http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/o.htm
> Popular Front (aka People’s Front)
>
> The Popular Front or “Peoples Front” was a right wing response by the <A HREF="http://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/c/o.htm#communist-international">
> Communist International</A> to the failures of the so-called “Third Period”
> (1928-1935), during which the Comintern embarked on an insurrectionary and
> ultra-left response to the world-wide capitalist depression (in the
> Comintern’s eyes, the “Third Period” of capitalist decline).
>
> This culmination of this line [of the "Third Period" --d.] was the failure
> of the German Communist Party, then the largest Communist Party outside of
> Russia, to effectively combat the rise of and eventual victory, of the
> German Nazis. It was a period marked by <A HREF="http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/e.htm#sectarianism">sectarianism</A> and adventurism.
> Around the world, Communist activists split unions to set up pure “red
> unions” in opposition to the established union movement, regardless of how
> isolated or small Communist influence among workers was. Additionally, any
> work with non-Communist workers was forbidden or discouraged, effectively
> destroying the ability of the class to unite against their common fascist
> enemy.
>
> In response, <A HREF="http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/d/i.htm#dimitrov-georgi">Georgi Dimitrov</A>, the Bulgarian leader of the Comintern, at the
> 1935 7th World Congress of the Communist International, proposed in a
> speech entitled <A HREF="http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/unity.htm">The Unity of the Working Class against Fascism</A> a turn away
> from this adventurism which was formerly known as the “United Front Against
> Fascism” but was more commonly referred to as the Popular Front.
>
> Whereas before this date, the Comintern’s sections regarded socialists and
> anarchist organizations as “social-fascists”, unity in action against
> fascism with them became the order of the day. However, this unity “against
> fascism” was also a unity with what Dimitrov, and Stalin, argued for as the
> “progressive” bourgeoisie. Thus this action, almost always manifested in
> an electoralist campaign with these “progressive” and anti-fascist
> capitalist political parties, meant forming such “People’s Fronts” at all
> costs, including subordinating the political independence of the working
> class parties to this unity.
>
> Because such unity was the point of the Popular Front, anything that would
> go beyond the confines of the agreement to fight fascism, had to be opposed
> and suppressed. The Comintern argued that “first we fight the fascists,
> then we fight for the socialist revolution.” This stagist approach
> inevitably meant that the Communist Parties had to act as brakes on
> mobilizations during this period.
>
> Popular front governments were elected in France and Spain 1936 on a
> capitalist “anti-Fascist” program. But due to the tremendous
> radicalization by the working class that resulted in the bringing to power
> of the Popular Front governments, the workers wanted to go beyond the
> limited program of the Popular Front. In France, factory occupations
> occurred in response to Fascist attacks on workers. Workers responded in a
> pre-insurrectionary way with action committees forming at the biggest
> plants in France. The Stalinist French Communist Party due to its control
> of the largest union in France, successfully demobilized and sabotaged
> these actions, thus defusing a pre-revolutionary situation, leading to the
> establishment of a right wing government.
>
> In Spain, a Popular Front government was also elected. The effects of a
> Fascist “pronunciamento” or coup attempt by Francisco Franco in July of
> 1936 resulted in a stunning set back for the Fascists, brought about by the
> workers, independently of the government, smashing the Fascist rebellion in
> half of Spain. The Stalinists in Spain were a small minority in the workers’
> movement, and in Catalonia, the workers, lead by Anarchists and dissident
> communists, quickly established democratic control throughout this
> industrialized region of the Spanish state.
>
> The Stalinists then went on a war path trying to destroy this workers
> revolution. With war raging in the west of Spain, the Stalinists used the
> excuse of the Popular Front to argue that now was “not the time for
> revolution”, that only the fight against Franco’s Fascist legions was
> permissible. Most of the working class disagreed, instead taking on the
> local capitalists, most of whom were sympathetic to Franco, expropriating
> their holdings and collectivizing the land was the only way to fight
> fascism.
>
> Because the Stalinists controlled the oppressive apparatus of the Spanish
> state they attacked the Anarchists, dissident communists and
> left-socialists, imprisoned some of their members and murdered others ...
> all in the name of Popular Front.
>
> The Stalinist government of Russia aided their fellow Stalinists in both
> France and Spain and in other countries, in protecting the capitalist
> integrity of the People’s Front by using the KGB/GPU secret police to go
> after those on the left that would oppose the policies of the Front.
>
> The Popular Fronts in essence meant the subordination of workers’ parties
> to the capitalist political system. It meant the demobilization of workers
> who naturally radicalized when they say members of their own organizations
> in government and expected them to defend their interests, up to and
> including smashing capitalism and building a workers state. The ultimate
> failure of the Popular Fronts of the 1930s did not, however, mean the
> ending of the policies of the Popular Fronts.
>
> To this day, the Popular Front takes similar forms, always subordinating
> the interests of the workers to the alliance of socialist, Communist and
> capitalist parties.
>
>
>
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