La Lutte was a French-language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 newspaper published in Saigon, Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

. It was launched ahead of the April-May 1933 Saigon municipal council election as a joint organ of the Indochinese Communist Party

Indochinese Communist Party

The Indochinese Communist Party was a political party which was transformed from old Vietnamese Communist Party in October 1930...

 and a grouping of Trotskyists (which became known as Nhom Tran Dau, the 'Struggle Group', after La Lutte), who were running a joint slate of candidates for the polls. This kind of cooperation between Trotskyists and Comintern

Comintern

The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...

-linked communists was a phenomenon unique to Vietnam. The editorial line of La Lutte fluctuated between Trotskyist and Communist Party positions. The supporters of La Lutte were known as lutteurs.

1933 election

La Lutte opposed both colonial rule and the Constitutionalist Party. The first issue of La Lutte was published on April 24, 1933. In the election the La Lutte grouping called its slate of candidates the 'Workers' List'. Two of the candidates of the Workers' List, Nguyen Van Tao and Tran Van Thach, were elected (there were six elected seats in total), but their election was invalidated in August 1933. Publication of La Lutte was discontinued after the election.

Revival

However, Nguyen An Ninh (an independent Marxist) sought to revive experience of leftist cooperation. An agreement between the Communist Party and the Trotskyists was reached. As a result, La Lutte was revived on October 4, 1934. The editorial board consisted of Nguyen An Ninh, Le Van Thu, Tran Van Thach (left-wing nationalists), Nguyen Van Tao, Duong Bach Mai, Nguyen Van Nguyen, Nguyen Thi Luu (Communist Party), Ta Thu Thau

Ta Thu Thau

Tạ Thu Thâu was a Vietnamese Trotskyist and the leader of the Fourth International in Vietnam.-Early life:Ta Thu Thau was born in a small hamlet in Tan Binh, south of Long Xuyen, the capital of An Giang Province in Southern Vietnam. His family were poor and leading a semi-peasant lifestyle...

, Phan Van Huu, Ho Huu Tuong, Phan Van Chang and Huynh Van Phuong (Trotskyists). Edgar Ganofsky was the manager of the newspaper. The united front

United front

The united front is a form of struggle that may be pursued by revolutionaries. The basic theory of the united front tactic was first developed by the Comintern, an international communist organisation created by revolutionaries in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.According to the theses of...

 formed around La Lutte ran various campaigns and participated in elections. In the March 1935 Cochinchina

Cochinchina

Cochinchina is a region encompassing the southern third of Vietnam whose principal city is Saigon. It was a French colony from 1862 to 1954. The later state of South Vietnam was created in 1954 by combining Cochinchina with southern Annam. In Vietnamese, the region is called Nam Bộ...

 assembly election, albeit with restricted suffrage and government interference, leftist candidates obtained 17% of the votes. There was a joint La Lutte candidate slate for the May 1935 municipal election, and Tran Van Thach, Nguyen Van Tao, Ta Thu Thau and Doung Bach Mai were elected. The election of the latter three was, however, invalidated. Moreover, the election was preceded by a controversy within the La Lutte alliance regarding the candidature of Doung Bach Mai, a Communist Party leader. He was labelled 'reformist' by Trotskyists, but defended by Ta Thu Thau. In late 1936 and 1937 the grouping organized various strikes.

Struggle for amnesty

La Lutte gave a large amount of attention to political prisoners held by the French colonial regime and campaigned for an amnesty for political prisoners. Prisoners' protests were frequently reported in the pages of La Lutte.

Popular Front in France and Vietnam

However, the Communist Party and the Trotskyists diverged on whether to support the Popular Front

Popular Front (France)

The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...

 that governed France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. Moreover, under the Popular Front

Popular front

A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...

 line the Communist Party adopted a more conciliatory tone towards moderate Vietnamese nationalists. By 1937 the Trotskyists had become the dominant force in La Lutte. In May 1937 the Communist Party launched a new newspaper of its own, L'Avant Garde ('The Vanguard'), in which the Trotskyists were attacked. The split in La Lutte was finalized on June 14, 1937, when the Communist Party refused to support a motion of Ta Thu Thau against the Popular Front government.

Latter period

The Trotskyists publicly blamed the French Communist Party

French Communist Party

The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...

 for the break-up of the La Lutte alliance. Ta Thu Thau emerged as the main leader of the Trotskyist La Lutte group. During the 1939 campaign for the Cochinchina assembly election, a Vietnamese-language

Vietnamese language

Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...

sister newspaper was launched, Tranh Dau ('The Struggle'). La Lutte was published until 1939.