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FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
EDITION OF THE THEORETICAL ORGAN OF THE
INTERNATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
AFTER THE STRIKES IN SPAIN
The events of the last weeks have marked a de big bourgeois international press, constitutes a sigcisive turning-point in the situation in Spain, the nificant symptom.
gime, together with the analyses published in the tries (particularly in France and Italy), even if it
ENGLISH • LANGUAGE Number 15
Editorial beginning of a new upsurge of the Spanish revolution. At the same time, it has aggravated the crisis of Portuguese Fascism, that more and more vacilates under the blows of the liberation move. ments of Angola and Mozambique and of the workers and intellectuals in the metropolis itself. The convergence of successful revolutionary developments throughout the entire Iberian peninsula would exert a tremendous influence upon all the working class movements in Western Europe and mark the beginning of a turn on a more general scale.
The Spanish strikes, which are at the centre of the most recent developments, not only prove once again that the Franco regime has reached an advanced stage of disintegration, but also confirm that the essential role in the struggle against the Fascist dictatorship is played by the working class. Just as the big Italian strikes in 1943 preceded accelerated Mussolini's fall, so the Spanish strikes of this year will be one of the decisive elements in the fall of Franco.
It is easy to understand that all forces and tendencies have been put into motion. The Spanish bourgeoisie, which for a long time considered Fran. co as its best instrument, in front of the crisis which has opened and deepens so menacingly, is impelled more and more urgently to seek an alternative sol. ution, which by putting aside Franco and Falang. ism could conserve the capitalist system even if on "new", more "European" bases. The attitude taken by a large part of the Spanish Church, which did not hesitate to express in various ways its sympathy with the strikers and its criticism of the re-
May - July 1962
Needless to add, the less blind tendencies of American Imperialism are not hostile to an operation of "renewal" which, by restoring in Spain a conservative bourgeois democracy, would render a little more palatable the mythology of "Atlantic democracy"
On the other hand the caution with which this problem has been treated by the Spanish ruling classes reveals that they are afraid that this operation may objectively have different results from those they hope for. They are afraid that once the Falangist dyke is breached definitively, the flood of the mass movement will not halt respectfully before the taboos of a conservative bourgeois de-
However it is clear that any delay or postponement will only sharpen the conflicts and render it even more difficult for the ruling class to find any new solution.
The Spanish working class movement is faced more urgently than ever with the problem of establishing a ciear strategic line and creating a resolute revolutionary leadership. If the Spanish ruling classes and in the last instance, Imperialism itself aim at overcoming the present crisis by establishing a new bourgeois, conservative equilibrium, the working class movement must seek to make the anti-fascist battle develop essentially as an anti-capitalist one. The working class must not only strike at Franco and Falangism, but basically as well against the capitalist ruling class which is at the very origins of any fascism.
The experience of the Civil War, and the experience of the anti-fascist struggle in other coun-
2 was at a different level, must together constitute for the Spanish working class a basic lesson. The defeat in spain, the capitalist restoration in Italy under the aegis of the catholic party, and the even more negative events which led in France to de Gaulle's hegemony, prove for the N th. time what are the bitter fruits of a policy of class collaboration, of popular fronts, in which bourgeois forces participate and finally prevail. Unfortunately this lesson does not seem to have been drawn.
The Socialist Party sterilised by exile, and suhmitting to the reactionary policy of international Social-Democracy, does not want to avert the bourgeois manouvres, but on the contrary attempts to be consciously one of the cogs of this whole conservative operation. The policy of the Communist Party is not substantially different: after having put forward the absurd line of so-called "national reconciliation", it now insists on the necessity and possibility of struggling against Franco by "peaceful means", on the basis of a united front even including the extreme right wing monarchists.
Obviously, if the "peaceful way" is sterile in countries of bourgeois democracy, it is then hopelessly grotesque under a regime of crude dictatorship. It not by peaceful means but by revolutionary struggle which in some regions may imply guerrilla actions, that Franco will be overthrown, and that the foundation will be laid for avoiding his replacement by another conservative bourgeois regime.
The working class must therefore coherently develop its struggle by fixing its transitional demands, by formulating its own strategy, by being fully conscious that the Spanish revolution must aim not at restoring bourgeois democracy but at overthrowing the capitalist regime and building a socialist republic.
This does not mean that the working class movement can ignore democratic demands. such as for instance a struggle for a revolutionary constituent assembly. But the decisive factor will be the concrete content that these demands assume in practice, the capacity of the working class movement to tie these demands to the essential, anti-capitalist objectives. It will be the decision to create from the beginning peoples' committees composed of workers, peasants, intellectuals and petty-bourgeois layers, conceived as embryonic organs of power, the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL decision to organise detachments for the armed struggle against the regime.
One of the most promising elements of the present situation is the fact than, in spite of the orientation of the old leadership and even against this orientation, the young people especially, both in Spain and in the Emigration, are thinking and beginning to act on this plane. he Fenter The role played in the last strikes by some new formations, such as the Frente de Liberacion Popular, has been underlined by various observers. As well there are possibilities of new developments inside old revolutionary organisations such as the POUM.
The task of the Spanish revolutionary marxists at the present stage is to stimulate the young forces, the new formations, to help them in their day-to-day struggle as they go through new experiences and to help them to clarify theoretically all the basic problems of the Spanish revolution. At the same time the revolutionary marxists should not neglect the possibility of fermentation developing inside the traditional organisations, once more especially among the youth.
A necessary condition for accomplishing these tasks is that the revolutionary marxists succeed in creating efficient homogeneous nuclei which will be capable of integrating rapidly in the mass movement and able to educate the most advanced young cadres in all the political and theoretical lessons that the revolutionary marxists have drawn from the dramatic experiences of Spain and the whole of the Iberian peninsula. In Portugal where the relationship of forces inside the mass movement are different, special attention must be paid to those sectors influenced by the Communist Party which shall probably play an important role in at least the first stage of the upsurge of the mass movement.
The European and international working class movement should not remain a passive spectator, nor limit itself to publishing appeals for solidarity. The working class organisation must establish direct connections with all the Spanish workers' organis ation and discuss together in what concrete forms (financial and military aid, boycotts etc.) international solidarity should be expressed to the fullest extent. Especially at the first stage, the trade union organisations must take the initiative: full. est support to the Spanish and Portughese workers constitutes today their imprescriptible duty.