While Clara Zetkin is primarily known for her many contributions to the struggle for women’s liberation and her participation in the the revolutionary Marxist wing of the 2nd International, the scope of her political activity extended across every major issue of her time and continued until her death in 1933. One of her most important contributions was the struggle she conducted during the last decade of her life for a United Front against fascism. Basing herself on the united front tactics developed by the Communist International and the analysis of fascism she developed in the Provisional International Committee for Combating Fascism established in 1923, Zetkin launched an effort to unite communist, social democratic, and trade union organizations in a struggle to crush fascism on an international scale. However Zetkin soon found herself at odds with the Communist International, which came to be dominated by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR and in 1928 mechanically imposed the absurd theories of “social fascism” and the third period on ‘official’ Communist parties throughout the world.
From the 5th Congress of the Communist International in 1924 onward, Zetkin was increasingly uncomfortable with the line coming from Moscow. Zinoviev lent his support to the ultraleft faction led by Ruth Fischer in the German Communist Party (KDP) and sought to remove leadership responsibilities from figures such as Brandler and Thalheimer, who gave at least token support to Zetkin’s conception of the united front. These concerns led Zetkin to refrain from positively endorsing the leadership of the Zinoviev-Kamenev-Stalin troika. However, Zetkin failed to connect the international maneuvers of the Comintern leadership to the internal struggle in the Russian party and consequently failed to support either the Trotskyist Left Opposition or the United Opposition and instead pinned her hopes on the leadership of Bukharin in the International. These failures came back to haunt Zetkin in 1928 as Stalin dispensed with his alliance with Bukharin, undemocratically established himself as the dominate figure both in the Russian party and the Comintern, and bureaucratically imposed his ludicrous conception of the Third Period. While Zetkin did everything in her power to resist the Stalinist onslaught — even going so far as to confront Stalin directly at the 6th Congress of the Comintern- and still remain a disciplined member of the KDP, she found herself tragically unable to effect a course correction in either the KDP or the Comintern as whole. Instead, Zetkin found herself in a rearguard struggle against party bureaucratic who sought to minimize her role due to her refusal to adapt her ideas to the whims of Stalin and only found occasional opportunities, such as her call for communists and social democrats to collaborate in the struggle for abortion access, to express herself publicly on the question of a United Front. The most notable of these opportunities is Zetkin’s 1933 address to the Reichstag, which she used to call for a United Front against fascism and for the socialist revolution in Germany. This speech is a testament to Zetkin’s courage and commitment, and is all the more remarkable do to the composition of the Reichstag it was nominally addressed to- over forty of the seats were held by the Nazis- but was too little too late. Not even Clara Zetkin could avert the horrors to come.
After Zetkin’s death Stalin executed a hundred and eighty degree turn over her head, leaping from one error to another without so much as pausing for breath. The absurdities of third period sectarianism were replaced with those of the Popular Front alliance with liberalism, which led to the defeat of the Spanish Revolution and the triumph of the fascist Francisco Franco. This defeat stemmed from the crippling of a revolutionary movement that must come from any alliance with sections the ruling class and the postponement of revolutionary objectives as necessitated by the Popular Front. The United Front advocated by Zetkin, therefore, stands as the only anti-fascist strategy that may claim to have been vindicated (in a negative sense) by the tragic history of the twentieth century. Zetkin’s error was to remain disciplined within the KDP and the Stalinized Comintern rather than declare her support for the Trotskyist opposition, which agreed with her on the need for a united front against fascism, but to her credit is developing a political strategy that if applied may have led to the crushing of the Nazi effort to seize power and offers important lessons for the left today.
While the modern left is not bound to a bureaucratic international the way Zetkin’s KDP was, there are still those who seek to impose the failed theoretical and tactical conceptions of Stalinism on the movement. The Third Period may be long past, but sectarians continue to protest the participation of what they now call the “pseudo-left” in the revolutionary movement and preach separatism. More prominent, and thus more dangerous, however are those who remain advocates of the Popular Front and now seek an alliance the with the section of the US ruling class represented by the Democratic Party. This unprincipled tactic, if embraced, would be a death sentence to the socialist movement in the US and would ensure the triumph of the ultra-right it seeks to ward against. Socialists must reject this failed approach and, remembering the legacy of Clara Zetkin, build a United Front of all the oppressed and exploited to lead the struggle for a better world.