1. Political differentiation within the proletariat

We have seen (Chapter 9, point 5) how the need for a revolutionary vanguard party arises from the intermittent character of the direct action of the masses, as well as from the scientific nature of the strategy needed to overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie. We can now add a further factor to this analysis – the political differentiation within the proletariat.

In every country of the world, the workers movement appears as the sum total of different ideological currents. Existing side by side are the social democratic current, classical reformists; the official pro-Moscow CP current, of Stalinist origin and increasingly neo-reformist in its orientation; the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist current; the Maoist current; the revolutionary Marxist current (the Fourth International). In many countries there are also intermediary formations (centrists) in between these principal ideological currents.

This ideological differentiation in the workers movement has many objective roots in the reality and history of the proletariat.

The working class is not entirely homogeneous from the point of view of its social conditions of existence. Depending on whether they work in large or small scale industries, have been urbanised for several generations or very recently, are highly skilled or merely have average skills, the workers tend to grasp certain basic ideas of scientific socialism with varying degrees of rapidity.

The highly skilled groups of workers can understand the need for trade union organisation much more quickly than workers who have been unemployed for half their lives. But their trade union organisation also runs the risk of succumbing more quickly to the temptations of narrow corporatism, subordinating the general interests of the working class to the specific interest of a working class aristocracy which defends the specific advantages it has acquired by attempting to prevent access to the trade. It is easier for workers in large towns and industries to become conscious of the enormous potential strength of the great proletarian masses, and to grasp the possibility of a victorious proletarian struggle to seize the power and factories from the bourgeoisie, than it is for workers in small firms or those living in small towns.

Added to the non-homogeneity of the working class is the diversity of its experience in struggle and its individual capacities. One group of workers may have had experience of a dozen strikes (most of them successful) and many demonstrations. This experience will help to determine its consciousness in a different manner from that of another proletarian group which may have experienced only one strike (which failed) in ten years and has never participated en bloc in a political struggle. One worker or employee may be naturally interested in study and may read pamphlets and books as well as the newspapers. A different worker may hardly ever read. One may be combative by temperament and even be a born leader; another may be more passive and prefer to remain aloof. One may make friends easily with workmates; another may be more of a home-bird and more absorbed in domestic life. All this will partially influence the behaviour and the political choice of individual workers, and their level of class consciousness at a given moment.

Finally, we must take into account the specific history and national traditions of the workers movement in each country. The British working class, the first to achieve independent political class organisation with the Chartist movement, has never had the experience of a mass party based on Marxist education or a Marxist programme, even at an elementary level. Its mass party, the Labour Party, is based on and born out of mass trade unionism.

The French working class, heavily influenced by its own specific traditions of the first half of the Nineteenth Century (Babeufism, Blanquism, Proudhonism), was held back in coming to Marxism by the relative weakness of large industry, and by its relative dispersal in comparatively small provincial towns. It needed the growth of large factories in Paris, Lyon, Marseilles and the North-East of France between the two World Wars, and again during the ’50s and ’60s, before the general course of class struggle could be determined by the mass strike (June 1936, the strikes of 1947-8, May 1968) and before the French Communist Party could become the dominant party of the working class, giving it an outlook and a tradition which have explicit reference to Marxism.

The Spanish working class and workers movement has long been marked by a revolutionary syndicalist tradition, strongly influenced by the pronounced under-development of large industry in the Iberian peninsula, etc.

The diversity of ideological currents in the workers movement is a result of its own logic and history – that is, of debates and oppositions produced by the process of class struggle itself. The First International was split between Marxists and anarchists on the question of the need to conquer political power. The Second International was split between revolutionaries and reformists on a number of questions: participation in bourgeois governments, support for national defence in the imperialist countries, support or suppression of the revolutionary struggle of the masses at the precise moment when it was threatening the survival of the capitalist economy and the bourgeois state based on parliamentary democracy. The Third International was split between Stalinists and ‘Trotskyists’ (revolutionary Marxists), between supporters and opponents of the theory of permanent revolution and the theory of ‘revolution by stages’, between supporters and opponents of the utopia of completing the construction of socialism in one country, and, from that, between supporters and opponents of the subordination of the interests of the international revolution to the alleged needs of this completion.

But even this diversity of ideological currents also has deeper objective and material roots.

2 The united working class front against the class enemy

The diversity of ideological currents within the workers movement has led to a fragmentation of the political organisations of the working class. While trade union unity exists in many countries (Great Britain, Scandinavia, the German Federal Republic, Austria), the division into different political organisations is universal. As materialists, we must understand that this is the result of objective causes and not of chance – the ‘crimes’ of the ‘splitters’ or the ‘criminal role’ of any individual or small group of ‘traitors’.

This political division is not in itself a bad thing. The working class has been able to win some of its most startling victories in conditions where many parties and tendencies co-existed, all simultaneously proclaiming adherence to the workers movement. The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which decided to transfer all power to the soviets, was marked by a deeper fragmentation into different political parties and tendencies of the working class than anything we now see in the West. The division of the German working class into three large parties (and a number of smaller groups and currents) did not prevent the victory of the general strike of March 1920, which nipped the reactionary Kapp putsch in the bud. The diversity of political and trade union organisations of the Spanish proletariat in July 1936 did not prevent it from responding correctly to the military-fascist uprising in almost all the industrial centres.

But the political diversity of the workers movement leaves intact the striking force of the working class as a whole only so long as it does not prevent the unity in action of the workers against the class enemy: the employers, the big bourgeoisie, the bourgeois government, the bourgeois state. A further precondition is the ability of the revolutionary Marxists to wage a political and ideological struggle for hegemony in the working class and for the construction of the revolutionary mass party – in other words, the existence of workers democracy within the organised workers movement and a correct political line put forward by the revolutionary Marxists.

The unified response of the working class is essential above all against the offensives of the bourgeoisie. This may be an economic offensive: redundancies, factory closures, wage cuts, etc. It may be political: attacks on the right to strike and on trade union liberties; attacks on the democratic freedoms of the masses and the workers movement; attempts to establish authoritarian or openly fascist regimes, suppressing the freedom of the workers movement as a whole. In all these cases only a massive and united response can defeat the bourgeois offensive. Real unity in action by the working class comes through a real united front of all workers organisations which retain any influence among important sections of the proletariat.

One of the greatest tragedies of the Twentieth Century was the defeat of the German proletariat by Hitler’s conquest of power on 30 January 1933, as a result of the refusal and the inability of the leaderships of the KPD (German CP) and SPD (Social Democrats) to reach a united front agreement against the rise of Nazism in time. The consequences of this tragedy were so great that every worker must absorb the principal lesson of this experience: the united front of all workers organisations is indispensable against the rise of fascism, in order to prevent, through the united and resolute action of the working masses, the rise to power of assassins, torturers and hangmen.

The barriers and obstacles on the road to achieving the united front are essentially of a political and ideological nature: the workers in their great majority are instinctively favourable to any united initiative. Among these political and ideological obstacles we can single out:

• The repressive practices of the social democratic leaders – and of the Stalinist leaders when they also find themselves in the same position – whenever they exercise responsibility in the bourgeois state. The radicalised layers of the working class are rightly indignant at such practices, which include everything from the ‘simple’ act of breaking strikes to the systematic organisation of betrayals within the workers organisations, and even the organisation of the assassi- nation of revolutionary leaders or even ordinary workers (Noske!)

• The bureaucratic and manipulative practices of the reformist and Stalinist trade union leaders, CP leaders catapulted to leading positions in the workers movement, etc. These practices, added to the repressive practices of the bureaucracy where it is in power, also provoke justified hostility among several layers of workers.

• The systematically counter-revolutionary role of the traditional leaders of the workers movement, who undermine the growth in class consciousness, objectively (and often deliberately) aid the counter-revolutionary and anti-working class projects of big capital, spread bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology within the working class, etc.

Nevertheless, we must fight sectarianism and ultra-leftism with regard to the traditional mass organisations of the workers movement – sectarianism and ultra-leftism which are not merely obstacles on the road to achieving the united workers front against the class enemy, but also obstacles on the road to an effective struggle against the hold of the reformist and Stalinist leaderships over the majority of the working class.

A failure to understand the double and contradictory nature of the traditional and bureaucratised mass organisations of the workers movement lies at the root of these sectarian and ultra-leftist errors. (More generally, sectarianism is charac- terised on the level of theory by the exaggeration of one particular aspect of tactics or strategy, by the inability to see the problems of class struggle and the proletarian revolution in all their complexity, in their entirety.) It is true that the policies of the leaderships of these organisations are largely favourable to the bourgeoisie, that they practise class collaboration, weaken the class struggle of the proletariat, and are responsible for countless defeats suffered by the working class, Nevertheless, it is equally true that the existence of these organisations allows the workers to reach a minimum class consciousness and strength without which the development of this class consciousness would become much more difficult.

The existence of these organisations also allows a modification of the daily balance of forces between capital and labour, without which the self-confidence of the working class would be badly shaken. Only their immediate replacement by higher forms of class organisation (workers’ councils) would prevent their weakening from being accompanied by a retreat or a paralysis of the working class. Their weakening, let alone their destruction, by capitalist reaction would represent a grave weakening and setback for the whole of the proletariat. That is the principled basis on which revolutionary Marxists fight for their policy of the workers united front against capitalist reaction.

3 The offensive dynamic of the ‘class against class’ front

Confronted by any capitalist offensive against the working class, especially the threat of a right-wing dictatorship or fascism, revolutionary Marxists propose the construction of a united front of all workers organisations from the rank-and-file upwards. They try to involve all the organisations claiming to be part of the workers movement, including the most moderate, and those with the most opportunist and revisionist leaderships. They systematically call on the leaders of the SP, the CP, the reformist and Catholic unions to join in the establishment of a united front of national, regional and local leaderships as well as those in the factories and localities, in order to face up to the enemy offensive with all appropriate means.

The refusal to pursue the united front to the leadership level in the social democratic or Communist parties (the so-called ‘Third Period’ politics of the Comintern, taken up today by quite a few Maoist-Stalinist organisations) is based on an ultimatist and infantile lack of understanding of the objective function of, and the subjective preconditions for, the unity of the proletarian front. It presupposes that the mass of Socialist workers (or those following the CP) are already prepared to engage in united action with revolutionary workers without the previous agreement of their ‘social- fascist’ or ‘revisionist’ leaders. It therefore treats as resolved the task that remains to be solved: that of detaching the masses from the opportunist leaders through their own experience. In fact, it is precisely the call to the SP and CP leaderships to join in a united front against the offensive of reaction which allows the workers who follow these leaderships to go through the valuable and necessary experience of judging the credibility, effectiveness and good faith of these leaders.
 Furthermore, to suggest that it is not necessary to involve the SP and CP leaderships in the workers united front gives rise to the assumption that the revolutionaries are already a majority in the working class, and spreads grave illusions as to the possibility of overthrowing capitalism, the bourgeois state, or the fascist menace, through minority coups.

Is this to say that the workers united front is a tactic which is strictly limited to defensive ends? Not at all. The organisation of the entire working class into one striking force – even if at first for defensive ends – modifies the balance of forces between the classes, and considerably reinforces the militancy, strength, self-confidence and capacity for political action of the working masses. It therefore creates an immense further potential for struggle which can quickly turn a defensive struggle into an offensive one. At the time of the Kapp putsch in Germany, in March 1920, the victorious and united response of the German workers organisations created a situation in which militants from many organisations – even reformist organisations – decided within the space of a few days in several Ruhr towns to set up armed workers militias. The call for a workers government was even advanced by the most moderate trade union leaders. The victorious and united response of the Spanish masses in most large towns to the fascist putsch of July 1936 led to the general arming of the proletariat and the seizure of the factories.

In order to exploit fully the offensive potential of the workers united front, revolutionary Marxists put forward the need to structure the united front at the base as well as the top, without turning this call into an ultimatum to the workers parties, trade unions or masses. This proposal implies that, apart from national and regional agreements and ‘blocs’ of workers organisations, the united front should involve local committees, in factories, estates and localities – committees which must evolve as quickly as possible into democratically elected committees engaged in systematic mobilisations and mass actions. The offensive dynamic of such a structure is evident, as it would clearly open up a revolutionary situation. 

4. The workers united front and the popular front

Just as revolutionary Marxists are the strongest supporters of the workers united front, so they reject the politics of the ‘Popular Front’ – a revival, dating from the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, of the old reformist social democratic policy of an alliance between the ‘liberal’ (or ‘national’ or ‘anti-fascist’) bourgeoisie and the workers movement (‘left bloc’).
 There is a fundamental difference between the workers united front and the ‘left bloc’ or ‘Popular Front’. Through its ‘class against class’ logic, the workers united front unleashes a dynamic which develops and sharpens the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. The Popular Front, on the contrary, through its collaborationist logic, unleashes a dynamic which holds back the workers’ struggles and even represses the most radicalised layers of workers. While the workers united front against the capitalist offensive contains no preconditions about the defence of bourgeois order and capitalist property (no matter how much the reformist leaders are attached to this defence), the Popular Front is explicitly based on the respect of bourgeois order and property – without which, they say, the presence of the ‘progressive bourgeoisie’ within the front would be impossible; and this, in turn, would ‘reinforce reaction’. The whole logic of the Popular Front therefore tends to deflect, contain or break mass struggles, which is not the case with the workers united front.

Of course, while the distinction between the workers united front and the Popular Front is considerable because of the objective class nature of the two types of agreement, there is no ‘absolute’ difference. There could be opportunist applications of the united front tactic in which the leaders of self-styled revolutionary organisations began themselves to hold back the mass struggle under the pretext that you must not ‘frighten the reformist leaderships’. On the other hand, Popular Front agreements in certain situations can lead the masses away from collaborationist illusions and towards an increase of their struggles and even to the creation of structures of self-organisation – initiatives which revolution- ary Marxists must, of course, support and back up in every way possible.
 But regardless of such intermediary situations, the questions of principle remains vital. From the point of view of the class struggle, we must support workers united front policies; we must fight any political pact with bourgeois parties, even ‘left-wing ones’, which would challenge the political class independence of the proletariat.

5 Political class independence and united class organisation

Thus, like the Popular Front problematic, the united front problematic leads on to one vital question: how can the working class achieve the united organisation of its strength, in total independence from the bourgeoisie, in spite of its fragmentation into ideological currents and different political parties, groups and sects, and in spite of the insufficient average level of class consciousness?

Those who put forward the disappearance of this fragmentation as a prior condition for the achievement of united class organisation live in the land of make-believe. This fragmentation has existed for a century. There is no indication that it will easily disappear. To consider its disappearance in this way is effectively to say that the unity of the proletarian front (and therefore its victory) is a possibility lost in the mists of time.

Those who see the achievement of the unity in action of the class simply as a result of top-level agreements, independent of the class content and objective dynamic unleashed by these agreements – those, for example, who positively identify the united front with the Popular Front – forget that the real unity of the proletarian front is only possible on a class basis; it is, in fact, unthinkable that all the sectors and layers of the working class could accept the self-limitation and self-mutilation contained in class collaborationist agreements.

There is, therefore, a close link between the unity in action of the working class as a whole and the common acceptance of its aims of struggle, and even the forms of struggle adopted by the class. Revolutionary Marxists are totally in favour of any unifying initiative because they are convinced that such initiatives always reinforce the militancy and consciousness of the workers towards an unyielding class struggle against capital.

The class independence of the proletariat, without which its unity cannot be achieved, applies in relation to the employers at the level of the factory and industrial sector; in relation to the bourgeois parties; and in relation also to the bourgeois state, even the freest, most bourgeois-democratic state. The self-confidence gained by the working class through the experience of real, class-wide unity drives it to take the solution of all problems into its own hands, even those problems normally left to parliament. This is another reason why revolutionaries are the most resolute and consistent advocates of the unity in action of the entire working class.

6 Class independence and alliances between the classes

The distinction in principle which we are making here between the workers united front and the Popular Front has often been criticised as ‘dogmatic’. It ‘tries to deny the need for alliances’. Without ‘alliances between classes’ the victory of socialist revolution would be impossible. Did not Lenin base the whole Bolshevik strategy on the need for an alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry?

Let us say first of all that any parallel between the imperialist countries of today and Czarist Russia is misguided. In Russia the proletariat represented 20 per cent of the active population. In the imperialist countries, with the exception of Portugal, the proletariat – that is, the mass of those who are obliged to sell their labour power – represents the overwhelming majority of the nation, 70-80 per cent of the active population in most of these countries. The unity of the proletarian front (including white collar workers, of course) is infinitely more vital for the revolution than an alliance with the peasantry.
 Let us add that revolutionary Marxists are in no way opposed to an alliance between the proletariat and the working, non-exploitative petty bourgeoisie of the towns and countryside, even in those countries where they are in a minority. In many imperialist countries, such as Portugal, Spain, Italy and France, the establishment of the workers and peasants alliance is still very important, politically and above all economically, for the victory and the consolidation of the socialist revolution.

What we dispute is that an alliance between working class parties and bourgeois parties is necessary in order to reach a similar alliance among the labouring classes. On the contrary, the liberation of the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie from the hold of the bourgeoisie also presupposes their emancipation from the support they tend to give to bourgeois political parties. The alliance can and ought to be based on common interests. The proletariat and its parties should offer these classes the social, economic, cultural and political objectives which concern them, and which the bourgeoisie is incapable of achieving. If experience confirms the will of the proletariat to seize power and implement its programme, it can obtain the support of a large part of the petty bourgeoisie who wish to achieve these objectives.