Summary:
1. The armed fight resort, main characteristic of the revolutionary movement in the developed capitalist countries
2. The communist party leads the resistance movement and guerrilla
Spain, as a monopolist country is fully in the general crisis of capitalism. Particularly, the economical crisis has aggravated all contradictions of the system and those derived from the structures and methods of fascist domination that the oligarchy in power has been putting in practice for more than forty years. This is the reason why in Spain exists an opposition in the struggle of classes sharper than that of other European countries.
In the present, revolution finds much more advantageous conditions, both at the inner level and at the external one, than in the past to be carried out and reach its widest aims. The transformations which took place during the last decades, changed our economical and socially underdeveloped country into a developed capitalist one. The working class became the largest class of society and the material foundations settled for the socialist revolution. In Spain the proletariat has had to fight a war without mercy against the savage explotation of monopolism, imposed by the fascist terror. Was has permitted to get rid of the influence of the middle-class ideology more easily.
Due to the economical and social underdevelopment of Spain, aggravated by the desvastating effects of a civil war and the subsequent repression, the monopolist economical development could only be carried out by means of the intensive exploitation of the working class and the peasantry, always accompanied by a brutal repression. In spite of the desorganization, the fear and the demoralization caused by the defeat, the masses confronted the reaction soon, using the most varied methods of fight and ways of organization, among which it is necessary to emphasize the guerrilla resistance during the forties and the fifties which had its continuity in the later strike movement. The new revolutionary movement has its roots in this situation originates by the monopolist development bound to the terrorism of state, and these reason make it different from that of the past. In Spain there is no democratic-burgeois revolution pendant. The only revolution possible is the socialist revolution. However, due to the fascist nature of the financial oligarchyīs State and the wide non-proletarian groups of the population who are subjected to the exploitation and opression, the main contradiction existing in Spain is that which confronts monopolism and fascism with the working class and the rest of the masses. For that reason, although the strategical aim of our revolution can only be the winning of the political power for the working class; this class will have to defeat the oligarchy in power before with the help of other opressed groups, preserving at every moment is leading an independant role.
The new working classīrevolutionary movement has gone through a long period of spontaneous strives, lack of organization and clarity of objectives as a consequence of the degeneration the Communist Party of Spain was driven to by Carrilloīs revisionist caucus. This band of traitors got the directive posts in the Party, imposing on it the burgeois policy of class reconciliation and denigrating its glorious revolutionary path that so much prestige won among the masses. This work was favoured by the disappearance in the fight of importants cadres, not only during the war but later on with the guerrilla; sometimes they were even murdered by Carrillosīs people ends. Such a labor received an invaluable approval with the revisionist thesis adopted by the PCUS XX congress, that contributed to create uncertainty. Had not been so, Carrillo and his supporters would not have achieved to impose on so experienced a Party.
The national reconciliation policy, which meant the reconciliation with bourgeoisie and fascism in our country, made the PCE into a socialfascist party. With the classes conciliation they were trying to take away the proletariat from the revolutionary struggle and lead them by the way of participation in the institutions of the fascist regime and its propping up. However, the working-class didnīt swallow the bait but went on with their resolute and independent strife spontaneously causing the total isolation of the regime and the aggravation of its inner contradictions.
All this created by the end of the sixties the commanding necessity of a proletarian vanguard to direct and organize the ascending movement of the masses, the unmask revisionism and prepare the future approaching fights of class.
To the crisis the revolutionay struggle had opened, joined the changes produced by the end of the sixties decade at the international situation. The end of the postwar development; the signs of a new great economic crisis; the wide anti-imperialist movement, unfastened all over the world by the Yankee aggresive war in Vietnam and the struggle that broke out at the international communist movement betwween the revisionist positions and the revolutionary and anti-imperialist positions. All these reasons, together with the struggle of classes sharpeced Carrillosīs revisionism. From this tendence would stand out the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Spain, a communist organization which would undertake the tasks for the reconstitution of the Party, this being an essential and necessary objective for the working-class to raise their struggle to a higher level. This fact was very important in order that the revolutinary movement should continue moving forward and finish with their spontaneity. On the other hand, the appearance of a new communist vanguard was something that sooner or later would have to happen, because of the agravation in the struggle of classes and the Carrillist treason. For the true communists and conscious workers became evident the necessity of giving the movement vanguard organization.
The Marxist-Leninist Organization of Spain (OMLE), established in 1.968 on the communist circles of the Spanish emigration, began their works focusing their efforts on the formation of a leading nucleus which identified themselves with the idea of reconstituting the Party. For this it was necessary to work among the masses, to contribute to their education and political organization, to urge as much as possible the fight against fascism and imperialism, to unmask at the same time revisionism and other opportunists. Having the marxist-leninism as a guide the OMLE with their clandestinity activity, started the creation of the party structure, building the foundations of its political line and of its centralized and democratic functioning, establishing the essential bonds with the masses, specially with the manufacturing proletariat.
In 1.973, the oligarchy tries for the first time to adapt its fascist machine to the new conditions, for which the traditional methods of domination were becoming ineffective. This is what was then known as political "opening", which was so opossed to inmovilism in the old ways of the fascist power as to the so called democracy.
The OMLE, was the only one that stood out in the denunciation of the "opening" manoeuvre and the conter-revolutionary block around it, formed by fascism and all kind of revisionists and opportunists; the OMLE called on the masses to proceed with resistance and to boycott every call to participation in the institutions; the OMLE took part in a lot of working strives, leading some of them which were very important, as the revolutionary strike in Vigo in 1.972; this organization carried out a systematic political and ideological strife against revisionism and oportunism. Fascism was weak, it was cornered and eaten up with its inner contradictions, and if there was courage to face it, it would give up.
In 1.975 te regime had the most serious crisis of its history. Before the failure of the "oppening" policy, its social isolation, the working-class boycott and resistance to its plans, the oligarchy had no other way out but resort to the most uncontrolled terrorism. In these conditions, the OMLE decided to hold the Reconstitutive Congress of the Party, because they were conscious that the working-class required more than ever their orgasnized vanguard. Moreover, the growth of the Organization spread out to every nationality and to the main industrial areas, had created the ideological, political and organic bases that made it possible the mentioned call.
In the Reconstitutive Congress (held in June 1.975) a series of plans were approved in order to place the Party in the direction of the masses revolutionary movement. Among other decisions taken was to support and drive the armed struggle. The numerous experiences got from the direct and active participation in the revolutionary struggle of the masses and the same character the general crisis of the system was taking, made the PCE(r) direction understand better every day the impossibility for the working-class of proceeding with the fight for true freedom and for Socialism with the methods of the syndical and parliamentary strife.
The great capital, at the present stage of its development -characterized by the chronic political and economic crisis, by militarism and the political method of police control- and before the growing opposition and resistance of the masses against spoliation and repression, it cannot follow ruling with the shameless fascist ways. However, the existence of lawful worker parties and trade unions are no allowed either. In spite of, like in other times, those should use the democratic bourgeois laws ans institutions to finish with the bourgeois system at the very moment of its decadence and generalized crisis. For this, today the state of the bourgeois dictadure is the armed counter-revolution, ready for acting at any time to drown in blood the least hint of popular freedom. This is why to attack the capistalist system, to achieve social and economic improvements. to enlarge freedom, to gather revolutionary forces, the syndical and parliamentiary methods (typical of the previous stages in the development of capitalism) are not enought. Those methods are today completely out of step and under the control of the repressive machine of the State.
On doing this analysis of the present conditions in the existance of capitalism and of the struggle methods corresponding to the imperialism stage, the Party had in mind the leninist doctrines. "Marxism -Lenin said- unquestionably demands that the problem of the struggle methods must be considered historically. To put the problem in the margin of the concrete historical situation is so much as not understanding the rudiments of the dialectic materialism". And goes on: "At different moments of the economic evolution, sujected the different political, national-cultural conditions of life, etc., firstly, different principal methods of strife stand out and, in relation to this, the secondary, subordinate methods vary, too"(1).
Historically, the frequent changes in the tactics come impossed by each political and economic moment. We can say that from the beginning of this century, from the entry of capitalism in the imperialism phase, and the beginning of the new revolutionary era this brought about, the tendency in the revolutionay movement is to use new methods of defence and attack and higher every day, what can be made specific in what we call the masses political movement, and the guerrilla war.
Today, we find ourselves with the monopolism and the political reaction; the bourgeoisie itself has broken from time ago with its democratic legality with which governed in other times. The monopolist capital has got rid of all the juridical and institucional ties that obstructed its open counter-revolutionary action. This change in the political situation revealed itself by the beginning of this century coinciding with the formation of monopolies in a series of countries. World War I evidenced it clearly. However, up to thirties we can say they still survive, together with the quick tendency to fascism and monopolism, political and economic methods of the previous period. Fascism (the political way of power that adopts financial capital in this stage) put an end to these latter, spurred by the development of the revolutionary movement and the necessity of the capitalist competition in those countries which were in worse conditions to carry it out.
It was natural, then, that the fight tactics of the proletariat preserved until then, the news methods together with part of the old ones, although, as Lenin said, these latter ways should be subordinated to the first ones, thatīs to say, the new mwthods of struggle, caused by the new economic and political conditions and by the raising quick development of the revolutionary movement of the masses."The old ways -Lenin said- have broken, for they antiproletarians and reactionary new content has obtained and excessive development"(2); for this, Lenin called, it is necessary "to change, overcome and submit all the methods, not only the new but the old ones; not to reconcile with the latter but to know how to change them all, the new and the old, in a complete, definite and invincible weapon of communism"(2).
The revisionist parties and other allied groups, not only have not combined the new and the old ways of struggle, but they have forgot little by little the first ones, accusing them of being "old and unuseful" to keep only the really old methods of strife, those that can be used for nothing. From these old positions direct their demagogic and low attacks to the new revolutionary movement, that is putting in practice the new mwthods which correspond to the new historical conditions.
Basing on these analysis, our Party, the PCE(r), decides to detach some of its best cadres to cover the armed fight front. These cadres were the ones who impelled the creation of armed organization wich would be named GRAPO later on.
October the First Antifascist Resistance Groups (GRAPO) appeared at a crucial moment for the countryīs political life, after a long period of training. In the summer, 1.975, before the breakdown of the "oppening" policy, the regime started a vast terror campaign to make the masses to back down. This was something the Party has already foreseen and was alerting the masses against this and calling them to resistance. After a lot of murders in the streets, beatings and massive arrest during the summer, which was known as the "summer of terror", on September 27 the death penalty was imposed to five antifascist. However, this vile crime had a forceful reply in the execution by the GRAPO of four paid assassins of the regime, when Franco and the oligarchy with its stalwarts, four days after the blood orgy, on October the first, were getting ready to celebrate in Oriente Square the triumph over the revolutionary movement. The simultaneous operation of four gerrilla commandos at different places of Madrid, what the most evident proof to show that the revolutionary forces were not frightened and that they were going to confront the regime with a more forceful struggle.
This date, from which the GRAPO got their name, meant a testing of force betwen the old fascism and the revolutionary proletariat, headed by the PCE(r), from wich the winner would be the resistance movement. October the first actions forced the regime to stop dead its terrorist intensification. More than twenty summary trials with the petition of the death penalty were interrupted and never held. This knock against reaction opened a wide route for the masses strives who were demanding in the streets demonstration and strike freedom; which were then very harshly punished by the law.
The answer to the purpose of keeping the old fascist apparatus by means of the terror, carried to oligarchy to change their steps in other direction. They started with the preliminaries of the reform, intensifying their contacts with the "tame oposition" at the time Franco was dying.
The first year after the so called "transition", inmediately after Francoīs death, was accompanied by the widest strike movement of all the cruel history of the regime. Only in January and March og 1.976, a great number of strikes, harsh facings with the police, barricades took place all over the State. On March, 3, in Vitoria, during the general strike, four workers were murdered and seventy more wounded in the course of a massacre made by the police while the workers were holding a meeting in a church. The solidarity movement with Vitoria spread all over the State. Our Party, studying the events of Vitoria and the character of the struggle breaking out at those moments, called on the masses to the general strike and to "look for arms and learn how they work", answering that way the necessity lots of workers felt, at the moment, to give a reply to the State terrorism.
With the last events, it was clear that they couldnīt follow deceiving the masses with promises and that pure and simple repression would not give them any result. By that reason, the monopolies, in accordance with the army and the high-ranking people of the church, give Suarez -responsible together with Fraga for the massacre in Vitoria- the task of making "democratic" the country. For this they allow the legalization of the reformist parties, particularly Carrilloīs party, which so much had distinguished itselfs in the contribution to repression. The power would follow in the hands of those who had it nearly forty years. Then, the so called "democratic reform" would not be anything else but the mask behind which they would try to hide the permanence of fascism without Franco. All this was against the demands of the masses for true democratic changes.
It was clear, then, that monopolism has a tendency towards reaction; that from fascism, it was impossible to go back to democracy. Therefore, in our country would not exist a movement toward parliamentarism, but what was really opened was a revolutionary process with a long character, in which the armed fight was essential to conquer freedom and socialism.
According to these plans, the GRAPO went on developing their armed activity joined to the movement of the masses. The regime found that at every step given in its manoeuvres, the came down with the forceful answer of the GRAPO. Particularly important were the capture of the President of the State Council, Oriol y Urquijo, and the President of Military Justice High Council, lieutenant general Villaescusa, both carried out respectively in December, 1.976 and January, 1.977. Such actions which were intended for unmasking the "reform", contributed to fustrate their plans and give a great impulse to the worker and popular movement and to the Amnesty struggle.
Experience has shown us that only the combination of the political and claiming of right struggle of the masses with the armed fight can achieve to make fascism go back, to take to pieces its military-burocratic apparatus and to create the favourable conditions for the wide development of the revolutionary movement. In only a few months of armed offensive, the masses learn more than in a decade of pacific development, they quickly become detached from the ideological and political prejudices, inculcated in them by the middle-class. At the same time, the repression unleashed against them is good for distinguishing clearly between friends and enemies and forces them to get rid of the old unuseful methods of strife and to look for other new ones and to put them in practice. Nowadays, the working-class doesnīt let to be bribed by false promises nor does it set out for some burgeois liberties; on the contrary, far from that, it imposes with its every day strife its own legality, from wich attacks reaction.
The political movement of the masses and the guerrilla war are two complementary parts of Popular Resistance Movement, that go on in a parallel way and mutual interrelation. By political movement of the masses we understand, all the strikes, demonstrations, all kind of protests and other current actions produced everywhere, spontaneously, semi-spontaneously, or organizedly, all which scape from the authorities and parliamentary parties control. This movement is formed by the working-class and the Party, its main directive force, the peasantry, the students and the progressive intellectuality.
The Popular Resistance Movement has not the same character the Popular Front han in Spain in the thirties. At that time, the political and social conditions were different, the different groups of the population, from the proletariat and the peasantry to the low middle-class, had importants organizations and were dependant on the realization of some burgeois-democratic transformation. Nowadays, the majority of proletariat and the peasantry, and alse the working youngsters and students are not organized. To give an example, in Spain, the percentage of workers in trade unions, as the official figures say, didnīt raise recently to 11%, and the percentage is tending to fall. And this is a country where the working-class is the largest one in society. The reason for this situation, so peculiar in Europe, is due to the socialfascist and lackey character of the called working parties and trade unions, to the revolutionary tradition of our class, and, as we have said before, to the particular conditions the class war develops. And therefore, its semi-spontaneous character and the present unsurpassable conditions for the proletariatīs party to head and direct all the Resistance Movement.
The guerrilla activity is part os this large movement, being the spearhead of it, from which the guerrilla nourish itself and receives all kind of support, serving only that Movement in the attacks against bourgeoisie. The proletariatīs Party ensures and enforces that relation by means of its political direction of the armed struggle. The armed actions give the masses confidence in their own forces, they make it easy their organization and show clearly the vulnerability of the regime; and so, they remove the vestiges of the fear and terror the regime is trying to inspire in them. On the other hand, it would be impossible to constantly replace the guerrilla forces if one wouldnīt rely on the recruitment inexhaustible reserve of the popular movement. The GRAPO donīt claim any special political-organizative role, they are a military organization that aims to become the future popular army.
The impossibility for an effective defence of the working-class and the masses interests through legal, pacific and parliamentary channels, is one of the reasons that make this resistance political movement to appear, and it endows with news methods of struggle. In Spain, it is impossible to think in the astablishment of popular masses large organizations. In the bourgeois legality can only enter those parties and trade unions which have betrayed the working-class interests, serving the monopolist bourgeoisie. Atruthful revolutionary opposition is impossible from legality. Any intention of doing it means to put the most conscious workers in the hands of repression and under the police control.
The Communist Party is essential to ensure the political and ideological direction of all the Movement. The presence and work of the communists gives the guerrilla the necessary classist basis and direction for the correct development of their activities. For this, one must rot mix up the armed organization and fight with the higher way in the proletarian organization, the Marxist-Leninist Party, whose role is manysided and plural and covers all fronts and methods of struggle.
The majority of the revolutionaries in all the advanced capitalist countries have planned the necessity of the Party. The guerrilla organizations have came fulfilling the function of advanced detachment in the revolutionary struggle, and trough them the formation of the political has been intended. Our experience has been, in this sense, on the contrary. In Spain, the special conditions the classe struggle has developed, carried the communists to fully dedicate themselves to the Party reconstitution, before thinking in the development of the armed fight and the guerrilla organization.
Whether it is the political vanguard first, in time, to the military one or vice versa, what is essential is to emphasize the fundamental role the party has in the guerrilla and in the whole Movement. One can say that the success or collapse of the armed organizations depends on the degree of fulfilment of the planned objective: The Party reconstitution. The lack of a clear class political direction in the guerrilla leads to a incorrect valuation of the political situation and does not let to foresee its evolution; it also prevents the guerrilla and the proletariat from a right policy of alliances and from inquiring into the ideological fight. From the military point of view, the proletarian direction of the guerrilla favours the right election of the objectives and military operations at each political moment.
The great learning we can deduce from our experience is that only the armed fight is not enough. The guerrilla organization can, in certain conditions and for a time, establish bonds with the masses, gain their heart, mobilize them for the struggle and unmask the traitors of revolution. However, to keep and deepen those relations; to give the proletariat and the masses a firm organization and the necessary political clarity; to consolidate the leading role of the proletarian ideology in the whole Resistance Movement; to ensure the lastingness and the very existence of the armed actions, and to clearly mark the tactical and strategical objectives of each stage in the revolutionary process, is essential the existence of avanguard party.
The fight, we are inmersed in, has necessarily a long character, since we confront an enemy with a centralice branched state apparatus, with relatively powerful means and much support from imperialism. The monopolies are not going to allow the proletariat to concentrate their forces and organize themselves, nor will they let to be taken by surprise in a general insurrection bursting at a given time, as it happened with the Bolshevik revolution in 1.917. This commands us to put in practice the strategy leading to accumulate forces by partial knocks, until we can make it into a guerrilla war. It will be in this long struggle preocess of the Resistance Movement how the confluence, the strenghening and the accumulation of forces will be given, and thus the embodiment of the large masses in the open fight for the power.
We are in a situation that the popular forces are on the strategical defensive and therefore, we speak of a "Resistance" movement. However, at the tactical level, the popular forces, in concrete the guerrilla, have the initiative and attack the reaction how, when and wherever they want. In this way, the popular forces transform their strategical disadvantage into a tactical advantage, and they will achieve their aim of accumulating forces and, little by little, weakening the enemy. When the forces correlation will be advantageous for the masses, then, the moment of changing the strategical direction will arrive. Fascism will place on the defensive and we will take the offensive. Although certains laws and tactical pecularities of the revolutionary process will be discovered in the course of the fight, the popular long war strategy, in the way we are describing it, will probably lead to the final insurrectional burst. The masses general insurrection will take place in the most important industrial cities, since the guerrilla does not have and will not have, in our conditions, support bases or free areas in the country to concentrate an important military strategical force. This force, in Spain, is located in the cities and is formed by the industrial proletariat. When the moment of insurrection will come, the classical slogan of "audacity, audacity and always audacity", that guided the two great popular insurrections in history, and that translated into a more common lenguage means: "offensive, offensive and nothing more than offensive" only them, this strategy will have its complete meaning.
(1)Lenin: "Guerrilla War".
(2)Lenin: "The leftism, Childdish Disease of Communism".