Wellred Books’ latest title Democracy, Bonapartism & Fascism: Class Struggle in the 1930s is now available for preorder! We publish below the introduction, written by Niklas Albin Svensson, which explains the invaluable theoretical lessons of this collection of writings by Leon Trotsky and Ted Grant.
This introduction looks at the situation in France and Germany in the 1930s, explaining that far from being inevitable, the coming to power of fascism in Europe was a result of the failures of the leadership of the working class. It ends by highlighting the purpose of this collection: to learn the real lessons of the rise of fascism and Bonapartism, and to arm communists today with the method necessary to analyse changing political conditions in the turbulent period through which we are living.
The 1930s was one of the most tumultuous decades in human history. The world was shaken in a series of convulsions, starting with the Wall Street Crash and ending in the horrors of the Second World War.
Parallels are frequently drawn between the crisis of that time and this third decade of the twenty-first century. The most obvious is the economic crisis, which has plagued the world since 2007-08. There’s a crisis in international relations, with a major conflict taking place between the main imperialist powers. Finally, of course, there’s the sharpness of the class antagonisms, which, in the case of the 1930s, led to the regimes of Adolf Hitler in Germany, Benito Mussolini in Italy, Francisco Franco in Spain and Philippe Pétain in France etc.
Historical parallels are useful, but insufficient, to understand the new elements in the situation today. This can then frequently lead to exaggerations and mistaken tactics. It has led to the policy of ‘lesser-evilism’, giving the workers’ leaders – whether trade unions or political parties – an excuse to capitulate before the ruling class.
Not only do they frequently exaggerate the strength of the enemy, but they also fail to look at the other side of the coin. The massive revolutionary potential that existed in the past, and that is even greater today, is to them a closed book.
The leaders of the labour movement are cynically exploiting the natural revulsion of many youth and working class people against divisive reactionary parties, in order to drag them into supporting the so-called ‘lesser evil’. With the excuse of fighting the ‘danger of fascism’, an utterly false perspective, they have supported draconian attacks on the working class as well as the ‘middle class’, which they so often claim to want to win.
In the mistaken policy of the workers’ leaders and the petty-bourgeois left, we find perhaps the clearest possible parallels with the past. The popular fronts of the 1930s have had many modern echoes, and just like in the past, their only achievements is to tie the working class organisations to the stinking corpse of liberalism.
What the workers’ movement needs is a clear-sighted strategy, which is based on a sober analysis of phenomena and what they represent. The texts contained in this volume are therefore, not just of historical interest, but are of vital importance in training a new generation of communists, if they are to succeed where their predecessors failed.
For Marxists, there are valuable lessons to be learnt from this period, but in drawing historical parallels we must always be careful. History never repeats itself exactly in the same way, and we will therefore not find in it exact analogies which we can use as a blueprint for our tactics today. In fact, one of the important threads running through the present volume is precisely the need, not to attempt to find in the texts of the past a formula, but to understand the method that the authors applied.
Leon Trotsky was the most acute observer of this period, and his writings are second to none. After Lenin’s death, it was left to Trotsky to carry on the legacy of Marxism. This was, on the one hand, the theoretical legacy left by Marx, Engels and Lenin, and on the other hand, the struggles of the revolutionary movement in Russia, including the successful seizing of power in October 1917.
In these texts, Trotsky carefully analyses the events as they are taking place and points the way forward. For us to learn from them, it is insufficient just to learn by rote the conclusions that he drew. It is necessary to understand how he draws out the analysis from events, how he analyses the consciousness of different layers in society and how he arrives from that to a conclusion about the correct tactics and slogans for the communists.
The whole period was one of revolution and counter-revolution and Trotsky never failed to see the connection between the two: how, under the right circumstances, counter-revolutionary coups would push the working class in a revolutionary direction; and how correct tactics on behalf of the leadership of the working class could lead from defensive action to offensive.
It was clear to him that only the seizure of power by the proletariat, led by a party, could defeat reaction. Therefore, the struggle against fascism and reaction was always intimately linked to the struggle to win the confidence of the working class and the petty bourgeoisie.
But to do that one needed to start from a concrete and careful analysis of things as they were. Trotsky make this point repeatedly when criticising the policy of the Communist International[1] in the article Bonapartism and Fascism:
“The vast practical importance of a correct theoretical orientation is most strikingly manifested in a period of acute social conflict of rapid political shifts, of abrupt changes in the situation… It is in just such periods that all sorts of transitional, intermediate situations and combinations arise, as a matter of necessity, which upset the customary patterns and doubly require a sustained theoretical attention. In a word, if in the pacific and ‘organic’ period (before the war) one could still live on the revenue from a few ready-made abstractions, in our time each new event forcefully brings home the most important law of the dialectic: The truth is always concrete.”
Trotsky’s method of analysing things concretely stood in stark contrast to the Communist International, which, under the leadership of Nikolai Bukharin and Joseph Stalin, adopted a completely schematic approach. In 1926, Bukharin drew up a schema for a defensive struggle of the then ‘second period’ which would then turn into the offensive in a ‘third period’.
This completely absurd characterisation of ‘periods’ freed the national sections of any need to concretely analyse the real conditions on the ground and the consciousness of different layers, because the answers were already provided by the general characterisation of the period.
The zig-zagging of the Comintern, between the opportunism of the ‘second period’ and the ultra-leftism of the ‘third period’ found a theoretical justification in this schema. But one can not derive slogans and tactics simply from the general characterisation of the period.
If one were to use a military analogy, it would be like insisting that the army is now in an offensive posture, which is going to last for some years, and this would mean that there can be no digging of trenches, no retreats, but only advance, and it has to be on the entire front. This on the basis that the conditions in general are suitable for an advance, while at the same time not considering the state of your troops, not considering the terrain, not considering the strength and weaknesses of different units, etc.
Such an approach would be a sure way of guaranteeing defeat. Indeed, the Comintern managed to do precisely that. The history of the 1930s and its ending in the horrors of the Second World War is the history of the failures of the Communist International – the organisation that was meant to lead the proletariat internationally to victory.
Germany and the collapse of the Weimar Republic
If one looks at each stage of this process, this becomes clear. In a sense, the perspectives of the Communist International of the ‘third period’ seemed to be confirmed by events. The policy was launched at the February 1928 plenum of the ECCI (the Executive Committee of the Communist International). This was confirmed at the Sixth Congress of the Communist International six months later.
One year after that, October 1929, the Wall Street Crash happened. It turned everything upside down. The temporary boom (from 1921-29) had stabilised the political situation, but now that all went out the window. The US was dragged into the crisis, and in a big way. This had important consequences for Germany.
Industries were idle, mass employment emerged. Crucially, heavily indebted farmers were facing ruin with banks forcing sales of farms. Hitler found fertile soil in the countryside in this period for his demagogy against the banks and finance capital.
The crisis led in March 1930 to the fall of the Social Democratic government of Herman Müller. Heinrich Brüning, of the Catholic Centre Party, became Chancellor.
The new government proceeded to attempt to resolve the crisis by a savage assault on wages, but this was rejected by the Reichstag. An attempt to pass it using President Paul von Hindenburg’s decree powers also failed. This left no option but to dissolve the Reichstag and call new elections.
Behind the scenes, Major General Kurt von Schleicher [3] was operating to undermine parliamentary rule – and particularly the SPD – using Hindenburg’s powers. Around him was a military clique who saw parliament, and ‘Marxism’, as an obstacle to German recovery.
The outcome of the elections did little to solve the problems of the German bourgeoisie. Compared to 1928, the Nazi Party went from 12 seats to 107 and became the second-largest party, the Communist Party went from 54 to 77 seats, becoming the third largest.
The new political situation was even more unstable than the previous one. This is the point at which the articles in this volume begin, with Trotsky’s ‘The Turn in the Communist International and the Situation in Germany’.
In the article, Trotsky lays out the danger posed by fascism in Germany. He criticises the Communist Party for its ultra-left stance towards the SPD. He did this not to support the Social Democrats who were playing a treacherous role, but because the Communist Party was closing the door to the millions of workers who still supported Social Democracy.
He criticises the leaders of the party for underestimating the danger of fascism, and because they were underestimating the difficulties that lay on the road to the revolution:
“Under the impact of the crisis, the petty bourgeoisie swung, not in the direction of the proletarian revolution, but in the direction of the most extreme imperialist reaction, pulling behind it considerable sections of the proletariat.”[4]
This posed a mortal threat to the workers’ movement and required the skilful use of the tactic of the united front. What was needed was to offer fighting agreements to the Social-Democratic workers, not shrill denunciations.
But shrillness was precisely what issued forth from the Communist leadership, who justified their position pointing to the role that the Social-Democratic leaders were playing. Particular bitterness was caused by the massacre of Communists on 1 May 1929, which became known as ‘Blutmai’. This was carried out by the police under the leadership of SPD police chiefs Karl Zörgiebel and Albert Grzesinski.
Yet, even such treacherous actions should not have determined the policy of the Communist Party. What was needed was a level-headed policy to win the confidence of the social-democratic workers, and thereby pull them away from their treacherous leaders. And this, the Communist Party completely failed to put forward.
The economic situation turned from bad to worse. In May 1931, the Creditanstalt bank collapsed in Vienna, which had a ripple effect across the continent. Then in July, Germany’s biggest bank, Danat, collapsed. By February 1932, there were six million unemployed. The situation was dire.
The Social-Democratic policy in these circumstances was to prop up the liberals in order, as they argued it, to keep the fascists out. They had supported the new ministry of Brüning which was governing with the use of Hindenburg’s presidential decrees, and in the election of April 1932, they supported Hindenburg as the only means of defeating Hitler. The same Hindenburg who less than a year later would hand the Chancellorship to Hitler.
Von Papen’s coup
After winning the elections, Hindenburg and the military clique around him moved against Brüning. They replaced him with Franz von Papen.
Von Papen began by lifting the ban on the Nazi street gangs, the SA and the SS, understanding that they would unleash a wave of violence. Schleicher was preparing a move against the Social-Democratic government of the Free State of Prussia, which at the time consisted of over 62 per cent of German territory and 61 per cent of the population. He got a commitment from the Social-Democratic unions not to participate in a general strike in its defence, in return for some promises.
On 17 July, seven thousand SA men staged a provocation with a march through Altona, a Jewish working class suburb of Hamburg. The Communist Youth, supported by local workers, attempted to block the march. In the clashes that followed the police shot and killed eighteen people, two of whom were SA men.
Papen used the event as a pretext to remove the Prussian government three days later. According to Papen, they had failed to maintain ‘order’. In one swoop, the military clique around Hindenburg had thus removed the main bastion of the SPD, and the SPD barely whimpered in response.
At the end of July came new parliamentary elections, where Hitler’s Nazi Party (NSDAP) got 37 per cent of the vote, well ahead of the SPD. Again, the Communists made small steps forward. The combined vote of the workers’ parties was now 35 per cent, a small decrease on the previous election, but only five points lower than 1928.
Numerically, the workers’ parties had retained the bulk of their support, and they both had paramilitary organisations numbering hundreds of thousands. To that should be added the trade unions who remained a massive force. The drop in the overall support for the working class parties was a sign of demoralisation as neither party could offer a way forward.
The ‘third period’ madness
The programme of the SPD was nothing short of a capitulation to the bourgeoisie. Yet the communists, who ought to have provided an alternative, failed to do so. The KPD was pursuing an ultra-left policy, declaring that society was already fascist, and that the SPD was ‘social fascist’. Because of this policy they were unable to win over the rank-and-file social-democratic workers to communism. Trotsky pointed this out:
“The workers cannot simply leave the Social Democracy, in spite of all the crimes of that party; they must be able to replace it by another party. Meanwhile the German Communist Party, in the person of its leaders, has for the past nine years done everything in its power to repel the masses or at least prevent them from rallying around the Communist Party.”[6]
In 1931, six months before Papen’s coup, at the height of their ultra-left madness, the KPD joined forces with the reactionary Stahlhelm – an armed veterans organisation tied to the monarchist German National People’s Party (DNVP) – and the Nazis, attempting to oust the Prussian SPD government in a referendum. They also made local agreements with the SA and other reactionary outfits to break up Social-Democratic meetings.
As Trotsky points out, this tactic was doing the Social-Democratic leaders a huge favour. It was very easy for them to portray the Communists and the Nazis as being the same.
It is in this frenzied atmosphere that Trotsky writes his pamphlet Germany: The Only Road. It was one of a series of articles directed at the German Communist movement, warning them of the impending disaster. Here he again takes up the problems with the schematic approach that the Communist Party, and its leader, Ernst Thälmann, had taken in analysing the situation, and the political mistakes that flowed from it:
“By disregarding the social and political distinctions between Bonapartism, that is, the regime of ‘civil peace’ resting upon military-police dictatorship, and fascism, that is, the regime of open civil war against the proletariat, Thälmann deprives himself in advance of the possibility of understanding what is taking place before his very eyes. If Papen’s cabinet is a fascist cabinet then what fascist ‘danger’ is he talking about?”
In other words, by insisting on calling Brüning, Papen and the SPD all fascist, and declaring that Germany was already in a fascist regime, they helped disarm the proletariat before the genuine fascist threat coming from Hitler.
Instead, Trotsky carefully analyses the then-regime of Papen and what it reflected. He points out that the crisis was bringing about the need for the ruling class to do away with the concessions granted in the wake of the German Revolution of 1918. The Reichstag and the labour organisations were an obstacle to that.
This was another reason why the labelling of the Social Democrats as ‘social fascist’ was mistaken. Not because they did not prepare the way for fascism, but because on that road, they, and particularly the millions of workers behind them, would inevitably enter into conflict with the fascists.
The policy of the Communists should therefore have been to seek a united front with the Social Democrats against the fascists. That is, they should have proposed to the Social Democratic Party and trade union leaders a united struggle against the Nazis on a programme of specific demands. If the proposal were accepted, it would have enabled a united struggle, strengthening the proletariat by raising its self-confidence, and if the leaders refused, the communists would have gained influence over the social democratic workers who would have seen them as willing to take up the necessary struggle. However, this is not what the Communist Party leaders did:
“The Stalinist bureaucracy acts in the opposite manner: it not only rejects fighting agreements, but still worse, it maliciously destroys those agreements which arise from below. At the same time, it proposes to the Social Democratic deputies a parliamentary accord. This means that at the moment of danger it declares its own ultraleftist theory and praxis to be worthless; yet it is replaced not with the policy of revolutionary Marxism but with an unprincipled parliamentary combination in the spirit of the ‘lesser evil’.”
After the coup of 20 July, when it became increasingly obvious in which direction things were moving, the Communist Party shifted their position, but the way they did it, as Trotsky says, was with “an unprincipled parliamentary combination”. Foreshadowing the popular front policy of 1934, they were supporting parliamentary coalitions including the SPD and the Centre Party.
In other words, whilst refusing an agreement for a united struggle of the whole working class on the streets, in the factories, etc., the Communist Party joined with the Social Democrats and one of the liberal bourgeois parties in a bloc in parliament. Thus what you got was not a united workers’ front, but a cross-class parliamentary bloc.
On the eve of 20 July, the Communist Party of Germany issued an appeal to the German trade union movement for joint action in defence of proletarian interests. Although technically correct, coming after four years of ultra-left madness, and with no explanation, it could only have the effect of exposing the leadership’s previous policy and inconsistency, rather than achieving the stated aim.
To top it off, they maintained their opposition to negotiations with the social democratic leaders for united action. They weren’t honest and open with the working class. They felt it too important to protect the prestige of the party and its leaders. So, they resorted to behind-the-scenes negotiations and combinations, including with pacifists and other petty-bourgeois elements. For example, they organised the World Congress Against War which was held in August 1932 and led to the formation of the World Committee Against War and Fascism, which was led by people like Albert Einstein, Upton Sinclair and Bertrand Russell.
Once again, the Communist International was jumping from one mistake to the opposite mistake. Yet this latest turn was not to have any impact before it was overtaken by events, as Trotsky had suggested.
Hindenburg hands power to Hitler
In September 1932, the Reichstag was once again dissolved after Papen had been defeated in a confidence vote. New elections were held on 6 November, which changed little in the parliamentary equation. Worryingly, from the point of view of the Bonapartist clique around Schleicher, the NSDAP was entering into crisis, as money had run out and the party had just lost two million votes in the elections, whilst the Communist Party was continuing to gain ground.
Schleicher had lost confidence in Papen and manoeuvred to get him out, taking over as Chancellor on 3 December. Schleicher insisted that it was necessary to prevent the collapse of the NSDAP. He wanted to bring them into government, but not with the position of Chancellor, which Hitler was demanding. Instead, Schleicher negotiated with a leading Nazi deputy and SA commander, Gregor Strasser, to overcome Hitler’s opposition. However, Hitler managed to prevent the manoeuvre.
This sealed Schleicher’s fate. Von Papen manoeuvred with Hindenburg (the ‘lesser evil’) to install Hitler as chancellor. The army, seeing Hitler as the only guarantee for stability, supported this move. On 30 January, Hitler was installed as Chancellor and the Reichstag was dissolved.
The terror campaign intensified on the streets. A few days before the new elections, Hitler and his new allies found the excuse they were looking for. The Reichstag was set on fire on the night of 27 February. The deed was blamed on the Communist Party, which was banned, and democratic rights were suspended. The election was a farce, the Communist Party vote was reduced by one million and Hitler managed to pick up 44 per cent of the vote.
Trotsky wrote his article ‘The Tragedy of the German Proletariat’ after this ‘election’. He drew the balance sheet of the past decade of the Communist International in a damning verdict:
“Since 1923, that is, since the beginning of the struggle against the Left Opposition, the Stalinist leadership, although indirectly, assisted the Social Democracy with all its strength to derail, to befuddle, to enfeeble the German proletariat: it restrained and hindered the workers when the conditions dictated a courageous revolutionary offensive; it proclaimed the approach of the revolutionary situation when it had already passed; it worked up agreements with petty-bourgeois phrasemongers and windbags; it limped impotently at the tail of the Social Democracy under cover of the policy of the united front; it proclaimed the “third period” and the struggle for the conquest of the streets under conditions of political ebb and the weakness of the Communist Party; it replaced the serious struggle by leaps, adventures or parades; it isolated the Communists from the mass trade unions; it identified the Social Democracy with fascism and rejected the united front with the mass workers’ organisations in face of the aggressive bands of the National Socialists; it sabotaged the slightest initiative for the united front for local defence, at the same time it systematically deceived the workers as to the real relationship of forces, distorted the facts, passed off friends as enemies and enemies as friends – and drew the noose tighter and tighter around the neck of the party, not permitting it to breathe freely any longer, nor to speak, nor to think.” [9]
He continued:
“Not a single national congress, no international congress, nor even a plenum of the ECCI; no preparation in the press of the party, no analysis of the policy of the past.”[10]
Indeed, the Communist International had proved itself incapable of learning, of absorbing the lessons of past struggles and had transformed itself into an obedient tool of the Moscow bureaucracy In so doing, it had bound the hands behind the back of the international proletariat. It had now led to an absolute disaster.
After the election, the Communist deputies were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. The SPD deputies were not far behind. On 23 March, the enabling act was passed, giving the government the right to pass laws without Parliament. In other words, it effectively abolished Parliament.
The Social-Democratic unions declared their ‘neutrality’ and promised to work with the Nazis. Such weakness, which these leaders had shown time and time again, only invited aggression. On 2 May, after a massive May Day rally organised by the NSDAP, all trade union offices were attacked and taken over. In the following months, hundreds of thousands of communists, social-democrats and trade unionists were sent to the concentration camps. The proud German labour movement had been annihilated without a fight.
‘The Tragedy of the German Proletariat’ was Trotsky’s balance sheet of the tactics and strategy of the Communist Party and Social Democracy, and the article ‘What is National Socialism?’ drew theoretical conclusions about the nature of the new regime.
Trotsky puts particular focus on the role that the petty bourgeoisie played in the rise of Hitler, but, he pointed out, this layer handed power to the very same people they had rebelled against:
“German fascism, like Italian fascism, raised itself to power on the backs of the petty bourgeoisie, which it turned into a battering ram against the organisations of the working class and the institutions of democracy. But fascism in power is least of all the rule of the petty bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it is the most ruthless dictatorship of monopoly capital. Mussolini is right: the middle classes are incapable of independent policies.”
Since the petty bourgeoisie was incapable of playing an independent role, they wound up handing power back to the big bourgeoisie. Using the Gestapo secret police, in The Night of the Long Knives, between 30 June and 2 July 1934, Hitler arrested and executed the leaders of the SA. This eliminated a threat to his alliance with the army and German finance capital. Thus the small farmers, shopkeepers etc., having helped to butcher the working class, now brought to power a regime of monopoly capital.
The collapse of the French Third Republic
In 1934, after the disastrous defeat of the German working class, the focus of the advanced workers of Europe shifted away from Germany and towards France, where on 6 February, gangs of fascists and monarchists had organised a provocation, leading to riots and clashes with the police in which 2,000 people were injured and seventeen killed.
These riots were followed by a response from the working class organisations: a massive demonstration on 9 February followed by a general strike three days later. The divide between the Socialist and the Communist Party was pushed to the side, as both their trade union confederations and their parties were united in action on the day.
The actions of the working class pushed back the fascists, but it resolved nothing. Instead the Gaston Doumergue regime rose to power, balanced, as Trotsky points out, between the two. The bourgeoisie attempted to find a new stability in an outsider, the retired previous president Doumergue, backed by two generals. The new government attempted to restore order, but it did not last long.
The article ‘Bonapartism and Fascism’, written in July 1934, tackles the theoretical questions raised by the period. Trotsky explains what the nature of the new regime in France was:
“A government which raises itself above the nation is not, however, suspended in air. The true axis of the present government passes through the police, the bureaucracy, the military clique. It is a military-police dictatorship with which we are confronted, barely concealed with the decorations of parliamentarism. But a government of the sabre as the judge arbiter of the nation – that’s just what Bonapartism is.”[12]
Trotsky pointed out precisely how the new government, in spite of nominally being based in parliament, in reality had raised itself above it. He makes this important theoretical point about the nature of both Bonapartism and democracy:
“The strength of finance capital does not reside in its ability to establish a government of any kind and at any time, according to its wish; it does not possess this faculty. Its strength resides in the fact that every non-proletarian government is forced to serve finance capital; or better yet, that finance capital possesses the possibility of substituting for each one of its systems of domination that decays, another system corresponding better to the changed conditions. However, the passage from one system to another signifies the political crisis which, with the concourse of the activity of the revolutionary proletariat may be transformed into a social danger to the bourgeoisie. The passage of parliamentary democracy to Bonapartism itself was accompanied in France by an effervescence of civil war. The perspective of the passage from Bonapartism to fascism is pregnant with infinitely more formidable disturbances and consequently also revolutionary possibilities.”
The new regime, being based on the unsteady equilibrium between fascists and the workers, was very weak, and it was to end in a revolutionary movement two years later.
As Trotsky was writing his article ‘Whither France?’ in November 1934, Doumergue resigned and was replaced by Flandin, who was not long after replaced by Bouisson, then Laval, then Sarraut – five governments in two years.
The reason for the instability of the governments was the collapse of the Radicals, the political centre. Their political base, the petty bourgeoisie, was being crushed by the crisis and became politically restless.
Society was in a crisis and it needed to be resolved either one way or another:
“The social crisis in its political expression is the crisis of power. The old master of society is bankrupt. A new master is needed.”
Who was that master to be? Was it to be the fascists or the working class? That was the real question. The petty bourgeoisie needed to be won over to the proletariat, or they would be won over by the fascists:
“The petty bourgeoisie will reject the demagogy of fascism only if it puts its faith in the reality of another road. That other road is the road of proletarian revolution.”
Now, however, the policy of the Communist International had shifted from the ultra-left period to opportunism. It now aligned its policy with the failed policy of social democracy; in other words, an alliance with the collapsing liberal Radicals, to try to shore them up.
This was preparing a very similar disaster to that of Germany, and the very opposite of what was needed:
“The working-class party must occupy itself not with a hopeless effort to save the party of the bankrupts. It must, on the contrary, with all its strength, accelerate the process of liberation of the masses from Radical influence.”
The Popular Front
Of course, the small forces of the Left Opposition in France, the Trotskyists, were unable to affect events. The Communist Party and the Socialist Party joined with the Radicals in a Popular Front in 1935, in time for the elections the next year.
The elections of May 1936 produced a wave of enthusiasm. Already in March, Trotsky was writing ‘France at the Turning Point’. He took up again the question of the Popular Front. He again pointed out that the crisis of capitalism could not be resolved by attempting to prop up the status quo. The leaders of the workers in France were preparing another disaster:
“The People’s Front [Popular Front], the conspiracy between the labour bureaucracy and the worst political exploiters of the middle classes [the Radicals] is capable only of killing the faith of the masses in the revolutionary road and of driving them into the arms of the fascist counter-revolution.”
Precisely because it was a cross-class alliance, it was bound to break down at the first impact of events:
“The People’s Front will fall to pieces at the first serious test, and deep fissures will open up in all of its component sections. The policy of the People’s Front is the policy of betrayal.”
Indeed, these words were to prove prophetic. The victory of the Popular Front led to a massive strike wave, starting on 26 May. It became a general strike involving more than a million workers and factory occupations.
But this was not suited to the new alignment on the French left. The line was that one mustn’t upset the coalition, and naturally the bourgeois Radicals were not at all happy about this turn of events:
“The leading centres of the working-class organisations, including those of the Communist Party, have been caught unawares. They are afraid, above all, lest the strike spoil all their blueprints.”
In order to preserve the Popular Front, the movement needed to be betrayed. Much like what was to happen thirty years later in May 1968, a massive revolutionary movement that could have taken power and abolished capitalism, was betrayed for lofty promises from the bourgeoisie.
An agreement was signed, which included major concessions to the workers. After all, when their back is against the wall, the bourgeoisie is willing to make all kinds of concessions, in order to save the system as a whole. However, far from creating a lasting basis on which to get further concessions, once the movement has died down, the bourgeoisie will exact their revenge.
Trotsky warned of the consequences:
“The very essence of the matter lies in the fact that the reforms, very meagre as they are in substance, upon which the capitalists and the leaders of the labour organisations agreed in June, are not viable, because they are already beyond the powers of declining capitalism, taken as a whole.”[21]
The big bourgeois of course could weather the crisis, with their massive financial reserves and monopoly power, and the cost would be borne by the small and medium producers. The consequences of the political support for the Popular Front were not hard to work out.
“‘Do not expect miracles from us!’, the pedants in power keep repeating. But the gist of the matter lies precisely in the fact that without ‘miracles’, without heroic decisions, without a complete overturn in property relations – without the concentration of the banking system, of the basic branches of industry and of foreign trade in the hands of the state – there is no salvation for the petty bourgeoisie of the city and country.”[22]
The betrayal of the strikes and the capitulation to the Radicals spelled the end of the movement. The Popular Front was wound up in 1938, after having moved to the right. From then on, each new government represented a further move to the right, until the French bourgeoisie could take their revenge with the capitulation to Hitler in 1940.
The Second World War and its aftermath
In his last article, ‘Bonapartism, Fascism and War’, Trotsky summarises how this disaster took place. The betrayal that was the Popular Front, and the campaign for a block with ‘democracy’ against Hitler, was followed by another zig-zag. Stalin entered into an alliance with Hitler through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939. The treaty promised Soviet non-aggression, and carved Eastern Europe up into spheres of influence. This disoriented the ranks of the party, but also had further, more devastating, consequences:
“The French working class proved caught unaware. The war provoked a terrible disorientation and the mood of passive defeatism, or to put it more correctly, the indifferentism of an impasse. From this web of circumstances arose first the unprecedented military catastrophe and then the despicable Pétain regime.”
Trotsky referred to the new regime of reactionary French general Philippe Pétain as ‘senile Bonapartism’, as this eighty-year-old symbolically represented the best that French capitalism could offer.
In the article, he summarised the experiences of the previous decade. He describes how under pressure of the crisis: “the ‘fuses’ of democracy ‘blow out’. Hence the short-circuits of dictatorship.”
The important question to understand is that parliamentary democracy is based on the ability of the ruling class to buy off at least a layer of the working class to keep the class struggle in check. When it loses that ability, the class struggle eventually reaches a point at which the fuses ‘blow out’. Should the workers in such a situation fail to take power, should the revolution be defeated, then Bonapartism and dictatorship follows.
He emphasised that the decisive point in the struggle against fascism and Bonapartism was the question of the working class taking power. Fascism wasn’t simply a policy of the ruling class that they picked up and imposed at will, nor was it a new economic system that had replaced capitalism. On the contrary, it was a consequence of the ruling class’ inability to govern society in the way it used to.
Trotsky was assassinated in August 1940, and the Trotskyists who attempted to take up the leadership of the Fourth International after his death, unfortunately, made mistake after mistake.
One of these mistakes was resurrecting the old schematism of Bukharin and Stalin, of course with some differences. As the Second World War was coming to an end, one of the leaders, Pierre Frank, declared that Bonapartism was now in place everywhere. So, whereas the Stalinists had declared that all regimes had become fascist as a result of the crisis in 1928-31, now Frank declared that since 1934 all regimes in France had been Bonapartist. This included the Popular Front government, and Frank claimed the same was true for the rest of Europe, except Britain where the regime was on the cusp of becoming Bonapartist.
Starting from the general statement on the period, that bourgeois democracy had exhausted its role, Frank declared in March 1946 that “we do not generally have in Europe at the present time democratic regimes, because there is literally no place for them”.
Almost alone in the Fourth International, Ted Grant and the leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) argued against the leadership of the International, that a new world situation was unfolding. One that could not have been envisaged in 1938-40. Ted Grant was to become the founder of the forces that have developed into the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI) today.
In 1946, he wrote in reply to the first part of Frank’s article that:
“Each stage must be examined concretely by the vanguard who could thus understand and interpret events and draw the correct practical conclusions for activity therefrom.”[25]
He quoted Trotsky’s ‘Bonapartism and Fascism’ about ready-made abstractions (see above) and said that some of the cadres of the International, like Frank, were precisely trying to live off of ready-made abstractions. They were drawing slogans and categories from the general position of capitalism, rather than proceeding from the concrete.
There was another wave of intense class struggle at the end of the Second World War, combined with strong partisan movements in Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia and a big movement in France. All these movements, with the exception of Yugoslavia, were diverted down the path of the bourgeois-democratic revolution by the Stalinists. In the same period, the Labour Party came to power in Britain with a landslide electoral victory, and it not only got into power, but was actually able to implement many of the reforms on which it had been elected.
Starting from reality as it was developing, Ted Grant and the British RCP drew the conclusion that what Europe was facing was not Bonapartism in general, but counter-revolution in a democratic form. That is, the movement had been betrayed and diverted towards stabilising a bourgeois-democratic regime by the Communist Parties and Social Democracy. Time was to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ted Grant was correct.
The final text in this collection is Ted Grant’s pamphlet ‘The Menace of Fascism’. In this pamphlet, Grant summarises the position of the Trotskyists on Bonapartism and fascism, with a particular emphasis on Italy, but he also draws out how the fascists were being used in bourgeois-democratic Britain after the war. He clarifies the methods and the tactics that should be employed, and once again warns against the dangers of Popular Frontism and of appeals to the state:
“Historical experience has shown that it is not possible to legislate fascism out of existence. The very nature of the capitalist state precludes that, for fascism in the nature of things is the naked weapon of capitalist class rule.”
This warning now not only had to be directed to the Social-Democratic, but also the Communist workers. The remnants of the Communist International were now working hand-in-hand with the Social-Democratic leaders to disarm the working class ideologically and preach the virtues of class collaboration and reformism.
Lessons for today
The aim of this collection is not to provide a prescription of measures for the movement – a kind of cookbook of fixed categories and slogans. Rather, the point is to learn the real lessons of the 1930s and the failure of the working class to take power.
Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Pétain did not come to power because of any supposed oratorical skills, or even because of the crisis of capitalism. They came to power because, when the question of power was posed, when the workers had the opportunity to take power, because of the fatal role of their leaders, the workers were unable to seize the opportunity.
As the conditions in the 1930s ripened, and even became over-ripe, Bonapartism, and eventually fascism, stepped in to resolve the question of power in favour of the capitalists.
The key point there, however, is that fascism came to power at the end of a revolutionary process, in which the workers, particularly in Germany, had the opportunity to take power many times. It was the failure to do so that paved the wave for Bonapartism and fascism. In other words: it was the disastrous mistakes of the Social Democratic and Communist leaders that led to Hitler.
The decades that have passed since Trotsky and Ted Grant wrote these texts have produced some important new developments. We once again face a crisis, but the balance of forces has changed. The post-war upswing massively strengthened the working class, leaving the petty-bourgeoisie as a rump and turning the bulk of them into proletarians. The farmers, who played such a key role in the rise of Hitler, are a tiny group in society, as are the small shop keepers. The bulk of teachers, lecturers and civil servants, who formed a privileged layer in the past, have been reduced to the status of workers.
Therefore, the working class today is far stronger than it was in the 1930s. The potential strength of the revolution is thus much greater, and the counter-revolution much weaker. Further, we find ourselves today at an early stage of this process, not at the end, which means the working class will have many opportunities to take power before counter-revolution has a chance to take control of the situation.
However, the leadership of the workers’ organisations, which was already degenerate in the 1930s, has now degenerated to an unprecedented level. The social democrats are in crisis everywhere. The Communist Parties have disappeared or merged with Social Democracy. The trade union leaders have become the worst strike breakers. All of them fight to defend the status quo at a time when it has once again become repugnant to the vast majority of workers and the petty bourgeoisie, in its weakened form. This is the biggest obstacle facing the working class at the present moment.
It will be the task of the coming period to rediscover the militant traditions of the workers’ movement, and in this the ideas of Leon Trotsky and Ted Grant will play a key role.
Niklas Albin Svensson,
London, 21 March 2025
