The tactic of the leftist party front is a counter-revolutionary policy

from El Partido Comunista”, #24, January 2021

Faced with the impact of the capitalist crisis on the wage-earning masses and the growing social unrest in the American countries, opportunists of all sorts assume that now’s the moment to reinforce their calls to form fronts that express the unity of different parties that proclaim themselves to be of the left, under slogans that they put forward as a solution to the vicissitudes of the workers, the advent of a workers’ and popular government, of a government of national salvation, of a truly democratic government, that puts an end to corruption, that takes care of the majority with social programs, that defends national sovereignty and that remains independent of imperialist countries and organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that is to say, a “progressive” bourgeois government. But these political fronts promoted by opportunism, which end up being variants of bourgeois politics and their nationalist government programs, which they go so far as to call “socialist”, are only an illusion, a lie, which ends up giving continuity to capitalist exploitation. The resumption of the class struggle of the workers in the countries of the American continent and in the whole world will necessarily pass through the rupture with these fronts whose so-called unitary fronts only channel the workers’ discontent towards class conciliation, for the benefit of the bourgeoisie and imperialism that they ostensibly want to fight. Likewise these fronts end up leading the workers towards electoral participation, constitutional reforms, legalism and the defense of bourgeois democracy.

In Venezuela the bourgeois government of the Bolivarians, who proclaim themselves leftists, has its own front of parties, the “Polo Patriotico”. Integrated by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and several parties and movements of the parliamentary left. From the government, Chavismo has promoted movements under its control, which are integrated to the electoral campaigns, such as the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP). Chavismo also has trade union organizations and organizations in different segments of the population which, although they do not have many real affiliates, have the full backing of the government and are added to the electoral media structure. At present, this front has been changing its economic policies, giving more space to private enterprise in the control of the economy and developing attractions for transnational capital. It is a reactionary political front, which defines itself as leftist, which has been guaranteeing the continuity of capitalist exploitation in an atmosphere of social peace, ideological confusion and repression.

The Popular Revolutionary Alternative (APR) groups a set of parties and movements, most of which were previously part of the Patriotic Pole but split from it due to criticisms of the current bourgeois Bolivarian government, led by Nicolás Maduro. This front included the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), Patria Para Todos (PPT), Izquierda Unida (IU), Lucha de Clases, Partido Revolucionario del Trabajo (PRT), Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario – 200, Red Autónoma de Comuneros, Compromiso País (COMPA) and Somos Lina, among others. This front emerged to participate in the parliamentary elections of 2020 and presented its candidates in the regional elections of November 2021. From a political point of view, they propose to return to the program led by the late Hugo Chávez, a program of State Capitalism and with populist components, which was weakened with the significant drop in oil revenues. As in the case of the Polo Patriotico, it is a reactionary political front, which defines itself as leftist, whose program and political orientation aims at giving continuity to capitalist exploitation.

In the end, the electoral results in Venezuela, without going into details, allow giving continuity to bourgeois domination and the quotas reached by each political front only give the bourgeoisie alternatives to continue confusing and exploiting the workers. The workers will continue to be subjected to an intense electoral agitation that will be maintained in the coming years for the election or recall of the president of the republic, with which the bourgeois power will try to keep them on the sidelines of the struggles for their demands and interests.

In Mexico (Morena’s alliance with other parties), Chile (“Frente Amplio” where the socialist party participates and another where the communist party is integrated), Uruguay (Frente Amplio), Argentina (Frente de Todos), Nicaragua (Alianza Unida Nicaragua Triunfa), Honduras (where the new president declares herself ”chavista”), fronts dominate in which reformist parties that call themselves “socialist” and “communist” participate together with right-wing parties that call themselves “centrist” or “moderate”. They have evolved to channel the discontent of the masses and their programs do not represent the slightest threat to capitalist exploitation. In Brazil we see the PT of Lula Da Silva and its alliances with parties and personalities of the right wing that were already in previous governments; and the possible critics of this course will not take long to present the proposal of a “truly leftist” alternative front or to remain within the current fronts, with greater electoral possibilities, as a current that would coexist with them in a “struggle” to change their course in the future. In Colombia, a possible front could be around the presidential candidacy of Gustavo Petro, whose political movement has not been legalized; and the opportunist left could end up integrated in this Front, including the demobilized members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In the end, electoral calculations weigh heavily in these “leftist” fronts.

In Argentina we can also observe the Left and Workers Front – Unity (FIT-U), which is a left-wing electoral coalition that boasts of having become the “third national political force” and of representing in parliament a “left-wing bench” and with “class independence from the bosses’ parties”. It is made up of the Partido Obrero, the Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas and Izquierda Socialista, as well as other adherents. The Left Front has a program with twenty-seven points, paying attention to the minimum wage, the rejection of the payment of the foreign debt, the nationalization, without compensation, of the banks, oil, mining, telecommunications and agrarian foreign trade, the surrender of the railroads under workers’ control, among others. This Front calls for a “workers government” which, in spite of the allegedly “Marxist” discourse, ends up being a road for the integration of these parties in the bourgeois governments and parliament.

The historical experience accumulated by the revolutionary movement shows the disastrous course taken by those parties which, pretending to broaden their influence among the workers or to join forces to confront the positions of bourgeois reaction, built political fronts with other supposedly proletarian movements. Those who took this road sacrificed their autonomy and abandoned their vanguard role; they fell into the pool of activism, of economism, of the distorted idea of the role of the vanguard, putting themselves at the tail of the mass movement (See in Lenin: “What Is To Be Done?”). All these fronts promoted by the so-called “left”, by international opportunism, always ended up leading to the deviation of the class struggle and the channeling of all the discontents towards the bourgeois democratic “solution”: the electoral participation to conquer a supposed workers’ and popular government. All these fronts proclaiming “socialism” claim democracy (bourgeois, there is no other democracy!), reject the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only support to make the socialist transformation viable and demand reforms and social adjustments that do not disturb the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

It is true that part of the proletariat tends to organize itself in other parties and particularly in parties that proclaim themselves to be of the left and the need to “join forces” will always be present. But the revolutionary method to join forces is based on wielding the weapon of criticism and confrontation with the different opportunist positions and this is not possible through the different fronts presented by the opportunists throughout the world. “If it is an essential aim of the Communist Party to win ground among the proletariat by increasing its strength and influence at the expense of proletarian political parties and currents with which it disagrees, this aim must be achieved by taking part in the reality of the proletarian struggle upon a terrain which can be simultaneously one of common action and of mutual conflict – always on condition that the programmatic and organizational physiognomy of the party is never compromised.” (Theses of Rome, 1921).

ON THE REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

The whole opportunist policy of forming fronts of supposedly “leftist” parties, to “confront the capitalists”, “the neo-liberals”, “the right”, is a policy common to the different strata that make up the different groupings that in America call themselves “left”, “socialist” and “communist”, but which practice a treacherous policy, of deception and confusion of the proletariat, in short, a counter-revolutionary policy.

Generally these fronts end up concentrating on electoral participation, to the point that the unity to assume any mobilization for any demand or legal reform ends up being put at the service of the search for the vote and parliamentarism; although there are many examples, we can mention in this case the so-called “Fora Bolsonaro” movement in Brazil, with a deep electoral background supported by different unions and social movements. Likewise, the activism that characterizes these fronts ends up integrating in a single program the aspirations of different classes and social strata. Participation in these alliances of parties means the renunciation by the party of the proletariat of its role as revolutionary vanguard and its prostration before programs alien to the class position of the proletariat.

These fronts equally tend to converge in the call for the conquest of “workers’” or “workers’ and peasants’ governments” or governments of national salvation, all in defense of the homeland and national sovereignty, which is the same as the defense of capitalism and bourgeois democracy. And it is common for socialism to become the adjective for the promotion of such eyesores as “socialist fatherland”, “socialist democracy”, “socialist market”, “socialist enterprises”, etc. The proletariat does not fight to take control of the bourgeois parliament or the bourgeois State; the proletariat fights to overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie and destroy all its political, economic and social institutions. No program that claims to be revolutionary, however progressive and anti-capitalist it may seem, makes sense if the proletariat does not establish and exercise its dictatorship. The calls to conquer these workers’ and popular governments and governments of national salvation are siren songs that turn the proletariat away from the historical course discovered and determined by Marxism.

The revolutionary movement of the proletariat, in this epoch, the imperialist epoch, will have to rise up apart from the different courses presented by opportunism, badly disguised as “leftist”, in different countries. Among the coordinates of the revolutionary road to travel, are the following:

1) The strengthening of fascist mechanisms in bourgeois governments, even and especially if in these participate reformist, laborist or so-called “progressive” parties, should not be used as an argument to call the working class to demand “true democracy”, “participatory democracy”, “popular democracy” or the illusory return to the liberal forms of bourgeois democracy. The only dictatorship facing the proletariat is the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, regardless of whether it assumes the figure of parliamentary democracy or dictatorial or authoritarian government.

2) Recognition of the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Argentina, Peru and other governments led by reformist parties, which proclaim themselves “leftist”, “socialist” and even “communist”, as governments that administer the interests of the bourgeoisie and imperialism, as occurs in the rest of the countries of the American continent.

3) Rejection of any invitation to national solidarity of classes and parties, of support “governments of national salvation”, of calls for the defense of the fatherland and the national economy. Struggle against any media and ideological campaign that tends to integrate and mobilize the working class in patriotic fronts of the various countries in the face of the possible new imperialist war, in which they are asked either to fight in favor of imperialism dressed in red, or to support imperialism in democratic clothing; calling for revolutionary defeatism.

4) Rejection of the maneuver and opportunist tactic of united fronts, that is, of the invitation to the false socialist and communist parties, which have nothing proletarian about them, to leave the government coalition to create so-called “proletarian unity” or “revolutionary unity”. This includes, without exception, the different “leftist” fronts that try to confront the fronts that today control the governments in Argentina, Venezuela, etc., and the parties that want to coexist in these party fronts as internal currents. Only the fronts that constitute the organizations of economic struggle of the working class are admissible, formed and with the active participation of the workers and not of supposed “class-based” vanguards and as long as these fronts do not mix organizationally with the so-called “social movements” or with organizations that group together non-proletarians and that end up fostering inter-classism.

The alliance of communists with socialists in proletarian struggles (united front) and even worse, in the parliamentary field for the legal conquest of power in common (workers’ government) is an erroneous tactic. In America and throughout the world, alliances and proposals for alliances with socialist and petty-bourgeois political parties (political united front tactics) must be totally discarded. We must tend to broaden the influence on the masses by being present in all economic and local struggles and inviting the workers of all organizations and of all creeds to give them a greater development, but we absolutely deny that the action of the party, even if only in public declarations and not in the intentions and instructions to the internal apparatus, can ever be committed to subordinate itself to that of political committees of front, of bloc and of alliance between various parties. Even more vigorously the international communist party rejects the supposedly “Bolshevik” tactic when it assumes the form of “workers government”, that is, the launching of the agitation slogan calling for the parliamentary conquest of power with mixed majorities of communists and socialists of various hues.

5) One of the most dangerous currents in the ranks of opportunism is that which calls to fight for a “workers government”, “workers and peasants government”, “workers’ and popular government” as substitute entities for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The workers’ movement must follow the course traced by the proletarian party, turning away from the opportunist call to fight for the constitution of workers’ governments, which end up forming part of electoral slogans and which only lead to the continuity of capitalist exploitation.

6) Through its media apparatus and its parties (right or left) the bourgeoisie proclaims the thesis that any nationalization or expropriation of enterprises is a socialist measure. Nothing could be further from reality. The means of production that become the property of the bourgeois State do not lose the character of capital. The bourgeois state is the ideal collective capitalist. And for this all the nationalizations touted as “socialist” are based on the maintenance of the same relations of production, of exploitation of wage labor, of appropriation of surplus value extracted from the labor force applied to different processes. In these cases the State, as collective capitalist, is the boss against whom the workers must confront just as they must do against the private bosses. The nationalizations applied by some bourgeois governments have generally responded to the need to save bankrupt capitalist entrepreneurs, or to respond to the demands of the masses in the area of services whose operating costs and prices cannot be assumed by the private sector and do not generate profits. That is why we recurrently see governments that for a time nationalize companies and at other times, depending on the behavior of the economy, privatize them and return them to the private sector. On the other hand, the movements that call on workers to confront privatizations fall into an erroneous position promoted by the opportunist parties. For workers, no matter whether the employer is public or private, the united struggle of the working class should focus on the demand for wage increases, reduction of the working day and rejection of layoffs.

7) The emancipation of the working class from capitalist exploitation is only possible with political struggle and with the political organ of the revolutionary class: the communist party. And this communist party will not be able to emerge and assume its vanguard role, integrated in multi-party fronts, interclassist and much less if they are oriented towards electoral and parliamentary participation and towards the administration of capitalism through “workers’ and popular governments”.

8) No anti-capitalist program can be implemented without the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. All the economic struggles of the working class must converge in the political struggle, that is to say, in armed insurrection followed by civil war, by means of which the power of the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, will be destroyed. This struggle cannot be victorious if it is not led by a party organization.

9) Just as the struggle against the power of the exploiting class cannot develop without a revolutionary political party, neither can the subsequent work of extirpation of the preceding economic institutions develop without it. The dictatorship of the proletariat, necessary in the not brief historical period of transition, will have to be exercised openly by its party, the international communist party.

10) The policy of forming fronts of left parties has included in Latin and Central America guerrilla movements, which have proclaimed themselves to be revolutionary and which have ended up raising interclass and nationalist programs and sponsoring all kinds of alliances which reinforce this opportunist tendency. We have seen the experiences of El Salvador, Colombia, Peru, Nicaragua and others and it is important that the proletariat not allow itself to be confused by this type of movements which, even with their “radical” appearance, are also alternatives for the continuity of the bourgeoisie in power.

To accelerate the new class ascent there are no ready-made recipes. To make the proletarians hear the voice of the class there are no maneuvers and expedients, which as such would not make the party appear as it really is, but would disfigure its function, to the detriment and prejudice of the effective resumption of the revolutionary movement, which is based on the real maturity of the facts and the corresponding adaptation of the party, enabled for this only by its doctrinaire and political inflexibility.

The proletarian party, on the line of past experiences, refrains, therefore, from sending or accepting invitations, open letters and agitation slogans to form committees, fronts and mixed agreements with any movement and political organization. This course of action is valid for America and for the whole world.