A popular front is any coalition of working-class and/or middle-class entities, including liberal and social democratic ones, united for a purpose. Generally, it is "a coalition especially of leftist political parties against a common opponent". The phrase uses "front" in the sense of a political movement "linking divergent elements to achieve common objectives".
The term was first used in the mid-1930s in Europe by communists concerned over the rapid growth of fascist movements in Italy and Germany, which they sought to combat by coalescing with non-communist political groupings they had previously attacked as enemies. Temporarily successful popular front governments were formed in France, Spain, and Chile in 1936.
The name has also been used by other alliances such as the Popular Front of India. In the late years of the Soviet Union, the popular fronts created actually played a key role in ending Communist Party rule in the Soviet republics.
Terminology and similar groups
The term "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.
When communist parties came to power after World War II in the People's Republic of China, and the countries of Central, and Eastern Europe, it was common to do so at the head of a "front" (such as the United Front and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in China, the National Front in Czechoslovakia, the Front of National Unity in Poland, the Democratic Bloc in East Germany, etc.) containing several ostensibly-noncommunist parties. While it was the communist party—not the fronts—that held power in these countries, the alleged coalitions allowed the Party to deny that it had a monopoly on power.
A related term was "communist front", meaning an organizational facade used to mask the true character of "the actual controlling agent", the Soviet Communist Party, with no real influence by others. The strategy of creating or taking over organizations that would then claim to be expressions of popular will, not merely organs of the Communist Party, was first proposed by Vladimir Lenin. Rather than political coalitions opposing fascism, these groups sought to spread the Marxist–Leninist message in places where it was either illegal or distrusted by many of the people the party wanted to reach.
Front organizations were used from the 1920s through the 1950s, and proliferated during the popular front political coalitions of the 1930s. Eventually there were large numbers of front organizations, such as the World Federation of Democratic Youth, International Union of Students, World Federation of Trade Unions, Women's International Democratic Federation, and the World Peace Council. Anti-communists during the Cold War frequently accused liberal political organizations of being Communist fronts.
Comintern policy: 1934–1939 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. A new, less extreme policy was needed, whereby Communists would form political coalitions with non-Communist socialists and even democratic non-socialists – "liberals, moderates, and even conservatives" – in "popular fronts" against fascism.
Germany Until early 1933, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was regarded as the world's most successful communist party in terms of membership and electoral results. As a result, the Communist International, or Comintern, expected national communist parties to base their political style on the German example. That approach, known as the "class against class" strategy, or the "Third Period", expected that the economic crisis and the trauma of war would increasingly radicalise public opinion and that if the communists remained aloof from mainstream democratic politics, they would benefit from the populist disillusionment and be swept to power. Non-communist socialist parties were denounced as "social fascist".
After a series of financial crises in 1926, 1929 and 1931, public opinion in Europe did radicalise, but not to the benefit of left-wing anticapitalist parties. In the weeks that followed Hitler's rise to power in February 1933, the German Communist Party and the Comintern clung rigidly to their view that the Nazi triumph would be brief and that it would be a case of "after Hitler our turn"; however, as the brutality of the Nazi government became clear and there was no sign of its collapse, communists began to sense a need for an urgent about-face, especially as Adolf Hitler had made it clear that he regarded the Soviet Union as an enemy state.
In several countries over the previous years, a sense had grown within the Communist Parties that the German model of "class against class" was not the best strategy for their national political contexts, and that some alliances were needed to prevent the greater threat of nationalist dictatorships. However, figures such as Henri Barbé and Pierre Célor in France and José Bullejos and Adama in Spain, who advocated greater co-operation with social-democratic parties and possibly even left-wing capitalist parties, were removed from leadership. Previous cooperative organizations, such as in the (later-renamed) World Committee Against War and Imperialism, had not sought genuince co-operation with other parties as equals, but rather to draw potential sympathisers into the Soviet Communist movement, ending in denunciation by the leaders of other left-wing associations.
In 1934, Georgi Dimitrov, who had humiliated the Nazis with his defence against charges of involvement in the Reichstag fire, became the general secretary of the Comintern, and it became more receptive to the coalition approach. Official acceptance of the new policy was first signalled in a Pravda article of May 1934 commenting favourably on socialist-communist collaboration.1914-1946: Third Camp Internationalists in France during World War II, libcom.org 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.Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (2009) pp 88-100.
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.The Seventh Congress, Marxist Internet Archive In the elections of May 1936, the Popular Front won a majority of parliamentary seats (378 deputies against 220), and Blum formed a government. In Fascist Italy, the Comintern advised an alliance between the Italian Communist Party and the Italian Socialist Party, but the latter rejected it.
Great Britain
In reaction to the National Government's appeasement of Nazi Germany, there were attempts at a popular front between the British Labour Party, the Liberal Party, the Independent Labour Party, the Communist Party and even rebellious elements of the Conservative Party under Winston Churchill. They failed mainly because of opposition from within the Labour Party, which was seething with anger over communist efforts to take over union locals, as well as the general incompatibility between liberal and socialist approaches.
United States
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.
Cultural historian Michael Denning has challenged the Communist Party-centered view of the US popular front, saying that sympathetic non-members (fellow-travelers) composed the majority of the movement. In his view, Communist party membership was not a mandatory or crucial element of leftist US culture at the time.
California
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.