(The following article appeared as a twopart series in the December 7 and 8 issues of the French Trotskyist daily Rouge. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.J
The radical nationalist movement Euzkadi ta Askatasuna (ETA—Basque Nation and Freedom) has claimed responsibility for an assassination attempt carried out November 27 in Pamplona against a chief of the armed police, Imaz Martinez.
This is only the latest in a long series of armed actions undertaken by the organization since the June legislative elections.
On October 10, ETA-Military claimed responsibility for an attack on the head of the provincial government in Guernica, Augusto Unceta, and the two Civil Guards protecting him. The next day there were ETA attacks on the Civil Guard motor pool in Pamplona.
On October 13, a truck driver known as a "stool pigeon" was the target of an attack carried out in broad daylight in Villabona, in which six persons were seriously injured. That same day, bombs went off in a Markina factory where police weapons were manufactured.
On October 31, the armed police barracks in Vitoria were bombed. On November 2, Jose Diaz, a municipal police sergeant in Irun, was "executed."
And the list goes on. It will get longer in the coming months, according to ETA which says it will not put a stop to its activities until it has "won freedom for Euzkadi and the fascist gangs have vanished."
The question on everyone's mind is, "Where is ETA headed?" All the Basque political organizations, including ETA- Political-Military, have condemned these actions for various reasons. The majority of the Basque people, who until recently were fervent supporters of ETA's actions, are now displaying rejection or lack of understanding of them.
The ETA-Military communiqué claiming responsibility for the Guernica attack was quite clear:
ETA believes that its action cannot destabilize democracy, for the simple reason that there is no democracy whatsoever in the Spanish state. We live under the same military dictatorship as before, but one with a smiling face... Before, mass demonstrations were illegal. Today they are tolerated, as long as they are limited to nothing more than a column of sheep obeying the shepherd and his dogs,! but the result is the same: zero.
This communiqué is an insult to the tens of thousands of workers and youth who have demonstrated in Euzkadi in the last few months.
Have these demonstrations really had "zero" results? Then who was it that freed the prisoners, won the legalization of political parties and the first few rights-ETA, with the help of its commando actions, or the workers through their mobilizations?
ETA's Contempt for Mass Struggles
This contempt for mass struggles is the most dangerous aspect of ETA's current evolution.
ETA-Political-Military condemned the Guernica attack, saying that it "in no way contributes to our people's defense, and only discredits what was the image and reality of ETA during its struggle against the dictatorship."
To understand the meaning of this criticism from ETA-Political-Military, which only a few weeks ago still advocated individual armed struggle, it is useful to review ETA's turbulent career.
The Record of the ETA
ETA arose in the 1960s as an outgrowth of the growing political radicalization among Basque youth and as a reaction to the quiescence of the traditional nationalist movement embodied by the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV).
ETA arose at a time when world attention was focused on national liberation struggles in the third world (first Algeria, then Cuba). In the decade of the 1960s, ETA played an increasingly important role in Euzkadi politics, partially filling the vacuum that resulted from the weakness of the mass movement.
The early stages of reorganization of the workers movement had an immediate impact on ETA. On the one hand, it declared its determination to defend the interests of the working class, and defined itself as a "socialist and revolutionary organization." On the other hand, the first major split was carried out by the Komunistak grouping, which was later to form the Communist Movement and which pushed mass struggles to the forefront.
In 1970, at ETA's Sixth Assembly, the majority of its members broke ideologically with nationalism and military activity. Two organizations came out of this assembly: ETA-V, which remained faithful to the precepts of the Fifth Assembly; and ETA-VI, which formed the LKI [Liga Komunista Iraultzaile] after fusing with the Spanish LCR [Liga Comunista spanish bek luga Comunista Revolucionaria-Revolutionary Communist League].
In that same year, the military trial of Izko and his comrades took place in Burgos. It set off the first overall political struggle against the Francoist dictatorship, and signaled the beginning of a new phase in the class struggle. From then on, it was the working class, both inside and outside Euzkadi, that took center stage.
ETA-V did not grasp this change in the situation. It continued to function in four area: armed actions, workers struggles, cultural and political movements. But the central axis remained that of armed actions. The heavy repression suffered by the organization as a result prevented it from regularizing the work it wanted to carry out in the mass movement.
It therefore underwent a new split with the Worker Front, which gave rise to the LAIA grouping. The endless debate over combining armed struggle with mass work led to ETA-V once again dividing into two currents in 1974: ETA-Military, a group devoted to armed actions, and ETA- Political-Military, which sought to combine the two.
A part of ETA gave rise to an organization called EIA (Party of the Basque Revolution), while the minority continued as ETA-Political-Military.
The most recent turn for the worse came this year, when a section of the members of ETA-Political-Military broke with the leadership and formed the Berezis Commandos under the leadership of Miguel Angel Apalategui. This group recently fused with ETA-Military.
At the same time, what was left of ETA-Political-Military announced that it was giving up the policy of imposing a "revolutionary tax" on Basque industrialists, and relegating armed struggle to a minor role in order to concentrate on mass work.
The initial conclusion that can be drawn from this review of the history of ETA and its splits is that a central aspect of its development has been this contradictory toward overcoming minority evolution armed actions in favor of political activity linked to the mass movement. All of the splits had this common denominator in one way or another. Each time a split occurred, it reopened the controversy over the objectively substitutionist policy of armed actions.
ETA-Military as it currently exists can therefore be characterized as the sector of the revolutionary nationalist movement that has proved incapable of analyzing and grasping the evolution of the class struggle and consequently of adapting its political activity to the new situation.
ETA's contributions to the class struggle have been distinct and contradictory. On the one hand, it has played a large role in the politicalization of the Basque people.
Euzkadi has experienced a much greater degree of repression in the last few years than the rest of Spain. The Basque people were quick to understand that behind the Civil Guard's submachine guns, behind the states of emergency and the banning of all manifestations of their culture, lay the Francoist dictatorship. The result was that the struggles of the workers and the popular masses were aimed squarely at the governmental authorities.
In terms of national oppression, ETA's influence has been an important factor in the awakening of consciousness. Its political and ideological break with bourgeois nationalism (represented by the PNV) in favor of revolutionary nationalism represented another progressive factor.
The radical methods of struggle used by ETA in its fight against the Francoist dictatorship broadly influenced large sectors of the working class, which in turn adopted equally radical methods of struggle-in particular, the use of general strikes and massive confrontations with the police.
The outcome of these three factors was the reduced capacity of the reformists to control the workers and mass movements, to the benefit of the organizations to the left of the PSOE (Spanish
Socialist
Workers Party) and the Communist Party. These organizations acquired real political significance. It cannot be denied that this played a positive role; otherwise, the mobilizations of the Basque people and their characteristics would be impossible to explain (a comparison with Catalonia or Madrid helps to clarify this).
The negative factors remain to be discussed
The policy of armed actions was and still is a means of substituting for the mass movement. This situation is now endangering ETA's very existence. But even during periods of dietatorship, revolutionary activity can never be "outside" the day-to-day struggles and level of consciousness of the workers or of the most advanced sectors of the working class.
Minority armed actions-when they are carried out by an organization that enjoys considerable mass support, as was the case with ETA-always have the negative ef fect of sowing illusions among the workers that forces exist outside their ranks capable of solving their own problems.
The reprisals carried out by ETA against the bosses of businesses where struggles were going on-including "executions"- are the most typical example of this danger. The highly paternalist role of "guardian angels" that ETA played on these occasions in no way helped strengthen the fighting ability and class consciousness of those workers in struggle.
Most of the time, the effect on the workers was actually retrogressive and divisive. After the execution in Guernica of Unceta, chairman of the Vizcaya provincial government and also boss of the Jypsa and Trebol firms, the workers in those plants, who had been involved in a struggle for many months, unanimously declared that this "outside" action had not helped them in any way.
ETA's nationalist ideology, aside from its positive contributions, also had negative effects. It is false to believe that national liberation of the Basque people, and the socialist revolution that will go hand in hand with it, can be brought about wholly within the boundaries of Euzkadi, independently of the class struggle in the rest of the country. Euzkadi, says ETA (with shades of HASI,' LAIA, and even EIA), is an independent framework for the class struggle.
However, it is clear that the victory of the socialist revolution is unimaginable outside the context of the Spanish state as a whole. It is not the government in Bilbao that must be destroyed, but the one in Madrid. It is utopian to think that the bourgeois state can be destroyed simply within the boundaries of Euzkadi, and this can have tragic consequences later on (remember Asturias in 1934).
As a matter of fact, the reason why ETA and the other revolutionary nationalist organizations have not drawn any serious practical conclusions from their strategic
2. HASI-Herriko Alderdi Sozialista Iraultzaliea (People's Revolutionary Socialist Party), founded in July through the fusion of various Basque nationalist-socialist currents.
MEMO
from:
Name
Street
City goal of socialist revolution is that doing so would call their own existence into question as parties organized only within Euzkadi and not in the rest of the Spanish state.
This is the question that the revolutionary nationalist movement will have to answer in the next period.
The June 15 elections opened up a new political situation. What kind of election campaign did ETA carry out at that time? A campaign of thirty-four armed actions (against television broadcasting antennas, railroad tracks, and police cars). At the same time, the Basque people were participating in the elections in large numbers and voting for the PNV and the PSOE.
The gulf between the ETA and the Basque people was gapingly apparent. It has continued to widen since then, especially after the recent elections. The fact that tens of thousands of persons-mostly very young and new to polities-shout at demonstrations, "ETA, the people are with you," does not mean that ETA has kept its reputation intact.
Nowadays, the great majority of the Basque people openly reject those armed actions, especially the "executions." ETA continues to characterize the Spanish regime as a "military dictatorship with a smiling face," at a time when the workers movement is nearly completely legal, when trade-union rights have been regained, when nearly fifty percent of the deputies in the Cortes belong to the anti-Franco opposition. This is irresponsible.
Right now, to the question "Where is ETA headed?" we are compelled to reply: If ETA continues its present political line, it will end its political career as an organization far removed from the reality of the class struggle, insensitive to political changes, peripheral to the workers and mass movements, and rejected by its own people.
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Notes
1. A play on words insulting to workers, since "dogs" (txakura in Basque) also means "cops."