In 1917, Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev had also put forward this concept of the Popular Front, of a government in which the role of the workers was accepted as being subordinate to that of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, as it sought to overthrow Tsarism. The February Revolution, had once again created soviets of workers and peasants, the latter being represented by the soldiery which came largely from that class. These soviets already held at least a large part of state power in their hands, on the back of the presence of the soldiers and sailors. When the Tsar is removed, a new Provisional Government is established as a Popular Front government comprising representatives of the bourgeoisie, peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, as well as of the workers, in the form of the reformist workers parties such as the Mensheviks. Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev argued for support for this government, and support for its adoption of a defencist position in relation to continuing the War against Germany. The basis of their argument is the old algebraic formula of the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry.
Lenin immediately and militantly opposed this position of what he called the “Old Bolsheviks”, and threatened to split the party, unless it changed position. Lenin's argument set out in the April Theses, and backed up by his Letters on Tactics, is quite simple. The old algebraic formula had now been superseded by real events, which had concretised the elements of the formula. It was no longer a matter of a struggle to establish the Democratic Dictatorship, because it had already been established. It existed in the form of the soviets, which now also provided the answer to the other part of the formula, the form that the political regime would assume. That form was no longer that of the Constituent Assembly, but that of the government of soviets. The task now becomes the struggle for such a soviet regime, symbolised by the demand “All Power To The Soviets”.
In the meantime, its clear that the revolutionaries cannot participate in the Provisional Government, as a government dominated by the bourgeoisie. It is a Popular Front government. The revolutionaries, thereby, raise the demand “Down With The Capitalist Ministers”. In other words, they demand that the reformist and centrist representatives of the workers show that they are committed to pursuing the interests of workers and poor peasants, by removing from the government the representatives of the bourgeoisie, whose interests are contrary to those of the former. In other words, they demand, as a transitional demand, that the so called workers' representatives establish a Workers and Peasants' Government. As Trotsky puts it, in The Transitional Programme,
“From April to September 1917, the Bolsheviks demanded that the SRs and Mensheviks break with the liberal bourgeoisie and take power into their own hands. Under this provision the Bolshevik Party promised the Mensheviks and the SRs, as the petty bourgeois representatives of the worker and peasants, its revolutionary aid against the bourgeoisie categorically refusing, however, either to enter into the government of the Mensheviks and SRs or to carry political responsibility for it. If the Mensheviks and SRs had actually broke with the Cadets (liberals) and with foreign imperialism, then the “workers’ and peasants’ government” created by them could only have hastened and facilitated the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But it was exactly because of this that the leadership of petty bourgeois democracy resisted with all possible strength the establishment of its own government. The experience of Russia demonstrated, and the experience of Spain and France once again confirms, that even under very favourable conditions the parties of petty bourgeois democracy (SRs, Social Democrats, Stalinists, Anarchists) are incapable of creating a government of workers and peasants, that is, a government independent of the bourgeoisie.”
This is the revolutionary conception of the Workers Government, as a transitional demand, raised during a revolutionary period, in conditions where the revolutionaries themselves do not constitute an outright majority, and workers continue to give large scale backing to the reformist and centrist politicians. It is a means of exposing the vacillating nature of those parties, in order to win over the workers to the revolutionaries.
“Nevertheless, the demand of the Bolsheviks, addressed to the Mensheviks and the SRs: “Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power into your own hands!” had for the masses tremendous educational significance. The obstinate unwillingness of the Mensheviks and SRs to take power, so dramatically exposed during the July Days, definitely doomed them before mass opinion and prepared the victory of the Bolsheviks.”
(ibid)
The Workers' Government is not, therefore, to be confused with the reformist connotation that the left reformists and Stalinists have placed upon it, as essentially just as Popular Front Government, in which it amounts to merely a parliamentary alliance of these parties, in which, again, the interests of the workers and poor peasants are subordinated to the interests of the bourgeoisie, simply in order to obtain an electoral majority in parliament.
“The slogan, “workers’ and farmers’ government,” is thus acceptable to us only in the sense that it had in 1917 with the Bolsheviks, i.e., as an anti-bourgeois and anti-capitalist slogan. but in no case in that “democratic” sense which later the epigones gave it, transforming it from a bridge to Socialist revolution into the chief barrier upon its path. ”
This reformist connotation is what was seen in the Popular Fronts in China in 1927, in France in 1934, Spain in 1936, etc., as well as in Chile in 1973. In each case, the interests of workers engaged in revolutionary struggles are subordinated to the interests of the bourgeoisie; the workers struggles are themselves demobilised in exchange, at best, for minor concessions, and, at a time of its choosing, the bourgeoisie breaks the alliance, and turns its fire on the workers and their representatives.
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