United front from below
아래로부터의 통일전선
Part of Workers' united front (Comintern)
The form of the united front used under the Comintern's Third Period line (1928–1934). It rejected agreements with social-democratic leaders and appealed only to rank-and-file members of social-democratic parties and reformist unions, to draw them to the communists. The theses of the Sixth Congress (1928) said that the sharpening struggle against social democracy shifted the centre of gravity decisively to the united front from below. The German Communist Party promoted it as the "Red United Front", but by making a break with the social-democratic leadership in effect a precondition of joint action it failed to win social-democratic workers.
In depth
The distinction between a united front "from above" and "from below" was already used in the Comintern in the mid-1920s; in autumn 1925 a "united front from below and above" was even proclaimed. After 1928 the phrase came to mean the exclusion of agreements with leaders. Paragraph 37 of the Sixth Congress theses on the international situation said that the tactic changed its form without abolishing the main content of the united front: the sharpening struggle against social democracy shifted its centre of gravity decisively to the united front from below, while the duty to distinguish between sincerely mistaken social-democratic workers and a social-democratic leadership fawning on imperialism grew stronger.
In practice, paired with the theory of social fascism, it became a demand that social-democratic workers break with their party. The German Communist Party under Ernst Thälmann called for a "Red United Front", but by making the political break of the social-democratic rank and file a precondition of joint action it is judged to have reduced the united-front method to absurdity. The Social Democrats formed the anti-communist and anti-Nazi "Iron Front" with the unions. Trotsky criticised appeals over the leaders' heads as a barrier to common struggle and demanded a workers' united front based on agreements between organisations. When the Comintern turned to the Popular Front in 1934–1935, the formula disappeared from the official line.