The New Popular Front

Steve Fraser

The ascendancy of the authoritarian right has generated a counterreaction on the part of the Left to restore the Popular Front that once confronted fascism. Although often led by the socialist left, the Popular Front was the vanguard of the movement to democratize capitalism rather than abolish it. Is recreating such a front the only or best way to confront the threat of fascism today?

Democracy is still on its trial, but so far it has not disgraced itself; it is true that its full force has not yet come into operation, and this for two causes, one more or less permanent in its effect, the other of a more transient nature. In the first place, whatever be the numerical representation of wealth, its power will always be out of all proportion; and secondly, the defective organisation of the newly enfranchised classes has prevented any overwhelming alteration in the preexisting balance of power.

— John Maynard Keynes, 1904¹

Contemporary politics is reenacting the past. Resurrecting the Popular Front of yesteryear is fast becoming the Left’s chosen form of restoration. What to make of that? What was the Popular Front as social movement and in mythic memory? How would today’s version, assuming it materializes, compare? It’s an elusive subject. Some opening assumptions — in part unexceptionable, […]

Sorry, but this article is available to subscribers only. Please log in or become a subscriber.

ESC

Catalyst