Catalan CP breaks from 'Eurocommunism

Scan page 3

By 424 votes to 359 the delegates to the Congress of the semni-autonomous Catalan Communist Party (the PSUC-United Socialist Party of Catalonia) have produced a new crisis in Western European Stalinism.

By that margin they • abandoned on January 6 the "Eurocommunist" line developed' in the party by the allies of Sanțiago Carrillo (Secretary General of the Spanish CP).

Resigned

They have substituted a hard line pro-Soviet position which was immediately condemned by special meeting of the executive of the Spanish CP.

But by then the old Eurocommunist leaders-Lopez calmundo, Anton Gutierrez and Sole Tura-had resignea from the leadership and been replaced by pro-Soviet leaders who have begun a purge of the This bitter blow to the Carrillo group has been to a great extent of their own doing.

They have engaged in the most abject collaboration with the monarchy and the anti-working class, policies of the Suarez government.

Many of the rank and file PSUC delegates were voting not so much for a pro-Soviet orientation as against Carrillo's cringing class collaboration and to some extent also against the monarchy.

One resolution called for an autonomous Catalonia in a Spanish republic.

The Eurocommunists' successors do not offer, any more thán Moscow does, an alternative pro-working class But for the time being they have been able to capitalise on rank and file disillusion.

This disillusion is expressed in the declining party membership (reported nearly halved from its peak of 200,000 three years ago); in the financial collapse last year of the CP's dally newspaper Mundo Ubrero; and in another struggle within the leadership against Carrillo.

The party's economist Ramon Tamames is leading a faction demanding less power concentrated in the hands of the Secretary-General.

Carrillo played a crucial role in exercising control over the working class and holding back its revolutionary impulse in the crucial years after Franco's death.

His colleagues now obviously feel that he has become a less effective counter-revolutionarv.

Although he has been badly hurt by these events, it would be premature to pronounce the political death of such an experienced and wily manoeuvrer.

The decline of the influence of, the CP nationally was confirmed last week bv the results of the second nationwide trade union elections since the death of Franco.

The elections are held under the official direction of the State.

And the official Ministry of Labour results (contested by the CP-dominated Workers Commissions) show the Workers Commissions getting 30% of the elected delegates compared with 34% in 1978 The Socialist Party's union the UGT (General Workers Union) got 29% as against 21% last time, The Catholic USO raised its share from 3% to 9% largely thanks to support from the Suarez government.

But unfortunately for them this vote is still below the 10% needed. for USO to participate in state-wide collective bargaining.

Carrillo

Scan page 4

SOCIALI: IT PRESS, Wednesday 4 February 1980 Trotsky: fought Third Period sectarianism Stalinists described his New Deal as 'fa JACK JOHNSON takes up.an important discussion on the character of the military junta which rode to power in Turkey last September.

Two There is only one method for it and that is directly opposing the pressure of the proletariat-the moment it weakens-