to point it out: the so-called proletarian parties – the socialist and communist parties – are thrown into this scandalistic fray and the proletarians will be uprooted from the revolutionary struggle against the capitalist regime, to be dragged into the struggle against some financial adventurers and mainly against Stavisky. The right wing of Maurras and Action Française takes the lead in a struggle against the government presided over by the radical Chautemps who, on January 27, gives way to a more pronounced left-wing government headed by Daladier and where Frot, who had until recently been a militant in the SFIO (French Socialist Party, French Section of the Workers’ International), occupied the post of Minister of the Interior. The Prefect of Police Chiappe, also compromised in the Stavisky scandal, was chosen by socialists and communists as a scapegoat, and was dismissed from the Police Prefecture and transferred to the “Comédie Française”. This was the occasion chosen by the Right for a demonstration in front of Parliament where they demanded the resignation of the Daladier government.

Daladier yields, resigns, in spite of Leon Blum’s advice to resist, and on February 9 two counter-protest demonstrations take place: one called by the Communist Party in the center of Paris where the arrest of Chiappe and the dissolution of the Fascist Leagues are demanded, the other called by the Socialist Party and held in Vincennes where the flag of “defense of the republic threatened by the Fascist uprising” is raised. The memory of the struggle against “social-fascism” was not yet definitively extinguished, but if there are two distinct demonstrations, there is nevertheless a single uniformity: it is no longer a question of affirming the autonomous class positions of the masses, but of directing them towards that modification of the form of the bourgeois State which will be realized only two years later when, following the elections of 1936, we will have the government of the Popular Front under the direction of the head of the SFIO, Leon Blum.

But immediately after these two separate demonstrations, another united demonstration takes place, that of the CGT with similar slogans to those of the two parades that had preceded it. In effect, through the general strike, it will be demanded that “the sectarian, riot provoking people” be repressed because “the offensive that has been projected for some months against political freedom and democracy has broken out.”

The Communist Party, which still held a dominant position in the industrial center of Paris, did not use it to direct operations and allowed the socialists and the CGT to lead the initiative. As for the CGTU [1], which had long ceased to be a trade union organization capable of organizing the masses for the defense of their partial demands and had become an appendage of the Communist Party, it did not come into the open even when preparing the general strike, which was a complete success.

In the meantime, the socialist-communist grouping and a governmental evolution that became more and more pronounced to the left became more precise.

On July 27, 1934 a pact of unity is signed between the Communist Party and the Socialist Party, on the basis of the following points: a) defense of democratic institutions; b) abandonment of the strike movements in the struggle against the full powers of the government; c) workers’ self-defense on a front that will also include the socialist radicals.

* * *

And in the international field the new orientation of the foreign policy of the Russian State is accentuated, which triumphantly enters the League of Nations.

Here is what Ossinsky’s theses of the First Congress of the Communist International in March 1919 say: The revolutionary proletarians of all the countries of the world must wage an implacable war against the idea of Wilson’s League of Nations and protest against the entry of their countries into this League of plunderers, exploiters and counter-revolution.

Here is what fifteen years later, on 2-6-1934, the organ of the Russian Party, Pravda, wrote: "The dialectic of the development of imperialist contradictions has led to the result that the old League of Nations, which was to serve as an instrument for the imperialist subordination of the small independent States and colonial countries, and for the preparation of anti-Soviet intervention, has appeared, in the process of the struggle of the imperialist groups, as the arena where – Litvinov explained this at the recent session of the Executive Central Committee of the Soviet Union – the current interested in the maintenance of peace seems to triumph. Which perhaps explains the profound changes which have taken place in the composition of the League of Nations."

Lenin, when he spoke of the League of Nations as a “society of plunderers”, had already taught us that this institution should serve to maintain “in peace” the predominance of the victorious States sanctioned at Versailles.

But Pravda’s articles were nothing but rhetoric. In fact Litvinov immediately and radically changed his position. From supporting the German and Italian theses for progressive disarmament, he passed to the open declaration that it was not possible to find a guarantee of security, and he supported the French thesis which, by making the realization of disarmament depend on the proclaimed impossible security, sanctioned the policy of arms development.

At the same time another radical change of course occurred with the Sarre question. The Communist Party, which had previously struggled with the word of the “Red Sarre at the core of a Soviet Germany”, advocates, on the occasion of the plebiscite, the status quo and that is, the maintenance of French control over this region.

Laval, the foreign minister of the Flandin Cabinet, comes up with the plan of isolating Germany. He couldn’t claim this nationalist achievement for himself at the trial where he was condemned to death: but it’s certain that he, a thousand times more and better than his nationalist and chauvinist cronies in the French Resistance, attempted the realization of the defense of the “French homeland” against Hitler. If France has been definitively degraded to the role of a vassal and second-rate power, this is due to the characteristics of the current international evolution, while all the hubbub around the defense of the “land of liberty and revolution” could only have one objective, however, which was fully achieved: the massacre of the French and international proletariat. The Third French Democratic Republic, born under the baptism of the alliance with Bismarck and the extermination of 25,000 communards at Père Lachaise [2], finds its worthy and macabre epilogue in the Popular Front, solidly based on the radical republican-socialist-communist trinity.

The essential points of Laval’s maneuver to isolate Germany are: 1) The meeting with Mussolini in Rome on January 7, 1935. 2) The meeting with Stalin in Moscow on May 1, 1935.

In the first one, there was an attempt to solve the Italian demands in Ethiopia through compromise, which had to be accepted by the English minister Hoare.

In the second, Poincaré’s move, which was to lead to the Franco-Russian alliance in the war of 1914-17, will be renewed, and on the occasion of the new Franco-Russian pact Stalin declares that he fully realizes the necessity of the policy of armaments for the defense of France.

On July 14, 1935, at the demonstration of the Bastille to honor the birth of the bourgeois republic, the communist leaders, next to Daladier and the socialist leaders, wear a tricolor scarf; the red flag is united to the tricolor, while against the “fascist danger” Joan of Arc and Victor Hugo, Jules Guesde and Vaillant are evoked, and we go so far as to speak of the “Austerlitz sun” of the Napoleonic victims. We have already said why all this chauvinism was inconclusive and ineffective since France, like Italy, Spain and all the other former powers outside the current Big Three, had to play the role of giving away concessions while being occupied by this or that great power; let us now add that when war broke out in September 1939 between France and Germany, the pact of May 1935 was not applied by Russia.

But all these are secondary questions in the face of the essential which is the class struggle on a national and international scale. And on this class front, the Bastille Manifestation, its precedents and the events that resulted from it were of capital importance not only for the French proletariat but also for the Spanish and international proletariat.

When, in March 1935, Mussolini went on the offensive against the Negus of Ethiopia, everything was ready to unleash an international campaign based on the application of sanctions against “fascist Italy”. A simultaneous action against Mussolini and the Negus was not even to be considered by the socialist and communist parties. Both of them are fighting in defense of the Negus’ feudal regime, which is, at the same time, a magnificent defense of Mussolini’s fascist regime. In fact, Mussolini could not have found better justification for the formation of that atmosphere of national unity favorable to his Ethiopian campaign than in the application of deliberately harmless sanctions.

Leon Blum proposed to the League of Nations, the supreme bulwark of “peace and socialism”, the arbitration of the conflict and wanted to entrust Litvinov, who, at that time, was President in office; after the Laval-Hoare compromise failed, the League of Nations sided, in its overwhelming majority, against Mussolini. Needless to say, the Italian “emigrés” aligned themselves with this action in defense of the Negus and British imperialism: at the Brussels Congress of September 1935, a motion was voted whose sloppy and servile terms show how far – one year after would come the Spanish War and four years after another World War – the masses had already arrived in joining the bourgeois bandwagon. Here is the text:

“To Mr. Benes, President of the SdN” [League of Nations]

The Congress of Italians which, in the present circumstances, has had to meet abroad to proclaim its attachment to peace and freedom, bringing together hundreds of delegates of the popular masses of Italy and of Italian emigrés in a single will to fight against the war, from Catholics to liberals, from Republicans to socialists and communists, notes with the greatest satisfaction that the Council of the SdN has clearly separated, in condemning the aggressor, the responsibilities of the fascist government from those of the Italian people; affirms that the war in Africa is the war of Fascism and not that of Italy, that it was unleashed against Europe and Ethiopia without any consultation with the country and in violation not only of the solemn commitments made to the SdN and Ethiopia, but in violation also of the sentiments and true interests of the Italian people; confident of interpreting the authentic thought of the Italian people the Congress declares that it is in the duty of SdN, in the interest of both Italy and Europe, to erect an unbreakable dam to the war and undertakes to support the measures that will be taken by the SdN and the workers’ organizations to impose the immediate cessation of hostilities."

The Comintern disciplined to the decisions of the SdN. Here was a result from which Mussolini could only be victorious.

In the meantime, the atmosphere was being prepared that would lead to the dispersion of the formidable strikes in France and Belgium and to the crushing of the powerful insurrection of the Spanish proletariat in July 1936, in the imperialist and anti-fascist war.

At the end of 1935, the French Parliament, in a session qualified as “historic” by Blum, was unanimous in its acknowledgment of the defeat of Fascism and of the “reconciliation” of the French people. At the same time, the strikes of Brest and Toulon are attributed, by the same united front of all the “reconciled”, to the action of “provocateurs”; and in January 1936 Sarraut – the same one who in 1927 had stated “communism, here is the enemy” – will benefit from the fact that, for the first time, the communist parliamentary group abstains from voting on the ministerial declaration. The attack against Blum in March 1936 pushes the Communist Party to launch the formula of the fight “against the Hitlerites of France”, a formula that will later be held against it, after the signing of the Russian-German treaty in August 1939.

On March 7, 1936, Hitler denounced the Treaty of Locarno and remilitarized the Rhineland. In the backlash that ensues in the French Chamber, the chauvinist fury displayed is as sensational as it is inconsequential in its international repercussions.

The events forced French capitalism to use the reaction to Hitler’s fait accompli only in the field of domestic politics and the Communist Party excelled in this action: recalling the time when the French legitimists fled France during the revolution, it speaks of the “emigrants of Coblentz, of Valmy”, evokes again “Napoleon’s Austerlitz sun”, and went as far as to make use of the words of Göthe and Nietzsche about “Germany still submerged in the state of barbarism” without hesitating to falsify Marx himself whose phrase “the German resurrection will be announced by the crowing of the French rooster” whose meaning changes in its social and class context of the French proletariat to the national and nationalist camp of France and its bourgeoisie.

Russian diplomacy strengthened the patriotic position of the French Communist Party at the same time that it remained very cautious – as did England – about the response to Hitler’s coup. Litvinov limits himself to declaring that "the USSR would associate itself with the most effective measures against the violation of international commitments” and to explaining that "this attitude of the Soviet Union is determined by the general policy of struggle for peace, for the collective organization of security and the maintenance of one of the instruments of peace: the League of Nations." Molotov is even more cautious, and, in an interview with the journal Temps, says: "We are aware of France’s desire to maintain peace. If the German government were also to testify to its desire for peace and respect for treaties, particularly those concerning the League of Nations, we would consider that, on this basis of the defense of the interests of peace, a Franco-German rapprochement would be desirable. "

The leaders of the French Communist Party reasoned in this way: Russia is in danger; to save her we’ll use our capitalism as a shield.

And with the usual shameless demagogic spirit they did not hesitate to support this theory by referring to Lenin’s action; Lenin himself who in 1918, in order to save Russia from the attack of all the capitalist powers, called for the proletarians of every country against the capitalism of their own country in a revolutionary attack aimed at its destruction. The contrast between the two positions is as fundamental as the contrast between revolution and counter-revolution.

It is in this atmosphere of national unity, of reconciliation of all French people, of struggle against the “Hitlerites of France” that the wave of strikes matures, beginning on May 11 at the port of Le Havre and in the aviation workshops of Toulouse. The victories of these two first movements is then combined by the immediate extension of the strike to the Paris region, to Courbevoie and Renault (32,000 workers), on May 14, to the whole Parisian metallurgy on the 29th and 30th. The demands are: the increase of wages, payment for the days of strike, workers’ vacations, collective agreement. The strikes lasted for a long time, extended first to the mining North and then to the whole country, and took on a new aspect: the workers occupied the workshops despite the appeal of the Confederation of Labor, the Socialist and Communist Parties. One appeal reads that "resolved to keep the movement within the framework of discipline and tranquility, the trade union organizations declare themselves ready to put an end to the conflict wherever the just working-class demands are met."

But how different were these from the Italian factory occupations, in September 1920! In Paris the red flag and the tricolor wave together, and in the workshops there was only dancing: the atmosphere had nothing of a revolutionary movement. Between the spirit of national unity that animated the strikers and the radical weapon of the occupation of the workshops there was a stark contrast. However, the facts leave no possibility for misunderstanding: both the Confederation of Labor, which had already reabsorbed the CGTU back into it, and the Socialist and Communist Parties had no initiative in these huge strikes. They would have opposed them if this had been possible, and it is only the fact that they have spread to the whole country that imposes on them declarations of hypocritical sympathy for the strikers.

The fact that the bosses are archly disposed to accept the demands of the workers does not determine the end of the movements. A decisive blow is needed. The May elections had given a majority to the left-wing parties and among them to the Socialist Party.

So here we are at the Popular Front: well before the deadline set by parliamentary procedure, Blum’s government was formed on June 4. The Delegation of the Left, the parliamentary body of the Popular Front, in an order of the day, "notes that the workers defend their bread in order and discipline and want to keep to their movement a claiming character from which the ’Croix-de-Feu’ (Colonel La Roque’s paramilitary movement) and the other agents of reaction will not succeed in detaching them." L’humanité for its part publishes in its headlines that "order will ensure success" and that "those who go outside the law are the bosses, those Hitler’s agents that do not want the reconciliation of the French and push the workers to go on strike."

On the night of June 7 to 8, what will later be called the “Matignon agreements” (the residence of Prime Minister Blum) is signed and it consecrates:

a) the collective agreement;

b) the recognition of the right to join a trade union;

c) the establishment of union delegates in the workshops;

d) the increase in wages from 7 to 15% (which is then 35% since the work week has been reduced from 48 to 40 hours);

e) paid vacations. This agreement would have been signed even earlier if in some factories those who were called “reactionaries” had not proceeded to the arrest of some directors.

On June 14, Thorez, the head of the French Communist Party, launched the formula that would make him famous: "We must know how to end a strike as soon as the essential demands have been achieved. It is also necessary to reach a compromise in order not to lose any strength and above all not to facilitate the panic campaign of the reaction."

After two weeks French capitalism succeeds in extinguishing this powerful movement, powerful not because of its class significance, but because of how extensive it was, the importance of the occupational demands, and the extent and degree of the means employed by the workers to achieve success.

The pseudo-proletarian organizations which had had no responsibility in the unleashing of the movement were the very ones who would take it upon themselves to put an end to it. The French Communist Party had to play a role of the first order in stifling any revolutionary possibility which might have had arisen, and it succeeded in doing so to astonishing effect by contemptuously defaming the few workers who tried to make the occupation of the factories converge with a revolutionary approach to the struggle as “Hitlerites”. And in this alone consisted the tactical problem that the French Party had to solve.

Almost simultaneously, strikes broke out in Belgium. They began at the Port of Antwerp and then spread throughout the country. The manifesto immediately launched by the Belgian Workers’ Party is significant: "Port workers, don’t commit suicide. There are people inciting you to stop work. Why? They are demanding a wage increase. We are not saying anything different in this regard at a time when the Belgian Transport Workers Union is discussing its policy of wage increases. And we will not be thrown a curve-ball by irresponsible people. We don’t want to see the same disastrous consequences in Antwerp that occurred after the Dunkirk strike. We have a regulation that must be respected. Those who incite you to strike do not care about the consequences. Port workers, listen to your managers. We know what your wishes are. Onwards with our union! Don’t strike unreasonably. We’ll still discuss things with the bosses today."

Despite a similar appeal from the Trade Union Commission (the equivalent of the Confederation of Labor), on June 14 the Miners’ Congress was forced to accept the situation and gave the order to strike. The day before, the organ of the Socialist Party communicated its agreement with the government decisions to avoid the occupation of the workshops.

On June 22, in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Van Zeeland, who presided over a coalition with the participation of the Socialists, an agreement was signed where the following was established: a) a 10% wage increase; b) 40-hour week for unhealthy industries; c) 6 days of annual vacation.

The Belgian Communist Party uses what little influence it has among the masses to profit from a tactic similar to that followed by the French Party: it blocks the strike along the Workers Party and the Trade Union Commission which monopolize the leadership of the movement. It had no initiative in starting the strikes and all its activity consisted in demanding that the government intervene in favor of the strikes.

As for the results, these were far inferior to those obtained by the French workers. But, in both countries, these union successes, moreover ephemeral, far from signifying a resumption of the autonomous and class struggle of the proletariat, favor the development of the maneuver of the capitalist State which, thanks to the arbitration of conflicts, succeeds in gaining the confidence of the masses and it will use this confidence to tighten the net of its hegemonic control over them.

The sanctioning of State authority in the labor contract represents not a victory but the defeat of the workers. In reality this contract is but an armistice in the class struggle and its application depends on the relations of force between the two classes. The mere fact that State intervention is accepted radically reverses the terms of the problem since the workers thus entrust their defense to the fundamental institution of capitalist rule: the class unions are now replaced class collaborationist unions intertwined with the officials of the Ministry of Labor who control the application of the law.

The French and Belgian strikes precede by just one month the outbreak of social unrest in Spain and the opening of the imperialist war in that country. We will explain the course of these events in the next chapter.