Our attitude to the resistance movements

Wellred

Core Argument

This chapter argues that the resistance movements in occupied Europe during the Second World War were not unified national fronts but rather arenas of sharp class struggle. The author contends that from the outset, organised resistance was initiated by a heterogeneous bloc including Stalinists, social democrats, petty bourgeois parties, and sections of the bourgeoisie. Within these coalitions, class contradictions found organised expression, in some countries escalating to civil war. The text cites Poland, Yugoslavia, and Greece as examples where the division produced dual, rival movements: Zervas and EDES representing feudal-capitalist reaction, who at times relied on the Nazis against Tito and Siantos, who represented the plebeian masses. A similar, if less extreme, division is noted in France between the Maquis and the FTP.

The chapter’s central polemic is directed against the left wing of the resistance, which it characterises as a “caricature of the popular front.” Despite resting on the revolutionary sections of the people and containing thousands of loyal proletarian fighters, the left wing was not based on broad committees but on an agreement of parties. Its chauvinist petty bourgeois programme and leadership made it, in the author’s assessment, a direct agency of imperialism. The argument draws on the Marxist position that, in the midst of an imperialist war, a genuine struggle for national liberation could only be undertaken on the basis of a socialist programme under the slogan of the socialist united states of Europe. Any organised struggle on another basis served one imperialist bloc against another.

The chapter therefore prescribes a dual tactic for Trotskyists. On one hand, implacable hostility to the resistance bloc as such, denouncing its leadership as an arm of Anglo-American imperialism. On the other, flexible tactics: sending cadres into the resistance movements to counterpose a proletarian programme, destroy bourgeois influence over militant workers, and organise a conscious proletarian opposition to chauvinist leaders. The party is also charged with counterposing independent military formations of the working class to those of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois resistance.

Looking beyond the war, the chapter predicts that the “liberation” of Europe by Anglo-American imperialism would thrust the national question into the background and raise class issues to the fore. Only a prolonged military occupation by the Allies and the Stalinist bureaucracy could restore the national question to importance. Germany is identified as the exception, where dismemberment and subjugation would make the national problem acute.