Popular Front

The Popular Front refers to both a short-lived communist policy and, more important, a larger movement within the American left. In both senses—as a policy and as a movement—the Popular Front entailed an effort to unite a broad coalition of left-wing and liberal forces in opposition to political fascism and conservatism.

As a formal policy, the Popular Front commenced with a 1935 directive from the Communist International (Comintern), the Soviet-dominated organization nominally in charge of world communism. Departing from an unsuccessful focus on revolutionary class struggle, the Comintern now advocated forming a united front of groups opposed to the fascism then advancing throughout the West. The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)—during which a fractious left-of-center coalition (aided by the Soviet Union) unsuccessfully battled the illegitimate right-wing government of General Francisco Franco (aided by Germany and Italy)—galvanized the nascent Popular Front. In some European nations, the new policy led to greater cooperation with Socialists, whom Communists had hitherto spurned. For the Communist Party USA, based in a nation possessing neither a powerful fascist movement nor a strong socialist one, the Popular Front meant cooperation with nonparty labor unions (especially members of the nascent Congress of Industrial Organizations, CIO) and support for the liberal New Deal policies of President Franklin Roosevelt. The Popular Front came to an abrupt end in 1939 when the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Adolph Hitler of Germany. The move disillusioned many leftists, some of whom were already disturbed by Stalin's policies at home and in Spain.

Yet the Popular Front ethos endured within the United States well into the 1940s. It did so for two major reasons. For starters, Stalin reversed positions in 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and returned to promoting a more inclusive political strategy. More important, the American left and the Comintern were never united. While many left-leaning Americans admired the Soviet Union—and while U.S. communists usually parroted the party line—a larger group incorporated Popular Front concepts for their own purposes. Black leftists in Alabama and Chicago, for example, held few, if any, ties to Moscow.

Seen as a more diffuse movement, then, the Popular Front both preceded and outlasted the Comintern policy of the same name. In this more significant sense, the Popular Front describes a lively, variegated phase of the American left extending from the beginning of the New Deal through World War II and up to the start of the Cold War. This period witnessed an explosion of grassroots radical activity. While some radicals backed the New Deal, pushing the president to adopt even more substantial reforms, others wholeheartedly anticipated the collapse of the capitalist system. (Some among the latter group also opposed Stalinist communism.) Still other homespun radicals embraced neither Roosevelt nor Karl Marx. Most participants in the broad Popular Front had little desire to join the Communist Party, whose numbers remained small, although many of them viewed the highly disciplined communists as necessary allies.

What united all these forces was a shared concern for the economic and political empowerment of an American working class battered by the Depression. Popular Front leftists believed that the path to a better society began with addressing the needs of laboring Americans. All other political goals—be they racial justice, civil liberties, or gender equality—would derive from their mobilization. From this assumption flowed two important characteristics of Popular Front politics. First, many radicals evinced a profound faith in the possibilities of popular democracy, despite the global ascendance of authoritarianism. Labor radicals embraced the ideal of industrial democracy, which reflected an overall emphasis on increasing the political power of American workers. Second, many Popular Front artists celebrated the cultural expression of political engagement. They sought to capture, as well as lift, the spirits of laboring Americans—a sentiment present in the spheres of theater, painting, literature, and cinema. To a degree foreign to subsequent trends within the American left, the Popular Front also embraced American nationalism, defining the nation's traditions and heroes in social democratic terms. For example, leftists organized the volunteer Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight against Franco in Spain. Patriotic themes were particularly resonant during World War II, which they cast as a crusade not only against fascism but also for workers' rights and racial equality.

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