Georgi Dimitrov, The United Front (New York: International Publishers: 1938) remembered by Norman Markowitz

                Recently  PA posted Georgi Dimitrov’s  important address to the Seventh Congress of the Comintern(1935) on the struggle against fascism and the need for a new policy—a broad united front policy of both the divided left and center left to fight "the fascist offensive”   In 1938, International Publishers, then and now the publishers representing  the CPUSA, issued   a collection of Dimitrov’s speeches, reports and commentaries from  the Seventh Congress  through 1937 when thepolicy had already seen many important developments. 

The work was widely read at the time and was  influential in the thinking of both U.S. Communists and progressives who were struggling to defeat fascism.  Rereading it, I found many valuable insights  into both the dangers of fascism and the  weaknesses and flaws of the  larger left of that time which  I believe are of value today.  So I decided to write this summary , remembrance, review and analysis of a classic collection, in a few installments.  This is the first installment

                The first section “The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International “ is the full version of the main report enunciating the united  front policy. Presented to the Congress on August 2, 1935 it  is ninety three pages long—a lucid summary of the policy which would be advanced in the coming years.

                 Dimitrov begins by challenging theoretically  the main  social democratic and liberal  analyses of fascism—that it  respectively  is a petit bourgeois reactionary movement and a mass  movement above conventional politics  that represents neither the working class nor the capitalist class

Rather, Dimitrov restates the Communist position  that  it is the dictatorship of finance capital, and adds  that  the path for its ascent  was  prepared  “the reactionary measures” of capitalist governments

                But simply to proclaim that  it is the dictatorship of finance capital means nothing unless one fight intelligently against it.   To have the right line means nothing if one is merely an observer rather than a committed activist.

 Fascism’s  appeal to the masses is that “it demagogically appeals to their most urgent needs and demands “ however  dishonest and twisted its appeal may be.

 Later Dimitrov gives as an example a rally of the unemployed in Berlin  which he attended before Hitler came to power.  A Nazi speaker denounced the delays and retrials of two prominent stock market swindlers and concluded that they should simply be shot to save the taxpayers’ money which could then be used to help the unemployed—demagoguery that in no way addressed the issue of unemployment(like “tea party” attacks of government spending and waste) but which the crowd cheered.  A Communist speaker  simply  repeated general statements of Comintern positions, and good wishes and his words fell flat. Fascist appeals to end unemployment by expelling foreigners.

 Solving the debt crisis by abolishing interest, like rightist schemes for a “flat tax” and campaigns to deport undocumented workers and seal borders today, were and are confidence tricks, pseudo actions feed on masss frustration with govercnnnment  inaction. Listening to economists or political analyists  on PBS /CNN discuss the economic crisis, even though their position is completely different than the Communist speaker at the unemployed rally in Berlin, equally falls flat to those who are victims of the economic crisis.

                Dimitrov then goes forward to see fascism as an international phenomenon which can come to power in any capitalist nation, contending that the view of many Communists that it could not happen in an advanced nation like Germany had been  proven completely false.

 How did the fascists win out where they won out?  Capitalist governments paved the way for them  Also, Social Democrats where they had some power in various governments did not take effective actions to both address the economic crisis and to use the state  power that they did have against the  lawless fascist paramilitary groups. 

Nor did they address the class interests of small peasants and agricultural laborers, without the class discipline of industrial workers,  who were prime targets for fascist demagoguery and mobilization.  One might look today in the U.S. to both the anti-union shop Southern and Western states and the hard hit “de-industrialized” sections of the Middle West to find similar potential mass constituencies.

                It did not matter of course that the fascist states in power broke all of the promises to poor peasants to free them from debt,  to women to protect the sanctity of the home and family to, youth of  a better and more secure life, to the small businessmen and salaried middle classes to  protect them from  big businessmen and foreign(in Germany Jewish) competition.  By then it was too late to resist except through the creation of undergrounds 

Fascism, Dimitrov contends is “a ferocious but unstable power.”  It is not rooted in capitalist strength but in capitalist weakness and desperation --- a desperation which  to fund  parties and policies which they themselves in pre crisis times   saw as lunatic and criminal.  One might compare this with the statements of "tea party" and ultraright Republicans today

                Dimitrov then goes on to address the criticisms of the United Front, first from the right.  The United Front is a “Communist maneuver.”   Let those who take that position join the United Front instead of fighting it and thus “expose” the Communists.”  Communists have a different program than Social Democrats and liberals.  Communists admit that but pledge not to attack others within the United Front and to work for a concrete anti-fascist policy.  The capitalist parties are more trustworthy than the Communists?   Look at what happened in Germany when the Social Democrats  supported such parties.

Dimitrov also challenges the contentions of British Laborites and others in countries with small Communist parties who argue that the Communists are too insignificant to matter in a United Front.  But without the militancy and organizational coherence of the Communists the mass grassroots action necessary to both establish and sustain an effective anti-fascist policy  in the face of the fascist offensive would not exist.

  Opponents of the United Front also argue that he Communists are for a dictatorship and we are for social democracy.  To this Dimitrov answers, without  denying or hiding the Communist commitment to a revolutionary “dictatorship” of the proletariat,” that the Communists  support concrete democratic struggles of the working class and see in the United Front not a “maneuver” or even a stage on the road to the dictatorship of the Proletariat but a policy to defeat fascist danger, which will liquidate all forms of democracy.

 For those today who might argue that Communists are tricksters, seeking to impose their will on others , one can argue that Communists if they were that could not have led in the development of industrial unions, pioneering anti-racist civil rights organizations, peace organizations, peoples democratic movements in the struggles against fascism in the past.  The commitment of Communists to democratic struggles and ideals has been expressed in action, not just in words and those who have learned through action and participation  in mass struggles  understand that.

But what is the content of the United Front?  “First, joint struggle to shift the consequences of the crisis unto the shoulders of the ruling class----in a word unto the rich.”   This means a government that will act to protect jobs and income, prevent foreclosures of productive and personal property, and to use today’s language, “bail out the people”.

“Second...joint struggle against the destruction of bourgeois-democratic liberties” meaning today in the U.S. the assault on free speech, freedom of assembly, the right  to be protected against warrantless searches and seizures, the right not to be held in preventive detention, measures and policy that pave the way for fascism.

“Third, joint struggle against the approaching danger of an imperialist, preparation which will make such a war more difficult.”  Given the policies of U.S. governments and its NATO allies in the cold war and “post cold war period” this analysis really needs no updating.

                But how to accomplish this?  There are many tactics but all call for militant and creative action to  defend workers organizations and strikes, to engage in mass political struggles against repressive legislation and to fight to defend women, youth, minorities against both “social reaction” and the fascist assaults.  And this must be done at the grassroots level, not bureaucratically by “committees” of Communist and Social Democratic and other anti-fascist parties, committees of various trade union and mass organization groups to form coalitions endorsing policies and candidates for electoral office without programmatic action to win over masses of people to those policies and candidates.

                Much of this remains directly relevant as we struggle to organize the working class to defeat the fascist danger, not to elect a political party that we all know is a party of capitalism, but to energize the masses of working people, including the most class conscious workers, minorities and women(a sociological minority given the institutional and ideological exploitation and oppression they face ) who are the mass constituencies of that party which we all know is the Democratic party  to use it as far as they can to defend their class interests.

                Although I am only on page 41 of the International Publishers 1938 edition, let me conclude this opening blog article on Dimitrov’s main report with a look  at one part of the following section “Key Questions of the United Front in Individual Countries.”  The first country listed was the United States of America.

                Here  it is important to understand that the various sections of the report were based on analyses developed by Communist representatives from the various countries and on the various commissions, not from some unseen sinister forces in Moscow, which continues to be the anti-Communist assertion.

                 Dimitrov makes the point  that “in contradistinction to German fascism which operates under anti-Constitutional slogans, American fascism tries to portray itself as the custodian of the Constitution and “American Democracy.”

 And in the U.S. there is no “third Reich” to be established, no new Roman Empire, or even a resurrection of Medieval Poland or a Hungary purified of minorities. 

Dimitrov looking at the U.S.  repeats the CPUSA position of calling for a “Farmers and Workers party”  that would not be socialist or Communist but address the “urgent demands” of workers;  the fight for land and against indebtedness for “white and negro sharecroppers; equal status for Negroes;”  “for genuine social legislation, for unemployment insurance.” 

At the time, Dimitrov feared that if such a party were not developed the depression crisis would lead to the creation of a mass fascist “utilizing the discontent of millions with the two Bourgeois parties, Democratic and Republican, to create a ‘third party’ in the United States, as an anti-Communist party, a party directed against the revolutionary movement.”

                Of course, things would change rapidly in the U.S.  The New Deal government would adopt some of the “genuine social legislation,” including unemployment insurance advanced by Communists and the left as the trade union movement took off, with industrial unions that Communist and socialists had long advocated, playing the leading role. 

 A third  party of reaction, an anti-labor, anti-Communist, national chauvinist/racist party, did not materialize, although fascist demagogues like Father Charles Coughlin and “the Reverend” Gerald L.K. Smith sought to develop such a party around names like “national union” and “social justice.” A conservative coalition of rightwing Republicans and Democrats, primarily Southern  Democrats, operating  from 1938 to the end of WWII through the House Un-American Activities Committee(HUAC) did serve as a center for the policies that such fascist parties were identified with in Europe, ironically using the language that Dimitrov used when  he noted that in America fascists attack all ideologies “imported” from Europe, including fascism, as “un-American.”

                Today the forces of fascism do  not need a “third party” although the media invented “tea party” inside the Republican party  sometimes seeks to portray itself as that.  A third party in itself would be divisive.  Instead, the immediate task would seem to be to work aid the many  millions of progressive citizens and voters of the Democratic party to liberate their progressive candidates, elected representatives, and organizations like Move on from the party power brokers and bosses  who at best act like the rightwing social democratic leaders  Dimitrov condemned—deferring to the center and the right  on everything  while presenting themselves as the only alternative to the right.