The Programme of the Early Comintern, and the Transitional Programme (16/18)
The approach of the Spanish Stalinists was dictated by the interests of the Moscow bureaucracy. The theory of building Socialism in One Country, developed by Stalin in 1924, meant that the USSR sought to undertake whatever international manoeuvres left it free from external interference. That meant continual diplomatic manoeuvres to make deals at one point with democratic imperialism, at another with the fascists. In both cases, it meant the Stalinists positioning themselves as hangmen of the revolution. Everywhere, the national communist parties were subordinated to the interests of the USSR, in its dealings with these vying global powers. As the Stalinists sought to obtain the support of democratic-imperialism, as they saw Japan threatening the USSR to the East, whilst fascist Germany and Italy threatened it from the West, and were all now joined into an “anti-Comintern Alliance”, so they had to assure that democratic-imperialism that it had no intention of allowing the workers in those countries to engage in proletarian revolution, and would act to demobilise and limit their struggles.
In France, the Popular Front government demobilised the growing general strike wave of the French working-class, channelling it into safe parliamentary limits, contained within demands for bourgeois reforms inside capitalism. Once contained, with some reforms and increases in nominal wages, even those reforms were reversed. In two years, nominal wages rose 48%, but inflation rose by 46% even on the rigged price indices used by capitalist governments. The other labour reforms such as recognition of shop stewards, right to strike, to collective bargaining, were simple bourgeois-democratic rights that were long overdue, but in any case irrelevant when, on the ground, workers were engaged in a massive strike wave, were already bargaining collectively and not waiting for employer approval as to who they could elect as shop stewards! But, in any case, as even these reforms contradicted the interests of French capital, as it began its rearmament programme, Blum abandoned them! The determining element of Blum's government was that rearmament, which itself also failed in its goal, as France was defeated, quickly, in 1940, by Germany, leading to the victory of fascism, both in the form of the German occupation and the Vichy government. The French Communist Party played the same role in May 1968, when, with a General Strike, and workers occupying large numbers of workplaces and operating them under workers' control, it used its support amongst the workers to advise them to end the occupations, and settle for bourgeois elections. Having demobilised the workers' direct action, DeGaulle knew that he had the upper hand, and won the subsequent elections, offering merely relatively minor reforms to workers and students, well contained within the limits of capitalism.
It was this diplomatic turn of the Moscow bureaucracy that led to the reverse from the madness of the Third Period, and adoption of the Popular Front strategy. To show to the forces of democratic imperialism its good faith, the Stalinists made clear that they had no desire for revolution in Spain.
Jesus Hernandes, Editor of the CP's daily newspaper, El Mundo, wrote on August 6th 1936,
“It is absolutely false that the present workers' movement has for its object the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship after the war has terminated. It cannot be said that we have a social motive for our participation in the war. We communists are the first to repudiate this supposition. We are motivated exclusively by a desire to defend the democratic republic.”
As with the French CP in 1968, the Spanish CP also fleshed out the words of Hernandes, by also standing against the direct action of the workers as they established their own factory committees and engaged in occupations. Jose Diaz, speaking in March 1937, to the CP Central Committee opposed this direct action saying,
“At the present time when there is a government of the Popular Front, in which all the forces engaged in the fight against fascism are represented, such things are not only not desirable, but absolutely impermissible.”
(Communist International, May 1937)
But, the truth was that, just as the representatives of the bourgeois parties in parliament represented only a shadow bourgeoisie, so that the Stalinists, Socialists and other workers parties had liquidated their own politics only in order to seek unity with a ghost, and only acted to provide Left cover for those bourgeois representatives who, without the Popular Front, would not have been able to retain their positions, so too the attempts of Moscow to build an international Popular Front with the forces of democratic imperialism was also chasing after a mirage. In fact, as Trotsky was to point out in relation to Germany itself, this policy of the Comintern hung the German Communists, because Hitler could point to the alliance of Stalin with that democratic imperialism, and use it as a means to rally the German masses around his nationalistic rhetoric and banner.
Trotsky wrote,
"Fascism is a form of despair in the petit-bourgeois masses, who carry away with them over the precipice a part of the proletariat as well. Despair as is known, takes hold when all roads of salvation are cut off. The triple bankruptcy of democracy, Social Democracy and the Comintern was the prerequisite for fascism. All three have tied their fate to the fate of imperialism. All three bring nothing to the masses but despair and by this assure the triumph of fascism...
The democracies of the Versailles Entente helped the victory of Hitler by their vile oppression of defeated Germany. Now the lackeys of democratic imperialism of the Second and Third Internationals are helping with all their might the further strengthening of Hitler’s regime. Really, what would a military bloc of imperialist democracies against Hitler mean? A new edition of the Versailles chains, even more heavy, bloody and intolerable. Naturally, not a single German worker wants this. To throw off Hitler by revolution is one thing; to strangle Germany by an imperialist war is quite another. The howling of the “pacifist” jackals of democratic imperialism is therefore the best accompaniment to Hitler’s speeches. “You see,” he says to the German people, “even socialists and Communists of all enemy countries support their army and their diplomacy; if you will not rally around me, your leader, you are threatened with doom!” Stalin, the lackey of democratic imperialism, and all the lackeys of Stalin – Jouhaux, Toledano, and Company – are the best aides in deceiving, lulling, and intimidating the German workers."
(“Phrases and Reality” in Writings 1938-9)
What is more, Stalin got nothing from democratic imperialism from this servility. The Popular Front governments refused to arm the workers and peasants to defend themselves, be it in Spain or France, fearful that the workers and peasants might use those weapons to pursue their own agenda. The same disastrous approach was taken by the Allende Popular Front government in Chile, in the 1970's, leading to the same catastrophe, as Thatcher's friend Pinochet launched his coup. Yet, all the time, the German and Italian fascist regimes were shipping the latest arms to Franco and the Falangists, who already had the benefit of superior arms, as well as use of ships and aeroplanes. At the very least, you might have expected that the forces of democratic imperialism would do the same for a democratically elected republican government, as recognition of Stalin's obeisance to them. But, no, the governments of the democratic imperialists insisted on refusing to sell arms to the Spanish government, instead implementing a policy of “non-interference”. And, who was it that proposed this policy? None other than the socialist, Leon Blum, head of the French Popular Front, whose existence itself depended upon the support of the French Stalinists!
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