Spain Crisis of Working Class

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A recent survey of (less than 100 known illegal peps, parties and janisations.

Of these well over half claimed be socialist or workers' parties. ny of these "parties" are no than tiny groups of *lectuals; but • significant aber of them are organisations the working class and its allies, it up during years oi repression, which militant workers nave ght tenacious struggles for their ac nguis. The clandestinity which fascist pression has forced on any kers' organisation has stamped if on the character of the ement.

Many organisations have been all and sometimes restricted to a rticular area or town because bpaganda and communication has en difficult. Even the major tional tendencies in the labour svement tend to have numerous, minally autonomous, regional ganisations, though this is also rily because of Spain's strong ternal nationalisms, such as that 'Euskadi and Catalonia which ith had autonomy during the public in the 1930s.

'AUTONOMY' | The best-known example of an ¡tonomous' regional party is the nified. Socialist Party of Catalonia SUC); the 'autonomy' of this immunist party is shown-up for a rce by the fact that members of • Central Committee have been cently expelled simply on the structions of Santiago Carillo, the itional secretary of the Spanish Clandestinity has also tended to eate divisions within the aderships of parties between tiled leaders end those operating i Spain. ¡ This is most true of the Socialist arty (PSOE) where the old adership under Rodolfo Llopis are ill in exile, calling themselves the listoric section' of the party.

They continue to issue tatements in its name, and these he subsequently disowned by the lew leadership in Spain under Felipe Gonzalez, who was elected Secretary-General 1974.

The party which has best survived the years of repression and clandestinity is of course the Spanish CP which is by far the largest of Spain's workers' parties.

This is true even if its claims to have about 100,000 members and a larger number of close sympathisers are exaggerated.

Internationally the Spanish CP has strongly supported the 'historic compromise with the bourgeoisie and the French CPs abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

And in Spain the party has developed a consistent policy of class collaboration. It advocates the restriction of the objectives of the working class to bourgeois democracy 'like the rest of Western Europe' COALITION It advocates the establishment of coalition provisional government to prepare the way for national elections. In such a coalition it is prepared to cooperate not only with the bourgeois opposition but also with past and even present ministers of the Franco regime.

For some years the CP has been the dominant political force in the Workers Commissions, Spain's illegal trade unions which were first established in the 1960s.

The party is, however, very tar from having complete control of the Commissions. The last few months of major working class offensive has in many areas weakened the CP's control of the Commissions as workers have seen the party systematically attempt to limit and control their activity.

In some areas where the CP has lost control of the Commissions it has set up rival commissions under its own dominance. Under pressure from the rank and file however the CP has recently been forced to abandon its previous policy of complete liquidation of the Commissions into the state 'trade unions' (CNS).

This was to have completed the 'takeover' of the state union' apparatus by the workers begun last Mass demonstration in Spain to mark the funeral in the Basque region shot down by fascist police.

year when 'united democratic' candidates, supported by the CP most other political tendencies it the workers' movement, won nearly all the local offices of these 'unions' In the recent struggles in Spain the almost universal experience has been that, even where the CP has used the CNS locally to nominally call a strike or demonstration, workers have looked for organisation to independent organisations in the first instance the relatively bureaucratic Workers' Commissions but increasingly to elected strike committees whose growth has been very rapid.

The CP has been turning continuous somersaults in its attempts not to get left behind by the mass struggle.

At the political level the CP's chosen instrument of class collaborationism has been the Democratic Junta, an umbrella organisation through which the CP has attempted to unite all the forces of the "democratic opposition' The objective of the Junta has been for a "democratic break" as opposed to gradual democratic reforms.

But the vast distance between the "democratic break" and socialist policy is well illustrated by the following extract from a pamphlet recently distributed to members of the army by the Madrid Region Democratic Junta:

"The Democratic Junta, and the opposition in general have long ago overcome the drama of our war... Those whom the System still calls "victors" and "vanquished" have for a long time lived and struggled together within our ranks without of workers conference Southern European Communist Parties, Felipe Gonzalez put it this way:

"The balance of power between different social classes in our country, clearly in favour of the industrial and financial right wing, strengthened also by the ultra-right, can be moditied in the course of events which the dynamic of political shange from dictatorship to democracy ...

Ubviously we do not attempt to construct in Spain a common programme of the left [!], but to arrive within the framework of, democratic freedoms where every political force will see what its influence is among the people..."

Such deference to the power of the right and such hostility to the establishment of an alliance of workers' parties, is one of the reasons why the PSOE has in the last few months been permitted by the fascist regime to hold large widely advertised public meetings addressed by Gonzalez.

The PSOE, which probably has in the region of 10,000 members, is far from united on the present line put by Gonzalez (adopted at the 13th Congress in 1974).

There is a small right-wing, allied to the historic section of the party which opposes all forms of alliance with the CP.

There is a larger 'left' opposition which to some extent opposes the class collaborationist line in Spain and the great weight which the Gonzalez leadership places on the PSOE's membership • of the 2nd International - the "international"

which contains such reactionaries as Wilson, Germany's Schmidt and Israel's Golda Meir.

The left' line is allied to the position of the youth sections of the party, the Juventud Socialista (JS).

At its 6th Congress in 1975 the JS passed a resolution opposing inter-class alliances and advocating instead a Common Anticapitalist Front and a revolutionary general strike to bring down the dictatorship.

The resolution, however, accepts the notion of the "democratic break' and by implication, therefore, it accepts the possibility of a bourgeois democratic phase of the revolution even though it advocates putting 'anti-capitalist programmatic points' within the fight for the democratic break.

These resolutions, while they invoke bitter hostility from the PSOE leadership are a long way from being a revolutionary programme and still do not represent a qualitative break with the political methodology of the CP or the PSOE:

But they are symptomatic of the growing dissatisfaction within the Tank and file of the workers' parties with abject class-collaborationist positions of the The same dissatisfaction has helped build the strength of several other parties which claim to represent a revolutionary alternative to the CP and PSOE and which will be examined in a later article.

BETTLE FORE

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position politics made by a drid evening paper, listed