United front

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The term “ united front ” is considered a slogan and strategy developed by the Communist International ( Comintern ) in 1921 . United Front describes the cooperation of communist parties (CPs) with mainly socialist or social democratic forces and other organized workers for the material interests of the working class and especially against those of the big business class and / or the influence and work of fascist groups.

The Communist International (abbreviated: Comintern or KI) pursued the strategy of the united front since its III. World Congress of 1921 to overcome the ideological and organizational division of the labor movement that has existed since the 19th century and especially since 1914/1918 . The slogan associated with the implementation of the united front line was "Get closer to the masses!"

As a consequence, negotiations between the Comintern and representatives of other left-wing parties took place in Berlin in 1922. This line was officially confirmed at the IV World Congress in 1922.

Conception and methodology of the united front

The basis of the united front concept is the programmatic and organizational independence of the forces involved. The motto was "March separately - strike together!" . Through the common struggle for common goals, for the immediate interests of the mass of wage earners ( working class ), the workers, the unemployed and urban and rural petty bourgeoisie (poor small farmers), the mass of proletarians and “semi-proletarians” should benefit from the practical superiority of revolutionary methods and program.

The united front conception is based on the conviction that revolutionaries could only win their trust in a determined struggle for the smallest daily demands of the masses (higher wages , better working conditions, etc.), in which the communists would show themselves to be the most determined and most far-reaching.

The declared aim of the CPs was to free the social democratic and Christian basis from their so-called reformist, hesitant and compromising leadership through practical experience in common struggle with the communists.

For the communists, who, except in Russia ( Soviet Union ), represented a minority within the labor movement in most countries, the united front policy was above all a method of gaining power over the labor movement.

History of the united front up to the rise of National Socialism

Theoretical reception of the united front line and its application in Germany

After the failed attempt of the KPD , known as the “ March Action ”, to come to power in 1921 by means of an isolated and poorly prepared uprising, Germany switched to long-term tactics. The united front strategy drawn up by the Comintern in the same year (which became a worldwide strategy) was essentially based on the German experience. Added to this was a theoretical generalization of Russian experience of 1917. (phase between February Revolution and the October Revolution , where the Bolsheviks by a united front against Kornilov - coup . Were the strongest force in the Soviets)

In Germany, the “left” and “ultra-left” opposition within the KPD, which continued to advocate an “offensive theory” (direct orientation towards the revolutionary conquest of power and the fight against social democracy), rejected this new line as “opportunistic”. Likewise by the left communist KAPD and the Dutch theorists of “ left communism ” or “ council communism ” ( Herman Gorter , Anton Pannekoek ).

The (V) KPD, which emerged from the union of the old KPD and the left USPD (which soon thereafter simply called itself again simply KPD) has been using the united front method since then (with the exception of the “left” phase of 1924/25 under the leadership of Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow , where the KPD temporarily returned to the "offensive theory").

Well-known examples of the application of the united front method in Germany were the resistance against the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch in 1920 (although before the official formulation of the united front method by the Comintern) and the (ultimately failed) joint campaign by the KPD and SPD to expropriate princes (1926) .

Until the "ultra-left turn" after VI. 1928 Comintern World Congress, the united front line was the dominant strategic doctrine of the communists.

Formation of government by SPD and KPD

The united front government - as a coalition government of communists and left social democrats - was described in the theory of the Comintern as the "highest form of the united front". However, a united front government can only play its role, which is progressive from the communist point of view and which promotes the revolutionary seizure of power by the proletariat, in a situation in which the labor movement is booming. A sharp class struggle and a general radicalization of the proletariat, in which the question of power arises immediately, is required.

In Germany there was such a united front government during the pre-revolutionary situation in the autumn of 1923 in Saxony and Thuringia . Under the aegis of the workers' government there (with communist ministers), Saxon and Thuringian workers formed a kind of militia , " Proletarian Hundreds ", which acted as an armed counterforce to the Reichswehr and the right-wing military associations (" Stahlhelm " and others).

For the KPD, the united front government was a step towards a revolutionary conquest of power, towards the establishment of a "workers and peasants government" of the Soviet type - efforts which then brought about the energetic resistance of the Reich government.

During that phase, the KPD briefly succeeded in becoming the leading force in the German labor movement. Even in rural areas, as in the state elections in Mecklenburg-Strelitz in the summer of 1923, the KPD gained as many votes as the SPD. An internal vote in July among the Berlin metalworkers resulted in 54,000 votes for the KPD against 22,000 for the SPD. But the KPD quickly lost this influence again after the planned revolutionary conquest of power, the “ German October ”, in autumn 1923 failed.

Social fascism thesis and failure of an anti-fascist united front

In political practice, the Communist Party’s relationship with the Social Democrats in the 1920s and early 1930s was characterized less by unity than by contrasts.

The deep contradictions between the revolutionary communists and the social democrats who supported the state led to the fact that they viewed themselves as enemies.

Events such as the “ Blutmai ” in 1929, when a social democratic police chief Karl Zörgiebel had an (illegal) communist demonstration shot in Berlin, intensified the division.

The social fascism thesis, which was first formulated in 1925 and represented by the communist parties affiliated to the Communist International (Comintern) between 1928 and 1934, made a decisive contribution to cementing the division and paralysis of the labor movement, which indirectly contributed to the victory of National Socialism. The thesis was formally confirmed by the 10th plenary session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (EKKI) in July 1929; social democracy was therefore a mere variant of fascism and any united front between the communist parties and the social democratic parties was therefore inadmissible.

The priority of the communists in the fight against the SPD, vilified as "social-fascist", led to the referendum initiated by the anti- republic steel helmet to dissolve the Prussian state parliament against the social democratic government led by Otto Braun not only by the right-wing parties and the NSDAP but also by the KPD has been.

Social democracy saw communists and the extreme right (German Nationalists and National Socialists ) as common enemies of democracy and the republic. The Social Democratic leadership therefore rejected the cooperation of its members with the communists.

Opposition communists such as Leon Trotsky and the associated Left Opposition of the KPD , the Lenin League , the Compromisers and the “ right- wing opposition ” (in Germany the KPO ) and other socialist groups such as the SAPD and the ISK fought this policy in vain.

The Stalinist KPD, led by Ernst Thälmann , did not hold back from appealing to the SPD base to form a united front. But this alliance called the “Red United Front” should be designed as a “United Front from below” (against the social democratic leadership). The KPD made the political rupture of the social democratic basis practically a precondition for unity of action and thus reduced the principle of the united front method to absurdity. The SPD in turn joined forces with the trade unions to form the “ Iron Front ”, which is sharply anti-communist and anti-Nazi .

In May 1933, the KPD declared: "The complete elimination of the social fascists from the state apparatus, the brutal repression and the social-democratic organization and its press not change the fact that they continue to pose before the social mainstay of the capital dictatorship." And yet the end In 1933 the KPD leader Fritz Heckert wrote that the struggle against the “ fascist bourgeoisie” had to be waged “not together with the Social Democratic Party, but against it” .

In 1934 Bertolt Brecht (text) and Hanns Eisler (music) demanded "Join the workers' unity front ..." in the united front song . At this point in time, after the rise of fascism in Europe, the Comintern's “united front policy” had long been considered a failure.

But in 1934 France succeeded in forging an alliance of SFIO , PCF and CGT against the extreme right. This heralded a change of course in the Comintern.

It was not until the VII. World Congress of the Comintern , which took place in 1935, that the “social fascism theory” was rejected and the popular front (united front) propagated against fascism. There defined Georgi Dimitrov to fascism as "the open terrorist dictatorship of the most imperialist circles of finance capital is not a model that should bring own problems, and the Soviet Union from signing the -" German-Soviet non-aggression pact in 1939 held.

Difference to the Popular Front

Since 1935 (from the VII World Congress), the Comintern has been promoting the Popular Front policy . This line, mainly theorized by Georgi Dimitrov , envisaged - in contrast to the policy of the proletarian united front - a merger of the workers' parties with bourgeois parties on the basis of a bourgeois program to "defend democracy" against fascism .

There were Popular Front governments in France (under Léon Blum ) and in Spain ( Francisco Largo Caballero , Juan Negrín ) in the mid-1930s . (See: Spanish Civil War .)

Since the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern, the “popular front line” has become the basic strategy of the communist ( Stalinist ) parties.

The proletarian revolution was separated in time from a bourgeois-democratic phase of the struggle in the sense of a stage theory.

The designation " German Democratic Republic " (and not "Socialist Republic") for the state founded in 1949 in East Germany within the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union is a consequence of the "stage concept" which assumes an "anti-fascist-democratic phase" as necessary prior to the socialist transformation and strictly separates these stages / phases from each other. (In contrast to the theory of permanent revolution .)

Although both terms were often used synonymously in the following by the Stalinist CPs, they are different conceptions of alliance politics and different objectives:

While the united front conception means the common struggle of all workers 'organizations - according to the principle of "class against class" for the social goals of the proletariat, the program of the popular front (which is by its nature an alliance of workers' parties with bourgeois parties) remains within the framework of a bourgeois-democratic one Program. Some non-Stalinist communists (especially Trotskyists ) reject the popular front method and stick to the III. and IV. Comintern World Congress.

The significance of the united front today

The “classical” united front is closely connected with a specific historical situation: namely with a phase of coexistence of ideologically different left / socialist mass organizations and parties with orientation towards the working class and a corresponding basis.

One cannot deal with the marginalization of the communist parties in some countries and their de-Stalinization in others (up to the actual collapse of these parties) after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of “real socialism” 1989–1991 and the bourgeoisisation of the social democratic parties speak more of a “classic” united front.

However, the question of the objective and character of political alliances and the strategy for gaining mass anchoring - that is, the application of the united front method - arises among revolutionary-socialist groups in today's political practice.

China

The temporary cooperation of the Chinese Communist Party with the nationalist Kuomintang party against the Japanese occupation is referred to in official Chinese historiography as the phase of the “united front”.

literature

  • Wolfgang Abendroth : Social history of the European workers' movement . 5th edition. Edition Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1969, p. 87 ff.
  • Theodor Bergmann : United Front , in: Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism , Vol. 3, Argument-Verlag, Hamburg, 1997, Sp. 194–199.
  • Wolfgang Krumbein (Ed.): Workers' government and united front. A critical update of the workers' government concept and united front policy from the Weimar Republic. With a characterization of today's socialist and communist parties in Western Europe . 2nd Edition. SOVEC, Göttingen 1977 ( contributions to Marxist theory and politics . 1, ZDB -ID 566312-x ).
  • Alfred Rosmer : Moscow in Lenin's time . 1st edition. isp-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-88332-160-5 , p. 145ff., p. 154 ff., p. 163 ff.

Web links

Wiktionary: United Front  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinrich August Winkler : Issues of German history. Essays on the 19th and 20th centuries . CH Beck, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-42784-7 , p. 110.