If there is one policy that has defined the politics of the French left for almost a century, it is that of the Popular Front against fascism. Whilst others may point to the participation of Alexandre Millerand as a minister in Waldeck-Rousseau’s grandly titled “Government of National Defence” alongside the butchers of the communards as an obvious predecessor of this policy – the popular front period is, in my view, more influential due to its large scale popular support, participation, and culture. And the hold it has to this day on the French and broader European left.
With the “victory” of the New Popular Front in the recent French legislative elections, many comrades have taken this opportunity to reflect on the successes and failures of its previous iteration. In his excellent article, Mike Macnair has already elucidated the many failings of the popular front policy and the need for a united front. Instead of simply restating good arguments, I will draw up a balance sheet of the Popular Front policy, demonstrate its long afterlife in the post-war left, and finally, how the New Popular Front is likely to fail, but in novel ways and for novel reasons as compared with its predecessor.
La Vie Est à Nous
The French Communist Party (PCF) was founded when most members resigned from the socialist French Section of the Workers’ International (SFIO) at its Tours Congress in 1920. It followed the history of much of the European Communist Movement over the next decade: the policy of Bolshevization (the creation of factory cells) and the sectarianism of the third period led to a collapse in membership from 1925-1929, and the SFIO reasserts itself as the leading force in the French working class. This sectarianism saw a change from a policy of a “united front” to the policy of “class against class”, which saw the abandonment of collaboration between the social democrats and communists and the pursuance of sectarian policies towards them, describing them as social fascists and the moderate wing of fascism. In France, this led to splitting the socialist trade union federation CGT and the creation of the CGTU, which was firmly under communist control. The failure of “class against class” is becoming increasingly apparent. From 1931, the leader of the PCF, Maurice Thorez, started arguing for the need for PCF members to address members of the SFIO in their local organisations and pursue joint work several years before the adoption of the popular front policy.
Following Hitler’s rise to power, the Comintern adopted the popular front under pressure from below. The Popular Front, or at least some unity with liberals and social democrats against fascism, is popular among the rank and file of the PCF. This new line is also prevalent among those in the wider orbit of the PCF. From 1933 to 1937, this period saw an explosion in membership (from 29,000 in 1933 to 237,000 in 1937)1 and victories in local council elections that left the PCF in control of the local government in the suburbs of Paris and the industrial north-west of the country. The previous sectarian policy in the unions is abandoned, and the communist-aligned CGTU rejoined with that august institution of the French working class, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT). There is an explosion of popular participation, films are produced, and the circulation of the PCF organ L’Humanite increases. The crowning achievement of this movement is the Popular Front government led by Leon Blum of the SFIO, in alliance with the “left” bourgeois of the Radical Party. At the behest of Blum and the USSR, the PCF does not seek ministerial positions in the government. However, they still take responsibility for the government. The government is inaugurated with a wave of strikes asserting the rights of workers to organise themselves in unions and the right of the popular front government to implement its program. These strikes ended with agreements between employers, the CGT, and the government. The popular front government implements meaningful reforms, including the 40-hour week, the right to paid holidays, the right to strike, and a major public works program and nationalisations, particularly of the arms industry. These tangible reforms, similar in scope to the policies of the post-war Labour government, earned a significant amount of goodwill from the French working class, especially for the PCF, the most vocal advocate of the popular front. The French Communist could rightly declare to his social betters that “life belongs to us”.
However, the popular front government was fundamentally committed to governing on behalf of the bourgeoisie. It sought only to carve out as much as possible for the French worker as was acceptable to their paymasters in London, Paris, and Wall Street. The popular front implemented no meaningful reforms in the colonies. It put up no fight against the fascist-sympathising colonists, many of whom would go on to staff the Vichy regime. Its labour and domestic policy reforms would come undone over the following two years. Employers viewed the 40-hour week as limiting production and would shut down factories, restricting the output of French industry. The growth of German armaments deeply concerned Blum, who would seek a speed-up in the newly nationalised arms industries with new social programs steadily abandoned to pay for this speed-up. Most egregiously, when their fellow popular front government in Spain was subject to a fascist coup and civil war, the French government would pursue a policy of “neutrality”, fearful that intervention would lead to the British abandoning their alliance with France. In a recent book, the eminent historian of the Spanish Civil War, Paul Preston, rightly lays the ultimate blame for the collapse of the republican government in Spain at the doors of the French and British governments2.
The Popular Front government would meet its ignominious end in the Munich Crisis. Months earlier, the Radical Party, frustrated with the “economic mismanagement”, i.e. the prioritisation of workers over capital, expelled the socialist ministers. Despite this, the SFIO and the PCF continue supporting the Popular Front! The Munich Crisis concretely posed the question of fascism and the international balance of forces; the PCF and the USSR then could no longer support the French government. The Popular Front would fall, and the next government would oversee the Nazi occupation of France and the establishment of the Vichy regime.
Here, we will draw up a rough balance sheet for this period. The PCF would see a massive expansion of its base and become associated with favoured reforms among the working class. The growth of the PCF reinvigorated the principles of unity in defence of freedom and unity in the fight for reforms. Unfortunately, the positives end here. The popular front policy led to the subordination of the interests of the working class as a whole to the interests of one section in alliance with a section of the French bourgeoisie. This was demonstrated most egregiously in the policies towards the colonies and the Spanish Republic. However, it is also evident in the ultimate failure of the government where, eventually, the interest of all workers is subordinated to the interest of the “left” bourgeoisie in the name of defence of the Third Republic against fascism. The popular front policy ended up as a total failure.
So why does the popular front still dominate the conscience of the French left? This is relatively straightforward. The failure of the policy at a national level was obscured due to the success of the wartime popular front between the UK, USA, France and the USSR, alongside the commendable efforts of the PCF during the Vichy regime, playing a leading role in the French resistance. The spectacular growth in party membership also assisted the dominance of this mode of thinking. The generation that entered the party during the popular front would identify the PCF with the policies of the popular front and would go on to play essential roles in the post-war.
From Tripartisme to Programme commun
The popular front, which, as shown above, was nothing short of a failure on almost every point, became the guiding idea of the PCF, and much of the French left after the Second World War. We shall briefly sketch how the popular front manifested itself after the Second World War up to the failure of the Mitterrand government.
In the immediate aftermath of the post-war, the PCF was able to use the infrastructure, personnel, and prestige from the popular front period and resistance to catapult itself into first place in the elections. The PCF, not the SFIO, would dominate the French workers movement. Continuing the popular front policy, the PCF sought an alliance with its old rivals, the SFIO and the newly founded bourgeois party, the Popular Republican Movement (MRP). This time, the PCF would be included in ministerial positions in the government. However, this popular front again became unstuck in the question of international policy and the defence of the working class. The Americans, whose troops were still stationed in France and bordering countries, made it clear that no country with Communist ministers would receive any Marshall Aid money. Simultaneously, a series of strikes by rail workers and miners, which became violent but remained isolated, was used as a pretext for the expulsion of the PCF ministers from the government. The Soviets were unwilling to back a French revolution, so with an eye on the international balance of forces, the PCF acquiesced and entered opposition.
Within the opposition, the PCF is able to build very effectively on the gains it had made in the popular front period. Mass organisations are established and re-established, membership swells, and the PCF becomes a force outside Paris and the North-West. However, the dream of the popular front persists, with Thorez, the leader of the PCF, proposing a popular front again in 1956 to no avail. The fact of the exclusion of the PCF from the government posed further problems for the French Fourth Republic. At each election, a clear majority of voters would support left-of-centre parties, and the Fourth Republic, with a proportional and representative system, would reflect this in the parliament. However, the PCF was not allowed to enter government. This created inherently unstable governing coalitions and undermined public confidence in the regime.
Furthermore, Charles De Gaulle, the general who had led “Free France” during the war, stood at the sidelines endlessly criticising the government and posing himself as an alternative. As this crisis intensified over the 1950s, the French wars in Algeria and Vietnam would explode, causing even more severe problems for the Fourth Republic and under pressure from the right, creating an air of instability. While the PCF was the main opposition party, they remained committed to the policy of the Popular Front. This culminates in the PCF voting for special powers for the Mollet government that are then used to suppress the PCF! This fundamental instability and what was felt by the PCF as the constant possibility of them re-entering government undermined their ability to build an effective strategy for long-term opposition. Once Charles De Gaulle acts and the Fourth Republic was brought to a close, the new regime ensures that the left majority is denied expression in the new parliament as long as they remain divided.
The PCF spent the next two decades trying and failing to establish the basis for another popular front. During this time, they saw their vote share and membership decline. However, so substantial are the impacts of the popular front’s experiences in the resistance and the taste of power under the Tripartisme coalition that the PCF found it impossible to reorient themselves away from the policy that has never succeeded for more than a couple of years.
Eventually, the cajoling of several generations of PCF leaders led to signing the Common Programme (Programme commun) with the newly renamed SFIO, the Socialist Party (PS), in 1972. Over the following nine years, the PCF would decline precipitously. A broader decline in mass politics accompanied this decline, and the CGT saw its membership halve from 1968 to 1984, as well as the rise to prominence of white-collar workers represented primarily by the PS. The PCF does attempt to adjust, but as always, it is within the framework of the Popular Front. In the 1981 legislative elections, they would enter the government of Francois Mitterrand as a junior partner. For the first time since the original popular front, the PCF were the minority party of the French workers.
If the lead-up to the Mitterrand government was damaging for the PCF, the government itself and its impact was nothing short of disastrous. The PS and Mitterrand entered this government to undermine and isolate the Communists by bringing them into the government. The leaders of the PCF knew that this was their plan. However, they saw no alternative. They had spent almost half a century telling their base that the only hope was a popular front government. Now that one was on the table, they believed they could not walk away. The new government begins to fall apart very quickly. From the spring of 1982, the government started under the guidance of Finance Minister Jacques Delors to “fighting inflation”, which meant the wholesale abandonment of much of the Keynesian economic programme and the implementation of austerity. The PCF withdrew from the government in 1984, while the CGT led a series of strikes, most famously at Renault, Billancourt against closure. The strikes are defeated, and Billancourt is closed.
To this day, the PCF remains committed to the idea of the Popular Front. Despite the near disappearance of the PCF from the political scene, much of their base persists and has remained politicised around the struggle for reforms and a better society. This base today has been unified. With the necessary background outlines, we should now turn to the New Popular Front.
A New, (Un)Popular Front
In his reflection on the CPGB crisis in the mid-1980s, historian Raphael Samuel comments that the CPGB’s crisis is simply one instance of a broader trend: the death of mass, participatory politics3. The extent to which this form of politics existed and its death can be overstated, but they help understand the novel challenges faced by the French and broader European left.
To understand the difference between the mass politics of the past and the narrow politics of today, it is worth comparing the forces that formed the original popular front with those that formed its successor. The New Popular Front (NFP) is composed of:
- The PCF, a shadow of its former self, committed to a rather strange identity politics about eating sausages and driving cars.
- The PS, successor to the SFIO, was the left party of government for much of the post-war period. It has still not recovered from the disastrous Hollande government that paved the way for Macronisme.
- The Ecologists, a party of the middle classes with both left and right elements.
- La France Insoumise, a split from the PS around the personage of Jean Luc Melenchon.
- A collection of smaller parties and individuals, mostly aligned with one of these four. These forces are marginal and will not be discussed further.
The LFI has dominated the French left for almost a decade, even over the PS, though the latter is making a comeback recently. Today, the LFI is an organisation that has similar levels of support to the PCF that founded the Popular Front; however, it has far more limited horizons. There is no commitment to international socialism, as the PCF, in whatever distorted form, still possessed well into the 70s. The LFI’s origins on the left of the PS have coloured the organisation’s view of the state, and Melenchon’s political adolescence in Mitterand’s camp has further reinforced this view. Furthermore, the LFI is not actually a political party in the classical sense; it is a brand controlled and operated by Jean-Luc Melenchon with little to no input from anyone else, creating a rather autocratic internal culture4. The most discouraging part is that the LFI is perhaps the best rooted of all the forces of the NFP.
Unsurprisingly, the NFP achieved a paltry 28.2% in the first round and an even worse 25.8% in the second round. The left can most consistently pull off large-scale electoral victories when it is well-rooted with its own infrastructure, media and activists. The shallow approach of the LFI, in particular, and the NFP at large leaves a lot wanting, and it is certainly not a mandate for implementing their program, as Melenchon likes to declare. It is worth reminding readers that the old popular front which got 57.16% of the vote in the 1936 election, was still driven away from the government and was incapable of stopping the rise of the Vichy regime. Even Mitterrand could win a presidential election and 48% in the legislative elections, something Melenchon has so far proven incapable of doing. Compared with its earlier predecessors, the New Popular Front is fundamentally unpopular!
It is worth briefly discussing the divisions within the NFP as these will likely be the proximate cause of its inevitable failure. The two main forces are the LFI and the PS. While both oppose the RN and somewhat oppose Macron, these two forces disagree on almost every key point of policy. The right of the PS have repeatedly and vocally called for the expulsion of the LFI and claimed that they are anti-republican, anti-Semitic, and pro-Russian. This screeching simply puts into print the real divisions that exist between the two major groups, namely on the constitution of the Fifth Republic, militant opposition to Israel and Zionism5, and opposition to French involvement in Ukraine. These two policies are fundamentally irreconcilable, much like the differences between the SFIO and PCF in 1938. Whilst temporary unity against the far right on this or that point of principle is possible, permanent unity requires the LFI to suppress any of its politics that the right of the PS -and, therefore, the French state- finds objectionable. The LFI and Melenchon appear unwilling to do this. However, they have already begun to compromise on policies such as the rollback of the pension reform6, and the joint NFP candidate for Prime Minister is a technocrat from the Socialist Party who has never been elected .
Therefore, there are several factors that all but guarantee the failure of the NFP. First, it is rootless. The mass organisations of the 30s do not exist. Today’s LFI, PS, PCF, and Ecologists are not the mass organisations rooted in the working class’s everyday life, which SFIO and the PCF of the popular front were. They are light organisations with, at best, large paper memberships, but often not even that. As shown by the examples of Podemos and Syriza, without this external strength and while the international rule of capital remains, left governments will only govern in the interest of the strongest force acting on them against their own base and the people that elected them. Second, it is unpopular; even when it is united, the NFP commands the support of a minority of the electorate and a minority of French society. It should be deeply concerning to every Marxist committed to a program of democracy that the Far Right has a greater claim to democratic legitimacy in terms of raw support than the alliance of the NFP. Finally, it is deeply divided; the LFI and PS, while both fundamentally committed to entering the government and governing on behalf of the bourgeoisie, are fundamentally opposed to several key issues. These disagreements will not disappear. In fact, given the current international situation, the stakes of these disagreements are likely to increase. The catalyst for the collapse of the NFP will likely be a disagreement over Palestine or Ukraine. This disagreement will break the fundamentally fragile and narrow base of the NFP and likely take the LFI and Melenchon with it7. This break will succeed because the LFI has no extra-parliamentary organisation that can exert power independently of the parliament.
To achieve this, the LFI should seek to democratise itself and build a participatory mass membership organisation that is focused on building power both in and outside of parliament. It should follow its best instincts on Palestine and NATO to their logical conclusion and call for an anti-imperialist and internationalist mass organisation. It should extend the rightful critique of the elected monarchism of the fifth republic to a deeper criticism of the more comprehensive liberal bourgeois constitutional regimes throughout Europe and demand a democratic republic on the scale of Europe at least. If this policy were to be pursued, the LFI would be well placed as the centre of rebuilding the oppositional revolutionary left that is so necessary today.
The popular front was a doomed policy that subordinated the interests of the working class as a whole to the interests of a subsection of the working class. It is even more ridiculous to attempt to build another one again, especially today in an era where mass politics no longer exists and must be built up slowly and patiently. To attempt to rush into government with liberals, greens, and scabs in the hopes this will deliver a mass base is ridiculous and will lead to nothing but the left being blamed for the inevitable failures of that bourgeois government. This is especially true when the left does not command the support of the majority and is internally divided. A popular front did not save us last time. It will not save us this time.
Notes
- One Hundred Years of the French Communist Party, Martelli et al., 2022, 263-264 pp.
↩︎ - Perfidious Albion: Britain and the Spanish Civil War, Paul Preston, 2024
↩︎ - The Lost World of British Communism, Raphael Samuel, 2006
↩︎ - This was best demonstrated in the high-profile purges that occurred in the lead-up to the elections.
↩︎ - The LFI and Melenchon should be commended for never backing down on this key point, something that Corbyn categorically failed to do.
↩︎ - The LFI has long called for returning to a pension age of 60; the NFP’s program only calls for the repeal of the latest extension, which would bring the age down to 62.
↩︎ - Though we should not discount the ability of Melenchon to survive, he is a very astute politician.
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