Contribution by the Communist Front of Italy

ON THE TACTICS OF THE POPULAR FRONT AND ITS PRACTICAL APPLICATION

Contribution by the Communist Front of Italy

Dear comrades,

First of all, I convey to you the greeting of the Communist Front of Italy, on whose behalf I would also like to thank the Communist Party of Workers of Spain for hosting our meeting.

We believe that an evaluation of the tactics of the popular fronts on both the theoretical and the practical level is useful for the topicality of this issue in terms of defining the tactics of the communists in the current phase. In times of weakness, such as the one the international communist movement is currently experiencing, there is a tendency to seek a way out by re-proposing tactics and positions adopted in the past, given the difficulty in developing new ones in step with the times.

We believe that an evaluation of this kind cannot be made by using the criterion of "hindsight", but by placing it in the concrete historical context in which this tactical line was adopted by the Comintern, that is 1935, the year when the 7th Congress of the Communist International was held. Only in this way is it possible to assess whether it has achieved the objectives it set itself at that time and whether the reasons for this choice still exist today.

The 7th Congress of the Comintern took place at a time when fascism was already over a decade in power in Italy and Nazism had already taken control of Germany since a couple of years. The Comintern was aware of its tendency to rapidly spread in Europe but not only, the threat that this posed to the labor movement and humanity in terms of the cancellation of freedoms and rights in domestic policy, of thrust toward imperialist war in foreign policy.

In the introductory reports by Wilhem Pieck and Georgi Dimitrov, self-critical assessments of the work carried out after the previous 6th Congress were drawn, highlighting two equal and opposite errors in relation to fascism that had occurred in the activity of the communists: on the one hand, an underestimation of the fascist danger and its ability to attract, organize and manipulate the petty- bourgeois masses, the lumpenproletariat and even sectors of the proletariat; on the other hand, the opposite tendency to see fascism even where it did not exist, classifying as fascist bourgeois governments that were not fascist.

We believe that these errors were due to several reasons: 1) until the VII Congress of the Comintern, the communists still lacked a scientific determination of the substance and basis of fascism, and this prevented a correct understanding of the phenomenon and of how to fight against it; this gap was filled by the well-known definition provided by Dimitrov in the context of an analysis of fascism, very in-depth for those times, which effectively captured its general nature, identifying its economic basis in financial capital; its social basis in the petty bourgeoisie, the lumpenproletariat and even sectors of the backward proletariat, deceived by fascist demagogy; its political basis in the open, terrorist and violent dictatorship, directed mainly against the labor' movement and the communists and, precisely for this reason, also against bourgeois democracy itself; 2) communist criticism and propaganda, in the period before the 7th Congress, were focused with prevalence and greater intensity on the opportunism of social democracy, against the so-called "social fascism", rather than against fascism itself; this was absolutely understandable, since social democracy had supported the imperialist war; where it was in power it had bloodily repressed the proletarian revolutions; it had generally rejected any form of collaboration with the communists preferring class collaboration with the bourgeois governments. In doing so, social democracy had stalled the tactics of the proletariat's united front and favored the rise of fascism; 3) the 6th Congress had relaunched the tactics of the united front, reiterating that the unity of the proletariat had to be pursued, safeguarding ideological autonomy and the criticism of opportunism in order to win the majority of the labor movement; the need to overcome any form of sectarianism and intensify activity among non­proletarian workers, peasants and even sectors of the intellectual petty bourgeoisie was also reaffirmed in order to build forms of social alliance of the working class with these popular strata. Despite the adhesion in principle, the tactics of the united front were not implemented as they should have been because they struggled to be put into practice by some sections of the Communist International, especially where the influence of the sectarian positions of the "left communists" was stronger, as in Italy and Germany, or the one of Trotskyists was still present, thus leaving non-proletarian popular strata to fascist manipulation and condemning the proletariat to a condition of de facto isolation; moreover, the fact that social-democracy in Germany and many other European countries, in its attempt to favor big capital, had pursued in the name of the working class a policy contrary to, or perceived as such, the interests of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie, also contributed to allow fascism to win the consent of these strata; 5) finally, the impact of the offense to national sentiment as a result of the imperialist war was underestimated, if not completely ignored, and left as a powerful tool of manipulation in the hands of the fascists in Italy (" the mutilated victory") and the Nazis in Germany (the shame of the "surrender of Versailles"), allowing them to cultivate the worst revanchism and the most sinister zoological hatred toward other peoples, depicted as "external enemies" in order to divert from the national bourgeoisie toward them the just popular anger for the atrocity of the war slaughter and for an imperialist peace that certainly did not bring justice. These are, in our opinion, the reasons that had caused the errors mentioned by Pieck and Dimitrov in their reports to the 7th Congress of the Comintern, which, therefore, by adopting the tactics of the popular front, was aimed at correcting the previous errors and adapting the activity of the communists to the new historical conditions, resulting from the rise to power of fascism.

In a very extreme summary, the new tactics consisted in the change of the primary short-term tactical objective without giving up the strategic objective of the socialist revolution, whereby the work aimed at accumulating forces for the revolution by winning the majority of the proletariat in the frame of the united front and the development of the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of workers' power had to temporarily give way to the immediate struggle for the overthrow of fascism and the safeguarding of bourgeois democracy, which had become a priority; to fight fascism it would have been necessary to build broader social alliances with non-proletarian strata up to sectors of the capitalist bourgeoisie, seek political agreements not only with social democracy, but also with other bourgeois anti-fascist parties and even authorize the national sections of the Comintern to participate to frontist governments along with other parties. Essentially, the main enemy in the Leninist sense, defeating which assumed absolute priority, was identified in fascism. In fact, it is a tactic similar to that which Lenin adopted in the first phase of the revolution in Russia to overthrow the autocracy as a precondition for any further revolutionary development. Engels and Lenin rightly argued that political conditions in which the proletariat can fight more or less openly are preferable to situations in which it is forced to act illegally. In consideration of this, Dimitrov explained the adaptation of tactics by arguing that, in that given historical moment, with that correlation of forces and in those objective conditions, the immediate choice was not between capitalism and socialism, between bourgeois democracy and proletarian dictatorship, but between fascism and bourgeois democracy, understood as the most favorable condition for the proletariat among all those that were realistically possible at that time. At the same time, Dimitrov explicitly reaffirmed the dialectical and class conception according to which fascism and bourgeois democracy, despite the undeniable differences between them, represent two different aspects of the same dictatorship of the capitalist bourgeoisie.

Let's draw some conclusions from the above.

1. The tactics of the popular front were developed by the International to combat fascism in power as the main enemy and its expansion. This is the reason for the tactical change of immediate objective and the search for wider social and political alliances, which cannot be justified in other conditions and contexts.

2. The awareness of the role of the Soviet Union as the first and only proletarian state in the world and the main bulwark against fascism and, therefore, of the need to defend it by all means was a

central fixed point in the tactics of the popular front, as Togliatti well expressed in his report to the 7th Congress: "In this historical stage, when in one sixth of the globe the Soviet Union defends socialism and peace for all humanity, the vital interests of the workers and toilers of all countries require that the _ policy of the working class, the struggle for peace, the fight against imperialist war, before and after its outbreak, are carried out with view to _protecting the Soviet UnionThe tactics of the popular front are therefore also a tool for the defense of the Soviet Union as a socialist state, but at the same time the Soviet Union is the political-ideological and material support that makes the tactics of the popular front viable.

3. The tactics of the popular front are not in contradiction with and do not abjure the tactics of the united front of the working class. The unity of the proletariat and a firm communist hegemony are the necessary prerequisites for building social alliances and political agreements in which the communist parties and the working class are at the head and not at the tail of other forces or classes. In this sense, the popular front is an expansion and continuation of the tactics of the united front, despite the diversity of short-term objectives. The extension of the spectrum of social and political alliances of the working class with non-proletarian classes, even with sectors of the bourgeoisie, and the parties that represented them was not a retreat from the revolutionary positions. From a Marxist-Leninist point of view, it is not the alliances, their breadth and composition, or the compromises on which they are based, that are of primary importance, but preserving the ideological principles and strategic objectives of the communists, as Marx himself teaches us: "... in politics, to achieve a certain goal, you can ally even with the devil himself: you just have to be sure that you are the one to lead the devil, and not the devil to lead you" [K. Marx, F. Engels, Complete Works, Ed. Politiceskaya Literatura, vol. 8, p. 410]. In this regard, the reports of the Executive Committee and the resolutions approved by the 7th Congress reiterated in several points the maintenance of the strategic objective of building socialism and the awareness that fascism could be definitively defeated only with the overthrow of the capitalism that generates it. In this, we do not find strategic concessions of an opportunist or revisionist nature, at least in intention, but rather just tactical adaptations to the new reality.

4. The tactics of the popular front failed to prevent the expansion and rise to power of fascism outside Italy and Germany, mostly due to the instability and the wait-and-see behavior of social democracy and other bourgeois anti-fascist allied forces and the delay in fully understanding the extent of the fascist phenomenon. However, it proved effective and successful in organizing the armed resistance in the countries occupied by the forces of the Anti-Comintern Pact and the liberation of the people from Nazi-fascism, thanks to the leading role of the Communist Parties within the anti-fascist coalitions. After the end of World War II, the maintenance of the hegemonic role they had in the armed struggle and the prestige won by the USSR with the Great Victory over Nazi Fascism allowed the Communist and Workers Parties of Eastern Europe to use the popular fronts that emerged from the liberation struggle as a form of government in the fledgling people's democracies on the road to socialism. In some cases, such as in Poland, Hungary and Democratic Germany, mergers also took place between communist and social democratic parties which overcame the historic split that occurred with the World War I.

Ultimately, we believe that the tactics of the popular front were on the whole adequate to the historical context of fascism in power and the international situation of constant threat to peace and the Soviet Union. In our opinion, problems may be found in the interpretations and forms that some parties gave to the implementation of the tactical directives of the Communist International.

5. The change of primary tactical objective and the choice to defend bourgeois democracy against the fascist attack were misunderstood by some parties. Concentrating propaganda and action on the fight against fascism to restore at least bourgeois democracy does not mean excluding more advanced outlets where objective conditions allow it. To believe that first we must restore bourgeois democracy and only then can we fight for a workers' democracy is a mistake due to a gradualist misinterpretation of historical processes and politics that was not the intention of the Comintern. This same logic later will lead some parties to serious opportunist deviations and to blur over time the revolutionary prospect of seizing power to the point of losing it completely and accepting the corral of the bourgeois state and democracy. Some communist parties, even after the liberation from fascism, therefore in conditions radically changed compared to those in which the tactics of the popular front were developed, froze their political line on trying to maintain anti-fascist unity. The anti-fascist unity from a tactical instrument thus became a strategic objective which over time overshadowed and definitively replaced the objective of the seizure of power, with an inversion between tactics and strategy that is typical of the worst opportunism.

The situation today is certainly not comparable to that of the years in which the Comintern conceived the tactics of the popular front, when almost all of Europe was dominated by Nazi-fascist or similar regimes. However, the fascist threat is far from over and communists must maintain high their vigilance and find ways of fighting fascism that are appropriate to our times.

Throughout the world, particularly in the European Union, we can see a resurgence of racist and xenophobic movements, openly Nazi-fascist, which are trying to gain consensus among the petty bourgeoisie, the lumpenproletariat and even within the proletariat. By demagogically exploiting popular discontent with the real problems created by capitalism and its crisis, they seek to group around themselves what was the mass basis of fascism and spread an anti-culture made of the cult of force, bullying and violence, racial hatred, contempt for women, the weakest, and the different in general. In addition to movementist fascist extremism, the parties of the sovereignist right, double-breasted fascists who are gathering growing support throughout Europe and are present in the EU institutions, are also of concern.

Moreover, we are witnessing a serious reactionary and authoritarian involution of all capitalist states, in a process that could be defined as "fascistization of the State", with an increasing use of methods of classist pressure and repression typical of fascism. Nevertheless, only in very rare cases, for example in Ukraine or Israel, can we talk about fascism in power. The liberal state also uses police, prisons, courts, army and bureaucracy for the repression and oppression of the proletariat, but spaces of political viability and democratic rights, more or less extensive, survive anyway. What differentiates fascism in substance is not so much the terrorist methods, but the total occupation of all political spaces, the suppression of all democratic rights, the total spying control over citizens by the State, the corporative organization of the economy and society at the service of financial capital, the paramilitary organization of the petty bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat who carry out illegal and violent work on behalf of the State and are the hard core of the regime, hence the definition given by Togliatti of fascism as "reactionary mass regime".

We believe that this process must be fought firmly, first of all through the constant presence and mass political work, primarily in workplaces, schools, universities, popular neighborhoods and, when and where possible, even in bourgeois political institutions. If we talk about tactics, even if we consider them adequate to the historical conditions in which they were conceived, we do not believe that the tactics of the popular front can be repeated in the same way in the current situation.

First of all, the traditional social democratic parties have long ceased to be representative of a part of the labor movement and are today an explicit political expression of big capital, having abandoned any even purely formal reference to socialism; in general, the era ended of the mass parties typical of the 20th century; parties have been transformed into personal electoral committees of this or that leader. Moreover, there is almost no longer any difference in programs and positions between the social-democratic parties and the other bourgeois parties, since all of them are managing the same capitalist system. Indeed, in many cases the so-called "left-wing" parties prove to be more anti-democratic, more anti-popular and more warmongering than the so-called "right-wing" ones. Therefore, in a political context of this type, political agreements with other parties, much less the participation of communists in "progressive" or "anti-fascist" coalition governments on the popular fronts model, are to be excluded. We say clearly that the proposals of "popular fronts", "democratic coalitions", "anti-fascist alliances", etc., are traps created to divert the proletariat from the revolutionary struggle for socialism. They are invented today by the old and new social democratic and bourgeois parties that use the scare of fascism to collect votes in elections, ensure the stability of their governments and dull the class struggle, and then implement themselves the worst and most brutal anti-labor and anti-popular policies.

What is instead still valid and must be practiced is working also among non-proletarian social strata and groups that we must not leave prey to fascist propaganda, in order to develop social alliances of the working class and create the mass basis of a wide antifascist movement decisively anti-capitalist oriented as the Resistance was, which defends what remains of constitutional guarantees and democratic rights, not to restore bourgeois democracy as it was, but so as not to retreat further and overcome it in the direction of socialist democracy. The precondition for this work to be successful is that the Communists accumulate forces and consolidate their Party by all means, defending its ideological autonomy and spreading its presence and voice among the working class and the toilers, the peasants, the students, women, all the exploited and the oppressed, to prepare for a counterattack, to relaunch the revolutionary struggle for socialism-communism.

Madrid, May 11, 2024