spain after the civil war

7/23/2019 Spain After the Civil War

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/spain-after-the-civil-war 1/25

Ricard Soler

Thirty years have passed since the Spanish Civil War, which shook all Europe.

From that time, Spain has been marginal to the history of the continent.

Apparently sunk in poverty and isolation, stifled by a torpid dictatorship, the

whole country has often been viewed from abroad as immobile and archaic.

In fact, no nation in Europe has undergone such dramatic and dynamic social

changes in recent years. The growth rate of Spanish capitalism was one of the

highest in the world during the early ’sixties. Today, Spanish per capita income

—over 600 dollars a year—is comparable to that of Italy in 1962, although, of course, much more unequally distributed still. The working class has doubled in

size: it is now one of the youngest and potentially most combative proletariats in

the West. In the next years, the class struggle in Spain might well erupt into

the centre of European politics once again. It is thus urgent to study the con-

crete social formation that has emerged from the long decades of Franco’s rule,

The New Spain

3



and the political perspectives that it poses to Marxists. Our analysis willtry to answer three fundamental questions for revolutionary theoryand practice in Spain today.1. What has been the nature of the socio-economic changes in Spain since theCivil War ? Tremendous changes of social structure have occurredwithin a political continuum which has succeeded—hitherto—in con-cealing and containing these changes. To analyse both social and

economic changes and political continuity it is necessary to divideFranco’s rule into two periods, 1939–57 and 1959–69. The economicdifferences between these periods are much more apparent than thepolitical changes which have tended to be cumulative, making theirlocalization at any given moment difficult. The great divide was1957–59. Formulated in another way, while the survival of Francoremains obvious, the contemporary problems are no longer the same asthose of the 1930’s.2. What are the fundamental contradictions of Spanish society today? Theprincipal contradiction, it will be stressed, is between the bourgeoisie,led by monopoly and finance capital, and the working masses, led bythe industrial proletariat. This contradiction is much the same as thatwhich gave rise to the Civil War—a class war—in 1936. However, thetwo poles of the contradiction have meanwhile undergone a radicaltransformation which has, if anything, sharpened their opposition. Asecondary contradiction opposes two forces within the ruling power-bloc. Monopoly and finance capital—the oligarchy—represented by atrained ‘technocracy’, is in conflict with a ‘bureaucracy’ integrated byofficial trade unions, police and army. Liberalization and counter-

liberalization alternate according to the relative force of one of theother. But the principal contradiction determines, both in the short-run and the long-run, the outcome of this secondary contradiction.3. What is the political relationship of the different social forces in Spain to theFranquista régime? This relationship is not necessarily static. In differentconcrete conjunctures, for example given degrees of working-classorganization and combativity, forces which today appear to be loyal tothe régime could in fact switch their allegiance, and the same could betrue of the opposition.

1. The Economic Model 1939–59: Capital Accumulation

‘National reconstruction’ after the Civil War was based on radicalautarchy and separation from the European economy. This policy wasdictated both by the ‘nationalist’ ideology of the fascist régime and bythe international conjuncture: the Second World War was only a fewmonths away. Massive repression of the working class made possible aprocess of capital accumulation based on very low wages. Industrializa-tion on a progressively larger scale then occurred. Nevertheless, it was

not until 1953 that the per capita income in Spain reached the level of 1936.It is the complexity of this development that must be analyzed.

After Franco’s victory, Spanish agriculture was gripped by a depressionwhich lasted until the late ’fifties. In 1946 average output per hectarewas 30 per cent less than in the years 1931–35. Production grew by only10 per cent from 1940 to 1953. The régime’s protection of the Castilian

4



wheat-growing and Andalusian cotton-growing small peasantryallowed large landowners to take advantage of official price and pur-chase guarantees by the State to earn high profits. In the post-waryears pitiful wages and dire poverty, aggravated by unemployment, ledto an exodus of agricultural workers from the land to the cities. Ruralmigration to Madrid, Catalonia and the North became an avalancheabout 1950 and is estimated at over 1,000,000 from the two Castiles,

Estremadura and Andalusia. After the war, the bulk of these displacedpeasants were absorbed not by industry but by the tertiary sector.

Meanwhile, in the industrial sector the régime intervened with taxconcessions and import permits rather than by direct state investment.Because of its tariff protection and import quotas, industrial prices rosevery considerably until the period of stabilization in 1959—and theirincrease was always proportionately higher than agricultural prices.

Pari passu, industrial production increased more rapidly than agricul-

tural production. Services, however, were the main beneficiary of theearly decades of Spanish autarchy. Changes in the composition of theworking population for the decade to 1950 show a transfer fromagriculture to the tertiary sector rather than to industry.

The economic pattern of the first two decades of Franco’s régime thuscombined agricultural stagnation, very limited industrial growth, andan inflated administrative and service sector. What was the socialmeaning of this system? It has three essential characteristics, whichdefine the whole class nature of the counter-revolutionary State that

emerged after the defeat of the Republic in 1939.

1. Ruthless control of wages was secured both by state decrees and bya reserve army of labour provided by the rural proletariat. Prices, bycontrast, rose steadily. The result was systematic pauperization of theworking class, in town and country. The maximum daily wage of anagricultural worker in 1940 was 10.37 pesetas; by 1954 this had risen to22.01 pesetas. Comparable figures for metal workers were 13.66 pesetasand 25.30 pesetas respectively. Between 1940 and 1955 agricultural and industrial wages increased by 100 per cent while the cost of living rose by 240 per cent — a loss of purchasing power of 50 per cent in 15 years. This super-exploitation was the economic expression of the political violence of theCivil War. It was probably unique in Europe. Between 1939 and 1959industrial prices rose by 676.8 per cent and production by 200 per cent;while agricultural prices increased 504.8 per cent and production 30per cent. Wage increases were similar in both sectors (261 per cent).Wage controls thus benefited industry more than agriculture. It was theformer that generated the higher rate of surplus and thus of capitalaccumulation. It was this super-exploitation that was later to allow the

capitalist class to increase its investment rate from 15 per cent of GNPin the decade 1950–60 to more than 25 per cent of GNP in 1964.

If industry generated a higher rate of capital accumulation than agricul-ture, it was the rural proletariat which constituted the reserve army of labour that allowed industrial wages to be kept down without produc-ing a social explosion. Despite the widely shared belief, even on the

5



Left, that latifundist agriculture remained a ‘feudal’ enclave,1 the fact isthat it was capitalism that viciously exploited both urban and ruralproletariat with the active collaboration of the State. This collaborationconsisted not only in direct repression (outlawing strikes and maintain-ing wage controls) but also in inflationary mechanisms that permitted ahigh level of public expenditure financed not by taxation but by in-creasing the Public Debt with notes discountable by the Bank of Spain.

The latter increased the liquidity of the private banks which then in-creased the possibility of loans and higher profits for the capitalist class.

2. The growth of the tertiary sector created a proliferating and parasiticbureaucracy, which was highly privileged economically. The numberof those listed in the category ‘official and personal services’ increasedvertically:

1930 549,2001940 813,000

1950 1,522,000An idea of the class character of this bureaucracy is given by the factthat in 1950 26 per cent of the working population engaged in the tertiary

sector received 40 per cent of the National Income. While a transfer of popu-lation to the tertiary sector is common to all underdeveloped capitalistcountries (Southern Europe and Latin America), the phenomenonassumed proportions in Spain surpassing even those of Portugal orTurkey.2 The Franquista régime needed bureaucrats to ‘control’ theeconomy—in other words, to control wages. At the same time thebourgeoisie, which kept industrial and agricultural wages to the

minimum, needed a consumer market for its growing production. Thenew class of bureaucrats loyal to the régime fulfilled a double function:of suppressing the working class and of providing consumers necessaryfor economic growth. The political importance of this group within theState system naturally became very great.

3. During the period of protection from foreign competition and highprofits for large and small capitalist enterprises alike, the process of capital concentration began to gather momentum. Initially this affectedmainly the banking sector. Finance capital had been highly concen-

1 For a critique of this ‘feudalist’ vision of Spanish agriculture production, see J. Martinez Allier ,La Estabilidad del Latifundismo, Ruedo Iberico, Paris, 1968.2 Total salaries paid to State functionaries in 1957 of 30,409 million pesetas werehigher than the total wages paid to agricultural labourers (29,218 millions). See La

Renta National en Espana y su Distribucion, Banco de Bilbao, Madrid 1960. The averageemployee’s salary in the public sector was 104,384 pesetas a year; in manufacturingindustry, 47,772 pesetas; in agriculture, 28,733 pesetas. See Informe sobre Distribucionde la Renta, 1964. INE, Madrid, 1966.

6

Table 1 Distribution of the working population and of the gross domestic product.

1940 1950 1965

Sectors W/P GDP W/P GDP W/P GDPPrimary 52 31 49 27 32 18Secondary 24 30 25 33 35 42Tertiary 24 39 26 40 33 40

Direcctión General de Empleo. J. Alcaide: La Renta Nacional en España.



trated from the beginning of the century when colonial profits wererepatriated after the loss of the Spanish colonies. This process nowdeveloped rapidly. Seventy banks disappeared between 1939 and 1964,and the ‘big five’ were able to increase their number of branches bynearly 60 per cent; this increased their possibilities of attracting smallsavings as well as industrial capital and reinforced their alreadydominant position. For Spanish banks have traditionally created large

industrial enterprises which they control by credit and inter-lockingdirectorships.3 Monopolization now occurred in as far as large com-panies were able to make huge profits rather than as a result of seriouscompetition between enterprises for a larger share of the market. Stateintervention reinforced this trend; economic ministries and officialtrade unions were responsible for the distribution of scarce materialsand foreign currency. In some cases, the decisive factor was bribery,the scale of which was proportionate to the size of the enterprise.Ministry of Industry investment permits prevented new companiesentering the market; this consolidated the monopolistic power of

companies already in existence and gave them even greater opportuni-ties for raising prices without fear of competition. Thus large firmswith high productivity coexisted with a proliferation of small enter-prises whose economic viability was assured by the régime. Until 1953,the surplus generated was not reinvested in production but was usedfor speculation (land in particular) or transferred to banks abroad. Itwas the signature of the Military Pact with the USA in 1953 whichfundamentally changed the situation. The Spanish régime was nowaccepted and guaranteed by American imperialism and the communityof international capitalism. Spanish businessmen henceforward felt asecurity they had hitherto lacked: the future of the status quo wasassured. Productive investment now started to pick up.

The first 20 years of Franco’s régime were thus a period of capitalaccumulation which consolidated the power of the big bourgeoisie, andespecially of the banks, at the expense of the industrial and rural pro-letariat who were subjected to growing poverty and violent policerepression. Every section of the bourgeoisie had ample reason to begratified by the profits it was making.

2. The Political Model 1939–59: Dominance of the Bureaucracy

Such was the ‘economic model’ of the first, autarchic phase of theFranquista régime. It is now possible to reconstruct the ‘political model’that corresponded to it—that is, the classes and groups which wererepresented by Franco’s government from 1939 onwards. Any analysisof the Franquista State must start from the alignment of forces beforeand during the Civil War. The Civil War was, of course, a revolutionaryclass war: the urban and rural proletariat and the ‘republican’ sectors of

the middle class fought and lost to the industrial and financial bour-geoisie, latifundism and the rich peasant class, organized and integratedby the Army, Falange and Church.

3 See R. Tamames, La Lucha contra Los Monopolios, Ed. Tecnos, Madrid, 1961. J.Velarde, Sobre la Decadencia Economica en Espana, Ed. Tecnos, Madrid, 1967. F. de laSierra, La Concentracion Economica en las Industrias Basicas Espanolas, Madrid, 1953.

7



The entire experience of the pre-Republican and Republican periodsshowed the inability of the old ruling groups to create a viable economicand political system. Their internal divisions and low level of inte-gration made bourgeois power very precarious, and it was only thedirect threat of proletarian revolution that led them to unite. The factthat the middle class was split during the war, with the majority in theRepublican camp, is further evidence of the unviability of the traditional

political system. The Republican middle class contested the dominanceof the traditional oligarchs by dreaming impossibly of a ‘bourgeois-democratic’ and liberal society.

The war resulted not only in the defeat of the working class but in lossof prestige for the old ruling groups who had responsibility for thehecatomb. The new State thus had the dual task of excluding the oldand discredited rulers while at the same time representing them to theirbest advantage. This is the key to an understanding of the function of the Franquista State. Its social character is self-evident: it is a classdictatorship, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. But the specificfunction of this State was to remodel the traditional economic basisof society in order to eliminate those obstacles which had historicallyrendered the rule of the oligarchy unstable. Thus, as has been demon-strated, the Spanish State, assisted by its corporate trade unions, wasable to depress wages for 15 years in order to produce an unprecedentedaccumulation of capital. At the same time, the State assumed a sub-stantial part of the burden of industrial development and, by promotingcapital concentration and monopoly, furthered the formation of a

renovated oligarchy.

It is necessary here to distinguish between the power bloc whichdominated Spanish society and the State itself. Up to 1959, it is clearthat the bureaucracy was the major force within the State and theoligarchy the major force within the power bloc which it represented.It will be seen that it was only through a period of ‘bureaucratic’ rulethat a new phase could be reached when a renovated oligarchy couldonce again assume something like direct command of the State appara-tus. Let us consider the State apparatus first.

Army

Victor in the Civil War, the Army was represented within the régime,in the first place through Franco himself. This pre-eminence wasreflected in the substantial share of the civilian administration con-trolled by the Spanish military: at least a quarter of all Ministries since1939 have been held by the Army, which has never received less than25 per cent of the budget, and considerably more if police forces areincluded. Although formally separate organizations, the police and the

Army are in practice much the same: the Ministry of the Interior hasalways been under military control, and officers of the Guardia Civil,the Policia Armada and the Army are largely interchangeable.

At the regional level the civilian administration is duplicated by amilitary administration which, though in principle only commandingthe provincial garrisons, in fact plays an extensive political role. The

8



officer corps has been mainly recruited from the urban petty bourgeoisand middle class, with certain sharp regional differences: there are veryfew Catalans and Basques. Privileges for high-ranking Army officershas been considerable: retirement, for example, came to mean highlypaid jobs in any of the proliferating ‘civilian administration’ organiza-tions.

Church

The particularly obscurantist role of the Church in recent Spanishhistory is well known. The Civil War was blessed as a ‘crusade’ againstcommunism, liberalism, the masons and the jews. It is important tonote, however, that it was not until 1945 that the Church succeeded insecuring a major position for itself in the Franquista régime. After theWar, in effect, Franco introduced it as a countervailing power to‘utopian’ Falangism, which had been somewhat discredited by theinternational defeats of Germany and Italy. The Concordat with the

Vatican later allowed Franco to nominate all Spanish bishops: thelatter, of course, participate directly in political activities. (In the case of Franco’s incapacity or death the Church now has one vote in the three-member Consejo de Regencia which will rule the country.)

Bureaucracy

The civilian bureaucracy was the specific creation of the FranquistaState. Dominated by the Falange with a strong base in the official tradeunions, it became a homogeneous social group whose numbers wereincreased by state economic intervention to create an enormousparasitic apparatus. Its existence was justified by its economic andpolitical function, discussed above: to control the proletariat and toprovide consumers. The strength of this bureaucracy can only beunderstood in the context of a ‘closed’ state which constantly defendedthe claim that society is no more than the State and that no economic,political or ideological activity can take place outside the State.

Franco

A great deal of literature, especially in Britain, sees Franco as a con-summate manipulator of different political forces, who assures a balanceof power between them. It would be more correct, we believe, to seehim as the product rather than the producer of this complex equili-brium, a politician who displays the political abilities demanded of himby the situation. It is, however, true that the critical initial period of the régime’s stabilization—secured finally in 1953 with the US MilitaryPact and the Concordat—lends credence to the image of Franco as acunning dictator. Constant gambles and sharp changes of direction,

largely conditioned by the international conjuncture, made every groupand institution seeking a share of power uncertain of its future. TheFalange’s loss of influence to the benefit of the Church in 1945; or—toanticipate somewhat—the bureaucracy’s further loss in 1957 to thebenefit of Opus Dei technocrats; or the last big gamble of 1967–68,which made good some of the bureaucracy’s previous losses by restor-ing the Movimiento Nacional to its position as the sole political party—

9



these are only some examples of Franco’s internal manoeuvrings.Though his leadership has remained unquestioned, Franco has alwaysbeen the ‘arbiter’ to whom different factions in power can appeal in thelast instance.

So much for the immediate components of the State apparatus. Mean-while, monopoly and finance capital has been the ruling class in Spain

throughout Franco’s régime. Because of the polarized class structure of Spain and because 200 families control the economy’s fundamentalresources, it is in the strict sense an oligarchy.4 This oligarchy, how-ever, underwent important transformations after 1936. Before theCivil War the oligarchy consisted mainly of financial and agrarianinterests—Southern latifundists more or less integrated into the bankingworld of Madrid. Neither the Catalan industrial bourgeoisie nor theBasque financial and industrial bourgeoisie were part of this oligarchy,although close links developed between them when they were threat-ened by working-class militancy. Owing to the particular configurationof class and region in Spain—a very important consequence of whichwas the existence of a weak state apparatus—there was no united rulingclass before the War. Despite their conflicting interests, fear drovethese sections of the bourgeoisie during and after the War to an under-standing of their collective interests. This had three results: (a) financecapital’s role in industry became absolutely predominant, (b) theBasque and Catalan industrial bourgeoisie were thereby integrated intothe oligarchy, (c) latifundism lost its importance as an economic andpolitical force. Thus the old oligarchy of the post-1939 period sub-

sisted but its composition was transformed. It gradually became amuch more powerful and coherent economic force, and thereby in-creasingly capable of reasserting its political presence within theSpanish State. The history of the Franco régime since 1959 is largelythat of the re-emergence of this now metamorphosed class. The bureau-cratic and autarchic State of 1939—the ‘political model’ which hadprovided the space for its economic renovation—now became a fetterto its further development. To assert its new vocation to directdominance, the oligarchy now started to reoccupy the State, in Spainthe single locus of legitimate political activity.

3. The Economic Model 1959–59: Liberalization and Expansion

The great change in the social nature of Franco’s régime occurredduring the two years 1957–59. It was preceded by the rebirth of Spanish working-class militancy in 1955. In that year, there were thefirst large-scale strikes and demonstrations for 20 years. The FalangistMinister of Labour, Giron, twice permitted wage increases greater thanall those of the previous 17 years. A year later, he was dismissed and thenew Ministry was dominated by Opus Dei technocrats, representing

both advanced capital and a modernized Church. An entirely new‘economic model’ was henceforward established in Spain. Autarchyand state dirigisme were abandoned for aggressive economic expansionand liberalization, under the hegemony of a revitalized oligarchy.

4 See ‘Las 100 familias’ in Horizonte Espanol 1966, Ruedo Iberico Paris, 1966. Vol. 1.For an historical account: A. Ramos Cliveira, Historia de Espana, Mexico.

10



The government now gave up its direct intervention in wage-fixing andallowed collective bargaining between firms and the official tradeunions; wage agreements could be reached by individual firms, ornegotiated for an industrial sector or province. The State reserved theright to intervene where no agreement was reached.5 While it remainedillegal to dismiss workers, this was in practice made possible by invok-ing ‘disciplinary infractions’ to sack individual workers or by per-

mission for lay-offs (expedientes de crises) when a firm could allegefinancial difficulties. ‘Liberalization’ of the labour market was acceler-ated in 1959; after consultations with the international organizations towhich Spain was to be admitted, the government approved a Stabiliza-tion Plan. This included devaluation, the establishment of a single rateof exchange for the peseta, and the lifting of restrictions on foreigninvestment in Spanish companies from 25 per cent to 50 per cent(higher with permission). State interventionism was sharply reduced:quantitative import controls were replaced by a somewhat less pro-tectionist tariff policy in 1960, and investment permits were abolishedin 1963. These measures were aimed at increasing economic flexibility,containing the inflationary process and attracting foreign capital. Theeffects were rapidly felt by the working class with the imposition of awage freeze (1959–61) which resulted in a large wave of emigration toEuropean countries and massive internal migration. National incometemporarily dropped, but a massive investment boom was building upwhich by 1962 had reached 24.4 per cent of GNP. The new politicalstability heralded by the Opus Dei dominance in the government wasthe institutional condition of this. The monetary condition of the new

boom was, of course, the huge foreign currency earnings from tourismwhich now multiplied, and the repatriation of savings by Spanishemigrant workers in the countries of the EEC.6 Both symbolized thefundamental orientation of the new economic model: integration intothe international capitalist economy, and abandonment of autarchy.

The influx of foreign currency and capital paid for the imports neededto develop industrialization. In contrast to the preceding period whenindustrial development was an extensive process (cheap labour, lowproductivity, high profits largely not reinvested in industry), the period

from 1962 was marked by productive reinvestment, higher wages andincreases in productivity. The cost of living rose by 65.5 per centbetween 1958 and 1966. Wages, however, more than kept pace withthis increase and for five years the working class knew a period of relative prosperity, particularly in comparison with the previous de-cades of absolute poverty.

5 In effect this was nothing mote than a means for the state to fix wages. Between1963 and 65, as working-class militancy increased, state intervention per number of

employees affected increased by 50 per cent in extractive and metallurgical andindustries, transport, while in agriculture the increase was only 7.4 per cent. Thedifference is explicable by the weaket negotiating position of agricultural workers.See E. Baron, Salarios, Conflictos y Coste de la Vida. Revista Cuadernos para el Dialogo,No. 9, Madrid, 1958.6 In 1966 17 million tourists visited Spain, bringing in $1,245 millions. Repatriationof foreign currency by Spanish emigrants amounted to $58 millions in 1960; by1965 the figure had risen to $380 millions.

11



Industrial prices, which in the period of capital accumulation rosefaster than agricultural prices or the cost of living, now became rela-tively stable, above all because of increased foreign competition afterthe abolition of quantitative import controls. Price stability and wageincreases accelerated monopolization and concentration; marginalenterprises previously kept alive by the policy of autarchy and lowwages, now went out of business. Meanwhile, higher agricultural prices

stimulated investment in mechanization, although production was stillinadequate. Mechanization eliminated jobs and new waves of migrationbegan: in 1954 more than 550,000 people migrated in a single year(293,000 abroad; 257,000 internally). The flight of the rural proletariatfrom the land was aggravated by a dramatic exodus of small peasantowners whose living conditions were little better than those of thelandless. In 1960, there were 2,397,000 independent farmers; five yearslater the number was reduced to 1,687,500. Although agricultural pro-ductivity began to rise in the 1960’s, increase in output (21·3 per centbetween 1958 and 1966) remained far below the industrial sector (114per cent for the same period).

With the increase in industrial investment, the national income rose by8.28 per cent a year between 1960 and 1966. Per capita income increasedby 7.38 per cent a year, reaching $665 in 1966. The result was a trans-formation of the work-force, which took three main forms: (1)massive agricultural migration to urban centres, (2) very rapid in-dustrialization, (3) growth of a service sector no longer linked to aninflated bureaucracy but to tourism and urban life. In 1963 the govern-

ment raised the minimum wage to 60 pesetas a day but this 25 per centincrease affected only agricultural labourers; due to collective bargain-ing, industrial wages were already above this level. Strike legislationwas slightly relaxed. Wages rose by between 15 per cent and 25 per centa year, depending on the industry. In 1966, however, the annualincrease had dropped to 14.8 per cent as recession halted the previousfive years of economic boom. A new wage freeze was imposed in 1967,and when this was lifted in January 1958, a norm of 5·7 per cent in-crease a year was decreed. Accompanying this measure, an earlier

Table 2 Spanish economic structure 1959–66

Nat’l Income Tourists Invest- Balance Cost of (millions : (thous) ment (% of trade Living index1953 ptas) of GNP) ($ mill) (1958 100)

1958 501,975 3,594 21·3 −386·6 1001959 476,500 4,194 19·3 −293·9 —1960 494,396 6,113 18·9 3·9 —1961 554,069 7,455 21·9 −382·9 111·4

1962 599,173 8,668 24·4 −

833·5 117·61963 650,423 10,931 24·5 −1,219·7 127·91964 689,278 14,103 24·2 −1,304·4 136·81965 738,477 14,251 26·4 −2,052·3 154·21966 796,966 17,252 27·6 −2,377·2 164·5

Source : Informe Economico, 1966, Banco de Bilbao, and Boletin EstadisticoBanco de Espana, November 1967.

12



Banditry and Terrorism Law was reimposed with the aim of controllingworking-class protest after the end of its short-lived moment of prosperity.

The new wage freeze was combined with increases in industrial prices tostimulate accumulation, and restrictions on imports to restore thevolume of foreign currency which had started to fall in 1967 as

emigration dropped and there was a slight decrease in tourist spending.Productive investment declined to 20·4 pet cent of GNP in 1967 as fundswere again channelled into non-productive investment or into foreignbanks: the flight of capital was estimated at $230 million by OECD in1957. The government was compelled to increased State expenditure toboost economic activity, but despite this national income declined. Thecrisis is only temporary, however, since the peseta was devalued againtogether with sterling in 1967, with a resulting increase in exports.

Thus, although it is vitiated by a great number of structural defects,

Spanish capitalism today remains poised for potential though cyclicalgrowth—perhaps very rapid growth. The length of the cycles willdepend on the class struggle and on the balance of forces between thosebourgeois groups for and those against State intervention in theeconomy. For the moment the latter two coincide; in the long-run-however, monopoly capital demands a ‘liberal’ economy and integration into European imperialism.

4. The Political Model 1959–59: Dominance of the Technocracy

There was one vital superstructural precondition for the suddendevelopment of the forces of production after 1959: a new ‘politicalmodel’ was essential to render possible economic expansion. The van-guard of this new political system was the Catholic lay organization,Opus Dei. This vast semi-secret network, controlling businesses andmedia all over Spain, had infiltrated the civilian administration from1939 onwards. But it was only in 1957–59 that its leading representa-tives acquired pre-eminence in Franco’s government. From then on, italways controlled the economic and financial ministries. The Opus Deirepresents—uniquely for any contemporary capitalist country—

monopoly capital and the modern Church simultaneously, within theSpanish State today. Its technocrats determine the economic policieswhich have produced the Spanish boom of the last years: with them,the renovated oligarchy has reassumed direct political power in therégime. At the same time, the traditional obscurantist hierarchy hasbeen largely displaced from its former supremacy in the Church.

Parallel to this fundamental change, the Army has undergone importanttransformations. The long delegation of its ‘sectional interests’ to theperson of the dictator himself produced a certain relative depoliticiza-

tion in the Army during the 1950’s, when the US Military Pact had beensigned. Thus, when after 1959 important differences and divisions arosewithin the régime, similar divisions started to arise within the Army.With the ascent of the Opus Dei to governmental power, there emergedin the Army a new ideology of ‘professionalism’, particularly amongyoung officers who were in part opposed to the bureaucratic structureof an Army still dominated by Civil War Generals. Politically, these

13



young officers tended to sympathize with the Opus Dei ‘experts’ andother bourgeois groups trying to modify the political system. In con-trast, a large number of old Generals remained firmly on the other side,fighting with the bureaucracy and the Falange to retain the closed andautarchic post-war State. The Spanish Army is now subject to the samecentrifugal pressures as the régime: it is not a monolithic institutionany longer.7

This, of course, is emphatically not to say that the class role of the Armyhas changed, for its factional divisions are far less important than itsunity against working-class opposition: the régime’s theory and historystill officially proclaim that the Army is the ‘final guarantee’ of thebourgeois order. It is, however, probably true that the Army hasceased to be the locus of national political transformations (its tradi-tional role in the 19th and early 20th centuries) because of Spain’s pro-found socio-economic changes. Whereas in the past the Army couldalways intervene politically, just as the Church could discipline itsfaithful, the dynamic of bourgeois politics in contemporary Spain isnow more independent of the corporate concerns of both.

The ascent of the Opus Dei has meant the decline of the Falange, andwith it of the antiquated 1939 bureaucracy. The new political model didnot altogether evict the Falange or the bureaucracy from importantpositions; they still control the Ministry of Labour and the officialtrade unions, for instance. But it did drastically reduce their powerwithin the Spanish State. A consequence has been the progressive ‘de-

ideologization’ of the bureaucracy, which has increasingly abandonedFalangist preoccupations for a corporate defence of acquired positionsand privileges: these are the factors of its homogeneity today. In 1967,it regained some of its power when the Movimiento National was offici-ally made Spain’s only political party: a change that reflected the needof the régime for ‘transmission institutions’ to control and repress theworking class.

This new political configuration translated the dominance of therenovated national oligarchy, which now rendered obsolete the old

divisions of different sections of the bourgeoisie: Catalan industry,Basque industry and finance, Madrid finance and Southern latifundia.An integrated union of these groups now exists, led by the industrialmonopolies and the financial power of the banks. Politically, thisoligarchy had now to participate directly in government to obtain theeconomic development demanded by its objectives. This hegemonicsection of the ruling class was consequently able to broaden the socialnature of the State. By inaugurating a period of rapid economicdevelopment, monopoly capital was able to subordinate large sectors of the medium bourgeoisie as the latter increasingly became clients of big

business. Although rationalization policies periodically ruin a numberof marginal firms, the subordination of the medium bourgeoisie is amore important phenomenon since the latter are politically strongerthan the marginal groups. Yet another consequence of economic

7 For the different trends within the army, see J. Busquets, El Militar de carrera enEspana, Ariel, Barcelona 1957, an uneasy account by a captain in the present army.

14



growth was the creation of a white-collar salariat whose number hasquickly increased. Evolution in the agricultural sector has taken adifferent path. Here the new economic model both increased the richpeasant class and drove a large number of small, mainly Castilianpeasants off the land and into the urban proletariat. For the régime thefirst development was of more importance than the second, becausethe social group newly won was more definitely committed to it than

the social group it had lost. It should, however be noted that this was anegative development for the bureaucracy since the small Castilianpeasantry had traditionally formed a reservoir of Falangism.

Thus, whereas during the Civil War, Franco rallied only the region of Navarre and the peasantry of Castile to give a mass character to hisbloc, after 1959 all sections of the Spanish middle class, under theleadership of monopoly and finance capital which was responsible forthe economic boom, swung to the present State. The result has beenthe emergence of an enlarged power bloc, the product of the ‘black

market’ of the ’fifties, and the prosperity of the ’sixties. Although still ina formative phase, this bloc now structures the class struggle in Spaininto a new pattern. The events of the last few years are the evidence.

5. The Avatars of ‘Liberalization’

In 1962, during the economic boom, the régime launched a programmeof political ‘liberalization’ that included a new press law and the re-placement of military by civilian courts for charges concerned withpublic and political order. From our previous analysis, it is clear that

some institutional modifications were necessary if the renovated powerbloc, under the hegemonic leadership of monopoly capital, was tosecure its objectives. The adaptation of legal and juridical forms to thepolitical change that had taken place was urgent by 1962.

This urgency was emphasized by the fact that some bourgeois groupswere already veering into opposition. A congress grouping Monarch-ists, Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and representatives of theBasque and Catalan national bourgeoisie took place in Munich during1962. Though the political outcome of the Congress remained un-

certain, it was the first time that groups inside Spain (Christian Demo-crats and Monarchists) had publicly engaged discussions with politicalparties exiled since the Civil War.8 The latter included the SocialistParty, the PSOE. A bourgeois alternative to Franco’s rule now appearedpossible. An ageing dictator, moreover, made the perspective of a post-Franco Spain more acute; the question of ‘institutionalizing’ the suc-cession was one which concerned both oppositional and non-opposi-tional bourgeoisie and which ‘liberalization’ was partly designed toresolve. At the same time the resurgence of working-class militancy ona larger scale made it necessary for the government to adopt a policy of social negotiation rather than armed coercion alone. Economic expan-sion in Europe, the growth of the Common Market and the renewedconfidence of US imperialism were also international factors whichcontributed to an internal ‘liberalization’.

8 For an analysis of the Munich gathering, see Espana Hoy, ed. J. Martinez and I.Fernandez de Castro, Ruedo Iberico, Paris, 1963.

15



The option taken by the régime was thus to outflank the Munichopposition by giving the Opus Dei technocracy powers to engineer along boom designed to install the hegemonic rule of monopoly capitalover all sectors of the bourgeoisie. The concrete measures of political‘liberalization’ were very limited. Its importance was rather that theState abandoned exclusively coercive-repressive rule in order to createan inter-class ‘consensus’ to provide itself with an expanded social

basis. Even so, the régime displayed extreme caution for fear that theopposition would then be credited with major conquests which wentbeyond these limits (the creation of workers’ commissions is oneexample).

Political liberalization in fact consisted less in what the régime per-mitted by law than in what was actually said, projected and done byindividuals and groups. An unprecedented example was a strike sus-tained by the workers of Laminados de Bandas in the North for fivemonths, despite repression. In 1963, the official trade union bureaucracy

set out to determine the possibility of ‘integrating’ the new proletariatinto more or less democratic trade unions that would, however,remain under its control. During this period some ‘enlightened’entrepreneurs outspokenly advocated the creation of strong and freetrade unions (note the plural) with which they could ‘dialogue’.Lamata, general secretary of the official union organization for Spain,took up this dialogue with a typical formula of falangist demagogy:‘The analytical method, which served Marxism to demonstrate that themedieval guilds had to be replaced by class-based trade unions, today

demonstrates the inadequacy of class trade unionism . . . Trade-unionists must not today be opposed to or lack solidarity with a socio-economic order that is no longer capitalism proper,’9 Liberalizationthus unleashed factional disputes between capitalists and the bureau-cracy. The bureaucracy’s project of creating a new trade-unionismunder its control was threatened from the start by the spontaneousworking-class response: the creation of the commisiones obreros—theworkers’ commissions. This will be discussed later. For the moment it isenough to say that they dealt a blow not only to the projects of thebureaucracy but also to capitalist schemes to encourage the creation of

a number of trade unions to divide the working class. The unitarycharacter of the workers’ commissions was, and remains, a radicalrefusal of both bourgeois strategies.

The results of the phase of liberalization were thus contradictory. Forthe bourgeois order there were three definite gains. (1) The bureaucracywas now irreversibly replaced by a technocracy (Opus Dei)—themanaging committee of monopoly and finance capital—which becamethe predominant influence in the régime. (2) Economic developmentand the creation of a certain bourgeois public opinion, expressed by

Opus Dei and Christian Democrat newspapers and publications, con-solidated—once and for all—the hegemonic rule of monopoly canitalover the medium bourgeoisie. This means that all sectors of this classare now loyal to the present régime. (3) Munich was forgotten.

9 Quoted by R. Bulnes, ‘Del Sindicalismo de Represión al Sindicalismo de Inte-gración’, Horizonte Espanol , op. cit.

16



Monarchists, Christian Democrats and even some Social Democrats actwithin the structures of the existing State.

These positive effects for the bourgeoisie must be assessed against amajor failure. Liberalization, which aimed at integrating the workingclass, created the conditions for the proletariat to fight integration bythe creation of its own unitary class organizations—the workers’ com-

missions. These commissions are unitary in opposition to the divisioninto Catholic, Social-Democratic and Communist trade unions plannedby the capitalists and class organs of combat in their refusal of theintegrationist strategy of the official trade unions.

The growth and strength of the commissions in fact determined thelimits of liberalization. As long as the new power bloc hoped to inte-grate the working class, the predominance of the technocracy over thebureaucracy was immediately guaranteed. When this project failed, anew pact had to be made between monopoly capital and the bureau-

cracy to control and repress the working class. Indeed, the present Stateof Emergency is as much the work of the Opus Dei, the oligarchy andthe church as it is of the bureaucracy and the military. It was thelogical result of a process of compression which started in 1966 whenwage demands (with workers’ and students’ militancy) coincided withthe approach of economic recession.

In conclusion: under the leadership of monopoly and finance capital,the Spanish bourgeoisie does not need an alternative system to Franco’ sdictatorship. The present régime with its combination of consensus—forthe bourgeoisie—and coercion—for the working class—contains all thepotential of ‘democratic’ evolution that the bourgeoisie could need. Itsinterests will be met from above, by the present State. In this context,Franco’s physical disappearance from the scene loses the relevance sooften attributed to it.

6. Workers’ Commissions: Organization and Mass Struggle

Up to 1950, working-class opposition in Spain was an epilogue to theCivil War itself; Anarchists, Socialists and Communists engaged inisolated guerrilla fighting, the Communists until 1948 and the Anarch-ists until somewhat later. Between 1950 and 1956 the only form of popular protest was street demonstrations, motivated by hunger. Then,from 1956 to 1962, the new working class began to make its appearanceand struggle on the shop floor for wage rises and improved workingconditions. After the strikes of 1956, 1957 and 1958, the State aban-doned direct control over wages and work conditions and institutedcollective bargaining. This then led to the mass strikes of 1962–66. It isessential to remember that by this time the whole nature of the Spanish

working class had fundamentally changed. Some 2 million new in-dustrial workers emerged between 1939 and 1965, more than doublingthe size of the Spanish proletariat. Of these, over two-thirds wereemployed in three major urban centres: Barcelona, Madrid and Bilbao.At the same time, over one-third of the working class was employed inlarge plants of more than 500 employees. This formidable growth of the working class soon produced new forms of consciousness and com-

17



bativity. It was in this period that the workers’ commissions were firstorganized: their principal aims were ‘economic’ but they rapidlytended to be politicized by the repression of the police, trade unionsand managers.

The movement began in Asturias during 1962. Negotiation for collec-tive agreements rapidly made it clear both that the official trade unions

were in league with the management, and that management, accus-tomed to the use of police repression, was in a weak bargaining position.In this situation, the workers began to organize factory and pit com-mittees which were democratically elected by illegal but not clandestineworkers’ assemblies. These replaced the official trade unions in negotia-tions. Strikes rapidly spread throughout the whole of the Asturianmining region, and the régime, with a characteristic syndrome of repression following concessions, declared a State of Emergency in theregion. While the régime was deporting and jailing working-classmilitants, the workers’ commission representatives were in practice

expected to negotiate with management in place of the official tradeunions. Wage disputes were thus rapidly converted into major politicalconfrontations. The solidarity of the working class in the rest of Spainwas demonstrated in strikes all over the country; in Bilbao and Bar-celona, factory committees were also formed.

These committees, however, tended to disappear once the particularnegotiations were ended, reappearing only when another bout of collective bargaining was due. It was not until 1964 that the Madridmetal workers formed a provincial workers’ commission based on

committees at factory level. Every other industrialized region soonfollowed the example of Madrid, and commissions organized at factory,branch and district level were established. These commissions arosedemocratically at each respective level: there was no centralizedorganization. The commissions had now become authentic massorganizations.

The dual objectives of these new proletarian organs of struggle areexpressed in their representative documents. A declaration of theMadrid workers’ commissions in 1966 asserts that: ‘The capitalist

system generates and determines the class struggle. In a capitalist socio-economic system there is no possible harmony between the interests of capitalists and workers; their positions are diametrically opposed. . . .The Spanish working class must fight for the right of association whoseexpression must be a single trade union. Rejecting facile solutions andstruggling for working-class objectives of both past and present, unitedand clear-sighted, no one will rob us of final victory.’ A declaration of the Barcelona commissions in 1968 develops a second essential theme:‘The workers’ commissions cannot be defined by their ideologicalprinciples. They are defined above all by their unitary and representa-

tive organization and by their function—leadership of the struggle inall its aspects. All those who see in the workers’ commissions both themost effective instrument for achieving proletarian demands, and theconfiguration of the future organs of working-class democracy, willfind in their organizational principles the correct means for struggle.’10

10 Reproduced in Cuadernos del Ruedo Iberico No. 20/21, August–November, 1968.

18



Two themes are evident here: on the one hand, the need to create aunitary trade union movement to prevent the division of the workingclass and to forestall the dangers of integration; on the other, the ideathat the commissions are already the basic organs of future proletariandemocracy.

Despite differences of emphasis, it is indisputable that the commissions

have in the past few years led the working-class struggle ‘in all itsaspects’, as the Barcelona declaration claims. In conjunction withpolitical parties, the commissions have organized the largest massdemonstrations in Spain since the Civil War. The emergence of thecommissions has made the industrial proletariat the class best organizedand most capable of leading the struggle of the other oppressed andexploited groups of the population (peasants or students, for example).

One of the reasons for the success of the commissions has been theirtactics at factory level. In 1963, the commissions boycotted the elections

to official trade union posts with considerable success. Three yearslater, however, the commissions consolidated their position by winningmajorities in the official trade-union elections for lower-echelon dele-gates. (Elective posts go no higher than the provincial secretary of the‘social sector’ of an industrial branch, the remainder being govern-mental appointees. In the unions’ corporative structures the employersare represented in the ‘economic sector’.) Contesting the elections, thecommissions won 90 per cent of the posts in the large Madrid factoriesand about 60 per cent in Barcelona and other industrial centres.Thepercentage was lower in medium-sized and small factories. On the basison these legally won posts, the tactic of combining legal with illegal means of struggle initiated the destruction of the official trade unionsfrom within. As officially elected delegates, commission representa-tives could legally press their demands in wage negotiations while theleadership of the struggle remained outside the official union. In thisrespect it should be remembered that the official trade unions havetraditionally been one of the main pillars of the Franco régime.

From their lower echelon posts within the unions, the commissions

were able to use legal weapons to support illegal actions, includingstrikes. The latter, when sustained for long periods, won the solidarityof workers in neighbouring factories, and sometimes nationally, thuspoliticizing the movement. The most striking example of this type of action by a workers’ commission was the strike at Laminados Bandas, aBilbao steel plant, which lasted five months. By opposing illegal action,the official trade union revealed itself as the primary ally of managementand the police—visibly negating the formal role of representing theworkers which the new arbitration procedures had supposedly givenit.11

Escalating militancy was thus very largely responsible for the ultimatefailure of political ‘liberalization’ and for the régime’s resort to violentrepression after 1966. However, by this time, the commissions had

11 See Nuestra Huelga (distributed by Ruedo Iberico, Paris), a pamphlet written bythe strikers and destined to become a classic of the working-class struggle duringthis period.

19



organized the working class so effectively that the régime was unable toprevent the growth of the movement. The difficulties of combininglegal and illegal means of struggle were, of course, greatly increased bythe economic crisis, the wage freeze and the restoration of militarycourts. The official unions also began to retaliate against commissionmembers who held union posts; today none of those elected three yearsago remains in office. Working illegally but not clandestinely, militants

from the commissions have been arrested and imprisoned with relativeease. But, given the present level of organization, they have also beenrelatively easily replaced by new militants. Factory and local organiza-tion is in any event much more important than a few publicly knownleaders.

During the economic crisis of 1967, the commissions not only main-tained but consolidated their strength in the struggle against massredundancy. They were now less involved in wage bargaining—rendered difficult by the freeze—and more involved in political demon-strations. These new forms of struggle led to the establishment of wardcommissions, youth commissions and commissions of unemployed—thus enlarging their scope of influence to all sectors of the populationexploited by capitalism. Autonomous associations of technicians andprofessionals were established alongside but linked to these new com-missions. The mass mobilizations of October 1967 in Madrid and theMay Day demonstrations throughout the country in 1968 were theoutcome of this new phase of political action by the commissions, whoare now the vanguard of all the exploited and oppressed.

Any analysis of these political confrontations must distinguish betweenthree different types of struggle which overlap: (1) the struggle againstthe police system and its repression of any prolonged workers’ fight—usually at the demand of management (2) the struggle against thetrade-union bureaucracy, pillar of the régime (3) the struggle against aState dominated by monopoly and finance capital.

Against police repression, the demands are for freedom of associationand expression, and the right to strike; against the trade-union bureau-

cracy, the necessity for independent and unitary trade unions; againstthe capitalist State, the perspective of socialist class struggle implicit inthe organizational form of the commissions and clearly expressed in thedeclarations quoted above. In the day-to-day struggle, these objectivesare inter-related and superimposed; the predominance of one or theother depends on the concrete political conjuncture. In the long ran,however, the priorities are clear: destruction of the monopoly capitalistState through mass struggle against the repressive apparatus of therégime via the elimination of the official trade union.

It is in the workers’ commissions that the political parties representingthe working-class movement must seek the consent of the majority fortheir programme. A number of ‘trade unions’ distinct from theworkers’ commissions though partly integrated into them (the CatholicAST and the Social-Democratic ASO and USO, for example) tend todiminish the degree of unity reached in the commissions. It is impos-sible to be certain whether the unitary character of the commissions

20



will prevail over these separatist divisions. What is certain is that theSpanish working class has once again shown spontaneous vitality andcombativity in forging new and original organs of struggle, comparableto yet distinct from the ‘internal commissions’ of Gramsci’s Turin,which anticipate the institutions of a future socialism.

7. The Proletarian Parties

The creation and consolidation of the workers’ commissions as unitaryorganizations of the proletariat poses an immediate threat to monopolycapital and the dictatorial State. When Spanish capitalism tried to solvethe economic crisis of 1967–68 by repressive measures, the commissionsassumed the leadership and representation of working-class struggle inall its aspects. But a distinction must be made between this ‘politiciza-tion’ which was a reaction to a concrete conjuncture, and the ability of the commissions to engage in a full-scale mobilization to create arevolutionary situation. To capture and maintain the political initiative

in the national class struggle, a revolutionary vanguard party is absolutelyindispensable.12

From this point of view, an evaluation of the current political strengthand role of the working-class parties in Spain is essential. The two mainhistoric parties of the Spanish proletariat are, of course, the SocialistParty (PSOE) and the Communist Party (PCE). The former has someregional affiliates, such as the MSC in Catalonia and the PSV in Valencia.The once-mighty PSOE is today a shadow of its past. In exile, the partyof Iglesias and Caballero has declined to become an orthodox social-democratic party of the latter-day type. The PSOE has no serious pro-programme, which accounts for its fragmentary and conjuncturalpolicies. Its official leadership remains in excile and maintains closecontacts with European social-democratic parties, while some of itsspokesmen in Spain—for example, Tierno Galvan—clearly intend towork within the existing State (though for this to be viable a muchgreater degree of liberalization would be necessary). The Socialist Partyis, in fact, polarized between its European and anti-Communist alliancesand its support of the clandestine trade unions ASO and USO which have

hitherto worked more or less within the unitary workers’ commis ions.This contradiction is responsible for its complete programmaticvacuity. The PSOE has steadily lost influence as a political party, whileretaining some of its industrial influence (the same, though to an evengreater extent is true of the Anarchists whose political activity today islargely irrelevant). The PSOE has been unable to attract large sectors of young workers, with the single exception of the Basque industrial zone.It has no base whatever in the universities.

The Spanish Communist Party is a very different affair today. After its

rapid growth during the Civil War, it was able to adapt to the completely

12 The recent State of Emergency, whose true objective was to curb the wave of demands in the factories, is a confirmation of this. Only at the plant level, mainly inBilbao and Barcelona, were workers able to maintain their demands under extremelydifficult repressive conditions. Nothing like a political response of the proletariatand other exploited groups occurred. There is no space here for the necessaryanalysis of these events.

21



different conditions created by fascist repression—alone of the partiesof the Republic. The young industrial working class and studentsprovided the militants of the renovated party. Thirty years after thedefeat of the Republic and the installation of Franco’s system, the PCE

has survived to become the first organized force against the SpanishState. By contrast with the Socialist Party, it has a coherent perspectiveand programme to which it has remained loyal over the years. It is this

perspective, however, which is at the root of the defects of the party’swork in the ’sixties, In assessing the PCE, we must adopt the Leninistcriteria of judging a working-class party by its programme and by itsefficacy in carrying a majority of the working class with it. The PCE’sfundamental analysis of contemporary Spanish society may be sum-marized briefly like this.

In Spain, a bourgeois-democratic revolution is necessary to end thedominance of an obscurantist Church, Southern latifundism and thefinancial oligarchy, who all represent pre-capitalist forces and classes. In

this perspective, the fascist State has effected no fundamental changesin economy or polity; rather the fundamental problems of 1936 havebeen ‘repressed and aggravated by fascist power’. Thus, the growth of monopolies is not related to the recent boom but is rather a ‘patho-logical’ symptom of the economic system. At the same time the PCE

believes that monopoly capital has little connection with the ‘con-servative forces of the agrarian and financial oligarchy’ which were,and are still maintained to be, the main support of Franco’s régime.The two central contradictions of Spanish society thus become the

maintenance of latifundism in the South (feudalism) and the growth of monopolistic industry, whose expansion has been achieved at theexpense of every other sector of the bourgeoisie.

For the party, the way forward is a democratic revolution, with areturn to the competitive phase of capitalism, in which the economicpower of monopoly capital will be reduced by state intervention. Thiswill lead to the consolidation of an economy run by the middle classesand small industrialists, capable of effecting a land reform. The view thata financial-agrarian oligarchy dominates the régime leads the PCE to

assert that power is controlled by a ‘clique’ without any importantsocial basis. This leads to a dissociation of economic realities fromtheir political manifestations. Thus when the needs of economicdevelopment dictate certain political changes—‘liberalization’—thesechanges are interpreted as the definitive crisis of the political system. Itwas to deal with this crisis that PCE announced a general strike in 1959.

It is consistent with its strategic perspective of a ‘democratic revolution’that the PCE has for many years proposed ‘National Reconciliation’ or aunited front of all bourgeois parties and working-class organizations

aimed at transcending the divisions of the Civil War. This front wouldideally include the national bourgeoisie, all non-monopolistic business,the new rich peasant class, the salariat and the working class. Thecommon objective of this front would be the ‘anti-feudal, anti-mono-polistic revolution’.

Any consideration of the character of the bourgeois ‘opposition’ to

22



Franco’s régime makes it evident that these hopes are quite illusory.Across the bourgeois spectrum there exist, of course, many individualswho have advocated democratic reforms in recent years. But it cansafely be said that since the Munich opposition was discomfited by theliberalization of 1962–66, no bourgeois political group has demanded abourgeois-democratic system to replace the Franquista régime. Indeed,the only bourgeois oppositional parties are the Catalan and Basque

nationalist parties (Front National Catala and Partido NacionalistaVasco) and even these have had to formulate a certain commitment tosocialism, however rhetorical and reformist. The possibility of aChristian-Democratic Party emerging, meanwhile, appears verylimited. This is because the Spanish candidates for a Christian-Demo-cracy are at one and the same time in the government and the opposi-tion. They are well aware that they cannot abandon the government if they are to remain in the dominant power bloc, led by monopoly andfinance capital. In consequence, they are reduced to a vaguely dissident‘élite’ working within the régime for ‘more freedom’. When, on oc-casion, they move towards opposition, they discover that the workingclass and the socialist political parties are better organized than they are—or could hope to be in the near future. Moreover, if they committhemselves to opposition, they have to act within the only frameworkavailable to opposition: an increasingly violent mass struggle (hencesuch episodes as the 1959 general strike plan, when the ‘ChristianDemocratic Left’ initially approved a Communist proposal for thestrike, only to repudiate it a few days before it was due).

Thus Monarchists, organized as an élite but not as a political party,some Opus Dei elements whose opinions are expressed by the news-paper Madrid , ‘progressive’ Christian Democrats in the monthly reviewCuadernos para el Dialogo—all work within the régime. This does notexclude the possibility of future Munichs or other oppositionalschemes : it merely means that the aim of any such manoeuvres will be toinfluence the correlation of forces within the present régime rather thanto create an alternative State. The weakness of the PCE’s strategy of alliances has thus been confirmed by the whole development of the pastdecade.

In fact, it has already been stressed that the present régime contains allthe democratic potential any sector of the bourgeoisie—dominant orsubaltern—might demand. In other words, the democratic libertieswhich the 19th and 20th century liberal bourgeoisie fought for withoutsuccess (or with only temporary success) no longer form part of thedemands of this class. These democratic demands have today devolvedon the working class. It is thus no accident that there has been noconsequent political opposition to the present régime in the last decadethat has not been socialist.

The New Revolutionary Left

From 1959 onwards, changes in society and the State already noted madeit clear that there was a certain political vacuum on the Left. Thetraditional political parties showed a radically incorrect appreciation of the internal Spanish situation. An example was the PCE’s slogan of a

23



general strike aimed at overthrowing Franco (the cause of this mistakewas thought at the time to be the fact that the PCE leadership in exilewas out of touch with the internal Spanish situation). The PSOE wasmeanwhile pursuing contacts with the Social-Democratic governmentsof Europe. Its presence inside Spain was thus drastically reduced, withthe exception of a certain trade-union activity. Thus when the newworking-class movement emerged (initially formulating mainly

economic demands), it was misjudged and left virtually without leader-ship by the traditional parties. Any resurgence of working-classmilitancy was immediately and mechanically translated by the PCE intoa symptom of Franco’s imminent demise; this meant that the meaningand strength of the new militancy was, paradoxically, both exaggeratedand minimized. It was exaggerated by giving it an unrealistic politicalperspective, and minimized by ignoring its latent potentialities whichled before long in quite another direction—the formation of the work-ers’ commissions. In effect, the PCE and PSOE each sought the allegianceof the new working-class, while this class was proving in its actions theneed for a unitary organization to include even non-aligned andcatholic trade unionists who would refuse to become members of eitherof the two traditional parties. A new type of trade-union leader,adapted to novel forms of action and uncommitted to the language andpolicies of these parties, had come to the forefront after the renewedworking-class militancy of 1956 and 1958. Moreover, the existence of legal catholic workers’ organizations ( JOC and HOAC) had provided themeans for great numbers of the new working class to acquire prole-tarian consciousness. While many of these workers later rejected the

Church’s cynical trade-unionism, they did not thereby become con-verted to the traditional parties.

For despite their verbal allegiance to unitary class politics, neither thePSOE nor PCE were actively willing to assist the growth of a unitedworking-class opposition. Finally, the beginnings of a student move-ment, related to the growth of working-class combativity, produced aMarxist intellectual sector determined to analyze Spanish societyscientifically. Although many of these students were later to rally to thetraditional parties, a large number were also well aware of the Stalinist

deformations of the PCE and of the reformist nature of the PSOE. In factmany of the arguments later used by the Chinese or Cubans, for ex-ample, were commonplace among a large sector of students before thedivisions in the international communist movement were made public.

For despite its class origins, the correlation of forces in Spanish societymade it inevitable that any student opposition must be socialist andlinked to the working-class opposition. Political from the start, thestudent movement built up a mass character in its struggle against theFalangist-controlled official students’ union. In 1968 the government

accepted student demands for freedom of association: by then, how-ever, it was too late, for the students demanded the same right not onlyfor themselves but for the working class. Commandos of youngworkers and students appeared in the streets during the demonstrations,especially in Madrid during the May Day demonstrations of 1968, andthe student movement as a whole co-ordinated its actions with—andunder the leadership of—the workers’ commissions. It is not within the

24



scope of this article to deal with all the aspects of the student movement.It is necessary only to emphasize its two remarkable achievements: thecreation of a mass movement in which the majority of students takepart and the organic union with the workers’ commissions. Students,moreover, now go on to provide many of the political cadres of theyoung working class. Above all, they gave the initial impetus for thecreation of the new revolutionary organizations which have emerged in

Spain during the ’sixties.

The first new socialist organizations were formed in 1956. Of these,only the FLP was to create a working-class political party, in 1959.Various splinter groups ( Acción Communista from the FLP; the Marxist-Leninist Party, the Claudin-Semprun group, and the InternationalCommunist Party from the PCE) emerged after 1963, a year in which thePCE also lost most Madrid intellectuals and students. It should be saidthere are a number of regional groups in a process of radicalizationtoday. Undoubtedly the most important of these is the Basque revolu-tionary party ETA, even if it is still early to assess ETA’s contribution tonew forms of combat. Well advanced towards revolutionary socialistpositions, ETA is unique in that Basque separatism forms a substantialpart of its separatist programme. Other such groups in Catalonia havedisappeared as their members rallied to revolutionary groups, whensocialist objectives had surpassed the separatist dream.

Today, the FLP-FOC-ESBA (Organizaciones Frente) is the main organizedgroup on the new revolutionary left, but Accion Communista has

played a valuable role in providing excellent studies of the Spanishsituation, while the Claudin-Semprun group has analysed the reformistmisconceptions of the PCE. Taken together, these groups could bedecisive, for it is from them that a new revolutionary party must emerge.These different groups which have emerged during the ’sixties areunited in their fundamental strategic perspective. By contrast with thePCE, they insist that the correct political perspective for Spain today is asocialist revolution.13 Capital accumulation and the accession of mono-poly and finance capital—distinct from but in close contact with the oldland-owning and financial oligarchy—to a hegemonic role in a power

bloc that includes the majority of the bourgeoisie, makes impossible areturn to a phase of competitive capitalism without monopoly. Thephase of capitalist evolution defined by Lenin has been reached: ‘Statemonopoly capitalism is the most complete material preparation forsocialism, its anteroom, because on a historical scale there are no inter-mediary levels between this phase and socialism.’ The new revolution-ary left believes that the ‘process of unification of latifundism, industrialcapital and finance capital has continued to accelerate . . . therebyinitiating the period of complete bourgeois revolution in Spain. Themystifying process of alliances between the upper strata of the bour-

13 The official documents which express the various political positions on the Leftare listed below. For the PCE, S. Carrillo, Después de Franco, Que?, Sotiales, Paris,1965; S. Carrillo, Nuevos Enfoques a Problemas de Hoy, Sotiales, Paris 1967. See alsoClaudin’s critique, ‘Dos Concepciones de la via espanola al socialismo’, HorizonteEspanol , op. cit. For the Organizaciones Frente (FLP-FOC-ESBA), ‘ Declaracion del Comité Politico de las Organizaciones Frente’, June, 1965. For Accion Comunista, thereview of the same name published in Paris.

25



geoisie and the ancien régime of Spain in the 19th century is thus ended’(declaration of the Organizaciones Frente). The middle and lowerbourgeoisie, now firmly under the leadership of monopoly capital, areincapable of opposing the latter in the name of any other model of economic or political development.

If it is correct to argue that the Franquista régime is the dictatorship of

the bourgeoisie, its overthrow will eventually be that of bourgeoisdomination of Spain. The revolutionary left must therefore be able toconfront both the overthrow of the existing régime and the anti-capitalist, that is, socialist character of the coming revolution. This isnot to say the immediate slogans of struggle must everywhere bemaximalist ones. On the contrary, it is clear that transitional demands of the type Lenin advanced during the 1905 Revolution are an absoluteprecondition of successful Marxist struggle in Spain today. TheOrganizaciones Frente are now well advanced in the formulation of such atransitional programme. The new Spanish working-class movement isin its infancy. The danger of economism—the reduction of all demandsto economic claims and the inability to link these to a political pro-gramme—is a tendency inherent in the present situation. It can only besurpassed, as in Russia after 1903, when the working class under theleadership of a vanguard party is able to seize the initiative in the fightfor State power. It will be seen that this perspective is quite distinctfrom that of the PCE, which by artificially separating Franco’s régimefrom the Spanish bourgeoisie relegates the problem of socialism to anindefinite future, after a complete period of ‘bourgeois-democratic’

revolution replacing Franco.The problem of alliances is also conceived differently by the new revolu-tionary left. It argues that the monopolistic logic of contemporarySpanish economic development demands a unitary working-classopposition. Approximately 70 per cent of the working population arewage earners today. Among the latter there has been a notable increaseof technicians, professionals and administrators, who, although sus-ceptible to integration by capitalism in their role as consumers, arepotential allies of the proletariat in specific conjunctures (low initial

income, economic crises or political repression may lead to conscious-ness of exploitation rather than to integration within the bourgeoissystem of dominance). These groups will rally either to the workingclass or, if integrated into the system, to monopoly capital. At the sametime, capitalist transformation of Spanish agriculture has progressivelyimpoverished small peasants to the benefit of a kulak class, while therestill exist a large mass of agricultural labourers. The rural poor form thesecond vital reservoir of allies for the proletariat. Lastly, the ideologicalrepression of the régime tends to keep each generation of students andintellectuals in a state of permanent revolt.

On the other side, the traditional middle class (small and mediumindustrialists, and new rich peasants) is a natural ally of monopoly andfinance capital. To some extent the economic interests of this class havebeen damaged by rationalization; but once monopoly capital becamethe hegemonic class, no other sector of the bourgeoisie could demon-strate a political or social autonomy or propose a future which would

26



not be inferior or utopian. These sectors are the political and—in mostcases—economic clients of big business. Thus the only power bloccapable of replacing the present monopoly-dominated bloc is that of the working class, the rural poor, technicians, clerical workers, studentsand intellectuals, under the hegemony of the industrial proletariat. This is theonly bloc capable of making the socialist revolution in Spain.

Having said this, it is necessary to add that all political organizations onthe Left agree that it is only through mass struggles organized by theworkers’ commissions that any change in the present situation can beeffected. At the moment, only the PCE has sufficient numerical strengthand influence among the working class eventually to lead a full-scalemobilization. But revolutionary struggle is not solely a matter of organization and numerical strength. Equally important is the capacityto analyse the concrete relationship of forces in society correctly and tobase a strategy and programme on this analysis. The PCE has attained aremarkable degree of organizational strength under conditions of tremendous repression, but it has not higherto proved capable of acorrect social analysis or policy of alliances. The new revolutionaryleft appears capable of the necessary strategic analysis, but its organiza-tional strength and influence is much weaker than that of the PCE. Theurgent necessity of creating a revolutionary regroupment on the basisof the existing organized groups is thus evident. The formation of sucha revolutionary party must not be prevented by denying the organiza-tion of these groups or by any form of sectarianism.

Postscript—November 1969

The October 1969 government reshuffle, which established complete Opus

Dei dominance in the Cabinet, signally confirms the general line of analysis

presented here. The Opus Dei was able to profit by the State of Exception of

1968–69—aimed ostensibly at students, in fact mainly at factory militancy

by workers—to oust the Falangista bureaucracy from its central posts in the

government. Nevertheless, this operation remains a risky one for the Opustechnocrats. Its fate will be determined by the class struggle in Spain. For the

outcome of the secondary contradiction between monopoly capital and the

bureaucracy is increasingly governed by the principal contradiction between

the capitalist State as a whole and the Spanish proletariat. Amidst many local

confusions, nuclei of workers armed with Marxist theory are now multiplying

i S i i h h h d f h f i i

spain after the civil war

Documents