Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributor
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- The formation of the French Popular Front, 1934–6
- The origins and nature of the Spanish Popular Front
- The French Radicals, Spain and the emergence of appeasement
- The Spanish army and the Popular Front
- Soldiers and Socialists: the French officer corps and leftist government, 1935–7
- The Spanish Church and the Popular Front: the experience of Salamanca province
- ‘La main tendue’, the French Communist Party and the Catholic Church, 1935–7
- Trotskyist and left-wing critics of the Popular Front
- The development of marxist theory in Spain and the Frente Popular
- The other Popular Front: French anarchism and the Front Révolutionnaire
- The French Popular Front and the politics of Jacques Doriot
- The Blum government, the Conseil National Economique and economic policy
- Social and economic policies of the Spanish left in theory and in practice
- Women, men and the 1936 strikes in France
- From clientelism to communism: the Marseille working class and the Popular Front
- A reinterpretation of the Spanish Popular Front: the case of Asturias
- Le temps des loisirs: popular tourism and mass leisure in the vision of the Front Populaire
- The educational and cultural policy of the Popular Front government in Spain, 1936–9
- French intellectual groups and the Popular Front: traditional and innovative uses of the media
- Index
The other Popular Front: French anarchism and the Front Révolutionnaire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributor
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- The formation of the French Popular Front, 1934–6
- The origins and nature of the Spanish Popular Front
- The French Radicals, Spain and the emergence of appeasement
- The Spanish army and the Popular Front
- Soldiers and Socialists: the French officer corps and leftist government, 1935–7
- The Spanish Church and the Popular Front: the experience of Salamanca province
- ‘La main tendue’, the French Communist Party and the Catholic Church, 1935–7
- Trotskyist and left-wing critics of the Popular Front
- The development of marxist theory in Spain and the Frente Popular
- The other Popular Front: French anarchism and the Front Révolutionnaire
- The French Popular Front and the politics of Jacques Doriot
- The Blum government, the Conseil National Economique and economic policy
- Social and economic policies of the Spanish left in theory and in practice
- Women, men and the 1936 strikes in France
- From clientelism to communism: the Marseille working class and the Popular Front
- A reinterpretation of the Spanish Popular Front: the case of Asturias
- Le temps des loisirs: popular tourism and mass leisure in the vision of the Front Populaire
- The educational and cultural policy of the Popular Front government in Spain, 1936–9
- French intellectual groups and the Popular Front: traditional and innovative uses of the media
- Index
Summary
In considering the Anarchists' attitude to the Popular Fronts, we have to bear in mind Daniel Guérin's distinction between what he calls the Popular Front No. 1 – an electoral alliance between social democracy, stalinism and bourgeois liberalism – and the Popular Front No. 2 – a powerful, extra-parliamentary movement, the initiative for which came from the working class: ‘the true popular front, the popular front of the streets and not of the politicians’.
Thus, Le Libertaire, most important of the anarchist newspapers and organ of the Union Anarchiste (UA), was careful to distinguish between the Popular Front's leaders – the politicians – and its working-class supporters. The Anarchists enthused over ‘the fraternity, the solidarity and the strength of the working class’ manifested in the extra-parliamentary movement of 1934 and 1935, and they also took an active part in that movement: the old nineteenth-century anarchist disdain for mass organizations – even for ‘the masses’ – was now no longer dominant.
The UA was one of the eight organizations represented at the meeting held in the offices of the CGT on 7 February 1934. According to Lefranc, Jouhaux particularly wanted the anarchists to be associated with the call for a general strike: ‘fidelity to the ideals of his youth and the desire to cover himself against accusations of having sold out to the government’. Its members took part in the strike of 12 February, and during the summer of 1934 they were involved in the Centre de Liaison et de Coordination des Forces Antifascistes de la Région Parisienne – a non-communist rival, more or less, to the communist-dominated Comité Amsterdam-Pleyel.
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- The French and Spanish Popular FrontsComparative Perspectives, pp. 131 - 144Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989