The Popular Front and the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International

IN AUGUST 1969, the British Communist Party published a 60-page booklet by Betty Reid entitled 'Ultra-Leftism in Britain'.

Though she touches on the activities of anarchist and 'Maoist' groups, Reid's main concern is to discredit Trotskyism in general and the Socialist Labour League in particular.

Starting today, the Workers Press will publish five extracts from a larger work dealing with all the main principled differences The extracts we are publishing here will deal with five specific issues raised by Reid's attack on the Fourth International: 1. The Popular Front and the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International.

The Second World War: The Stalin-Hitler Pact.

The Second World War: 'The Big Three.

British Trotskyism today: Stalinism and the Stalinism PAGE between Trotskyism and Stalinism.

visionists.

The fight for alternative ist record-and ours.

THE OPPORTUNISM of the 'Popular Front. like the ultra-leftism 01 the Third Period, cannot be understood except as a product of the crisis of the Soviet bureaucracy.

Reid presents the twists and turns of Stalinist policy as a series of 'mistakes' and corrections. A policy which condemned the largest section of the International outside the Soviet Union to the horrors of the Nazi terror cannot simply be explained away as a 'far-reaching sectarian error' (p. 9).

On whose authority does Reid judge the theory of 'social fascism' to be an error?

Like the earlier and later phases of right-wing opportunism, ultra-left 'social fascism' was a product of the overall Stalinist policy of 'socialism in one country'. In one situation, it could take a right-wing form, in another, that of extreme adventurism and ultra-leftism.

Stalin's entry into the League of Nations in 1934 So eloved of Mrs Reid and heralded front' her Stalinist friends.

But what did the Leninist Communist International have to say about the body which Stalin considered a 'factor in retarding the outbreak hostilities'?

Its founding. conference of March 1919 #poke of 'those bourgeois elements who want to use the deceptive illusion of the so-called League of Nations to conjure away the proletarian revolution'.

In its 'Theses on the International Situation' the congress spelled out its hostility to the League in a programmatic form :

•... the League of Nations •.. will only play the part of a Holy alliance of the capitalists to suppress the workers' revolution. Propaganda for the League of Nations is the best way of introducing confusion into the revolutionary sciousness of the working class...• ... The revolutionary proletariat of all countries of all the world must wage an irreconcilable struggle ... arainst entrv into this League of robbery, of exploitation, and of imperialist counterrevolution' These statements are quite adequate to condemn the counter-revolutionary diplomacy of Stalin.

But the 1920 Congress returned to this theme once again, and we must quote Lenin's own estimation of the League in his Theses on the National and Colonial Question adopted by the Congress:

"The reunification of nations artificially torn apart is also in accordance with the interests of the proletariat; but the proletariat can attain genuine national freedom and unity only by means of revolutionary struggle and after the downfall of the bourgeoisie. The League of Nations and the entire post-war policy of the imperialist States disclose this truth even more sharply and clearly, everywhere intensifying the revolutionary struggle • • • accelerating the destruction of petty-bourgeois national illusions about the possibility of peaceful coexistence and the equality of nations under capitalism.' (Emphasis added.)

That is what Lenin thought of the Stalinist theory of "peaceful co-existence' - a 'petty-bourgeois illusion'.

And this is the theory that has guided the activity of what the Stalinists call the 'World Communist movement' since 1924!

The Popular Front, the deliberate restriction working class to the level of Reid's minimum demands (anything else was slandered as 'ultra-leftism', as it is today) led to the following statements in the Young Communist League discussion magazine. 'Our Youth': youth organizations.' (October 1938, p. 12.)

'Can there be democratic participation of youth in "Keep Fit" schemes? . . . In Sheffield a youth keep fit conference has already been held, attended by the Boy's Brigade, Scouts, Ramblers Association, Bible class, Girl Guides, Trade Union Youth Advisory Committee, Young Communist League and many other crimes and the fate of many innocent men [all once denounced by Reid and company as guilty] should not prevent us from examining soberly Trotskyists' policies'. (p. 17.)

Unity • with the Bible class and Girl Guides-but not Trotskyists.

Stalinists like Reid would argue that unlike the bulk of the organizations we have just quoted, the Trotskyists represented an alien influence in workers' movement.

The article makes the following revealing admission:

'A group of League members visited the Rover Scouts. They were very well received, spent • an enjoyable evening discussing matters with them, being agreeably surprised to find we had so much in common with them ... one of the League members declared that she had learned more about the YCL and its policy from the discussion with the scouts than she had learned during the whole time she had been a member of the League.' (p. 13.)

This is the real essence of the Popular Front. The Communist Party concentrated on winning progressive Tories and leading churchmen, while the YCL rounded up the Scouts, the Guides and Biblestudy groups.

No wonder Reid finds Trotsky's call for transitional demands 'ultra left' — with Lord Baden-Powell as your ally, even a modest wage claim becomes adventurist.

Here they will find all the rotten compromises with the 'left' and not so 'left' trade union bureaucrats, the boosting of 'progressive' clergymen, the revolting practice of publicising jingoist Tories when they make anti-German remarks that tie in with CP policy—it was all prepared in the popular front, the e pariod sectarian errors were correc. sectarian errors were Correc ted'. (p. 9.)

This was the logic of inism internationally.

The Moscow Trials and the alliance with the Boy Scouts where all of a piece. • They cannot be treated as separate questions, as Reid and Monty Johnstone would like to do:

In the section on the Trials Reid rounds off with the following words:

If these 'innocent Trotskyists' were murdered by Stalin, it was surely because of their policies. Reid now says they were innocent.

Is Reid arguing that though the Trotskyists were innocent them, erator guilty or the worle against "Third fought for rect political line and the According this logic, of at least the revolutionary leadership of the working class.

wonderful advertisement Communism, Mrs Reid. US State Department could not Front was tionary politicians at the same time as his courts Nonombor 4, 1900 old Bolsheviks were being shot as fascist agents:

The Popular Front was courted tionary politicians sentenced and executed the same Even during his flirtation with the Western Democracies' (during the pact with Hitler, Stalin was to use the Nazi term Western Plutocracies'), Stalin never gave up his quest for a deal with the Nazis.

The Red Army purges, the Moscow Trials, double edge.

Stalin not only feared the Soviet General Staff as a possible source of opposition to his rule.

The army leaders also posed his pro-Hitler policies, favouring instead closer relations with France. They rightly saw the Nazis as the : 15* Union. main threat to the Soviet Before the Hitler Pact could be signed, all traces of opposition to Stalin's pro-German policy had to be removed.

Stalin, like Hitler, preferred to deal with regimes that were not subject to the hazards of democratic elections and workers' revolutions.

Stalin, by ensuring that Hitler swept away both, believed he had built up a perfect foil to play off against France and Britain.

Even during the height of fascism, Stalin was willing to drop hints through the International that Italiian fascism was really not so bad as the German variety. 1036 number August of the Italian CP journal, Lo Stato Operajo' issued the following appeal, made in the month that the first batch of Nonomber 4, 1900 old Bolsheviks were being shot as fascist agents:

'Italian people; Fascists of the old guard [not Bolsheviks of the old guard-they were being shot • fascists!] Young fascists! We communists adopt as our own the fascist programme of 1919, which is a programme of peace, of freedom, of defence of the interests of the workers.. .?

This incredible document went hand in hand with hysterical appeals to not only ex'social fascists' liberals, but even Tories, to fight fasHarry Pollitt, the British CP Secretary, went to ridiculous lengths to boost 'progressive' Tories as allies of the working class in the fight against fascism.

"They [left-wing critics of Stalinist policy] try to frighten us with talk about Winston Churchill, Eden and Duff Cooper. Surely it is a matter of political interest that inside the rank of this great powerful Tory Party cracks are appearing; powerful leaders of conservatism country openly declare that Chamberlain is sacrificing the interests of Britain.

"This is not something to cry about. It is something for us to welcome, to encourage, to stimulate, whatever their motives may be . . if now a Conservative or a Liberal is prepared to take stand against Hitler and Mussolini • we believe our class is strong enough to handle them (Defence of the People: CP pamphlet, February 1939, pp. 11-12.)

New allies the later stages of the Popular Front it was not even question fight workers' minimum demands.

If Churchill and company were to be the new allies, all struggle for working-class rights and conditions had to be sacrificed to these "powerful leaders of Conservatism'.

Trotsky was completely correct when he denounced the Popular Front as a joint attempt by Stalinism, social-democracy and capitalism to stifle the working class in the name of 'broad unity in the fight against fascism.

The Stalinists themselves were to admit the fatuous nature of their 'People's Fronts' against fascism when many of their most soughtafter capitalist allies became once again politicians on the road to fascism.

This was the fate not only of Churchill, but of many other would-be or actual members of the 'People's Front'.

In its heyday, they were billed as leading 'anti-fascists; during the Nazi-Soviet Pact they were relegated to the depths of reaction (they now opposed Stalin's new ally, Hitler) and were promoted just as suddenly to anti-fascist status after the invasion of the Soviet Union British by Hitler.

chdrop to British (Stalm Augur 1s hatre Fet Hurry Prosttid...

Like Churchill's, Roosevelt's political relations with the Stalinists went through the cycle not once, but twice.

In the "Third Period', US Communist Party desStan ang taure suir.

Jone Golian.

cribed his 'New Deal' as 'the fascist direction in which the Roosevelt carrying the (Earl Browder, speech printed in "Communist International', January 1934.)

With the advent of the Popular Front, Roosevelt, from being a fascist, became a leadng anti-fascist Tuesday, It is significant that Reid not!

'These pronouncements of Roosevelt, when taken together with the more concrete proposals of the CIO. • provide a rounded-out People's Front programme of an advanced type.' ('The Communist', December, 1937.)

But the Stalinists • had not finished with Roosevelt yet.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact found the US ranged against Stalin's new friends.

Once again, a 'revaluation' was called for:

'In the face of a popular will to keep out of the war, ... the Roosevelt administration, backed by the economic royalists and their agents, is taking the country step by step into the war with a speed unexampled in all history and with a boldness and cynicism that are quite breathtaking, worthy of Hitler himself.' (Browder, speech, June 1940.)

Somersaults The cycle was completed for the second time after Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. The main point that arises from this catalogue of Stalinist somersaults is the total lack of principle in all the politics of the bureaucracy.

'Marxist' phrases are at one moment used to present a reformist or capitalist politician as an enemy of the working class, as a fascist.

The next day, purely in the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy as it shifts its international stance away from one group of imperialist powers and towards another, the same people become leading 'anti-fascists'-and then back to fascist again if the Kremlin once more veers in its course.

This subordination of the working class to the manoeuvres of the bureaucracy is well illustrated by Stalin's policy towards the Italian war against Abyssinia.

Reid makes the following allegation:

• .. some Trotskyists of a previous generation attacked the attempts to impose sanctions on Mussolini when he invaded Abyssinia, because the latter was a feudal and reactionary regime.' (p. 29.)

Who are these 'some Trotskyists'? In the whole of this series, we have named names, places, dates and publications. It is significant that Reid Let Let Trotsky answer not!

Let Trotsky answer this slander:

"Maxton and others opine that the Italo-Ethiopian war is a "conflict between two rival dictators" . . . They thus define the character of the war by the political form of the state. • • • If Mussolini triumphs, it means the reinforcement fascism, the strengthening of imperialism and the discouragement of the colonial peoples in Africa and elsewhere.

"The victory of the Negus, however, would mean a blow not only at Italian imperialism but imperjalism as a whole, and would powerful impulse to the rebellious forces of the oppressed peoples. One must be really blind not to see this. (On Dictators and the Heights of Oslo', April 22, 1935.)

But Stalin at this time did not want the defeat of Italian imperialism!

That is why he supplied oil to the fascist war machine, hoping to break Mussolini from his alliance with Hitler by taking advantage of Italy's and Germany's lack of oil.

The Soviet Comintern leader Manuilsky justified this policy in his report to the Leningrad and Moscow Party Organizations following the Seventh Congress of the International in 1935:

'Who would gain from this? [Soviet sanctions against Italy.] "The capitalist states. Who would lose from this? Not Italy, but the USSR. In actual fact, the boycott would be turned not against Italy, but the USSR.' Reid charges 'some Trotskyists' with opposing sanctions against Mussolini.

This was not Trotsky's policy. It was Stalin's, Pollitt's and Gollan's.

It is not just a question of ignorant of the bein writings of Mrs Reid Trotsky. This she undoubtedly Reid charges the Fourth International with the very crime of which Stalinism is guilty.

It was the Soviet bureaucracy, supported by all the world's Stalinists, which subordinated the struggle of the diplomacy opower and secret colonial people for freedom the Kremlin.

Stalin's ever-changing diplo. matic tactics even influenced the script prepared for the Moscow Trials.

Stalin's special regard for Mussolini was reflected in the failure of any one of the 'defendants' to confess to being an agent of Italian fascism.

The Trotskyists were always in league with Hitler, but never Mussolini.

As Reid admits, all these charges were concocted by Stalin; can she explain the favours shown to Italy in any way other than being due to the secret diplomatic links between the Kremlin and the fascist regime in Italy, which operated even throughout its intervention the side of Franco in the Spanish Civil Abyssinia was not the only country sacrificed on the altar of Stalinist diplomacy During the Popular Front period, the Soviet bureaucracy allied itself with the rulers of two vast empires, the British and the French.

The end of the Third Period faced the Stalinists with a new problem; what was to be the line of the International on the struggle of the colonial people oppressed by governments now officially elevated to 'anti-fascist' status, such as the Blum Popular Front government in France from 1936, or the similar government in Spain throughout the civil war?

Again Manuilsky, speaking at the 18th Congress of the Bolshevik Party in 1939, gives us the answer:

"The Communists concentrate their main fire in the specific historical situation on the fraudulent fascist "self-determination of nations" [Within six months British and French colonies were to be the only target.] ... Communists lay prime emphasis on the struggle for self-determination by the nations enslaved by the fascist states. ('The Land of Socialism To day and Tomorrow', p. 82.)

The millions of colonial slaves in Africa and Asia had to wait on Stalin's diplomacy for their freedom. When Stalin turned back to Hitler in August 1939, they were given permission to struggle again-until June 22, 1941.

The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union once more found British and French imperialism as 'progressive forces', their colonial slaves yet again were told to wait for their freedom.

Stalin never saw the oppressed masses of the empires as allies of the Soviet Union and their rousing to revolutionary struggle as the greatest blow that could be struck against the enemies of the Stalin subordinated everything to the interests of the Kremlin bureaucracy. Millions of workers and peasants all over the world were picked up, bargained with and dropped like so many • counters on a gambling table.

The greatest crime of all was that this policy was carried through in the name of Communism and the Russian Revolution.

The Fourth International, in fighting against the counterrevolutionary policies and actions of Stalinism, was the best, the only genuine defender of the Soviet Union, because it fought to give a revolutionary leadership to the struggle of the working class and peasantry in the capitalist and colonial countries.

Trotsky fought for a Leninist defence of the Soviet Union, against the reactionary policies that flowed from the theory of 'socialism in one country' By his military purges, his disruption of the economy, his alienation of the peasantry and crushing of the working class, his decapitation of the Leninist leadership of the Bolshevik party and International, his discrediting of the Soviet Union and Communism by all the cynical manoeuvres which reached their climax in Germany and Spain, and finally the Hitler Pact; Stalin more than any other single person weakened the Soviet Union and exposed it to all the horrors of the Nazi invasion.

Reid's attack on Trotskyism begins in • earnest when she reaches 1938, the year of the Founding Conference of the Fourth International.

Her main target is the Transitional Programme, adopted at that conference and condemned by Reid as being a weapon of disruption in the struggle against fascism and Unable to explain how the 'ultra-left' Trotsky attacked Stalinism 'from the right' during its 'social fascist' phase, Reid feels she is on firmer ground in the period of the Popular Front from 1935 to 1939.

Mass working-class demonstrations reached a climax in 1936 on 'Red Thursday', but the movement was consciously betrayed by the leaders of French Stalinism. BED!

For while Stalinists such as Reid and Johnstone make verbal criticisms of the ultra-left line followed by the International in the early 1930s, they endorse to the hilt everything carried through by Stalinism in the period of the British Stalinists defend the Popular Front with a double tenacity. Apart from a natural desire to uphold the line followed by their own leadership, the Reids uphold the opportunist policies of that period as the historical forerunner of 'The British Road to Socialism' with its pleas for 'left unity' with the trade union and Labour Party bureaucracies.

The Transitional Programme bristles with hatred for such unprincipled alliances:

'Under the banner of the October Revolution, the conciliatory politics practised by the People's Front dooms the working class to impotence and clears the road for fascism.' (Transitional Programme, PP. 9-10.)

Within a year, the Popular Fronts of Spain and France had crashed, to be replaced in both cases with fascist regimes under Franco and Petain.

Faced with these stark hisorical tacts, Reid patheticall claims that 'what the Trotsky. ists were proposing in France was a mad adventure which would have split the Popular Front and led to fascism coming early to power, instead of being imposed later by the actions of the invading German armies'. (p. 11.)

What were the policies advocated by Trotsky which Reid decries as leading to a 'mad adventure' ?

'Instead of a Popular Front which Trotsky said "succeeded in canalising and damming, at least temporarily, the revolutionary stream" ... the slogan of the French Trotskyists was "A Workers' Government"' Reid also seeks to prove that Trotsky's call for the United Front in the French struggles of 1936 was a maximum demand out of line with the level of the struggle.

Reid also seeks to prove that Trotsky's call for the United Front in the French struggles of 1936 was a maximum demand out of line with the level of the struggle.

Trotsky called, as Reid says, for a Front based 'On a system of measures with which a workers' and peasants' government can ensure the transition from capitalism to socialism'.

This, Reid claims, is not a 'transitional demand' at all, but a slogan 'based on the most advanced programme — the dictatorship of the proletariat'. (p. 9.)

Reid's attacks on Trotskyism involve a direct revision of all the basic work of the Leninist-Bolshevik Party and the first four Congresses of the Communist International, all of whose decisions and policies are generalized in the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International.

There is a very good communist precedent for Trotsky's call for the united front to prepare the road for a workers' and peasants' government. The slogan was first concretized at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, in the "Theses on Tactics':

"The slogan of a workers' government (or a workers' and peasants' government) can be used practically everywhere as a general propaganda slogan.

'But as a 'topical political slogan it is of the greatest importance in those countries where bourgeois society is particularly unstable, where the relation of forces between the workers' parties and the bourgeoisie is such that the decision of the question, who shall form the government, becomes one of immediate practical necessity.

In these countries the slogan of a workers' government follows inevitably from the entire united front tactic ..?

It was precisely in this context that Trotsky put forward the demand for a workers' and peasants' government in France in the great strikes of 1936.

As the 'Theses' state, the slogan of class power, in a prerevolutionary or revolutionary situation, flows inevitably from the period of preparation in the fight for the united front.

The French Stalinists in rejecting the Leninist united front and the call for the workers' government in period of profound capitalist crisis came to the aid of the ruling class.

If there is to be no call for

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power, expressed at a certain preparatory stage through the existing workers' parties, then there can be only unity against a struggle for power.

Like all reformists, Reid attempts to justify the political line of Stalinism with voting She reproduces the results of the French general election of 1936 as crushing proof that there had been no revolutionary situation and therefore, no betrayal.

The Stalinists do the same thing when covering-up for the role of the French Communist Party in the great sit-in strike of May-June 1968.

Steeped in the methods of the "British Road to Socialism', with its programme of parliamentary transition to socialism, Reid evades completely the class context of the situation in France in 1936. She can see only the ballot box and combinations within parlia•... in the first ballot . the Communist and the officiai Socialist parties combined had polled 3,341,132 votes out ot a total of 9,838,943, and these were votes cast not on a programe of immediate seizure of power but on the basis of a popular front government' (p. 10.)

Not a word from Reid about the mass strikes and sit-ins in progress in the weeks before the elections, the results of Stalia's oil which were only a pale and distorted reflection of the real class forces in conflict in factories.

Yes. The workers voted for parties standing on a Popular Front programme, But that was not their choice.

Even the leader of the French Stalinists at that time, Thorez, admitted that things were boiling over and only checked by the intervention of his party:

In the midst of a city at fever heat and shaken with preposterous rumours [i.e., such as the Stalinists preparing to call for revolution] we held a meeting to instruct all the Communists in the Paris district. . . • Among the metal workers who had been the first to fill the breach and had been fighting for two weeks, were there not some ardent youngsters who believed that the hour of revolution had struck? But we who lead the Communist Party are the general staff of the working-class army, not political adventurers .. the Popular Front stands for order, for steady and organized progress.. • Straightforwardly, and weighing all my words, I declared in the name of the Central Committee: "Though it is important to press our claims thoroughly, it is equally important to know when to stop. At the moment, there is no question of taking power" •.. Our political wisdom was soon to bear fruit. Many collective agreements were carried through and the evacuation of the factories and workshops was begun in an orderly and cheerful spirit.' (Thorez, 'Son of the People' , 1938 ed., pp 129-132.)

It is clear from this extract that the Stalinists' intervention was decisive in ending the great sit-in strike of June 1936. Reid, aware of the great betrayal carried through by Thorez, diverts the argument to a question of votes.

But even here, Leninism has a sound precedent for dealing with Reid's parliamentary cretinism. The Russian workers took power, as is well known, in a country numerically dominated by peasants.

The voting figures for the elections to the Constituent Assembly reflect the numerical ratio of workers to peasants in Russia at the time of the October Revolution. But Lenin looked at the question qualitatively, not in terms of numbers alone.

Had he not done so, the Bolshevik Party would have followed Reid's advice and renounced power when they found themselves outvoted in the elections to the Assembly.

While the workers voted solidly for the Bolsheviks, the peasants in the overwhelming lajority plumbed for the ocial Revolutionaries (SRs) :

Bolsheviks ••. 9,000,000 SRs 21,000,000 Others 4,500,000 If anything, measured in terms of votes, there was a more favourable situation for the working class before the revolution in France than there had been in Russia after it.

As Thorez admits, France in in 1936 was no 'normal bourgeois country'.

The ruling class was only able to hold on to power by creating, through its Radical Party, a bloc with the Socialists and the Stalinists, through them, to the Soviet bureaucracy.

These international aspects of Stalinist policy will be dealt with in more detail in the next section. Here it is only necessary to point out that the line French Communist Party determined Kremlin diplomacy, which after 1934 turned to French imperialism as a counter-weight to the rise of Nazi Germany in central Europe.

The slogan of a workers' and peasants' government was designed for precisely the situation that developed in France When there had been no revolutionary situation in the previous hve years, the French Stalinists had proclaimed revolution from the roof-tops.

Now, when it stared them in the face, they embraced not only the "social fascists' but even the capitalist Radical Party, the organization of the most conscious sections of the French ruling The Transitional Programme itself, with its emphasis posed itself against sectarian- transitional demands, counteropportunist line of the Stalinists after 1934.

The ultra-lefts who scorned the struggle of the working class for minimal reforms were as much an enemy of the Fourth International as those who set out to serve capitalism by confining the struggle of the working class to this level alone:

"The Fourth International does not discard the programme of the old "minimal" demands to the degree which these have preserved at least part of their vital forcefulness.

• Insofar as the old, partial, "minimal" demands the masses clash with the destructive and degrading tendencies of decadent capitalism - and this occurs at each step-the Fourth International advances a system of transitional demands, the essence of which is contained in the fact that ever more openly and decisively they will be directed against the very bases of the bourgeois regime.

"The old "minimum programme" is superseded by the transitional programme, the task of which lies in systemYorkshire THREE atic mobilization of the masses for the proletarian revolution? (Transitional Programme', p. 11-12.)

In the name of a struggle against ultra-leftism, Reid upholds the old 'minimum programme' of social democracy.

Again, Trotsky drew on the rich store of experience of the early Communist International in developing this perspective.

The Third Congress adopted its 'Theses on Tactics' which contains all the basic policies outlined by Trotsky 17 years later:

"The Communist parties do not put forward any minimum programme to strengthen and improve the tottering structure of capitalism. ... In the place of the minimum programme of the reformists and the centrists [and by 1935 the Stalinists] the Communist International puts the struggle for the concrete needs of the proletriat, for a system of demands which in their totality disintegrate the power of the bourgeoisie, organize the proletariat, represent stages in the struggle for the proletarian dictatorship, and each of which expresses in itself the need of the broadest masses, even if the masses themselves are not vet consciously in favour of the proletarian dictatorship! • . . The revolutionary character of the present epoch consists precisely in this, that the most modest conditions of life for the working masses are incompatible with the existence of capitalist society, and that therefore the fight for even the most modest demands grows into the fight for communism.' This is just the strategy condemned by Reid in her attack on Trotsky for his advocacy of the workers' government during the French sit-in strike of 1936:

'Only a minority of French workers understood this however, and therefore the immediate aim of the fight against fascism could not be working-class power.' (p. 10.)

Reformism Would Reid claim, against Lenin and all leading Marxists, that the working • class takes power as a class with full consciousness of what it is doing?

What were the slogans of the Russian Revolution — 'socialism in one country' or bread, peace and land?

What , the Comintern 'Theses' underline is that given revolutionary leadership, the logic of the struggle for certain demands of a transitional character drives the working class forward, even its more backward sections, towards the 'fight for power.

By consciously adapting the vanguard to the rearguard, and the middle class, as did Thorez in the French general strike, the Stalinists guaranteed the stabilization of the capitalist regime under the guise of a People's GovernProperty relations, the basic Marxist criteria of the class nature of any government, remained as before capitalist.

Not a single one of Reid's attacks on the Transitional Programme, and Trotsky's application of its strategy to the class struggle in France and Spain, stands up to a momanalysis. All her attacks are shot through with the philosophy of reformism, of fighting for what seems possible.

By containing the working class to minimum programme in the interests of maximum unity, the Stalinists drained the working class of its energies so effectively that even the minimum programme was smashed by fascist coun ter-revolution.

That is the ruthless logic of the class struggle: either a struggle for Power or, eventually, the loss of everything the working class has won in its century-long struggle for conditions and organization.

Or as Marx himself stated, either socialism or barbarism.