9. FRONTISM: A STRATEGY FOR DERAILING THE PROLETARIAT

Under decadent capitalism when only the proletarian revolution is historically progressive, there cannot even momentarily be any tasks held in common between the revolutionary class and any faction of the ruling class, however ‘progressive’, ‘democratic’, or ‘popular’ it claims to be. In contrast to the ascendant phase of capitalism, the decadence of the system makes it impossible for any bourgeois faction to play a progressive role. In particular, bourgeois democracy, which in the nineteenth century was a progressive political form in relation to the vestiges of feudalism, has lost any real political content in the period of decadence. Bourgeois democracy only serves as a deceptive screen hiding the strengthening of the totalitarian power of the state, and the bourgeois factions who advocate it are just as reactionary as the rest of their class.

Since World War I ‘democracy’ has shown itself to be one of the most pernicious opiates of the proletariat. It was in the name of democracy that the revolutions that followed the war in several European countries were crushed; it was in the name of democracy and against ‘fascism’ that tens of millions of workers were mobilised for the second imperialist war; it is once again in the name of democracy that capital is today trying to derail the struggle of the proletariat into alliances ‘against fascism’, ‘against reactionaries’, ‘against repression’, ‘against totalitarianism’, etc.

Because it was the specific product of a period in which the proletariat had already been crushed, fascism is simply not on the agenda today and all propaganda about the ‘fascist menace’ is pure mystification. Moreover, fascism has no monopoly on repression and if the democratic left-wing political tendencies identify fascism with repression it is because they want to hide the fact that they are themselves resolute practitioners of repression, that it is they who have always been at the forefront in crushing the revolutionary movements of the class.

Just like ‘popular fronts’ and ‘anti-fascist fronts’, the tactic of the ‘united front’ has proved to be a major weapon for the diversion of the proletarian struggle. This tactic which advocates that revolutionary organisations call for alliances with the so-called ‘workers’ parties’ in order to ‘force them into a corner’ and expose them, can only succeed in maintaining illusions about the ‘proletarian’ nature of these bourgeois parties and thus delay the workers’ break with them.

The autonomy of the proletariat in the face of all the other classes in society is the first precondition for the extension of its struggle towards the revolution. All alliances with other classes or strata and especially those with factions of the bourgeoisie can only lead to the disarming of the class in the face of its class enemy, because these alliances make the working class abandon the only terrain on which it can temper its strength: its own class terrain. Any political tendency which tries to make the class leave that terrain is directly serving the interests of the bourgeoisie.