Imperialism and the Popular Front
Bob Mandel
Platypus Review 189 | September 2026
On April 16, 2026, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted the panel “Imperialism: What is it and why should we be against it?” at Oregon State University. Platypus member Andony Melathopoulos moderated the panel. The speakers were Asa Jorg (Young Communist League), Bill Smaldone (E.J. Whipple Professor of History at Willamette University), and Bob Mandel (a veteran of Mississippi Freedom Summer and a former member of the Spartacist League). An edited version of Bob Mendel’s opening remarks follows.[1]
Panel introduction
In the 1920 preface to his famous work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Vladimir Lenin declared imperialism to be “the eve of the proletarian social revolution of the proletariat.”[2] Over a hundred years later, the world proletarian revolution has yet to occur, yet “imperialism” remains a prominent category on the Left, among both Marxists and non-Marxists. From intervention in Iran and Venezuela to the eyeing of Greenland, “imperialism” remains the framework through which we interpret these actions. This panel will explore the meaning of “imperialism” as a category for the Left today and how the Left seeks to challenge it. What is imperialism, and why should we be against it?
Opening remarks
THE YEAR LENIN WROTE Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), five times more “profit” had been realized in bourse / stock-market speculation than in production in the British economy — till then, the workshop of the world, as the United States became after the Second World War, and as China is today. Lenin writes that the dominance of finance capital leads to the export of capital to realize superprofits in non-industrialized nations, both through the exploitation of labor and the extraction of natural resources.[3]
Imperialism has suffered serious defeats: in China, Yugoslavia, and later Vietnam and Cuba, in all of which capitalism was expropriated, the capitalist state apparatus smashed and overturned, and a socialized planned economy initiated; and in the anti-colonial revolutions that swept the African continent in the mid-1950s, resulting in bourgeois democratic rule. But nowhere has the proletariat come to power, nowhere directly ruled, except in the Soviet Union, and there, at best, from 1917 to 24 — or, charitably, to 29, when Trotsky’s exile marked the consolidation of bureaucratic rule.
Stalin represented a caste, a bureaucratic layer on top of the socialist property forms — the result, as Trotsky had warned, of “the old crap” arising based on poverty, competition for scarce resources (who got the apartment with two rooms? — someone had to decide), and the concentration, historically, of skills in Russian hands.[4]
But why has the proletariat never come directly to power? There is no simple answer, but a key is in the strategy of the Popular Front pursued by communist, socialist, and social-democratic parties all over the world, particularly since 1935–36.
The first four congresses of the Third, or Communist International (Comintern) (1919–22) believed in the United Front: unity in action between different working-class parties and organizations. While fighting together against the boss, fascist thugs, or the government itself, each had the right to carry its own banners, to voice its own politics. The object was to win masses of workers away from their class-collaborationist leaderships (to set the base against the top) by proving in action that the communists had a superior program. This tactic was born of the need to regroup the workers’ movement under communist leadership after working-class unity and internationalism were shattered by mutual slaughter during World War I.
Stalin turned the United Front on its head between 1928 and 35. The Comintern’s position became: if you’re not a communist, you’re a social fascist. So, while Hitler’s thugs roamed the streets like ICE[5] (but even more like the KKK), assaulting Jews, communists, and union halls, destroying working-class printing presses, and attacking working-class housing co-ops, the German Communist Party (KPD) refused to try to unite with socialist workers who were members or supporters of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). And the SPD leadership remained firmly committed to reforming capitalism — marked by its support for participation in WWI, entry into the government in 1918, and acquiescence when Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were assassinated.
The year before Hitler was handed power by a capitalist class shaken by the depression and fearful of the powerful workers’ movement, he received 12 million votes, the SPD 7 million, the KPD 6 million. A united front, particularly in the streets but conceivably also electorally, could have blocked Hitler’s taking power.
Crossing the class line
In recognition and fear of the defeat in Germany, instead of returning to United Front policies of intra-class unity in action, Stalin flip-flopped to the Popular Front, uniting with “progressive capitalists” “committed to democracy.” And that has been the critical component in the failure of revolution in the industrialized world ever since.
France in 1936: When the Front Populaire[6] was elected to power, with LĂ©on Blum as Prime Minister, mass strikes erupted, often in the form of plant occupations, demanding nationalization and/or expropriation. Blum, with the support of the French Communist Party (PCF),[7] actively opposed this, and over the course of many months succeeded in bringing the occupations to an end. The working class was so demoralized that it was passive when the pro-Nazi Vichy government consolidated power.[8]
The U.S. in 1941: The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) and the near-dozen unions under its leadership issued a “no-strike” pledge to support the capitalist war effort. The CPUSA supported the government bringing the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) (SWP) and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Minneapolis to trial under the Smith Act. The Midwest Conference of Teamsters under the leadership of the SWP was the only section of labor to oppose World War II as an inter-imperialist war. In turn, after the Democrat President Harry S. Truman launched the Cold War in 1947, the government used the same Smith Act to ruthlessly persecute the CPUSA and its supporters. (21 years later, George Wallace’s presidential campaign was for peaceful coexistence and social reforms but not socialist expropriation — a Leftish Rooseveltism.)
Europe in 1945–48: The French and Italian Communist Parties turned power over to the bourgeoisie even though the Parties had led the anti-fascist resistance and had qualitatively more military power than Charles de Gaulle in France or the Christian Democrats in Italy.[9] Instead of consolidating revolutionary power and expropriating the capitalist class, in both countries the Parties constructed Popular Front governments, preserving capitalism. Stalin had made a deal with Winston Churchill, dividing Europe into spheres of influence, and the communists in the West were to defend the Soviet Union by sacrificing the proletariat.
France in 1968: A pre-revolutionary situation developed, sparked by student demonstrations that were viciously attacked by the police. Student resistance became so intense, including barricades and hand-to-hand combat, that the police special forces announced they would no longer engage. Spurred by the student movement and deep dissatisfaction over stagnant wages and worsening working conditions, 10 million workers engaged in the largest general strike in French history. Its primary leadership was the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT),[10] the PCF-led union confederation. De Gaulle fled the country to a military base in West Germany where U.S./NATO troops mobilized to invade France to try to crush the revolution. Rather than fighting to take power, the PCF/CGT settled for a wage hike. Demoralized, workers were ousted from the plants they had occupied, the student movement waned, and capitalism was restabilized.
Disaster in Chile in 1970–73: Socialist Salvador Allende, elected President at the head of the Unidad Popular[11] — of which the Communist Party of Chile was the major organizer — had to agree in advance to limit nationalizations, to give compensation, and to leave the military intact. He died a martyr for the working class, AK-47 in hand, paying along with 25 thousand others for the illusion that capitalism could be peacefully reformed and even replaced through parliamentary legislation. Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and the CIA proved otherwise. If anything, Chile proved how wrong the slogan “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” is.[12] “The people” is a classless concept. Like the Popular Front itself, it blurs lines. Lenin and the Bolsheviks stood for a workers’ and peasants’ government.
South Africa in 1994: It was three general strikes that brought down apartheid in the industrial powerhouse of the continent, not sanctions or boycotts. The last general strike took place immediately after the assassination of Chris Hani, the general secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP). 6 million workers struck and people rebelled in the streets, evoking images strongly reminiscent of the riots when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated (1968). The general strike and rebellion led directly to the first free election and brought the African National Congress (ANC) to power. Unlike Hani, who was reportedly targeted because he advocated not only the overthrow of apartheid but the direct taking of power in a socialist workers’ state, Nelson Mandela, the ANC, and the remaining SACP leadership embraced a two-stage theory of revolution: first, the abolition of apartheid through the establishment of a “democratic” government; later, at some unspecified point to be determined by history, socialism. The ANC established a cross-class government, the Popular Front under another name, capitalism remained intact, and nearly half the population now lives in crime-ridden poverty. In 2012, the ANC government proved just how committed to the private ownership of the means of production it is. When miners in Marikana went on strike, 34 were shot dead by the police. In the U.S., only Angela Davis, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) #10 spoke out strongly to condemn the murders. (The ILWU has strong ties to the South African working class, having won praise from Mandela for an illegal 11-day refusal to unload South African cargo in 1984.)
Today
All of this is directly relevant to the situation in the U.S. today. The memory of George Floyd’s murder and the overturn of Roe v. Wade is deep in popular consciousness. The genocide in Gaza, the ICE raids across the country, the war in Iran, and skyrocketing inflation have brought millions into the streets. The question is, which way forward? A return to Democratic Party rule or a decisive break with it to form an independent, socialist, working-class party to fight for a workers’ government and the expropriation of the oligarchy?
The Democrats have been the American expression of the Popular Front in a disguised form beginning in the Roosevelt era but particularly since the end of WWII and the launching of the Cold War. It is a capitalist party through and through but has had major support in the working class, particularly its black and Latino sectors, and especially organized labor. It de facto controls the unions through their leaderships’ class-collaborationist policies and through existing labor law — the Taft–Hartley Act, the Railway Labor Act, and various state laws. Democratic Presidents have invoked Taft–Hartley to break strikes far more often than Republicans.
While deep dissatisfaction with Democratic policies led to a mass desertion of working-class voters to Trump last election, the tide has already reversed. But because Biden’s actions financing and arming the genocide are fresh in mind, as are Obama’s attack on public education through charter schools and his deportation of some 3 million immigrants (middle-aged workers will also recall Bill Clinton’s role in NAFTA and the start of “the New Jim Crow”[13]) this is a unique opportunity to break from the Democrats — to reject class collaboration and all Popular Front strategies.
This cannot be accomplished by abstaining from or boycotting mass events organized by the Democrats in opposition to Trump’s authoritarianism, but rather by intervening consistently and pedagogically in them. At their inception, Indivisible[14] and the No Kings rallies[15] consciously excluded mention of Palestine and the genocide because to permit it was to permit discussion of Biden and Harris’s critical role. At the first thousands-strong No Kings rallies in Oakland, my sign about Palestine and the Democrats’ role in the genocide was the only one visible; there was not a Palestinian flag to be seen. But over time, the strong Palestine movement asserted itself, and because of mass popular revulsion at the genocide, it has now won a place on the platform at the major San Francisco No Kings events.
At the most recent No Kings rally in Corvallis, a similar outcome was achieved when a representative from Veterans for Peace was given the mic for a careful critique of the Indivisible national leadership’s resistance to the issue of Palestine and its current silence on Iran — about which the Democrats continue to equivocate as they seek simultaneously to maintain imperialist control of Middle Eastern oil and capitalize on mass anger against Trump. The Corvallis event was also marked by a united-front socialist contingent of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), and others carrying banners to make it clear that it is the entire capitalist system at fault, not just Trump — although attention to the role of the Democrats was less focused and more muted than it should have been. Indeed, revolutionary socialists should continue to intervene in the YDSA to argue for breaking fully from the Democrats. The opening is there.
For the growing but still small, socialist parties, the lessons of the past must be learned and publicly articulated: unity in action, with the only path forward being working-class independence on an explicitly anti-capitalist program of expropriation. |P
[1] A partial recording of the panel is available at <https://archive.org/details/imperialism-panel>.
[2] V. I. Lenin, “Preface to the French and German Editions” (1920), in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York: International Publishers, 1939), 14.
[3] The Russian invasion of Ukraine is not imperialism in that sense but in the old sense of expansion of empire; Russian capitalism is not fundamentally based on the export of capital. I am a revolutionary defeatist — opposing both sides and saying the “main enemy is at home” because the U.S./NATO provoked the war by encircling Russia ever more closely with nuclear weapons, as Ukraine became a client state. Nonetheless, the Russian invasion is indefensible.
[4] Trotsky quotes Marx and Engels, The German Ideology (1845), in The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is It Going? (New York: Pathfinder, 1972), 65. See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker, second ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978), 161: “And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which at the same time implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise, because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily reproduced.”
[5] United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, created as part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002.
[6] An alliance of Left-wing parties including the French Communist Party, the Section française de l’Internationale ouvrière (French Section of the Workers’ International) (SFIO), and the Parti républicain, radical et radical-socialiste (Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party); it was founded in 1936 and dissolved in 38.
[7] Parti Communiste français, founded in 1920 by members of the SFIO.
[8] The Vichy government (1940–44) was led by Marshall Philippe Pétain and based in the city of Vichy.
[9] Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democracy) was an Italian political party that was founded in 1943 and dissolved in 94.
[10] General Confederation of Labour is a national trade-union center, founded in Limoges in 1895.
[11] Popular Unity (UP) was a political alliance — founded in 1969 and dissolved in 81 — that was originally made up of most of the Chilean Left: Partido Socialista de Chile (Socialist Party of Chile), Partido Comunista de Chile (Communist Party of Chile), Partido Radical (Radical Party), Partido Social Demócrata (Social Democrat Party), Acción Popular Independiente (Independent Popular Action), Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitario (Popular Unitary Action Movement), etc. UP was the successor to Frente de Acción Popular (Popular Action Front), which was a coalition of parties from 1956 to 69.
[12] “¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!” was borrowed by UP from a 1940s speech by Colombian Liberal Party politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.
[13] The North American Free Trade Agreement eliminated or reduced barriers to trade between Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. from January 1, 1994; “the New Jim Crow” refers to legal scholar Michelle Alexander’s contention that “the war on drugs,” begun in 1971 and escalated in the 80s, continued the systemic oppression of black men only apparently resolved by the civil-rights reforms of the 1960s.
[14] A movement and organization founded in reaction to Donald Trump in 2016. See Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump (New York: One Signal Publishers, 2019).
[15] A series of protests (June 2025, October 2025, and March 2026), mostly in the U.S., opposing the second Trump administration.
