The
Communist International (Comintern), the international organization created by the
Soviet Communist Party in the wake of the 1917
Bolshevik Revolution, went through a number of ideological strategies to advance
proletarian revolution. Its
1922 congress called for a "
United Front" (the "Second Period") after it became clear that proletarian revolution would not imminently sweep aside
capitalism in the rest of the world: the minority of
communist revolutionary workers would join with workers outside the communist parties against the bourgeoisie. This was followed by the "
Third Period" starting in mid-1928, which called for militant policies to take advantage of the economic crises of capitalism, with no need for coalitions with non-communists. As the
Nazi Party came to power in 1933 in
Germany and eliminated the powerful German communist movement, it became clear that
fascism was the main enemy, and that opposition to it was disorganized and divided. The reorientation was formalised at the Comintern's Seventh Congress in July 1935 and consummated with the proclamation of a "People's Front Against Fascism and War". Communist parties were now instructed to form broad alliances with all antifascist parties with the aim of securing social advance at home as well as a military alliance with the Soviet Union to isolate the fascist dictatorships. The resulting "popular fronts" succeeded in forming governments in France, Spain, and Chile, but not elsewhere.
France French politics saw the collapse of a leftist government coalition
of social-democrats and left-liberal republicans, followed by
far-right riots which brought to power an
autocratic right-wing government. With a slide toward
authoritarianism looming, previously peaceful socialists were now more inclined to street protests, and previously doctrinaire communists more willing to co-operate with other antifascists in Parliament. In June 1934,
Léon Blum's socialist
French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) signed a pact of united action with the
French Communist Party. By October, the Communist Party began to suggest that republican parties opposed to the nationalist government might also be included, and strengthened this the next July after the French government
tilted even further to the right. In May 1935, France and the Soviet Union signed a
defensive military alliance, and in August 1935, the
7th World Congress of the Comintern officially endorsed the Popular Front strategy. In the
elections of May 1936, the Popular Front won a majority of parliamentary seats (378 deputies against 220), and Blum formed a government.
United States campaign headquarters in
the Bronx, New York during the
1937 elections, displaying candidates of the CPUSA and
American Labor Party side by side The
Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) had been quite hostile to the New Deal until 1935, but it suddenly reversed its position. After attempting a joint Socialist-Communist ticket with
Norman Thomas's
Socialist Party of America in the
1936 presidential election, which the Socialists rejected, the communists also then offered support to
Franklin D. Roosevelt's
New Deal. The Popular Front saw the Communist Party taking a very patriotic and populist line, later called
Browderism. of the 20th Century." The Popular Front has been summarized by historian Kermit McKenzie as: McKenzie characterized this as a mere tactical expedient, without changing the ultimate goal of overthrowing capitalism through revolution under the Communist Party.
California , featuring the United Labor ticket, October 14, 1935 At a meeting of the
American League Against War and Fascism in
San Francisco on April 29, 1935,
Samuel Adams Darcy, leader of the CPUSA's California district, called for a "United Labor party" composed of "Communists, Socialists,
EPIC followers and other Liberals" to oppose anti-labor legislation. Less than a month later, at the annual convention of the
End Poverty in California (EPIC) movement, delegate
Ben Legere introduced a motion to build a popular front of "EPICs, Socialists, Communists,
Laborites, Utopians,
Townsendites and
Technocrats... to oppose oppressive legislation, war, and fascism."
Upton Sinclair, the leader of the movement, expressed his opposition to the plan, and it was voted down. On July 19, at a conference held at the
Building Trades Temple in San Francisco, the United Labor Party was founded. It brought together 37 organizations, including the Communist Party, a faction of the EPIC movement, 16 Democratic clubs and 13
union locals. Eugene Dietrich of the
International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) was elected chairman and Legere was elected secretary. At the party's second conference held on August 31, San Francisco
Newspaper Guild president Redfern Mason was nominated for
mayor in the
upcoming election. The party's slate was finalized at a ratification convention on September 22; candidates nominated included Legere for
sheriff and
Anita Whitney for the
Board of Supervisors. The party boasted support from 35 labor unions representing over 60,000 workers, as well as high-profile figures such as state assemblyman
William Moseley Jones, ILA organizer
Harry Bridges, and
Thomas Mooney. This support evidently didn't carry over into the November election; the United Labor ticket was defeated in a landslide, with Mason earning only 14,267 votes (less than 8%).
End of popular fronts The period suddenly came to an end with another abrupt reversal of Soviet and Communist policy, when the Soviet Union signed the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany in August 1939, dividing
Central and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, and leading to the
Soviet takeover of the Baltic Republics and
Finland. Comintern parties then turned from a policy of
anti-fascism to one of advocating peace with Germany, maintaining that
World War II was not a fight against Nazi aggression, but "the Second Imperialist War" in which workers had no stake. Many party members quit the party in disgust, but many communists in France and other countries refused to enlist in their countries' forces until June 1941, when
Germany invaded the Soviet Union and the Communist line reversed yet again.
Critics and defenders of policy Leon Trotsky and his far-left supporters roundly criticised the coalition strategy. Trotsky believed that only
united fronts could ultimately be progressive, and that popular fronts were useless because they included fundamentally hostile liberal bourgeois forces. Trotsky argued that in popular fronts, working-class independence is compromised and their demands are reduced to a bare minimum. That view is still common to most
Trotskyist groups.
Left communist groups came to oppose popular fronts as well as united fronts. In 1977, the
eurocommunist leader
Santiago Carrillo offered a positive assessment of the Popular Front. He argued that in Spain, despite the passionate excesses of civil war, the period of coalition government in Republican areas "contained in embryo the conception of an advance to socialism with democracy, with a multi-party system, parliament, and liberty for the opposition". Carrillo, however criticised the Communist International for not taking the Popular Front strategy far enough, especially since French communists were restricted to supporting Blum's government from without, rather than becoming full coalition partners. ==Soviet bloc==