Summary:
The character of the revolution in Spain
Our revolution's short-dated and long-dated objectives
A proletarian strategy and tactics for the revolution
There is no way back from fascism to democracy
The fighting and organization methods of our revolution
The strategy and tactics of the struggle and military combat: a protracted people's war strategy
The great revisionist betrayal in our country left the proletarian and people's movement beheaded in its struggle against fascism and monopolism. But the revolutionary proletariat, far from giving up the fight, progressively acquired new experiences and learnt from the daily combat of the class struggle, in very different conditions from the ones that took place in our Revolutionary Civil War (1936-39). The masses have been accumulating these experiences and teachings from the Civil War in their confrontation with the fascist domination. All the electoral farçes promoted by the regime: the syndical, the political ones, Franco's "organic-democratic" referendums, even the "parlamentary-democratic" elections from the time of the reform of the regime have been boicotted by the masses; refusing at the same time everything that comes from "above", from the official institutions, putting into practice espontaneously a covered civil disobedience when not an all-out one. The divorce between the masses and the state structures and everything that comes from them is a reality in Spain that comes from the destruction by the fascism of the legitimate people's power conquered through the poll on the 16th February 1936.
The popular classes in our country have reached a great political maturity, they have learnt to recognize who their enemies are: the fascists, the reformists of all labels and revisionists joined today in defense of the interests of their masters, the monopolies.
From all these experiences and teachings and from the analysis of the situation, a new revolutionary movement with the recontructed proletarian vanguard and neatly configurated by the mid 70' s, will also adopt a new strategy for the revolution in Spain: that of the Protacted People' s War. This strategy is based on a serious marxist-leninist analysis of the new economic, politic and social situation created during the last decades and on the experiences from the daily struggle of the revolutionary movement since fascism was imposed by the force of arms.
From the fascist victory in 1939, when the monopolist capitalism had already existed in the world for many years and in Spain the semi-feudal structures still survived, the financial oligarchy undertook important economic and social transformations which were based on the overexplotation and the oppression of the working class and other popular layers. These transformations mainly carried out in the 50's and 60's can be reduced to especially one: an intense accumulation of capital; the expansion of the monopolies; the great migrations of population to the cities or to foreign countries; the proletarianization of vast popular layers so that the working class trebled its number becoming the largest class of the population. Industry becomes the main source of wealth in the country and the country is also affected by the capitalist transformation. Nowadays, the monopolies in the hands of a reduced financial oligarchy, control the greatest part of the economy of the country in close relation to the State which offers them not only their structures of domination but also their economic resources. The control of the main industrial branches, the vast agricultural lands, energy sources, the mining, the means of transport, the means of distribution and selling of goods, etc. are in the hands of five important banks. The popular masses are deprived of any legal means of expression and organization in defense of their interests.
If in 1936 Spain was a semi-feudal country, today the economic regime is characterized by the monopolist state capitalism, however, none of the problems inherited from the old semi-feudal structures have been solved - the problem of the nationalities, the backwardness of the country, etc.- and moreover, all the contradictions derived from the accelerated and strong capitalist development were joined to the problems: "On one hand the accumulation of wealth, opulence and the fullness of rights for only a few; on the other hand overexplotation, misery, insecurity for the future and the most absolute lack of rights for the inmense majority"(1).
Besides, we have to point out that only by means of the brutal way in which the monopolist and financial oligarchy has proceed could it maintain itself in power and increase their priviledges: "In Spain there was no other way of capitalist development but this one; a capitalist-type way of development which is bound to the terrorism of a fascist regime. This is the most typical and original feature of the bloodthirsty Spanish capitalism, which makes its existance so precarious [...] Fascism has served capitalism to drown in blood the sharp contradictions that were brought about by the economic and social transformations. But at the same time, fascism has contributed to sharpen and aggravate these contradictions, so that it could be said that fascism itself has acted as a factor of the later break down of capitalism, depriving it of any social base and confronting it openly with the working people"(2).
Another feature that determines the great precariosness of the capitalist regime in Spain is that the economic and social transformations (produced in the decades that followed our Revolutionary Civil War) have been generated in an international context in which capitalism had already exhausted all its means of progress many decades ago and it was bound to a generalized and permanent crisis from which it will never come out. This situation of worldly crisis is specially affecting the monopolist Spanish capital, which sets out in inferiority of conditions with respect to the world market, which had already been divided among the strongest imperialist powers after the II World War.
Understanding only in this way the historical process in Spain can the particularities of the revolutionary movement in our country be understood in relation to the rest of the occidental European states. The very objective development of the Spanish society and its structures have determined the speeding up of the revolutionary process and the fact that the real possibility of a revolution in this country is more evident than in other capitalist countries.
The material conditions in our country determine the socialist character of the pending revolution in Spain. The old aspirations of democratico-bourgeois transformations were surpassed and buried in our Revolutionary Civil War. The Proletariat is today the main and guiding force of the revolution, not only due to its importance in number, but mainly due to the place that it occupies in the social production, which makes it be the most conscious and qualified class to perform its guiding task.
However, the existance of fascism, with the subsequent lack of political freedom, and the overexplotation to which the proletariat and the vast popular masses have been and are still submitted, make the main social contradiction existing in our society be the one that confronts the people with fascism and monopolism. These characteristics are going to be determining when coming to the point of establishing the tasks of the organized vanguard of the proletariat, the Party.
If the character of the pendent revolution in Spain is socialist, as we have already seen, the objectives to reach cannot be different from the suppression of classes and the building of comunism: a society without exploiters and exploited, without special means of repression, based on the free association of the producers and where the banner "from each one according to his/her capacity and to each one according to his/her needs" can freely wave.
In order to achieve this, it is necessary for the taking over of the political power by the proletariat, the demolition of the old burgeois state machine, the implantation of the proletarian dictatorship over the exploiters which will undertake the construction of socialism based on the supression of the private property of the means of production and exchange and the eradication of the reactionary ideology. These objectives constitute the maximun program of the present historical phase of our revolution.
However,the fact that the main social contradiction existing nowadays is the one that confronts the people with fascism and monopolism, makes the people's unity necessary to the violent demolition of the opressive regime. Due to this fact, and to favour that unity under the hegemony of the proletariat, the Party proposes a Minimum Program for the Revolution in Spain which expresses the interests of the working class as well as those of the popular layers. This program, aproved in the 1st Congress of the Party (June 1975), includes, in summary the following points: Provisional Democratic Revolutionary Government; creation of popular and workers councils and general arming of the people; complete demolition of the fascist-monopolist bureaucratic-military machinery; nationalization of the main means of production; political and syndical freedom for the popular and working masses; improvement of their working and living conditions; right to self determination of the Catalonian, Basque and Galician Nationalities; derogation of the imperialist military treaties, dismantlement of the foreign military bases in our territory; peaceful foreign policy and non-aligneament policy.
Due to the capitalist character of our country, the attainment and fulfilment of the objectives of our Minimun Program will create the conditions for the immediate seizure of power by the proletariat and for the beginning of the construction of socialism, as the only and true solution to all the problems of our society. Due to this, the non-proletarian popular layers, equally subdued and exploited by capitalism, will not doubt, when the moment will have come, in their election. We are speaking, then, of a tactic program which makes easier the immediate attainment of the strategic objective in the present historic phase of our revolution, the taking of political power by the proletariat and the begining of the construction of socialism; hence, the tactic program can be qualified as having a strategic reach.
It's clear, then, that on one hand the strategic objectives of our revolution in its present historic phase are the taking of political power by the proletariat and the instauration of its dictatorship over the exploiters and that on the other hand in order to achieve these objectives, it's necessary to overthrow the present regime using the masses' revolutionary violence, since the bourgeoisie will never yield their priviledges in a pacific way. Then, it's a question of establishing a tactic and strategy in the light of the analyses of the objective reality and according to the objectives to conquer which are part of the revolution's program, and which will make easier the accumulation of revolutionary forces in order to achieve the victory, and to solve the main problem which the revolutionary process faces today: the dispersion of the forces which will have to make the revolution, how to accumulate those forces, how to educate and organize them in and for the combat.
The proletariat has proved in practice with its acting for tens of years, that it is the vanguard of the struggle against fascism and monopolism. When the working class movement reaches the highest moments in its fight, society shudders and the different popular sectors enter the fight for their particular problems, so that a tide of social and political struggles come together in a single movement which is confronted with the State of monopolies. Day by day, this movement acquires a great revolutionary character when faced with the total lack of perspectives of solution to the problems which affect the masses due to the oppression of the regime that is drowned in its own politic and economic crisis.
The proletariat must know how to take advantage of these favourable political conditions in order to lead the fight against fascism and monopolism to the end and carry out this revolution. the working class -and particularly its organized leadind vanguard, the Party- must "attract all those sectors of the population which are today confronted with fascism and the monopolist explotation, defending their interests against fascism and monopolism and critizicing, at the same time their unavoidable hesitations. The peasants, the small shop-keepers, the popular classes from the nationalities opressed by the Spanish State, the democratic and progressive intelectuals and the working and student youth, the working women and other popular layers together with the working class constitute the poeple's forces which nowadays have common interests and objectives and that, therefore, can unite to fight for them"(3).
From among all these popular sectors, the peasants are the ones that stand out as the surest and main ally of the working class. But for the proletariat, they are the largest sector of the population, they suffer the explotation and robbery of the industrial and financial monopolies, and of the land-owners which lead them to desperation. As well as the working class, they are deprived of any minimal freedom to defend their interests; besides, they have already given proof of their fighting spirit. Due to all these reasons, we maintain that the obtainment of the revolutionary objectives must be based on a solid aliance between the working class and the peasants.
The union or the alliance with the non-proletarian popular sectors will take place based on a common program, the Minimum Program for the Spanish Revolution, in order to fight against fascism and monopolism. We have to point out that this must not limitate the political independence of the working class, on the contrary, this alliance will strengthen its position as leading vangard of the whole political movement of resistance.
This process will be long and tough; the very characteristics of the regime of the monopolies impose a long-term confrontation in which all the struggles of the different popular sectors will join under the same direction, the guidance of the working class and its vangard party.
At the same time, the proletariat must fight against the strategies created by the regime to confound the masses, in the same way as it has been doing it with remarkable sucess under the guidance of its Party, the PCE(r).
The last years have been very rich in experiences for the proletariat and the popular masses. The Party in its fight against the democratic reform has conquered the heart of the masses and has proved to be a disciplined and far-seeing party, showing the masses the path to follow.
Once Franco had died, the regime needed to end with the deep political crisis in which it was involved, pressed by the hardening of the economic crisis and the rise of the struggles of the masses and the urban guerrilla actions, but it could not do it due to its situation of politic and social isolation. "The Spanish fascist state was completely isolated, almost without any social support and unable to keep control of the situation as it had been doing before, with the only resource of violence and all-out terrorism against the people. So, what finally prevailed was the urging need of providing this same state of some institutions to grant the continuation of the social and economic domination of the oligarchy, now under a democratic façade, to protect the regime from the ascending tide of the revolutionary struggle"(4).
Our Party denounced and fought against this new political plan from the very beginning, it clarified that it was "a plan designed to repress the masses and increase their explotation, to maintain 'franquism without Franco", to increase, in the new circumstances of crisis, the war booty robbed to the different people of Spain. Besides, against those who made efforts to spread "democratic" illusions to confound the workers, to boycot their organizations and independent struggles and tried to convert them into a mere branch of that new policy of the monopolies and fascism, the Party unmasked this manoeuvre proving that there is no way back from fascism and monopolism to the regime of the bourgeois parlamentary democracy; that the regime of the formal political freedoms which corresponds to the premonopolist economic system has been left behind by the economic development and the civil war, and that what nowadays the oligarchy tries to impose is nothing but a camouflaged form of the fascist system to prevent once more the emancipating action of the working class. This marxist-leninist thesis, absolutely true, scientific, has been defended by PCE(r), sieged by the democratic "drunkenness" with which some groups and parties of the "left" tried to calm the masses while they lended themselves to colaborate with the repression against the true communists and democrats(5).
Today is the day in which we can say that this fight against the "reformist" manoeuvre has been concluded with the most important victory of the proletariat and its leading vanguard, and that the reformist illusions have been completely destroyed. The regime has not obtained anything after the desintegration of UCD, the governing party from the beginning of the reform(6); furthermore, it has been forced to use its last resource: the arrival to the government of the "left" the PSOE. The ten million votes obtained by the so-called "socialist" in October 1982 were conditioned to the solving of the most urgent problems of the masses. In a few months, and once it was proved to be a great fraçe, the latest demagogic resource of the regime has collapsed as a house of cards. And today, after the last modernizations of the mass media, mass control, police and military machinery, the monopolies together with the PSOE as manager an d watchdog of their interests are ready to carry out the economic measures such as the re-structuration of all the economic sectors in order to cover the holes produced by the economic crisis and to secure and increase their profits; however, they will not be able to avoid the fall of the system.
Nowadays, when the industrial reconversions are being carried out, they lead the country to a revolutionary crisis of big proportions , besides these measures are unable to stop the agony of capitalism. The working masses are not ready to increase submissively the army of unemployed (which numbers almost 3 million people) as it is proved by the big struggles of the siderurgy workers of Sagunto last year, the shipyard workers' fights which acquire a high level revolutionary confrontation as in Euskalduna -Bilbao-, in the shipyards of Galiza, Cádiz, and mainly among the Asturian proletariat which has massively adopted the same fighting methods used by the guerrilla. To all this joins the lack of solution of the deep problems which affect the masses: unemployment, the high cost of living, the lack of rights for the nationalities, our forced integration in the NATO, the existance of US military basis in our country, the lack of any minimal democratic freedom, the repression and torture which affect thousands of people each day, the increasing of the number of political prisoners, etc.
Today, the state and the revolutionary forces are ready for a protacted battle. The fight for the Minimum Program of the Party goes on to occupy the foreground of present time; the true solution to the masses' problems requires the imposition of this program. The generalized economic and politic crisis of the regime created the conditions to accelerate the revolutionary process to the conquest of Socialism. The Party and the rest of the revolutionary forces must prove, in such a favourable situation, that it is possible not only to resist but also to grow till victory. As our General Secretary says in his inform to the Central Committee in September 1984: "Nowadays, outside the PCE(r) and outside the Movement of Resistance that we defend, there is no political perspective and this is being understood better now by the most advanced sectors of the working class and other democrats. But the moment has come in which it is not enough to have proved in a practic way, and not only theoretically, that we can fight fascism resolutely and continue resisting. This has been one of the great achievements of the class war obtained by the revolutionary movement in Spain in the last 40 years. But this is not enough. In order to keep advancing, to justify to the workers the very existance of the Party, we have to prove above all, that we can not only fight and maintain the combat in the fierce struggle against the class enemy but also we are able to advance and grow; we are able, from our positions to strengthen the Party and the guerrilla and to articulate a vast mass movement with a revolutionary character able to overthrow capitalism".
The question of the fighting and organization methods completely affects the strategy and tactics; the tasks and guidelines of each historical phase can hardly be carried out if we don't apply the correct fighting and organization methods. With respect to this: "The revolutionary proletariat must apply all the fighting methods within its reach, the legal and the clandestine, the peaceful and the armed ones, without tying its hands to any of them and always taking into account the economic and politic conditions of each moment" (7).
In Spain the fascist character of the monopolist regime which was imposed by the arms to the people in 1939, and was maintained by means of terror for more than 40 years, has legitimated the use of the revolutionary armed struggle as the essential complement of the mass movement; thanks to this violent struggle the people's movement was and is still able to develop and advance towards the achievement of its objectives.
Fascism is the permanent armed counterrevolution; if its brutality was uncovered and open, today, with the renewal of its state machinery which is at the same level of those of the Western "democracies", it pretends to hide its brutality under special Acts (antiterrorist, special laws,...) which cover torture, extermination jails, and the most sophisticated means of mass control. The old fighting methods, the ones corresponding to the bourgeois democracy times when it was still possible to use its legality and institutions against the bourgeois regime are not useful any more.
"In other times, the bourgeois democracy, to which achievement the working class contributed with its blood, allowed to join and organize the vast people's masses little by little, using the elections, the Parlament, the trade unions, till the moment in which it would be possible to face the Reaction and overthrow its regime by means of the people's armed insurrection. In Spain, this has been left behind. The monopolist do not or will not allow the people's masses to concentrate its forces nor organize themselves in a peaceful way; the monopolist will not get surprised by a general insurrection that would take place in a given moment; furthermore, in the current conditions of Spain if there is something that fascism will never allow it is any kind of minimally independent legal organization of the working class and other popular layers: there is not any minimum chance in this way. So, what is urgently needed is the active resistance of the masses and the revolutionary struggle. Only the active resistance and the armed struggle will join the true antifascist and will allow the vast masses to organize themselves and secure their victory" (8).
The historic experience of the mass struggle confronted with fascism from the civil war has configurated the new characteristic of the revolutionary struggle in Spain. From then the people's resistance to the fascist regime through the politic boycot, its institutions and electoral farçes were boycotted to give way in the 70's to politic actions which were more and more resolute and organized. The economic and politic strikes have proliferated through all the franquist stage in spite of being forbidden and repressed; nowadays, with the "democratic" farçe, confronted with the rigid corset of the legal strikes, all over the country appear the so-called "savage" strikes out of the control of the revisionists and socialfascists. We have the recent example of the workers fights against the industrial reconvertion, where the the strikes are combined with masses demonstrations, violent actions and clashes with the repressive forces, with the alteration of the citizen life through barricades defended by workers. The workers assemblies have been imposed out of the control of the sold out and traitor trade unions as maximum organs of decission of the workers and even, among other popular sectors as the students: the commissions of delegates, the pickets, etc. Besides, lately, the movement of the masses and, specially the workers movement have put into practice the fighting methods and organization in small groups proper of the guerrilla; the retentions of businessmen and managers have been generalized, the sabotage to the means of production and the attacks against official buildings, facilities, banks, means of transport, etc,...; the clashes with the police in small organized groups that act here and there using authentic guerrilla tactics,etc. To conclude, a long list of fighting and organization methods which are authentically democratic and revolutionary coming together with the organized guerrilla struggle, as spearhead of all this movement, have provocked the complete bankrupt of all the labels of oportunism and revisionism and have created the social isolation of the financial oligarchy.
The masses have achieved important victories against fascism using all this conjunction of fighting means and organizations methods. In spite of the fact that the final victory is still far away, the fights of the working class, the ones of the people's masses and their revolutionary vanguard have achieved relevant advances and have forced the enemy to retreat many times, stopping its killing and pillaging plans. In the combat against their "reformist" manoeuvres -fight in which our Party and the guerrilla organizations have played a very important role- a big defeat has been inflicted to the regime, unmasking the true essence of the "democracy" of the fascists and the traitorous and worker-confounding role played by the revisionists, sinking all of them in the most complete social isolation and in a deep political crisis; it has been forced the liberation of many political prisoners (specially in 1975, 1976 and 1977) thanks to the fights of a strong mass movement, the adoption of forms and methods trully democratic and independent in the sindical world -assemblies, strike pickets, commissions of delegates, etc.- as well as in all the spheres of social life; and have prevailed popular organizations such as those linked to the movement in favour of the liberation of the political prisoners, against NATO, organizations of unemployed people, etc.
In these victories and struggles the role played by the armed struggle has been fundamental: its actions give example to the masses, that have adopted the same methods as the guerrilla, as we have pointed out previously, for instance, the executions of four policemen on 1st October 1975 in Madrid, that helped to brake sharply the terror campaign inspired by the regime that summer and the rest of the shootings of antifascists planned before.
So, the organized armed struggle has developed in our country in perfect interaction with all this political movement of resistance of the masses; these concepts have their basis in the own reality and experiences of the revolutionary struggle and "we have not invented them, but they define two complementary parts of a same reality. We call Political Movement of Resistance to the conjunction of strikes, campaigns, demonstrations and other actions that take place by thousands everyday and everywhere in a semi-spontaneous way, out of the control of the authorities and the domesticated parties. The guerrilla actions are part - as its spearhead- of this vast movement. These actions would not take place with the current regularity, and the groups that carry them out could not stand for a long time resisting the repression, or renew, without the existance of a vast movement of Resistance and, on the other hand, it is clear that this movement would have collapsed some time ago, victim of the repression or of the demoralization created by the repression, if it had not found in the guerrilla organizations and in the kind of struggle that they carry out a resistance even firmer, stronger; if the repressive forces ( and the government which command them) had not found a continuous strikeback to their crimes and if the armed struggle had not given to the whole Movement of Resistance of the vast masses the only way out that they really have. To resume: the Movement of Resistance of the vast people's masses has given birth and continually feed the guerrilla, and this one, at the same time, stands and favours the continuous development of the people's Movement of Resistance against the capitalist system" (9).
To oppose this continuous development of the Movement of Resistance of the masses and the guerrilla struggle the regime increases repression which can only bring about -with its aggravation- a bigger spreading and radicalization of the struggles of the masses and the development of the people's war. It is necessary to develop all these organization and fighting methods described above against the renewed fascist terror. It is also necessary to support the armed struggle of the guerrilla organizations and to strengthen the revolutionary Party in order to enable it to lead the whole revolutionary movement, the main struggles of the masses which are developed in the direction of the Socialist revolution. If we continue with this task confidently and persistently, the regime of the monopolies will be destroyed. Fascism is isolated from the masses and "it is weak by nature, and any political, military or ideological concession contributes to its strenghthening. This is the reason why we have to unmask resolutely all those ideas that tend to overstimate the enemy forces and understimate our own ones. Such ideas which are intensely spread by the revisionists and other oportunists to demoralize the masses and tying the hands of those who are ready to fight ( ideas to which the traitors and repentants have joined) start from the same base and follow the same objective; they start from the lack of confidence in the people's forces, from the oposition to their just struggle, and have as their objective to prolongue the agony of the monopolies. These ideas are false and do not have their origin in a proletarian attitude nor, in consequence, in an objective appreciation of reality, but in bourgeois interests and in the spirit of capitulation to fascism. The historic events are not decided by fascism nor by the fascist army but by the powerful masses. The working class in Spain, the peasants and other popular layers have enough forces and capacity to overthrow fascism and creating a new system of true freedom and welfare for all the workers" (10).
As we have pointed out the armed struggle plays a first order role in our revolution and our Party in order to develop it efficiently has also paid attention to it as it requires.
We have said that the people's masses are the ones who decide the historic events and not fascism and its military forces. But in order to secure the development and growth of the revolutionary process we have to depart from a just valoration of the relation of forces nowadays, and to put into practice a strategy and tactics that take this into account in order to accumulate the revolutionary forces needed to overthrow the oppressive enemy. From this just valoration our Party has elaborated the strategy of Protacted People's War. It is a people's war because those who have to make the revolution are the vast masses, proletarian and non-proletarian, all of them exploited and oppressed by fascism and the monopolies. And it is a protacted war because we part from a dispersion of the revolutionary forces and from a relative lack of organizationa among the masses, while fascism has enormous material means to confront with the current weak revolutionary forces.
We have already seen the relation between the military struggle and the one of the masses (the leading role of the Party for all the Movement of Resistance), so we can define the strategy of Protacted People's War as a strategy that includes not only the guerrilla struggle but also the political struggle of the masses, that it needn't always be legal and peaceful.
In the process of protacted war of the Movement of Resistance will take place the conjunction, the strenghthening and accumulation of organized forces, the joining of the vast masses to the all-out struggle to seize the power; this conjunction of factors will take place in the last phase of the war, the insurrectional phase.
Fascism will have to combat against an invisible enemy, it will not have confronted with it - as in the 30's - an enemy in an open battlefield, easy to defeat; the people's armed forces, formed in the beginning by small armed groups, will become the armed people's masses that -militarily organized- will combat fascism everywhere.
"Instead of having fascism the initiative to carry the war according to its plans, it will have to make it in the field chosen by the armed people's forces. This does not mean, in any way, that the fascist army is already under siege, or in a defensive strategic attitude from the beginning. On the contrary, the struggle carried out by the army will have, for a long time, an offensive strategic character, while the armed people's forces will have to make a war of defensive strategy, also for a long time. This strategic relation between the revolutionary armed forces and the reactionary ones is determined, specially, by the enormous disproportion that exists actually between them. So, the fascist army attacks and tries to annihilate the people's armed forces in the smallest period of time. This takes place in a general or strategic plane, but in any particular combat the people's forces are the ones who attack and the fascist army, the one who have to defend itself. In this way, the people's armed forces will turn their strategic disadvantage into a tactic advantage and they will achieve their objective: to accumulate forces weakening at the same time the enemy's ones. This people's war strategy will lead to a change in the relation of forces. When the relation between the forces turn favourable to the people's ones the time would have arrived to change the strategic orientation. Fascism will adopt a defensive strategy and we will attack it. We will launch strikes and offensives of any kind not only fighting with small groups or commands, but even we will be able to confront the main enemy forces with bigger ones and annihilate them. When this time comes we would have already formed a powerful workers' army, the vast masses led by the Party and other democratic organizations will join in the fight and we will finally overthrow the hated regime" (11).
The first phase of the Protacted People's War, is one of defensive war, of resistance, in which the movement of the masses develops through political courses (not always legal and peaceful) in a complex interrelation and mutual support with the guerrilla military struggle. This armed struggle with its continuous strikes against fascism helps to open the way to the accumulation of revolutionary forces in all levels, organizative, political and ideological in the heart of the movement of the masses which supports and provides the guerrilla with new militants. In this process of accumulation a time will arrive in which it would be possible to fight and defeat the fascist forces in all fields, in which the masses not only would be ready to resist and fight as they had been doing before but also to take the arms and die, if neccessary to achieve the final victory. Then we will change to the offensive strategy and, under the guidance of the Party of the proletariat, "all the conditions and arrangements will be made to arrive to the final phase, to the general insurrection that will take place in the most important industrial cities, because the guerrilla will not be able to stablish and keep for a long time support basis or liberated areas in the country to place there an important strategic military force. This force (...) can be found in the cities, and it is conformed by the industrial proletariat; and when this one would raise, when the general insurrection takes place and the cities collapse, we will have then enough motives to think that, effectively, the seizure of power will have been achieved" (12).
The main actor of the violent seizure of power will be the proletariat leading the people's masses raised in arms and supported by their organized guerrilla forces and not a revolutionary army able to defeat the fascist one in an open battlefield in a classic way.
Nowadays, as we have pointed out, the guerrilla cannot pretend to create liberated areas, to grow there and keep these areas for more or less time, but its task is to develop its activities where the masses are -in the cities and the factories, in the industrial centres- in combination with the Political Movement of Resistance and the politic, organic and ideological work of the Party. In this way the conditions for the final phase, for the armed general insurrection will be secured.
A long way has been walked in the revolutionary struggle in our country but there is still much to do; and today, in 1985, as our General Secretary, comrade Arenas, says in his inform to the Central Committee of the Party in September 1984: "Our movement is able to make battle in all fields, in the political, the ideological and the military ones". After a difficult stage, where the fight against the reform and the "democratic" farçe has concluded triumphantly for the proletariat and its leading vanguard, we enter a new phase in which "the fight and the guerrilla organization are going to live a new development ,as it has happened in the last months. We have to try to follow with this tendency, preventing it from suffering a backwards movement; we have to secure that this qualitative step that has conformed the change from a situation of declivity to a new one of continuous growth and bigger political relevance of its actions, will stand up". Stage in which "the Party must be reorganized everywhere and this task has to be performed on the basis of its Minimum Program and Statutes, recruiting in first place the most capable proletarian comrades. This is a task that has been lately delayed and that cannot be delayed any more. If we do not do it, this only can bring about negative consequences to the whole Movement of Resistance"(13).
Notes:
(1) Programatic Line of the Communist Party of Spain (reconstituted), approved by the 2nd Congress of the Party in June 1977.
(2) Programatic Line of the Communist Party of Spain (reconstituted)
(3) Programatic Line of the Communist Party of Spain (reconstituted)
(4) Inform presented to the Central Committee of PCE(r) by its General Secretary, comrade Arenas, in September 1984: "Where to go, which way must we take?".
(5) Inform presented to the Central Committee of PCE(r) by its General Secretary, comrade Arenas, in September 1984: "Where to go, which way must we take?".
(6) The so-called reform starts with the death of General Franco in 1975 and ends with the passing of the Constitution in 1978 [N.of T.]
(7) Programatic Line of the Communist Party of Spain (reconstituted)
(8) Programatic Line of the Communist Party of Spain (reconstituted)
(9)"The new revolutionary movement and its fighting methods", F. Arenas, 1978; quoted in the article "Between two fires".
(10) Programatic Line of the Communist Party of Spain (reconstituted)
(11)"Between two fires", F. Arenas, 1983.