The contentions regarding the policies of the united front take their origin from such fundamental and inexorable exigencies of the struggle of class against class (in the Marxist and not the bureaucratic sense of these words) that one cannot read the refutations of the Stalinist bureaucracy without a feeling of shame and indignation. It is one thing to keep on explaining, from day to day, the most rudimentary ideas to the most backward and benighted workers or peasants. One can do it without any feeling of exhaustion; for here it is a matter of enlightening fresh strata. But woe to him who is perforce obliged to explain and to prove elementary propositions to people whose brains have been flattened out by the bureaucratic steamroller. What can one do with “leaders” who have no logical arguments at their disposal and who make up for that by referring to the handbook of international epithets? The fundamental propositions of Marxism they parry by one and the same epithet, “counterrevolution!” This word has become inordinately cheapened on the lips of those who have in no manner as yet proved their capacity to achieve a revolution. Still, what about the decisions passed by the first four congresses of the Comintern? Does the Stalinist bureaucracy accept them, or not?

The documents still survive and still preserve their significance to this day. Out of a large number, I have chosen the theses worked out by me, between the Third and Fourth Congresses; they relate to the French Communist Party. They were approved by the Politburo of the CPSU27 and the Executive Committee of the Comintern and were published, in their time, in various foreign Communist publications. Below is reprinted verbatim that part of the theses which is devoted to the formulation and the defense of the policy of the united front:

“… It is perfectly self-evident that the class life of the proletariat is not suspended during this period preparatory to the revolution. Clashes with industrialists, with the bourgeoisie, with the state power, on the initiative of one side or the other, run their due course.

“In these clashes — insofar as they involve the vital interests of the entire working class, or its majority, or this or that section — the working masses sense the need of unity in action. … Any party which mechanically counterposes itself to this need … will unfailingly be condemned in the minds of the workers. …

“… The problem of the united front — despite the fact that a split is inevitable in this epoch between the various political organizations basing themselves on the working class — grows out of the urgent need to secure for the working class the possibility of a united front in the struggle against capitalism.

“For those who do not understand this task, the party is only a propaganda society and not an organization for mass action. …

“If the Communist Party had not broken drastically and irrevocably with the Social Democrats, it would not have become the party of the proletarian revolution. …

“If the Communist Party did not seek for organizational avenues to the end that at every given moment joint, coordinated action between the Communist and the non-Communist (including the Social Democratic) working masses were made possible, it would have thereby laid bare its own incapacity to win over—on the basis of mass action—the majority of the working class. . . .

'After separating the Communists from the reformists it is not enough to fuse the Communists together by means of organizational discipline; it is necessary that this organization should learn how to guide all the collective activities of the proletariat in all spheres of its living struggle.

'This is the second letter of the alphabet of Communism.

'Does the united front extend only to the working masses or does it also include the opportunist leaders?

'The very posing of this question is a product of misunderstanding.

'If we were able simply to unite the working masses around our own banner . . . and skip over the reformist organizations, whether party or trade union, that would of course be the best thing in the world. But then the very question of the united front would not exist in its present form. . . .

'. . . we are, apart from all other considerations, interested in dragging the reformists from their asylums and placing them alongside ourselves before the eyes of the struggling masses. With a correct tactic we stand only to gain from this. A Communist who doubts or fears this resembles a swimmer who has approved the theses on the best method of swimming but dares not plunge into the water. . . .

'In entering into agreements with other organizations, we naturally obligate ourselves to a certain discipline in action. But this discipline cannot be absolute in character. In the event that the reformists begin putting brakes on the struggle to the obvious detriment of the movement and act counter to the situation and the moods of the masses, we as an independent organization always reserve the right to lead the struggle to the end, and this without our temporary semi-allies. . . .

'It is possible to see in this policy a rapprochement with the reformists only from the standpoint of a journalist who believes that he rids himself of reformism by ritualistically criticizing it without ever leaving his editorial office, but who is fearful of clashing with the reformists before the eyes of the working masses and giving the latter an opportunity to appraise the Communist and the reformist on the equal plane of the mass struggle. Behind this seemingly revolutionary fear of 'rapprochement' there really lurks a political passivity which seeks to perpetuate an order of things wherein the Communists and reformists each retain their own rigidly demarcated spheres of influence, their own audiences at meetings, their own press, and all this together creates an illusion of serious political struggle....

“On the question of the united front we see the very same passive and irresolute tendency, but this time masked by verbal irreconcilability. At the very first glance, one is hit between the eyes by the following paradox: the rightist party elements with their centrist and pacifist tendencies, who … come simultaneously to the forefront as the most irreconcilable opponents of the united front. … In contrast, those elements who have … held in the most difficult hours the position of the Third International are today in favor of the tactic of the united front.

“As a matter of fact, the mask of pseudorevolutionary intransigence is now being assumed by the partisans of the dilatory and passive tactic” [Trotsky, The First Five Years of the Communist International, vol. 2, New York and London, 1953, pp. 91–96, 127–128].

Doesn’t it seem as if these lines were written today against Stalin–Manuilsky–Thaelmann–Neumann? Actually, they were written ten years ago, against Frossard, Cachin, Charles Rappoport, Daniel Renoult, and other French opportunists disguising themselves with ultraleftism. We put this question point-blank to the Stalinist bureaucracy: were the theses we quoted “counterrevolutionary” even during that time when they expressed the policies of the Russian Politburo, with Lenin at its head, and when they defined the policy of the Comintern? We warn them duly not to attempt in answer to reply that conditions have changed since that period: the matter does not concern questions of conjuncture; but, as the text itself puts it, of the ABC of Marxism.

And so, ten years ago, the Comintern explained that the gist of the united-front policy was in the following: the Communist Party proves to the masses and their organizations its readiness in action to wage battle in common with them for aims, no matter how modest, so long as they lie on the road of the historical development of the proletariat; the Communist Party in this struggle takes into account the actual condition of the class at each given moment; it turns not only to the masses, but also to those organizations whose leadership is recognized by the masses; it confronts the reformist organizations before the eyes of the masses with the real problems of the class struggle. The policy of the united front hastens the revolutionary development of the class by revealing in the open that the common struggle is undermined not by the disruptive acts of the Communist Party but by the conscious sabotage of the leaders of the Social Democracy. It is absolutely clear that these conceptions could in no sense have become obsolete.

Then how explain the rejection of the policy of the united front by the Comintern? By the miscarriages and the failures of this policy in the past. Were these failures, the causes for which reside not in the policy but in the politicians, examined and analyzed and studied in their time, the German Communist Party would be strategically and tactically excellently equipped for the present situation. But the Stalinist bureaucracy chose to behave like the nearsighted monkey in the fable; after adjusting the spectacles on its tail and licking them to no result, the monkey concluded that they were no good at all and dashed them against a rock. Put it as you please, but the spectacles are not at fault.

The mistakes made in the policy of the united front fall into two categories. In most cases the leading organs of the Communist Party approached the reformists with an offer to join in a common struggle for radical slogans which were alien to the situation and which found no response in the masses. These proposals had the character of blank shots. The masses remained indifferent; the reformist leaders interpreted these proposals of the Communists as a trick to destroy the Social Democracy. In each of these instances only a purely formal, declamatory application of the policy of united front was inaugurated; whereas, by its very nature, it can prove fruitful only on the basis of a realistic appraisal of the situation and of the condition of the masses. The weapon of 'open letters' became outworn from too frequent and hence faulty application, and had to be given up.

The second type of perversion bore a much more fatal character. In the hands of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the policy of the united front became a hue and cry after allies at the cost of sacrificing the independence of the party. Backed by Moscow and deeming themselves omnipotent, the functionaries of the Comintern seriously esteemed themselves to be capable of laying down the law to the classes and of prescribing their itinerary; of checking the agrarian and strike movements in China; of buying an alliance with Chiang Kai-shek at the cost of sacrificing the independent policies of the Comintern; of re-educating the trade-union bureaucracy, the chief bulwark of British imperialism, through educational courses at banquet tables in London, or in Caucasian resorts; of transforming Croatian bourgeois of Radich's type into Communists, etc., etc. All this was undertaken, of course, with the best of intentions, in order to hasten developments by accomplishing for the masses what the masses weren't mature enough to do for themselves. It is not beside the point to mention that in a number of countries, Austria in particular, the functionaries of the Comintern tried their hand, during the past period, at creating artificially and “from above” a “left” Social Democracy—to serve as a bridge to Communism. Nothing but failures were produced by this tomfoolery also. Invariably these experiments and filibusterings ended catastrophically. The revolutionary movement in the world was flung back for many years.

Thereupon Manuilsky decided to break the spectacles; and as for Kuusinen—to avoid further mistakes, he decreed everyone except himself and his cronies to be fascists. Whereupon the matter was clarified and simplified; no more mistakes were possible. What kind of a united front can there be with “social fascists” against national fascists, or with the “left social fascists” against the “rights”? Thus by describing over our heads an arc of 180 degrees, the Stalinist bureaucracy found itself compelled to announce the decisions of the first four congresses as counterrevolutionary.