Popular front

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists who are united by opposition to another group (most often fascist or far-right groups). Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal (or "bourgeois") forces as well as socialist and communist ("working-class") groups. Popular fronts are larger in scope than united fronts, which contain only working-class groups.

In addition to the general definition, the term "popular front" also has a specific meaning in the history of Europe and the United States during the 1930s, and in the history of Communism and the Communist Party. The term "national front", similar in name but describing a different form of ruling, using obstensibly non-Communist parties which were in fact controlled by and subservient to the Communist party as part of a "coalition", was used in Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

In response to the growing threat of fascism in the 1930s, Communist parties that were members of the Comintern (largely under the control of Joseph Stalin) adopted a policy of forming broad alliances with almost any political party willing to oppose the fascists. These were called "popular fronts". Some popular fronts won elections and formed governments, as in France (Front Populaire), the Second Spanish Republic, and Chile. Others never quite got off the ground (there were attempts in the United Kingdom to found a Popular Front against the National Government's appeasement of Nazi Germany, between the Labour Party, the Liberal Party, the Independent Labour Party, the Communist Party, and even rebellious elements of the Conservative Party under Winston Churchill, but they failed due to opposition from within the Labour Party).

In the United States, Joseph Stalin used the concept of the Popular Front to solidify control of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and to suppress criticism from those in the radical left after the Moscow show trials and subsequent series of executions and assassinations.[1]

Leon Trotsky and his supporters roundly criticised the Popular Front strategy. In the first place, Stalin had used the Popular Front as a tool to oppose Trotsky and other dissidents outside Stalin's immediate control.[2] Additionally, Trotksy believed that only united fronts could ultimately be progressive, and that popular fronts were useless because they included non-working class bourgeois forces such as liberals. Trotsky also argued that in popular fronts, working class demands are reduced to their bare minimum, and the ability of the working class to put forward its own independent set of politics is compromised. This view is now common to most Trotskyist groups. Left communist groups also oppose popular fronts, but they came to oppose united fronts as well.

After World War II, most Central and Eastern European countries became de facto one-party states, but in theory they were ruled by coalitions between several different political parties who voluntarily chose to work together. For example, East Germany was ruled by a "National Front" of all anti-fascist parties and movements within parliament (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Liberal Party, Farmers' Party, Youth Movement, Trade Union Federation, etc). The People's Republic of China's United Front is a current (as of 2007) surviving system.

It should be noted that not all coalitions who use the term "popular front" necessarily meet the accepted definition for "popular fronts", and not all popular fronts necessarily use the term "popular front" in their name. The same applies to "united fronts".

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