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Front Populaire, Front National: The Colonial Example

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Irwin M. Wall
Irwin M. Wall
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
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Extract

The popular front strategy, by which the French Communist party (PCF) came to mean a tactical alliance of the left including the Socialists and the left-leaning elements of the petty bourgeoisie represented by the Radical party, was pursued only briefly by the PCF in the 1930s, from 1934 to 1936. This is ironic, since it is by the slogan of the Front Populaire that the period of the 1930s in French history was to be subsequently known and remembered. The popular front was actually a transitional strategy between the famous (or infamous) “Third Period” of Comintern history from 1928–34, characterized in France by the class-against-class policy, and the policy of Front National, in which the PCF pursued a policy of alliance with anyone, including the right, against fascism at home and abroad. The PCF launched the national front in August 1936, and although the slogan did not catch on and was withdrawn, the party pursued that strategy for the remainder of the period until the war. But it was the popular front that would be remembered as having resulted in a wave of social legislation following the Blum government's assumption of power in June 1936 and which has ever since become a point of reference for the PCF. The wage increases, rights to unionize, paid vacations, forty hour week and nationalizations remain accomplishments for the party, to be built upon in each successive experience of participating in, or supporting the French government.

Type
The Popular Front
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 30 , Fall 1986 , pp. 32 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1986

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References

NOTES

1. Robrieux, Philippe, Histoire intérieure du Parti Communiste 1920–1945 (Paris, 1980).Google Scholar

2. Delpla, François, “Les Communistes français et la sexualité,” Le Mouvement social 91 (04–06 1975).Google Scholar

3. See Brower, Daniel, The New Jacobins: The French Communist Party and the Popular Front (Ithaca, 1968), 152–71.Google Scholar

4. Birnbaum, Pierre, Le Peuple et les gros: histoire d'un mythe (Paris, 1979)Google Scholar; Cohen, William and Wall, Irwin, “French Communism and the Jews,” in The Jews in Modern France, ed. Malino, Frances and Wasserstein, Bernard (Hanover, N.H., 1985), 81–102.Google Scholar

5. See Hobsbawm, Eric, Revolutionaries (London, 1973), 23Google Scholar, also his article on Popular Fronts in Marxism Today 20 (1976).

6. Wall, Irwin, French Communism in the Era of Stalin (Westport, Conn., 1983).Google Scholar

7. For a summary of the extensive literature on the turn of 1934 see Santore, John, “The Comintern's United Front Initiative of May, 1934: French or Soviet Inspiration?” Canadian Journal of History 16 (12 1981): 405–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Most historians simply assume this connection. See Mortimer, Edward, The Rise of the French Communist Party 1920–1947 (London, 1984), 234Google Scholar; Robrieux, Histoire intérieure, 458; Caute, David, Communism and the French Intellectuals (London, 1964), 207.Google Scholar

9. Lenin, V.I., “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” (1914), in Collected Works, vol. 20 (Moscow, 1972), 440Google Scholar and passim. Also Stalin, J., Marxism and the National and Colonial Question (San Francisco, 1973).Google Scholar

10. See the Oeuvres de Maurice Thorez (Paris, 1950–1965), vol. 1, 213, vol. 2, 141.

11. Ferrat, André in Cahiers du Bolchevisme, 03 1934Google Scholar; Thorez, Oeuvres, vol. 7, 140.

12. Sivan, Emmanual, Communisme et nationalisme en Algérie, 1920–1962 (Paris, 1976).Google Scholar Chaintron's comment in Natacha Dioujeva et François George, Stalin à Paris (Paris, 1982), 120.Google Scholar

13. L'Humanité, 9 Jan. 1936.

14. L'Humanité, 7, 18 Feb. 1936.

15. L'Humanité, 4 March 1936.

16. L'Humanité, 15 May 1936.

17. L'Humanité, 23 May 1936.

18. Robrieux, , Histoire intérieure, vol. 4, 211–23. See also L'Humanité, 7 07 1936.Google Scholar

19. Fauvet, Jacques, Histoire du Parti communiste français (Paris, 1964), vol. 1, 203.Google Scholar

20. L'Humanité, 24, 25 July 1936; 8 Aug 1936.

21. L'Humanité, 11 Aug 1936.

22. Samidei, Manuel, “Les socialistes français et le problème colonial entre les deux guerres,” Revue française de science politique 18 (12 1968): 1115–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also Daniel Hemery, “Aux origines des guerres d'indépendance vietnamiennes; pouvoir colonial et phenomène communiste en Indochine avant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale,” and Jacques Marseille, “La conférence de gouverneurs généraux des colonies (novembre 1936),” both in Le Mouvement social 101 (Oct.-Dec.,1977): 3–37, 61–85. Wall, Irwin, “Socialists and Bureaucrats: The Blum Government and the French Administration, 1936–37,” International Review of Social History, part 2 (1973).Google Scholar

23. L'Humanité, 16 Dec 1936.

24. L'Humanité, 1 Jan. 1937.

25. L'Humanité, 23 Jan. 1937.

26. L'Humanité, 11 March 1937.

27. L'Humanité, 19 March 1937.

28. L'Humanité, 9 April 1937.

29. L'Humanité, 2 Oct 1937.

30. L'Humanité, 27, 30 Oct.; 1, 2 Nov 1937.

31. It was reproduced as a pamphlet, Thorez, Maurice, La France du Front populaire et les peuples coloniaux (Paris, 1937).Google Scholar Excerpts may be found in Moneta, Jacob, Le PCF et la question colonial (Paris, 1971)Google Scholar and Stuart Schramm et Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, Le Marxisme et l'Asie (Paris, 1965), 31.Google Scholar Cahiers du Bolchevisme, Jan 1938.

32. Cahiers du Bolchevisme, Jan 1938.

33. Cahiers du Bolchevisme, Dec 1938.

34. These remarks are reprinted also in Moneta and Schramm and Carrère d'Encausse. Also Oeuvres de Maurice Thorez, vol. 16, 176–84.

35. See the analysis by Emmanuel Sivan, Communisme et Nationalisme….

36. Léon Feix's appreciation of Thorez's theory appears in the preface to Thorez, Maurice, Textes choisis sur l'Algérie (Paris, n.d.), 5–6.Google Scholar