Hits Spain

the rule of the dictatorship.

At the base of Francoism’s political crisis/lies a much deeper problem — the relationship between the ruling classes and the masses. It is necessary for the development and growth of the economy, that certain reforms take place within the Spanish state, so as to make it more flexible and more conducive to foreign capital investment. But the bourgeoisie has no guarantee that the rebellious spirit of the workers and other oppregged sections will lie dormant in the event of a liberalisation of the regime. On the contrary up” in the regime would result in the mobilisation leadership of the workers against the capitalist system itself. So they find themselves burdened with a dictatorship that most sections of the capitalist class don’t really want, but have to accept asa guarantee against social revolution.

The economic crisis The nineteen sixties witnessed a rise in the standard of living of the Spanish working class and an increase in their confidence in economic struggles. However as elsewhere the deepening recession has made it necessary for the capitalists to retain their profit level, to attack the workers standard of living. So the Spanish working class has been forced to engaged in economic struggle to protect their standard of living, irrespective of the political crisis. Also in Spain, unlike most Western European countries economic struggles lead directly to political struggles. Because independent trade unions are banned, the workers have to organise themselves in illegal movements and if they go on strike they must do so ‘illegally’. So automatically the questions of class law and state control are posed, the workers are not just confronting their own bosses but the bourgeois state wth all its apparatus including the secret police and the army. As the economic crisis continues, the state will intensify and provide an explosive framework for the developing political crisis of Francoism. The increasing repression in the bourgeois democratic statesvhas the effect of weakening the intervention of outside forces for ‘reforming’ the regime. But it is extremely will solve the crisis or lessen the combativity of the mass movement.

they have every reason to believe that any “openingrhe mass movement and its political Through their bitter struggles in the nineteen thirties, the Spanish masses gave an example to the result of the suicidal policies followed by from the past, the reformists, principally the Communist Party (the Social Democrats virtually disappeared during the years of clandestinity) continue with the line of seeking an alliance betweent the mass movement and “democratic” sections of the bourgeoisie.

Realising that sectors of the bourgeosie would only move against the dictatorship if they were certain that there would be no revolutionary challenge to the capitalist system, the Communist Party discourages class struggle and instead recommends “‘peaceful general strikes’’.

The old stages theory is resurrected. First we fight for democracy and only then do we fight for workers power. This policy has 2 major flaws in practice; The Spanish bourgeosie will seen to be on the verge of collapse. In such an event the bourgeoisie would be in a perilous situation and would be quite prepared to ally its forces to crush the workers movement. The other flaw in the reformists policy is its working class would be prepared-to limit their demands to ‘liberal reforms’. All the evidence suggests that once mobilised the workers won’t simply attack the dictatorship but also the capitalist system. This possibility of a is strengthened by the emergence of a new reformism and is struggling to introduce revolutionary politics into the mass movement.

It is in this layer that the Spanish section of the 4th International, the LCR—ETA (V.I.) is a fusion between the main Trotskyist current in Spain, the Revolutionary Communist League Party the K.T.a. wnile the main workers organisation, the Workers Commissions, and the Communist Party which dominates it, have put out a call for a peaceful general strike this autumn the L.C.R.-E.T.A. (V.1.) supporting the strike, have called on the militants to prepare for a revolutionary general strike to bring down the dictatorship. It is only by engaging the masses in struggle against the regime that the forces of reaction can be paralysed and any real liberation won.

Ga > U