[The arrest of a Corsican nationalist, Leonelli, and…]

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The arrest of a Corsican nationalist, Leonelli, and his subsequent confessions have led to the imprisonment of scores of nationalist militants in the island itself and in Marseilles.

This • police operation, masterminded by the French intelligence services, has created severe turmoil amongst the different opposition forces in the island.

Reactionary

As usual, all the reactionary newspapers-most prominent the Nice-based Nice Matin-have triggered a vicious witchhunt against Corsican nationalists, calling for reinforcements to be sent to an island already saturated with police squads, army units and special branch brigades.

The press has branded those nationalists who have confessed their involvement in the bombings-none of which has killed • anyone-as "terrorists" and "psychopathic killers"

At the same time, the "clans"-the traditionally powerful class of Corsican landowners and businessmen-have launched a campaign "protesting against violence" but whose real aim is two-fold.

Firstly the two main clans, Rucca Serra and Giaccobbi, acting under orders from the French ruling class will exploit every bombing to denounce the "autonomists" and the "antiFrench? elements.

And secondly they will try and minimise the impact of the economic recession on their followers and allies-the petty bourgeoisie, shopkeepers, hotel owners-whose illusions in the clans as protectors of their interests are rapidly decreasing.

As for the left parties-CP, SP and CPU (legal autonomists) '-their demands for the past decade have posed no real threat to French domination in the island.

Reforms

Their demands have merely been limited to puny reforms which they hoped the French ruling class would grant in order to whittle down any growing opposition.

On the contrary the French bourgeoisie in alliance with local capitalists has reacted arrogantly, dismissing every demand however minimal, formulated by the reformists.

Even under pressure from their own base those reformists and Stalinists are still steadfastly refusing to mobilise the working class and overthrow French domination.

Instead they have made semantic changes in their rhetoric and, for the first time, even dared use words like "autonomy"

But words like 'independence" will still be banned from their speeches and resolutions.

Their allies, the CPU, profess openly their allegiance to France and after their last congress in August, were warmly congratulated by the daily Le Monde for their "courageous stand'.

The only group to pose a threat to French domination in the island is the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica (FLNC).

Recruiting mainly among rural nationalists (i paesani) the Front enjoys support from the working class and the peasantry.

And it is for this reason that the French ruling class had been increasingly strengthening the forces of repression, precisely to sever that link between the Corsican population and the Despite a well-planned campaign of bombing and sabotage, the Front has achieved very little.

Their acts of violence against military or commercial targets have left the ruling class unscathed.

They have become mere routine operations, and don't even help the Front to score political gains.

Apparently in their communiques to the press or leaflets to the population the nationalists dont bother to explain the political significance of their acts.

Of course their main objective is the overthrow of French domination. But so far they have not claimed adherence to any political line.

Rouge, weekly paper of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) recently claimed to have received a copy of the Front's paper. Ribellu, where the front outlined programme and tasks.

They correctly demand the expropriation of all land belonging to French colonialists; but nevertheless they do not extend the agrarian reform to the land owned by local clan chiefs and businessmen.

The Front also stresses the need to build a society where all forms of exploitation would be eliminated.

This will remain an abstract formula without a full political programme of transitional demands.

Campaign

The Front aiso regularly greets "all brothers in prison" victims of French repressionbut without organising a political campaign for their release.

The solidarity organisations, grouping prisoners' families, have limited objectives and can only provide moral support for the prisoners.

Like its political opponents, the Stalinists and reformists, the Front uses dangerous concepts like "national unity"

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Second in a series of background articles by Don Flint on the left wing groupings currently engaged in the Last week's article looked at the general lines of policy of the Mass Revolutionary Coordination (CRM) formed on February 28, and its parallels with the Nicaraguan FSLN. This week attention is focussed on the Communist Party.

SOCIALIST PRESS, The principal forces of developed around and out of Stalinism.

Important elements were radicalised by the crisis of Christian Democracy in the late 60s and early 70s-but these were largely concentrated in the peasantry and student movement.

The leading cadres of the guerilla forces and mass organisations set up in the mid-70s were primarily dissidents from the Communist Party of El Salvador (PCS).

Since is establishment in 1930 the PCS has remained an unremarkable and stoically pro-Moscow Stalinist organisation.

But nearly 50 years, of illegality have prevented it from exploiting to the full its projected alliances with the 'national bourgeoisie' in order to 'develop the forces of production', institute bourgeois democracy and ease the tiny, super-exploited neo-colonial state into socialism on the back of "industrialisation'.

Nationalistic

The founder of the PCS, Agustin Farabundo Marti, is today celebrated for campaigning alongside Sandino in Nicaragua.

yet it is rarely, It ever, mentioned that Marti broke with Sandino over the 'merely nationalistic, and non-revolutionary nature' of his struggle against the US marines.

Marti was executed the following year after the disastrously-led 1932 insurrection, and the FPL guerillas have adopted. his name in their full title, evoking the 'interAfter a recent street riot Wednesday September 10th, struggles in El Salvador. nationalist example of his decision to join Sandino, rather than that in his criticism and subsequent break from Sandino's narrow nationalism.

Thus one of the few positive lessons yielded by the early Salvadorean communists has been cast aside and Marti's memory and myth utilised in much the same manner as is Sandino's In 1969 the PCS formed the Democratic National Union (UDN) and joined with the MNR and Christian Democrats in forming the National Opposition Union (UNO) in a fruitless effort to contest the elections that had been traditionally rigged by the army since it came to power in 1931.

The platform of UNO was for minimal reforms and 'greater democracy; it posed no threat to the ruling oligarchy and had nothing to offer the masses bar abject confusion, monstrous illusions, and cul-de-sac abstentionism from all polls except that in 1972.

By the time UNO had selfrighteously and indignantly withdrawn from the 1977 presidential poll, the alliance was already a dead duck and the PCS in tatters as a result of a series of splits.

The first of these, in 1969, resulted from the party's open support for the military invasion of Honduras which came to be known as the 'Football War' but in fact stemmed from the overspill of large numbers of Salvador's • many .. migrant workers and nationalistic rivalry within the Central American Common Market.

However, the loss of many of its most experienced cadre did not deter the CP from pursuing its popular front strategy of seeking alliances with the capitalist class.

Enriched

As late as the Spring of 1979 it celebrated the tenth anniversary of the founding of UNO as 'enriching the popular movement' with its programme that "voiced the democratic aspirations and structural changes required by the great majority of the people, grouped them behind it, and forced a polarisation in the electoral confrontation. " (EI PCS Celebro Su Septimo Congreso, May 1979 p.3)

In case the lessons of this strategy were lost on its supporters the Central Committee spelt Salvador poor: no common them out explicitly "The bourgeois democratic path to solving the political crisis has today to be an inseparable part of substantial socio economic reforms ..? (ibid)

The practical consequence of such positions was the call for "anti-fascist unity" for 'the removal of the fascists from the government' (ie fascist individuals from the government, not the government itselt) (PUs leatlet, 18 June 1979 p.4)

This required the "steadfast struggle of the workers, of the people in general, of all democratic sectors, led calmly (serenamento) and in unity, without sectarianism or adventurism, to erect the solid barrier capable of stopping the fascists. (PCS leaflet, 1 May 1978 P4.)

It was therefore, perfectly logical for the CP to enter the colonels junta in October 1979 taking five cabinet positions (ministries of labour, education, economy and the presidency).

The experience was totally disastrous. even in the PCS' nwn UFT AL terms. Its political credibility crumbled as government troops slaughtered hundreds of workers and peasants with the implicit stamp of approval of the 'party of world proletarian revolution' and in the cause of 'greater democracy'.

CP ministers were kidnapped and held hostage by striking workers, and in the face of total disintegration, the PCS scurried out of government along with the social democrats early in January 1980.

By the end of the month, still operating under the name of the UDN, the party had joined the Mass Revolutionary Co-ordination (CRM) announcing its entry with the ominous headline: "unstoppable advance of Popular Unity."

Marriage The CRM was described the "first step in the construction of a broad front of popular forces against the military dictatorship ... which demonstrates the maturity attained by the revolutionary organisations and by the popular movement in general". (Voz Popular, 122 21 January The role of the CP .as marriage broker for the popular front is in itself unsurprising but its principal achievement has been to overcome the distrust and outright opposition of the 'revolutionary left'.

It is reported that within the CRM the CP is still treated as rightist despite the fact that its leading light, Jorge Shafik Handel, has gained a place on the Unified Revolutionary Leadership (DRU)-the centralised guerilla command, ostensibly the radical arm of the alliance (ie roughly analogous to the Nicaraguan FSLN high command compared to the broad political front).

The right wing orientation is borne out in the PCS' desperate search for international allies which almost outstrips the bourgeois effort in this quarter, declaring that it is "necessary to gain the friendship and aid" of the right wing Venezuelan regime (which actively supports and arms the junta) and "at least get the benevolent neutralism of the Costa Ricán government . •. despite the anti communist attitude of President Carazo." (UDN leaflet undated, Spring 1980).

of right-wing Sitting on the DRU with Shafik is Salvador • Cayetana Carpio ('Marcial"), who • is Commander of the Popular Liberation Front (FPL). and a leading member of the Popular Revolutionary Block (BPR), and one of the principal figureheads of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR).

Veteran

Cayetano, a man in his 60s, is a veteran militant, a union leader of many years standing and, until 1970, secretary general of the PCS.

It was Cayetano who led the split in 1980 to form the FPL in 1971 and the BPR in 1975.

The critiques of the PCS made by these forces ostensibly go beyond mere guerillaism and therefore deserve some scrutiny.

In next week's Socialist Press we will examine them in some detail.

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SOCIALIST PRESS, CUT ARMS Wednesday September 10th, 1980

----- pull-quotes -----

the left in El Salvador, unlike those in Nicaragua,