Jacques Doriot, From Communism to Fascism by Dieter Wolf (2015)

* Source: Retrieved on 26/4/2022 from http://euskalherriasozialista.blogspot.com/2015/09/jacques-doriot-el-alcalde-comunista-que.html?m=1

* First published: As part of Jacques Doriot. Del comunismo al fascismo by Dieter Wolf

* Notes: This was translated by me from Spanish to English, again I don't speak Spanish and I used the same method as my last translation (A Total, Organic State by Michel Schneider) however this translation is a lot more choppy, I might retranslate in the future, so excuse the mistakes. 

Jacques Doriot, the communist mayor who founded fascism in France

The son of a blacksmith, Jacques Doriot was born in Bresles, Oise department (France), on September 26, 1898. He comes from a working-class background, his family had always been workers and peasants. He is, along with Mussolini, the only fascist leader of a genuine proletarian background in a movement that was mostly characterized by emerging middle class of its leaders. Doriot's father had Italian origins and his mother was Flemish, like many of the second-generation immigrants in France. In the fall of 1915, barely a teenager, young Jacques moved on his own behalf to Saint-Denis, a populous industrial municipality north of Paris, which today is a dormitory neighborhood of the French capital. There he worked as a manual laborer in various jobs until he specializes as a metal worker.

At the age of 18, he joined the Socialist party in Saint-Denis, a section strongly influenced by revolutionary syndicalism, but was called up shortly after, in April 1917, and served bravely during the First World War in the Lorraine front, being later transferred to the Eastern front, where France had stationed peace-keeping troops, so Doriot might've been present in Hungary when Bela Kun's Bolshevik revolution breaks out and in Fiume, when D'Annunzio's rebels in that romantic attempt of affirming the Italian character of this Adriatic city. All this surely makes a deep impression on the young idealist Doriot.

In 1920 he returned from the army after three years, with a brilliant service record but increasingly convinced of the need for pacifism and the horrors of war. When the split of the Socialist Party took place in the Congress of Tours, which would eventually lead to the creation of the French Communist Party, Doriot follows the faithful dissidents to Moscow. The Communist International had already noticed the potential in this young gentleman and supported him.

 Supported by the Comintern, Jacques Doriot rises steeply in the Party. At 26, he is already a member of the Central Committee, leader of the communist youth since 1922 and a Deputy, as well as a French delegate to the Comintern, which led him to visit the USSR on numerous occasions, in the plenary sessions of that leading organ of world communism, and even reach China itself. A true professional agitator, educated in the purest orthodoxy of revolutionary socialism, very much in parallel with Mussolini's life trajectory.

 His popularity is undeniable, especially among the youngest members of the party, and his campaigns in favor of the demilitarization of the Ruhr, occupied by France since the end of the First World War and against the French intervention in the Moroccan Rif, made him be rise in the arena of the media.

However, the independence and undisciplined activism (of Jacques) annoyed certain sectors of the party, who saw their power declining before the young deputy with the red belt from Paris, strongly implanted in his fief in Saint-Denis, where he will become its mayor. by the lists of the communist party in the municipal elections of March 1930. In a majority working-class municipality, unemployment and social problems were magnifying. It was not difficult to understand that it was one of the hardest core of French communism and socialism.

In 1932 he begun to have serious problems with the party leadership. His differences on the strategy to win the working class grew by the day and are manifested in acts of indiscipline on the part of Doriot. That year the communist party went through a profound crisis of leadership and its popularity among the working classes fell to a minimum never known before. In the legislative elections of 1932, Doriot was the only communist deputy elected by an absolute majority in the first round with more than 50% of the votes cast, apart from improving his 1928 result by several thousand votes. Empowered by this he vigorously participated in the 12th Comintern Plenum in Moscow (August 27-September 15, 1928) where he read a very negative report on the party leadership in France. and asks for collaboration from the International to pressure the French leadership to accept its theses, among which is, paradoxically, anti-fascism as a flag. Let's not forget that at that time the tactic imposed by the Party was that of direct confrontation with the socialist leaders and trying to capture their militants.

Doriot distances himself from the leadership in that he demands collaboration with the socialists for the creation of an anti-fascist front to prevent the working class from falling into the hands of Fascism as has happened in other countries. Doriot is clear-sighted in this, the attraction of the masses to fascism is the greatest obstacle to the communist revolution in Europe and is perhaps the key to understanding its turn, a few years later, embracing the fascist cause. It is the same fight, the same revolution, but with another flag, but always with the same objectives for Doriot.

 At the March of 1934 Central Committee session he prophetically declares:

"Before us, the fascist forces raise their heads; among the peasants, among the middle classes, among the small merchants and the intellectuals of worth, the demonstrations multiply that prove that the fascist idea matures and grows... there is between fascism and us a fight to win the masses. A certain number of social layers that seem decisive are mobilizing behind fascism, when they should be a point of support for the proletariat..."¹

However, the Political Bureau and the Central Committee of the party refuse to collaborate with the socialists to create an anti-fascist popular front. Doriot, contrary to the agreement of his superiors, decides to start these contacts on his behalf and creates a Vigilance Committee in Saint-Denis with the Socialist Party and the Socialist unions .It is interesting to note that in his fiefdom Doriot did not need the support of the socialists or the union, since he had a comfortable majority and this fact should be interpreted as an attempt to prove his theses to the leadership. When the right-wing riots broke out in Paris on February 6, 1934 as a result of the Stavinsky affair, Doriot believed he saw a fascist demonstration in them and immediately called an anti-fascist counter-demonstration.² The party leadership forbade his membership but Doriot disobeyed and is the only communist leader who is in the front row with the communist and socialist protesters, confronting the forces of order, demanding an anti-fascist front.. His popularity is at its peak and he is the visible head of the young communist militants, with a stronger position every day, not restricted to Saint-Denis but to all of Paris. 

The leadership reacts immediately and local meetings are organized with the elected officials of the north of Paris where Doriot is condemned and a notice is published in the communist daily L'Humanité addressed to the communist militants of the northern sector urging their support to stop "comrade Doriot from propagating his opportunist conception... and force him to return to the discipline of the Party". However, Doriot, who already voluntarily refrained from attending sessions of the Political Bureau and the Central Committee, has made a serious decision. On April 9, 1934 he resigned from his position as mayor and publishes a manifesto addressed to the Communist International to make his position clear.

The municipal elections, called for May 6th and 13th, made the Communist International give orders to the party leadership by means of a telegram dated April 23rd, to try to reach a solution with Doriot. They are aware that losing Doriot would be losing a great asset. "The internal struggle has gone too far and it must cease" ordered the International again on the 26th. However, Doriot has already crossed the Rubicon and is not willing to reintegrate himself into the discipline of a party that no longer meets the expectation of a revolutionary organization . The results of the elections seem to prove him right again, he is elected with 75.9% of the votes. An incredible result for any analyst and that shows us Doriot's charisma in his city. On the contrary, it should be noted that the Communist party did not present a candidacy in Saint-Denis, although this does not detract from its merits in attracting such a percentage of voters.

The Communist International demands him to go to Moscow but Doriot refuses and publicly opposes it. "I am not going to go to Moscow..." says Doriot challenging neither more nor less than the International itself, "I will go to Moscow when the heads of the Communist International have retracted and rectified the slanders and lies that for three months have been spread over me." Breaking up is fact and there is no going back. On May 16, the Communist International chose the leadership of the party and authorizes it to adopt measures to neutralize Doriot. The exclusion of the party is only a matter of time and materializes shortly after, although, curiously, and it is still a paradox that shows that the Doriot affair was not just a mere disagreement over electoral strategy, Doriot's theses Regarding the creation of a Popular Front, are assumed by the party and months later they will manifest themselves publicly with the creation of the Popular Front with which they will come to power.

From this moment Doriot will launch a frantic campaign to discredit the communist party from its fief of Saint-Denis and build a communist organization, always communist, that is capable of attracting the working masses. For Doriot and his collaborators, leaving the PCF was not, although one might believe otherwise, an easy matter to accept. His main collaborator at that time, Henri Barbé, the former general secretary of the party in 1930 and who had followed Doriot in the split, in his memoirs can summarize the state of mind of all of them at that time: "What happened to me when the break with the party occured was like a deep disenchantment. I looked back at all my efforts, my struggles, my sacrifices as a young man... the friendships, the fraternal camaraderie that united me with hundreds of other militants. I felt an immense pain. It was like a vertical fall of my illusions and my convictions. It is not an exaggeration to say that I felt deep despair at that moment." 

To reorganize, Doriot created base cells, the so-called Groupes d'amis de l'Unité (Groups of Friends of Unity), intended to regroup those dissident communist militants who wanted to continue fighting under the banner of unity of action. for the communist revolution. He also launches a national edition of his organ of expression L'Émancipation which appears in October with the subtitle Central Organ of the Total Unity of Workers. Doriot decides that the future party be called the Unified Workers' Party and launches a clearly communist program from which he calls for the unity of the proletarian forces, although his success is certainly rather limited. The issues of L'Émancipation rarely exceed 4,000 copies nationwide and the PCF prevented any demonstration or collaboration of the party with Doriot, or that his organization has contacts with the coordination committee for the creation of the Popular Front.

After months of failures, the balance that Doriot can observe at the beginning of 1935, summarizing the situation, is rather sad. His expectations have been frustrated one after another. Certainly he had been re-elected deputy by an absolute majority again for his constituency, Saint-Denis, and it is the most powerful far-left organization in France, fully participating in communist orthodoxy (rituals, language, symbols) but lacking implantation. at the national level. There is only one chance to survive, Doriot must recognize his collaborators and that is to renew himself entirely. For this, he throws himself fully into the task of creating the bases for a new party, one that overcomes classes and that incorporates the national idea that is so dear to the working masses.

To do this, he will have around him a series of very valuable men who have been joining him throughout his dissidence and from the left, who have become disenchanted with the current crisis situation in France. Thus we find Paul Marión, a veteran ex-communist, later a socialist, with an unbeatable organizational capacity; Víctor Arrighi, the communist delegate in the Banca Obrera y Campesina and with contacts in Italy; Paul Guitard, a well-known journalist from L'Humanité; some dissidents from the right-wing leagues who criticized the lack of social vision of Colonel la Rocque such as Pierre Pucheau, a brilliant executive from high industry but coming from the working class, Claude Popelín, Robert Loustau and, above all, intellectuals such as Bertrand de Jouvenel or Drieu La Rochelle³.

Doriot multiplies his work meetings, interviews and potential donors for the party between industrialists and bankers, without much success although some historians affirm the opposite, and organizes his most immediate collaborators so that they occupy the leadership of the party that he wishes to present as soon as possible. best. Historians do not agree on when the idea and the name of the French People's Party arose, but in the spring of 1936, after the strikes that devastated the country, in which the mayor of Saint-Denis collaborated with the strikers, all he was ready for it. The decisive hour had come to finally break with communism.

Notes

¹ Repr, Burrin. La dérive fasciste, pp. 163-164.

² Stavinsky was a swindler very close to the power structures who mysteriously committed suicide, arousing everyone's suspicions when his corruption was discovered. He was the trigger for the disorders that occurred in Paris in February 1934 as a result of the discredit of the political class before the citizens. The leagues of ex-combatants monopolized the demonstrations of tens of thousands of demonstrators who wanted to take over Parliament. They resulted in numerous deaths and injuries while showing the impossibility of the leaders of the radical right to take power. For fascistic intellectuals such as Rebatet, Brasillach or Drieu La Rochelle, he represents the beginning of their political activism in the fascist field, seeking a way out of the impasse that Maurras and La Rocque had led them to, 

³ One of the most important would be Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (1893-1945), a writer, journalist and above all polemicist, Drieu La Rochelle is the most representative figure of that generation of Gallic intellectuals who embraced fascism.