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The characterization of the PUL as moderate, however, is inadequate, and
the attempt to locate it on a linear spectrum between moderate and radical,
misleading. It is probably more useful to analyze PUL using terminology that was
not widespread in the U.S. until after 1935: PUL was a locally-generated example
of a united front mass organization as defined by the strategy of the People's
Front.61 The PUL represented a center-left alliance in that it united progressive
middle- and even upper-class elements of both the white and Black communities
with working-class elements; it united radical and socialist individuals and
organizations with liberal and moderate individuals and organizations. It was
emphatically not the "united front from below" type of organization that the CP was
advocating in the period, an organization where the center and left of the rank and
file unites behind left leadership, and center leadership is isolated and "exposed."
Likewise, it was not the kind of center-left alliance that came to dominate the
movements of the later Popular Front period (for example, much of the building of
the CIO), where the more moderate center dominated the leadership. In the PUL,
the left retained the initiative and leadership, not the center. In fact, the leading
role of the left in PUL within the broader center-left alliance is crucial key to
understanding the organization and its strange combination of radicalism and
moderation — or rather its radical core in a moderate shell. And the radicalism of
the core of PUL is demonstrable in several ways.
First, on the issue of inculcating Socialist values in the PUL, Naomi Riches
was undoubtedly right that PUL's Socialist core was stretched to the limit of its
energies and was unable to carry Socialist education as far as it would have liked.
Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that Socialists in the PUL carried on a
good deal of education around socialist principles and analyses of the world,
especially considering the fact that, in order to encourage breadth of support, PUL
was an officially non-partisan organization. Education of the unemployed was an
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