Spain THE FINAL ASSAULT by PEDRO AGUIRRE The regime that arose out of the defeat of the proletariat in the civil war is no longer useful for Spanish capitalism. It is no longer capable of preventing the working class from fighting for its economic demands or from organizing. The number of strikes has risen to levels comparable to those of the most combative countries of Europe. Concurrently, the maintenance of the dictatorship constitutes an extraordinary factor of politicization in each of the mobilizations; the lack of legal channels for organization stimulates the self-organization of the masses. Finally, the dictatorship also constitutes an obstacle to the organization of the bourgeoisie itself into political parties. Spanish capitalism has been conscious of this reality for some time now. But it has run into a total impasse in offering a solution. To immediately abandon the dictatorship, to do so without organizing its own forces while confronting a workers movement and a number of workers parties with great experience in organization, would run the risk of opening up an accelerated process toward proletarian revolution, which the bourgeoisie and the reformist parties would be unable to divert into parliamentary channels. But to maintain the dictatorship meant to increase the politicization and organization of the mass movement and to allow it growing experience in united activity. The means by which Spanish capitalism attempted to escape from this imposse was the "reform of the dictatorship. " The first government of Juan Carlos became the agency charged with carrying this process forward. Failure of the first government The essential objective of the project of reform of Froncoism was to avoid an open confrontation with the mass movement, to avoid the overthrow of the dictatorship through the direct action of the masses, to avoid the opening of a prerevolutionary process. Spanish capitalism hoped to be able to succeed in transforming the dictatorship into a strong state before this confrontation came
about. Winning some legitimacy for the monarchy, in the eyes of the masses lay in the center of this operation. This required that the Communist party of Spain (PCE -Partido Comunista de España) and the far left remain illegal, while the development of the bourgeois parties and the Social Democracy would be fostered and conditions would be created that would permit a future trodeunion division in the workers! ranks. Achievement of this project required that three conditions be met: ability to establish an "internal pact" with the apparatus of the dictatorship; integration of the "democratic opposition" into the plan, and demobilization of the mass movement. Far from accepting the reform of the dictatorship, however, the apparatus of the regime fiercely opposed it. Thus, the government, the realization of whose project had to be effected through the Cortes (the Francoist "parliament"') and the Consejo del Reino (Council of the Realm), ran into open opposition from these bodies. Nor was the democratic bourgeoisie able to be integrated. From the beginning it was aware of the advantages the government's project would grant it, and some of its spokesmen did not fail to indicate this openly. The reform of the dictatorship held out the possibility of making up for lost time, of organizing more solidly, and of allowing the Social Democracy to gain strength while the PCE and the organizations of the for left would remain illegal. But the democratic bourgeoisie could not openly and actively compromise with this project. To do so would have risked precisely the loss of any possibility of legitimizing its "democratic" charocter in the eyes of the mass movement. The action of the "democratic bourgeoisie" had to be centered on achieving a poct with the workers organizations on the basis of the bourgeoisie's own program whereby the bourgeoisie would attempt to remain the protagonist of the mass movement while preparing the conditions for compelling the traditional workers parties to impose a "social pact" on the workers movement in order to make it possible to prevent the end of the dictatorship from being transformed into the beginning of the revolution. This would grant capital a margin for maneuver in order to reconstruct the bourgeois state and would definitively assure the time needed for resolving the crisis of Spanish capitalism. But it was above all the mass movement that resoundingly brought down and destroyed the projects of the flest govemment of the monarchy. After the death of Franco the mass movement, with the working class in the lead, launched the greatest mobilizations of the past forty years. And within this process the general strike of Vitoria, the massive and violent confrontation with the repressive forces, the general strike of solidarity in Euzkadi (a million people participating), and the solidarity demonstrations throughout the Spanish state constituted the final end of the government project, the practical proof of the impossibility of "anticipating" the action of the masses.
General lines of the evolution of the mass movement* From its origin the present mass movement has been marked by some original characteristics which have defined its development since the beginning of the 1960% and have forged its capacity for resistance and offensive against the dictatorship. Today these characteristics continue to shape the final assault on Francoism and contain the key to the future activity of the masses. The profoundly unitary character of the mass movement has been decisive on the one hand for the protagonist role of motor force which has been assumed by the industrial proletariat in the battle against the dictatorship and exploitation in such a way that the other exploited and oppressed sectors have come into action by passing through the breeches opened up in the Francoist armor by the struggles of the workers, and on the other hand for the clarity with which the workers and people have perceived the existence of a common enemy, the dictatorship. An immense aspiration for unity in action and active solidarity has been present in all the workers and people's mobilizations, from the 1962 miners strike to the Vitoria general strike. Today this aspiration has become a decisive factor in the situation, no communist policy can situate itself on the margins of this aspiration, and still less in opposition to it. The unevenness of experience and mass consciousness has been a product in the first place of the objective contradictions within which the working class took shape during the postwar period, the accelerated social restructuring that was at the origin of capitalist development in the country beginning in 1959 and the consequent effects on the national question and regional inequalities. Second, this unevenness is the product of the illegality imposed by the dictatorship on the organization of the workers, which made the existence of stable mass organizations impossible, thus making it difficult to accumulate and transmit the experiences undergone by the moss movement. Third, it grows out of the reformist illusions peddled by the practice of the PCE, the major subjective obstacle to overcoming this unevenness, to waging comprehensive struggles under proletarion leadership, which are summed up today in the general strike agdinst the Francoist monarchy. The new rise of the mass movement since the death of the dictator, the incorporation of the immense majority of the workers and popular sectors into the struggle, the continuity these struggles have acquired, the imposition of a certain margin of legality on the dictatorship, the experience of general struggles of a political character (amnesty, for example) and of struggles for economic *The following section is drawn from the resolutions of the recent congress of the Liga Comunista Revolucionacia/Euzkadi to Askatasuna-VI (LCR/ETA-VI - Revolutionary Communist League/Basque Nation and FreedomSixth Assembly), a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International in Spain.
SPAIN demands in various sectors waged on a state-wide (banks, telephones, health, teaching) or regional scale (construction, metals, textiles, etc.) have all modified this unevenness in a twofold sense: * On the one hand, extending both the upper and lower limits of the activity of the masses in which more basic levels of organization and consciousness are appearing ("legal" strikes and demonstrations with the applauding of the police, strictly legal organizational forms) along with levels higher than those ever achieved before (strikes led by assemblies or coordinating bodies of delegates, the Vitoria general strike, massive demonstrations for amnesty and the dissolution of the repressive corps, etc.); * On the other hand, a shift "to the left" of the entire activity of the masses is occurring, which raises the average political and organizational level. The disorganization and "ctomization" of the workers has been the fundamental polifical function of the Francoist dictatorship, For years it was only during the peaks of the most radical struggles that the moss movement achieved a direct organizational form: the assembly. Under these conditions, the workers movement created the sort of organization for its vanguard best suited to its situation of illegality: the workers commissions. Thus, while it prevented the stable organization of the mosses, the dictatorship simultaneously stimulated the masses' instinct for self-organization, even though this could occur only in temporary and discontinuous forms having diverse content, from the "passive" assemblies to the assemblies as decision-making centers. The latter forms arose especially in the big industrial centers with the greatest tradition of struggle and less frequently in more dispersed sectors or those more separated from the "school of organization" the capitalist factory represents for the workers. These conditions account for the sort of development that gave rise to the great desire for organization with which the mass movement greeted the disappearance of the dictator, a development in which two organizational processes of distinct political content were intimately * On the one hand, a firm aspiration to recorstruct the moss organizations that are "natural" in capitalist society, especially the trade unions but also popular neighborhood organizations, sectoral organizations (women, youth, etc.), and so on; *On the other hand, a search for forms of self-organization based on the direct exercise of workers democracy, forms capable of assembling the working class and all the popular sectors in struggle, which concentrate all their authority in the rank and file and see themselves as capable of responding to any sort of social, political, or economic problem: the price-watch committees that have appeared in some neighborhoods and the committees to investigate Francoist crimes which 10 have arisen in some areas of Euzkodi respond to particular themes in this process. The tendency to lend organizational support to solidarity and overall struggles, which has been manifested, for example, in the past struggles in the Madrid educational system, goes in the same direction. And, above all, the extension of the experiences of coordination of delegate assemblies, the great acquisition of struggles since the beginning of this year, serves to verify the depth of this desire for self-organization. The most important thing is to understand that these two processes are not mutually exclusive, but on the contrary emerge as linked in proctice within this great overall attempt af organic recomposition of the mass movement through which we are now living. The movement's conquest of legality will produce a combined development of these processes in such a way that the construction of the trode unions in particular will itself have a strong content of self-organization and will coexist with experiences of direct self-orgonization in the factories, neighborhoods, and so on. The controdiction between the levels of combativity on the one hand and political consciousness on the other has been another of the basic characteristics of the mass movement. The workers have had the experience of repeatedly having to wage prolonged and very difficult battles to win minimal demands; there has thus developed an unquenchable combative will, a profound hatred for the dictatorship, and an immense longing for liberty. The mass movement has acquired a well-developed anticopitalist instinct, but its consciousness has not yet been able to clearly assimilate the experiences of the conscious and direct struggles against the bourgeoisie in all its political variants. Francoism has acted simultoneously as a stimulant to the politicization of the movement, which has had to confront the repressive instruments of the dictatorship, and as a veil obscuring the actual anticapitalist content of the movement's activity. Since the death of the dictator, the masses have entered an accelerated process of politicization. They want to be active politically, have seen liberty within the ir grasp and have fought for it, awakening all the demands, all the "running accounts, " of forty years of exploitation and oppression. Undoubtedly, their "democratic illusions" have not only been maintained but have even been extended, but these illusions are permanently subjected to the test of action. The attitude with which the mass movement has approoched government "tolerance" is exemplary in this regard. Understanding that the decapitation of the dictatorship held out unprecedented possibilities for making use of legality and for winning a de facto "legality" going well beyond that allowed by the Francoist legal code, the workers, guiding themselves on the basis of the effectiveness of oction without making a fetish of either legality or illegality, made extensive use of the Candidaturas Unitarias Democráticas (CUD - Democratic Unitary Candidacies) during the trade-union elections and the Neighborhood Associations, as well as various semilegal organizations,
especially those of an anti-repressive character, while always maintaining the assembly in the center of their organization. When the narrow limits of this "tolerance" became clear, the movement, in spite of the legalism and general moderation of the majority workers leaderships, quickly developed the appropriate slogans (dissolution of the repressive corps, exaction of responsibility for Francoist crimes, rehiring of workers fired for trodeunion activity, etc.) and the proper organs (delegates) for the new experiences. Thus, as always occurs during impetuous upsurges of the mass movement, class consciousness began to become "the most dynamic factor in the situation", leaps forward in the situation of the masses that would have taken years under normal conditions now occurred in a matter of days. The weakness of the hegemony of the PCE is a factor which politically sums up (in both its aspects, "weakness" and "hegemony") all the characteristics mentioned above. The essential inability of the historic Social Democracy to fulfill its political role under conditions of clandestine existence permitted the PCE to play the political role of reformism without competition; it is on this that its hegemony over the mass movement is based. But the whole objective dynamic of the struggles has repeatedly come into practical contradiction with the pacifist and conservative line of the PCE, within which the activity of the masses is supposed to have the exclusive function of exerting pressure. Because of this there have been rather frequent instances of the reformist leadership's being massively outflanked and mobilizafions have occurred that have escaped reformist control From the outset (especially in Euzkodi). These factors explain how revolutionary positions more or less consistent with a line of class independence have, in competition with this reformist hegemony, acquired a moss audience and have been able to contest in practice the PCE's leadership of the movement and often to win that leadership. There is no doubt that these instances of outflanking are not irreversible and do not represent any political break with reformism by the masses, but they have meant an accumulation of experiences, of acquisitions of the movement, which embody the existing possibilities of openly joining the battle with reformism for leadership of the mobilization of the masses. This generalization of the movement, the first phase of which we are now experiencing, has already implied and will imply even more strongly in the Immediate future the growth of the troditional organizations, not only the PCE but also and especially the PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español — Spanish Socialist Workers party, the Social Democracy). But this growth does not eliminate the possibilities of intervention by revolutionaries, who will extensively reap the fruits of the "shift to the left" of the activity of the masses to which we referred above. The hegemony of the PCE will be contested both by the Social Democracy and by the far left; its political line will thus feel the effects of having to make concessions to the bourgeoisie and the workers simultoneously. The relationship of forces within the mass movement as a whole will take on an extreme mobility, which will be reflected in processes of recomposition and internal crises within the various political currents. This totality of charocteristics is now acting within the movement as a system of forces whose results will alter the leadership according to the concrete course of events, but the basic thrust will persist: the class polarization of Spanish society. Suárez: a transitory government Big capital has clearly become aware of the failure of the project of "reforming the dictatorship." From the very moment of its formation, the second government of King Juan Carlos publicly affirmed its transitory character, The Suárez government totally lacks any program for responding to the key problems of Spanish capitalism. Its entire operation is aimed of fostering a gradual erosion of the relationship of social forces in order to allow the bourgeoisie to acquire the possibility of establishing a new political stability based on the Christian Democracy and the Social Democracy. This has been the meaning of all the initiatives taken up to now: *The attempt to defuse the issue of amnesty and above all to rob it of its content as an immediate conquest. The amnesty granted by the government affected nearly all the militants of the PCE who were in prison. But many members of the ETA and the LCR/ETA-VI, the great majority of them Basque militants, continue to languish in Francoist jails; in fact, conditions in these
SPAIN prisons have even worsened. The bosic objective of the government is to make the mass movement accept an evolution by stages in this domain as well as in others. While cleverly lamenting the limits of the scope of this amnesty, an important part of the supposedly "independent" press hai claimed that with the "concession of amnesty" the basic problems now shift to different political themes. Even Felipe Gonzälez, secretary general of the PSOE, has contributed to the orientation of the government, explaining that total amnesty would be possible only under a "provisional government. * Accelerating the division of the workers movement to the advantage of the Social Democracy through direct and privileged negotiation with the Social Democracy. Behind the surface appecrance of simple exchanges of impressions, the meetings of the president of the government with Socialist leaders and above all with Felipe González himself are aimed at pursuing this objective. - Maintaining the "principle" of the illegality of the PCE, not because it is believed that this illegality is really a principle, but in an attempt to secure greater concessions and above all to make sure that the workers party that holds hegemony will accept the imposition of the "social pact." *Redusing "tolerance" of the activity of the masses: minimal broadening of controllable legal activity combined with greater rigidity in regard to whatever becomes uncontrollable; systematic repression of street actions; organization or paraorganization of provocafive actions; intensification of repression on questions that are. "non-negotiable," such as the monarchy, the army, strike pickets, and so on. Economically, the activity of the government is also reduced to taking tactical measures. On the one hand to place leadership of economic policy directly in the hands of big capital, on the other hand to delay any measures of economic stabilization until the general elections have been held so that greater "political confidence" can exist in the mass movement. In view of the facts that this year's inflation rate will be the highest ever, the problem of unemployment (there were nearly a million unemployed at the end of last year) has not been broached, Spanish capitalism is still far from being able to keep up with the relative economic reactivation that has begun in Europe, the entry of currency has diminished considerably, and so on, this means that the government will face the coming autumn and winter, when the labor contracts will come up for renewal, in a very tough social atmosphere.
The democratic opposition broaden the
"pact
It is significant that the formation of the Coordinación
Democrática, which "overcame" the previous division between the Junta Democrática and the Plataforma de
Convergencia Democrática, occurred immediately after the Vitoria events. (1) With the Coordinación, the dem-
12 ocratic bourgeoisie sought to provide itself with a body that would really be able to perform the function of coming to an agreement with the government over the "peaceful transition, " the definitive abandoning of the dictatorship. Hence, the fundamental objective for which the CD was created was simply to exist in order to bring this pact about. Initiatives of mass mobilizafion, even reduced and controlled mobilization, were excluded from the CD's program. But the enormous pressure of social struggle prevented the CD from remaining completely locked into these positions. If it had not responded to the demands of the movement, and in particular if it had remained totally inuctive on the question of the political prisoners, the CD would have begun to lose its credibility in the eyes of the masses. This is what induced the Coordinac ión to call a pro-amnesty week at the beginning of the summer. But if it hoped to be able to control these demonstrations, the CD made a big mistake. In each province and city up and down the Spanish state tens of thousands of people came into the streets, most often clashing with the repressive forces, combining slogans on amnesty with calls for the dissolution of the repressive corps and the exaction of responsibility for the crimes of the dictatorship. This open outflanking of "amnesty week" and the consequent effects on the maneuvers of the new gavernment have reshaped the activity of the democratic opposition, inducing if to take a new step to the right in its orientation: * Adapting itself to the Suárez government's "transformation by stages, " the democratic opposition has begun to develop the theory of partial conquests, conquests which in any event are no more than promises in most cases. The "democratic break" and the provisional gove emment, up to now axes of the opposition's orientation, have given way to the theory of a "government of brood representation" or a "government of broad democratic consensus " which would serve to "prepare" general elec•The democratic opposition is now seeking new pact structures in which the PCE would still be present, but with less weight than it has in the CD, bodies which above all would be exclusively frameworks for pacts, with no pretensions in regard to mobilizations. The reI ASAMBLER DE EUSKADA M ECO0 CEND) POR LA LINDAD DE COMEONES BRENNE POR LIN SINDICATO GRRERO SOLIDARIDAD COL CARTALIETA VANIA NE
- ARAMSCRA CECO "BINDICATON
cent documents of the "32" and the "44, " the Cena de Aravaca, " and so on(2) represent various forms of preparing structures for pacts that are brooder (in the direction of the bourgeois right) than the Coordinación Democrática and that reduce the alreody minimal program of the CD. *In this sense the role of the CD must continue to be mainly to assert its mere existence. It is symptomatic that it was after the very success of amnesty week that there began to be more insistent talk that the CD was "in troubled waters" (as was pointed out by Tamames, he PCE representative in the CD). In reality, even con rolled and limited mobilizations are scarcely compatibl with the negotiating projects, when both sides are supposed to be working within the same body. The CD is ever more clearly a vehicle (within which the bourgeois opposition stands side by side with the two major workers parties) through which the Christian Democracy and the PSOE are carrying out only a small part of their policy. The maintenance of this body corresponds only to the need to maintain the illusions of the mass movement in some sort of pact organ and to an attempt to confine the activity of the masses to the limits laid down by the interclass bloc. The PCE and the three Maoist organizations that are part of the CD have exactly the function of transmitting this pactist policy to the moss movement. "Finally, the democratic opposition is seeking to establish a political framework that permits strict control over the pace of the transition from dictatorship to democracy. The attempts to work out a new constitution, the search for a single body through which to negotiate on the scale of the entire Spanish state, the attempts to concretize governmental plans, the drawing up of "shadow cabinets" (leaving adequate room for those sectors of the regime willing to negotiate) - all this is oriented toward convincing big capital and the army that it is possible to "take the plunge" without causing the definitive explosion of the social crisis. The attitude of the PCE itself toward the U.S. military bases in the Spanish state, affirmed by Santiago Carrillo himself, who said that the Communist party does not demand the dismantling of these bases under the new democratic state, is also aimed at winning the confidence of big capital. Our alternative A central question is now posed for the moss movement: What more is needed to get rid of the dictatorship? The working class and all the oppressed sectors have waged repeated struggles, undergone constant experiences of general strikes, occupied the streets, and utilized all available forms of struggle, legal and illegal. But the dictatorship has not yet been overthrown. The majority workers parties have refused to offer a mass action political response to this question. Their pacifist policy requires the subordination of the movement to the programs and projects of the bourgeoisie.
For us, the response is composed of four elements, which taken together define the political alternative to the present situation: the battle for immediate election by universal suffrage of a Constituent Assembly; the battle for the formation of National Assemblies that permit the immediate self-determination of the oppressed nationalities; the mobilization to carry the overthrow of Francoism through to the end; and, through all this, and combining it with all the social demands of the masses, the battle for the organization of the ganeral strike. Immediate elections to a Constituent Assembly
The government's refusal to Tegalize the whole of the mass movement and the workers parties, as well as the conciliatory attitude of the democratic opposition, which seeks a "constituent" period under the control of a strong state with significant restrictions on the full exercise of democratic rights, Imply the refusal of all of them to face immediate democratic elections in which the decisive weight of the mass movement would be expressed in the conquest of clear positions of strength for the workers organizations, despite all the limits and deformations of elections in reflecting the relationship of class forces. But the mass movement now possesses sufficient strength to defeat all the plans of the bourgeoisie. The immediate convocation of a Constituent Assembly means the legalization of all the political and trade-union organizations and the full exercise of democratic rights, in short, the end of the dictatorship. If thus constitutes the central political slogan today by which to stimulate the activity of the masses against the Francoist regime and by which to confront any maneuver that, in the name of "democracy" or "democratic consensus, " deprives the movement of the right to provide itself with the constitution and government it chooses itself. Merged with this battle, the raising of the slogan "For the Republic" must serve the mass movement to oppose the at-
13
SPAIN tempts, accepted by the democratic opposition and the leading workers parties, to maintain the monarchy as the guarantor of the stability of the bourgeois regime. Self-Determination. National Assemblies
The national question has become one of the most acute problems of the class struggle in the Spanish state. The general social crisis which constitutes the essential characteristic of the present situation has generated a growing wave of radicalization against one of the essential elements of the Francoist dictatorship: ultracentralism, the fierce repression of any form of expression of the nationalities. The present government has been compelled to freeze the project of "regionalization" that had been initiated by Fraga, minister of the interfor in the previous government, conscious that this project would serve only to sharpen the struggle of the oppressed nationalities. Maintaining national unity "above all else" and rejecting any "negotiation" in this domain, the government is attempting to find compromise solutions with the "democratic" bourgsoisie of the nafionalities under which this bourgeoisie commits iself to uphold acceptable projects that integrate the present sensitivity of the masses. This has been the essential objective of the contacts between the government and the Catalanian democratic opposition. For their part, the reformist workers parties are taking many initiatives to find pact formulas that are acceptable to the bourgeoisie of the nationalities and avoid the proletariat's revolutionary assumption of the struggle against national oppression. The general political framework of this policy is summed up in the slogan for the "autonomy stotus" granted during the Seguna Republic, a status which amounted to dependence on the decisions of the central Cortes and implied absolute rejection of the exercise of the right of self-determination by the oppressed nationalities. The formation of the Consell de Forces Politiques(3) (Council of Political Forces) in Catalonia (in which only bourgeois parties and the PCE participate) and the support to the Basque Government (whose basic force is the Basque Nationalist party) in Euzkadi are the concrete ways in which the PCE is attempting to integrate the radicalization of the oppressed nationalities into its interclass projects. As against this, we revolutionary Marxists affirm the sovereign right of the Catalonian, Basque, and Galician peoples to decide for themselves what sort of relations they want to maintain with the rest of the Spanish state; we pledge ourselves to completely respect this decision, even if it is to separate and form an independent state. Of course, we believe that in the present historical situation separation would not constitute the most odequate alternative for the interests of the proletariat and people of these nationalities. We believe that in the present circumstances the most adequate framework is a federal republic of all the nationalities and regions that are now under the Spanish state, But we affirm the right of all these nationalities to separate; we defend the immediate exercise of the right of self-determinotion of all of them as an inalienable principle. We thus reject any other measure that does not include this right. 14
Neither the central Constituent Assembly nor the "provisional governments" imposed on the Basque, Galician, and Catalonian masses represents a real political solution to national oppression, nor do they have any right to interfere with or control national self-determination. The slogan of the election by universal suffrage of a sovereign National Assembly for each of the nationalities which would guarantee national self-determination is the objective that responds to this problem. Complete the destruction of the dictatorship
A single virus con infect the whole country again. This is an idea we stress constantly in our agitation. The bourgeoisie is attempting to base itself on a substantial part of the dictatorship to reconstruct the new "democratic" state. The dictatorship has been the specific form taken by the bourgeois state for forty years. Its complete dismantling constitutes a real danger for the class power of the capitalists. But the mass movement cannot agree that the democratic liberties if wins can be defended and guaranteed by the same rifles that murdered five revolutionaries o little less than a year ago or by the same repressive corps that have massacred every demonstration and mobilization. The dissolution of the repressive corps, the dismantling of all Francoist legislation, and the exaction of responsibility for all the crimes of the dictatorship constitute objectives that the mass movement cannot abandon. In addition, the repressive corps form the basis from which the fascist attacks are organized and carried out. From Montejurra to the kidnapping and probable murder of "Pertur, " a militant of the ETA-V, to the murder of Normy Menchaca in Santurce to the attacks on the "del Antiguo" neighborhood in San Sebastián to the sacking of the Usera youth club in Madrid, the fascist commandos have been created out of the repressive forces themselves, especially the political police and the Guardia Civil. (4) The struggle against all this must be prepared immediately. The committees to investigate the Santurce crime and the Pertur kidnapping and the antifascist vigilance committees that have begun to be set up are the instruments of struggle and organization with which to take this battle forward today and with which to assure tomorrow's fight for the complete destruction of the murderous dictatorship. Organize the general strike
The perspective of the general strike and its use as the central slogan of times like the present correspond to four objectives:
* Unification of the central political slogans and the economic and social demands of the masses, centralizing the struggle to bring down the dictatorship and the anticapitalist mobilization into a single battle.
*Development of the centralization of the organs the masses have created for the struggle, from the workers commissions and workers parties to the factory strike committees.
*To make the motor-force of the mass movement in the overthrow of the dictatorship a living and conscious factor in the octivity of the movement itself, combat-
ing the attempts of the democratic bourgeoisie and the reformist parties to make the conquest of democracy appear as the result of their pacifist policy.
*To cut the ground from under the policy of "partial conquests" adopted by the democratic opposition, to place the necessity for the overthrow of the dictatorship in the very center of the activity of the masses, A decisive autumn The battles of coming months will be decisive for the political situation in the Spanish state. Through these battles the mass movement will have the opportunity to bring down the dictatorship definitively. The labor negptiations
The economic decisions adopted by the government mean that the mass movement will face unusual toughness from the employers, with the threat of unemployment and repression; in addition, the bourgeoisie will attempt to exocerbate trade-union division. As against this, the working class will be able to triumph only if it strengthens the weapons it has forged in the course of the first months of this year: comprehensive struggles, united platforms of demands, assemblies and delegates (of these assemblies) for negotiations, and the strike. The collapse of the CNS (the official, vertical union) has already gone so far that the employers themselves believe that it has ceased to be useful for negotiating contracts. To attempt to base the organization of the struggle for trade-union demands solely on the structures of militant CNS delegates would be a serious error. In order to stimulate self-organization and a united struggle coordination is necessary, genuine united activity among the workers commissions, the Unión General del Trabajo (UGT - General Union of Labor), the USO (Unión Sindical Obrera — Workers Union Federa-
Escala 4 Solar x 8% - Gumen. CU 92778-738 ta - 13/=650 12.231 Total rumento somal 100 Se,, Sagal aumento de 85 1442-85 = 357 mento real Coste Vic Nos supondvis 1100 fion), and the other trade-union bodies. The task of such coordination is to provide the means by which to stimulate the coordination of the representative bodies of the rank-and-file assemblies so that the working class can deal with all the maneuvers of the bourgeoisie and can provide itself with united instruments with which to direct its struggle for demands. Trade-union unity
While the leadership of the UGT is maintaining its divisive positions in the trode-union domain, the majority current in the workers commissions, the PCE, continues to fail to lend these bodies a stable organizational form on the factory and branch level and continues to reduce the activity of the workers commissions to the activity carried out by the narrow leadership structures that control them. This poses a real danger to trade-union unity, which is a need profoundly felt by the immense majority of the workers of our country. All the present projects aftempting to achieve this unity remain confined to the limits laid down by agreements between the bureaucrats of the workers commissions and those of the UGT. In this domain as well, the reformist workers organizations are trying to deprive the masses of their leading role, to avoid the active role of the masses in the united construction of the trade unions. As against all these maneuvers, the battle for a united trade union born of a constituent trade-union congress based on assemblies in the factories and work sites must continue to be the central axis of the trade-union alternative of the revolutionary Marxists. But the proctical realization of this trade-union congress is possible only after the conquest of legality for the entire workers movement. And this poses the necessity of offering concrete tactical responses in the present situation. The first axis of this tactic rests on the necessity of the workers commissions' adopting a stable, organized trade-union form, from the factory level to the leadership bodies, which permits the effective activity of the thousands of workers who identify with the commissions and
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SPAIN prevents the leading bureaucracy from substituting for this activity. Thus, the battle for a democratic organization of the general congress of the workers commissions that was called by the general assembly of the workers commissions held last spring must serve as the occasion for the workers commissions to adopt a stable and centralized organized trade-union structure, democratically elected from the rank and file to the leadership. Along with this, the battle for the conquest of legality for the workers commissions must be placed in the center of revolutionary activity, stimulating the organization of open sales of the bulletin of the workers commissions at all levels, the opening of headquarters for the commissions, etc. Preparing the conditions for the future united trade union and providing it with adequate instruments at the foctory level with which to negotiate the contract demands of the workers requires that this battle be combined With the stimulation of the formation of united factory unions that include all the trade-union currents that exist in each factory. The struggle for amnesty
The government attempts to divert mass attention from the question of amnesty have not succeeded. Especially in Euzkodi, the will of the masses to continue the fight until not a single political prisoner or exile remains has not flagged, But this struggle must be redoubled, becouse the relationship of forces is such that the moss movement can win total victory in this domain more than in any other. But in addifion, the broadening of the battle for amnesty in the factories, the highpoint of which was marked by the demonstration of 250,000 people in Bilbao, permits and requires that this slogan be placed in the very center of the negotiations over the demands of the working class, In many workers bastions amnesty for all those fired for political or trade-union activity since 1936 has already been won; these victories must be extended and the same battle must be won in all the sectors in which the dictatorship and the employers have removed the most combative workers from their jobs. Against the fake referendum
Affer postponing if again and again and without evar defining its exoct content, the government has now announced that the referendum will be held at the end of this year. The position on this should be unanimous: Out with the referendum! No hesitation, no vacillation on this point while amnesty has not been granted and while the workers parties and organizations continue to be illegal. But the referendum can provide an opportunity for a united mass mobilization around central political objectives: For the election of the Constituent Assembly. For the republic. For the election of sovereign National Assemblies for each nationality. The workers' response must be unified and the unity in action of all the workers parties and trade-union organizations must be structured around these slogans. This is the "workers vote" that must be counterposed to the farcical referendum of the Francoist monarchy. O 16
FOOTNOTES:
1. The Coordinación Democrática was founded on March 29, 1976; it included various bourgeois groups and personalities (the Christian Democracy among them), the PSOE (Social Democrats), the Communist party, and two Maoist-centrist organizations, the Labor party (PTE) and the Communist Movement of Spain (MCE). A third centrist formation, the Revolutionary Workers Organization (ORT), has since joined, The Coordinación arose out of the fusion of two previously existing organs of class collaboration, the Junta Democrática (Democratic Council), which was founded in July 1974 and included the Communist party, the PTE, and several not very significant bourgeois personalities, and the Plataforma de Convergencia Democrática (Platform of Democratic Convergence), which was created in June 1975 and included the Social Democrats (PSOE), several Christian Democratic groupings, and the MCE and ORT.
2. The two documents were published immediately after the statement of the Coordinación Democrática just after the amnesty decree. They were signed by bourgeois representatives in the CD, representatives of the PSOE and PCE, and other representatives of the bourgsoisie not present in the Coordinación, while the Maoist-centrist groups were excluded. These documents put forward a much more "shaded" criticism of the government's reformist policy. The Cena de Aravaca, a dinner held on August 5, was a meeting of the same type. The PSOE and the Maoist-centrist groups of the CD did not participate. During the dinner there was discussion of the formation of a united opposition body "broader" than the CD; there was also speculation about the formation of a provisional government.
3. The Consell (Council of Political Forces) was formed early this year and includes only bourgeois forces plus the United Socialist party of Catalonia (PSUC), which is the Catalonian branch of the Communist party. It was seen by the Catalonian bourgeoisie as an alternative to the Asamblea de Catalunya (Assembly of Catalonia), which is made up of various left centrist groups and mass neighborhood organizations, workers commissions, etc., in addition to some bourgeois personalities and the Communist party. The Asamblea had played a role in many mobilizations.
4. In Montejurra two participants in the annual festival of the Carlist followers of Victor Hugo were assassinated and many were wounded. The shots were fired by alleged partisans of an opposing Carlist current, who in reality were members of foscist and parapolice groups. The Guardia Civil did not intervene, even though the presence of armed elements in the area had been reported the day before. "Pertur" was kidnapped in the French part of the Basque country last July 23 by "unknown elements" (members of parapolice gangs). His presenf whereabouts are unknown and it is not unlikely that he has been murdered. Menchaca was murdered in July of this year during a demonstration for amnesty. The killers were dressed in civilian clothes but were recognized as members of the Guardia Civil.