[In the early days of the Spanish election…]

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In the early days of the Spanish election campaign Santiago Carrillo, General Secretary of the Spanish Communist Party, published a now notorious book called 'Eurocommunism and the State' The main themes of the book were two: first an attempt to justify the form of class collaboration carried out by the Spanish, French and Italian Communist Parties; and second, as part ol Carrillo's efforts to convince the bourgeoisie of his sincere intentions an attack on the Soviet Communist Party, especially on political repres sion in the Soviet Union.

MOSCOW

The book prompted a virulent rejoinder from the Soviet bureaucracy in the form of a review of the book in the international foreign affairs journal New Times, published in Moscow.

The review attacks Carrillo personally as "consciously anti-Soviet" and for putting forward an interpretation of "Eurocommunism" 'which responds exclusively to the interests of imperialism and the forces of aggression and reaction.' Carrillo himself responded to this attack with a number of press statements elaborating his view that the Soviet state:

• if it is not exactly bourgeois is certainly not one where the organised workers are the ruling class."

Saying also that if he had been in the position of the Czechoslovak Communist Party leaders in 1968 he would have ordered his followers to fire on Soviet troops.

Conflict between Carrillo and the Soviet leadership is nothing new.

EXPELLED

In 1968 a group inside the leadership of the Spanish CP was expelled for refusing to condemn the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and were later supported by the Soviet leaders in their attempt which turned out a disastrous failure, to form an alternative Communist Party in Spain.

This new quarrel, however, has stirred up a hornet's nest among the Communist Parties of Western and cut support from some parties.

In Western Europe, the Soviet Union was supported by the Danish Austrian, Greek (exterior) and Portuguese parties.

Alvaro Cunhal, Portuguese CP secretary, expressed his "serious doubts about Santiago Carrillo's way of thinking."

DOUBTS

In Eastern European parties, however, there were evidently serious doubts about the attack on Carrillo.

Only the Czechoslovakian party gave unambiguous backing to the position of New Times.

ts party newspaper «laying, Rude ravo, accused Carrillo of with visible pleasure, the cuckoo's egg of Eurocommunism" in the nest of the world communist movement.

But the Fast German, Romanian and Polish CPs have continued to maintain an embarassed silence on the question of "Eurocommunis and Hungarian CP leader Janos Kadar has expressed his scarcely-veiled support for it.

He stated a few weeks ago that "Eurocommunism" was "completely natural"

"DUTY"

It was "not only the right but the duty" of all parties to find their own road to socialism:

"With or without the dictatorship of the proletariat, with a pluralist or other form of socialism, 1 only want them to open up the road to socialism for their people as quickly as possible."

Carrillo was strongly defended against the Soviet attack by the paper of the Yugosiav CP, while the Italian CP was a good deal more ready to condemn the "unacceptable" tone of the New Times review than to support the precise formulations in Carrillo's book.

The Bitish and French parties have taken a similar line. The French CP daily L 'Humanite wrote on July 7:

"Aside from his book, of which it is perfectly possible to criticise certain chapters without stooping to hostility, the secretary general of a Communist Party was directly aimed at and disputed with by a this. And the author of the New Times article worsens his case by trying to dissociate from a party its secretary-general.

That is an inadmissible procedure. This is not the way to encourage the necessary debate within the world communist movement."

It would be wrong to see the "Carrillo affair" as mere hot-air.

It certainly marks a stepping up of the Kremlin bureaucracy's attempts to rescue its declining authority within world Stalinism.

NO DISAGREEMENTS But the Soviet Union has raised no disagreements with the class-collaborationist strategies of the so-called Eurocommunist parties.

Quite the contrary. In the middle of the hulabaloo about Carrillo the Soviet press significantly produced a series of articles in (left to right) Husak, Czechoslovał praise of the policies and "successes" of the French, and Spanish CPs.

On July 9 Pravda spoke of the success of the popular frontist Union of the Left in the French municipal elections.

In this Union, said Pravda, *the Communists represent the most dynamic force".

Pravda acknowledged the difficulties in formulating the programme of the Union of the Left but, it added:

"This should not let us forget the most important thing: the fact that the old division of workers, used by the monopolists to help their pol cy of isolating the communists and maintaining the capitalist system, has been overcome.

WELCOMED

In Italy, Pravda welcomes the new reactionary policy agreement between the CP and the Christian Democrat government but adds that *its a long way between making an agreement and putting it into practice."

Once again Pravda through this agreement:

"the discrimination which the Italian CP has suffered from and the division of the political f rees of the country are coming ti an Carrillo collaboration of the French and Italian CPs is mild compared with the rapture with which the Soviet news agency TASS on July 8 praised the policies of the party of Santiago Carrillo himself.

The Tass dispatch begins by complimenting the "realism and subtlety" or Adolfo Suarez and King Juan Carlos.

The new Spanish government (which is, of course, composed of Francoist murderers) reflects, says Tass:

"The results of the last elections which have shown the will of the Spanish people to put a definitive end to the Francoist past ... What is important is that legislative and executive power in Spain is from now on concentrated in the hands of partisans of parliamentary democracy."

This "achievement" is put down by Tass to the wisdom of the Brezhner, USSR, Honecker, strategy of the Spanish CP:

"The Communists of Spain, who have selflessly fought fascism during forty years of dictatorship, here put forward the slogan of national reconciliation of all Spaniards, regardless of which side of the barricades they were on in the civil war.

The triumph of this slogan today is the result of the long struggle of communists, socialists, left catholics and other anti-fascist democrats."

Eulogies of this kind make it clear that the purpose of the Soviet attack on Carrillo is not part of any attempt to alter the criminal popular frontist strategy of the West European CPs but is rather a new installment of Moscow's attempt to arrest "indiscipline" within the Stalinist forces.

The two things, however, cannot be separated since the Soviet policy of socialism in one country is the basis of class collaboration on the part of the Stalinist parties in capitalist countries.

But at the same time, that class collaboration can be completely fulfilled only by the adoption of anti-Soviet positions, such as Carrillo's support for US bases in Spain and the Italian CP's support of NATO.

The problem of authority within Stalinicm therefore ic an ultaneously the Soviet leaders launched a similarly virulent attack on the Japanese CP. because of its support for the Japanese government's claim to four islands of the Kurilles group which are 'occupied" by the Soviet Union.

On June 12 Pravda accused the Japanese CP of "chauvinism", "hostility to the Russian people" and "violation of the principles of Marxism-Leninism by making a frontier problem the object of a dispute between. Communist Parties."

In its reply the Japanese CP leadership identified itself with Carrillo and the right of all Communist Parties to find their own road to socialism.

It attacked the Moscow bureaucracy for "continuing the errors of Stalin"

It condemns the Soviet Union IOT Its great power interventionism" against the Czechoslovakian CP in 1968 and for its open support for an "anti-party group" within the Japanese CP in 1964 when the Soviet Union financed that group's factional paper, Voice of Japan, and described the group as "true patriots"

This is a further reminder that these conflicts between the Soviet bureaucracy and other CPs are nothing new.

Nevertheless, the crisis of Stalinism which they express now seems to be reaching a new peak.

A simultaneous crisis has blown up in relations between the Chinese bureaucracy and its hitherto faithful ally, Albania.

East Germany, and Tito, Yugoslavia, far right.

On July 7 the official paper of the Albanian CP launched an unmistakable attack on the international strategy of the Chinese leadership (without however mentioning it by name).

The main point of the article is an attack on the Chinese "three worlds" theory in which the "third world" is the source of revolution:

"Considering globally the so-called "third world" as the main force in the anti-imperialist struggle and the revolution . . . without making any distinction between the authentic anti-imperialist and revolutionary forces and the pro-imperialist, reactionary and fascist forces which hold power in a number of developing countries, means to distance oneself in a flagrant way from the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and to preach typically opportunistic views causing confusion and disorientation among revolutionary forces...

The articles point to the need to fight regimes like that of Pinochet in Chile, whom the Chinese have supported.

The practice of Enver Koxha's regime in Albania gives no evidence that its adherence to those principles is anything more than formal.

But in the Stalinist world even formal ad lerence to suc h a position

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