Spain. 1. For a total struggle against the dictatorship and capital! In a June 16, 1974, declaration, the General Coordination of the Workers Commissions issued a call for preparation of a twenty-four-hour general strike. Independently of the content of this call and of the methods of struggle it puts forward, our organization supports the calling of a general struggle and is preparing to act to help bring it about. The necessity for a united struggle throughout the country becomes more imperative every dey, given the economic and political situation the country is going through and given the demands that have been raised this year by the struggles themselves. (a) Growing workers combativity has given rise to an impressive new rise of struggles. Faced with the rising cost of living, groups, no matter how erroneous we may believe them to be, are inspired by hatred for the exploiters and devotion to the cause of the exploited. Against bourgeois repression, every revolutionary is always in the right. The Fourth International is not a terrorist organization. It is a communist organization in the full sense of the word, and the bourgeoisie, along with its police watchdogs, the "theoreticians" of this campaign, know it very well. And it is precisely because they know this that they lie, that they try to slander us. Because they know that in the Fourth International they have an irreconcilable enemy with which it is not possible to sign any pact, an enemy that is growing and organizing throughout the world and that will not cease to struggle until the proletariat has conquered the final capitalist fortress. That is why they try to present a false and distorted image of our organization. But the Fourth International is constructing its real image in its daily revolutionary action at the side of the workers and peoples of the world. That image is the image of socialist revolution, of the future of humanity. And all the slanders of the bourgeoisie will not succeed in holding back the march toward that future for one single second. September 20, 1974 the workers have overturned the dates and terms of the negotiations for collective contracts and have presented their own demands to the employers and entered into struggle. From one end of the Spanish state to the other, from the most advanced centers of struggle during the past several years (Catalonia, Euzkadi) to the areas with no tradition of struggle (Caceres, Malaga, Huelva, Cadiz) and passing through centers in which the workers movement has undergone a process of recomposition (Madrid, Vigo, Valencia, Valladolid, Sargasso), the slogans of equal wage increases, full pay for sick days, the 40hour workweek, reintegration of fired workers, etc. have been put forward in the greater part of the workers struggles of recent months. But at the same time, this broad movement has revealed two fundamental weaknesses: first of all its discontinuity in time. Thus, the dictatorship has found itself in a situation in which it could repress the struggles one at a time without risking getting caught by a vast, general movement. Thus, likewise, in the two most advanced struggles of this year (Pamplona with its struggle at Authi, Baix Llobregat with its struggle at Elsa and Solvay), the solidarity movement and the support movement throughout the country, which could have allowed for a great victory against the employers, was a failure.
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SPAIN The other weakness has been the absence of a mass response to the sentencing of the Carabamchel 10 (the trial of ten leaders of the Workers Commissions, among them the Communist militant Camacho) and to the assassination of Salvador Puig Antich. Nevertheless, the weak mobilization against these attacks of the dictatorship did not represent retreats or the mass movement, as was shown by the relaunching of struggle before and after the 1001 trial (the Carabamchel 10 trial was also called the 1001 trial because the sentences demanded against the defendants totaled 1001 years) and on March 2, the date of the assassination of Puig Antich. It is therefore not in order to speak of defeats, but rather of lost opportunities to develop the political mass struggles that could have made the dictatorship back down as it was forced to do during the Burgos trials in 1970. (b) Another characteristic of this year's struggles has been the deepening of the struggles of other sectors and the entry into struggle of new layers of the population. As for the first phenomenon, we can stress the struggles of the professors and students (in universities and high schools) against the selection law, which, despite the massive protests it triggered, was approved. This will surely produce further struggles in which the working class, which is most affected by selection, will have to play the same role as it did during the struggle against the capitalist profitization of education. The liberal professions have continued more than ever to reject the framework of the professional colleges and are organizing the struggle outside the limits imposed by the dictatorship. The technicians have ¡oined in the struggles of the workers (as at Standard in Madrid); this represents a new index of the radicalization of this sector. The interning physicians and public health workers have engaged in struggles (Madrid, Bilbao, San Sebastian, Santiago, Sevilla) against the exploitation to which they are subjected and the bad conditions under which they have to treat the sick. Among the new sectors that have entered into struggle are the agricultural workers and the small-scale peasant proprietors. This was especially seen in the month-long strike of 12,000 agricultural proletarians in Marco de Jerez. Also significant is the struggle of the small merchants of Madrid, which exemplified the growing loss of support among petty-bourgeois sectors for a regime that appears in the eyes of these layers as the direct supporter of the large landed proprietors, the wholesalers, the central milk producers, etc., directly responsible for the aggravation of the situation of the small merchants and for the increase in the prices of agricultural products on the market. (c) The basis of all these struggles is found in the economic situation, which is marked by the dizzying rise of the cost of living. The bourgeoisie, which is trying to make the workers suffer the weight of the imperialist economic crisis, will try to overcome its difficulties by laying off thousands of workers. The measures restricting the entry of emigrant labor into countries like France and Germany have now been followed by attacks on employment in our country: discrimination in employment against women and youth; placing of many firms in bankruptcy; increase in unemployment in the construction industry; threat of unemployment by the end of the year in the auto industry, etc.
Thus, to respond to these two effects of the economic crisis of the bourgeoisie it is necessary to lead a vigorous struggle against the cost of living and unemployment in all the sectors hit by capitalist anarchy. (d) The Francoist dictatorship, which has been the form of 14 bourgeois rule in Spain for thirty-five years, is now directly confronted with the problem of succession. Its difficulties in this regard stem from the absence of any alternative figure able to play the role of arbitor among the various factions of the bourgeoisie, the role that has been played by Franco. The disappearance of Carrero Blanco effectively meant the disappearance of the only Bonapartist aspirant who had been groomed for that role. In the short term it is impossible to find a political personality capable of filling the vacuum left by the disappearance of the admiral. Arias absolutely cannot be such a personality, and that is why we call his government a provisional one. It is a government for burying the generalissimo, but it is not a post-Franco government. The impending disappearance of the dictator has posed this problem in the sharpest sense. The absence of an answer that is satisfactory for all sectors of the bourgeoisie (and neither Juan Carlos, nor Arias, nor the two together offer sufficient guarantees) is fostering the aggravation of tensions among the various factions in a way that could lead to the brink of an explosion. We say "to the brink" because it is clear that if Franco should say a word or make a gesture of approval to Arias and his government, the various families and political layers. would be much more concerned about having to confront the present government overtly. That is why the life of Franco - what little may be left of it -- is blocking the explosion of these tensions. That is also why an inevitable biological fact -- like the death of the dictator -- will immediately have very important political consequences in this country. And all these tensions, difficulties, and differences are not unrelated to the development of the mass movement. For one thing, the power of this movement, which has been manifested since the 1970 Burgos trials, has been based on these difficulties. For another thing, all the intrabourgeois differences act in the direction of weakening the attacks on the working class and its allies.
(e) In such a situation, to advance toward a general strike that regroups and unifies the fragmented struggles and insists on the granting of the demands that have been raised -- release of arrested and imprisoned militants, democratic rights allowing for an increase in the organization and power of the struggle of the proletariat and the other oppressed layers, etc. -- it is necessary not to let any important struggle go by without an active solidarity movement that overcomes the weaknesses we have mentioned. It is also necessary not to allow any repressive attack by the dictatorship to go without a response, no matter whether the attack comes from the police or the special tribunals. It is necessary to place the struggle for the overthrow of the dictatorship, the direct instrument of thirty-five years of exploitation and political oppression, in the center of this general strike, along with all our other demands. 2.The declaration of the General Coordination of the Workers Commissions. The call issued by the General Coordination of the Workers Commissions presents an analysis of the political situation and perspectives for preparation of the general strike that begins from a point of view that revolutionary Marxists can only criticize. Our support to the specific call for the general strike must not prevent us from making what we believe are necessary criticisms of the document of the General Coordination of the Workers Commissions. (a) We must stress one thing above all: the total absence of internal democracy within the Workers Commissions; or, what amounts to the same thing, the bureaucratic manipulation of the leadership bodies. Thus, the members of the Workers Commissions are integrated into operations like the Catalonia Assembly and now the Junta Democratica without ever being consulted. The same thing happened in the case of the call for the general strike: Not only was the idea of a total struggle not discussed by the rank and file of the Commissions; in addition, the content of the call -- elaborated by the Spanish Communist party faction in the Workers Commissions -- was not submitted to any discussion. We stress that our criticism does not refer to the fact that the Workers Commissions expressed political opinions -- with this we are in agreement -but rather to the fact that these opinions were imposed without the slightest possibility of internal discussion and confrontation between the positions of the various political currents that exist within the Workers Commissions. (b) To this absence of discussion and, in the final analysis, absence of participation of all militants of the Workers Commissions in all the most important decisions, must be added the fact that after the issuing of the call, the coordination of the Commissions took no practical measures to prepare for the gen-. eral strike by entering into relations with other commissions and organs of struggle in the factories, schools, and countryside or with bodies of struggle of the liberal professions, or with political parties. Nor did it begin to develop an agitational campaign to popularize the idea and objectives of the general strike. If it continues on this road, the coordination of the Commissions will find itself in an irresponsible and suicidal position.
(c) Another characteristic of the call is its insistence on the utilization of all legal possibilities, in particular possibilities within the vertical trade-union: "It is not possible to develop and to have a real influence in the confrontations simply on the basis of clandestine positions, or still less on the basis of positions that are eternally opposed to the trade-union officials. . . . It is necessary, today more than ever, to utilize more the legal means and instruments, even though our experience proves the correctness of our line. " But the workers struggles of past years, above all since Burgos, have exactly been characterized by a systematic overflowing of the legal channels of the dictatorship. The resort to direct action (work stoppages, strikes, assemblies, demonstrations) has been generalized. Even those struggles for economic demands that initially accepted the mediation of the legal representatives always ended outside the CNS (the corporatist state "union") because of the ineffectiveness of the legal channels for the workers struggles. We are given two reasons to justify acceptance of the legal channels of the CNS. The first consists of presenting us with statistics of struggles in which the legal representatives played a top-level role, a leadership role. The second claims that the only way to make the struggle of backward sectors move forward is to utilize the trade-union officials, inasmuch as these sectors have not yet directly experienced the trap that the vertical union amounts to. We do not deny that there are some militant legal representatives. Nor do we believe that the working class of the entire country has already experienced the traitorous character of the CNS. But we believe that there are organizations like the Workers Commissions and other factory bodies (for the unification of which Trotskyist militants are fighting) that are capable of standing at the head of the struggle in all sectors and under all circumstances and that therefore make it absolutely unnecessary to utilize the organs of the vertical union. We believe that the tasks of these militant legal representatives would be much more effectively carried out within the Workers Commissions of their factories and, if they participate in general assemblies, with all the other workers. We think that it is up to the Workers Commissions themselves to help more backward sectors avoid the errors that were committed by the more advanced sectors during the period of recomposition of the workers movement in the 1960s. Their task is to explain the lessons of the advanced struggles, to draw the lessons of past defeats, and so on. This, moreover, is the way that sectors that are just now entering into struggle will be able to move forward, taking significant steps ahead in a short period of time and catching up to the sectors that we consider to be "advanced" today. To the list of improvements obtained through the mediation of the union representatives we counterpose the list of demands that have won in factories that went beyond the channels of the CNS and developed their struggles through direct action in a democratic way (assemblies, elected and recallable committees, etc.). Furthermore, in most cases, the mediation of the trade-union representatives was based on a relationship of forces that shifted in favor of the employers during the negotiations, because the legal representatives isolated themselves from the mass of workers, a situation that can be avoided only through assemblies that determine demands which are then presented to the employers by an elected committee. The mediation of the legal representatives has also been a weapon used by the leadership of the vertical union to strengthen the CNS. Thus, we are opposed to "utilization" of the vertical union as much for reasons of effectiveness as because it would run counter to the struggle of the workers movement against the vertical union that has been imposed on the workers by the dictatorship. Furthermore, the Workers Commission declaration affirms that we must "accelerate the process of assemblies, especially in
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SPAIN the work places, but at the same time in the local unions. " We agree -- if the following points are added: (1) That the assemblies be part of the local unions only as a last resort. We believe that the natural olace for these assemblies is the factory. Further, it is undeniuble that the possibilities of greater control by the union bureaucrats and the police make the leaders of struggles more vulnerable to repression and can prevent open discussions among the workers. (2) Whether they are formed in the factories, the locals of the CNS, or anywhere else, the assemblies should not be consultative bodies, but rather the sole decision-making center of the struggle. They should be accompanied by elected and revocable committees to deal with the more concrete aspects (like coordination with other factories, organization of economic solidarity, etc.). In their contacts with the employers, the committees should be limited to transmitting what has already been decided in the general assembly. To lead a total struggle it is necessary to put forward objectives capable of uniting the greatest number of exploited and oppressed sectors and responding to the necessities of the struggle of the moment, both economic and political. This struggle must also be the point of departure for new struggles. That is why the apolitical character of the Workers Commission coordination's call for the general strike reduces the effectiveness of the battle inasmuch as the struggle against the high cost of living by itself does not enable the more backward sectors to become conscious of the necessity for fighting for political objectives. But this apoliticism is not accidental. It conforms to the interests of the Spanish CP, which does not want to jeopardize its alliances. If it is to be credible to sectors of the bourgeoisie and thus preserve and develop its alliances, the CP must on the one hand prove its ability to mobilize people and at the same time show that it is the only force capable of controlling the movement and avoiding an excessive radicalization and politicization of the struggle, for this would frighten its potential allies. 3. Our proposals. Here we present the points that we think are capable of grouping together all the sectors that are fighting the Francoist dictatorship. It is a matter of a struggle against the high cost of living, against selection in education, and against repression and the dictatorship. On this basis the LCR-ETA(VI) thinks that the platform below is the one that best corresponds to the needs of the current struggle. 1. Against the high cost of living:
-- minimum salary of 600 pesetas a day,
--equal increases of 6, 000 pesetas a month for all wage- earners and retirees,
-sliding scale of wages for workers, unemployed, and retirees, according to a cost-of-living index evaluated every three months,
--sliding scale of hours, that is, division of the available working hours among all able-bodied workers, with no reduction in pay,
--full payment of wages in the event of illness, accident, unemployment, and retirement,
--social security paid by the factory, --solidarity with the struggles of the workers of the coun tryside, the small farmers and merchants. For the creation of price-watch committees composed of representatives of the 16 various popular sectors. 2. Against selection in education:
--down with the selection law,
--against the capitalist profitization of education,
--for compulsory, rounded, secular, and free education up to 16 years of age,
--support to the demands of instructors and professors,
--elimination of all sanctions taken against instructors, students, and professors. 3. Against repression and the dictatorship:
--stop the assassinations of worker and student militants and nationalist militants,
--dissolution of the repressive corps and institutions. Abrogation of all repressive legislation,
--prosecution of those responsible for the crimes of Francoism,
--freedom for political prisoners; freedom for all political exiles to return,
--freedom of association, meeting, the press, strikes, and demonstration,
--self-determination for national minorities,
-- immediate and unconditional independence for "Spanish" Sahara in order that the people of the Sahara may choose their future freely; down with Spanish colonialism in Africa,
--down with the dictatorship,
--down with the Francoist monarchy. 4. How to organize the general strike. 1. The first task is to develop a vast campaign of propaganda and agitation around the objectives of the general strike. For that, the Workers Commissions must fix a date for the general strike that permits all the bodies of struggle and all the political organizations to prepare it. The necessity for each organ of struggle and each organization beginning this work of agitation now must not prevent the search for all possibilities of united agreements. 2. Let us stimulate struggles in the work, places and schools for the demands that have been raised; solidarity with the struggles going on and with the militants hit by repression; let us organize meetings of the vanguard and general assemblies to prepare the general strike. 3. Let us push the battles forward by direct action: form assemblies as leadership bodies for the struggles; the assemblies should name elected and revocable committees charged with transmitting the demands approved by the assemblies and with establishing coordination with the other centers of struggle. Against the dictatorship's attempts to isolate struggles, let us form pickets to extend them and generalize the struggle. Against repression let us organize self-defense pickets to protect the assemblies, demonstrations, and militants who are in the forefront. 4. The broadest unity in action among bodies and organizations under the leadership of the Workers Commissions will be possible only if contacts are immediately made among all these various forces. All parties that represent sectors of the bourgeoisie must be excluded from this coordination and all workers political parties must be convoked with consultative voice but not the right to vote, this being reserved for the representafives of the struggle organs of the various sectors. 5. But the reformists will try to arrive at agreements with representatives of sectors of the bourgeoisie and will consequently
SOLIDAKES DE
"APPEAL OF THE 100"
THE BOURGEOIS ARMY try to subordinate the objectives and methods of the struggle to their policy of alliances. It is for this reason -- and with the aim of creating a framework capable of attracting the maximum number of militants, including those influenced by the reformists -- that we call for unity in action of all the organizations that defend a line of class independence in regard to the objectives, tactics, and forms and methods of organization in order to counterpose a class alternative to the reformist orientation. This will also be a means of forcing the reformists to