THE COMMUNIST LEADERSHIP
The fundamental characteristic of the working class vanguard is its empirical, experimental consciousness and its desire to provide solutions to the concrete problems which face the class at present. Consequently the revolutionary party can attract the best vanguard militants only insofar as it is able to give answers to these problems in the day-to-day activity of the masses. Therefore the revolutionary party does not establish its relations with the workers vanguard either through ideological and propaganda activity or through activity separate from the actions of the mass movement, but only through concrete intervention which poses and builds the revolutionary leadership within the mass movement.
The fundamental orientation for the intervention of communists in the class struggle is synthesised in a formula from the Transitional Programme: it is necessary to help the masses in the process of daily struggle to find the bridge between the present demands and the programme of the socialist revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today's conditions and today's consciousness of wide layers of the proletariat and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.
Having established this starting point, communist leadership consists in concretely determining what is the next practical step forward in each struggle of the masses in order to advance the line of class independence and develop experiences which will increase the confidence of the movement in its own strength, organisation and consciousness. This must always take account of the discontinuous, uneven way in which the activity of the masses develops. This practical next step forward encapsulates the whole art of communist leadership.
We must avoid the sterile propagandism of the ultra-left, constantly out of step with reality. But that is not to say that we limit our intervention among the vanguard and the masses simply to positions on tactical and immediate questions. The communist leadership, the communist militants, must know how to develop and apply a mass pedagogy which can firmly link concrete daily problems to the programmatic lessons which flow from them.
THE OVERTHROW OF THE FRANCOIST MONARCHY
Unlike the reformists, revolutionary Marxists do not consider that there is any identification between the development and consolidation of democratic freedoms on the one hand and the development of bourgeois democracy through its institutions on the other. Even the most democratic bourgeois state presupposes the existence of a state machinery, a repressive apparatus and a series of political institutions which limit the free activity of the masses. As against the reformists, we believe that the struggle for the defence and consolidation of these liberties involves the rejection of the legitimacy of the bourgeois democratic institutions. But the legitimacy of the bourgeois democratic institutions cannot be put into question solely by propaganda in favour of the dictatorship of the proletariat; this rejection can only come if the mass movement gains practical experience of the limits of bourgeois democracy and the superiority of workers democracy. To achieve this — that is, to achieve the emergence of the masses onto the political scene — it is necessary that they begin to develop more advanced structures of self-organisation (workers councils, neighbourhood commissions, etc.). In this way they can understand how such structures of direct representation, allowing the fullest exercise of their liberty and the direct participation of the broadest number of workers and oppressed in political life and in control over their own destinies, can ultimately lead to the defence and achievement of their own demands.
The clear central axis of revolutionary activity is the leadership of the masses both to achieve the transformation of their representative organs into structures of workers power and to fight for their coordination and centralisation. At the present moment the perspective and slogan of the general strike encapsulates the key task which faces the mass movement: the overthrow of the dictatorship. Oriented to this precise objective, the line of the general strike involves:
* A line of class independence, designed to make the movement trust only in its own strength, reflected in its autonomous organisation.
* A line which poses the need for the broadest coordination and centralisation of the various organisations of the masses in struggle.
* An orientation of mass mobilisation centred on the working class, whose fundamental aim is the complete overthrow of the dictatorship, directing this mobilisation towards the full conquest of the political, economic and social demands to which it aspires.
Throughout the present period this line will be concretised in various different forms: from general movements developing out of an economic or solidarity struggle to responses to the attacks of the dictatorship; from general strikes in a locality to those which take in a whole region. Without implying that the general strike is the only perspective for any mobilisation, such occasions allow this [illegible].
* Tying the battle for the general strike to intransigent defence of the unity of the movement through a correct application of the policy of the united front.
* Introducing into each struggle, and closely linking to the general strike, the fight for democratic demands which allow the mass movement to understand in practice the necessity to do away with the Francoist monarchy.
Against a monarchy whose only legitimacy comes from a bloody dictatorship, and equally, in opposition to the conciliatory attitude of the bourgeois democrats and the reformist parties of the working class for a peaceful transition under the monarchy, we demand that a central task of the Constituent Assembly is the proclamation of the Republic. This fight also constitutes an important polemical axis against the Democratic Coordination.
Similarly, in the struggle against national oppression, aggravated by the dictatorship, we fight resolutely for the right to self-determination of the oppressed nationalities, with no limitations, dependence or compromise with the central state. The demand for immediate elections to national assemblies in order to exercise this right has the effect of demanding the complete sovereignty of each nationality to define its own relationship with the Spanish state from the very moment of the overthrow of the dictatorship. This must include separation and the formation of an independent state if that is what is desired. Precisely for this reason the slogan of the national assembly implies going much further than a simple restoration of the statutes of the 1930s. These were compromises with the central bourgeoisie which did not recognise the right to self-determination. This slogan also rejects any provisional coalition government which attempts to set itself up as the representative of the various oppressed nationalities.
In the framework of these elections in each nationality, revolutionary Marxists will advance that solution to the national problem which best favours an alliance between the various national movements and the proletariat of the State as a whole. In present circumstances, we believe that this formula must be for the formation of a Federal Republic agreed by the free union of the different nationalities. This implies being able to exercise the right to separation. This Federal Republic must be able to respond to the growing internationalism of the productive forces on the one hand [illegible] the development of each nationality and region on [illegible].
All these slogans would lose their radical democratic content if they were not tied to the need for the full exercise of the freedom of association, demonstration, strike and information. The very essence of the bourgeois project of the democratic state is a serious rejection of these rights. This is aimed at impeding the free activity of the masses in order to guarantee the bourgeoisie's social peace and allow the stabilisation of the strong state. Permanent agitation for these demands must occupy a central place; today against the continuation of the dictatorship of the monarchy, tomorrow against the bourgeois manoeuvres. At any time we emphasise the most serious threats to these freedoms by the authorities. In particular, amnesty and the dissolution of the repressive bodies of Francoism are at present two slogans of essential political value, two objectives which are deeply felt by the mass movement, on which it is necessary to insist unconditionally.
Consistent propaganda for anti-capitalist slogans which develop an understanding in the vanguard of the tasks posed by the beginning of the third Spanish revolution and the necessity to introduce these slogans into the action of the masses.
THE MAXIMUM DEMOCRACY
The desire of the mass movement for the full exercise of democratic freedoms, without restrictions, is enormous. Revolutionary Marxists deny that these freedoms can be fully exercised under capitalism. But so long as the masses have not discovered from their own experience the need to destroy the bourgeois state and to build a workers democracy, we fight resolutely for the maximum democracy possible under the bourgeois state.
The demand for the immediate calling of elections for a Constituent Assembly, with the right to vote by free and direct universal suffrage from the age of 16, and on the basis of the full establishment of liberties, is directed towards this maximum democracy. We will need to fight every manoeuvre of the bourgeoisie and the reformists (provisional coalition governments without election by the masses, designated parliaments, etc.) which tend to reduce mass participation. [illegible] forces existing at the time of the overthrow of the dictatorship. This will be expressed, albeit in a deformed way, through immediate elections. In the fight against the bourgeoisie's project of the strong state, this slogan is central. Today it stands in opposition to the promise of a referendum and elections to a non-constituent legislative Cortes which would retain a substantial part of the Francoist apparatus; tomorrow in opposition to new projects to restrict liberties for the election of a Constituent Assembly. Revolutionary Marxists highlight the need for its immediate convocation and demand the full exercise of democratic freedoms.
In the framework of the fight for elections to the Constituent Assembly, the demand for free municipal elections, based on the full exercise of liberties, on the right to free propaganda for the different programmes, on full legality for all the workers parties and organisations, must also constitute an axis of revolutionary activity and mobilisation of the masses for the maximum unlimited use of bourgeois democracy.
THE SELF-ORGANISATION OF THE MASSES
The fall of the dictatorship will pose before the masses — even more than is posed at the moment — the need to utilise the organs at their disposal, to create new ones, to look for the instruments which they best see as serving the various forms of political and social organisation in their own interests: trade unions, factory committees, neighbourhood assemblies, control commissions for the liquidation of the remnants of Francoism, committees of soldiers, teachers, etc. At the same time comes the task of finding the most adequate forms of coordination and centralisation. Revolutionary Marxists do not fetishise any particular form of organisation of the masses, in the name of 'pure' models of workers councils. We take part in the concrete expressions of the self-organisation of the movement towards a clear objective: the progressive transformation of the existing bodies of the movement into structures of self-organisation with increased coordination and centralisation.
As the struggle sharpens, the process of the construction of the class union will develop. Within the movement a clear relationship can be seen between [illegible] and the development of unitary representative structures at the factory level. These have begun to emerge as the product of a whole series of demands which begin to [illegible] in the face of the capitalist in the factory. Unlike the reformists, we do not believe that the tasks of the unions should be limited to the 'socio-economic' [illegible] and to support of the parliamentary tactic applied by the majority parties of the working class. Neither do we [illegible] that union structures, however broad, can substitute the creation of superior organs of workers democracy capable of grouping the entire working class.
We fight for a Constituent Union Congress, with delegates elected from assemblies of all those workers who wish to participate, the objective of which is the single class union. This is the formula which allows us on the one hand to fight the policy of trade union plurality, openly encouraged by imperialism and the bourgeoisie and more or less defended by various working class currents, and on the other hand to encourage the broadest possible self-organisation and workers democracy in the process of building the union.
On the one hand there is the divisive attitude of sections of the UGT, which under the leadership of the social democratic PSOE tends towards using any advantages given it by the manoeuvre of the Francoist reform. At the same time, it sharpens its attacks on the Workers Commissions and silences the tendencies which took up a [illegible] position at its Congress. On the other hand it is the attitude of USO, which has abandoned its initially more unitary positions and now gives objective support to the manoeuvres of the UGT leadership. Finally there is the position of the PCE (Communist Party of Spain) fraction within the Workers Commissions, which attempts to preserve its absolute leadership through bureaucratic methods, subordinating the Workers Commissions to its treacherous objectives. At the same time it utilises the legitimate reaction of the base of the Workers Commissions against the attacks of the UGT and USO to reinforce the monolithism of the leadership and in particular to isolate the most radical sections of the vanguard and the far left organisations.
We attempt to develop agreements on unity from all currents in the factories, seeking the formation of united organisations which can overcome the present divisions and using assemblies to launch representative united structures: single factory unions. We extend this orientation to sectors of industry, zones and localities. We try to get the fullest unity with the participation of the representative bodies and the different currents, to arrive at agreement on the process of building the single class union within the framework of fighting for the Constituent Union Congress.
In the neighbourhoods, towns and cities, we defend the most progressive forms of coordination of the different sectors in struggle, under the leadership of the working class. We always fight for their transformation into organs of the broadest self-organisation and democracy to take up the distinct tasks which are raised by the conquest of the demands of the population.
In the women's movement, among the youth and in all sectors, we fight for the creation of united, autonomous and democratic organisations of the masses, with a line of class independence which allows an alliance in struggle with the working class.
The semi-spontaneous character of the upsurge of embryonic organs of workers power and the extraordinary diversity of forms adopted poses decisively the need for their centralisation. Without this the best network of organs of this type cannot appear before the masses as an alternative power to the bourgeois state. The experience of all revolutions shows the enormous obstacles to this centralisation occurring spontaneously; in this respect Portugal is the closest example. Without a substantial part of the vanguard understanding the need for this centralisation and struggling to bring it about — and this today supposes that the revolutionary Marxists have progressed in winning clear leadership within it — it will be impossible to achieve in practice. This is the fundamental terrain on which converge the building of the revolutionary party and the conquest of power by the workers.
THE UNITED FRONT AND WORKERS GOVERNMENT
The principal theme of our united front tactic is, clearly, the political unity of the working class and its class independence in relation to the bourgeoisie. In this respect we advance and popularise those experiences which bring about the unity of the proletarian organisations and parties. Without excluding the possibility of support from bourgeois parties of a certain type on particular issues, especially against repression, we fight to ensure that these conjunctural coincidences of our positions do not mean the slightest sacrifice of the political and organisational independence of the workers movement. We wage an intransigent fight against the inter-class pacts, centring today on the theme of breaking the workers parties from pacts with the bourgeoisie. We demonstrate this in concrete experiences of the demobilising and treacherous character of these alliances. We accept and fight for partial unity in action within the movement, without excluding on principle the participation of any working class current.
The reformist workers parties actively collaborate in an effort to establish a bourgeois democratic state in Spain. They use the formula of the Broad Coalition Government, through which they offer their services to the bourgeoisie and show themselves ready to assist in resolving its crisis of power. The Broad Coalition Government, then, constitutes the political culmination of class collaboration. Today this form of government appears to broad sections of the masses as, to use an expression of Lenin, the least costly solution — that is, as an instrument to guarantee their demands at the cost of the least possible suffering, thus the influence of the reformist leaderships is reflected in the consciousness of the masses.
But this does not mean that the workers reduce their demands, limit their desire for self-organisation or cease their combativity, least of all when they actually win their freedom. The masses will judge Broad Coalition Governments by what they do in practice. Their loss of confidence in any inter-class government is the test of their open political break with the bourgeoisie.
The preparation, within present struggles, for this break basically consists of the line of class independence and the policy of the united front, whose programmatic culmination lies in the slogan of the Workers Government. The political function of this slogan is to pose the question of power in a form which is accessible to the masses. It establishes a link between the parliamentary beginnings of the socialist revolution and the popular formation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. We define the Workers Government not only by its political composition but also by its programme and by the bodies to which it is responsible. On these three levels, we establish the class and revolutionary character of the Workers Government slogan — whether it has a general propagandistic content or a concrete and agitational character — by an assessment of objective and subjective political conditions.
In the present situation, the level of development of the class struggle and the activity and consciousness of the masses do not allow a concretisation of the formula of the Workers Government which can directly relate to the consciousness of the masses. It does not have the immediate mobilising power which characterises agitational slogans. Agitation for the Workers Government would inevitably take on an abstract character, with the evident risks of reducing the Workers Government to the question of a parliamentary majority or a simple instrument to denounce the reformist leaderships. Each of these cases is an incorrect use of the slogan of the Workers Government. For revolutionary Marxists the Workers Government can today play an educative and propagandistic role as the Workers Government responsible to the representative organs of the masses. This involves popularisation of the tasks and central organisational forms needed for the assault on bourgeois power. It can also be used in relation to the formulas for national workers self government, elaborated in each concrete situation of national oppression.
As the pre-revolutionary process accelerates, the Workers Government becomes a current slogan and must be formulated concretely. This is based on an assessment of the new relationship of forces between the classes and between reformists and revolutionaries. The existing organisations of the masses must also be taken into account. At present the slogan we use to express agitationally the rejection of any provisional coalition government is the demand for the immediate calling of elections to the Constituent and national assemblies. Combined with this, flowing from successive concrete experiences of the demobilising and capitulationist character of the inter-class pacts, we systematically pose the need for the workers united front and for the parties and organisations of the working class to break from the [illegible].
THE INSURRECTIONAL SEIZURE OF POWER
The emergence of a situation of dual power would open the possibility, at least embryonically, of armed bodies tied to the new workers power. Given the characteristics of the pre-revolutionary process in our country, the tasks which are today posed in the context of the overthrow of the dictatorship — purging, anti-fascist vigilance, punishment of the Francoist criminals, protection of demonstrations and of the localities — are going to demand the development of committees, pickets and specialised bodies. It will be through these bodies, tied to the process of self-organisation of the masses, that the basis of a future qualitative growth will be consolidated.
But the overthrow of the dictatorship and the emergence of a situation of dual power will also have its effects in the ranks of the bourgeois army, deepening its internal contradictions. The extension of basic democratic freedoms and basic economic demands for the troops, the purging of the old civil war officer caste and the denunciation of the different forms of the intervention of the army into struggles (Councils of War, militarisation of the public services, threats of direct confrontation ...) will contribute to the development of the autonomous organisation of soldiers and to solidarity between them and the working class and its allies, particularly the youth.
The closest coordination between the organisation of the self-defence of the masses and revolutionary anti-militarist activity, inside and outside the barracks, is the way to prepare the mass movement specifically for the inevitable violent confrontation with the apparatus of the bourgeois state. This is a pre-condition for the conquest of power. Within these tasks a central place must be occupied by the education of the movement in the need for a united and immediate response to any attempt at a coup by sections of the bourgeoisie and army. The lessons of Chile and Portugal demonstrate the disastrous consequences of creating any illusions in 'democratic' officers. Only the democratic mobilisation of the masses, as happened on 11 March 1975 in Portugal, is capable of nipping the reactionary plans in the bud and advancing towards the socialist revolution.
OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MARXISTS
The fundamental road towards the building of the revolutionary party is certainly through the development of our intervention into struggles, in line with the strategy and political coordinates which we have already established. But, besides our specific orientation, it is necessary to intervene in the process of differentiation and political recomposition which is accelerating among the workers organisations. The objective priority in this respect is the reunification of the revolutionary Marxists, the construction of a single organisation, the section of the Fourth International in the Spanish state.
The split in the LCR in December 1972 was the product of the political immaturity of the revolutionary Marxists in our country. Without doubt it could have been avoided and should have been, given that it lacked any political justification and was absolutely not understood by the vanguard. The split cut short the growth of the Fourth International in the Spanish state, a growth which has only recently been renewed. Revolutionary Marxists have paid a high price for their incapacity to maintain organisational unity, based upon permanent political debate and respect for democratic centralism.
Today it seems necessary and possible decisively to overcome this situation, though we are aware of the very serious difficulties involved in this. The common position of the LCR-ETA (VI) and the Liga Comunista (LC) in supporting the same basic programme and the same International is the basis on which we can achieve reunification. Sadly, deep differences do exist and are growing in relation to concrete interventions and the class struggle. These constitute a serious obstacle to this objective. Despite this, and because of the primary need to achieve the organic unity of the revolutionary Marxists, we are prepared to run the risks which these obstacles create.
We think that both organisations should define their positions in relation to one question. Are the present differences too great to allow the common political activity of revolutionary Marxists in a single organisation in the Spanish state, respecting democratic centralism? Our answer is NO. We hope that the LC's will be the same. If that is the case we think that a concrete plan should be drawn up as soon as possible for a reunification congress.
The expulsion of the Revolutionary Socialist Tendency of the LC and its transformation into the Revolutionary Socialist League (LSR) seems to us a serious political error which is unjustified from any point of view. We are obliged to have the same orientation to the LSR which we have previously had to the LC. We are convinced that the reunification of the revolutionary Marxists in the Spanish state will be an attractive stimulus to draw to the Fourth International a series of anti-Stalinist groups and many valuable revolutionary militants.