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Carl Davis

Jacques Doriot, a Communist Turned Fascist

(March 1945)

From Labor Action, Vol. IX No. 10, 5 March 1945, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).

There is hardly a worker who will not rejoice at the news that Jacques Doriot, ex-Stalinist-Communist leader and more recently the little fuehrer of a French fascist party, was killed during an Allied plane attack on Germany. The only regret in the manner of his death is that the French working class did not have the opportunity to deal with this foul creature, who learned his totalitarianism in the school of Stalin:

We could end this item right here and say “good riddance,” were it not for the fact that Robert Minor, that notorious liar, officer of the Communist Political Association and writer for the Daily Worker (pronounced union-wrecker), saw fit to make some of his usual ignorant and false comments on Doriot’s death.

Minor takes this opportunity to say that Doriot was an associate of Leon Trotsky, the outstanding fighter for world socialism and the oppressed of all countries, before an agent of Stalin’s GPU assassinated him.

A Scribbler at Work

Says Minor: “Doriot was once a member of the French Communist Party but expelled in 1936 when it was discovered that he was secretly allied with Trotsky.” The purpose of this lie is obvious. Since Doriot was an avowed fascist, you prove that Trotsky was one by asserting that he was allied with Doriot! What are the facts? Doriot and Trotsky were never allied. On the contrary, they were bitter enemies, when they were both in the.Communist International and out. What Minor, the journalistic prostitute of the Hearst-like Daily Worker, deliberately fails to mention is:

Doriot was not merely a member of the French Communist Party, but one of its leaders, a member of its central committee and one of its representatives on the executive committee of the Communist International.
He was also one of the leaders of the French Young Communist League and its representative on the executive committee of the Young Communist International.
Doriot resided in Moscow for a long time, during which period he was one of the outstanding opponents of Trotsky and a Trotsky-baiter. His role in the French Communist Party was to frame up the left-wing elements of the party, the true followers of socialism. This he did at the behest of Stalin. But in doing that he only did what Minor, Foster and Browder did in the American Communist Party. They were all associates-in-crime, the best of friends. Doriot, Minor and the other puppets of Stalin help to make a shambles of the once revolutionary Communist International built by Lenin, Trotsky, Bucharin and other leaders of the Russian Revolution.
What the liar Minor deliberately omitted from his account is that Doriot had a fall-out with the Stalinist clique which ran the Communist International and the French Communist Party and quit. He did not become a fascist all at once, but only after a period of “development.” But this transformation was not difficult, since he merely exchanged the totalitarianism of Stalin for the totalitarianism of Hitler. Having been schooled in Moscow, he merely took a post-graduate course in Berlin. As an outstanding pupil of the anti-Trotsky school, he only took another step forward in his degeneration. The really sad thing about it all is that he lived so long.

New Capitalist Defenders

But look at the course of Minor and his associates. Once they were socialists, too. Now they are Stalinists, acting in his name in this country. Once they fought in the interests of all labor and against capitalism. Today? They are anti-socialist and anti-labor.

The outstanding supporters of capitalism and big business in America is the Communist Party (now called “Political Association”). They have more faith in decaying capitalism than the big business men themselves. They now stand for an aggressive imperialism in which American big business can exploit the world.

They are against any movement or individual which genuinely fights for socialism or a real improvement of the lives of the people.

They are for a permanent post-war no-strike pledge and against militant unionism, pleading for capital-labor peace which is another means of killing the labor movement.

Scabs of the Labor Movement

Even at this late stage, when the WLB has been unmistakably stamped as an anti-labor body, the Communists and their Daily Wrecker rises to its defense, blaming Vinson, who is in turn an appointee of Roosevelt, warning labor not to fight for its elementary rights.

The Stalinist-Communists scabbed on the Montgomery Ward workers in their fight against Sewell Avery. This was merely the practical result of their policy, which would reduce the unions to agencies of the government, relying solely on handouts from cheap capitalist politicians. They are the scabs of the labor movement.

No, Doriot was not an associate of Trotsky, but his violent enemy. But he was an associate of the Minors, Browders and Fosters. If you think his transformation was strange, just think of the policies the Stalinist-Communists pursue today. And remember, too it wasn’t so long ago that the Minors were defending the Hitler-Stalin pact, saying that fascism was “a matter of personal taste.”

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