Towards a Popular Front Political Economy, 1936–39

Abstract

To paraphrase Arthur Koestler, in the period after 1935, the vituperative, social-fascist castigating, revolutionary communist Mr Hyde gave way in communist circles to the gentle bedside mannered Dr Jekyll who was a freedom-loving, anti-fascist popular front democrat.¹ In terms of political action this initially involved the Communist Party in seeking collaboration with Labour and other left groupings and, eventually, in advocating the pursuit of a broad political alliance involving Liberals and even Conservatives of a radical hue. It also involved an attempt, as it proved, ineffectual, to affiliate to a Labour Party previously portrayed as a bastion of social fascism. At a theoretical level this shift in the Comintern line demanded both an alteration in the critical analysis of capitalism which communists had previously purveyed and in the policy prescriptions and forms of political action which they had advocated. Strachey’s writings in the period from late 1936 through to early 1940 represent a response to that intellectual challenge.

There is no one in politics today worth sixpence outside the ranks of Liberals except the post-war generation of intellectual Communists under thirty-five.

J. M. Keynes, ‘Democracy and Efficiency’, New Statesman and Nation, 28 January 1939

A policy does not become a useful one until it comes down to earth with specific proposals

Letter to J. Strachey, 2 December 1936