“Greek Elections: Workers Face More Austerity. Down With the EU! For a Workers Europe!”
http://spartacist.org/english/wv/1005/greece.html, “Down With the Bosses’ European Union – For a Workers Europe! Banks Starve Greek Working People. For a Leninist-Trotskyist Party! (http://spartacist.org/english/wv/1002/greece.html) and “Trotskyist Group of Greece Says:Vote KKE! No Vote to Syriza!” (http://spartacist.org/english/leaflets/votekke.html)

See also: “Toronto Historical Materialism Conference. Revisionists Still Trying to Bury Leninism” (http://spartacist.org/english/wv/1006/histmat.html)

Like prianikoff, I found Ian’s comments on the Fourth Congress treatment of the workers’ government concept tantalisingly incomplete. Ian writes:

“Obviously there are echoes here of situations in our own world and there is much to be learnt from a study of these debates [on the workers’ government]. But I remain sceptical as to whether detailed formulations from 1922 can be applied to the world of the 21st century.”

I agree entirely with these sentences. But if “detailed formulations” should not be applied mechanically, the overall thrust of the Fourth Congress decision does seem to me relevant and quite helpful. This thrust is, in a word, that it’s worth struggling for a workers’ government if this regime, or the struggle to achieve it, can play a transitional role in an advance toward revolution. It seems to me that such a criterion can be usefully applied to the Greek experience.

It’s also worth noting that the Fourth Congress considered the united front, transitional demands, and the workers’ government as a totality. This helps us toward a better understanding of the united front as part of a strategic vision.

Ian Birchall writes: ” I remain sceptical as to whether detailed formulations from 1922 can be applied to the world of the 21st century..study this congress, but study it in historical context.”

It’s not just about studying history, it’s about applying its lessons to current politics.

The main thing to understand, is that abandonment of the United Front policy was one of the main steps in its political degeneration of the Comintern. In 1920, the 2nd Congress of the Comintern adopted the The “21 Conditions”. These were designed to produce a sharp break between the Communists and Social Democratic /Centrist parties.

It soon became clear however, that the Communist vanguard parties formed on this basis were unable to win of a majority of the working class. The 3rd Congress in 1921 recognised that the working class still had “democratic and reformist illusions”. It thus supported a slogan of “to the masses” and the struggle for “partial and immediate” demands

By 1922, the 4th Congress went even further. It called on affiliated parties to “support the slogan of the united workers front and take the initiative on this question”. The associated “Workers Government” slogan even envisaged the possibility of joint governments between Social Democratic and Communist Parties as a prelude to Workers Power.
In Germany during the early 20’s, KPD ministers entered Socialist-led governments in order to facillitate this.

All of these positions were abandoned by the Stalinists in the late 1920’s, as the Soviet bureacracy consolidated its grip in the USSR.
They were replaced by the ultra leftism of the 3rd period and the Popular Front policy of Dimitrov. Neither of these policies were able to stop the rise of fascism.

A reformist variant of the United Front and Workers Government slogans was adopted by the Brandlerites, the international “right opposition” in the Comintern. Trotsky thought that this tendency would eventually merge with Social Democracy and opposed them. His prognosis entirely wasn’t entirely correct, but this didn’t stop Trotsky from adopting both these slogans. For instance, in his writings on Germany in the 1930’s and in the Transitional Programme, just prior to WW2.
Of the main communist tendencies at the time, only the Stalinists completely rejected them.

Why is this still relevant to today?

If anything, reformist and democratic illusions amongst the working class are even stronger now than in the 1920’s. The long period of capitalist economic stability from the end WW2 has only just come to an end.

While new left parties and mass protest movements are coming into existence, none of them have yet replaced the traditional mass parties.
Where they’ve come closest to doing so, as with Syriza Greece, the FdG in France, die Linke etc, it’s on the basis of left-reformist policies which have appeal to a mass social-democratic base.

“Marxist” vanguard parties which failed to apply the united front policy to these developments have found themselves isolated. The most miserable example being the KKE in Greece, which adopted an atttitude towards Syriza very reminiscent of 3rd period Stalinism. Some self-described Trotskyists even supported the KKE in this idiotic approach. If such people are unable to benefit from studying this book, they ought their ears swiped with a copy.