On Mon, Aug 10, 2026 at 08:32 PM, Anthony Teso wrote: > > ...a united front is an agreement, not a mood. It has a definite basis in > a concrete action or demand, and "we all showed up" is not one... The > categorical condition, the same for every party, is the complete > independence of each organization entering the agreement and its freedom > to state its views and its criticism of its partners. And then the phrase > that decides the argument: the necessity of discipline in action,
Neglected to add that your criticism of the position I expressed is valid. At least, in theory. I wish it were so in practice. However, I don't believe a united front has ever been constructed on the basis of each organization's freedom to criticize its partners. It would more likely than not lead to its dissolution. The only signed pacts I know of were between the CP's and SP's in France and Spain in the 30's and later in Chile under Allende in the 70's. Each quickly devolved into Popular Fronts incorporating the so-called progressive bourgeoisie. If either the Social Democrats or the Communists would have attacked each other over this move, their unity would have come to an end. The Trotskyists argued that the Popular Front with the bourgeoisie represented a "failure of leadership" by the two workers' parties and attacked them in the belief that they would inevitably win hegemony over the masses and seize state power as had happened in Russia in 1917. They did not take into account that the unanticipated failure of the revolution to spread and rise of fascism had changed the relationship of forces between the classes and is what led the Comintern retreat from the Third Period Policy to the Popular Front. It was primarily these objective factors rather than errors in the ideological realm which accounted both for the disasterous outcomes in Spain and Chile and the stunted growth of the Trotskyist movement. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42924): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42924 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120623848/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
