Another round in the crisis of the Communist Party developed around the balance sheet of the Transition and the PCE's policy atter 1979, the characterization of the PSOE government and what sort of opposition to conduct toward it, and the kind of party they want to build. This last point involves ideological definitions, relations with the various social movements, deal-
After being by far the strongest force in the clandestine opposition to the
Franco dictatorship (at least on the all-Spain level), the Spanish Communist Party has been more and more marginalized since that is, the return to parliamentary democracy in 1975-77.
The fading of the CP first became evident in the parliamentary elecions of June 1977, when it was outdistanced by the Social Democrati
'SOE. One of the reasons for this was that the CP leaned over backward to accomodate the Francoist government in the period when it was preparing The Transition.
Since 1977, the CP has been in steady decline. In the elections last year that brought a PSOE government to power, insignificant position on the all-Spain level.
The discontent among the militant working-class base of the CP has also been fed by the party's support for the various social pacts that it has entered into, along with the PSOE. These amounted to a surrender to very time the economic crisis hit, reducing the living standards and level of employment of the workers disastrously.
Since in this period, the leadership of the CP, headed by Santiago
Carrillo was identified with a liberal, or Eurocommunist line, the left opposition tended to be captured by Stalinist fundamentalists harking back to the "good old days."
The conflict came to be centered in the United Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC), the CP's affiliate in Catalonia, which is where the CP has its greatest strength. In this area in particular, a lot of oppositionists left the party and oriented toward the formation of a new party.
gress of Communist Unity formed a new philo-Soviet "Communist Party"
on January 15, unanimously electing Ignacio Gallego general secretary.
After last year's elections, Carrillo was obliged to give up the leadership of the party, but he quickly organized a fight against the new general secretary, Gerardo Iglesias. The following article analyzes the outcome of this fight at the CP's eleventh congress in mid-December, where Iglesias' main resolution was passed by 386 to 376 with 25 abstentions, the smallest majority in the party's history.
F. CRUELLS
Gerardo Iglesias' victory in the Eleventh Congress of the Spanish CP has by no means marked the end of the party's long crisis.
Even the PSUC magazine Treball could not summon up much optimism:
"We do not want to be so naive as to think that the tensions will disappear immediately, when in fact in the period preceding the congress we saw a tendency toward geographical consolidation of the differences.
In this article, I will analyze the reasons for the continuing crisis of the PSUC.
To explain the conflict between the
Iglesias and Carrillo tendencies in the
PSUC, it is useful to look at the body of problems both face. The common ob-
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"The Transition" it was reduced to an almost The Conjective of the two tendencies was to give impetus to a revival of the PCE as a force in electoral politics and in the mass
Both tendencies knew that in order to accomplish that, the party has to capitalize on the discontent with the PSOE government among elements that want more radical policies. However, both Iglesias and Carrillo are firmly committed to a generally reformist line, little different from that followed by the PCE in the period of transition to parliamentary rule.
The PCE needs to demonstrate some renewed vitality in order to stop the bleeding split of militant workers from which the party has been suffering for some time. Moreover, in particular, it has to keep a large left element from being ing with internal differences, as well as relations with the USSR and the other Communist parties.
all the questions I have just cited, the political and organizational differences were not clarified, at least not sufficiently to justify the violence of the conflict between the two tendencies. The differences are more comprehensible in terms of a power struggle in the party and maneuvers by the two tendencies to gain support for that purpose.
For the sake of this game, Carrillo tried to present himself as a left opposition to Iglesias. He stressed the danger of a coup, criticism of the PSOE government and the need for strong opposition to it. This left talk, which sounded funny coming from him, fitted in with his attempt to gain support among the rank-and-file worker members.
Many of these rank-and-file worker communists want a more left policy, and sections of them could be attracted by Ignacio Gallego's alternative and the Communist Unity Congress. To avert that, Carrillo did not hesitate to give a pro-Soviet turn to his international positions.
On the other hand, Carrillo made no criticism of all of the social pacts that have been accepted one after the other. This was precisely because that is one of the fundamental themes the PCE's working-class ranks could radicalize around, and this would have immediate practical consequences.
Carrillo's inability to offer a consistent criticism from the left enabled Iglesias to play the same game of talking out of the left side of his mouth, to keep Carrillo from stealing the thunder of the "left turn." He stepped up his criticisms of the PSOE and has made trips to Portugal and Cuba. At the same time, he raked up Carrillo's rightist past and his clashes with the USSR.
Iglesias obviously thought that the question of the party was his strongest point. Thus, he talked about intervening in the social movements, about collective methods of work and normalizing differences in the party. He put a lot of stress on the appeal to those who wanted change to return to the party. But he did not neglect the critical element on the left who might feel attracted to the Communist Unity Congress. He promised that the PCE would be a democratic party that would respect the right to have
International Viewpoint 30 January 1984
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SPAIN -
Words, however, are cheap. The question of the party's attitude to religion can be fuzzed over by saying simply that it is Marxist in inspiration.
And Felipe
Alvaraz did not take any big risks by inviting Ignacio Gallego to rejoin the party.
The