Economic End Times
by Stephen Lendman
Economic End Times - by Stephen Lendman
Despite a deepening global depression, establishment economists are in denial. On June 9, the Wall Street Journal said those surveyed expected slow, steady growth through 2011, despite high US unemployment, a housing depression, European sovereign debt in crisis, and the unreported insolvency of major French and other banks.
On June 8, testifying before the House Budget Committee, Fed chairman Bernanke fantasized about 3.5% US growth through 2011, stopping just short of ruling out the possibility of recession he called "unlikely."
And in 2007, when equity and housing bubbles peaked, neither he or Greenspan expressed alarm, destroying their credibility in the process.
Based on an early August survey, establishment (in bed with Wall Street) economists now put the chance of "another" downturn at 30%, compared to 15% in May, expecting 2.5% growth over the next year.
Some, in fact were sanguine, calling America's economy strong, attributing negative views to a crisis of confidence, not hard reality, signaled by the August 4 shot across the bow market rout.
Despite a predictable rebound, it signified much worse to come because conditions are dire getting worse. Even manipulated data show enough to sound alarms, highlighted by economists like David Rosenberg.
On August 15, he expressed surprise about so "little reaction to the shocking US consumer sentiment data that were released on Friday - the worst since the tail end of the Jimmy Carter recession era in 1980."
Moreover, consumer spending is weak even with suspect upward revisions. In addition, "(n)ew mortgage and refinancing loan volumes fell 19% in Q2 to" a three-year low. Further, auto buying plans declined to a decade low, likely headed much lower as economic conditions deteriorate. Other big ticket buying plans also dropped to 2008-09 depths when the economy falling off a cliff seemed possible.
In fact, growth indicators overall are rapidly heading south at a time they're already woefully weak. There's no end to decline in sight. Remarkably, negative household assessments of government policy hit record lows, surpassing the depths of the early 1980s recession and Watergate.
As a result, Rosenberg called the US economy "recession-bound, expecting" even manipulated data to show negative Q 3 growth, followed by greater contraction in Q 4 and 2012 Q 1.
"(P)ractically every major variable is" negative. "We are past the point of no return....I can understand the innate need to be hopeful," he said, but it's impossible to dispute reality.
Weakness and imbalances are extreme. American and European sovereign debt are overextended and troubled. "Anyone who thinks this gets contained (especially in Europe) slept through the last financial crisis after Lehman failed."
And when weak economies beg for stimulus, austerity is force-fed, assuring far greater economic pain. It's coming, will deepen and persist because policy measures are opposite of what's needed.
Commenting on the August 4 market rout, Rosenberg said nearly always it signals downturns. Western economies are fundamentally weak. Unlike earlier times when the Fed could cut interest rates, it now relies on "untested methods to underpin investor confidence and the economy."
And if America's economy plunges, so do others even deeper. Hunker down believes Rosenberg and independent economists believing the worst is yet to come.
Other Respected Views
Economist Michael Hudson is unequivocal explaining a debt deflation caused Depression. The game is over. The global ponzi scheme ran its course. Papering over conditions only works so long before hitting a wall. Tunnel vision assures trouble. Wrecking economies to save banks is lunacy, and forced austerity when stimulus is needed guarantees disaster. It's not a matter of if, just when, how deep and protracted.
Economist Paul Craig Roberts, trends analyst Gerald Celente, and others worry whether Washington will choose greater war to distract public attention from economic distress. In 2009, in fact, Celente warned about the oldest trick in the book, saying:
"Given the pattern of governments to parlay egregious failures into mega-failures, the classic trend they follow, when all else fails, is to take their nation to war."
In 2011, he called it a worrisome wild card, perhaps preceded by a major 9/11 type false flag to enlist public support.
Bet on it, in fact, if conditions become bad enough, public anger grows, and Obama's approval rating crashes ahead of the 2012 election. War based on heightened fear is how to raise it perhaps high enough to win.
Highly respect analyst Jeremy Grantham began his August letter to investors headlined, "Danger: Children at Play" with a "Stop Press Addendum," saying:
"My worst fears about the potential loss of confidence in our leaders, institutions, and 'capitalism itself' are being realized. We have been digging this hole for a long time. We really must be serious in our attempts to resuscitate the 'average (number of) hour(s) worked' and the fortunes of the average worker."
"Walking across the Boston Common this morning, I came to realize that the unpalatable (to me) option of some debt forgiveness on mortgages looks increasingly to be necessary as well as tax changes" he discussed in his report.
"To go further, if we mean to prosper long term, I am sure we need to act to make debt less attractive to everybody: it really is a snare and a delusion" to think otherwise.
Calling America's Congress "dysfunctional," he said it has to decide between two bad choices:
-- austerity to kill demand when the economy is on its knees; or
-- do nothing, risk default, compromise the integrity of the dollar and send "a powerful signal to the world that the US, at least for now," is past its prime.
In fact, growing numbers acknowledge that reality. "Come to think of it," said Grantham, "the choice was between a technical default and looking like a Banana Republic (or) technical blackmail and looking" like the same thing. "Just different bananas perhaps."
Overall he sees hard times, "lean years." Any pretense otherwise "is beyond wishful thinking or weak math skills. It is either childish or gross and cynical politics: that is to say, even worse politics than usual."
With balanced budgets mathematically impossible without major politically unpalatable policy changes, the alternative is "kicking an enormous can down the road" for even greater predictable disaster.
It's the equivalent of not dealing with a metastasizing cancer until the patient dies or is too far gone to save.
Adding his own grim assessment, Grantham said if we keep "drift(ing) around rudderless, if we don't develop some real (nowhere in sight) leadership soon, then seven lean years may be the least of" America's woes.
Commenting on the August 4 market rout, he added that it "always (has a) disturbing habit of ignoring the obvious and ignoring it some more, until, in the blink of an eye, it doesn't."
On August 4, it blinked, making "risk avoidance....a good idea," Grantham believes that may be his polite way of saying watch out! I warned you! There's no visible light at the end of this tunnel, getting increasingly darker. Watch out indeed.
In fact, a deepening global Depression just began. It'll last years before ending, and cause grave harm to billions worldwide, not responsible for their leaders' malfeasance, especially those domiciled on Wall Street, complicit with political puppets in Washington they own.
Moreover, the greater pain caused, the more they benefit like their Western counterparts, wrecking their economies for personal gain.
No wonder astute analysts like Grantham expressed lack of confidence in America's leaders, disgust with a "dysfunctional Congress," and questioned "capitalism itself," perhaps self-destructing as he wrote.
For billions of global victims, it can't happen a moment too soon, if it isn't already too late to help.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
This work is in the public domain
Showing posts with label communisim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communisim. Show all posts
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal- Guest Book Reviews
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
***************
Reviews
Pierre Naville (ed.), Pierre Naville, Denise Naville and Jean van Heijenoort, Leon Trotsky: Correspondence 1929-1939, L’Harmattan, Paris 1989, pp229, 110ff
The flood of fascinating French books on revolutionary history continues. This latest work is a collection of 123 letters from three of Trotsky’s main French correspondents during the 1930s, together with 24 letters from Trotsky. Pierre Naville was one of the key leaders of the French section. of the Trotskyist movement. Denise Naville was a close friend of both Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova. Jean van Heijenoort was Trotsky’s most capable secretary.
Between 1927 and 1939, Pierre Naville was a leading member of the Trotskyist movement. After the outbreak of war, he turned to the academic world, and wrote a large number of books, mainly on the sociology of work and on philosophy. Over the last 15 years he has begun to publish material from his years of political activity, including a volume of his writings between 1926 and 1939 (L’entre-deux-guerres), and a book of memoirs (Trotsky Vivant).
This latest collection of documents has a curious history, as Naville explains in his Introduction. At the outbreak of war Naville put about 300 letters from Trotsky, together with copies of his replies, in the care of a friend of his wife. Following the German occupation of France, this person took fright and destroyed the letters. When Naville came to try and reconstitute the correspondence in the 1970s, he discovered that many of the letters were missing from the three main archival collections (Harvard, the Hoover Institution and the International Institute of Social History at Amsterdam).
Naville claims that these gaps must be due to Trotsky’s archives having been rifled by his son, Leon Sedov, and by one of Trotsky’s secretaries, Jan Frankel, or even by Jeanne Desmoulins, ex-wife of Raymond Molinier. As Naville points out, he was at loggerheads with Sedov and Frankel on many points throughout the 1930s, and there was – and still is! – a mutual detestation between himself and Molinier. Given that Naville presents absolutely no proof for his allegations, it seems far more probable that he is interpreting events in the light of a series of rivalries which are now over 50 years old.
Despite the book’s title, the bulk of the documents are written by Naville and van Heijenoort. Amongst the letters by Trotsky there is little that has not previously been published, and the few documents that are not in the French Oeuvres add nothing fundamentally new to our knowledge of Trotsky’s positions and activity during these years. Further, with the exception of a couple of previously published documents by Trotsky, these are not letters dealing with major theoretical questions. Rather, they deal with the practical problems of building the Trotskyist movement in the 1930s. This does not, however, detract from the interest of the collection in any way.
Most of the letters are from 1937 to 1939. Nearly two-thirds of the book is devoted to this period. The main subject they deal with is the Moscow Trials, and the struggle waged by Trotsky to clear his name and expose the Stalinists. Naville’s letters to Trotsky and van Heijenoort explain in detail the work which the French Trotskyists undertook, notably their campaign of public meetings and political confrontations with the French Communist Party.
In February 1937 the POI – the French section – held a meeting with 2,000 people at it. At the same time, Naville was in Belgium, speaking about the Trials to a meeting of miners. The letters describe how the PCF was forced to respond to the POI’s campaign, by organising its own meetings, at which the POI intervened with leaflets and by organised heckling.
During this time the POI grew to several hundred, with scores of youth and workers who were at least partly won on the basis of their work around the Trials. The enthusiasm with which Naville describes the growth of the organisation in this period makes its decline – within two years it was down to a few dozen – all the more difficult to fathom. Unfortunately, none of the letters shed any light on this collapse, although there is a telling remark in a letter to van Heijenoort (23 April 1937): “With lots of work and initiative, we can double our membership in the next two months. The only problems – as always – are our organisational and propagandistic capacities.” (p.l27)
The POI was riven by the same differences of opinion over the nature of the USSR as were to split the International, notably the SWP (US). In October 1937 Naville reports that he expected around 30 per cent of the POI’s conference delegates to support Craipeau’s position, which denied that the USSR was a workers’ state. Similar problems hit Raymond Molinier’s PCI during the same period.
A theme which runs through all the letters, especially during the period of the campaign against the Trials, is that of mutual reproaches by both Naville and his correspondents. Trotsky and van Heijenoort complained that the POI was slow in getting vital evidence with regard to Trotsky’s visits in France; Naville retorted that Trotsky had not done enough to encourage support from the author Andre Gide.
This, coupled with bitter complaints – from both sides – about not having received documents (which were clearly ‘lost’ in the post), Naville’s bleatings about van Heijenoort’s translations together with the somewhat sharp replies he received in return, give an impression of distinctly uncomradely relations. This is not the case, as other, more relaxed letters show. Rather, we are given an indication of the pressure under which both men – who were in fact very friendly – were working.
A major disappointment is the lack of any discussion on the Founding Conference of the Fourth International, presumably due to the gaps in the various archive collections. In one of the few references in the book, Naville writes to van Heijenoort that the Transitional Programme had already sold 1,200 copies – by 23 June 1938, 10 weeks before the Programme was adopted (and amended) at the Founding Congress!
One point which will draw a sigh of recognition from anyone who has been in France during the summer months is Trotsky’s exasperated letter to Naville (2 September 1935), with regard to an attempt to organise a conference of the Bloc of Four!
The conference was adjourned in order to prepare it properly, but as far as I can tell, nothing has been prepared. In many respects the internal perspectives document has been overtaken by events. The political perspectives document is not ready. Having been adjourned, the conference is now going to take place any old how. But nothing can be done, because there is a supreme historic factor which is called the holidays. We are in France, in a civilised country and the revolution can just wait at the door. (p.62)
A final historic footnote which drew a smile from this reader was Trotsky’s request for help in finding quotes from Robespierre and other French revolutionaries, to include in his book on Stalin. Denise Naville organised a team of young comrades to help out, whom Trotsky wished to thank in the preface to his book. Two of those involved were Barta and his companion Louise, who were shortly to found the Union Communiste, of which the French organisation Lutte Ouvrière claims to be the continuation.
Despite the gaps in the record, and the fact that a good 15 per cent of the letters are of virtually no interest whatsoever, (especially a series of covering notes sent by van Heijenoort with documents in 1938-39), this collection is extremely interesting, and Naville had done us all a service in reassembling the correspondence and publishing it. Given the wealth of other, more important, material which is in French and remains untranslated, it is probably too much to hope that Naville's book will be published in English in the near future. However, everyone who has an interest in this period and can read French should get hold of a copy.
Alison Peat
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
***************
Reviews
Pierre Naville (ed.), Pierre Naville, Denise Naville and Jean van Heijenoort, Leon Trotsky: Correspondence 1929-1939, L’Harmattan, Paris 1989, pp229, 110ff
The flood of fascinating French books on revolutionary history continues. This latest work is a collection of 123 letters from three of Trotsky’s main French correspondents during the 1930s, together with 24 letters from Trotsky. Pierre Naville was one of the key leaders of the French section. of the Trotskyist movement. Denise Naville was a close friend of both Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova. Jean van Heijenoort was Trotsky’s most capable secretary.
Between 1927 and 1939, Pierre Naville was a leading member of the Trotskyist movement. After the outbreak of war, he turned to the academic world, and wrote a large number of books, mainly on the sociology of work and on philosophy. Over the last 15 years he has begun to publish material from his years of political activity, including a volume of his writings between 1926 and 1939 (L’entre-deux-guerres), and a book of memoirs (Trotsky Vivant).
This latest collection of documents has a curious history, as Naville explains in his Introduction. At the outbreak of war Naville put about 300 letters from Trotsky, together with copies of his replies, in the care of a friend of his wife. Following the German occupation of France, this person took fright and destroyed the letters. When Naville came to try and reconstitute the correspondence in the 1970s, he discovered that many of the letters were missing from the three main archival collections (Harvard, the Hoover Institution and the International Institute of Social History at Amsterdam).
Naville claims that these gaps must be due to Trotsky’s archives having been rifled by his son, Leon Sedov, and by one of Trotsky’s secretaries, Jan Frankel, or even by Jeanne Desmoulins, ex-wife of Raymond Molinier. As Naville points out, he was at loggerheads with Sedov and Frankel on many points throughout the 1930s, and there was – and still is! – a mutual detestation between himself and Molinier. Given that Naville presents absolutely no proof for his allegations, it seems far more probable that he is interpreting events in the light of a series of rivalries which are now over 50 years old.
Despite the book’s title, the bulk of the documents are written by Naville and van Heijenoort. Amongst the letters by Trotsky there is little that has not previously been published, and the few documents that are not in the French Oeuvres add nothing fundamentally new to our knowledge of Trotsky’s positions and activity during these years. Further, with the exception of a couple of previously published documents by Trotsky, these are not letters dealing with major theoretical questions. Rather, they deal with the practical problems of building the Trotskyist movement in the 1930s. This does not, however, detract from the interest of the collection in any way.
Most of the letters are from 1937 to 1939. Nearly two-thirds of the book is devoted to this period. The main subject they deal with is the Moscow Trials, and the struggle waged by Trotsky to clear his name and expose the Stalinists. Naville’s letters to Trotsky and van Heijenoort explain in detail the work which the French Trotskyists undertook, notably their campaign of public meetings and political confrontations with the French Communist Party.
In February 1937 the POI – the French section – held a meeting with 2,000 people at it. At the same time, Naville was in Belgium, speaking about the Trials to a meeting of miners. The letters describe how the PCF was forced to respond to the POI’s campaign, by organising its own meetings, at which the POI intervened with leaflets and by organised heckling.
During this time the POI grew to several hundred, with scores of youth and workers who were at least partly won on the basis of their work around the Trials. The enthusiasm with which Naville describes the growth of the organisation in this period makes its decline – within two years it was down to a few dozen – all the more difficult to fathom. Unfortunately, none of the letters shed any light on this collapse, although there is a telling remark in a letter to van Heijenoort (23 April 1937): “With lots of work and initiative, we can double our membership in the next two months. The only problems – as always – are our organisational and propagandistic capacities.” (p.l27)
The POI was riven by the same differences of opinion over the nature of the USSR as were to split the International, notably the SWP (US). In October 1937 Naville reports that he expected around 30 per cent of the POI’s conference delegates to support Craipeau’s position, which denied that the USSR was a workers’ state. Similar problems hit Raymond Molinier’s PCI during the same period.
A theme which runs through all the letters, especially during the period of the campaign against the Trials, is that of mutual reproaches by both Naville and his correspondents. Trotsky and van Heijenoort complained that the POI was slow in getting vital evidence with regard to Trotsky’s visits in France; Naville retorted that Trotsky had not done enough to encourage support from the author Andre Gide.
This, coupled with bitter complaints – from both sides – about not having received documents (which were clearly ‘lost’ in the post), Naville’s bleatings about van Heijenoort’s translations together with the somewhat sharp replies he received in return, give an impression of distinctly uncomradely relations. This is not the case, as other, more relaxed letters show. Rather, we are given an indication of the pressure under which both men – who were in fact very friendly – were working.
A major disappointment is the lack of any discussion on the Founding Conference of the Fourth International, presumably due to the gaps in the various archive collections. In one of the few references in the book, Naville writes to van Heijenoort that the Transitional Programme had already sold 1,200 copies – by 23 June 1938, 10 weeks before the Programme was adopted (and amended) at the Founding Congress!
One point which will draw a sigh of recognition from anyone who has been in France during the summer months is Trotsky’s exasperated letter to Naville (2 September 1935), with regard to an attempt to organise a conference of the Bloc of Four!
The conference was adjourned in order to prepare it properly, but as far as I can tell, nothing has been prepared. In many respects the internal perspectives document has been overtaken by events. The political perspectives document is not ready. Having been adjourned, the conference is now going to take place any old how. But nothing can be done, because there is a supreme historic factor which is called the holidays. We are in France, in a civilised country and the revolution can just wait at the door. (p.62)
A final historic footnote which drew a smile from this reader was Trotsky’s request for help in finding quotes from Robespierre and other French revolutionaries, to include in his book on Stalin. Denise Naville organised a team of young comrades to help out, whom Trotsky wished to thank in the preface to his book. Two of those involved were Barta and his companion Louise, who were shortly to found the Union Communiste, of which the French organisation Lutte Ouvrière claims to be the continuation.
Despite the gaps in the record, and the fact that a good 15 per cent of the letters are of virtually no interest whatsoever, (especially a series of covering notes sent by van Heijenoort with documents in 1938-39), this collection is extremely interesting, and Naville had done us all a service in reassembling the correspondence and publishing it. Given the wealth of other, more important, material which is in French and remains untranslated, it is probably too much to hope that Naville's book will be published in English in the near future. However, everyone who has an interest in this period and can read French should get hold of a copy.
Alison Peat
Saturday, October 09, 2010
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal- Book Reviews
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
**********
Reviews
Martin Alexander and Helen Graham (eds.), The French and Spanish Popular Fronts: Comparative Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989, pp277, £27.50
The appearance over the last decade or so of all-class organisations based upon liberal politics around such issues as racism, women's rights, the environment and militarism, issues on which a Marxist approach is sorely needed, demonstrates the necessity to examine earlier analogous manifestations, the Popular Fronts of the late 1930s. The recent calls by certain Stalinists, Labour Party members and academics for electoral pacts involving outright bourgeois parties, make this task even more pressing. Britain of the late 1980s is not France or Spain of the late 1930s, but the lessons of Popular Frontism have not lost their relevance.
`The picture is full of complications and no more than a fraction of the potential questions have been touched on here.' The words of one contributor sum up some of the problems with this collection. There are over 20 contributions, averaging a dozen pages apiece, covering a very wide range of subjects; the origins of the Popular Fronts, the attitudes of the churches and military towards them, the governments' economic policies, political organisations and regional and cultural studies. It's an eclectic brew, rather too skimpy for the expert - can one cover adequately, say, the left wing opposition to French Stalinism in 12 pages? - and often too obscure for the newcomer; take, for example, the essay `Popular Tourism and Mass Leisure in the Vision of the Front Populaire.' Readers of some knowledge will find plenty of interest, but the eclecticism, each author with his or her own specialised subject, style and outlook, leaves the collection with a decided lack of cohesion. There again, this is always a problem with this type of book.
The centrality of Stalinism to the Popular Front, and its crucial r61e in the subsequent demoralisation and defeat of the French and Spanish working class, are downplayed. We learn very little about how the French Communist Party undermined the mammoth strike wave that shook France in June 1936, other than the albeit telling fact that the Stalinists wouldn't challenge the unions' reluctance to fight for equal pay for women. There's a wealth of material not yet translated into English on French Stalinism which could have been drawn upon. Similarly there's next to nothing on the Stalinists' reign of terror in Spain. It's not just a question of the GPU's methods, horrible as they were, but the fact that outright terror was an essential part of the Popular Front, and that the most militant workers and peasants had to be killed or terrorised if the Popular Front's all-class alliance was to survive. The complex relationships between a Stalinist party and the internal pressures of the capitalist and working classes and the external pressures of the Soviet bureaucracy are only mentioned in passing.
Whilst the formation of the Popular Fronts is well covered, little space is devoted to their demise. Commenting on the social and economic policies of the Spanish left, Jose Manuel Macarro Vera recognises that the Popular Front was historically unviable. The reinforcement of the `proletarian bloc' implied `the whole question of the seizure of political power' and this would have spelt the end of the Popular Front. Conversely, making the Popular Front economically viable meant attacks upon the working class, thus provoking class conflict. And there it's left. Just how this dichotomy worked itself out, either in France or in Spain, is not outlined in this book, which is a serious omission.
The Popular Front governments in both Spain and France were brought into office on tremendous waves of working class militancy, which exploded in response to Fascist provocations. In both countries, this militancy had to be defused, dissipated by the workers' parties supporting the Popular Front to ensure that their bourgeois partners in office would not split the coalition governments. The French and Spanish Stalinists played a key part in this, demoralising the masses and, in Spain, physically exterminating those who attempted to expose the charade. There are no `comparative perspectives' on Stalinist treachery here. Reliant upon the demobilisation of the masses and unable to satisfy them with petty reforms, which only raised the resentment of the capitalists, the Popular Fronts led to disaster.
The Popular Front administrations in France were rapidly followed by Edouard Daladier's increasingly repressive government, which overturned what gains the workers had won, and delivered them to the tender mercies of Marshal Petain. In Spain, the Republic fell victim to Franco's Falangists. The real lesson of the Popular Front is that the democratic rights of the working class can only be defended in and through the struggle for state power. Any attempt to stop half way, or to subordinate politically the labour movement to the liberal end of the ruling class will only lead to disaster. The most important aspect of the Popular Front is that the French and Spanish working classes were defeated precisely because of it, and it's a shame that this central issue is only hinted at in this collection.
Paul Flewers
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
**********
Reviews
Martin Alexander and Helen Graham (eds.), The French and Spanish Popular Fronts: Comparative Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989, pp277, £27.50
The appearance over the last decade or so of all-class organisations based upon liberal politics around such issues as racism, women's rights, the environment and militarism, issues on which a Marxist approach is sorely needed, demonstrates the necessity to examine earlier analogous manifestations, the Popular Fronts of the late 1930s. The recent calls by certain Stalinists, Labour Party members and academics for electoral pacts involving outright bourgeois parties, make this task even more pressing. Britain of the late 1980s is not France or Spain of the late 1930s, but the lessons of Popular Frontism have not lost their relevance.
`The picture is full of complications and no more than a fraction of the potential questions have been touched on here.' The words of one contributor sum up some of the problems with this collection. There are over 20 contributions, averaging a dozen pages apiece, covering a very wide range of subjects; the origins of the Popular Fronts, the attitudes of the churches and military towards them, the governments' economic policies, political organisations and regional and cultural studies. It's an eclectic brew, rather too skimpy for the expert - can one cover adequately, say, the left wing opposition to French Stalinism in 12 pages? - and often too obscure for the newcomer; take, for example, the essay `Popular Tourism and Mass Leisure in the Vision of the Front Populaire.' Readers of some knowledge will find plenty of interest, but the eclecticism, each author with his or her own specialised subject, style and outlook, leaves the collection with a decided lack of cohesion. There again, this is always a problem with this type of book.
The centrality of Stalinism to the Popular Front, and its crucial r61e in the subsequent demoralisation and defeat of the French and Spanish working class, are downplayed. We learn very little about how the French Communist Party undermined the mammoth strike wave that shook France in June 1936, other than the albeit telling fact that the Stalinists wouldn't challenge the unions' reluctance to fight for equal pay for women. There's a wealth of material not yet translated into English on French Stalinism which could have been drawn upon. Similarly there's next to nothing on the Stalinists' reign of terror in Spain. It's not just a question of the GPU's methods, horrible as they were, but the fact that outright terror was an essential part of the Popular Front, and that the most militant workers and peasants had to be killed or terrorised if the Popular Front's all-class alliance was to survive. The complex relationships between a Stalinist party and the internal pressures of the capitalist and working classes and the external pressures of the Soviet bureaucracy are only mentioned in passing.
Whilst the formation of the Popular Fronts is well covered, little space is devoted to their demise. Commenting on the social and economic policies of the Spanish left, Jose Manuel Macarro Vera recognises that the Popular Front was historically unviable. The reinforcement of the `proletarian bloc' implied `the whole question of the seizure of political power' and this would have spelt the end of the Popular Front. Conversely, making the Popular Front economically viable meant attacks upon the working class, thus provoking class conflict. And there it's left. Just how this dichotomy worked itself out, either in France or in Spain, is not outlined in this book, which is a serious omission.
The Popular Front governments in both Spain and France were brought into office on tremendous waves of working class militancy, which exploded in response to Fascist provocations. In both countries, this militancy had to be defused, dissipated by the workers' parties supporting the Popular Front to ensure that their bourgeois partners in office would not split the coalition governments. The French and Spanish Stalinists played a key part in this, demoralising the masses and, in Spain, physically exterminating those who attempted to expose the charade. There are no `comparative perspectives' on Stalinist treachery here. Reliant upon the demobilisation of the masses and unable to satisfy them with petty reforms, which only raised the resentment of the capitalists, the Popular Fronts led to disaster.
The Popular Front administrations in France were rapidly followed by Edouard Daladier's increasingly repressive government, which overturned what gains the workers had won, and delivered them to the tender mercies of Marshal Petain. In Spain, the Republic fell victim to Franco's Falangists. The real lesson of the Popular Front is that the democratic rights of the working class can only be defended in and through the struggle for state power. Any attempt to stop half way, or to subordinate politically the labour movement to the liberal end of the ruling class will only lead to disaster. The most important aspect of the Popular Front is that the French and Spanish working classes were defeated precisely because of it, and it's a shame that this central issue is only hinted at in this collection.
Paul Flewers
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