Events such as the Tribunite revolt in the House of Commons over the Government's White Paper on public expenditure, the support of 40 Labour MPs for the National Assembly on Unemployment, and the candidature of Benn in the Labour leadership contest all pose the question of what attitude revolutionaries should take to left reformists.
How far left will they really go? When they move left is it correct to form united fronts with them, or does that merely give them a 'left cover"? Under what conditions can such united fronts be formed? It is practical questions like these which increasingly confront revolutionary Marxists today.
The following section of Trotsky's pamphlet The Third Period of the Comintern's Errors is one of the most thorough explanations of this question in the literature of Marxism. Starting from the experience of the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee, an alliance which was formed in the mid-1920s between the TUC and the Russian trade unions, Trotsky clearly explains the basis of united front tactics as applied to the lefts. It provides an important background to all discussion of this problem today.
** our strateoists still nave not understood the lessons or the analo Kussian Committees Ine mistake was not in making an episodic agreement with the General Council, which was actually moving to the 'left' in that period under the pressure of the masses. The first mistake was that the bloc was concluded, not on concrete pracudi godis cicar to une working class, but on general pacifist phrases and false diplomatic formulas. The chief mistake. however, which grew into a gigantic historical crime, lav in the lact inat our strategists could not in mediately and openly break with the General Council when it turned its weapons against the general strike - that is, when it turned from an unreliable oartial aliv into an open enemy The influence of the radicalisation of the masses on the retormisis is cute similar to une innuence that the development of a bourgeois revolution has on the liberals. In the first stages of the mass movement, the reformists move leftward, hoping in this NEWSREEL COLLECTIVE were formed last year to fill the need felt on the left for quickly made topical films which could serve the needs of specific campaigns as well as the general interests of the working class struggle.
Their first film, An egg is not a chicken (20 mins, £5 to hire), dealt with the campaign for free abortion on demand.
Following this. Newsreel were given a £12,000 grant for six months by the British Film Institute. With it they made Republica - - fighting for workers power (zu mins, to to nire) On the side of the people (48 mins, £10 to hire), and a film about housing struggles, Housey Housey (35 mins, £7 to hire).
They are now making a film about way to retain the leadership in their hands. But when the movement surpasses the limits of reform and demands from the leaders a clean break with the bourgeoisie, the majority of the reformists quickly change their tune.
From cowardly fellow travellers of the masses, they turn into strikebreakers, enemies, open betrayers. At tne same time, nowever, some or them not necessarily their better elements, jump over into the camp of the revolution. An episodic alliance with the reformists, at the moment they happen to be compelled by circumstances to make a step or half-step forward, may be unavoidable. But it must be understood beforehand that the communists are ready to break merciessiv with ine reformists the moment they jump back.
Heffer-one of the 37 Tribunites who brought about Wilson's defeat on the cuts The reformists are betrayers not because they carry out at every given moment and in every one of their acts, the instructions of the bourgeoisie. If that were the case, the reformists would have no innuence on the workers and consecuenty would not be needed by the bourgeoisie. Precisely in order to nave the necessary autnority tor betrayal or tne workers at the decisive moment, the opportunists are compelled during the preparatory period to assume the leadership of the workers' struagle, parunemployment, but the refusal of the which Molotov himself belongs. ticularly at the beginning of the radicalisation of the masses. From this follows the necessity of the united front tactic, wherein we are compelled for the sake of a broader unification of the masses to enter into practical alliances with their reformist leaders.
it is necessary to understano ine nistoric unc tion of the social democrats as a whole in order to Torce them step by step out of all their positions. The present leadership has not even a trace of such an understanding. It knows only two methods: either....to tail-end the social democracy (1926-28), or, by identifying social democracy with fascism, to substitute ineffective abuse for revolutionary policy. As a result of the last six years of zigzags, the social democracy is stronger ano communism weak- of the bourgeoisie. er. The mechanical directives of the Tenth Plenum can only serve to worsen the already poor situation.
Onlv a hopeless ignoramus can imagine that with the miraculous oower or the inira period Ine working class as a whole will turn away from the social for both sides. democracy, driving the whole reformist bureaucracy into the fascist camp. No, the process will develop in a more comolicateo ano contracictory tasnion A growing dissatisfaction with the Social Democratic government in Germany and with the Labourites in Britain, the tranformation of partial and isolated strikes into mass movements, etc. (when all these developments actually do take place), will have as their unavoidable consequence - all the Molotovs had better mark it well - a leftward turn of broad layers of the reformist camp, ust as une internal processes in me woom necessit ated the leftward turn of the centrist camp, to The social democrats and those of the Amsterdam International, with the exception of the more conscious ront-wine elements nomas. herman Mueller, Renaudel types, etc), will be compelled under corresponding conditions to assume the leadership of the advance of the masses, in order to confine these advances within narrow limits, or in order to attack the workers from the rear when they overstep these limits. Although we know that in advance and openly warn the vanguard about it nevertheless, in the future there will still be tens, nunareas and mousanas or cases when tne commun-
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