The second half of Frank’s lecture was harder to translate than part one, and you’ll see some points [in brackets] where we’d welcome feedback from our francophone subscribers.
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International Context and the Rise of Reaction
Consequently, there was in the working class, especially not just the conditions under which it was created, the reasons for which it was created, the elements that constituted the masses, but also what it achieved to bar the path to fascism, to the government.
I will conduct this analysis, especially to allow for an international context, on an international background. The union of the left, which presents... [phrase fragmentée] there is another problem that also played a role in this period: the rise of reaction did not only occur in the capitalist world. The rise of reaction also occurred considerably in the Soviet Union.
Stalinism, the Stalinist bureaucracy, had obviously eliminated the left opposition a number of years prior. The Bolshevik party had become a totally bureaucratized monolithic organization, but in this same period, from '35, '36, Stalinism reinforced its reactionary development. It was in '36 that the Moscow trials began, which formed the basis for the physical extermination of the old Bolshevik party, of all the old fighters of the October Revolution, and this reactionary phenomenon played a role. It combined with the workers' uprising of the masses in Europe. I will explain this more precisely when I discuss what this meant for the Trotskyist movement. But the push of the masses was all the more channeled by the Popular Front because there was no longer a large organization like the Communist Party which for years had defended a revolutionary program. The revolutionary program was reduced and defended by a small organization, so this international context was different.
The Electoral Victory and Mass Mobilization of 1936
Now, there was also another contradictory element on the part of the Popular Front. The electoral victory of the Popular Front was perceived by the masses not at all as a simple electoral victory; the masses thought they would now have their demands satisfied. So a very particular phenomenon occurred, given the constitutional provisions that existed in France between the electoral victory of the Popular Front and the formation [of the government]. The meeting, on the one hand, of the new Parliament and the formation of a new government, had an interlude of a few weeks, and the masses did not understand why people who no longer represented the elected majority remained in government. And this is what triggered, what served as the detonator for the movement of May-June '36, which indeed began in the last days of May, when workers who were on strike in some factories realized that they were facing a government that was not the government they had brought to power. And the movement spread very quickly, which also led very quickly to the formation of the Popular Front government, and in any case, there were indeed illusions among the masses. It is true that there were immense hopes, and because of that, to some extent, the electoral victory of the Popular Front served as a detonator. Of course, in '36, it was the student affair [?]. The day of the barricades served as a detonator. This is another aspect of the Popular Front, it's the electoral victory, but one must not, I insist on this, one must not identify the Popular Front with the achievements of June '36.
The Blum Government's Achievements and Limitations
Now, if we look at what the Popular Front government actually did, the first Blum government. There were subsequently one or two other governments. But the first Blum government was obviously the signing of the Matignon Accords, which gave all these gains to the working class: the effective recognition of factory delegates. There were no factory delegates before. There were no elections. There was, there was the signing of collective agreements earlier. Before the Popular Front, there were perhaps in France about one or two hundred, I don't know the exact number, of collective agreements in very specific categories, but the large mass of workers was not organized and did not have collective agreements. It was simply the contract that a worker signed with the employer who hired him. That is to say, in very large companies, there was practically no trade union organization. There were, of course, the 40 hours and paid holidays, all of which are enormous gains for the working class. And then, with June '36, the working class found itself organized as a class where it began to emerge, that is, in the factories on the basis of production. And that, in my opinion, was the main conquest of June '36. The working class became a class recognized by itself, and capitalism was nevertheless forced to recognize it in France as it had never recognized it before.
But despite that, make no mistake. The Popular Front government, in which there was no Communist minister and which was supported by the Communist Party, made every effort to stem and stop the June 1936 movement; this was its first major operation. This is where Thorez famously uttered the phrase, "At the height of the wave," meaning one must know how to stop a strike. Moreover, during the Riom trial during the war, when Blum was accused of having disorganized the economy, etc., and the Popular Front was put on trial by the Pétain government, one must read his defense, and in his defense, he explains that they were not the ones who pushed the workers, but on the contrary, if they had not been there, the workers risked going much further, and therefore, they should be grateful to him.
Nationalizations and Economic Measures
I have already spoken of some nationalizations such as the SNCF [French National Railways]. It was an absolutely indispensable thing. There was an outdated network in France, and the nationalization took place in 1936, just as it had been done, I believe, in the early years of the century, concerning the western network, precisely because there were no more capitalists to invest and only the state could invest the necessary money to renovate this industry indispensable to the whole of the French economy. There was also a somewhat caricatural nationalization. It was that of the Bank of France, which became [sic - remained] the Bank of France, and in which, simply, they put roughly the same people, plus one or two representatives of trade unions on the board of regents. What the Popular Front government achieved very quickly was the evacuation of factories and the rest, and the evacuation of factories out of respect for private property, and from mid-July, it was enough for there to be factory occupations for the CRS to intervene immediately. It was then called the mobile guard, and the mobile guard intervened immediately.
Labor Rights and Strike Legislation
Of course, formally, the right to strike was recognized, but the right to strike has been recognized for a very long time in France. I believe it dates back to Napoleon III, something like that, but what the Popular Front did not do, and it was necessary to wait until after the war for the legislation to be modified in this direction, is that a strike at the time still canceled the employment contract, meaning that if the employer felt strong enough during a strike, legally, he could dismiss all his workers and hire or not rehire whomever he pleased or hire others. At the time, a strike constituted the termination of the employment contract. The Popular Front changed nothing in this matter, which is why there were subsequently in 1936, 1937, 1938, until the war, a series of incidents in companies. Another thing, the Popular Front passed a law that allowed it at the time to dissolve the ultra-reactionary organization of the Croix de Feu and some other groups. But the Croix de Feu immediately reorganized under the form of a political party called the French Social Party. And which was a formation, an organization of the right at that time and which was very, very strong. The reactionary movement, the reactionary gangs were extremely powerful. The legislation passed by the Popular Front is the legislation that allowed, after the war, to dissolve a number of organizations, and notably after May '68, to dissolve the PCI [?], the ICG [?], and later the Communist League.
Colonial Policy and the North African Star
Well, a very important thing concerning the Popular Front's program and its application concerns the movement of colonial masses. Certainly, the movement of colonial masses at the time was rather nascent. The mass movement in the French colonies began after the 1914-1918 war, only around the years 1928-1935, that in different countries, in Indochina, in Algeria. In other countries, these were formations, but they were not yet mass movements. These were formations that generally aimed for democratic reforms in these countries. The Popular Front's program regarding colonial territories was extremely simple. It had four lines, as follows: "Establishment of a parliamentary investigative commission on the political, economic, and moral situation in French overseas territories, particularly in French North Africa and Indochina." Period, that's all. That's where the Popular Front's program ended.
So, of course, there were commissions, an investigative commission, someone sent. But what is important is that the masses in a number of these colonized countries hoped that the advantages gained by French workers in June 1936 would apply to them. And so it was a moment when the masses in the colonies were also stimulated to put forward more important demands. Comrades can read the book by [unclear name] which gives a whole series of indications concerning Indochina, and I will not elaborate on that. It is an extremely interesting thing. The organizations took advantage of a period. They exploited to some extent a certain legality. But then repression hit very hard in North Africa. It was the same thing there. And there, repression hit very quickly and very hard. And there was a mass organization that existed in France, called the North African Star, which also existed in Algeria. But anyway, it had an important base in France and united Algerians, Tunisians, and Moroccans. And very quickly, there was the dissolution by the French government of the North African Star. The Communist Party went along with this, declaring that they were provocateurs. It was the Communist Party at that time. I would say it almost inaugurated this tactic of calling provocateurs and others all those who did not support its policy and did not support the Popular Front. So, there was the dissolution of the North African Star, and the Popular Front government, facing strikes organized by the workers in certain countries like Tunisia, sent in troops or special troops to fire on the workers and carry out repression. Notably, there was the shooting of strikers in [Mlaoui?], Tunisia. Information on these events can be found, particularly concerning the policy of the PCF, but which show the entire policy of the Popular Front in a book published by Maspero by [unclear author] on the colonial policy of the PCF.
International Policy and the Spanish Civil War
Regarding international politics, the Popular Front government was immediately confronted with a very important problem, which was the Spanish Civil War. While the German government of Hitler and the Italian government of Mussolini sent armed forces, not to mention all the accompanying munitions, planes, etc. The French government, [upon the urging of?] the British government, declared itself for non-intervention, that is, for not sending any aid even to the bourgeois republican government of Spain. And it immediately began interminable talks to ensure that all armed forces would be withdrawn. But in reality, this only happened at the time of the crushing of the workers' camp, led by the bourgeoisie with the help of the socialists and the Stalinists in Spain, and with the defeat. This was one of the things that greatly impacted the situation at the time. Of course, on this level, sharp divergences emerged between the Communist Party and the Socialist Party because the Socialist Party was Blum's party in government and therefore fiercely defended the policy of the famous Western European and US democracies. Whereas the Communist Party, for its part, conducted propaganda, actions, and meetings for "cannons and planes for Spain," in short, to support the Republican government in Spain. And this accentuated a whole series of divergences and divisions within the Popular Front.
The Decline and Fall of the Popular Front
So it's useless to go into all these details. Finally, the Popular Front government, the Popular Front, saw a weakening of its base; the workers began to be relatively demoralized, discouraged by the experience of the Popular Front. The government passed back into the hands of the Radicals, and then came the Daladier government, which had signed the Munich Accords with German imperialism and with the Italian government, those accords which, in reality, constituted the beginning of the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, which had accepted the incorporation of a policy and the end of a policy which had accepted the incorporation of Austria by the Nazi takeover of Austria. All this so that, finally, this government led by Daladier, that is to say, by the Radicals, and it was the Popular Front chamber which, at the time of the debacle in '40, brought Pétain to power.
So there was a small number, I think, of 70 or 80 deputies who did not vote, who did not vote full powers to Pétain. There had been previously the elimination of the communist parliamentary group, and it is in this, it is this Popular Front government. This Popular Front majority of the government, the electoral majority, the majority of the Popular Front Parliament that installed Pétain and that led to a debacle that from a political point of view temporarily liquidated the parliamentary democratic gains that existed in France.
Changes Within the Workers' Organizations
I will add a brief note regarding what happened within the workers' organizations. The Socialist Party, under Blum's leadership, pursued this Popular Front policy until the very last moment, including during the war. It was only just after, under the Pétain regime, that it opposed it. But a large part of its parliamentary group still supported the operation. However, before that, around late 1937 or early 1938, an opposition developed within the Socialist Party under the leadership of Marceau Pivert. Marceau Pivert was not very extremist, though. He did everything he could to remain in the Socialist Party, but Blum pushed him out because he did not want to be in government and at the same time tolerate an opposition that violently criticized him on the Spanish question. And so, the extreme left, or rather the left, not the extreme left, the left of the Socialist Party, was excluded and formed the PSOP [Workers' and Peasants' Socialist Party], an organization that existed for some time. And which foundered during the war.
The Communist Party, as I have already said, shifted sharply to the right in a formidable way. From 1935, it became a reformist party. And it must also be said, and this is very important in the history of the French workers' movement, it was from 1935 that the Communist Party began its ascent as a mass party of the working class. Before 1920 to 1930-32, it was a revolutionary party that was linked to important masses. The fact of obtaining something like [800,000] votes or [1,000,000] votes shows that it was not a party without great influence. But numerically, it had several tens of thousands of members, but it was still a minority party in the class. And from 1935, it became, it transformed into a party. It formed, and that's where its ascent began. It gained a number of members at the end of 1935, but especially from June 1936, which made it rise to [140,000-150,000] members. But this ascent continued after the war, thanks to what it did in the resistance and elsewhere. While the masses were very attached to the Popular Front, they identified the weaknesses, especially with the leadership of the Socialist Party, which meant that after the war, the situation was reversed between June 1936 elections and June 1936 in the great mass movement. Let's say that the balance of power was two for the Socialist Party to one for the Communist Party. After the war, the ratio had reversed to two for the Communist Party against one for the Socialist Party.
Electoral Results and Analysis
Now, these are the situations. The [1932] elections had given: the Radical Party [1,700,000] votes, the Socialist Party [1,700,000] votes, the Communist Party [1,000,000] votes. The [1936] elections gave for the Radical Party [1,100,000] votes, that is to say a loss of [600,000] compared to 1932. The Socialist Party [2,200,000] votes, that is to say a gain of [500,000]. The Communist Party, instead of gaining votes, had lost from one million [to 1,500,000] [Note: This passage appears garbled in the transcription - Frank likely meant the CP gained from 1 million to 1.5 million]. And certainly the workers had gained and the Radical Party in this operation, far from gaining had lost.
The Trotskyist Movement During the Popular Front
As for the Trotskyist movement, I recall that we were born within the Communist Party, that we had been excluded from the Communist Party, that for a long time we had not accepted these exclusions, and that we fought as a fraction of the Communist Party, but that from the catastrophe in Germany in 1933, due to the capitulation without a fight of the German Communist Party and the Communist International, and the approval of this policy by the Communist parties, we had given up fighting for the rectification of the Communist International. We were engaged in a policy of building new parties, a new international. And we were very, very weakened during this period, which meant that when the mass movement began in 1934, we oriented ourselves towards a certain left that appeared within the Socialist Party, where we could express ourselves. We entered the Socialist Party for some time to develop our ideas there. And at that time, we began to meet with some success, and we recruited new forces. But as soon as the Socialist Party allied with the Communist Party to form the Popular Front and with the prospect of entering government, our presence was completely intolerable for these gentlemen, and we were therefore excluded from the Socialist Party. Our entry during this period lasted, I believe, less than a year, [9-10] months, and we gained an important position in the socialist youth, which primarily allowed us to renew our ranks and bring in younger forces that enabled us to approach the war period. But anyway, we were eliminated from the Socialist Party with a certain strength that was relatively more important than what we had had in previous years. But whereas, in the past, we were [facing] a Communist Party whose limits I have indicated, this time, we found ourselves, even with forces, let's say, double or triple, which was the most that the situation could offer, with a Communist Party that had multiplied by five or by eight. I don't know how, and facing the fact that incomparably larger masses than ever before were now involved in the workers' movement, and masses who knew nothing of the past of the 1917 revolution and who were going to engage first in a reformist experience, which means that practically our movement, which did its utmost in its struggles, both individually through its militants in a number of companies. And I point out that the two or three major leading points of the June 1936 movement in France, one in the Parisian region, namely an attempt to gather strike committees, and in the North in Lille, an attempt to start up a [large enterprise]. These were Trotskyist militants who were at the forefront of these movements. Our intervention, from a journalistic point of view, was such that the Popular Front government launched an investigation against us for conspiracy against state security. But all that, compared to the situation, was quite limited. And our possibilities for development during this period very quickly became limited and then dwindled due to all these new masses entering the workers' movement being deceived by the Stalinists and believing all their propaganda about Trotskyist agents, etc. There were the Moscow trials. They swallowed all that, and our situation was extremely difficult, extremely painful. I believe that was the most difficult period for our movement.
Assessment: The Popular Front's Historical Role
Well, to conclude, we can say that the Popular Front, which had apparently been constituted to block the path to fascism, not only did not block it but opened the way to Pétain, who was not exactly a fascist regime. It was a Bonapartist regime that, on its own, would have had very weak forces but relied on the armies of occupation. The Popular Front is an experience that did not stimulate, let's say, the class consciousness of the workers. Militancy developed, but class consciousness was halted. The working class, in reality, was led to undergo an experience for a very long time, a very long time of class collaboration, first under the hegemonic leadership of the Socialist Party, then under the hegemonic leadership of the Communist Party. Yes, and then the Popular Front, which was supposed to bring the petty bourgeoisie alongside the working class, far from doing so, on the contrary pushed all this, of course, this was temporary since the next day the process started again, but temporarily the very experience of the Popular Front pushed the masses of the petty bourgeoisie to the right in 1939-1940, because there is no doubt that the Pétain regime, the Pétain government, initially relied on very large masses in France. That is to say, if we want to make an overall assessment. The Popular Front was not, let's say, a failed revolution. As [unclear reference] says, in reality, it was a political operation — I come back to this — that temporarily, always temporarily, broke the first great impulse of the working class that sought to resolve the crisis of French society in the direction of socialism. So, that's what the Popular Front actually was.
Afterword: This translation is based on a comparison of two transcriptions of Pierre Frank's 1976 talk. Sections marked with [brackets] indicate unclear passages in the original transcription or likely reconstructions of garbled text. Numbers have been standardized from their oral form (e.g., "sept cent mille" rendered as [700,000]).
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