BANNER OF THE
WORKING CLASS:
SPAIN was proving incapable of stimulating a generalization of the strugglo. It is these same combative elements, both in the "Workers Commissions of sectors" and in the Workers Commissions of the CP orientation, who have been the advocates of forming broader and broader pickets to extend the strike, who have managed to draw the majority of the Elsa workers into the struggle one way or another, who are in process of pressing for setting up an independent coordination of workers to organize a general strike in the region to support the Elsa and Salvay workers, to defend their common demands, and to reintegrate all the fired workers. This is shown by the general strike slogan that has now been raised by the leadership of the Workers Commissions. It is these militants who forced the administration of the legal representatives to be discussed in assemblies; it was these militants who have pushed for the election of committees by general assemblies to draw up the lists of demands, which was done of Harry Walker. Nevertheless, despite the strengthening of this most conscious current in the course of the struggle Itself, the majority of the workers of Baix Llobergat continue to have confidence in the negotiation of a regional contract, continue to believe that partial work stoppages will be sufficient to force the Elsa and Solvay managements to give in, and that combative legal representatives will be useful in the struggle, despite the antiworker character of the CNS. Precisely in that lies the main weakness of the struggle, a weakness that is increasing the difficulty of generalizing the struggle not only in the region, but also in Barcelona, where sfruggles like those at AFA, Foessa, and so on, testify to a growing climate of agitation in most of the factories. This climate is also reflected in the RAISE THE The Chilean and Portuguese events have hod an important inFluence on the class struggle in Spain at a particularly grave moment. There are three reasons for this: (1) The evaporation after the execution of Carrero Blanco of any possibility of Franco's succession taking the form of a "personal Bonapartism. " (2) The approach of an economic recession accompanied by a very high rate of inflation, which everybody except the government expects to begin next autumn. (3) The maintenance of the combativity of the mass movement, which is prepared to defend itself against attacks on its standard of living and against firings. On this subject we have only to stress the emergence of regularized struggles in the countryside and their indirect effects on small merchants. Under these conditions, the question of the Francoist dictator-
6 negotiations around the metalworkers" contract, in which the reformists have placed all their hopes. The outlook The struggle of the Elsa and Solvay workers has already lasted for a month. Partial work stoppages in solidarity with them in Baix Llobregat and the struggle against the high cost of living and against firings is going on and continuing to develop throughout the region, especially since the employers have refused to negotiate a regional contract. The situation is even more explosive in Barcelona, and the workers! sensitivity to the Baix Llabrogat struggle is increasing every day. There are already many worker who are not prepared to wait for the still very hypothetical results of the metalworkers negotiations before launching their own struggle for on immediate wage increase, a sliding scale of wages, a forty-hour workweek, the defense of fired militants, and against the infernal speedups. The situation is similar at Sabodell, Terrassa, Cerdanyola, and Badalone. There are considerable possibilities for a generalized struggle throughout the province. That is the alternotive revolutionaries are fighting for within the various Workers Commissions, making unity proposals to the other organizations (like the Anfi-capitalist Platforms) and developing their own work in the factories and neighborhoods, pushing for a conscious outflanking of the CNS and the contracts by raising the struggle for a unified platform of demands, self-organization of the workers struggles, and organization of self-defense. As was affirmed in a leaflet put out by militants and sympathizers of the LCR-ETA(VI) and the Baix Llobregot Bolshevik-Leninist Faction: "All in struggle for the demands of all!" That is the rood to victory. ship -- its maintenance, transformation, alteration, or overthrow -- has been placed in the center of the strategic debate and has aggravated the contradictions within the bourgeoisie, contradictions that provoked an important reorientation of the government of Arias Navarro and triggered a process of political regroupments within the workers movement. In their fum, the totality of these actions and reactions, in spite of the embryonic character of many of them, are allowing for the clariFication of the perspectives of the overthrow of Francoism and the definition of the orientation that revolutionaries must give to present struggles. "Classic" and "radical" centrism The centrist current, which only a few months ago constituted the ideological base and pillar of unconditional support for
the Arias team, some of whose most significant figures were members of Jt, began to take its distance from the government from the moment that a "rodical" wing began to develop within it. The reason for this lies in the two varying inferpretations of the centrist political dogno: "The necessary survival of the dictatorship is linked to its ability to regroup within it political organizations representative of all the principal foctions of the bourgeoisie." One interpretation, whose advocates directed their activity toward changes that could be made while Franco is still alive, considers the relationship of forces within the apporatus of the dictatorship to be a decisive factor and concludes, after the striking reappegrance of the for right, that Arias represents the maximum limit of the "opening" that can be made today. The other interpretation, whose advocates are already orienting their activity with a view toward post-Francoism, judges that the possibilities opened up by Arias are extremely norrow and prevent the realization of the dogma referred to above. That is why the advocates of this interpretation have raised the banner of institutional reforms opening a gradual and controlled process of "Europeanization" of the dictatorship, that is, of direct control by the big bourgeoisie of its state apparatus and of recomposition of its social base. While it is true that "rodical centrism" today has only on embryonic existence around the personality of Fraga, it has brood possibilities of strengthening inself based on the defeat it expects Arias to suffer on the level of the Associations and of constituting after the death of Franco the alternative pole to the far right within the framework of the dictatorship. That is exactly what it hopes to achieve. The new far right The Spanish for right has gone through a transformation because of the convergence within it, along with the fascist bands, of organizations of civil war veterans, the remains of the "historic" phalange, and a considerable fringe of the armed forces and the police from the sector that was "displaced" after the Carrero government. Thus, the for right forms a bloc, an alliance that is not based on ideological identity among its various components -- on this level, the divergences among Iniesta, Giron, and Fernández are very clear - but rather on political accords among these most important components in the present situation. They are all in agreement that the survival of Francoism con be based only on an intensification of its dictatorial charocter, an intensification in tum based on a "political army" - the army of July 18 -- and a homogeneous state apparatus. It is this army that appears os the legitimate heir to Francoist bonapartism. Consequently, their solution to the crisis of Spanish capitalism, which, according to them, will take on a life or death character immediately after the disappearance of Franco is an open military dictatorship accompanied by a brutal moss repression, a dictatorship tightly integrated with the big international copitalist groups that have proven their effectiveness in promoting capitalist development, as in the cose of Brazil. Otherwise, they hold, the alternative is Portugal, which showed the risks involved in a policy of concessions, evolution, and weakness that finally contaminated the sacred rampart, the army, thus leaving a "power vacuum" and opening the door to revolution. Thus, the alternative that the far right is pushing is not exactly fascist. Although they unite, utilize, and draw support From the fascist bands, the most important sectors of this far right, namely the "technocrats" and the officers, have not the slightest intention or possibility of constructing a classical mass fascist movement. Under their plans, the task of destroying the moss movement devolves fundamentally on the official repressive forces in collaboration with the fascist bonds. Nor is it putschist, for there is no need to change a single one of the basic laws, even the one naming the successor of the dictator, in order to legitimize an open military dictaforship in the country. The trump card of the for right is not that of "coup, " but precisely that of. "continuity." It is important to stress the fundamental role played in this bloc by the "nouveaus. " Effectively, resent the bridgeheods of important financial and industrial Interests, the "material base" of the dominant sector of Opus Del within the political froction as such, control over which was and still is just as difficult os it is necessary for the Spanish bourgeoisie. And in fur, the whole far right is not unaware of the fact that it is exactly these "experts" who make the for right a credible alternative regime for big capital. They can only think of their "brothers" in Bolivia, Chile, and Brazil The "democratic" bourgeoisie At the same time, and of the other end of the political spectrum, a wing of the bourgeoisie that no longer believes in the dictatorship has appeared. This wing is still limited to a series of spokesmen who lack great cohesion on the fundamental problems, like what attitude to take toword the troditional workers organizations, what the role of the army shouid be, and what affitude to take toward the Arios government (pressure, opposition, etc.). But two observations must be made: - Many of these spokesmen are absolutely not "political phantoms" marginal to the real interests of their own class, but are significant personalities of big capital responding to the objectives and ambitions of a faction of the bourgeoisie that is so far o minority but nevertheless an important one. (This is most easily seen in Catalonia.) - The emergence of this group represents the most solid political appearance since 1939 of a sector of the bourgeoisie explicitly situating itself outside of Francoism. Beginning with these two facts and the international situation - particularly the Portuguese experience - - we can conclude that this is the first time since the wor that a "democratic" bourgeoisie has acquired a certain plausibility, a certain capacity for political intervention. But the adjective "democratic" must be qualified in four ways: 1. Without the masses. Apart from a few individual exceptions, who are in fact political phantoms, the "democratic" bourgeoisie poses the problem of changing the regime absolutely apart from the action of the masses. In this sense, they want to hear no talk under the present conditions of "general strikes, " no matter how peaceful they may be, above all because the "democratic" bourgeoisie correctly doubts that a peaceful character could be preserved. It could not be otherwise with the Catalan employers who experienced the Besos general strike a few months ago or with Huarte, who experienced the Pampiona strike. 2. With Don Juan. Thus, for the "democratic" bourgeoisie, one of the fundamental conditions is that the change of the regime must be legitimized. That is the role it intends to be played by the count of Barcelona (Don Juan, Conde of Barcelona and father of Juan Carlos, the successor designated
SPAIN by Franco himself -- INPRECOR), for no "liberating" sector of the arny has come forward. This condition is fundamental at this point, for the refusal of this fantastic personality to place himself at the head of a "provisional government" was sufficient to create a real impasse with no short-term solution. 3. A conditioned choice. The "democratic" choice of a secfor of the Spanish bourgeoisie is far from being an irreversible profession of faith. All sorts of furns and even complete reversals are left open. This is because the three elements that have determined the choice are the following: (al The most satisfactory type of Spanish development after the death of Franco will involve and necessitate direct control by the bourgeoisie over the state -- and especially over the army -- and a total integration into the Common Market. (b) Given the particular form of the dictatorship, there is scant possibility, - and what possibility exists is difficult to realize -- of attaining these objectives through an evolution beginning from the dictatorship itself. (c) In the long run, it seems less risky to establish a relationship with a workers movement controlled by the reformists than a workers movement with its present characteristics. It is clear that these three elements could change, especially in function of the state of the mass movement, but also in function of the international situation, the relationship of Forces within the bourgeoisie, etc. 4. The strong state. " Furthermore, as we have already pointed out, parliamentary democracy odmits of many variants. It is • obvious that the variant that most corresponds to the interests of this sector of the bourgeoisie is the model of the "strong state, " Involving serious restrictions on trade-union and politTeal righis, a parliament controlled by the executive, a strong repression against the revolutionary left and the uncontrolled mass movements - the so-called wildcat strikes. This is a model that definitely constitutes a real political tendency on a world scale in the present epoch of the decline of imperialism. In any case, and independently of the desires of any sector or organization, the only nondictatorial system Spanish capitalism could endow itself with given the structural crisis and the confrontation with an extremely combative working class would be based on that type of model. The recent events in Portugal are significant in this regard. In face of this breadth of varying bourgeois factions, the compelling conclusion is that the dominant sector of Spanish capItalism is covering all bets, lending privilege to none and excluding none. This is the logical manner in which it is approaching the uncertainties of post-Francoism and the rapid evolution and shifts that are going on and will continue to go on among the different variants. Arias Navaro: a really provisional government But the current situation of the government is precarious. After six months of promises, declarations of principles, and crises small and great, it can be asserted that the government's authority within the state devolves exclusively from that which Franco decides to accord it from one day to the next. It will disappear after Franco's death. As time goes by, the bourgeoisie becomes ever more conscious of the security and tranquility it lost with Carrero Blanco, the irreplaceable historic successor of the dictator. 8
In this sense, it is important to reaffirm the provisional and transitory character of the Arias government. For the following recsons: (a) Arios's only means of acquiring the minimum authority needed to pass the test of succession was to recompose the dictatorship politically. Only then would he have been able to compensate for his total incapacity to be the successor to Francoist bonapartism even in a partial sense. Any idea that his government could have succeeded in what was beyond the scope of Carrero Blanco's -- breaking the rise of the moss movement -- must be discarded. (b) But this poltrical recomposition presupposed a modification of the relationship of forces within the dictatorship, of the expense, for example, of the sector that have been dominant up to now, in particular of the expense of the Francoist bureaucracy that is ideologically identified with the for right. But this sector is one of the most faithful supporters of the dictatorship, and therefore anything reducing its power undermines Francoism itself. And furthermore, it constitutes on unconditional support to the repression, especially in its most brutal manifestations, which is normally regarded with a cerfoin reserve by other political factions. And a government that commands no other weapon than repression in holding back the moss movement cannot neglect such support. (c). This problem broke out after the military coup in Portugal. Its clearest expression is the so-called gironazo. In his speech June 15 in Barcelona Arias showed how he had bottled up the coup. As on other occasions, the far right of the dictatorship played its role of "shock absorber" against any changes, copable of contracting for a time in order to expand later and allow Francoism to recuperate its previous positions in their fundamental aspects. June 15 Thus, the political content of June 15 was a self-defense reoction of the bureaucratic apparatus of the dictatorship, which saw its own existence threatened by the possible appearance of groups outside the "Movement" and supported by a very important nucleus of army leaders, who had just blown up Diez Alegria, one of Franco and Carrero's trusted men who had been maintained in his position against the General Staff during years of winds and storms. It was also a confession of impotence before the aspirations of the sectors on which it had based itself previously. And, what is more important, it was an expression of powerlessness in face of the necessity felt by the majority of Spanish capitalists to begin what we have called the political recomposition of the dictatorship. From that point on, the baurgeoisie has had to pose the problems of succession in terms of a "power vocvum" in its strictest sense, namely the non-existence of personalities or political institutions capable of immediately carrying out the change in the dictatorship and of making key sectors of the army, the state apparatus, and the various facFions of the bourgeoisie respect the key political decisions. Margins for maneuver Consequently, Arios commands only a very narrow margin for maneuver in trying to resolve the problems of Spanish capitalism, both in the long-term and the short-term. But he will utilize what little margin he has, and it is necessary to determine how his action will influence the unstable Spanish polit-
ical situation. 1. The Associations will finally be authorized, not as instruments for participating in power, which is what the bourgeoiste needs, but as instruments of pressure on the regime, narrowly controlled by the Francoist bureaucracy. It is therefore predictable that the meager and useless proposal Arias will make to the political factions will be to legalize a new type of pressure group, a new showease through which they can display their merchandise. While there may be no doubt that the proposal will be broadly accepted in a more or less critical manner, there is also no doubt that it will not allow for the resolution of the problem of the bourgeoisie's participation in the regime and that it will contribute in a decisive fashion to sweeping away illusions in the dictatorship's capacity for self-reform. 2. The political status of the armed forces -- which is already. clearly defined in the Organic Law of the State as the "army of the civil war" - - is now tending to be concretized in preparation for the succession. The Draft Law of National Defense that Diez Alegria is working out claims to assign to the army the role now played by the Generalissimo of the Government in order that the so-called professional and apolitical army may in fact be a pillar of governmental policy. Consequently, the intent is to limit as much as possible not the politicization of the army but rather its political independence from the concrete interests of the bourgeoisie. That is the second impossible mission of Arias's proposals. More than thirty years of Francoist dictatorship have forged an army whose command closely Idenfifies with a "pure and hard" conception of Francoism and of the historic role that devolves on the army in maintaining this conception. Furthermore, it is obvious that the continuity of the dictatorship, both in its "reformist" version and in its "Immovable" version, depends on the active support of the army. From these two facts derive both the profound identification of a considerable sector of the officers -- among them, to be sure, the chiefs of police who more and more come from the army's General Staff -- with the for right and the open struggle among the various sectors of the bourgeoisie for control over the armed forces. While this struggle may have only just begun, It seems predictable that the government will meet strong resistance to any attempt to reduce the independence of the military. For, in the final analysis, the army's control of the government is greater than the government's control of the army. The suspension of Diez Alegria, like the attook launched against the draft law by General Cono Jeries, the military theoretician of the far right, reflects the current relationship of forces. Arias can do nothing but put strong but controllable men in certain important posts in the Civil Guard, the General Staff, and the ministries. And this he can only do through a series of compromises and concessions to the "generals of the July 18." 3. Relations with the church constitute Arias's third field of battle, and here, as in the other cases, all he can do is try to obtain a truce. The ideological and political role that the Spanish church and the Vatican have played for many years in strengthening and supporting the dictatorship is finished, even though a considerable wing of the hierarchy and the clergy remain fully faithful to the "crusade." The dominant sector of the ecclesiastical hierarchy has no desire to link its fate to a regime in crisis and it needs to find a margin of independence that can allow it to continue to play a role as moral guardian of the bourgeois order and can grant it a certain authority in relation to the political rodicalization of the confessional movements, in particular the Carholic worker youth. The 1953 Concordat represented one of the dietatorship's major diplomatic successes. The one that is soon going to be signed will mean nothing more than a redistribution of privileges and will in any case be unable to strengthen the moral authority of the church or to put the brakes on the process of radicalization or to limit all the other effects of the crisis of the dictatorship and of capitalism. 4. But it is in the decisive field of relations with the mass movement that Arias's Impotence has appeared most clearly. Apart from the spectacular reinforcement of the repressive apparatus - the only "solution" that the current govemment can present -- there is not the slightest proposal nor the slightest prospect of a truce. A government that is incapable of conceding the slightest particle of participation to its own class can still less make any concessions to its class enemy: The new regulations being prepared to apply to what are called "collective conflich" can be nothing but an administrotive patchwork in the absence of class trade-unions. And the CNS (National Union Council) con aspire to no other role than that of instrument of the employer with greater or less flexibility depending on the strength of the workers movement it confronts, that is, depending on the flexibility the employers are able to demonstrate. The dictatorship has not the slightest ability to infegrate the working class, and it has no illusions on this score: It is o question neither of integrating nor destroying the movement. It is simply a question of keeping if divided. That is the maneuvering room with which Arias is preparing to wonfront a critical year like 1975 -- trode-union elections, associations, economic crisis, social crisis throughout the imperialist world - a situation the workers and popular movement has already shown how to respond to in Pamplong and Baix Llobregal. Combativity and level of consciousness All revolutionary intervention in the class struggle of our country must be oriented around this profound crisis of the regime and the Spanish bourgeoisie, a crisis whose explosion could be precipitated by a factor unpredictable by and foreign to the action of the masses: the disoppearance of the dictator. Putting aside all speculation, the important thing is to stimulate this mass dynamic, beginning from the current state of the movement, and prepare if to take up the new tasks it will be confronted with during an open prerevolutiongry crisis. Consequently, we must begin with an analysis of this "current level of consciousness" within which the vanguard must root itself in order to be able to effectively win the leadership of the moss mobilizations. Beginning with the observation that we find ourselves in a phase of the rise of the mass movement, we must concretize the controdictory characteristics of the present situation. (a) A movement that is spreading. Since the beginning of the year, mass mobilizations have continued to spreod at accelerated rhythms, both geographically and by sector. This extension seems to be the product of two Factors:
1. The capitalist economic crisis, which has provoked on important attack on the standard of living of the masses and has raised the specter of massive unemployment os an imminent threat.
2. The offensive attitude adopted by the mass movement For several years, which has succeeded in establishing a rela-
SPAIN fionship of forces with the bourgeoisie allowing the questions of winning demands through action and solidarity and of going beyond the Francoist legal channels to be posed, even in sectors or cities that lack a tradition of struggle. (b) The peasantry: The incorporation of the peasantry into the struggle is extremely important. This incorporation is not of a temporary character. In fact, from the standpoint of both the internal and external market, the structure of the Spanish countryside is ruined. This explains why:
*Every harvest of various crops touches off a "war" whose main effect is to shake the bureaucratic hierarchy of the "Brotherhood of Farmers and Breeders";
«Second, Important differentiations do not appear between large and small peasant proprietors;
*An important secondary effect of the situation is seen in the struggles of small merchants who have been forced to pay the costs of the concessions won by the peasonts and have been demagogically presented as being resporsible for. the price rises on the market.
*Finally, we must stress the emergence of regularized struggles of the agricultural proletariat, less spectacular and more limited on the local level than in the past, but taking on an enormous importance even in the short-term, given the predictable situation of unemployment in the countryside and the brake on emigration. The whole situation in the countryside expresses on the one hand a step forward in the decomposition of the social base of the dictatorship and the aggravation of the internal contradictions of the bourgeoisle (within which the necessity of taking the rood of "capitalist rationalization of the countryside" is beginning to attract a certain audience) -- and, on the other hand, the incorporation into combat of a sector that contains an important part of the working class (the agricultural proletariat) and a fundamental ally in the working-class struggle (the poor peasantry). In order to forge the revolutionary alliance of the working class and this sector of the peasantry, it is necessary as rapidly as possible to close the enormous gap in the intervention of revolutionaries in the countryside by having the proletariat appear as the best defender of the interests of the poor peasantry ogainst the large agricultural proprietors and the dictatorship. (c) The movement in the popular neighborhoods. In the popular neighborhoods, struggles around living conditions and high prices are beginning to develop and become generalized. Until very recently this sort of struggle had appecred only in the form of isolated explosions. Given that the objective causes of the emergence of a specific movement of a mass character in the popular neighborhoods (consequences of the economic crisis and the degrodation of public services like health, schools, transport, urbanization, protection of the environment, and so on) can only grow in coming months, the neighborhoods should play an important role in future struggles, not only as a sector struggling around its own problems -- although that is obviously where the possibility of developing a real mass movement comes from -- but also in:
1. As centers of organization for a totality of struggles, whether the origin of these struggles lies with specific problems of the neighborhood or with factory struggles, struggles on construction sites, or directly political struggles.
2. As the most appropriate place to immediately confront the demobilization tactics used by the employer (like lockouts), facilitating close contact among suspended workers, the organization of the assemblies, and so on, and allowing for the occupation of factories that are closed down. 10
3. As the nafural place for the assembly of unemployed workers and for the preparation for struggles to win jobs. Finally, the important thing is to work so that the neighborhood movement becomes integrated into the mass movement in a conscious and concrete form and is thus integrated os a new base of support and as an experiment of particular importance for the present and future struggles: the organization of a territorial bese capable of centralizing the struggles of the worker of different occupations, the small merchants, the apprentices, the students, and so on. Apart from a few exceptions, the vanguard organizations that now exist in the popular neighborhoods are extremely wook and have a very limited audience inferior to that of the various sort of legal associations. This is a result of their limited effectiveness and, more especially, of their limited range of action. That is why if seems necessary for all the political organizations coordinating with the workers orgonizations and the Workers Commissions. The effectiveness these organizations are able to acquire -both from the standpoint of specific demands and from the standpoint of their participation in the totality of the movement -- will depend in large measure on constructing within them a revolutionary tendency of all militants ready to press for a line of direct mass action and an anti-capitalist program that responds to the most burning interests of the inhabitants of the popular neighborhoods, particularly, in the current situation, o program capable of offering a class alternative for the struggle against the high cost of living, a coherent program with slogans and demands of the whole movement. (d) The liberal professions. As regards the sactors of liberal professions, four points must be stressed:
1. The important participation of groups of the liberal professions -- going beyond the limits of their professional associations -- in the struggles that followed the assassination of Puig.
2. In general, the repeated experience of important layers tiveness of their associations (Colegios Profesionales) in defending their interests, especially after the application of the
3. The continuity of the struggle of doctors along with joint actions of doctors, other public health worken, and nurses in various cases.
4. Finally, and this is the most important, the participation in workers struggles and in the factory Workers Commissions of an important sector of engineers, who, of course, have been publicly denounced by their professional associations. (The best example is that of Standard of Madrid.) Although experiences like the one at Standard of Madrid may unfortunately be exceptions, they confirm the tendency of significant fringes of technicions to abandon the side of the employers (which a growing sector of them have not the slightest interest in defending) and to assume their condition as workers following the leadership of the working class. Clearly. it is an extremely important task to push this determined tendency in an anticapitalist direction, beginning both from the Workers Commissions and from the bodies that regroup the vanguard of these sectors. This means to organize the common struggle of the workers and technicions against the hierarchization of labor in the factories, against the enormous wage difFerentials, against all the weapons the employers utilize to
perpetuate the division and opposition between the technicions and the workers. In the end, it is a matter of opposing the reformist conception that winds up by destroying any possibility of common action by asking that the proletariat defend not the real interests of all the workers but the privileges of the technicions. (e) The movement in the educational system. By forming the essential base of the mass actiors against the assassination of Salvador Puig Antick the student movement once again showed its capacity to respond immediately to the repression unleashed by the dictatorship. But the student movement has suffered from three serious insufficiencios that are at the origin of the oscillations and difficulties it has experienced to a greater or lesser extent in all areas:
1. The brood spontaneous resistance of the student movement to the application of the General Education Law and its various consequences ran into organizotional difficulties in regard to the building of bodies of the brood student vanguard and political difficulties - stemming from the hegemony of the "corporatis:" current -- in transforming itself into a conscious resistance and, as such, into the permanent backbone of the student movement.
2. The objective convergence of the struggles of various sectors of the educational system -- professons. instructors, university students - was concretized in proctice only in a very limited way, well inferior to the possibilities offered by the struggle against selection.
3. The structuring of the student movement on a national scale, a necessity deeply felt by broad layers of the student vanguard, received only the ineffective and reformist resporse of the RGU (Reunion General de Universidades -- General Assembly of University Students). The bosis of the struggle of revolutionary students and professors against the "participationist" moneuver that has been promised for the next year of the university, through whose framework the corporatist current will try to channel the demands, combativity, and revolutionary political role of this sector, must be to try, to overcome these three basic insufficiencies. [f The workers movement The workers movement has newly confined its role os the driving lance of the entire mass movement, which odvancer only through the breaches opened up by the workers. These have been the fundamental characteristics of the workers movement during recent months:
1. Although the most important regions of workers mobilizafion have continued to be Catalonia and the Basque country, a process of recomposition has begun in Madrid - probably the most important such process since 1967 -- which seems to have put an end to the long crisis of the workers movement in one of the most important industrial regions in the country, a region whose role was fundamental during the 1960%. Further, to show the entry of new cities into struggle, we could cite the examples of the strike of Citesa in Malago, of Dragados y Construcciones in Huelva.
2. The virtually unique axis of the workers mobilizations hes been struggles for economic demands and against firings. The participation of the workers movement in political strug gles whether ground the 1001 trials", the assassination of Puig Antich, or May 1 -- has been very limited, especially *The trials of militants of the Workers Commissions, among whom was the Communist leoder Camacho, which opened in Madrid on the day of the execution of Carrero Blanco. They were called the 1001 trials because the sentences demanded against the militants totalled 1001 years in jail. -- INPRECOR when compared to the high level of combativity that hos been manifested in the factories or to the response to the Burgos trials in 1970.
3. The important experience of the Platforms of Unitary Demands worked our on the scale of an industrial branch or a region has extended rapidly and been transformed into o weapon of combat that has been laken up on many occasions by the masses. They will play a centrol role in Immediate struggles.
4. Solidarity in the form of work stoppages in the factories and collectiors for striking workers has developed around the most important struggles, reflecting the firm determination of the proletariat to defend everybody's jobs, especially if the reason for the firing has been participation in the struggle Moreover, in the cases of Authi and Baix Llogregat we have seen workers demanding not only the reintegration of militants fired during a struggle that was in progress, but also of militants fired several months earlier. Among many other examples. the workers of the metal industry in Modrid incorporated this demand -- readmission of all those fired from this bronch during the past few years (a total of about 2,000) - into the unitary platform
5. Certain of these struggles initially developed outside the legal channels. But these were exceptional coser! The most frequent development was the outflanking of Froncoist legality with controdictory features between the ranks of the movement -- who were seeking the road of direct cetion -and certain leaders who in several coses furned the struggle toward the offices of the CNS, the bishop and the government functionaries. In this way, a minuscule: bureaucracy of the CNS in favor of an opening" emerged, representatives of a cheap demagogy that has no future at oll. It can be said that if this bureaucracy commands a certain room for intervention, this is exactly a result of the oscillations or the legalism of some of the leaders of the struggles. In any case, this room for intervention in extremely reduced and cannot grow in coming months. In the present situation of the movement, the dicfatorship can tolerate the CNS only as a repressive bureaucratic structure. At the present time, even such a weak maneuver as the one carried out by Solis in 1966 during the vote for the best" campaign, has no chance of coming off;
6. These contradictions in the field of direct oction explain why the various embryonic local general strikes that have appeared -- Including the most developed, that of Baix Llobregat -- have not deepened. The recson for the very weak importance of the street actions (demonstrations from the factories, central demonstrations, etc.), which were rather easily broken up by the cops, is closely related to this. Thus, once again the delay in the organization of self-defense of the movement cost very dearly in each of the struggles, all the more dearly in that "preventive" repressive action is becoming more effective (police occupations, encirclement of Factories, police patrols, permanent coordination with the management, etc.). If self-defense continues to be left to improvisation ("IF we are attacked, we will defend ourselves") and if the police are permitted to be masters of the streets, it will be very difficult to create the relationship of forces that will allow for real total struggles. All revolutionary workers must consider it a task of vital importance to wage a basic battle in the Workers Commissions to make them assure the organization of self-defense of struggles in a regular manner.
7. The situation is also contradictory on the level of the orgonization of the movement. The assemblies have played a central role in the great majority of struggles, and they have
11
SPAIN been recognized as the leadership organs of the mobilizations. Te would be absurd to neglect the importance of this foct, which has taken years of struggle to put across. But the assemblies have an indispensable complement, which considerably augments their effectiveness and educational function: elected and recallable committees. These committees have appeared in certain cases, but most of the time they have been replaced by bastardized formations that tried to combine defense of the inferests of the workers as expressed in the assemblies and respect for a legal framework of negotiation. Very often these "committees responsible to the assembly" -- which in certain coses were purely and simply the legal committee of the factory -- wound up by placing the legality of the negotiation before the demands of the workers in struggle, as could have been predicted. Revolutionaries who defend the direct action of the masses do not do so out of simple "educational" necessiries posed in function of the historic interests of the prolefariat, nor out of purist and infantile "leftism. " They defend this line because the whole experience of the Spanish workers movement since 1967 proves that the struggle for demands can go forward only through direct action, because the minimum conditions in the CNS that would allow it to be used in the workers! favor simply do not exist, and because if is absolutely unnecessary to try to so utilize it in a period of outright rise of the workers struggles when bodies like the Workers Commissions exist, which are instruments capable of placing themselves at the head of the struggles in the field and in all circumstances. And finaliy, because the collective bargaining contracts have shown in every cose that they are nothing but weapons of the dictatorship -- loyal collaborators with the two other weapors of Francoism, the illegality of the workers organizations and the repression in all its forms -- in its fight to continue to carry out what has always been its political justification for the bourgeoisie: maintaining the workers movement as divided as possible. There is no revolutionary Marxist principle that says that we may never utilize the legal channels of the dictatorship, nor, naturally, that we must always ufilize them. It is for the reasons stated above -- and not out of any question of principle -that we are opposed to utilization of the present legal structures of the dictatorship and that we are in favor of systematically going beyond them through strikes, demonstrations, pickets to extend the strikes, self-defense pickets, assemblies, and elected and recallable committees that discuss directly with the management about the demands of the workers in struggle without the intervention of the state or the CNS.
8. Finally, as regards the situation of the Workers Commissions, two very important facts have amerged:
*In the first place, the reformist and centrist organizations -- above all the Communist party -- continue to maintain brood hegemony over these bodies, with only very rate exceptions. The relationship of forces that the advocates of "class independence" have been able to establish within the Workers Commissions is very weak. This is the reason for the persistence of the division of the Commissions and the slowness with which their recomposition is progressing, as well as their very weak aftractive power for new militants and the Inexistence of a coordination of the Commissions on o national scale. It is not difficult to find the explanation for such a phenomenon, which has been repeated many times in the history of the workers movement: A mass dynamic that is objectively opposed to the reformist orientation -- or, to take the phrase of Trotsky, that "cuts through it at a certain angle" -- but which neverthe less remains under reformist leadership, while the revolutionary orientation, which is in accord with the dynamic of the movement, remains on the fringes of it. The key to the 12 apparent contradiction resides in the errors committed by the revolutionary left, which is seeking to break its isolation through various forms of opportunist adaptation to the leaderships that hold hegemony or else is occepting in theory or practice its isolation and its marginal character and is renouncing the inch-by-inch battle on all fields against these leaderships, thus eliminating any possibility of appearing os o concrete alternative to the present leaderships in the struggles of the movement. Thus, even when the facts clearly prove the revolutionary line correct, the indispensable conscious link between this isplated concrete proof and the daily struggle of the working class does not exist. Thus, the hegemony of the reformists is not at all affected.
*In the second place, the combination of the reformist hegemony and the marginality of the revolutionaries -- and consequently, the virtual nonexistence of conclusive concrete proof of the effectiveness for the interests of the working class of working within the Workers Commissions -- have stimulated the reappearance of a significant fringe of the vanguard structured outside the Commissions in the "platforms" that are taking on a growing importance and have already led a few rodical struggles, like that of the construction workers in Vallalid It is clear that it will be difficult to build an effective alternative of class independence without taking those bodies into account and, in general, without taking into account all the sectors of revolutionary workers, even if they are not organized in the Commissions. But it is also clear that such an alternative can be effective only if it is developed within the organized workers movement, replacing its present leadership after a prolonged battle and integrating itself into the totality of experiences of the class and not simply at the culminating points of the struggle. Finally, while the emergence of a new revolutionary workers current should be saluted, it is necessary to establish solid political links between this current and the workers orgonized in the Commissions. We cannot approve the external ground on which it hos chosen to fight the reformist leaderships, thus repeating an experiment that has failed on several occasions in the most recent history of the Spanish workers movement. Conclusion The mass movement in our country has suffered two important partial defeats since the beginning of the year: the sentences at the 1001 trials and the assassination of Salvador Puig Antich. Both cases were tests of strength that ended in favor of the dictatorship. In spite of that, if the events of the past several months are considered as a whole, it is obvious that the movement is not conscious of a defeat and that it is moving into a phase of rising struggle. The partial defeats are not demoralizing the movement of the masses. On the contrary, they are being integrated into its experience so as to better prepare the next battles. Without drawing such a conclusion it is impossible to explain not only the proliferation of struggles throughout the country but also the recourse to direct action that has emerged in the great majority of cases. But there is no doubt that the 1001 trials and the assassination of Puig constituted lost opportunities of enormous potential value for the political and organizational strengthening of the movement. These lost opportunities are not unrelated to the present difficulties being met in concretizing the struggles in order to pass from generalized work stoppages to local general strikes. Likewise, these two defeats have had a negative influence on the vanguard, more seriously than in the past, because in this case one can speak of consciousness of the defeats among broad
sections of the militants of the Commissions and the political groups, although in the cose of the 1001 trials the reformist and centrist organizations succeeded in concealing their responsibilities behind the disturbances created by the execution of Correro Blanco. The effects of this demoralization have not been nonexistent, as can be seen in the organizations that have theorized their incapocities and have abandoned the field of directly political struggle even more than in the past. But these effects have been limited because of the fact that the working class has not ceased its struggle for a single day and because the response to the assassination of Puig reached an important level in certain cities, particularly Barcelona, a level sufficient to prevent the dictatorship from executing other revolutionary militants who had been condemned to death. Thus, a difficult test concerning the combativity of the movement has generally been passed. But the some cannot be said about the movement's political consciousness. The leap forward that objective events have made possible and that the aggravation of the social and political crisis of Spanish capitalism has made Indispensable has not been taken. And the class struggle cannot indefinilely postpone its time for action until better conditions for the struggle of the proletariat exist. The prerevolutionery crisis can break out at any moment, and no vanguard organization will have the right to be taken by surprise. For precisely one of the determining factors for developing this crisis in favor of the interests of the working class - and if this does not happen, it will develop ogainst these interests, for there is no such thing os a "neutral" prerevolutionary crisis - is the vanguard's capacity to foresee if and to use the current struggles to prepare the mosses politIcally and orgonizationally to confront it. In this sense, two irseparable tasks must be developed by the intervention of the vanguard:
*Press forward and extend the general battles for demands with the perspective of transforming them into local general strikes.
*Organize responses of the movement on the strictly political plone -- against the attocks of the repression and the diversionary maneuvers of the dictatorship -- so as to directly prepare the masses and their vanguard for the revolutionary general strike. Although either of these tasks could take priority of any given moment, the general orientation should be always to combine them: never neglect one in favor of the other. This is the only way to give a revolutionary solution to the contradiction between the combativity and the level of consciousness of the mass movement, which in the conditions of our coantry fundamentally means modifying the relationship of forces between reformists and revolutionaries within the broad vanguard. In this sense, the process of political regroupment that is now affecting the political workers organizations after the events in Portugal takes on its full import. The "pactist" bloc Within the polffical workers organizations the most important effect of the Portuguese events is undoubtedly the strengthening of the line of class collaboration and the role of the Communist party. This involves a growth of confidence in the Pact for Freedom* among the brood vanguard. If can be said that the utopian character of the "Pact" is still not an obvious fact and that an important layer of militants are developing, or redeveloping, confidence in it. Corsequently, the relationship of forces within the broad vanguard inifially shifted in favor of the reformists. This is undoubtedly on essential fact whose extent and consequences have to be determined. (a) The Spanish CP and Portugal. "In fact, the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal fell under the blows of an action that very much resembles the Poct for Freedom that we have called for to liquidate the fascist dictatorship in Spain: the convergence at a given moment of the workers and popular movement with the neocopitalist groups that were disturbed by the colonial war and the fascist structures (groups represented by Sprnola) -- a convergence that in this cose received the support of the army. That can only confirm the correctness of our position." These words were spoken by the general secretary of the Spanish CP immediately after the military coup in Portugal. As always Carrillo found himself obliged to manipulate reality to the very limits of imagination - presenting, for example, the role of the Portuguese army on April 25 as a "support" to a "convergence" -- in order to show the "resemblance in this case" between the Pact and the events that brought down the dictatorship in Portugal. On other occasions, the manipulation hos been aimed of showing the "lack of resemblance." Let us remember the CP's version of the September 11, 1973, coup in Chile. But that is not the most important thing, although it does indicate the analytical enormities the reformists have to perpetrate to "confim the correctness" of their position. What is really important is to deduc» from this exposition the image that the CP tries to give of Portugal:
*The fall of the dictatorship is the fruit of the "convergence" of the workers and popular movement and the neocapitalist antidictatorial groups.
*The "convergence" was realized through a program similar to that of the Pact.
*The role of the army was secondary -- limited "in this case" to "support" - but it supported the "convergence" and isolated the "gorillas." (b) The CP offensive. This Image is at the origin of a political offensive the CP has launched aimed of four targets:
-- The dictatorship itself, to which the CP holds up the examples of the extroordinary isolation in which the Portuguese dictatorial apparatus found itself and the spontaneous offensive of the masses against its most characteristic representatives. The CP calls on the Francoist functionaries, Including those of the political police, to engage in "civil disobedience" and in return offers them amnesty, total omnesty.
- The "neocapitalist" groups, which in this case is simply a form of saying big capital," to whom Carrilla holds out the possibility of replacing the dictatorship without risk, which would open a new situation in which the mass movement would be controlled by the CP itself, thereby eliminating the "revolutionary danger" that now exists only because of the dictatorship.
- The broad vanguard, to whom the CP presents April 25 as the strategic confirmation of its line, a demonstration of the "realism" of the Pact, of the effectiveness of class collaboration.
- The mass movement, which obviously constitutes the decisive front. The CP presents itself to the mass movement as the leadership that will lead it to freedom in the immediate *Pacta por la Libertad: a strategy of alliance with "democratic* sectors of the bourgeoisie that has been proposed by the Spanish CP -- INPRECOR
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SPAIN future. The fall of Francoism is presented os on imminent fact that justifies all the concessions, all the compromises qualified as "tactical, " all the limitations of struggles. All this has to be done to take advantage of the present "great opportunity" of getting rid of the dictatorship. (c) A knot of controdictions. But the absolute necessity of the CP "making a mad dash" to place its line and its organization at the head of the movement is the weak link of the political operation it has initiated.
- The reformist leadership has to "make a mad dash" because the political and social conditions that allowed it to launch an initial offensive con deteriorate very rapidly, both in terms of the situation in Portugal (as an example of the role the CP plays after the fall of the dictatorship and its medium-term consequences) and in terms of the Spanish situation (the political impasse and fragility of the recently born "democratic" bourgeoisie, the aggravation of the capitalist crisis and the type of response that is expected from the movement).
- This Is why It is not enough for the CP to appear os the leadership of daily struggles. It has to place the struggle on a directly political level. That means that if is sketching out at least the general features of the peaceful general strike" (huelgo general pacifica) in order to show the bourgeoisie its capacity to control the movement.
- This presupposes that the mass movement, and especially the working class, will in practice agree to the necessity of limiting it forms of struggle, demands, and objectives to the framework of the Pact with the big bourgeoisie-
- But the objective dynamic of the struggles, the experiences of past years, and the economic and political crisis of the bourgeoisie work agairst these limitations. The movement will continue to orient Itself toward direct mass action, because it class instinct - fashioned through hundreds of struggles, both defeats and successes -- convinces the movement that this is the only way to succeed in winning its demands and preventing the bourgeoisie from resolving the crisis at the workers' expense, and because there is o new vanguard within the mass movement that has broken with the politics of reformism and Is systematically struggling for the movement to utilize the forms and methods of struggle of the proletariot. Consequently, the reformist leadership will be steadily outflanked as soon as the struggles attain a minimum level of development.
-- Of course, this outflanking is not uncooptable by the CP, and in that lies one of the CP's most important trump cards. In the absence of a revolutionary altemative embedded in the struggles from the beginning and copable of directing the outflanking process and raising the level of consciousness, the CP will not regain control of the mobilization but will turn the lessons of the struggle in its favor: The favorable relationship of forces obtained by direct action will provoke important concessions that the reformish will present as a victory of the "regaining" phase they have initiated (pressures on the government, on the CNS, and so on, which accompany any compromise signed by the reformists). In the final analysis, all the possibilities for maneuver that the CP can command in the present conditions flow from the weakness of the revolutionary left. For Carrillo, isolating the line of class independence is a priority fask, for he commands neither the objective conditions nor the organizational instruments that would guarantee him stable control over the mass mobilizations. It is only on condition that he succeeds in this task that the CP will threaten to play the cord of "coopting the outflanking. " (d) The two currents within the "Pactist" bloc. The best way 14 the reformist leadership has of achieving this isolation is to strengthen the pactist bloc of workers organizations, thus contributing to strengthening simultaneously their ability to control the movement and their capacity to exert pressure on the bourgeoisie. It must be roted that the CP apparently does not hold many illusions on the possibility of getting some significant sector of the bourgeoisie to enter the Pact formally. In fact, the versions of their strategy recently offered by the reformists tend to show that the interclass Pact is not supposed to be concretized in proctice unfil the actual moment of the fall of the dictatorship. (This is exactly what Carrillo meant with his theory of the "convergence" at "a given moment" in Portugal.) Consequently: the workers bloc constitutes the essential part of the Pact. And two principal currents with very different political characteristics must be distinguished within it: the current made up of Bandera Rojo and the PCI (Partido Comunista Internacionalista -- Internationalist Communist party, a Maoist organization) on the one hand, and the Social Democrotic current on the other. Both Bandera Roja and the PCI seem to be going through a significant process of political differentiation between a proCP wing and another wing that remains within the organizotons and in any event does not seem to question the organizations' presence in the Assembly of Catalonia. Bandera Roja and the PCI represent the "for right of the for left" and are characterized on the one hand by a very weak independent strategy in relation to the CP (in foct, on this level, the most important differences boil down to the types of alliances that are possible with the bourgeoisie, the breadth of the sectors with which one can enter into antidictatorio! accords, etc.) and, on the other hand, by a leftist recruitment among a sector of the new vanguard. They educate their militant to be suspicious of the CP. (although in a deformed way). As for as workers struggles are concerned, they betray a will to adapt to the level of the movement, which in many cases leads them to very right-wing positions but in other coses to appose the most brazen moneuvers of the reformists. Consequently, the two groups suffer from a serious contradicfion between the elements that are moving bock to the CP and the ones that are moving oway. A sector of these organizations seems to have resolved this contradiction in favor of closs collaboration at the first invitation of those whom they characterized as "revisionist" not so long ago. The evolution of the other sector remains to be decided. The revolutionary left has an important battle to wage here in order to draw this layer of militants, who have up to now shown their resistance to the attractive power of the reformist current, toward positions of class independence: The political reappearance of the Social Democracy, in particular of the PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español -Spanish Socialist Workers party) represents another important factor in the constitution of the pactist bloc. But it is clear that this importance lies not in the present strength of the Social Democracy within the brood vanguard, nor for that matter in its capacity for mobilization or the dudience it commands within the moss movement. As for the PSOE, we can say that if has lost any possibility of playing a new role similar to the one it played before 1936. The years of clandestinity have gravely damaged this orgonization, whose political and organizational life was bosed procisely on the public functioning of its trade-union and electoral machine. After the second world war, the future of the
PSOE, like all of Europeon Social Democracy, was linked to its ability to assert itself as the determined defender of bourgeois "social peace, " to be the guarantor of social peace within the working class through the framework of parliamentary democracy. But the dictatorship prevented it from playing this role. At the same time, its lack of integration into the bourgeois state allowed the PSOE, unlike the English or German Social Democracy, to maintain a certain Marxist ideological reference and to continue to put forward the "maximum program" that its European comrades had abandoned several years earlier. In this way the PSOE has been able to maintain undeniable, though weak and localized, links with the present mass movement. A section of its militants, grouped together in the Young Socialists, can be considered as part of the new vanguard, in some respects closer to the revolufionary left than to their own leadership. In any cose, the importance of the PSOE must be measured not in terms of the present situation but in terms of the situation that will open up after the overthrow of the dictatorship. That will be the time when both the CP and the bourgeoisie, Functioning in the framework of parliamentary democracy, will need a Social Democratic organization to share control of the working class with the Stalinisis to a certain extent. For historical reasons, that Social Democratic organization can be only the PSOE. That is the reason for Carrillo's present efforts to get the PSE into the Pact, with the complementary aim of expanding his maneuvering room and his national and international "respectability." This is the meaning of the political reappearance of the PSOE, which is taking odvantage of the prestige personalities like Soares and Mitterrand are lending the Social Democracy, This is particularly a result of the CP-SP electoral alliance in France. The new PSOE leadership -- which has replaced the ferociously anticommunist group led by Llopis -- has manifested an inclination to "collaborate with all the anti-Franco forces. " It could not be otherwise, and it is equally certain that the Young Socialists will maintain considerable independence and a very critical attitude toward their leodership. The revolutionary left must try to stimulate this attitude by strengthening the elements that are already fighting for an independent class line. The Pact: a mirage Class independence: the solution In the final analysis, the "new rise" of reformism in Spain Is the product of its greater strategic credibility among the brood vanguard. It is consequently the product of a myth, for the line of the CP is not only maintaining its traditional contradictions (and the essentially utopian character deriving from them), but is incorporating new ones:
- Our country is experiencing not only a political crisis, but a general social crisis as well. The dictatorship is in crisis, but so is capitalism. For forty years the dictatorship has held a tight grip on the country, on Its whole productive structure, on the alliances among various sectors that have now given birth to present-day Spanish monopoly capital. The dictatorship is already a difficulty, an "obstacle" to the development of some of these sectors. But for the bourgeois class as a whole -- whose interests are expressed by the dominant faction of big capital -- as long as the present dynamic of the mass movement continues, that is, as long as the threat persists that any recognition of democratic political rights might unleash an uncontrollable process of anticapitalist mobilization, the dictatorship will remain the best solution, the one that offers the best guarantees for the defense of the bourgeoisie's global interests, once the possibility of undertaking a serious capitalist reform of the present structure of production is eliminated. In the present international conjuncture, this solution is not without difficulties, in particular in terms of integration into the Common Market and the political "isolation" of Francoism. But the present situation of Spanish capitalism within the Imperialist system forces any idea of "isolation" to be relativized. The very crisis of imperialism in its turn considerably reduces the external pressure for any change in the dictatorship that does not offer the necessary guarantees of control. The international difficulties should not be neglected, but they must be considered as secondary. Moreover, the dictatorship is not "hindering" all bourgeois groups. There are some groups, identified with the "bockward productive sectors, " that are not only not annoyed by the dictatorship, but are prepared to struggle to maintain it in power. Standing at the side of these groups are a significant number of military chiefs and the majority of the Francoist apparatus. Vultures, yes, but numerically significant vultures, armed and organized, whose political survival is linked to the maintenance of the present regime. It is clear that the general contradictions of the bourgeoisie will be reflected within this sector, and they will intensify after the death of the dictator. But these contradictions will not lead this sector to be neutral, even temporarily. In all probability, the dictatorship will break up before the atomization and isolation of the for right occurs. It is for that very reason that only the artion of the mosses will be able to break the for right's capaciiy for resistance: This is especially the cose with the Francoist army. The caste of military chiefs is not completely homogeneous as such or in its relations with the other officer corps. The homogeneity is not being strengthened but is weakening, as a by-product of the decrepitude of Francoism, But the fall of the dictatorship will require more than lack of homogeneity, It will require paralysis of the reactionary potential of the armed forces. Appeals to an alleged national-popular sentiment among the higher officers are completely useless in attaining this. What must be done is to undertake revolutionary work in the barrocks, to foment distrust among the troops toward their officers, to denounce the "army of civil war" among the youth, and to prepare the movement to confront the attacks of armed military repression. These tasks are the real catalysh for exploiting the controdictions within the army so as to defend the interesis of the working class during the overthrow of the dictatorship and the period that will open up offer that. But there are other serious errors in the reformist line. The only social force active in the confrontation with the dictatorship is the mass movement. No one can deny the determining role of the mass movement in bringing down the dictatorship. But it is clear that this role can be assumed only on the basis of the most advanced experiences gone through by the movement itself. The first outlines of the overthrow of the dictatorship were seen in the struggles of Burgos, Ferrol, Vigo, Pomplona, and 5. Andrian del Besos. And none of these great struggles had anything in common with what the CP calls "peoceful general strikes. " None of these key experiences was possible without the outflanking of the CP. The real face of the apparent "realism" of the reformists is shown in their marching against the dynamic of struggle to try to coopt the movements outflanking them, In fact, the most profound contradiction of the CP line lies in the fact that only a serious decline in the activity of the masses would make it seem viable.
- The CP is banking on the obvious power vacuum that will follow the disappearance of the dictator. If claims that
beginning from that vacuum a controlled pressure of the movement will allow for a "democratic" regroupment of the majority of bourgeois sectors. But it is clear that it is also of that moment that the for right will make its bid for power. The CP is advancing onto the ground of utopia and suicide. Because the greatest possibilities for reactionary action are created by o movement that is capable of paralyzing the normal functioning of Spanish copitalism but whose leodership is holding it back from lounching an assault on the dictatorship. The verbal threats of the reformists will not suffice to deter those who will defend Francoism with violence. The history of the workers movement is replete with defeated strikes, but the bureaucrats repeat the same refrain: "If the enemy loses his head and attacks us, then... * But then if is already too late! It is not words but the actual class struggle that changes the relationship of forces. Whot, then, is the road of seeking bourgeois "concessions" worth? Under what conditions will the leading sectors of big capital launch their "democratic" alterative? In face of the Independent action of a movement that has in general escaped From reformist contral, that is developing all the possibilities of its own class activity, struggling for it own objectives with its own methods without stopping to effect the slightest "convergence" with any sector of the exploiters, confronting the armed resistance that it will meet on the way, launching the assault on the dictatorship and thus paralyzing the army: That E the strategic perspective that we propose under the formula of the revolutionary general strike. The Spanish bourgeoisie will abandon the dictatorship only when it begins to hear the rumbling of its collapse. And the revolutionary old mole of the Spanish proletariat and people will have to continue to dig the tunnels that will erode the foundations of Francoism. Their "democratic allies" will come to "fraternize" with them in the streets when the edifice of the dictatorship is on the point of falling on their heads. Thus, we maintain the entirety of our strategic orientation. But it is nevertheless certain that the revolutionary general strike has appeared to the vanguard in an excessively rigid form that places it practically on the level of an armed insurrection. There should be no equivocation on this subject. The most probable variant is that the overthrow of the dictatorship will not require the generalized arming of the mosses and will not immediately open up the prospect of civil war. The gravity of the crisis of the dictatorship allows of the possibillry that a series of chain reaction general strikes on local and regional scales in the most Important industrial sections of the country, with periods of ebb and flow in a short period of time, will be enough to induce the bourgeoisie to implement it democratic notions in order to avoid the explosion of a simultaneous revolutionary general strike throughout the entire country. In any case, the simultaneity is secondary, not only in the serse indicated in the preceding sentence, but in the apposite sense os well. In fact, a simultaneous mass action throughout the country would not necessarily mean the fall of the dictatorship, although it would objectively raise this perspective. If the oction remairs under firm reformist control, it will initially represent no more than a demonstration of force that the dictatorship may be in position to tolerate. From the standpoint of the overthrow of the dictatorship, the main facfor is for the mass strikes to prove capable of responding to the repressive violence they will certainly meet, to begin the dismantling of Francoism, to surmount all the dictatorship's possibilities for maneuver and compromise, and to challenge the foundations of copilolist rule. Then, and only then, will talk of "convergences" begin, and not right then, but over the long-term. As we have affirmed on many other occasions, the period that will be opened by the fall of Francoism will be characterized by a strong polit16 ical and social instability in which the bourgeoisie will seek to establish a favorable relationship of forces and thus obtain the possibility of imposing its conditions on the masses. If the proletariat and the people do not utilize the favorable situation to prepare the final assault on bourgedis power, democracy will be but a brief interlude bracketed by periods of oppression. And the second oppression could be more brutal than the first. Within the broad vanguard there are already thousands of militants who have had experience with reformist betrayal, who refuse to follow the rood of democratic mirages and who are seeking a credible option effective in defending the interests of their class. None of the revolutionary organizations is yet capable of offering this alternative. There are also organizations that are hesitant in face of the relationship of forces that the CP has imposed, organizations whose leaders are probably preparing some "toctical" capitulafion to "go through the experience with the masses." There is no doubt that there are mony militonts within these organizafions who are Inclined to confront their leaders and who can succeed in preventing the turn toward class collaboration in all Its forms if they are stimulated by a revolutionary current that offers an alternotive to any capitulation: There are also organizations that retain an enormous potential of combativity but that express it in a sectarian manner, deciding not to launch what they consider a hopeless battle against the CP on its own territory: the organized workers movement. It is necessary to show them that the battle can and must be won. And finally, there are thousands of militants who today follow the reformist leadership because they believe it is the best and only instrument with which to defend the interests of the proletariat and the people. To any interclass pact that aims at plocing the working class at the service of the exploiters the revolutionaries counterpose the unity of the proletarian front. But in order to put this concept forward, to put ocross its coincidence with the immense unitary aspiration that is latent in the workers movement, to denounce the systematic breaking of this unity by the reformist leoders, we will have to try to concretize the concept, to make it live in the present struggles. It is necessary to create a relationship of forces that allows the line of class independence to appear as a concrete alternative capable of systematically going beyond the limits of legalism and conciliation by creating in action the conditions that will force the CP and its allies to enter the workers united front or risk a break with their rank-and-file membership. It is with this dim in mind that accords must be established to:
-- Constitute revolufionary tendencies in the organs of the broad vanguard of the various sectors of intervention,
-- Struggle for a unified coordination of these organs of all levels, and especially at the national level,
-- Press forward general struggles as the most favorable ground on which to force the dictatorship and the employers to retreat,
-- Stimulate the organization by the movement of its own self-defense and, in particular, the creation within the organizations of the broad vanguard of permanent self-defense detachments,
- Build a united front against repression in all its forms,
- Begin antimilitarist activity among the youth and coordinate the revolutionary work in the barracks. In short, to take on all the tasks that can permit us to offer to all those struggling against the dictatorship and capitalism a proletarian banner cleansed of all compromise and submission to the enemy and capable of contending for the leadership of the movement and tearing it from the hands of the reformists. From this point on, the LCR-ETA(VI) unconditionally and unreservedly commits itself to this task.