Re: [Marxism] Respect, a united front?!?!

[Shane Mage <shmage@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis wrote:
>  The united front could be summarized under the slogan "March 
>separately-strike jointly". In his December 1931 article "For a 
>Workers' United Front Against Fascism," Leon Trotsky wrote:
>
>     No common platform with the Social Democracy, or with the 
>leaders of the German trade unions, no common publications, banners, 
>placards! March separately, but strike together!

This was written in 1931 when the parties of the Comintern, like the
parties of the Second International in 1912, could still be thought of
as revolutionary in some sense.  By 1933, as Trotsky recognized, that
no longer was the case.  Then on 12 February 1934, responding to the
fascist riots of 6 February (after the Stavisky "suicide"), the PCF and
the SFIO called separate marches.  But the French proletariat had
a different idea--the marchers came together, embraced, and surged
forward with common banners, thus rejecting the sectarianism of both
parties.  This decisive event was the impetus to Trotsky's "French Turn,"
and it gave a new and different meaning to the "United Front" concept,
which now became the demand for united action among all the 
workingclass parties (soon in counterposition to the reformist 
"Popular
Front" electoral bloc with capitalist parties like the Radicals).

Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not
consent to be called 
Zeus."                                                         

Herakleitos of Ephesos




________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism