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Title: The United Front
Author: Jonathan Payn
Date: November 2014
Language: en
Topics: South Africa, Italy, Russian Revolution, Germany, history, left unity, working class unity
Source: Retrieved on 14th October 2021 from http://www.anarkismo.net/article/27348][www.anarkismo.net]], [[http://anarkismo.net/article/27349][anarkismo.net]], [[http://anarkismo.net/article/27495][anarkismo.net]] and [[http://anarkismo.net/article/27572
Notes: First published in Workers World News.

Jonathan Payn

The United Front

Part 1: NUMSA and the ‘United Front Against Neoliberalism’

The resolution adopted by the National Union of Metalworkers of South

Africa (NUMSA) to form a ‘United Front against neoliberalism’ – as well

as its decision not to endorse the ANC in the elections – represents an

interesting development in the political landscape, one which activists

should look at carefully and engage.

Due to the language used by the media, the Left, NUMSA’s critics and

even NUMSA itself much confusion surrounds the debate – leaving many

questions: Is the ‘United Front’ an organisation or attempt to build a

new labour federation or political party? Is it an attempt to revive the

1980s United Democratic Front (UDF)? Why NUMSA’s sudden interest in

community struggles?

This series, of which this article is the first, aims to clarify these

and other questions by looking at the proposal and history of united

fronts locally and internationally to clarify key issues and draw

lessons that activists can use when engaging the pros and cons of

NUMSA’s United Front proposal and if and how they think it should be

developed.

First published in issue 86 of Workers World News

Global capitalist crisis and a stalled revolution

To understand NUMSA’s decision to break with the ANC and SACP, and the

potential its call for a united front could offer for building a working

class-based alternative to the ANC-led Alliance and its neoliberal

policies, activists must contextualise these decisions and unpack what

NUMSA understands by the United Front.

NUMSA has noted that, twenty years after the democratic transition, the

majority-black working class has not experienced meaningful improvements

in its conditions. At the same time, however, a small black elite has

become super wealthy. In South Africa NUMSA has noted that the

neoliberal restructuring, implemented by the ANC government and

supported by its Alliance partners, has been aimed at benefiting the

capitalist class and has resulted in the increased dominance of finance

capital, in massive job losses and increased poverty and inequality.

‘A weapon for uniting the working class’

NUMSA claims not to see the United Front as a new organisation or party

but a mechanism “to mobilise the working class in all their formations

into a United Front against neoliberalism”. Whereas NUMSA sees the

Alliance as “simply a mechanism for mobilising a vote for the ANC”, it

envisions the United Front as a “mobilising tool to organise and

coordinate working class struggles”.

The United Front is also not about building a new labour federation as

NUMSA is calling on COSATU to join it in breaking with the Alliance and

building a new movement. Nor is it an attempt to simply revive the UDF.

Rather, it is “a way to join other organisations in action, in the

trenches”, through sharing common struggles.

NUMSA says that “better working conditions are inseparable from the

working class community struggles for transportation, sanitation, water,

electricity and shelter” and that it wants to break down the barriers

that exist between worker and community struggles. The two pillars on

which its United Front would stand are gaining community support for

NUMSA campaigns and building “concrete support for other struggles of

the working class and the poor wherever and whenever they take place”.

‘NUMSA is part of the community, and NOT the community’

For many community activists the question then is why now, after

ignoring community struggles for so long, does NUMSA claim to want to

support them? Moreover, why does NUMSA think it should lead this

unification process? After all, community activists long ago identified

the ANC’s neoliberal character.

Despite the fact that its members come from the communities NUMSA has

not supported community struggles in recent years. Yet now it seems

NUMSA wants to support community struggles and lead them in building a

united front. While it might have a role to play, some community

activists feel NUMSA cannot legitimately take the lead in uniting

community struggles.

Instead they feel NUMSA should focus on building unity with other unions

before approaching communities. Similarly, communities should first work

together to unite their own struggles from the bottom up; a process that

is already underway in parts of the country.

Only once community struggles are united and coordinated from below, by

the activists involved, can they feel confident in uniting community and

worker struggles without fear of bigger, more resourced organisations

like NUMSA imposing themselves on them.

Conclusion

A good thing about the United Front is that it accommodates ideological

differences in order to build the unity of working class formations in

struggle. However, Communist Parties have historically engaged in united

fronts to create unity in action in struggles against the onslaught of

capitalism, but also with the aim of winning over the majority – who

mostly (but not exclusively as there were other revolutionary currents)

supported reformist social democratic parties – involved in these

struggles to their programme and lead as a Party. When engaging the

NUMSA United Front proposal, then, it is important to ask whether or not

NUMSA also sees the United Front as a tactic to win what it has

sometimes unfortunately described as leaderless and unorganised

community struggles to its perspectives and to ensure they accept its

leadership in struggles.

Community activists across the country have, despite scepticism,

responded positively to NUMSA’s call by supporting the 19 March actions

against the Youth Wage Subsidy.

Will NUMSA reciprocate by putting its resources and capacity at the

service of building “concrete support for other struggles of the working

class and the poor “wherever and whenever they take place”?

The possibility of NUMSA playing any relevant role in fostering working

class unity depends on the answer to this question.

Part 2: Anti-militarist United Fronts and Italy’s “Red week”, 1914

The United Front tactic – aimed at uniting masses of workers in action

and winning Communist leadership for the working class – was adopted as

policy by the Communist International (Comintern) in 1921 and will be

discussed later in this series. However, there are important examples of

working class unity in action which predate Comintern policy and bear

relevance to the united fronts discussion. One often-cited example is

the united front to defend the gains of the February Revolution from a

military coup in Russia in 1917, which will be discussed in the next

article in this series.

Before looking at this, however, there is another example of proletarian

unity in action – that didn’t seek to win Communist leadership – which

warrants attention; that of a revolutionary worker-peasant alliance.

This conception of united front action found expression in Italy’s

anti-militarist “red blocs” and it is to these that we now turn.

First published in issue 87 of Workers World News

Prelude to Rebellion

In the early 1900s, there was strong worker and peasant opposition to

Italian colonialism and military involvement in Eritrea, Abyssinia and

Libya, and to the repression of the Italian working class by the state’s

armed forces. Workers and peasants saw that, although soldiers came

mostly from the working class and peasantry, the military and its

colonial adventures only served the interests of the ruling class in its

search for new markets and new sources of cheap labour and raw materials

– as well as to suppress local working class struggles.

However, divisions emerged in the Italian socialist movement between its

rank-and-file and the Italian Socialist Party’s (PSI) reformist leaders,

who rejected revolution – represented by anarchists, Bolsheviks and

syndicalists – in favour of a gradual electoral transition to socialism.

Shortly before Italy invaded Libya in 1911, the PSI’s youth wing, the

Italian Socialist Youth Federation – which rejected “reformism” – met

with syndicalist youth organisations and agreed to co-operate in

anti-war efforts. This co-operation, extended to anarchist youth as

well, laid the basis for an anti-militarist united front or “red bloc”.

1914 “Red Week”

By 1914, a twenty thousand-strong united front of workers and peasants

from different political tendencies was organised against militarism. On

Constitution Day, June 7 1914, this anti-militarist front organised a

national demonstration against militarism and war. Fearing this front

could lay the basis for a revolutionary “Red bloc” the government

ordered troops to suppress the protests. Clashes between troops and

anti-militarists erupted leaving three workers dead.

The proletariat took to the streets in response and rebellion engulfed

the country. Before the dominant General Confederation of Labour (CGL)

had responded the Italian Syndicalist Union and Chamber of Labour called

a general strike. Dock and rail workers asserted their power in a

crippling wave of protests and 50 000 workers marched in Turin in “iron

ranks of class solidarity” when the CGL joined the call.

Although the socialist leadership had been divided over the call for a

general strike the masses embraced it with revolutionary fervour.

Barricades sprang up in the northern industrial centres. Self-governing

communes were declared in smaller towns and government officials forced

to flee. About a million people participated and for ten days the city

of Ancona was under the control of rebel workers and peasants.

The uprising, called the “Red week”, differed from previous uprisings in

extent and intensity – it spread across the country from north to south,

in cities and countryside, and was offensive rather than defensive in

nature. Many workers and peasants believed that revolution was possible

and pushed to realise it.

Betrayal and Collapse

However, the reformists restated their view that socialism wouldn’t be

achieved by the masses’ revolutionary impulses and rejected the need for

a revolutionary rupture. They believed that the working class was not

ready for socialism, that its “impulsiveness” was harmful and that

socialists should “educate and civilise” the proletariat in order to

prepare it for a gradual transition to socialism.

On seeing the situation develop into a potentially revolutionary

uprising that they could not contain the CGL called off the strike after

two days – over workers’ heads and without consulting the PSI or other

working class formations. In doing so they gagged the most conscious and

rebellious working class militants and the revolutionary movement

collapsed. Although ten thousand troops were needed to regain control of

Ancona and in Marcas and Romagna anarchists, revolutionary socialists

and Republicans maintained their posts in the streets, side-by-side, for

a few days more.

Alternative Ending

However, not everyone shared this view and some socialists did believe

that the masses were ready for and capable of revolution and that this

was how socialism would come about.

Errico Malatesta, an anarchist leader of the uprising, pleaded with

workers not to obey the CGL’s order to end the strike; believing instead

that the monarchy was collapsing and that revolution was indeed

possible. For revolutionaries like Malatesta socialism would be achieved

not through class compromise and elections, but through a working class

revolution from below. Through the self-activity and self-organisation

of the masses. For them socialists should encourage and stimulate this

working class self-organisation and self-activity in preparation for the

revolution, which would be cultivated by constant use of the strike

weapon, culminating in a revolutionary general strike.

For these revolutionaries, the lesson of the Red Week is that the

working class can be revolutionary and that it is strongest on its own

terrain; outside and against the state. Rather than being harnesses to

and held back by electoral parties it should organise independently as a

class, across ideological lines, to overthrow the state and capitalism

and replace them with directly democratic organs of working class

self-governance.

After the Red Week uprising had been suppressed Malatesta declared,

“Now... We will continue more than ever full of enthusiasm, acts of

will, of hope, of faith. We will continue preparing the liberating

revolution, which will secure justice, freedom and well-being for all.”

Part 3: The 1917 Russian Revolution and United Front

In the October Revolution of 1917, the Bolshevik Party, together with

other revolutionaries, overthrew the Provisional Government established

in February and – together, initially, with left Social Revolutionaries

– seized power. How did the Bolsheviks – a minority just eight months

earlier, when the February Revolution overthrew the Tsar and established

the Provisional Government – come to power so quickly? How did this

small force emerge from relative obscurity to win large sections of the

working class to its programme and take power? Herein lies the root and

essence of United Front policy in a traditional Marxist sense.

First published in issue 88 of Workers World News

Soviet Democracy and Revolution in February

During the February Revolution, workers, peasants and soldiers

spontaneously rose up and seized land and factories throughout Russia

establishing workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils – mass

democratic organs of working class counter-power. These councils, known

as soviets, elected their own delegates and had representatives from

different political tendencies from (reformist) Mensheviks and Social

Revolutionaries to (revolutionary) anarchists and Bolsheviks. Through

the soviets workers co-ordinated strikes and other forms of struggle,

using them to govern themselves as a class. They were, in effect, united

fronts organised from below by the working masses in pursuit of specific

demands: food, land, democratic reforms and an end to the war.

In a few short weeks the Tsar, whose family had ruled Russia for

generations, was forced to abdicate and a provisional government formed.

The soviets developed alongside the liberal Provisional Government and a

situation of dual-power emerged. Initially, the soviets supported the

Provisional Government as a hesitant expression of workers’ democratic

aspirations but, as the war dragged on and the Provisional Government

failed to implement even modest social reforms, discontent arose. Many

workers and soldiers trusted the soviets more than the Provisional

Government; but the new government was not strong enough to disband

them.

Discontent and Reaction in August

The Provisional Government, headed by Kerensky, faced a crisis by the

end of July. The growth of revolutionary ideas was fuelled by worsening

economic conditions, unpopular government policies and peasant unrest.

The ruling class became unhappy with Kerensky’s weak-kneed government.

In August, the reactionary General Kornilov broke with the Provisional

Government and plotted to establish himself at Russia’s head by seizing

Petrograd – the stronghold of the revolution. If the Kerensky government

could not deal with the soviets he would do so himself.

Barricades and revolutionary defence committees were established by

workers and soldiers spontaneously across Petrograd to defend their

hard-won democratic advances from General Kornilov’s forces. The

Bolsheviks, like most other revolutionary currents, entered into these

committees as a minority but played a prominent role in the Committee of

Revolutionary Defence. They established Red Guard units and provided

military training.

Bolshevik “Upswing” and Revolution in October

The coup, which was rightly seen as a reactionary attempt to crush the

soviets, was defeated. The workers’ victory shifted the balance of

forces leftwards and Bolshevik support surged. Later, this “upswing” in

Bolshevik support was attributed to their united front-style tactics.

According to this analysis, by participating in the front-lines of the

struggle against Kornilov while maintaining their political

independence, providing political leadership and not taking

responsibility for the inadequacies of Kerensky’s policies, the

Bolsheviks won the majority over to their leadership. Faced with a

common enemy different workers’ parties were united in action and, both

by supporting the (non-Communist) mass of workers’ demands for land,

peace and bread and by exposing their reformist leaders’ inability to

satisfy these demands, the Bolsheviks managed to win the majority to

their programme.

Within two months, the Bolsheviks had led a revolution against the

Provisional Government and established what appeared for a short while

to be soviet power. This, for traditional Marxists, was the “great

lesson” of the Russian Revolution.

Another Approach: Revolutionary and from Below

However, many leftists – including some prominent Bolsheviks – were

critical of the Bolshevik approach to the struggle against Kerensky. The

reformists believed that instead of dissolving the Constituent Assembly

they should have formed a socialist united front government with other

socialist parties – the Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and

Bolsheviks – which together had a majority, as the Constituent Assembly

elections in November showed.

For them such a government, enjoying majority support, would bring peace

and through the economic stability enabled by these conditions could

gradually introduce socialist reforms from above. They said a

Bolshevik-only government would lead to “a regime of terror and to the

destruction of the revolution”.

However, there was another revolutionary position – represented by the

anarchists, syndicalists and communist left. This position held that the

working class was already united in revolutionary action in February

1917. They argued that the soviets were already a majority and didn’t

need the support of the Provisional Government or Bolshevik leadership

but, rather, could have built on the class confidence gained through

Kornilov’s defeat to dissolve the Provisional Government and truly

disseminate all power to the soviets.

This position held that what was needed to advance the revolution was

not centralised state power under the leadership of an all-powerful

party, but the decentralised power of a federation of armed workers’,

peasants’ and soldiers’ soviets; a revolutionary united front from

below.

The Bolshevik argument was that you couldn’t have a revolution without

Communist Party leadership because the working class would vacillate in

its absence. However, there were in fact many episodes throughout 1917

where the working class was more revolutionary than the parties,

Communist included. Many parties thus tailed the working class and even

the Bolsheviks changed their programme to be more in line with the

revolutionary working class – only to change it back once they had

consolidated power.

While we will never know what would have happened had this alternative

position triumphed, history has vindicated the argument against

one-party Communist rule.

The next instalment in this series will look at another important

episode in united working class struggle and its contribution to United

Front policy – Germany in 1920–21.

Part 4: United Working Class Action and the Workers’ Council

Movement in Germany, 1920–1923

A “revolutionary alternative from below” that was not quite to be but

holds pertinent lessons for movements today.

Our latest issue of Workers World News continues our educational series

on “united fronts” with a focus on the Workers’ Council Movement in

Germany, 1920–1923.

In 1919, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) organised the

suppression of workers that, together with soldiers, had overthrown the

German imperial government in the 1918–1919 German Revolution and

brought an end to the First World War. The SPD restored capitalist and

state power but, despite being brutally repressed by the SPD, the German

working class continued to struggle against the government until 1923.

Right-wing forces also wanted to oust the SPD-led government, recapture

direct state control and reverse the results of the Revolution.

United action against the Kapp Putsch

In March, 1920, right-wing military forces occupied Germany’s capital,

Berlin, under the leadership of Wolfgang Kapp and the SPD-led government

fled. All left parties, excluding the KPD (German Communist Party),

called for a general strike to counter the coup and defend democracy.

Soon, the strike had spread across the country. Workers spontaneously

organised an insurrectionary offensive, forming armed defence and strike

committees to unite workers from different political tendencies and

co-ordinate their actions.

This regrouping of the workers’ movement in the form of workers’

councils and action committees – which had been widespread during the

1918–1919 Revolution – united workers across political parties. The

newly-formed “red army” was organised around three main geographical

centres under the influence of the USPD (Independent Socialists); KPD

and Left USPD; and revolutionary syndicalists and KPD left-wing

respectively.

Facing nation-wide armed resistance and an insurrectionary general

strike Kapp’s forces gave up and fled Berlin, but the insurrection

continued in pursuit of a new government. The three “workers” parties

(SPD-USPD-KPD) did not support the workers’ struggle for a new

government and opposed workers’ attempts to arm themselves and act

independently.

Following the flight of Kapp’s forces the central government returned to

Berlin, called off the strike and attempted to form a “workers”

government comprising the SPD, KPD and USPD. The KPD was divided over

whether such a government could play a progressive role. The left-wing

majority – which in April 1920 left to form the anti-parliamentary KAPD

(Communist Workers’ Party) – distrusted this government and said it

would be similar to the SPD coalition government established after the

1918 uprising, which had brutally repressed workers and helped restore

capitalist rule in the form of social democracy. They opposed a return

to parliamentary activity because they believed that the workers’

council movement had superseded parliamentary activity and that the call

to return to parliament was a betrayal of the revolution. They said

there was already a revolutionary situation in Germany at the end of

1918 and almost all left politics in 1919 took place in the workers’

councils, not in parliament, and it was in fact the workers’ faith in

bourgeois democratic institutions – promoted by the “workers” parties in

order to get themselves into power – that had led to the demobilisation

of revolutionary workers.

However, there was a minority that – wanting to replicate the role of

the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution – felt it was similar to the

Bolshevik call, in 1917, for the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries

to break with the bourgeoisie and form a united front government. The

USPD, however, rejected the proposal and so it was never tested.

As with the November 1918 revolution the working class had conquered

power again in 1920 without being conscious of it and, “had gone in its

actions far beyond its explicit demands – and far beyond the

consciousness it had of its own activity and desires. Now it had to

decide whether to consolidate its new found power (i.e., create a

genuine council system) or revert back to the realisation of its initial

demands (i.e., peace, food, and parliamentary democracy)”.

The mass of workers having effectively taken power through their

councils failed to consolidate the gains made and effectively divested

their power to party “representatives”. Those revolutionaries that

wanted to go further were shot down by the same army which had supported

the rightist coup and to which the government, as it inevitably does,

now turned for support.

The right, having reappeared on the political scene with the coup,

shifted the political centre of gravity rightward and the SPD

relinquished power in the June 1920 elections and in August the centrist

parliament passed a “disarmament” law.

The last flicker of hope, 1923

In the years following the abortive Kapp putsch there were numerous mass

demonstrations and strikes around Germany, however parties like the KPD

and SPD were able to capture the direction of these movements and lead

them away from a revolutionary direction. The KPD consistently pushed

workers’ struggles away from insurrection and towards parliamentary

activity under the instruction of Moscow; which didn’t want to upset

imperialist powers, such as England and France, and risk destabilising

the Bolshevik regime until they had consolidated power.

The German working class last engaged in mass struggle on a national

level in August, 1923, where workers spontaneously arose in response to

increasing inflation and deteriorating living conditions. Workers’

councils and armed defence committees were again established. The KPD’s

defensive implementation of a united front policy won them the support

of a large number of SPD members, but its attempt to form an alliance

with the right-wing around a national programme left it disoriented.

Rather than providing revolutionary direction the KDP, interested only

in bringing social democratic workers under its party leadership,

consistently betrayed the revolutionary working class by reinforcing

illusions in parliamentary activity and diverting workers away from

insurrectionary struggle at times when the working class itself had

effectively taken power and established democratic forms of working

class self-administration.

Due to its isolation and divisions within the working class the 1923

uprising was soon defeated and the workers’ movement was weakened beyond

recovery.

A revolutionary alternative from below

In opposition to the move to institutionalise – and thus control – the

workers’ council movement by drawing it into parliamentary activity

there existed an alternative revolutionary position represented,

particularly, by the council communist KAPD and the revolutionary

syndicalists. These currents struggled against the ideas of party-rule

and state control by attempting to put into practice concepts of the

workers’ council movement in pursuit of direct workers’

self-determination. They acted as an extra-parliamentary opposition to

the reformist and statist left parties and “educated people to act on

their own political initiative, independently of any representatives”.

Although the objective conditions existed for revolution the subjective

conditions were not fully developed; the masses did not look forward to

building a new socialist society but – influenced by the “workers”

parties – back to the restoration of pre-war liberal capitalism and the

completion of the reforms started before the war.

Thus, the clear revolutionary path desired by the so-called ultra-left

(council communists, anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists) was not

possible in light of the prevailing attitude of the mass of workers, who

were still under the illusion – promoted by the “workers” parties – that

their power lay in having “their” representatives in bourgeois

democratic institutions and consistently divested the power they had

effectively taken with the establishment of workers’ councils to party

representatives.