Approach to the history of the
Communist Party of Spain

Communist Party of Spain (Reconstituted)
September 1997, translation into English, April 1998

Summary:

Presentation to the second edition

The book presented here under the title Approach to the History of the PCE was previously published in chapters as supplements of Resistencia. This has allowed us to insert in the present edition some opinions and corrections suggested by militants and sympathizers of the Party. However, excluding the last section of Chapter V, the one referring to the May events that does not appear in the previous edition, the other changes that we have introduced are not relevant since they are mere clarifications or writing corrections.

The May events, the attempted anarcho-trotskist putsch in Spring 1937, and the struggle that had to be carried out against it were, however, a politic event of an enormous significance that made evident the antagonism to which the contradictions within the People’s Front had come. This has a great importance to understand what took place in our country afterwards; in particular, the formation of the anticommunist block and the counter-revolutionary coup of Casado which meant the last stabbing on the back of the Republic.

Anyway, as we have already pointed out in the presentation to the first edition, we must not forget that this is only an approach to the history, and that it is the PCE the main protagonist or object of our attention. So, we leave this work open to possible revisions, rectifications or additions that complete or enrich the knowledge of our historic past. In this sense, with the aim of not extending too much in the content in detriment of the clarity of exposition and of its fundamentally interpretative character, we have left many data and facts aside, except on those occasions in which they were indispensable for the understanding of the history of the PCE. On the other hand, we have tried at any moment to support or back our appreciations and conclusions with those PCE and CI documents that we were able to consult. Now well, the reader also has to take into account that the activity of the Party in its first times (and even later) -as Luis Portela, one of the founders of the Spanish Communist Party, said- it is not recorded on its minutes but on its acts which, certainly, makes the research task difficult. As he himself points out, at least it is a comfort to think that this lack of written testimonies of the life of the PCE also obstacled the action of the police.

By way of introduction

The study of the history of the PCE, the rescue and summary of the most important ideas and experiences of struggle of the revolutionary proletariat in our country (as that of the international communist movement in general), has always constituted one of our biggest worries. This comes from the relationship that links the current movement to the one that preceded it. In this relationship we find both continuity and rupture. Continuity with the revolutionary tradition, with the principles and historic objectives of our class; rupture with everything that is alien to it. This question was already raised in the Reconstitutive Congress of our Party and it continues to be very current. We -said Arenas then in the report presented to the Congress- do not renounce to that past and we assume both the mistakes and the best decisions.

To delimit the best decisions from the mistakes of the history that we have assumed is the task that we have intended to carry out, since only in this way could we be able to use it in the new stage and to extract the indispensable lessons for the future. This has been, as we have already pointed out, a constant worry for the majority of the militants of the Party, so we can say that no important meeting has been held without taking it into account nor paying some attention to it. But it has been mainly in the prisons, in the short periods in which a given number of militants were allowed to stay together and to dispose of some documentation, when it has been possible to start to tackle the study of this subject in depth and carefully. Thanks to this previous task of research, discussion and analysis we have been able to round this work which we now present to the consideration of all.

The foundation of the PCE

1.1 The signal of the Aurora

The Russian Revolution is the first of a series of revolutions that shook Europe. At the end of the first imperialist world war, the revolutionary movement becomes more extensive and better organized, specially in the countries that have taken part in the conflict. All through 1918 insurrections of workers and soldiers take place in Germany and these will culminate in 1919 with the establishment of the Soviet Republic of Bavaria. Something similar takes place in Finland, Hungary and the Baltic Countries.

Under these conditions, the creation of a new international working association becomes an urgent need. On the basis of the internationalist groups and organizations of the left (which had previously met in Zimmerwald and Kienthal) led by Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, in March 1919 is held in Moscow the I Congress of the Communist International or III International.

In this Congress, in view of the attempts of the bourgeoisie and its agents in the working movement at arguing against the Republic of the Soviets, Lenin states in his report the thesis on the bourgeois democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat: History teaches us that no oppressed class has been able nor will ever be able to dominate without a period of dictatorship, namely, without conquering the politic power and crushing by force the most desperate and furious resistance; that resistance which does not stop in front of any crime, the one that the exploiters have always opposed (1). The bourgeoisie seized power crushing violently the kings, the feudal lords and their attempts of restoration. Therefore, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not only fully legitimate [...] but it is absolutely necessary (2). The form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, already achieved in practice, was the Soviet Power in Russia. It was necessary then to defend and extend the system of the Soviets. This was the main task of the communist parties in all the countries where the Soviet Power did not already exist.

But imperialism does not stand inactive and very soon it will close ranks, getting ready to confront the revolutionary tide. The imperialists centre their efforts on ending with Soviet Russia, besieging it, supporting the counter-revolutionary armies and intervening military.

At the same time, the socialchauvinists redoubled their attacks against the October Revolution, opposing to it the excellences of the bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Frightened by the extent of the revolutionary movement in the West, in 1919 they hastened to recompose the failed II International in order to try to counteract the great influence that the Communist International was having upon the workers of all countries.

After its first Congress, the attraction that the III International starts to exert on some working-class parties and groups is enormous. The banner of communism attracted those groups who were disillusioned with the treason of the II International, although not all of them were revolutionary. Among them, the so-called centrists, led by Kaustsky, maintained opportunist positions and tried to combine the new conceptions of the communist movement with the rotten ideas of the socialtraitors. One of the conceptions supported by these centrists was that of combining the bourgeois parliament with the Soviet Power, or what was the same, joining the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Such a theory meant to abandon completely the doctrine of class war and to go straight to the field of the bourgeoisie. As Lenin said, this was the coup de grâce struck to the II International.

Therefore, it was necessary to establish clearly the communist principles, both to cut the way to the International to those unsteady groups and to prevent their false and inconsequent acceptance from bringing about disastrous consequences, as it had happened in the Soviet Republic of Hungary. In this country, socialdemocrats and communists had joined in a party that, after seizing the power of the State, proclaimed the dictatorship of the proletariat. But, since this party was not purged of reformist elements, a series of mistakes were committed which made easier the crushing of Revolution.

The central axe of the II Congress (1920) was the endorsement of the Statutes and the 21 conditions that had to be fulfilled by the parties and organizations that sought the entry into it: to comply with the agreements of the International, break with opportunism, purge the reformist or centrist elements, create a clandestine machine of the Party and subordinate to it the legal activity -the press, the actuation in parliament, etc.-, make propaganda in the army and the countryside, fight for the liberation of the colonies and against imperialist militarism, etc.

Regarding the young Communist Parties, newly created by the leaders of the left who had split from the socialdemocrat parties and trade-unions, the Congress considered that they were extremely weak at both the organizational and the ideological level. Their leaders frequently made serious mistakes, mainly of a sectarian character, of which the enemies of revolution took advantage. Precisely, it was in the II Congress of the CI where Lenin presented his book ‘Leftism’, childish disease of communism whose thesis and fundamental conclusions constituted the basis of important agreements reached in it. In this work, Lenin alerted the communists against those mistakes -not forgetting to highlight what they had of expiry of the opportunist sins of the working movement-; he showed the methods for an adequate political leadership and he insisted on the necessity of fighting with enough flexibility to attract the masses without this meaning a renounce to the revolutionary principles. His ideas constituted an important contribution to the development of the marxist theory and to the tactics and strategy of the proletarian parties in the new historic stage of the general crisis of capitalism.

1.2 The impact of the October Revolution in Spain

The working press echoed the events interpreting them according to their respective tendencies and points of view. El Socialista (The Socialist), official voice of the Spanish Socialist Worker Party (PSOE), could not hide its annoyance: the news that we receive from Russia bring us bitterness. We sincerely believe that the mission of that country was to crush Germanic imperialism... (3). On the contrary, anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists assumed the October Revolution as their own; the anarchist ideas... -proclaimed ‘Tierra y Libertad’ (‘Land and Freedom’)- had triumphed (4).

In this way, little by little, those ten days that shook the world will become known in our country.

The workers and working masses in general, received the Bolshevik victory with enthusiasm; the landowners, the church and the bourgeoisie received it as a ghost that threatened to disturb their placid existence.

Their fears did not lack any foundation. There was also in Spain a revolutionary situation. The permanence of archaic agrarian structures was disturbing the development of capitalism. This contradiction had widened the ditch that separated the industrial bourgeoisie from the reactionary landowning castes. But, besides, there existed another particularity: notwithstanding the fact of being an industrially backward country, the financial capital maintained a high degree of control and dominion upon important branches of the production. Due to all this, the sharpening of the contradictions generated by the crisis of the capitalist system, which had led to the first imperialist world war, sharpened even more the crisis of the politic regime of the Restoration. However, the bourgeoisie did not dare to break openly with the old regime since they feared the proletariat whose force and politic influence were growing daily. The Soviet Revolution came to enforce them even more, highlighting its role as leading force of the revolution.

All these circumstances explain the fact that Spain was so deeply affected by the general crisis of the capitalist system in the new imperialist stage and that our country was transformed into an area where the contradictions that confronted the different imperialist powers started to converge.

Although the Spanish government declared itself neutral due to the rivalry of interests and leanings of the dominant classes and groups, the war had deep economic and social repercussions in Spain. Thanks to the neutrality, the capitalists multiplied their profits with the supply of agricultural and industrial products to the belligerent nations, achieving a great accumulation of capital. At the same time there was a great increase of the proletariat. But, from the beginning of the economic recovery of the States in conflict, after the signing of the Armistice in 1918, the situation changed radically: social conflicts raised due to the low salaries and the increase of the cost of living; the assaults to warehouses and bakeries became frequent in cities and the strikes and confrontations with the repressive forces multiplied; whereas, in the countryside, the struggle of the peasants -who, in areas like Andalusia, launch themselves to revolt at the shout of Long live Russia-, has all the characteristics of an agrarian revolution (5).

However, the proletariat was not in conditions to head the revolutionary movement consistently. As it was revealed during the insurrectional general strike in August 1917, it lacked a vanguard to lead it in the struggle, forge its unity and secure its alliance with the peasantry. For this reason, the crisis of the regime did not culminate, like in Russia, in a revolution in spite of the fact that there existed favourable conditions for it. Hence, the first teaching that could be learnt from those events, in the light of October, was that of starting to work to construct a revolutionary worker party in Spain.

1.3 The youths take the initiative

Already from 1909, like in other European socialist parties some time before, also within the PSOE was developing a process of inner struggle stimulated by the increase of the mass revolutionary movement and the slide of its leadership towards more and more rightist positions. Events as the establishment of the republican-socialist Coalition, with which Spanish socialism openly abandoned its traditional rejection to a formal alliance with the bourgeoisie, and, later on, its positioning in favour of the imperialist States of the Entente, made the ranks of the opposition to the opportunist line swell. In this way, when the October Revolution takes place, this process will take a greater boost, being its defence or its detraction the dividing line between the socialist left and the socialdemocrat reformism.

Also in the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist field a similar phenomenon takes place, although to a lesser extent. The great sympathies that the Soviet Revolution produces among the libertarian ranks will be highlighted in the unanimous agreement of joining the CI taken by the Congress of the CNT held in the Theatre of the Comedy in Madrid (December 1919). But it will be within the PSOE where the stream of adhesion to the III International creates a clear polarization that will end up in a rupture.

From the foundation of the Communist International, the struggle for joining it becomes the central issue for the socialist left. In view of the pressure of the basis, the leadership of the PSOE is forced to organize an extraordinary Congress in order to take a resolution on that matter. At that moment, the thirdists (as the ones who were in favour of the III International started to be known) have the possibility of reaching the support of the majority for the entrance of the PSOE in the III International, but they withdrew considering the fear of provoking a split in the party, since it was their aim to integrate it en bloc. Therefore, the question of joining the CI is temporarily postponed. Other two extraordinary congresses will be necessary to solve the matter definitively.

On the contrary, the UGT positions from the beginning, by means of an overwhelming majority, against the entrance into the CI.

Very different was the attitude of the Socialist Youth Federation. It decides on its V Congress its support to the CI, following the example of the Socialist Youth of Madrid, which had answered immediately to the call addressed to the international proletariat by the I Congress of the CI and had sent its adherence.

In both cases, these initiatives disappoint the thirdists that advocate for subordinating any decision of the youth organization, with regard to the CI, to that adopted by the PSOE.

Paying no attention to these intentions, very soon a sector of the socialist youth takes one step more. In view of the unsteady and compliant attitude and the lack of firmness of the thirdist leaders when coming to plan the rupture with the opportunists and the immediate entry in the CI (as the Asturian Socialist Federation proposed), the majority of the National Committee of the Youth Federation agrees, in a secret meeting, on the transformation of the organization into the Spanish Communist Party. This decision is communicated to the local Federations through a closed letter, sent with instructions of not to be opened before a given date. In that letter the split and the constitution of a new party are reported; at the same time, all the youth organizations are invited to become branches of it (6). In this way, on 15th April 1920, almost two and a half years after the October Revolution, the first Spanish communist party was born.

This decision was influenced to a great extent by the Amsterdam Bureau of the CI in which the leftist positions predominated.

Renovación (Renewal), voice of the Socialist Youth, changes its headline by that of El Comunista (The Communist) reaching a few months later a print run of 6,000 copies (7).

Among its promoters are Merino Gracia, Luis Portela, José Illescas, Eduardo Ugarte, Emeterio Chicharro, Ricardo Marín, Rito Esteban, Tiburcio Pico and Juan Andrade. Apart from some students and intellectuals, most of them are workers, as well as almost the whole of its ranks. All of them, besides, are young, happening to occur that when coming to elect the legal editor of El Comunista, none of the members of the National Committee has the minimum age of 25 required by the law.

From the very beginning a group of socialist militants and some anarcho-syndicalist youth joined the Party.

The most numerous nucleus of the Spanish CP is found in Madrid, outstanding the graphic workers, carpenters and metalworkers.

The procedure followed, without any previous debate nor congress, and the precipitate decision, did not allow a clarification of ideas among the majority of the socialist youth. Something similar happened within the working-class movement. This explains the fact that the new party did not have more support among the masses and that only a minority of socialist youth (the hundred children as they were contemptuously called by the thirdists) joined the initiative.

As other European communist organizations, the Spanish CP was born strongly impressed by the idea that the socialist revolution in Europe was imminent. This vision started to be questioned by Lenin due to the defeat of revolution in Germany and other European countries. Hence, the perspective of a more or less prolonged ebb of the revolutionary tide and the immaturity of the movement took him to start to discern the need of a withdrawal.

From these facts and appreciations it was possible, besides, to come to a conclusion that could not be reached at that moment: since the outbreak of the world revolution was delayed, the CI lost, as it was logical, part of the function that was attributed to it as leading centre of the revolution; this should lead to pay more attention to the independent development of the revolutionary movement in each country. But this problem will acquire a greater relevance as time passed.

By that time, what worried most the CI was the tendency towards certain leftist deviations that, under the pretext of combating the socialdemocrat reformism, were present in some parties. Although they had broken with socialdemocracy, experience proved that they were still very influenced by it. Certainly, the leftist radicalism meant a real rupture with the socialdemocrat parties, but, in practice, as Lenin pointed out, there existed certain concomitant conceptions and practices between one and the other tendencies. It is within this context where we have to place Lenin’s work 'Leftism', childish disease of communism which disappointed the young Spanish communists so much that they described it as abominable and opportunist (8). All this led them to an inefficient and verbal radicalism and, therefore, to isolate themselves from the masses and, in particular, from the most advanced workers, many of whom were still clung to the old socialist parties.

For the same reasons mentioned above, and without this meaning a renounce to the 21 conditions, already from its III Congress, the CI adopted at Lenin's request, a more flexible attitude towards socialdemocracy, whose left sectors it tried to attract in order to form true revolutionary mass parties. Lenin himself, with the aim of snatching the workers from the influence of the reformist leaders, went further when he advocated for pacts or alliances with socialdemocracy under certain conditions. All these conceptions will be materialized in the IV Congress in the tactics of united Front. The aim and the sense of the tactics of united Front -Lenin affirmed- consists of attracting an each day greater mass of workers to the struggle against the capital, without hesitating in calling upon the leaders of the II International and those of the II and a half International with the proposal of supporting this struggle jointly (9).

As the leftists accused, that position of flexibility towards socialdemocracy was in contradiction with the previous instructions that advocated for the most radical rupture with reformism and that led to hasten the formation of communist parties, like the Spanish CP. This explains the fact that some of its members highlighted this contradiction and expressed their reluctance to the new tactics of the CI, interpreting it as a step backwards or a surrender to socialdemocracy. We -affirmed Juan Andrade- cannot enter the Socialist Party again, since we will never be able to have any influence within it. To reach an agreement with it, would mean for the Spanish working class a recognition of our mistake. The centrists would know how to exploit it... I believe that what the International should do is to help us and not to tolerate them (10). For this reason they also denounced what they considered flirtations of the CI with the centrists and they opposed to an understanding with them.

In spite of these positions, we have to highlight that, unlike other European left communists groups, not all the points of view of the Spanish CP were misguided, therefore it would be a mistake to consider them of the same sort. Although it is true that regarding the participation in the electoral struggle they essentially shared the same ideas of their European fellow leftists, we must not lose sight of a special circumstance: their refusal corresponded to the conditions in which class war was developing in Spain. In fact, their ideas contrary to participate in parliament did not obey to differences of principles with the position that the CI was defending, as it is proved by the fact that in their Basis and Thesis they show the necessity of participating in the elections to parliament, municipalities and councils to awake and affirm the conscience of the proletariat. However, they made an exception that has to be taken very much into account: that participation should be considered in very special political situations (11). This was the particular case of Spain. Their refusal to participate in the elections was based on the anti-parliamentarian tradition of the Spanish workers. Besides, they argued another powerful reason: the reformist use, not revolutionary, that the leaders of the PSOE were making of the electoral struggle. They saw in this practice one of the causes that had most contributed to the deep-rootedness of anarchism among the masses. Parliamentarianism -argued Andrade- is something we are not ready to accept... due to the anarcho-syndicalist propaganda, the Spanish workers are essentially anti-parliamentarian. To convince them of the fact that their working-class representatives can work in Parliament for the revolution is something impossible. The daily example of the adaptation of the socialist members of parliament to the ambience of the Houses has a great influence on their anti-parliamentarian intransigence (12).

Indeed, the situation of Spain had to be taken into account, since unlike other capitalist countries, there did not exist a bourgeois parliamentary tradition nor democratic institutions. That is why the parliamentary cretinism of the PSOE did nothing else but to reinforce the refusal of the masses to the participation in the institutions which represented the tyranny of the dominant classes.

In this sense, Marx, already in his time, was interested in the distancing of the Spanish people from the State. The movements of that which we use to call State -he observes- have affected the Spanish people so scarcely that it has gladly washed its hands of this separated dominion of alternate passions and mean intrigues of the good-looking of the court, the military, the adventurers and the handful of self-styled statesmen, and it has had no important reasons to repent of its indifference (13). He even stated that the most serious democratic parties proclaimed themselves pro-abstentionist which proves that this abstentionism or boycott to the State and its institutions had deep roots in the psychology and the political culture of the masses in our country. Definitively, anarchism did nothing else but to link with this deeply rooten tradition which the working Internationals did not understand when they attributed it to its influence. For this reason, the Spanish communists, in spite of sharing this point of view, were not very misguided when they advocated for the boycott to parliament and other institutions.

The use of parliament could, to a certain extent, be appropriate in those countries where a bourgeois revolution had taken place and where there existed a parliamentary tradition, but this did not suit the conditions of Spain. Much less if we take into account that, at that moment, there did not exist a mature communist party with a defined politic line and tactics that could use parliament in a revolutionary way, no matter how reactionary this parliament was. This was not a new problem. Engels, analysing the experiences of the struggle of the German proletariat, maintained by the end of the 19th century that the parliamentarian tactics corresponded to a period of relatively peaceful expansion of capitalism. He also pointed out that, as long as this situation was maintained, it was necessary to participate in the elections since this allowed to keep tactically a contractual state with the bourgeoisie (14). But, as Engels himself pointed out, that situation could not last for a long time and, in fact, already at that moment with its entrance into the imperialist and monopolist phase, the capitalist regime started to show its claws. The contract was torn in 1914 by the imperialist war and the imposition of the most violent reaction in the capitalist States, which compelled to revise the tactics of the struggle of the proletariat. Ever since then, it was necessary to learn to dominate all the methods of struggle and forms of organization: the legal and clandestine work, the peaceful struggle and the armed struggle, the mass politic strikes and insurrection. However, Lenin was right when he criticised the leftists for confounding the historic expiry of parliamentarianism with its politic expiry in those countries where it still preserved some influence among the masses. For this reason he insisted on the fact that the tactics should be elaborated taking into account, with strict objectivity and calmly, all the class forces of the State in question (and of the States that surround it and of all the States at a world scale), as well as the experience of the revolutionary movements (15). At the same time he declared: The old forms (the ones corresponding to the bourgeois democracy) have been broken, since their new content -anti-proletarian, reactionary- has acquired a disproportionate development... we must transform, defeat and subdue all the forms, not only the new ones, but also the old, into a complete, definite and invincible weapon of communism (16). But all this is something that the CI, since it insisted unilaterally on the electoral participation, will take less into account.

Curiously, with regard to the work in the trade-unions, the Spanish leftists also differed from the European in that they refused it and they agreed with the CI. On the trade-unions, we have the same position as Moscow. We believe that the position of the German worker communists is mistaken. Practice convinces us more each day. In the old trade-unions, a great task can be done... Our attitude is to be members of either the UGT or the CNT, in order to work within them for the unification of the working syndical forces upon the programme of the Third International (17).

All these positions entered in contradiction with the socialdemocrat practices and conceptions of the thirdists of the PSOE (given the fact that these showed a distant attitude, sometimes even hostile, towards the CNT) which made difficult an understanding. Also in this point the tactics of the CI differed from that advocated by the Spanish communists. This was one of the main points of friction, due to which, in view of the almost insurmountable difficulties that appeared in the path of the unification, the CI took the decision of forcing this process. This initiative was described by the young communists as practically a treason. Hence, they did not waste any opportunity of accusing the thirdists of reformism and, in view of the urgent calls and initiatives of the CI in favour of unity, they answered highlighting the centrist character of their opponents and their identification with the followers of Pablo Iglesias denying the fact that many of them could be won for the cause, as in fact happened. Therefore, instead of working for the confluence, as the CI proposed, they thought that it was necessary to combat them without concessions. This closed and inflexible position gave way to many arguments. Sometimes the militants of the Spanish CP, headed by their leaders, came to a physical confrontation with those of the Socialist Party. The day that El Comunista appeared -remembers Andrade- there were quarrels because they tried to impede its selling. The communists got angry, protested and slapped a caretaker in his face. They are really scared of us (18). In this way the Spanish leftists understood the struggle against socialdemocracy.

As for the rest, notwithstanding their lacks and childish habits, the birth of the Spanish CP meant a step forward in the conscience and organization of the revolutionary working movement and allowed to give a greater impulse to the process of political and ideological decanting that was taking place mainly within the PSOE. As G. Zinoviev, maximum responsible of the CI, pointed out referring to the communist parties appeared at the same time, the Spanish CP was nothing but an organization that wanted to be communist, but it is was not yet (19). He himself admitted that the birth of a communist party, even if it takes place in the most favourable conditions, is always a long and very laborious process. Due to this, in its short existence, the Spanish CP was nothing but a group of agitators in whose labour outstood the diffusion of communist propaganda and literature, among which was included the publishing of some texts, as Lenin's State and revolution, first Bolshevik work edited in Spain (20).

1.4 A rather formal unification

To this unfavourable result contributed the dilatory tactics of the opportunist leaders and, to a lesser extent, the ideological and theoretical lacks of the most outstanding representatives of thirdism. These were not able at any moment to put to a severe criticism the conceptions and path of the Spanish socialism, which was marked, already from its beginning, by the tendency towards reformism. The generalized confusion of ideas about the character of revolution, about the tactics and role of the proletariat in it -of which the leftists also participated-, unabled the thirdists to combat consistently and to unmask opportunism in front of the socialist workers. Isidoro Acevedo's affirmation during the Congress that the problem of the adherence to the International was fundamentally tactic (21), made evident that, in fact, they had no differences of principles with the pablists. For the moment, the adherence of the thirdists to the CI and their attachment to communism was rather spontaneous and sentimental.

However, the rupture between the two sectors of the PSOE became unavoidable. The thirdists left the Congress hall in an atmosphere of extreme tension and confrontation, moving to the New School, where, that very day, on April 9th, decided to become the Spanish Worker Communist Party (PCOE).

Among the members of the new party there were outstanding historic leaders of the PSOE and UGT, such as Antonio García Quejido, Virginia González, Isidoro Acevedo and Facundo Perezagua.

Unlike the Spanish CP, the PCOE counted with a considerable presence in the UGT and with more members, mainly workers, among which the organizations of Vizcaya and Asturias stood out. In these two areas, almost half of the socialist militants entered the new party.

The rupture had immediate consequences in the Socialist Youth Federation that had been reorganized after the foundation of the Spanish CP. The socialist youth followed the steps of the PCOE and entered it, and with this, the PSOE lost for a second time in a very short period, its youth organization.

The existence of two organizations that proclaimed themselves communist created a situation of dispersion of forces and gave way to spread confusion among the revolutionary working movement. For this reason, the CI had been expressing with so much insistence the need of coming to the unification as soon as possible. This was a very difficult task: with a Spanish CP in which the leftist tendency was very accused, and with a PCOE in which there was a stressed tendency to slide towards reformism, it was difficult to bring positions closer and establish agreements. The biggest obstacles came from the leftists' vindications of purging most of the PCOE leaders, which they accused of centrism.

In the course of the talks that preceded the unification, the CI played a decisive role. In its final stage only one representative per each party took place in them -Núñez de Arenas by the PCOE and Gonzalo Sanz by the Spanish CP-, apart from the CI delegate, the Italian Graziadei. Once the obstacle of the purging had been overcome, on 14th November 1921 the Unification Act (22) was signed, with it, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) became constituted.

A real unification did not come from this agreement. As it had happened in similar cases with other communist parties, it was merely the addition of two groups arranged upon the only basis of the formal acceptance of some general principles, without a previous politic and ideological debate nor a common tactics that allowed to advance in the elaboration of the programme and to constitute, at the same time, a united leading nucleus. This question had been standing out as the main problem for some time. Considering the significance of the step to be given, no forceful reason could be argued to justify the fact that the unification was made in such a way. The conceptions and practices that both groups were maintaining advised against it. Nothing else emerges from the contradictory conclusions of the report sent by Graziadei to the EC (Executive Committee) of the CI, when he pointed out that with regard to the question of principles and tactics there were no great differences, while, on the other hand, he was compelled to recognize that among many comrades of the Spanish CP there were some leftist tendencies and among many comrades of the PCOE there were centrist tendencies (23).

Impelled by the need of forging as soon as possible an agreement between the two groups which allowed the formation of the party, the leaders of the CI stressed the unity in itself, losing sight of the principle of the ideological struggle. Given the existence of so different positions, it was unavoidable and necessary, at least after the unification, to open a process of ideological struggle. This would allow to advance in the path of a greater clarification and inner cohesion. The CI with its authority should have favoured the discussion and debate. The CI itself was the greatest guarantee to preserve the unity without detriment of principles. But, in view of the fear of a possible rupture, the criterion of lessening the contradictions prevailed and a conciliatory line was imposed.

The consequences of this false conception in the line of construction of the Party will bring about very negative effects on its latter evolution. In this way, considering the outbreak of consecutive crisis and inner struggles to which were not alien the differences about the tactics, nor those referred to the electoral participation or to the continuous shifts imposed by the changes in the international situation, the CI will try to suppress or to solve them by means of disciplinary or conciliatory measures, depending on the cases. This is what took place during the I Congress of the PCE (March 1922) and the II Congress (July 1923). In the latter, the representative of the CI, the Swiss Humbert-Droz, not only did he impede the delegates to elect the Central Committee democratically, but he also imposed a leadership that was mainly formed by the militants who were more prone to conciliate the conflicting positions (24). With such proceedings, impeding the Party to solve its own contradictions (instead of following the principle of democratic centralism), the CI hindered its purging and the creation of common links and labour habits among the militants of varied origin. In this way the door was open to the continuous and sharper reproduction of the same problems and conflicts without extracting anything clear from them.

The inner struggle was in itself a positive fact, a sign of vitality. But what was extremely pernicious was not the fact that in that moment they tried to impede the struggle and conciliate different positions, but the tendency, that by then was starting to appear, to confuse the character of the contradictions that unavoidably appeared within the Party, and, according to it, to adopt misguided, bureaucratic or official methods to solve them.

Despite everything, we must take into account that, in this first stage, the task of the CI was crucially positive and even decisive, since it provided the politic and ideological elements and the material support, without which the process of birth of the Party would have been much longer and painful. Even it is possible that this would have not taken place. But above all, the most important conclusion that can be drawn from these first steps is that the development of the PCE, just like that of any other communist party, could not be forced. Due to the very nature of the problems posed and the very conditions in which the PCE appeared, made necessary a long period of work among the masses, of accumulating experiences, of ideological struggle and theoretical elaboration. The process of formation of a communist party required -as Lenin pointed out- a prolonged task, a harsh experience. Its formation -he added- is made easier by an adequate revolutionary theory that, at the same time, is not a dogma, but it is only created in a definitive way in tight link with the practical experience of a true mass and revolutionary movement (25). From the Bolshevik experience the Spanish communists could learn valuable teachings, but they should not imitate them, that is precisely the mistake in which they constantly fell and against which Lenin did not stop advising. To research, to study, to discover, to guess, to grasp that which is particular and specific from the national point of view, in the way in which each country deals specifically with the solution to the common international problem; the problem of the triumph over opportunism and left doctrinarism within the working movement, the overthrowing of the bourgeoisie, the establishment of the Soviet republic and the proletarian dictatorship, is the main task of the historic stage that all the developed (and not only the developed) countries are undergoing (26). This task, in the case of Spain, could only be undertaken by the PCE in the long term, taking into account the peculiarities of the revolutionary struggle in our country. It could not be other way.

This is corroborated by the experience of the Communist Party of China. In a general way -Mao manifested referring to this same problem- the objective world of China has been understood by China itself; she has acquired this knowledge and not the comrades of the international communist movement interested in the Chinese problem. These comrades of the international communist movement do not understand, we can even say that they are unable to understand Chinese society. We ourselves have not understood for a long time the objective world of China; then, let's not talk any more about those foreign comrades. It is in the time of the war of resistance against Japan when we have defined the general line of the Party, when we have taken some political decisions adapted to the situation. By that time, we had already undergone twenty years of revolution. Through all those years of revolutionary labour, we had worked blindly... (27).

From these experiences and conclusions we can learn that the elaboration of the politic line, the knowledge of the objective world in each country, as in any process of knowledge, could be nothing else but the result of the direct experience of the communists in those countries, of their participation in the revolutionary struggle. And therefore, it could not stop being tied to the very laws of knowledge, to a gradual movement of accumulation of experiences, of partial knowledge favoured by the defeats and victories, as well as by the inner struggles till reaching a superior knowledge that allows to discover the laws of each revolution.

2. Times of crisis and confusion

At the same time, despite the government and employers repression, strikes of great fighting spirit took place in this period, the last of them in 1923. This was the case of the Vizcayan miners strike, led by the Party, which will culminate in an armed confrontation between the repressive forces and a hundred of its militants shielded in the People’s House in Bilbao. But these struggles already had a defensive character; hence, the working class adopted an attitude of passive resistance in front of the military coup. Only in Vizcaya there were partial strikes answering to the communist call to a general strike.

On the contrary, the leaders of the PSOE and the UGT, as an advance of their immediate collaboration with the Dictatorship, hastened to make a call to the working class to refrain from taking any initiative and to act within the legal channels (28). More surprising was the attitude of the anarcho-syndicalist leaders who opted for suspending the activity of the CNT against the criterion of many federations.

By resorting to the Army and to the establishment of an all-out dictatorship, the dominant classes tried to find a way out to the politic crisis of the regime and to avert the threat of revolution. With this Spain did nothing else but to follow the path of other European countries. In Lithuania, Italy, Poland, Greece and Hungary had been established fascist or pro-fascist regimes that were an advance of those that will be established later on in the thirties. Even in the most developed capitalist countries, which had a greater parliamentary tradition, the tendency towards reaction and militarism was the dominant trend.

The repression of the Dictatorship soon fell on the PCE, when it had not already reached a minimum consolidation, adding greater obstacles to its development. In this way starts a period of confusion and crisis, which was to a certain extent the continuation of the previous one, in which the divisions and inner struggles will consume the greatest part of its energies. This was also a stage in which it was not possible to form a really united and stable leading nucleus and in which a politic line was hardly outlined. To sum up, a period that will coincide with a situation of inner struggles and constant changes of the CI, that will logically have an incidence in the national sections and will contribute to increase confusion.

2.1 Starting a new

The Leadership of the Party, not understanding the meaning and reach of the politic change that had just taken place and not having a clear idea of the tasks that it should undertake, found itself disoriented. The greatest part of its members were of the opinion that the Dictatorship would not last long (29). And, although repression decimated and dismantled the organization, the Central Committee did not take at any moment the measures that such a situation required: instead of working for the formation of a clandestine machine, it kept the Party in legality as if nothing had changed. In this way the tendency to elude any activity that could attract a greater repression upon the Party and its militants opened its way; this tendency will be openly manifested when, for instance, the PCE refused to participate, together with the French CP in a campaign of denounce of the war against Morocco.

This attitude, together with the neglect of the syndical work, specially within the CNT, unleashed towards the CC the criticism of several federations led by the Catalonian-Balearic one, in which a group of followers of the CI coming from anarcho-syndicalism had just entered. Among them was Joaquín Maurín, who had outstood in the circles of the radical left and who had a great prestige among the leaders of the CI, as well as Andreu Nin, another of the standard-bearers of the thirdist trend of the CNT, who was a member of the Secretariat of the Red Syndical International (RSI).

In the conflict created as a result of those criticisms, the CI went to the side of the opposition to the CC which had been promoted by the CI itself in the II Congress and which was then reinforced by the followers of Maurín. To this change of position was not alien the inner struggle that was taking place within the CI (and the SUCP) which was reflected in the V Congress (July 1924) in the slogan of Bolshevization of the communist parties (30). In this way they tried to counteract and combat the influence of the rightist opportunism that, in the course of the struggle against the leftist deviations, had increased in many communist parties.

The International, besides, had other reasons to renew or to change the Leadership of its Spanish section: its concern for the weakness of the communist influence in Catalonia, where there existed a large and combative proletariat, and the scarce attention paid to the national problem of Catalonia by the Spanish leaders. This is the reason for its insistence on the transfer of the CC to Barcelona and of its aim of placing Maurín and other militants, who affirmed to count with many followers, at the head of the Party.

As a consequence of this series of problems, in the National Conference that took place in Madrid in November 1924, the CC handed in its resignation and a new Provisional Central Committee formed by the opposition was elected. But, it had not the opportunity of developing its activity since the greatest part of its members were very soon arrested by the political police. A similar fate run many rank-and-file militants. In a short time the Party was almost completely dismantled. Only La Antorcha (The Torch), its central voice, which was legally published and submitted to military censorship, kept its existence symbolically (31).

At the beginning of 1925 the situation was so critical that the CI decided to constitute a special commission to solve the problems of the Spanish section. This commission designated José Bullejos as secretary general, entrusting him the mission of reorganizing the Party in the underground. A first step in this sense was given by the Ivry Conference (May 1925) with the formation of the Executive Committee to which joined some militants exiled in France. At the instances of the CI, who was sensibly opposed to the immediate transfer to Spain until there was not a start of reorganization, the new leadership was kept in Paris for some time (32).

By the end of the year, contacts with different localities had already been established and preparations for the holding of a National Conference had been made. The meeting would take place in December in Bordeaux, with the attendance of delegates of five federations, the Communist Youth and a delegation of the CI. One of the most important agreements taken in that Conference was the transfer of the Executive to the inside of the country (33).

2.2 Best decisions and mistakes of the Bullejos group

The CI was swift to answer to this agreement. A resolution taken in January 1927 (*) qualified it of being mistaken and advised the Party to participate in the elections. Besides, in its resolution the CI defended the point of view that a strengthening of the Dictatorship was taking place. On the other hand, even recognizing that the Party had made some progresses in certain fields, the resolution made an essentially negative general balance of the task developed by the Executive Committee in particular. To be more precise, the Leadership of the CI stressed the fact that the Spanish leaders had not been able to reach the fundamental objective of achieving a fusion of the different groups of the Party which was attributed, according to the CI, to the lack of a prudent politics that was able to overcome the causes of the divergencies instead of sharpening them when insisting of them (35).

Apart from other considerations, the appreciations of the Leadership of the CI about the alleged strengthening of the Dictatorship, in which it will insist a year later in other resolution of the same type (36), could not be more out of reality. As the leaders of the Party justly maintained, the evolution of the politic, social and economic events had proved the contrary and will prove it many times more. And this was due not only to the isolation of the Dictatorship from the majority of the population, but also to the inner antagonisms of the Spanish capitalism, each time more acute, which the resolution did not take into account.

In fact, the strength of the Dictatorship was only apparent. Due to the particularities of the capitalist development and the class struggle in our country, the establishment of a fascist regime found big obstacles. Hence the differences that separated Primo de Rivera's Dictatorship from the Italian fascist model, which explain its fragility. Primo de Rivera's project did not count, as Mussolini's one, with a mass basis; even it did not count yet with the support of important sectors of the bourgeoisie of the Basque Country and Catalonia, although at the beginning they had provided it fearing the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. For this reason, it had not been a chance that the coup had had in Catalonia its main cornerstone. In this nationality, where together with Vizcaya the majority of the industrial proletariat of Spain was concentrated, the class struggle had sharpened more than in any other area of the country. It was precisely the Catalonian big bourgeoisie, organized around Fomento del Trabajo (employers association) and Lliga Regionalista (Regionalist League), the first one to ask for the intervention of the army against the workers strikes and to stimulate and support State terrorism. Even the very idea of the coup had started from it, not only to end with the workers agitation and the anarchist activism but also to assert its politic influence in Madrid and to achieve higher levels of self-government with which better defend its interests.

But, even if the army and the financial and landowning oligarchy coincided with the Catalonian capitalism in the necessity of a dictatorship against the workers -and in this sense the Catalonian bourgeoisie embodied the wishes of the Spanish one-, they differed not only with regard to their politic and economic interests but also, and mainly, regarding the Catalonian national question. So, from the moment when Primo de Rivera broke his promises and dissolved the Mancomunidad (sort of assembly in which the Catalonian bourgeoisie saw a first step to advance in its aspirations of self-government), the divorce between them did not take long to occur. Naturally, these pretensions had to crash with the plans of the centralist oligarchy designed to reinforce its power and to establish a system of State monopolist capitalism. Due to this, instead of creating a new type of State that would integrate everyone and would calm down the inner quarrels -which will only be achieved under Franco's regime and this only for some time-, Primo de Rivera's Dictatorship was a caricature of fascism. Nothing else can be said of its desire to dress in clothes of the 20th century the politic power of the traditional monarchy with its guilds, its consultive councils and Courts that were structured on the basis of the different social layers. The Italian fascist State appeared in the end as an innovation; that of Primo de Rivera was nothing else but a piece of junk. Under such conditions, the thesis of the strengthening of the Dictatorship could hardly be maintained.

The divergencies of the leaders of the PCE with the CI spread to other issues, as the characterization of the economic and social basis of the regime, since they considered that the resolution established a completely artificial separation between the financial capital, the big landowners and the industrial bourgeoisie, situating them at the same level. In their opinion, the financial capital was the first economic power, not only in the sense that, from a quantitative point of view, it represented an addition of values superior to that of the industrial and agricultural capital put together, but, mainly, because its economic power had made the other two sectors dependant on it (37).

In view of these analyses, it was evident that the leaders of the Party underestimated the hindrance that the feudal remains meant in the field of the capitalist development. But, also, it was not less true that the Leadership of the CI tended to stress them more than necessary.

Unlike Bullejos and company, the leaders of the International did not take into account the fact that, although under the Dictatorship the old agrarian structures were almost untouched, the first embryonic forms of State monopolist capitalism started to appear. In this sense, in 1924, the National Council of Economy was created as the superior governing and promoter organization of the economic policy, as well as other different state or para-state organizations destined to undertake the monopolization of important productive sectors. The fact is that the Dictatorship could not shirk the economic and politic needs and interests of the big financial bourgeoisie and its ascending force.

The economic interventionism of the State also became evident in the nationalization of some ruined enterprises and in the subvention of others, in the establishment of state monopolies like CAMPSA (Contractor Company of the Oil Monopoly), in the control and regulation of the prices, in the passing of many laws favouring a bigger economic concentration and protecting the production and the inner market, as well as in the promotion of the industrialization of the country and in the accomplishment of public works to modernize its infrastructure. In order to finance such ambitious plans, the State resorted to loans in the financial Spanish and foreign markets and to the issue of national Debt.

Primo de Rivera's Government had also helped the investment of foreign capital in those branches of production that the Spanish capital could not attend directly due to the lack of investments and technology, joining to the already existing foreign investments in the financial sector, mining, railways and industry. In this way, Spain was characterized by being a country that depended to a great extent on foreign capital, although not as much as to reach a point in which the financial-landowning oligarchy would lose its control on the basic sectors of the economy.

The intervention of the State even covered the syndical sphere through the Labour Council and the parity committees. In order to accomplish this it counted with the help of the socialist and UGT leaders who occupied prominent posts in the Labour Council, in the State Council and in many other organizations and institutions established by the Dictatorship.

The outcome of this politics was the advance of the capitalist development in Spain, which was favoured by the temporary recovery of the world economy.

Certainly, it was not easy to determine in a precise way, at that moment, the basic structural features of Spanish society. The so complex characteristics of the Spanish capitalist development and the so particular, dynamic and contradictory process through which the alliance between the old landowning aristocracy and the big commercial, industrial and financial bourgeoisie was being knit from the 19th century, made it difficult. Precisely, Marx in his times referred to this type of problems, when studying and deepening in the knowledge of Spanish history, when he affirmed that it was a quite confusing history and that it became really difficult to find the causes of the developments (38). To this contributed, in his opinion, the fact that there was not any other country except Turkey that was so scarcely known and so badly understood by Europe as Spain, what he attributed to the fact that historicists instead of appreciating the strength and resources of those peoples in their province and local organization, they have drunk in the source of their official histories (39).

In order to throw some light on so much confusion and find the background causes of the Spanish politic events in the 19th century, Marx centred his attention on searching the peculiarities of the revolution in Spain, giving a great importance to the analysis of the superstructural instances -traditions, institutions, politics, religion, culture, popular psychology, etc.- and to their dialectic relation with the economic and social structural elements. For instance, a politico-military phenomenon, as the so-called Reconquest, is interpreted by him as the primary cause of a structural feature of the Spanish society that he considered decisive: the local isolation, the self-sufficiency and independence of the regional forces. With this feature, as Marx affirmed, another political factor interweaved in the course of Spanish history: the incapability of the Austrian dynasty to create a modern centralized state, that will redound, on the one hand, in the manifest stagnation of the State, and on the other in the delay of the achievement of the natural conditions of modern society (40); namely, in the delay of the bourgeois revolution and of the capitalist development.

Therefore, it was of the biggest importance to define the fundamental structural features of Spanish society, since they conditioned the tactics and strategy of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat in our country. The importance of the feudal remains impeded the revolution to have a socialist character. But, at the same time, the predominance of the financial capital and the subordination to it of the big landowning properties -either they belonged to the aristocracy or to the bourgeois big landowners- and of the industry, together with the entrance of capitalism in its imperialist phase, gave the still non-accomplished democratico-bourgeois revolution a new character, clearly popular and anti-monopolist. This could only be secured under the leadership of the revolution by the proletariat.

2.3 A non-Bolshevik tactics

But what constituted a crude tergiversation of the Bolshevik experience, in which a dogmatic position could be perceived, was to affirm that the tactics of participation corresponded to the constant practice of the Russian communist party, the only one that is adapted to the current situation of Spain and of the Spanish communist party (42); since, at least the Bolsheviks had once carried out an intense campaign of boycotting the tsarist Duma, without the existence in Russia of an immediate revolutionary situation. Precisely on that experience were based the leaders of the PCE to justify the boycott although they admitted that a similar situation did not take place in that moment. However, they argued that there existed all the necessary factors for the outbreak of a democratic people's revolution (43), what did not take long to become evident. The leaders of the CI could not appreciate this situation from Moscow and even less when they showed themselves incapable of understanding that the stage of ebb and relative stabilization of capitalism was approaching its end, as it will become evident very soon with the outbreak of the economic crisis in 1929.

In any case, the revolutionary tactics that should have been applied at that moment in Spain, could only be the one that the Bolsheviks had applied in their struggle against the constitutionalist sham of Tsarism, less reactionary by the way than Primo de Rivera's freak. And this was the tactics that the PCE finally adopted. The Durango Conference (June 1927), basing on the analysis made by the EC, disapproved the proposals of the CI and pronounced in favour of boycott (44). But, since the calling to elections was still pendant, the Party would not make reference to the boycott in its campaigns against the Dictatorship, and it would merely call upon resistance.

Regarding the considerations of the resolution about the inner situation of the PCE, there is no doubt that they contained many mistakes of subjectivism, since they did not take into account the so adverse conditions in which the Party had to move nor the very responsibility in this matter of the Leadership of the International; with this once more, the CI would repeat the same mistake of advising the Party to apply misguided methods, openly conciliatory, in the resolution of the inner conflicts. On the other hand, it was also true that the aforementioned conflicts could not be solved, as Bullejos and his group intended, through disciplinary measures and expulsions, following the bureaucratic and official methods that were being imposed in the SUCP and the CI (45), since, in this way they impeded the clarification of ideas moving away from the Party those militants who could be won for the cause.

As for the rest, it was evident that the CI applied a different criterion with the EC of the Party and with those who, according to the resolution, violated the elementary rules in the life of a communist organization, did not have a communist ideology yet and lacked a politic platform to oppose the one of the EC (46). In view of such contradiction, it is easy to understand that the Leadership of the Party would not be ready to apply with those ones, as they were required, a prudent politics.

In fact, as it will be understood later, what worried the leaders of the CI in that moment was not the unity of the Party, but the form in which to eliminate, in a non-Bolshevik form, the EC and, specially, its secretary general to place in its post a more ductile and malleable leadership. This and nothing else laid behind the criticisms and advises of the CI. Naturally, in that new Leadership the group of militants of Barcelona to which the resolution referred will occupy a prominent place. Behind this group was Joaquín Maurín who was pulling the strings from Barcelona Modelo Prison, from where he would be released in a short time.

In 1924, due to the aforementioned reasons, the CI could still have some justifications to entrust the maurinists with the leadership of the Party. But, in 1927, since it became evident that those were a group of frauds and crooks -the forces with which they affirmed to count turned out to be a bluff-; and that they had never done anything similar to a communist work of organization and propaganda; and only had devoted themselves to make a labour of sabotage, intrigue and split, to ally with them, to put into practice a prudent policy, could do nothing but to increase confusion even more and obstacle the proclaimed unity.

In particular, Maurín had never deigned to collaborate with La Antorcha, in spite of the persistent requirements he was made. But, on the contrary, his collaborations proliferated in the press of the French CP and in that of the French trotskist opposition, whose voice -the Bulletin Communiste edited by Souvarine- was profusely distributed by the Regional Committee of Catalonia, whereas they refused to distribute the voice of the Party (47). Later on, in 1928, Maurín will go even further when he supported undercover the establishment of the so-called Catalonian Communist Party in order to press the CI in favour of his pretension of taking control of the Leadership of the PCE (48).

But, besides, we have to point out that it was not true that the opposition lacked a politic platform to oppose the Executive Committee. At least, Maurín and his followers had defended and will still persist to defend the slogan of a Democratic Federative Republic in which, although they did not manifest it openly, it was revealed their opportunist, socialdemocrat conception of the democratico-bourgeois revolution and their favourable position towards subordinating the Catalonian proletariat to the nationalist bourgeoisie (49).

So, if we take into account the latter deeds of the majority of the members of the group of militants of Barcelona and their final adherence to trotskism -and where will end some of the members of the EC of the CI of that time, among others, Tasca, Togliatti and Humbert-Droz that so much sympathized with Maurín (50)-, it will be easily understood that some of the advises of the resolution were used by them with opportunist aims, as the one of trying to place one of them at the head of the Party.

In this matter time will prove that Bullejos and his group were right. Besides, the elections will never take place and the Dictatorship will soon enter an all-out crisis dragging the Monarchy with it. However, the Leadership of the CI will never reconsider its position nor admit to have made the minimum mistake in its appreciations. There still existed the possibility of putting the blame on the opportunist group in fashion. As a result, the Leadership of the CI will continue acting in the same way: insisting systematically on the electoral participation -even in situations of acute revolutionary crisis (51)-, without taking into account the particular conditions and hindering in this way the process of development and maturing of the PCE impeding the Spanish communists to elaborate their own politic line independently.

2.4 In search of a new revolutionary via

What was the cause of such disparity of positions? Were the Leaders of the PCE so sectarian or leftists -as the leaders of the International insinuated- so as not to take into account their views? Was the CI perhaps moving towards rightist opportunism, as the Spanish leaders insinuated? What was the bottom of the problem?

The Leadership of the CI was utterly right when it insisted on the democratic, not socialist, character of the revolution as it had already become evident during the polemic started previously. This was certainly a fundamental or principle question, from which the tactics of struggle of the Party had to be defined. In this matter, Bullejos and his group talked nonsense when they insisted on their part on the slogan socialist revolution. Now well, the fact that the CI underestimated the economic power of the financial capital and put the emphasis on the electoral participation gave way to think that the democratic revolution which it advocated for, could run the risk of being limited to the old type. And that risk was even greater since there were two different conceptions about the democratic revolution, not only within the PCE but also within the International.

In relation to this crucial problem there existed another question which did not have less importance and that contributed to increase confusion: the formula of the workers and peasants government, used by the CI to define this kind of democratic revolution, appeared many times linked to the socialist revolution, to insurrection, without specifying that it corresponded to a government of a transition period (53). Obviously, the struggle for the workers and peasants government, which constituted the true central issue of the leaders of the PCE, could not match with an out-and-out practice of electoral participation. This explains the fact that before the fall of the Monarchy, with the revolutionary mass movement in full development, Bullejos, supported by a great part of the Leadership of the PCE, advocated for the electoral boycott and insurrection (54).

This same problem of the inadequacy of the slogans of working and peasant government, soviets and insurrection in the cities, was also being posed by that time in China, where they were finally rejected by the Communist Party. From all this we can deduce today that the tactics based on the Russian experience did not correspond to the current conditions for the development of the democratic revolution at that time, and this not only in Spain and China (semi-feudal and semicolonial country in which this problem had a great relevance), but also at a general level.

In fact this tactics had been invalidated after the defeat of revolution in Europe and the subsequent ebb of the revolutionary movement on a worldwide scale, therefore, it was necessary to look for another one. However, although the CI recognized to some extent this need in an attempt to adapt itself to the new situation, it still maintained the old slogans combined with callings to participate in the parliamentary elections. In all this there was a certain logic, particularly applied to the conditions of Spain; even more if we take into account that the CI considered that there was an ebb situation in the revolutionary movement, that the Dictatorship was being consolidated and that all this could lead to an isolation of the Party from the masses.

On their part, the leaders of the PCE lost sight of the fact that -as Lenin himself had explained- the Bolsheviks had counted with extraordinarily favourable conditions to seize power. Not only the imperialist war had dismantled the already corrupt and weakened Russian State, but the workers and peasants, most of them posted in the army, were armed. Besides, it would be impossible to understand the October Insurrection without taking into account the February democratico-bourgeois revolution which dethroned the Tzar, and even less, to understand both revolutions without the preceding one of 1905. So if to this we add, as Lenin pointed out, that under imperialism (and even more after the first socialist revolution had taken place) the tactic and strategic proceedings of counter-revolution had developed much more than those of the proletariat (55), we can understand better the difficulty of the problem that the CI and the PCE had before them, as well as the necessity of looking for a new path that would allow to accumulate forces and experiences awaiting for the appearance of favourable conditions to take the offensive.

To conclude, during this period until the adoption of the tactics of People's Front the CI will lack a clear and just tactics, which made the leaders of the PCE move in the middle of confusion and grasp to the old slogans. In order to develop and complete the People's Front tactics the experience of the war in Spain and, mainly that of the Chinese revolution will still be necessary. On this basis Mao will elaborate his theses on the new democracy and the strategy of protracted people's war with which a new path for revolution will be opened.

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