The United Front tactic, or making tactical alliances with different class forces including the capitalist class, has proven to be a central part of the strategy of the left in its struggle to win influence and ultimately political power. The political imperatives driving such a tactic is the uneven levels of consciousness amongst the masses, including the working class, who continue to be influenced and even organised and mobilised by different class forces.

The heart of the United Front tactic is two-fold: to get a hearing and win political influence amongst the masses and at the same time to expose, in the eyes of the masses, the limitations and vacillation of the pro-capitalist and petty bourgeois forces.

In all countries where capitalist rule exists the ruling class organizes its own parties and its own base amongst the working class and the broad masses. In the imperialist countries this is primarily done through the Social Democratic parties, such as the British and Australian Labor Party, the SPD in Germany, the Socialist Party in France, as well as the Democratic Party in the US. These pro-capitalist parties have a huge mass influence and even control the mass organizations of the working class, i.e., the trade unions.

In the Philippines too the ruling class has always organised it own mass base and even mobilized this in significant numbers, especially during a period of political crisis. Also in countries such as ours (Indonesia, etc), where the working class is a minority surrounded by a majority of semi-proletarian or petty-bourgeois layers, the non-proletarian influence over the masses is stronger. Therefore the left is even more pressed to use the tactic of the United Front to break the hold of the elite over mass consciousness and get a hearing.

The United Front tactic is therefore essentially “the battle for ideas”, the struggle to win political influence amongst the masses. It is especially important and comes to the fore during the period of political crisis and heightened struggles.

 The UF Tactic in the Struggle Today

The UF tactic is clearly posed today in the struggle to oust GMA. Many of the discussions and debates around tactics in Laban ng Masa are essentially over the application of the United Front tactic. The call for a TRG itself is a United Front tactic of a particular kind, applied to the character of the governmental power that LM stands for in the transition period.

It should be clarified here that Laban ng Masa is not the United Front. This is the left and progressive forces uniting and coordinating their activities in this period. Those represented in LM (irrespective of the class background they initially originated from) stand on the side of the working class and the poor. They have aligned themselves with the historic interest of the working class and the poor.

The United Front is what is broadly referred to in LM as the “second layer” - the broad anti-GMA alliances. What is at the heart of the debates about joint rallies with UNO, etc., is the application of this United Front tactic.

 The Debate

In the discussions about applying this UF tactic in relation to sections of the anti-GMA elite, one of the arguments that gets repeated is that we need to strengthen our forces first and then go into a United Front with the non-progressives, i.e., there is tendency to counter-pose the strengthening of the left to the UF tactic. A variation of this is the argument that we need to strengthen the ‘counterpole’ first, and only after this that we can advance to an alliance with the ‘second layer’.

In this framework, the strengthening of our forces is viewed as if it’s “business as usual” organizing, i.e., using the traditional methods of organizing and recruiting people to our mass organizations, etc. But this is not a “business as usual period”. On the contrary this is a period where everyone, including the left, is battling to win political influence for their particular political projects and ideas.

This is also a period in which we see a section of the elite, such as the UNO forces, who have significant influence amongst the masses (especially the urban poor) mobilizing them in street protests against the regime. I think this is also what differentiates the UNO forces from the bishops (either through the CBCP or the KME) and the pro-Cory forces today. The pro-Cory forces and the Bishops are not mobilizing through street protests. They organize religious (predominantly Christian faith-based) mass. But street protests are a more militant form of mobilising the masses. We can’t intervene politically in a mass, as much as we can in street protests, for instance.

Strengthening our forces today essentially means increasing our political influence amongst those sections of the masses that are in motion. The UF tactic is an integral part of strengthening our forces in this period of heightened crisis. It is an additional and an increasingly important tactic to strengthening the left. It should not be placed in counter-position, but should be integrated into the range of tactics that we use to strengthen the influence of the left today. To counter-pose the two is to miss the central point of the UF tactic.

This means negotiated and joint mobilizations with UNO and the like should be viewed as an important part of building the left: of addressing, getting a hearing and influencing a broader layer of the masses that they mobilize, outside of our own organised base. This is a key element in winning “the battle for ideas” or political influence. Just because we have problems with this or that rally (and this is mainly from Bayan and not UNO), it does not mean that we should retreat from this approach.

The UF tactic with UNO and the like includes hard-tack negotiations to win more ground on our terms. If we can’t, then we walk away from any particular activity or even from joint activities with them, such as if they insist that we also carry the demand for an Erap restoration (however, this does not preclude their speakers calling for it at rallies). But let’s test out the tactic fully first on an ongoing and systematic manner.

We also need to move beyond a “rally-by-rally” approach. This is ad-hoc and unsystematic and does not provide any directional framework to the tactics needed today to win mass influence. I think the rally-by-rally approach is also extremely pragmatic. It could lead to making mistakes if we negotiate without a clear tactical framework.

Negotiations with these trapo forces are extremely tricky. They are not reliable allies. This necessitates a clear framework on the United Front tactic and its application. Instead of a rally-by-rally ad hoc approach, a systematic application of the UF tactic is what is needed today.

 Historical Lessons: Some points

All successful historic struggles for social transformation included the left parties being involved in various United Front formations: Vietnam’s NLF; Cuba’s Directorio Revolucionario; the Chaves forces in Venezuela experimented with a range of UF formations from electoral alliances (Causa R to run in the elections and the MVR today) to party formations, etc.

In the case of the Philippines, the failure of the CPP to lead the struggle to overthrow the Marcos dictatorship in 1986 could also be put down to the fact that it did not effectively apply the UF tactic, especially in the electoral arena, and was therefore marginalized in the upsurge that overthrew the Marcos dictatorship. #