Accumulating forces

Published in "Resistance", voice of the PCE(r)
number 6, October 1987

The transition from capitalism to socialism, the forms of struggle and organization that the revolution adopts, is one of the most important problems that any true communist party has to deal with both in theory and in practice. Either a peaceful and parliamentary transition -as all the revisionists are advocating for- or resorting to the revolutionary violence against the reactionary violence for the seizure of politic power? It is indispensable to maintain a clear and definite position on this important issue. Our Party has long ago adopted it and we define the combination of the strike movement of the workers with the guerrilla armed actions "as the main characteristic of the revolutionary movement in our country". This just position is not enough to avoid the rightist and "left" mistakes within the movement. Our experiences in this sense have been many and very bitter. For this reason, in the Draft our Party Programme which is being debated is expressly said:

"It has been proved that it won't be possible to give a single effective step in the revolutionary direction through the peaceful and parliamentary methods; but experience also teaches that through the armed struggle, conceived as the main method of struggle, neither will it be possible to accumulate the necessary military force able, on its own, to defeat and annihilate the fascist army. For this reason, the guerrilla must pursue as its main objectives in the current stage of its politico-military struggle the accumulation of forces and the preparation of the general -politic, organizational, economic, military, etc.- conditions for the general insurrection".

This thesis, which is summarized in our Politic Line, has been repeated and discussed so many times that we come to it again with a great effort. However, it is necessary to do it, since there are comrades who have not understood it yet and who only bear in mind the most secondary or the brightest aspects of our politic labour. The struggle to destroy the capitalist State will be very long and complex and it will continue to require many sacrifices. But there are those who conceive this struggle as if that objective could be achieved in a fixed term and in any way, and all this without even taking into account the fundamental necessity of developing the revolutionary forces. Those who think and act in this way conceive the armed struggle as a tactical issue whose main task would be to answer "eye for eye" to each and every of the outrages of the regime.

The practice of 12 years of armed struggle has proved that if the State, with all its arsenal of laws and its repressive machinery, has not been able to liquidate the guerrilla activity, neither can the latter develop and accumulate forces if it continues with the tactics of "an eye for an eye". That position was just when the crisis of the regime made us hope that by putting it under pressure we could snatch some concessions and when among the workers the reformist illusions had permeated. But nowadays this situation has changed, we cannot and should not expect anything from the regime but repression or its insistent invitations to surrender. Neither do the workers expect anything from it but poverty, unemployment or the most fierce exploitation. Therefore, to go on acting as if nothing had changed can only lead to a tainted and mistaken practice.

In these moments in which important steps in the reorganization of the guerrilla movement have been taken, it is necessary to bear in mind all the above mentioned; on the contrary, the blows we have received and the experiences that we have accumulated would have been useless, and what is worse, the development of the guerrilla movement would stagnate. It is necessary to end with the nihilist attitudes and with the anarchical habits and to inculcate in each one the necessity of a rigid discipline; we have to carry out a policy of recruitment of new militants; we have to support the mass movement and the revolutionary organizations; we have to maintain and continue with the policy of self-strengthening and leaning on our own forces; only in this way will it be possible to pay attention, when the moment comes, to all the requirements that the class struggle poses to us everyday.