Representatives of four self-professed revolutionary Marxist tendencies enjoin the debate on the the ‘Popular Front’ orientation adopted by the Communist International. A policy which has dominated, with exceptions, the politics of the ‘official’ Communist Parties since it was formally enacted by the Seventh, and last, Comintern Congress in 1935. The move away from the ‘Third Period,’ and its preparations for power, began almost immediately after the unparalleled defeat of March, 1933’s fascist capture of the German state and outlawing of, arguably, the most important Communist Party in the world. Such a dramatic change in position required dramatic justification. Georgi Dimitrov was the Secretary of the Comintern in the period and the foremost proponent of the Popular Front. The debate on the Popular Front is joined by Gus Tyler of the Socialist Party and its Militant Faction, Jay Lovestone for C.P. leader of the International Communist Opposition, Max Shachtman, also a former C.P. leader and then a prominent U.S. Fourth Internationalist.

‘What Is the People’s Front?’ by Georgi Dimitrov from New Masses. Vol. 19 No. 9. May 26, 1936.

IT IS not enough to wish for peace. We must struggle for it. General propaganda against war is absolutely insufficient. Propaganda against war “in general” does not at all deter the plotters in Berlin or Tokio from accomplishing their ends; it would satisfy them only too well if the working class went no farther than spreading general propaganda.

A successful struggle for preserving peace requires deliberate orientation of the joint efforts of the proletariat and the broadest masses against the real war-makers and against those forces in each country which directly or indirectly aid war. From this standpoint, it is of the greatest importance in each country to work out a specific, correct tactical line in the struggle for peace.

In countries where fascism is in power the working class realizes that the essence of the anti-fascist struggle lies in exposing chauvinist demagogy and war preparations. It therefore seeks to unite all forces which can prevent the catastrophe into which fascism is determined to plunge the people. In the struggle against fascist dictatorship and military aggression the proletariat and the broadest masses in Germany, Italy and other fascist countries act not only in their own interest but in the interest of peace, in the interest of all the peoples, of the whole of mankind.

An especially important problem in the tactic of the working-class, particularly in countries directly menaced by attack, is at present the attitude toward the governments’ foreign policy and the defense of the country. Certainly it is not a matter of indifference to the working class and all laboring people what foreign policy the governments pursue in regard to the fascist enemies of peace; whether the governments patronize the agents of fascism or undertake effective steps against them; how the populations are safeguarded against the horrors of war, etc. To be indifferent to the question of the country’s defense is to surrender such considerations to the control of the bourgeois governments. Such a position in no way assists the cause of peace. It is no accident that the upper layers of the governing bourgeoisie have always regarded this realm as their monopoly, as their “holy of holies.” This bourgeois monopoly must be ended once and for all.

The proletariat cannot get along without its own independent policy on these questions. Under no circumstances permitting itself to slip into a bourgeois position, the party of the proletariat must with its own platform and its own demands, vigorously participate in matters of foreign policy and those affecting the country’s defense.

As the intransigent upholder of active defense of the people and the country against fascist enslavement, the working class must link the problem of defense with demands for broadening the democratic rights of workers and peasants and the defense of their vital interests. Its premise must be that democratization of the regime and the army, the exclusion from these of fascist and other reactionary elements, and the fulfilment of the most urgent demands of the worker and peasant masses are alone capable of strengthening the people’s defense against fascist attack. Working-class representatives act properly when they support those measures which make it harder for bourgeois governments to capitulate to fascist aggressors, thereby betraying the freedom and independence of their people.

Communists emphasize that only the rule of the proletariat is capable of insuring reliable defense of a country and its independence, as demonstrated by the Soviet Union in a situation where there is a direct threat of war from fascist aggressors. At the same time they seek the creation of a People’s Front government. Decisive measures against fascism and reactionary elements in the country, against the agents and collaborators of the enemies of peace, insure the control of the organized masses in the defense of the country. The People’s Front government will encourage the development of the people’s militant defense against fascist aggression.

Insofar as power is at present in the hands of bourgeois governments, there is no guarantee of genuine defense of the country; and insofar as the state’s armed forces are used against laboring people, the working class cannot carry any political responsibility for measures of defense undertaken by such governments. Hence it opposes the military policies and military budgets of such governments. This does not preclude in specific cases a motivated abstention from voting on those individual measures of defensive character that are indispensable for making an attack by fascist aggressors more difficult (the fortification of borders, for example); as well as voting for and supporting such measures as are necessary for protecting the people against the horrors of war (refugees from gas attack, gas masks, first-aid services, etc.). The time is past when the working class does not participate independently and actively in the solution of such vital questions as war and peace. The difference between Communists and reformists, revolutionaries and reactionaries in the labor movement, does not at all consist in the fact that the latter participate in the solution of these problems while the revolutionaries remain on the sidelines. No, the difference is that the reformists, in these as in other matters, de- fend the interests of the capitalist class, while the Communists defend the interests of the working class, the interests of the people.

This flexible Bolshevik tactic, which is the application of a specific point in the general tactical formulation made by the 7th Congress of the Communist International, is necessarily conditioned by the entire present international situation, particularly by the presence of the various well-defined fascist aggressors.

It is comic to hear “left” phrase-slingers of various breeds oppose this tactic, masquerading as uncompromising revolutionaries. According to them, all governments are aggressors. They even attempt to fall back on Lenin who, during the imperialist war of 1914-18, rejected the arguments of the social chauvinists that “we have been attacked- we are defending ourselves.” At that time the world was divided into two military imperialist coalitions, each of which sought world hegemony, each of which prepared and instigated the imperialist war. At that time. there were no countries where the proletariat had triumphed, nor were there countries of fascist dictatorship.

Today the situation is different. Today there exist: (1) A proletarian state that is the greatest bulwark of peace; (2) definite fascist aggressors; (3) a number of countries under direct threat of fascist aggression and the loss of their state and their national independence; (4) other capitalist states which are at the moment interested in the preservation of peace. Consequently it is absolutely inaccurate to represent all nations as aggressors. Only people who try to cover up the actual aggressors can so pervert the facts.

THE existing peace is a bad sort of peace, but this bad peace is in any event better than war. Every consistent supporter of peace understands the necessity of backing all measures that help to preserve it, including measures adopted by the League of Nations, particularly sanctions. Sanctions can become an effective instrument against the aggressor nations.

If the sanctions undertaken by the League of Nations did not hinder Italy in the war against Ethiopia, this is no condemnation of sanctions, but rather a condemnation of the powers that undermined their application.

And if German fascism today challenges the entire world it is because it believes that it can get away with it, it is because sanctions were not applied against Japan, it is because sanctions against Italy were sabotaged by capitalist countries and, lastly, it is because when Hitler moved his troops to the borders of France and Belgium he was convinced in advance that the application of sanctions against him would be sabotaged by the English ruling class.

They say that the application of sanctions increases military danger, that they ultimately lead to war. This is not so. Quite the contrary, the aggressor’s success increases the danger of war. The more firmly sanctions of a financial-economic character are applied against fascist aggressors (complete refusal of credits and cessation of trade and deliveries of raw materials) the less intent will German fascism be on starting a war involving far greater risks.

The League of Nations must be mercilessly criticized for its waverings, passivity and inconsistency. The working class wages an uncompromising struggle against the governments of those imperialist states which, while members of the League, allow their predatory ambitions to assist the aggressor, to sabotage steps for the preservation of peace and to sacrifice the interests of small nations to those of the great imperialist powers.

From this, however, it does not follow that we must take a generally negative attitude toward the League of Nations. Why should the proletariat play into the hands of the war-makers who are now all opposing the League? On the one hand, precisely those who are the main instigators of war–Germany and Japan–have left the League; on the other hand, the League contains the Soviet Union which throws its entire inter- national influence on the side of peace and collective security. In the League are also other states which have no wish to provide fascist aggressors with an opportunity to attack other peoples. Whoever is unable to make a distinction between the League of Nations in the past and the League today, whoever cannot differentiate between various members of the League, whoever renounces the pressure of the masses upon the League and on the separate capitalist governments to preserve peace simply chatters and is no revolutionary, no proletarian statesman.

The working class must support those measures of the League of Nations and the separate states which are truly designed to preserve peace (pacts of non-aggression and mutual assistance against the aggressor, pacts of collective security and financial-economic sanctions). Not only must such action be supported, but mighty mass anti-war movements must be utilized to compel the League as well as the governments of the separate countries to take serious measures for the defense of peace.

It is incorrect to think that the policy of constant concession to the demands of the fascist instigators of war on the part of the League of Nations and on the part of separate countries (England, France, Belgium, etc.) can help the preservation of peace. Workers have not forgotten that in a certain period in Germany’s internal policy, conciliation and capitulation before the advance of fascism cleared the road for fascism to seize power. In the international arena such a policy of capitulation frees the hands of fascism.

It is also incorrect to believe that the cause of peace will gain by considering at this time the question of redistributing the sources of raw materials, colonies and regions under mandates, as the reactionary social-democratic leaders do. In substance, this is done with the aim of distracting the attention of the masses from the war-makers. At the same time such a proposal conceals a desire to provide German fascism with its share of colonies which would reinforce even strongly its military position. It is not the proletariat’s business to favor one or another kind of distribution of colonies and mandates among the imperialists. The proletariat’s task is to support the struggle of colonial peoples for their interests and rights and for their final liberation from the imperialist powers.

THE demand by the proletariat that the League of Nations and bourgeois governments take effective measures against fascist aggression does not for a moment obscure the most important element in preserving peace, the basic and decisive element, the independent action of the broad masses in defense of peace.

There is not the slightest doubt that if the international proletariat, with its mass organizations, particularly organizations of trade unions, would have acted in a united manner and by means of strikes and other actions would not have allowed a single ship to sail to or from Italy, a single train to move, Italian fascism would long ago have been confronted with the necessity of terminating the robber war against the Ethiopian people.

But the creation of a truly broad People’s Front for peace, sufficiently powerful to wage such a struggle against militant fascism, is possible only if proletarian unity of action is achieved. It is precisely the establishment of this unity of the working class that has given the French and Spanish proletariat the opportunity to create a mighty anti-fascist People’s Front.

Torn by inner contradictions, the London conference of the Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions with headquarters at Amsterdam, passed over, because of pressure from the reactionary wing, the question of the necessity for immediate realization of unified action by the proletariat on a national and international scale. The conference did not summon the working masses to independent action. It confined itself to calling for complete dependence on the League of Nations. It did not rise to the defense of the Chinese people subjected to attack from Japan. It failed to condemn those Laborites and Social- Democratic leaders who came out in defense of the aggressive policy of German fascism, masking that defense with phrases about “preservation of peace.”

Nevertheless, there has been developing in the ranks of the Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions a movement in favor of the united front of the working class. The fundamental interests of the entire international proletariat demand that these forces emerge victorious and overcome the resistance of those opposing the united front. The shift in fascism to a stage of military advance utilizes dissension in the parties and organizations of the working class of separate countries and thus renders most urgent the need for a unified international policy of the working class in the interests of preserving peace.

Briefly then, the realization of this unified international policy of the proletariat is possible on the following premises:

First of all, restoration and reinforcement of actual international proletarian solidarity for the defense of the interests of the widest strata of the laboring populations; a decisive break by the Social-Democratic parties with the imperialist interests of their bourgeoisie.

Second, all possible support of the peace policies of the Soviet Union, the proletarian state that unshakably guards peace among nations. This presupposes above all else a determined struggle of all workers’ parties against any counter-revolutionary attempts to identify the Soviet Union’s foreign policy with that of imperialist states, to identify the Red Army, bulwark of peace, with the armies of the imperialist countries-attempts playing into the hands of the fascist war-makers.

Third, singleness of purpose and concentrated blows against the fascist aggressor; a different attitude toward the aggressor on the one hand and to the victims of aggression on the other; the exposure of every attempt to obscure the difference between fascist and non-fascist states. the Fourth, proletariat’s independent struggle for peace, independent both of the capitalist governments and of the League of Nations, a struggle that would prevent the subordination of the labor movement to the concealed combinations of the imperialist governments participating in the League.

Under present conditions the struggle for the preservation of peace is the struggle against fascism and it is substantially a revolutionary struggle.

The preservation of peace threatens fascism with extinction: as it increases fascism’s internal difficulties it undermines the fascist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The preservation of peace furthers the growth of the forces of the proletariat, the forces of revolution, it aids in healing the break in the ranks of the labor movement; it assists the proletariat in becoming the guiding class in the struggle of all laboring people against capitalism; it cracks the foundations of the capitalist structure; it hastens the victory of socialism.

STALIN has pointed out that “war can flare up unexpectedly. Nowadays wars are not declared, they are simply begun.”

This requires of Communists above all a clear understanding of the extent and character of the war danger and the ways and means of coping with it.

A decisive step toward action by the inter- national proletariat against the war makers is today the development by the Communist Party in each country of a most vigorous, persistent and undisguised campaign in all aspects of social and political life for the preservation of peace. The Communists conduct this campaign even before agreements are reached with the leadership of the Social-Democratic Party; but they conduct it of course with a view toward unity of action between the Communist and Socialist parties. The Communists exert all their energies to overcoming the resistance of the reactionary Social-Democratic leaders to the united front; they seek to support as much as possible the common struggle against the common foe.

Such a campaign for the unity of Communists and Socialists will assist the activization and solidarity of all forces of the proletariat, not only on a national but on an international scale. This will powerfully stimulate the influx into the movement of other sections of the urban and rural working population, the masses of the lower middle class, farmers and professionals, all supporters of peace. This will hasten the formation of an invincible fighting force of the international proletariat, of all who work, of all peoples for the preservation of peace.

The struggle for peace is the struggle against fascism, against capitalism, the struggle for the triumph of socialism in the entire world.

The New Masses was the continuation of Workers Monthly which began publishing in 1924 as a merger of the ‘Liberator’, the Trade Union Educational League magazine ‘Labor Herald’, and Friends of Soviet Russia’s monthly ‘Soviet Russia Pictorial’ as an explicitly Communist Party publication, but drawing in a wide range of contributors and sympathizers. In 1927 Workers Monthly ceased and The New Masses began. A major left cultural magazine of the late 1920s and early 1940s, the early editors of The New Masses included Hugo Gellert, John F. Sloan, Max Eastman, Mike Gold, and Joseph Freeman. Writers included William Carlos Williams, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Day, John Breecher, Langston Hughes, Eugene O’Neill, Rex Stout and Ernest Hemingway. Artists included Hugo Gellert, Stuart Davis, Boardman Robinson, Wanda Gag, William Gropper and Otto Soglow. Over time, the New Masses became narrower politically and the articles more commentary than comment. However, particularly in it first years, New Masses was the epitome of the era’s finest revolutionary cultural and artistic traditions.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1936/v19n09-may-26-1936-NM.pdf