[We have translated the following editorial trom the first issue in 1971, No. 47, o1 Quatrieme Internationale.)
Since the big strike wave of 1962, the most important Spain has experienced since the end of the civil war, the Francoist regime has undergone a long period of chronic crisis. Although marked from time to time by abrupt explosions, this crisis has, in general, been contained within an evolutionary, nonrevolutionary framework. Francoist bonapartism maintained itself owing to an equilibrium of forces. The traditional conservative elements were too weak to halt this evolutionary process but still too strong to fall prey to inner decay or to passively abdicate. The mass movement was too strong to be suppressed, but too weak to overthrow the dietatorship spontaneously, without effective revolutionary organization.
Behind this equilibrium of political forces loomed the historic crisis of social classes. The bourgeoisie is too weak to permit a new legal expansion of the workers movement in a framework even of decadent bourgeois democracy -to say nothing of classical bourgeois democracy. The new generations of workers, no longer weighed down by the defeat of 1937- 39 and the long period of fascist terror during and after it, are not yet battle-hardened enough and experienced enough, and, above all, do not have an effective enough leadership to spike a well-oiled repressive apparatus - no matter how backward this apparatus may seem in comparison with the ones in France, the United States, or other advanced imperialist countries. Franco's "genius," "mastery of the art of governing," and "good luck," which inspire the admiration of so many superficial commentators, are merely manifestations of this equilibrium.
The equilibrium is unstable, undermined by the evolutionary development itself, which is constantly and 134
consistently changing the relationship of forces in one direction only -toward structurally weakening the traditional reactionary forces, whose strength made it possible to unleash the military-fascist coup d'etat of July 1936; structurally reinforcing the working class, the sole consistent and effective foe of the Francoist dictatorship.
The evolutionary development of recent years has undoubtedly delayed the revolution. Economic growth has created a margin, however narrow, for improving the standard of living. But, above all, this development has fostered illusions about a more or less irreversible "liberalization" of the regime, illusions which only experience, that is, time, could wipe out. But this same evolutionary development has also prepared the ground for a revolution that will be more deepgoing and thorough. The revolution will cut the more deeply insofar as this evolutionary process is gradually clearing away all intermediary "solutions," more and more directly counterposing the two great antagonistic social forces emerging from the transformation of old Spain- the big bourgeoisie on one side and the proletariat on the other.
The year 1970 has been a turning point in this process in more than one respect. For the first time since 1936 a wave of mass political strikes has swepte ver he penitel has swept over the peninsula. For the urban petty bourgeoisie has lined up en masse on the side of the proletariat. For the first time since 1936, the shift in the relationship of class forces has shaken the stability of the political forces on which the dictatorship rests, producing an internal crisis of the regime.
It is too early to predict the outcome of this latest intensification of the crisis, although the commutation of the sentences of the six Burgos defendants is an indication. However, it seems no matter how the regime evolves, whether in the direction of "stiffening" the repression, increased
"liberalization," or a combination of the two-or dancing back and forth between the two poles of the Francoist policy - that such development now works to promote an increasing politicalization of the masses, that is, in favor of the revolutionary overthrow of the dictatorship. In this sense, we can correctly speak of the twilight of Francoism, Francoism with or without Franco.
The chronic crisis the Francoist regime has experienced since the welling up of the strike wave in 1962 reflects the underlying contradictions of Spanish capitalism, magnified by the specific features of a slowly decaying military-bonapartist dictatorship.
The economic expansion, which has been and remains real, is clearly marginal with respect to the industrialized imperialist countries, that is, it is the product of an imported "prosperity." It tends to reproduce in an exaggerated way all the cyclical movements, however minor, of the international imperialist economy and especially the European imperialist economy.
Opening up the Spanish market to commodities from the rest of the capitalist countries is the precondition for "modernizing" Spanish capitalism and integrating it increasingly into the economy of capitalist Europe. But as a result, the native capitalists are continually confronted with competitors who produce better quality goods at lower prices.
Spain's balance of trade is therefore chronically in the red. This deficit feeds inflation, as it is fed by it. From the structural standpoint, the deficit is covered by income from tourists and the repatriation of the wages of Spanish emigrant workers, as well as by American financial aid (in exchange for military bases) and importing foreign capital.
The growth of the Spanish capitalist economy has therefore been given a peculiar spasmodic form. Every phase of expansionist fever in the domestic economy (generally no more than a year in duration) produces inflation and an increased deficit in the balance of trade. Every cyclical downturn of the international imperialist economy immediately reduces the external resources needed to restore the equilibrium. Secondly, every worsening of the balance-of-payments situation, which results from the interaction of these two fundamental forces obliges the Francoist regime to tighten the screws and choke off the expansion by a deflationist policy. But since such a policy cannot help but aggravate social tensions, expansion is "resumed" as soon as there is the slightest reduction in the balance-ofpayments deficit, thereby opening a new cycle of spasmodic development.
The reasons for this spasmodic development are not conjunctural but structural: the persistent weakness of Spanish capitalist industry relative to its foreign competitors, and the intensity of domestic social tensions. The first factor rules out long-term expansion without aggravating the balanceof-trade situation; the second rules out long-term deflation without risking an explosion in the country.
It is significant that in its desperate search for markets that the more developed capitalist powers will not try to take away, Spanish capitalism - which came to the phase of technological revolution too late - must turn toward the Arab countries, the West African countries, and ... Poland (thus Franco and Gomulka exchanged favors all through 1969 and 1970, with the Polish bureaucracy not hesitating to break the Asturian miners' strike by delivering coal to Spain). That is, the perspectives opening up for Spanish capitalism on the big world markets are less than uninspiring. In 1969 the Common Market countries imported $300,000,000 worth of food products and only $260,000,000 worth of manufactured products from Spain! To Spain, these countries exported $1,175,000,000 worth of manufactured goods and $55,000,000 worth of food products.
There is an obvious interlocking between this fundamental economic contradiction of Spanish capitalism and its acute social contradictions. That is, the economy has been too backward and too unstable to create suf- February 15, 1971
ficient margins of maneuver for reforms of the neocapitalist type.
Of course, with the undeniable economic growth of the decade just ended, the standard of living of the Spanish workers and toiling masses has risen somewhat. But it has not risen sufficiently to reduce two fundamental disparities - the gap between the real incomes of the different parts of Spain, and between Spanish real wages and real wages in the rest of capitalist Europe.
In 1969 the Banco Español de Credito published an annual report on the Spanish market which contained numerous invaluable indications of the extremely uneven development among the different provinces and regions of Spain. The difference in the level of development between the richest regions (the Balearic Islands, Catalonia, and the Basque country) and the poorest regions (Ronda in Andalusia, Badajoz, and Jaen) is estimated at 1,000 percent. The scale of "coefficients of active wealth" goes from 16,600 for Madrid to 28 for Ayamonte (in the province of Huelva)! Per capita buying power in the poorest provinces barely equals 15 percent of that in the richest ones.
Massive emigration has partially concealed the extreme underemployment and poverty underlying these figures. But every deflationist thrust, every slowdown in expansion, every reflux of emigrants resulting from a recession or rise in unemployment abroad immediately makes this underemployment explosive.
On the other hand, to realize the enormous disparity that persists between Spanish wages and those in the rest of Europe, we need only note that the Spanish council of ministers has set the new minimum wage at 120 pesetas a day (69.8 pesetas equal US$1], or 3,000 pesetas a month, and that this [monthly] sum is equivalent to 230 French francs, or US$42. As early as 1962, the revolutionists demanded a minimum wage of 250 pesetas a day; today they are demanding a minimum daily wage of 200 pesetas.
This disparity between the Spanish and European wage rates is the expression at once of underemployment (of the industrial reserve army) and the dictatorship (the absence of real mass trade unions capable of forcing the sale of labor-power at its value).
In exporting its unemployed, transforming them into a subproletariat and manual-labor force in other European capitalist economies, Spanish capitalism has created a temporary cushion. But as the emigrants return home, bringing with them needs and tastes acquired abroad, as they strive to get these incorporated into the minimum living standard, that is, into the value of labor-power in Spain, this cushion will no longer operate. The emigration of workers will be transformed into a source of conflagration.
The interlocking of the economic and social contradictions of Spanish capitalism has been the basis of the long life of the Francoist dictatorship. This pattern has ruled out any chance of the dictatorship actually transforming itself even into a "strong state" of the Gaullist type, to say nothing of a bourgeois "democracy."
The revival of mass militancy has made possible an incessant struggle for immediate demands. The essential function of the dictatorship has been to prevent any linkup or spread of these struggles, which would be fatal for this weak capitalist system. In the last analysis, so long as the combativity of the masses continues to mount, the Spanish bourgeoisie has no realistic prospects for survival except in the context of a dictatorship.
Bourgeois "liberals," Social Democrats, and reformists of every stripe - with the Spanish CP heading the pack -are of course trying to convince the ruling class that the contrary is true. But time and time again the bourgeoisie shows that it understands its own interests better than do its friendly advisers. The events since 1969, that is, since the declaration of the state of emergency, have been a very clear demonstration of this.
In recent years Francoist policy has generally been represented as wavering between two wings - Falangism of either the old (Solis) or new style (Fraga); and the Opus Dei technocratic, neocapitalist, "liberalizing" and "European" wing personified by the present planning minister Lopez Rodo and the minister of foreign affairs Lopez Bravo.
The September 1969 cabinet shakeup, the designation of Prince Juan Carlos as Franco's successor, and the commutation of the death sentences of the six Burgos defendants have been depicted as a victory of the "liberal" wing over the Falangists. The declaration of the state of siege in 1969 and the street demonstrations in support of Franco after the sentencing in the Burgos trial have been represented as the revenge of the latter. The arbitrator's role that Franco has played, balancing off these two tendencies against each other for more than ten years, is supposed to have been taken over by the army. After the transformation of the fascist dictatorship into a bonapartist one, we were supposed to see it becoming a military dictatorship pure and simple (with or without a new coup d'etat).
This analysis obviously rests on real facts. The Falangist bureaucracy has seen its power decline constantly ever since the country emerged from its isolation; since the state industrial sector - which could flourish only under conditions of autarky and extreme protectionism - has been put on short rations; since foreign capital has pervaded the peninsula and Spain has been ruled in fact by a coalition of the big Spanish financial interests increasingly associated with the big international capitalist monopolies. That this coalition of interests finds itself more at home with the embezzling technocrats of Opus Dei than with the demagogic intriguers or brainless fascists of the Falange is obvious.
But this is only one aspect of the complex reality of capitalist Spain today. From another standpoint, the chiefs of Opus Dei and the financial groups are no less anxious than the heads of the army, the police, and the Falange to see order maintained at any price. After all, they have a lot more to lose in the event of a triumph of "subversion." They possess infinitely greater wealth and have proven themselves in a totally different class as specialists in graft and influence-peddling (e.g., the Matesa affair!) than the petty chiselers of the fascist hierarchy. Thus, over and above the real differences separating the two wings of Francoism, they have 136
a common interest-to prevent a social revolution and contain a mass movement threatening to become explosive.
In a period of calm, divergent points of view can appear between the two wings on the most suitable tactic to use to gain this end. The one wing advocates material concessions, semilegalization of real unions, meeting material demands that tend to co-opt the workers into the system so as better to suppress political demands and the politicalization process. The other wing does not oppose such concessions; sometimes it even calls for more than the other side. But it objects to anything permitting independent activity by the masses, even on the tradeunion reformist level.
But as soon as the activity of the masses steps up, the "struggle against subversion" logically shifts the center of gravity in the government toward the repressive wing. This was the case at the time of the first state of emergency proclamation in 1969. The same was true at the beginning of the agitation against the Burgos trial. What in certain aspects of the Spanish political situation seems to be two factions in the government also represents two combined forms used by the big monopolies in exercising power, alternating according to the trend in the relationship of forces.
In this sense, an open military dictatorship, a military coup d'etat (a "new 1936"), would not constitute an immediate solution for the contradictions besetting the Spanish bourgeoisie. In 1936 the problem was to use terror to smash a mass revolutionary movement which could strike for power. Even at that time, the undertaking was risky; it almost precipitated what it was designed to avoid. This attempt succeeded in fact only because of the bankruptcy and betrayal of the traditional working-class organizations. Today the problem is how to assure accelerated industrialization and at the same time prevent the proletariat, constantly more numerous, younger, and more combative, from fighting for wages and rights that Spanish capitalism is incapable of granting.
In this context, dismantling the dictatorship, that is, giving the workers more freedom to struggle, is no more effective than tightening up the repression. Clandestine struggle is scarcely easier to canalize and contain than legal or semilegal struggle - the events of the last two years testify to this! - and repression in itself is incapable of preventing such combat. Open military dictatorship, even combined with demagogic social measures, offers no way out of the impasse. Any comparison with the Greece of the colonels is out of place. First of all, the weight of the working class is infinitely greater in Spanish society than in the Greek. Secondly, the dictatorship was installed in Greece after a period of increasing demobilization and demoralization of the masses. But in Spain the mass movement is expanding vigorously.
An additional factor supports the conclusion that the internal crisis of the dictatorship in recent weeks represents an extremely grave threat to the survival of Francoism. It is the fact that while the army attempted to play a different game than the government-for the first time since the establishment of the dictatorship - the game was by no means all of one piece. In fact, many signs indicate that the army high command was less disturbed by the worker and student street demonstrations than by the impact of the Burgos trials on the military itself. The camarilla of superior officers split between supporters of strong measures, supporters of clemency, and cliques irritated at the idea that the army had been made into a scapegoat by the Opus Dei ministers for the difficulties of the dictatorship.
Information coming out of Spain on reform and oppositionist movements in the ranks — including in the Burgos garrison itself-indicates that the movement of challenge is growing among the soldiers as well, bringing them into conflict with their officers.
Of course, it is at times when this challenging penetrates into the army that the most reactionary and stubborn officers always lose their heads and are most tempted to strike. But where can they strike and at whom? In view of the growing politicaliza: tion of the mass movement, which astounds the clandestine reformist leadership as much as the foreign journalists, and considering the going over en masse of the middle classes (e.g., the merchants in Barcelona, Bilbao, and other places) to the side of the "challengers," it is probable that any stroke of force would increase the fissuring of the army rather than stop it.
The Spanish vanguard has been barely touched by the virus of constitutionalist and electoralist illusions which paralyzed the Brazilian masses in 1964 and the Greek masses in 1967. There is little risk that an escalation of repression will catch them unprepared. In fact, hasn't such a step-up already been tried with the declaration of the state of emergency in early 1969? Any hopeful super-Francos must be thinking that this did nothing to alter the immediate dilemma that Spanish capitalism must face. And if they are not, events can be counted on to bring this fact to their attention still more forcefully!
I1I
The crucial fact of 1970 in the history of the Francoist dictatorship is, in truth, the failure of the steppedup repression inaugurated by the state of emergency proclamation. Less than two years after this declaration, in the second half of 1970, Francoist Spain had the largest number of strikin its entire history. And since the preparations began for the Burgos trials, these strikes have more and more clearly taken a political turn.
It would obviously be a grave underestimation of the weaknesses of the Spanish workers movement to claim that the state of emergency had no effect. It enabled the dictatorship to strike hard blows against the worker and student organizations, which felt them all the more because these formations were semilegal (the national network of workers' commissions animated by the CP comes to mind first) or too weak organizationally (here one thinks of a whole series of young far-left groups composed primarily of students). The workers and revolutionary movement paid dearly in 1969 for the reformist and "liberalizing" illusions of the former and lack of seriousness of the latter with February 15, 1971
respect to organization and the rules of clandestine work.
The dismantling of the workers' commissions, the arrests of many activists, and the disintegration of some "leftist" groups undoubtedly blocked the expansion of the mass movement in 1969. As a result, it became a banner year for Spanish capitalism in both the economic and social spheres. But the 1969 boom itself promoted a revival of workers struggles. Fundamentally, the working class was neither defeated nor demoralized by the state of emergency. A phase of regroupment had barely ended when new strikes erupted, sometimes better organized than before, and which did not fall into the snare of semilegality within the state unions.
Moreover, while the severe repression in 1969 momentarily increased the weight of the CP -the strongest and best diversified of the far-left groups and therefore the best able to withstand selective repression - it also speeded up the formation of a more battle-tested revolutionary vanguard which took the rules of clandestine work seriously and strove to build organizations better protected against the successive waves of arrests.
In this sense we are justified in speaking of the failure of the repressive policy applied from the beginning of 1969 to September of that year. The historic result of this attempt has been the rise of increasingly political struggles that has marked the second half of 1970. In the course of this upsurge, for the first time, the struggle against the repression, for the release of the political prisoners, and against the parody of justice in Burgos has moved ahead even of the struggle for better pay which is so necessary and so acute because of the living conditions of the Spanish proletariat. And this has occurred at a time when the economy has again been moving toward a recession.
Events then have taken care of deflating the reformist and "liberalizing" balloons better than the propaganda of the revolutionists could. Every attempt to divert the workers struggle toward purely trade-unionist forms of action and organization, in expectation that changes at the top of the dictatorship would lead to its dismantling, has proved to be a criminal and suicidal policy. Life has taught the Spanish workers to link economic demands closely together with political and democratic ones, and to develop clandestine organizations for this purpose.
The Francoist dictatorship cannot be transformed into bourgeois democracy through "mass pressure." It must be overthrown by the direct revolutionary action of the masses. And while this revolutionary assault on the state may very well begin with a struggle for the most elementary democratic and economic demands, it will inevitably be transformed into a process of permanent revolution which will put on the agenda not consolidating some constitutional monarchy or liberal republic, but creating a socialist democracy of workers councils, of soviets. The big difference from 1931-36 is that the relationship of social forces in Spain and Europe is infinitely more favorable to the victory of such a proletarian socialist revolution today than it was thirty-five years ago.
But despite a less favorable relationship of forces, the victory of this revolution was perfectly possible in 1936, if a revolutionary leadership had consolidated itself and been recognized by the Spanish proletariat. And, while the more favorable relationship of forces today will no doubt assure a more prolonged period of hard-fought struggles, it will not by itself guarantee a revolutionary victory. As before, the factor of leadership, of a revolutionary party, remains absolutely decisive. This is what must be understood by the young revolutionists emerging from tumultuous weeding-out process a over the decade just concluded. They must devote all their efforts to surmounting this obstacle.
Building the revolutionary party in Spain today means concretely, on the programmatic level, waging an extremely rigorous struggle against all
Menshevik, neo-Menshevik, the Khrushchevite, and not a few Maoist and left Social Democrat deformations concerning the nature of the Spanish revolution that is in preparation. It means tirelessly educating the workers vanguard to prepare for the self-organization of the masses in committees and councils, first as organs of dual power and then as organs of struggle for workers power.
On the strategic level, building the revolutionary party means giving the organizational question the key importance it deserves today. It means tirelessly building a disciplined organization of the Leninist type, capable of withstanding the blows of repression, of centralizing the experiences of struggles at the national level, and gradually of centralizing the struggles themselves. It means building a party capable of distilling from these experiences and from a scientific analysis of Spanish capitalism a program of transitional demands capable of mobilizing the masses for the overthrow of the dictatorship and capitalism.
On the level of general orientation, building the revolutionary party requires advocating forms of struggles that foil all reformist maneuvers and enable a broadening vanguard to learn the practical lessons of revolutionary combat.
On the tactical level, carrying out this task means concretely gaining experience in using the best-formulated slogans, slogans that draw the maximum number of workers and students into independent class struggle. It means gaining practice in applying the united-front tactic, which makes it possible to unite all the workers in struggle without the revolutionists striking their colors, hiding their goals, or camouflaging their program. It also means understanding the proper place in these tactics of mass struggle that must be accorded to democratic and national demands, as the events of November-December 1970 confirm. At the same time, building the revolutionary party requires understanding the proper place that the development of forms and techniques of mass self-defense occupies in mobilizing against a cruel and implacable dictatorship.
This task is possible only on the basis of the accumulated theoretical and practical capital of the revolutionary workers movement in Spain and worldwide. The revolutionary party that will be built will be the Spanish section of the Fourth International.
December 31, 1970.