Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributor
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- The formation of the French Popular Front, 1934–6
- The origins and nature of the Spanish Popular Front
- The French Radicals, Spain and the emergence of appeasement
- The Spanish army and the Popular Front
- Soldiers and Socialists: the French officer corps and leftist government, 1935–7
- The Spanish Church and the Popular Front: the experience of Salamanca province
- ‘La main tendue’, the French Communist Party and the Catholic Church, 1935–7
- Trotskyist and left-wing critics of the Popular Front
- The development of marxist theory in Spain and the Frente Popular
- The other Popular Front: French anarchism and the Front Révolutionnaire
- The French Popular Front and the politics of Jacques Doriot
- The Blum government, the Conseil National Economique and economic policy
- Social and economic policies of the Spanish left in theory and in practice
- Women, men and the 1936 strikes in France
- From clientelism to communism: the Marseille working class and the Popular Front
- A reinterpretation of the Spanish Popular Front: the case of Asturias
- Le temps des loisirs: popular tourism and mass leisure in the vision of the Front Populaire
- The educational and cultural policy of the Popular Front government in Spain, 1936–9
- French intellectual groups and the Popular Front: traditional and innovative uses of the media
- Index
Trotskyist and left-wing critics of the Popular Front
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributor
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- The formation of the French Popular Front, 1934–6
- The origins and nature of the Spanish Popular Front
- The French Radicals, Spain and the emergence of appeasement
- The Spanish army and the Popular Front
- Soldiers and Socialists: the French officer corps and leftist government, 1935–7
- The Spanish Church and the Popular Front: the experience of Salamanca province
- ‘La main tendue’, the French Communist Party and the Catholic Church, 1935–7
- Trotskyist and left-wing critics of the Popular Front
- The development of marxist theory in Spain and the Frente Popular
- The other Popular Front: French anarchism and the Front Révolutionnaire
- The French Popular Front and the politics of Jacques Doriot
- The Blum government, the Conseil National Economique and economic policy
- Social and economic policies of the Spanish left in theory and in practice
- Women, men and the 1936 strikes in France
- From clientelism to communism: the Marseille working class and the Popular Front
- A reinterpretation of the Spanish Popular Front: the case of Asturias
- Le temps des loisirs: popular tourism and mass leisure in the vision of the Front Populaire
- The educational and cultural policy of the Popular Front government in Spain, 1936–9
- French intellectual groups and the Popular Front: traditional and innovative uses of the media
- Index
Summary
THE LOSERS ARE NOT ALWAYS WRONG
A mass movement which swept millions behind it, the Popular Front burnt itself out in disillusionment and defeat as its left-wing critics had warned from the start. Slandered, ostracized and, in some cases, physically liquidated, these critics, ignored by the masses and isolated in small groups, appeared to be the ‘losers’. In the perspective of the fiftieth anniversary they come into their own. Why, then, did they fail to turn the tide of historical events?
ORIGINS OF THE POPULAR FRONT
There would have been no Popular Front but for the tactical turn made by the Comintern as a belated response to the German left's defeat of 1933. It would have been inconceivable without a major turn in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. The new line was consecrated at the Comintern's Seventh Congress in July–August 1935 – most emphatically in the speeches of Dimitrov and Ercoli (Palmiro Togliatti) – while the French leaders claimed great success had already been achieved.
The Popular Front was designed to confront the twin problems of the growing military threat from Nazi Germany and the spread of fascism. Its novelty lay in the parallel search for international alliances with ‘peace-loving’ bourgeois states and national coalitions between workers’ parties (including communist parties), and capitalist parties opposed to fascism. There was thus a fundamental difference between the Popular Front and the united front advocated by the Comintern in the 1920s.
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- Information
- The French and Spanish Popular FrontsComparative Perspectives, pp. 104 - 115Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989