Ricard Soler

The New Spain

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 yearis 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 concrete social formation that has emerged from the long decades of Francos rule,
3

and the political perspectives that it poses to Marxists. Our analysis will
try to answer three fundamental questions for revolutionary theory
and practice in Spain today.
1. What has been the nature of the socio-economic changes in Spain since the
Civil War? Tremendous changes of social structure have occurred
within a political continuum which has succeededhithertoin concealing and containing these changes. To analyse both social and
economic changes and political continuity it is necessary to divide
Francos rule into two periods, 193957 and 195969. The economic
differences between these periods are much more apparent than the
political changes which have tended to be cumulative, making their
localization at any given moment difficult. The great divide was
195759. Formulated in another way, while the survival of Franco
remains obvious, the contemporary problems are no longer the same as
those of the 1930s.
2. What are the fundamental contradictions of Spanish society today? The
principal contradiction, it will be stressed, is between the bourgeoisie,
led by monopoly and finance capital, and the working masses, led by
the industrial proletariat. This contradiction is much the same as that
which gave rise to the Civil Wara class warin 1936. However, the
two poles of the contradiction have meanwhile undergone a radical
transformation which has, if anything, sharpened their opposition. A
secondary contradiction opposes two forces within the ruling powerbloc. Monopoly and finance capitalthe oligarchyrepresented by a
trained technocracy, is in conflict with a bureaucracy integrated by
official trade unions, police and army. Liberalization and counterliberalization alternate according to the relative force of one of the
other. But the principal contradiction determines, both in the shortrun and the long-run, the outcome of this secondary contradiction.
3. What is the political relationship of the different social forces in Spain to the
Franquista rgime? This relationship is not necessarily static. In different
concrete conjunctures, for example given degrees of working-class
organization and combativity, forces which today appear to be loyal to
the rgime could in fact switch their allegiance, and the same could be
true of the opposition.
1. The Economic Model 193959: Capital Accumulation
National reconstruction after the Civil War was based on radical
autarchy and separation from the European economy. This policy was
dictated both by the nationalist ideology of the fascist rgime and by
the international conjuncture: the Second World War was only a few
months away. Massive repression of the working class made possible a
process of capital accumulation based on very low wages. Industrialization 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 Francos victory, Spanish agriculture was gripped by a depression
which lasted until the late fifties. In 1946 average output per hectare
was 30 per cent less than in the years 193135. Production grew by only
10 per cent from 1940 to 1953. The rgimes protection of the Castilian
4

wheat-growing and Andalusian cotton-growing small peasantry

allowed large landowners to take advantage of official price and purchase guarantees by the State to earn high profits. In the post-war
years pitiful wages and dire poverty, aggravated by unemployment, led
to an exodus of agricultural workers from the land to the cities. Rural
migration to Madrid, Catalonia and the North became an avalanche
about 1950 and is estimated at over 1,000,000 from the two Castiles,
Estremadura and Andalusia. After the war, the bulk of these displaced
peasants were absorbed not by industry but by the tertiary sector.
Meanwhile, in the industrial sector the rgime intervened with tax
concessions and import permits rather than by direct state investment.
Because of its tariff protection and import quotas, industrial prices rose
very considerably until the period of stabilization in 1959and their
increase was always proportionately higher than agricultural prices.
Pari passu, industrial production increased more rapidly than agricultural production. Services, however, were the main beneficiary of the
early decades of Spanish autarchy. Changes in the composition of the
working population for the decade to 1950 show a transfer from
agriculture to the tertiary sector rather than to industry.
The economic pattern of the first two decades of Francos rgime thus
combined agricultural stagnation, very limited industrial growth, and
an inflated administrative and service sector. What was the social
meaning of this system? It has three essential characteristics, which
define 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 by
a reserve army of labour provided by the rural proletariat. Prices, by
contrast, rose steadily. The result was systematic pauperization of the
working class, in town and country. The maximum daily wage of an
agricultural worker in 1940 was 10.37 pesetas; by 1954 this had risen to
22.01 pesetas. Comparable figures for metal workers were 13.66 pesetas
and 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
centa loss of purchasing power of 50 per cent in 15 years. This superexploitation was the economic expression of the political violence of the
Civil War. It was probably unique in Europe. Between 1939 and 1959
industrial prices rose by 676.8 per cent and production by 200 per cent;
while agricultural prices increased 504.8 per cent and production 30
per cent. Wage increases were similar in both sectors (261 per cent).
Wage controls thus benefited industry more than agriculture. It was the
former that generated the higher rate of surplus and thus of capital
accumulation. It was this super-exploitation that was later to allow the
capitalist class to increase its investment rate from 15 per cent of GNP
in the decade 195060 to more than 25 per cent of GNP in 1964.
If industry generated a higher rate of capital accumulation than agriculture, it was the rural proletariat which constituted the reserve army of
labour that allowed industrial wages to be kept down without producing a social explosion. Despite the widely shared belief, even on the
5

Left, that latifundist agriculture remained a feudal enclave,1 the fact is

that it was capitalism that viciously exploited both urban and rural
proletariat with the active collaboration of the State. This collaboration
consisted not only in direct repression (outlawing strikes and maintaining wage controls) but also in inflationary mechanisms that permitted a
high level of public expenditure financed not by taxation but by increasing the Public Debt with notes discountable by the Bank of Spain.
The latter increased the liquidity of the private banks which then increased the possibility of loans and higher profits for the capitalist class.
2. The growth of the tertiary sector created a proliferating and parasitic
bureaucracy, which was highly privileged economically. The number
of those listed in the category official and personal services increased
vertically:
1930
549,200
1940
813,000
1950 1,522,000
An idea of the class character of this bureaucracy is given by the fact
that 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 population to the tertiary sector is common to all underdeveloped capitalist
countries (Southern Europe and Latin America), the phenomenon
assumed proportions in Spain surpassing even those of Portugal or
Turkey.2 The Franquista rgime needed bureaucrats to control the
economyin other words, to control wages. At the same time the
bourgeoisie, which kept industrial and agricultural wages to the
minimum, needed a consumer market for its growing production. The
new class of bureaucrats loyal to the rgime fulfilled a double function:
of suppressing the working class and of providing consumers necessary
for economic growth. The political importance of this group within the
State system naturally became very great.
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
GDP
Primary
52
31
49
27
32
18
Secondary
24
30
25
33
35
42
Tertiary
24
39
26
40
33
40
Direcctin General de Empleo. J. Alcaide: La Renta Nacional en Espaa.
3. During the period of protection from foreign competition and high
profits for large and small capitalist enterprises alike, the process of
capital concentration began to gather momentum. Initially this affected
mainly the banking sector. Finance capital had been highly concen1 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 were
higher 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 average
employees salary in the public sector was 104,384 pesetas a year; in manufacturing
industry, 47,772 pesetas; in agriculture, 28,733 pesetas. See Informe sobre Distribucion
de la Renta, 1964. INE, Madrid, 1966.

trated from the beginning of the century when colonial profits were
repatriated after the loss of the Spanish colonies. This process now
developed rapidly. Seventy banks disappeared between 1939 and 1964,
and the big five were able to increase their number of branches by
nearly 60 per cent; this increased their possibilities of attracting small
savings as well as industrial capital and reinforced their already
dominant position. For Spanish banks have traditionally created large
industrial enterprises which they control by credit and inter-locking
directorships.3 Monopolization now occurred in as far as large companies were able to make huge profits rather than as a result of serious
competition between enterprises for a larger share of the market. State
intervention reinforced this trend; economic ministries and official
trade unions were responsible for the distribution of scarce materials
and 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 companies
entering the market; this consolidated the monopolistic power of
companies already in existence and gave them even greater opportunities for raising prices without fear of competition. Thus large firms
with high productivity coexisted with a proliferation of small enterprises whose economic viability was assured by the rgime. Until 1953,
the surplus generated was not reinvested in production but was used
for speculation (land in particular) or transferred to banks abroad. It
was the signature of the Military Pact with the USA in 1953 which
fundamentally changed the situation. The Spanish rgime was now
accepted and guaranteed by American imperialism and the community
of international capitalism. Spanish businessmen henceforward felt a
security they had hitherto lacked: the future of the status quo was
assured. Productive investment now started to pick up.
The first 20 years of Francos rgime were thus a period of capital
accumulation which consolidated the power of the big bourgeoisie, and
especially of the banks, at the expense of the industrial and rural proletariat who were subjected to growing poverty and violent police
repression. Every section of the bourgeoisie had ample reason to be
gratified by the profits it was making.
2. The Political Model 193959: Dominance of the Bureaucracy

Such was the economic model of the first, autarchic phase of the
Franquista rgime. It is now possible to reconstruct the political model
that corresponded to itthat is, the classes and groups which were
represented by Francos government from 1939 onwards. Any analysis
of the Franquista State must start from the alignment of forces before
and during the Civil War. The Civil War was, of course, a revolutionary
class war: the urban and rural proletariat and the republican sectors of
the middle class fought and lost to the industrial and financial bourgeoisie, latifundism and the rich peasant class, organized and integrated
by 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 la
Sierra, La Concentracion Economica en las Industrias Basicas Espanolas, Madrid, 1953.

The entire experience of the pre-Republican and Republican periods

showed the inability of the old ruling groups to create a viable economic
and political system. Their internal divisions and low level of integration made bourgeois power very precarious, and it was only the
direct threat of proletarian revolution that led them to unite. The fact
that the middle class was split during the war, with the majority in the
Republican camp, is further evidence of the unviability of the traditional
political system. The Republican middle class contested the dominance
of the traditional oligarchs by dreaming impossibly of a bourgeoisdemocratic and liberal society.
The war resulted not only in the defeat of the working class but in loss
of prestige for the old ruling groups who had responsibility for the
hecatomb. The new State thus had the dual task of excluding the old
and discredited rulers while at the same time representing them to their
best advantage. This is the key to an understanding of the function of
the Franquista State. Its social character is self-evident: it is a class
dictatorship, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. But the specific
function of this State was to remodel the traditional economic basis
of society in order to eliminate those obstacles which had historically
rendered the rule of the oligarchy unstable. Thus, as has been demonstrated, the Spanish State, assisted by its corporate trade unions, was
able to depress wages for 15 years in order to produce an unprecedented
accumulation of capital. At the same time, the State assumed a substantial part of the burden of industrial development and, by promoting
capital concentration and monopoly, furthered the formation of a
renovated oligarchy.
It is necessary here to distinguish between the power bloc which
dominated Spanish society and the State itself. Up to 1959, it is clear
that the bureaucracy was the major force within the State and the
oligarchy the major force within the power bloc which it represented.
It will be seen that it was only through a period of bureaucratic rule
that a new phase could be reached when a renovated oligarchy could
once again assume something like direct command of the State apparatus. Let us consider the State apparatus first.
Army
Victor in the Civil War, the Army was represented within the rgime,
in the first place through Franco himself. This pre-eminence was
reflected in the substantial share of the civilian administration controlled by the Spanish military: at least a quarter of all Ministries since
1939 have been held by the Army, which has never received less than
25 per cent of the budget, and considerably more if police forces are
included. Although formally separate organizations, the police and the
Army are in practice much the same: the Ministry of the Interior has
always 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 a
military administration which, though in principle only commanding
the provincial garrisons, in fact plays an extensive political role. The
8

officer corps has been mainly recruited from the urban petty bourgeois
and middle class, with certain sharp regional differences: there are very
few Catalans and Basques. Privileges for high-ranking Army officers
has been considerable: retirement, for example, came to mean highly
paid jobs in any of the proliferating civilian administration organizations.
Church
The particularly obscurantist role of the Church in recent Spanish
history is well known. The Civil War was blessed as a crusade against
communism, liberalism, the masons and the jews. It is important to
note, however, that it was not until 1945 that the Church succeeded in
securing a major position for itself in the Franquista rgime. After the
War, in effect, Franco introduced it as a countervailing power to
utopian Falangism, which had been somewhat discredited by the
international defeats of Germany and Italy. The Concordat with the
Vatican later allowed Franco to nominate all Spanish bishops: the
latter, of course, participate directly in political activities. (In the case of
Francos incapacity or death the Church now has one vote in the threemember Consejo de Regencia which will rule the country.)
Bureaucracy
The civilian bureaucracy was the specific creation of the Franquista
State. Dominated by the Falange with a strong base in the official trade
unions, it became a homogeneous social group whose numbers were
increased by state economic intervention to create an enormous
parasitic apparatus. Its existence was justified by its economic and
political function, discussed above: to control the proletariat and to
provide consumers. The strength of this bureaucracy can only be
understood in the context of a closed state which constantly defended
the 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 consummate manipulator of different political forces, who assures a balance
of power between them. It would be more correct, we believe, to see
him as the product rather than the producer of this complex equilibrium, a politician who displays the political abilities demanded of him
by the situation. It is, however, true that the critical initial period of
the rgimes stabilizationsecured finally in 1953 with the US Military
Pact and the Concordatlends credence to the image of Franco as a
cunning dictator. Constant gambles and sharp changes of direction,
largely conditioned by the international conjuncture, made every group
and institution seeking a share of power uncertain of its future. The
Falanges loss of influence to the benefit of the Church in 1945; orto
anticipate somewhatthe bureaucracys further loss in 1957 to the
benefit of Opus Dei technocrats; or the last big gamble of 196768,
which made good some of the bureaucracys previous losses by restoring the Movimiento Nacional to its position as the sole political party
9

these are only some examples of Francos internal manoeuvrings.

Though his leadership has remained unquestioned, Franco has always
been the arbiter to whom different factions in power can appeal in the
last instance.
So much for the immediate components of the State apparatus. Meanwhile, monopoly and finance capital has been the ruling class in Spain
throughout Francos rgime. Because of the polarized class structure of
Spain and because 200 families control the economys fundamental
resources, it is in the strict sense an oligarchy.4 This oligarchy, however, underwent important transformations after 1936. Before the
Civil War the oligarchy consisted mainly of financial and agrarian
interestsSouthern latifundists more or less integrated into the banking
world of Madrid. Neither the Catalan industrial bourgeoisie nor the
Basque financial and industrial bourgeoisie were part of this oligarchy,
although close links developed between them when they were threatened by working-class militancy. Owing to the particular configuration
of class and region in Spaina very important consequence of which
was the existence of a weak state apparatusthere was no united ruling
class before the War. Despite their conflicting interests, fear drove
these sections of the bourgeoisie during and after the War to an understanding of their collective interests. This had three results: (a) finance
capitals role in industry became absolutely predominant, (b) the
Basque and Catalan industrial bourgeoisie were thereby integrated into
the oligarchy, (c) latifundism lost its importance as an economic and
political force. Thus the old oligarchy of the post-1939 period subsisted but its composition was transformed. It gradually became a
much more powerful and coherent economic force, and thereby increasingly capable of reasserting its political presence within the
Spanish State. The history of the Franco rgime since 1959 is largely
that of the re-emergence of this now metamorphosed class. The bureaucratic and autarchic State of 1939the political model which had
provided the space for its economic renovationnow became a fetter
to its further development. To assert its new vocation to direct
dominance, the oligarchy now started to reoccupy the State, in Spain
the single locus of legitimate political activity.
3. The Economic Model 195959: Liberalization and Expansion

The great change in the social nature of Francos rgime occurred

during the two years 195759. It was preceded by the rebirth of
Spanish working-class militancy in 1955. In that year, there were the
first large-scale strikes and demonstrations for 20 years. The Falangist
Minister of Labour, Giron, twice permitted wage increases greater than
all those of the previous 17 years. A year later, he was dismissed and the
new 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. Autarchy
and state dirigisme were abandoned for aggressive economic expansion
and 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 and

allowed collective bargaining between firms and the official trade
unions; wage agreements could be reached by individual firms, or
negotiated for an industrial sector or province. The State reserved the
right to intervene where no agreement was reached.5 While it remained
illegal to dismiss workers, this was in practice made possible by invoking disciplinary infractions to sack individual workers or by permission for lay-offs (expedientes de crises) when a firm could allege
financial difficulties. Liberalization of the labour market was accelerated in 1959; after consultations with the international organizations to
which Spain was to be admitted, the government approved a Stabilization Plan. This included devaluation, the establishment of a single rate
of exchange for the peseta, and the lifting of restrictions on foreign
investment 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 protectionist tariff policy in 1960, and investment permits were abolished
in 1963. These measures were aimed at increasing economic flexibility,
containing the inflationary process and attracting foreign capital. The
effects were rapidly felt by the working class with the imposition of a
wage freeze (195961) which resulted in a large wave of emigration to
European countries and massive internal migration. National income
temporarily dropped, but a massive investment boom was building up
which by 1962 had reached 24.4 per cent of GNP. The new political
stability heralded by the Opus Dei dominance in the government was
the institutional condition of this. The monetary condition of the new
boom was, of course, the huge foreign currency earnings from tourism
which now multiplied, and the repatriation of savings by Spanish
emigrant workers in the countries of the EEC.6 Both symbolized the
fundamental orientation of the new economic model: integration into
the international capitalist economy, and abandonment of autarchy.
The influx of foreign currency and capital paid for the imports needed
to develop industrialization. In contrast to the preceding period when
industrial development was an extensive process (cheap labour, low
productivity, high profits largely not reinvested in industry), the period
from 1962 was marked by productive reinvestment, higher wages and
increases in productivity. The cost of living rose by 65.5 per cent
between 1958 and 1966. Wages, however, more than kept pace with
this increase and for five years the working class knew a period of
relative prosperity, particularly in comparison with the previous decades of absolute poverty.
5

In effect this was nothing mote than a means for the state to fix wages. Between
1963 and 65, as working-class militancy increased, state intervention per number of
employees affected increased by 50 per cent in extractive and metallurgical and
industries, transport, while in agriculture the increase was only 7.4 per cent. The
difference 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. Repatriation
of foreign currency by Spanish emigrants amounted to $58 millions in 1960; by
1965 the figure had risen to $380 millions.
11

Industrial prices, which in the period of capital accumulation rose

faster than agricultural prices or the cost of living, now became relatively stable, above all because of increased foreign competition after
the abolition of quantitative import controls. Price stability and wage
increases accelerated monopolization and concentration; marginal
enterprises previously kept alive by the policy of autarchy and low
wages, now went out of business. Meanwhile, higher agricultural prices
stimulated investment in mechanization, although production was still
inadequate. Mechanization eliminated jobs and new waves of migration
began: in 1954 more than 550,000 people migrated in a single year
(293,000 abroad; 257,000 internally). The flight of the rural proletariat
from the land was aggravated by a dramatic exodus of small peasant
owners whose living conditions were little better than those of the
landless. In 1960, there were 2,397,000 independent farmers; five years
later the number was reduced to 1,687,500. Although agricultural productivity began to rise in the 1960s, increase in output (213 per cent
between 1958 and 1966) remained far below the industrial sector (114
per cent for the same period).
With the increase in industrial investment, the national income rose by
8.28 per cent a year between 1960 and 1966. Per capita income increased
by 7.38 per cent a year, reaching $665 in 1966. The result was a transformation of the work-force, which took three main forms: (1)
massive agricultural migration to urban centres, (2) very rapid industrialization, (3) growth of a service sector no longer linked to an
inflated bureaucracy but to tourism and urban life. In 1963 the government raised the minimum wage to 60 pesetas a day but this 25 per cent
increase affected only agricultural labourers; due to collective bargaining, industrial wages were already above this level. Strike legislation
was slightly relaxed. Wages rose by between 15 per cent and 25 per cent
a year, depending on the industry. In 1966, however, the annual
increase had dropped to 14.8 per cent as recession halted the previous
five years of economic boom. A new wage freeze was imposed in 1967,
and when this was lifted in January 1958, a norm of 57 per cent increase a year was decreed. Accompanying this measure, an earlier
Table 2
Spanish economic structure 195966
Natl Income Tourists InvestBalance
Cost of
(millions :
(thous) ment (% of trade
Living index
1953 ptas)
of GNP) ($ mill)
(1958 100)
1958
501,975
3,594 213
3866 100
1959
476,500
4,194 193
2939
1960
494,396
6,113 189
39
1961
554,069
7,455 219
3829 1114
1962
599,173
8,668 244
8335 1176
1963
650,423
10,931 245
1,2197 1279
1964
689,278
14,103 242
1,3044 1368
1965
738,477
14,251 264
2,0523 1542
1966
796,966
17,252 276
2,3772 1645
Source : Informe Economico, 1966, Banco de Bilbao, and Boletin Estadistico
Banco de Espana, November 1967.
12

Banditry and Terrorism Law was reimposed with the aim of controlling
working-class protest after the end of its short-lived moment of
prosperity.
The new wage freeze was combined with increases in industrial prices to
stimulate accumulation, and restrictions on imports to restore the
volume 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 204 pet cent of GNP in 1967 as funds
were again channelled into non-productive investment or into foreign
banks: the flight of capital was estimated at $230 million by OECD in
1957. The government was compelled to increased State expenditure to
boost economic activity, but despite this national income declined. The
crisis is only temporary, however, since the peseta was devalued again
together 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 cyclical
growthperhaps very rapid growth. The length of the cycles will
depend on the class struggle and on the balance of forces between those
bourgeois groups for and those against State intervention in the
economy. For the moment the latter two coincide; in the long-runhowever, monopoly capital demands a liberal economy and integra
tion into European imperialism.
4. The Political Model 195959: Dominance of the Technocracy

There was one vital superstructural precondition for the sudden

development of the forces of production after 1959: a new political
model was essential to render possible economic expansion. The vanguard of this new political system was the Catholic lay organization,
Opus Dei. This vast semi-secret network, controlling businesses and
media all over Spain, had infiltrated the civilian administration from
1939 onwards. But it was only in 195759 that its leading representatives acquired pre-eminence in Francos government. From then on, it
always controlled the economic and financial ministries. The Opus Dei
representsuniquely for any contemporary capitalist country
monopoly capital and the modern Church simultaneously, within the
Spanish State today. Its technocrats determine the economic policies
which have produced the Spanish boom of the last years: with them,
the renovated oligarchy has reassumed direct political power in the
rgime. At the same time, the traditional obscurantist hierarchy has
been largely displaced from its former supremacy in the Church.
Parallel to this fundamental change, the Army has undergone important
transformations. The long delegation of its sectional interests to the
person of the dictator himself produced a certain relative depoliticization in the Army during the 1950s, when the US Military Pact had been
signed. Thus, when after 1959 important differences and divisions arose
within the rgime, similar divisions started to arise within the Army.
With the ascent of the Opus Dei to governmental power, there emerged
in the Army a new ideology of professionalism, particularly among
young officers who were in part opposed to the bureaucratic structure
of an Army still dominated by Civil War Generals. Politically, these
13

young officers tended to sympathize with the Opus Dei experts and
other bourgeois groups trying to modify the political system. In contrast, a large number of old Generals remained firmly on the other side,
fighting with the bureaucracy and the Falange to retain the closed and
autarchic post-war State. The Spanish Army is now subject to the same
centrifugal pressures as the rgime: it is not a monolithic institution
any longer.7
This, of course, is emphatically not to say that the class role of the Army
has changed, for its factional divisions are far less important than its
unity against working-class opposition: the rgimes theory and history
still officially proclaim that the Army is the final guarantee of the
bourgeois order. It is, however, probably true that the Army has
ceased to be the locus of national political transformations (its traditional role in the 19th and early 20th centuries) because of Spains profound socio-economic changes. Whereas in the past the Army could
always intervene politically, just as the Church could discipline its
faithful, the dynamic of bourgeois politics in contemporary Spain is
now more independent of the corporate concerns of both.
The ascent of the Opus Dei has meant the decline of the Falange, and
with it of the antiquated 1939 bureaucracy. The new political model did
not altogether evict the Falange or the bureaucracy from important
positions; they still control the Ministry of Labour and the official
trade unions, for instance. But it did drastically reduce their power
within the Spanish State. A consequence has been the progressive deideologization of the bureaucracy, which has increasingly abandoned
Falangist preoccupations for a corporate defence of acquired positions
and privileges: these are the factors of its homogeneity today. In 1967,
it regained some of its power when the Movimiento National was officially made Spains only political party: a change that reflected the need
of the rgime for transmission institutions to control and repress the
working class.
This new political configuration translated the dominance of the
renovated 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 industrial
monopolies and the financial power of the banks. Politically, this
oligarchy had now to participate directly in government to obtain the
economic development demanded by its objectives. This hegemonic
section of the ruling class was consequently able to broaden the social
nature of the State. By inaugurating a period of rapid economic
development, 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 number
of marginal firms, the subordination of the medium bourgeoisie is a
more important phenomenon since the latter are politically stronger
than the marginal groups. Yet another consequence of economic
7 For the different trends within the army, see J. Busquets, El Militar de carrera en
Espana, 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 has

quickly increased. Evolution in the agricultural sector has taken a
different path. Here the new economic model both increased the rich
peasant class and drove a large number of small, mainly Castilian
peasants off the land and into the urban proletariat. For the rgime the
first development was of more importance than the second, because
the 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 a
negative development for the bureaucracy since the small Castilian
peasantry 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 his
bloc, after 1959 all sections of the Spanish middle class, under the
leadership of monopoly and finance capital which was responsible for
the economic boom, swung to the present State. The result has been
the emergence of an enlarged power bloc, the product of the black
market of the fifties, and the prosperity of the sixties. Although still in
a formative phase, this bloc now structures the class struggle in Spain
into 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 rgime launched a programme

of political liberalization that included a new press law and the replacement of military by civilian courts for charges concerned with
public and political order. From our previous analysis, it is clear that
some institutional modifications were necessary if the renovated power
bloc, under the hegemonic leadership of monopoly capital, was to
secure its objectives. The adaptation of legal and juridical forms to the
political change that had taken place was urgent by 1962.
This urgency was emphasized by the fact that some bourgeois groups
were already veering into opposition. A congress grouping Monarchists, Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and representatives of the
Basque and Catalan national bourgeoisie took place in Munich during
1962. Though the political outcome of the Congress remained uncertain, it was the first time that groups inside Spain (Christian Democrats and Monarchists) had publicly engaged discussions with political
parties exiled since the Civil War.8 The latter included the Socialist
Party, the PSOE. A bourgeois alternative to Francos rule now appeared
possible. An ageing dictator, moreover, made the perspective of a postFranco Spain more acute; the question of institutionalizing the succession was one which concerned both oppositional and non-oppositional bourgeoisie and which liberalization was partly designed to
resolve. At the same time the resurgence of working-class militancy on
a larger scale made it necessary for the government to adopt a policy of
social negotiation rather than armed coercion alone. Economic expansion in Europe, the growth of the Common Market and the renewed
confidence of US imperialism were also international factors which
contributed 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 rgime was thus to outflank the Munich
opposition by giving the Opus Dei technocracy powers to engineer a
long boom designed to install the hegemonic rule of monopoly capital
over all sectors of the bourgeoisie. The concrete measures of political
liberalization were very limited. Its importance was rather that the
State abandoned exclusively coercive-repressive rule in order to create
an inter-class consensus to provide itself with an expanded social
basis. Even so, the rgime displayed extreme caution for fear that the
opposition would then be credited with major conquests which went
beyond these limits (the creation of workers commissions is one
example).
Political liberalization in fact consisted less in what the rgime permitted by law than in what was actually said, projected and done by
individuals and groups. An unprecedented example was a strike sustained by the workers of Laminados de Bandas in the North for five
months, despite repression. In 1963, the official trade union bureaucracy
set out to determine the possibility of integrating the new proletariat
into 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 free
trade 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 the
medieval guilds had to be replaced by class-based trade unions, today
demonstrates the inadequacy of class trade unionism . . . Tradeunionists must not today be opposed to or lack solidarity with a socioeconomic order that is no longer capitalism proper,9 Liberalization
thus unleashed factional disputes between capitalists and the bureaucracy. The bureaucracys project of creating a new trade-unionism
under its control was threatened from the start by the spontaneous
working-class response: the creation of the commisiones obrerosthe
workers commissions. This will be discussed later. For the moment it is
enough to say that they dealt a blow not only to the projects of the
bureaucracy but also to capitalist schemes to encourage the creation of
a number of trade unions to divide the working class. The unitary
character of the workers commissions was, and remains, a radical
refusal of both bourgeois strategies.
The results of the phase of liberalization were thus contradictory. For
the bourgeois order there were three definite gains. (1) The bureaucracy
was now irreversibly replaced by a technocracy (Opus Dei)the
managing committee of monopoly and finance capitalwhich became
the predominant influence in the rgime. (2) Economic development
and the creation of a certain bourgeois public opinion, expressed by
Opus Dei and Christian Democrat newspapers and publications, consolidatedonce and for allthe hegemonic rule of monopoly canital
over the medium bourgeoisie. This means that all sectors of this class
are now loyal to the present rgime. (3) Munich was forgotten.
9

Quoted by R. Bulnes, Del Sindicalismo de Represin al Sindicalismo de Integracin, Horizonte Espanol, op. cit.
16

Monarchists, Christian Democrats and even some Social Democrats act

within the structures of the existing State.
These positive effects for the bourgeoisie must be assessed against a
major failure. Liberalization, which aimed at integrating the working
class, created the conditions for the proletariat to fight integration by
the creation of its own unitary class organizationsthe workers commissions. These commissions are unitary in opposition to the division
into Catholic, Social-Democratic and Communist trade unions planned
by the capitalists and class organs of combat in their refusal of the
integrationist strategy of the official trade unions.
The growth and strength of the commissions in fact determined the
limits of liberalization. As long as the new power bloc hoped to integrate the working class, the predominance of the technocracy over the
bureaucracy was immediately guaranteed. When this project failed, a
new pact had to be made between monopoly capital and the bureaucracy to control and repress the working class. Indeed, the present State
of Emergency is as much the work of the Opus Dei, the oligarchy and
the church as it is of the bureaucracy and the military. It was the
logical result of a process of compression which started in 1966 when
wage demands (with workers and students militancy) coincided with
the approach of economic recession.
In conclusion: under the leadership of monopoly and finance capital,
the Spanish bourgeoisie does not need an alternative system to Francos
dictatorship. The present rgime with its combination of consensusfor
the bourgeoisieand coercionfor the working classcontains all the
potential of democratic evolution that the bourgeoisie could need. Its
interests will be met from above, by the present State. In this context,
Francos physical disappearance from the scene loses the relevance so
often attributed to it.
6. Workers Commissions: Organization and Mass Struggle

Up to 1950, working-class opposition in Spain was an epilogue to the

Civil War itself; Anarchists, Socialists and Communists engaged in
isolated guerrilla fighting, the Communists until 1948 and the Anarchists 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 appearance
and struggle on the shop floor for wage rises and improved working
conditions. After the strikes of 1956, 1957 and 1958, the State abandoned direct control over wages and work conditions and instituted
collective bargaining. This then led to the mass strikes of 196266. It is
essential to remember that by this time the whole nature of the Spanish
working class had fundamentally changed. Some 2 million new industrial workers emerged between 1939 and 1965, more than doubling
the size of the Spanish proletariat. Of these, over two-thirds were
employed in three major urban centres: Barcelona, Madrid and Bilbao.
At the same time, over one-third of the working class was employed in
large plants of more than 500 employees. This formidable growth of
the working class soon produced new forms of consciousness and com17

bativity. It was in this period that the workers commissions were first
organized: their principal aims were economic but they rapidly
tended to be politicized by the repression of the police, trade unions
and managers.
The movement began in Asturias during 1962. Negotiation for collective agreements rapidly made it clear both that the official trade unions
were in league with the management, and that management, accustomed to the use of police repression, was in a weak bargaining position.
In this situation, the workers began to organize factory and pit committees which were democratically elected by illegal but not clandestine
workers assemblies. These replaced the official trade unions in negotiations. Strikes rapidly spread throughout the whole of the Asturian
mining region, and the rgime, with a characteristic syndrome of
repression following concessions, declared a State of Emergency in the
region. While the rgime was deporting and jailing working-class
militants, the workers commission representatives were in practice
expected to negotiate with management in place of the official trade
unions. Wage disputes were thus rapidly converted into major political
confrontations. The solidarity of the working class in the rest of Spain
was demonstrated in strikes all over the country; in Bilbao and Barcelona, factory committees were also formed.
These committees, however, tended to disappear once the particular
negotiations were ended, reappearing only when another bout of
collective bargaining was due. It was not until 1964 that the Madrid
metal workers formed a provincial workers commission based on
committees at factory level. Every other industrialized region soon
followed the example of Madrid, and commissions organized at factory,
branch and district level were established. These commissions arose
democratically at each respective level: there was no centralized
organization. The commissions had now become authentic mass
organizations.
The dual objectives of these new proletarian organs of struggle are
expressed in their representative documents. A declaration of the
Madrid workers commissions in 1966 asserts that: The capitalist
system generates and determines the class struggle. In a capitalist socioeconomic 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 whose
expression must be a single trade union. Rejecting facile solutions and
struggling for working-class objectives of both past and present, united
and 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 ideological
principles. They are defined above all by their unitary and representative organization and by their functionleadership of the struggle in
all its aspects. All those who see in the workers commissions both the
most effective instrument for achieving proletarian demands, and the
configuration of the future organs of working-class democracy, will
find in their organizational principles the correct means for struggle.10
10

Reproduced in Cuadernos del Ruedo Iberico No. 20/21, AugustNovember, 1968.

18

Two themes are evident here: on the one hand, the need to create a
unitary trade union movement to prevent the division of the working
class and to forestall the dangers of integration; on the other, the idea
that the commissions are already the basic organs of future proletarian
democracy.
Despite differences of emphasis, it is indisputable that the commissions
have in the past few years led the working-class struggle in all its
aspects, as the Barcelona declaration claims. In conjunction with
political parties, the commissions have organized the largest mass
demonstrations in Spain since the Civil War. The emergence of the
commissions has made the industrial proletariat the class best organized
and most capable of leading the struggle of the other oppressed and
exploited groups of the population (peasants or students, for example).
One of the reasons for the success of the commissions has been their
tactics at factory level. In 1963, the commissions boycotted the elections
to official trade union posts with considerable success. Three years
later, however, the commissions consolidated their position by winning
majorities in the official trade-union elections for lower-echelon delegates. (Elective posts go no higher than the provincial secretary of the
social sector of an industrial branch, the remainder being governmental appointees. In the unions corporative structures the employers
are represented in the economic sector.) Contesting the elections, the
commissions won 90 per cent of the posts in the large Madrid factories
and about 60 per cent in Barcelona and other industrial centres.The
percentage was lower in medium-sized and small factories. On the basis
on these legally won posts, the tactic of combining legal with illegal
means of struggle initiated the destruction of the official trade unions
from within. As officially elected delegates, commission representatives could legally press their demands in wage negotiations while the
leadership of the struggle remained outside the official union. In this
respect it should be remembered that the official trade unions have
traditionally been one of the main pillars of the Franco rgime.
From their lower echelon posts within the unions, the commissions
were able to use legal weapons to support illegal actions, including
strikes. The latter, when sustained for long periods, won the solidarity
of workers in neighbouring factories, and sometimes nationally, thus
politicizing the movement. The most striking example of this type of
action by a workers commission was the strike at Laminados Bandas, a
Bilbao steel plant, which lasted five months. By opposing illegal action,
the official trade union revealed itself as the primary ally of management
and the policevisibly negating the formal role of representing the
workers which the new arbitration procedures had supposedly given
it.11
Escalating militancy was thus very largely responsible for the ultimate
failure of political liberalization and for the rgimes resort to violent
repression after 1966. However, by this time, the commissions had
11
See Nuestra Huelga (distributed by Ruedo Iberico, Paris), a pamphlet written by
the strikers and destined to become a classic of the working-class struggle during
this period.

19

organized the working class so effectively that the rgime was unable to
prevent the growth of the movement. The difficulties of combining
legal and illegal means of struggle were, of course, greatly increased by
the economic crisis, the wage freeze and the restoration of military
courts. The official unions also began to retaliate against commission
members who held union posts; today none of those elected three years
ago remains in office. Working illegally but not clandestinely, militants
from the commissions have been arrested and imprisoned with relative
ease. But, given the present level of organization, they have also been
relatively easily replaced by new militants. Factory and local organization is in any event much more important than a few publicly known
leaders.
During the economic crisis of 1967, the commissions not only maintained but consolidated their strength in the struggle against mass
redundancy. They were now less involved in wage bargaining
rendered difficult by the freezeand more involved in political demonstrations. These new forms of struggle led to the establishment of ward
commissions, youth commissions and commissions of unemployed
thus enlarging their scope of influence to all sectors of the population
exploited by capitalism. Autonomous associations of technicians and
professionals were established alongside but linked to these new commissions. The mass mobilizations of October 1967 in Madrid and the
May Day demonstrations throughout the country in 1968 were the
outcome of this new phase of political action by the commissions, who
are now the vanguard of all the exploited and oppressed.
Any analysis of these political confrontations must distinguish between
three different types of struggle which overlap: (1) the struggle against
the police system and its repression of any prolonged workers fight
usually at the demand of management (2) the struggle against the
trade-union bureaucracy, pillar of the rgime (3) the struggle against a
State dominated by monopoly and finance capital.
Against police repression, the demands are for freedom of association
and expression, and the right to strike; against the trade-union bureaucracy, the necessity for independent and unitary trade unions; against
the capitalist State, the perspective of socialist class struggle implicit in
the organizational form of the commissions and clearly expressed in the
declarations quoted above. In the day-to-day struggle, these objectives
are inter-related and superimposed; the predominance of one or the
other depends on the concrete political conjuncture. In the long ran,
however, the priorities are clear: destruction of the monopoly capitalist
State through mass struggle against the repressive apparatus of the
rgime via the elimination of the official trade union.
It is in the workers commissions that the political parties representing
the working-class movement must seek the consent of the majority for
their programme. A number of trade unions distinct from the
workers commissions though partly integrated into them (the Catholic
AST and the Social-Democratic ASO and USO, for example) tend to
diminish the degree of unity reached in the commissions. It is impossible to be certain whether the unitary character of the commissions
20

will prevail over these separatist divisions. What is certain is that the
Spanish working class has once again shown spontaneous vitality and
combativity in forging new and original organs of struggle, comparable
to yet distinct from the internal commissions of Gramscis Turin,
which anticipate the institutions of a future socialism.
7. The Proletarian Parties

The creation and consolidation of the workers commissions as unitary

organizations of the proletariat poses an immediate threat to monopoly
capital and the dictatorial State. When Spanish capitalism tried to solve
the economic crisis of 196768 by repressive measures, the commissions
assumed the leadership and representation of working-class struggle in
all its aspects. But a distinction must be made between this politicization which was a reaction to a concrete conjuncture, and the ability of
the commissions to engage in a full-scale mobilization to create a
revolutionary situation. To capture and maintain the political initiative
in the national class struggle, a revolutionary vanguard party is absolutely
indispensable.12
From this point of view, an evaluation of the current political strength
and role of the working-class parties in Spain is essential. The two main
historic parties of the Spanish proletariat are, of course, the Socialist
Party (PSOE) and the Communist Party (PCE). The former has some
regional 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 party
of Iglesias and Caballero has declined to become an orthodox socialdemocratic party of the latter-day type. The PSOE has no serious proprogramme, which accounts for its fragmentary and conjunctural
policies. Its official leadership remains in excile and maintains close
contacts with European social-democratic parties, while some of its
spokesmen in Spainfor example, Tierno Galvanclearly intend to
work within the existing State (though for this to be viable a much
greater degree of liberalization would be necessary). The Socialist Party
is, in fact, polarized between its European and anti-Communist alliances
and 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 programmatic
vacuity. The PSOE has steadily lost influence as a political party, while
retaining some of its industrial influence (the same, though to an even
greater extent is true of the Anarchists whose political activity today is
largely 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 in
Bilbao and Barcelona, were workers able to maintain their demands under extremely
difficult repressive conditions. Nothing like a political response of the proletariat
and other exploited groups occurred. There is no space here for the necessary
analysis of these events.

21

different conditions created by fascist repressionalone of the parties

of the Republic. The young industrial working class and students
provided the militants of the renovated party. Thirty years after the
defeat of the Republic and the installation of Francos system, the PCE
has survived to become the first organized force against the Spanish
State. By contrast with the Socialist Party, it has a coherent perspective
and 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 partys
work in the sixties, In assessing the PCE, we must adopt the Leninist
criteria of judging a working-class party by its programme and by its
efficacy in carrying a majority of the working class with it. The PCEs
fundamental analysis of contemporary Spanish society may be summarized briefly like this.
In Spain, a bourgeois-democratic revolution is necessary to end the
dominance of an obscurantist Church, Southern latifundism and the
financial oligarchy, who all represent pre-capitalist forces and classes. In
this perspective, the fascist State has effected no fundamental changes
in economy or polity; rather the fundamental problems of 1936 have
been repressed and aggravated by fascist power. Thus, the growth of
monopolies is not related to the recent boom but is rather a pathological symptom of the economic system. At the same time the PCE
believes that monopoly capital has little connection with the conservative forces of the agrarian and financial oligarchy which were,
and are still maintained to be, the main support of Francos rgime.
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 the
expense of every other sector of the bourgeoisie.
For the party, the way forward is a democratic revolution, with a
return to the competitive phase of capitalism, in which the economic
power of monopoly capital will be reduced by state intervention. This
will lead to the consolidation of an economy run by the middle classes
and small industrialists, capable of effecting a land reform. The view that
a financial-agrarian oligarchy dominates the rgime leads the PCE to
assert that power is controlled by a clique without any important
social basis. This leads to a dissociation of economic realities from
their political manifestations. Thus when the needs of economic
development dictate certain political changesliberalizationthese
changes are interpreted as the definitive crisis of the political system. It
was 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 a
united front of all bourgeois parties and working-class organizations
aimed at transcending the divisions of the Civil War. This front would
ideally include the national bourgeoisie, all non-monopolistic business,
the new rich peasant class, the salariat and the working class. The
common objective of this front would be the anti-feudal, anti-monopolistic revolution.
Any consideration of the character of the bourgeois opposition to
22

Francos rgime makes it evident that these hopes are quite illusory.
Across the bourgeois spectrum there exist, of course, many individuals
who have advocated democratic reforms in recent years. But it can
safely be said that since the Munich opposition was discomfited by the
liberalization of 196266, no bourgeois political group has demanded a
bourgeois-democratic system to replace the Franquista rgime. Indeed,
the only bourgeois oppositional parties are the Catalan and Basque
nationalist parties (Front National Catala and Partido Nacionalista
Vasco) and even these have had to formulate a certain commitment to
socialism, however rhetorical and reformist. The possibility of a
Christian-Democratic Party emerging, meanwhile, appears very
limited. This is because the Spanish candidates for a Christian-Democracy are at one and the same time in the government and the opposition. They are well aware that they cannot abandon the government if
they are to remain in the dominant power bloc, led by monopoly and
finance capital. In consequence, they are reduced to a vaguely dissident
lite working within the rgime for more freedom. When, on occasion, they move towards opposition, they discover that the working
class and the socialist political parties are better organized than they are
or could hope to be in the near future. Moreover, if they commit
themselves to opposition, they have to act within the only framework
available to opposition: an increasingly violent mass struggle (hence
such episodes as the 1959 general strike plan, when the Christian
Democratic Left initially approved a Communist proposal for the
strike, only to repudiate it a few days before it was due).
Thus Monarchists, organized as an lite but not as a political party,
some Opus Dei elements whose opinions are expressed by the newspaper Madrid, progressive Christian Democrats in the monthly review
Cuadernos para el Dialogoall work within the rgime. This does not
exclude the possibility of future Munichs or other oppositional
schemes : it merely means that the aim of any such manoeuvres will be to
influence the correlation of forces within the present rgime rather than
to create an alternative State. The weakness of the PCEs strategy of
alliances has thus been confirmed by the whole development of the past
decade.
In fact, it has already been stressed that the present rgime contains all
the democratic potential any sector of the bourgeoisiedominant or
subalternmight demand. In other words, the democratic liberties
which the 19th and 20th century liberal bourgeoisie fought for without
success (or with only temporary success) no longer form part of the
demands of this class. These democratic demands have today devolved
on the working class. It is thus no accident that there has been no
consequent political opposition to the present rgime in the last decade
that has not been socialist.
The New Revolutionary Left

From 1959 onwards, changes in society and the State already noted made
it clear that there was a certain political vacuum on the Left. The
traditional political parties showed a radically incorrect appreciation of
the internal Spanish situation. An example was the PCEs slogan of a
23

general strike aimed at overthrowing Franco (the cause of this mistake

was thought at the time to be the fact that the PCE leadership in exile
was out of touch with the internal Spanish situation). The PSOE was
meanwhile pursuing contacts with the Social-Democratic governments
of Europe. Its presence inside Spain was thus drastically reduced, with
the exception of a certain trade-union activity. Thus when the new
working-class movement emerged (initially formulating mainly
economic demands), it was misjudged and left virtually without leadership by the traditional parties. Any resurgence of working-class
militancy was immediately and mechanically translated by the PCE into
a symptom of Francos imminent demise; this meant that the meaning
and strength of the new militancy was, paradoxically, both exaggerated
and minimized. It was exaggerated by giving it an unrealistic political
perspective, and minimized by ignoring its latent potentialities which
led before long in quite another directionthe formation of the workers commissions. In effect, the PCE and PSOE each sought the allegiance
of the new working-class, while this class was proving in its actions the
need for a unitary organization to include even non-aligned and
catholic trade unionists who would refuse to become members of either
of the two traditional parties. A new type of trade-union leader,
adapted to novel forms of action and uncommitted to the language and
policies of these parties, had come to the forefront after the renewed
working-class militancy of 1956 and 1958. Moreover, the existence of
legal catholic workers organizations (JOC and HOAC) had provided the
means for great numbers of the new working class to acquire proletarian consciousness. While many of these workers later rejected the
Churchs cynical trade-unionism, they did not thereby become converted to the traditional parties.
For despite their verbal allegiance to unitary class politics, neither the
PSOE nor PCE were actively willing to assist the growth of a united
working-class opposition. Finally, the beginnings of a student movement, related to the growth of working-class combativity, produced a
Marxist intellectual sector determined to analyze Spanish society
scientifically. Although many of these students were later to rally to the
traditional parties, a large number were also well aware of the Stalinist
deformations of the PCE and of the reformist nature of the PSOE. In fact
many of the arguments later used by the Chinese or Cubans, for example, were commonplace among a large sector of students before the
divisions in the international communist movement were made public.
For despite its class origins, the correlation of forces in Spanish society
made it inevitable that any student opposition must be socialist and
linked to the working-class opposition. Political from the start, the
student movement built up a mass character in its struggle against the
Falangist-controlled official students union. In 1968 the government
accepted student demands for freedom of association: by then, however, it was too late, for the students demanded the same right not only
for themselves but for the working class. Commandos of young
workers and students appeared in the streets during the demonstrations,
especially in Madrid during the May Day demonstrations of 1968, and
the student movement as a whole co-ordinated its actions withand
under the leadership ofthe 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: the
creation of a mass movement in which the majority of students take
part and the organic union with the workers commissions. Students,
moreover, now go on to provide many of the political cadres of the
young working class. Above all, they gave the initial impetus for the
creation 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 (Accin Communista from the FLP; the MarxistLeninist Party, the Claudin-Semprun group, and the International
Communist Party from the PCE) emerged after 1963, a year in which the
PCE also lost most Madrid intellectuals and students. It should be said
there are a number of regional groups in a process of radicalization
today. Undoubtedly the most important of these is the Basque revolutionary party ETA, even if it is still early to assess ETAs contribution to
new forms of combat. Well advanced towards revolutionary socialist
positions, ETA is unique in that Basque separatism forms a substantial
part of its separatist programme. Other such groups in Catalonia have
disappeared as their members rallied to revolutionary groups, when
socialist objectives had surpassed the separatist dream.
Today, the FLP-FOC-ESBA (Organizaciones Frente) is the main organized
group on the new revolutionary left, but Accion Communista has
played a valuable role in providing excellent studies of the Spanish
situation, while the Claudin-Semprun group has analysed the reformist
misconceptions of the PCE. Taken together, these groups could be
decisive, for it is from them that a new revolutionary party must emerge.
These different groups which have emerged during the sixties are
united in their fundamental strategic perspective. By contrast with the
PCE, they insist that the correct political perspective for Spain today is a
socialist revolution.13 Capital accumulation and the accession of monopoly and finance capitaldistinct from but in close contact with the old
land-owning and financial oligarchyto a hegemonic role in a power
bloc that includes the majority of the bourgeoisie, makes impossible a
return to a phase of competitive capitalism without monopoly. The
phase of capitalist evolution defined by Lenin has been reached: State
monopoly capitalism is the most complete material preparation for
socialism, its anteroom, because on a historical scale there are no intermediary levels between this phase and socialism. The new revolutionary left believes that the process of unification of latifundism, industrial
capital and finance capital has continued to accelerate . . . thereby
initiating the period of complete bourgeois revolution in Spain. The
mystifying process of alliances between the upper strata of the bour13

The official documents which express the various political positions on the Left
are listed below. For the PCE, S. Carrillo, Despus de Franco, Que?, Sotiales, Paris,
1965; S. Carrillo, Nuevos Enfoques a Problemas de Hoy, Sotiales, Paris 1967. See also
Claudins critique, Dos Concepciones de la via espanola al socialismo, Horizonte
Espanol, op. cit. For the Organizaciones Frente (FLP-FOC-ESBA), Declaracion del
Comit Politico de las Organizaciones Frente, June, 1965. For Accion Comunista, the
review of the same name published in Paris.
25

geoisie and the ancien rgime of Spain in the 19th century is thus ended
(declaration of the Organizaciones Frente). The middle and lower
bourgeoisie, now firmly under the leadership of monopoly capital, are
incapable 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 rgime is the dictatorship of
the bourgeoisie, its overthrow will eventually be that of bourgeois
domination of Spain. The revolutionary left must therefore be able to
confront both the overthrow of the existing rgime and the anticapitalist, that is, socialist character of the coming revolution. This is
not to say the immediate slogans of struggle must everywhere be
maximalist ones. On the contrary, it is clear that transitional demands of
the type Lenin advanced during the 1905 Revolution are an absolute
precondition of successful Marxist struggle in Spain today. The
Organizaciones Frente are now well advanced in the formulation of such a
transitional programme. The new Spanish working-class movement is
in its infancy. The danger of economismthe reduction of all demands
to economic claims and the inability to link these to a political programmeis a tendency inherent in the present situation. It can only be
surpassed, as in Russia after 1903, when the working class under the
leadership of a vanguard party is able to seize the initiative in the fight
for State power. It will be seen that this perspective is quite distinct
from that of the PCE, which by artificially separating Francos rgime
from the Spanish bourgeoisie relegates the problem of socialism to an
indefinite future, after a complete period of bourgeois-democratic
revolution replacing Franco.
The problem of alliances is also conceived differently by the new revolutionary left. It argues that the monopolistic logic of contemporary
Spanish economic development demands a unitary working-class
opposition. Approximately 70 per cent of the working population are
wage earners today. Among the latter there has been a notable increase
of technicians, professionals and administrators, who, although susceptible to integration by capitalism in their role as consumers, are
potential allies of the proletariat in specific conjunctures (low initial
income, economic crises or political repression may lead to consciousness of exploitation rather than to integration within the bourgeois
system of dominance). These groups will rally either to the working
class or, if integrated into the system, to monopoly capital. At the same
time, capitalist transformation of Spanish agriculture has progressively
impoverished small peasants to the benefit of a kulak class, while there
still exist a large mass of agricultural labourers. The rural poor form the
second vital reservoir of allies for the proletariat. Lastly, the ideological
repression of the rgime tends to keep each generation of students and
intellectuals in a state of permanent revolt.
On the other side, the traditional middle class (small and medium
industrialists, and new rich peasants) is a natural ally of monopoly and
finance capital. To some extent the economic interests of this class have
been damaged by rationalization; but once monopoly capital became
the hegemonic class, no other sector of the bourgeoisie could demonstrate a political or social autonomy or propose a future which would
26

not be inferior or utopian. These sectors are the political andin most
caseseconomic clients of big business. Thus the only power bloc
capable of replacing the present monopoly-dominated bloc is that of
the working class, the rural poor, technicians, clerical workers, students
and intellectuals, under the hegemony of the industrial proletariat. This is the
only bloc capable of making the socialist revolution in Spain.
Having said this, it is necessary to add that all political organizations on
the Left agree that it is only through mass struggles organized by the
workers commissions that any change in the present situation can be
effected. At the moment, only the PCE has sufficient numerical strength
and influence among the working class eventually to lead a full-scale
mobilization. But revolutionary struggle is not solely a matter of
organization and numerical strength. Equally important is the capacity
to analyse the concrete relationship of forces in society correctly and to
base a strategy and programme on this analysis. The PCE has attained a
remarkable degree of organizational strength under conditions of
tremendous repression, but it has not higherto proved capable of a
correct social analysis or policy of alliances. The new revolutionary
left appears capable of the necessary strategic analysis, but its organizational strength and influence is much weaker than that of the PCE. The
urgent necessity of creating a revolutionary regroupment on the basis
of the existing organized groups is thus evident. The formation of such
a revolutionary party must not be prevented by denying the organization of these groups or by any form of sectarianism.

PostscriptNovember 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
196869aimed ostensibly at students, in fact mainly at factory militancy
by workersto oust the Falangista bureaucracy from its central posts in the
government. Nevertheless, this operation remains a risky one for the Opus
technocrats. 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
in Spain; with them, the vanguard of the future is starting to emerge.
27