Carrillo's crisis Congress

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Sutcliffe CRISIS is an overused word in politics. But it is not easy to find any other for the state of the Spanish Communist Party, displayed last week at its Second Congress since being måde legal in 1977.

First of all, it was reported to the Congress that the membership of the Partynow 100 ,000 - was only half of its figure two years ago.

The Spanish CP has failed to make any of the electoral advances it hoped for in its euphoria after Franco's death.

It has been forced to abandon a short-lived and financially catastrophic experiment with a dally newspaper and revert to a weekly magazine.

In the latest union elections the Socialist UGT almost overtook the Communist Workers Commissions.

In the aftermath of the February 23 coup attempt the Party leadership has virtually hidden itself altogether behind the bourgeois political leaders and the monarchy.

And now the long-standing leadership of one of the most slippery and supple of Europe's post-war Stalinist leaders, Santiago Carrillo, is being assailed from two sides in a public and organised way.

Carrillo will survive the Congress to live another day as general secretary of the Party - but with his authority more impaired than ever.

The two opposing tendencies are the pro-Soviet faction (known • as the "Afghans"), led by a large section of the Catalonian section of the Party, the PSUC; and on the other side the renovating Eurocommunists' (perhaps 'bornagain: Eurocommunists' would be better) who want to go further and faster along the road that Carrillo has trod in the last five years.

Waverers

On: some organisational questions the"two opposi tions, with the aid of some waverers of the Carrillo majority, have shown themselves able at moments in this Congress to outvote the Carrillo forces.

But on the disputed political questions Carrillo has been able to hold the line largely because neither of the two opposition factions have been able to provide a convincing answer for a mass party which has lost the confidence of the masses, including its own rank and file members.

Carrillo is able to attack the born again Eurocommunists led by the Basque CP chief Roberto Lerxundi, in the name of 'revolution' accusing them of wanting to convert the Party into a correspondence with leaders of the Second (Social Democratic) International, including Austrian Chancellor purely parliamentary social democratic party.

Carrillo admits that:

"Our basic error has been to make policy from above. The communication of the Party with the masses has been done exclusively through its parliamentary representation.

The cadres have deserted the organisation of the rank and file. Our Party thus risks becoming electoralist and ceasing to be revolutionary."

And he applies the same fake anti-parliamentarism to his argument against permitting factions in the Party:

"The legalisation of tendencies would be equivalent to introducing what the electoral game represents in the society into the Party which claims to be the vanguard of that society. Legalised tendencies would look for votes among a passive mass membership reduced to the status of voters."

Despite the fact that Carrillo's regime has reduced the rank and file to the status of ciphers, and his revolutionary' conception of the CP has led it into more than five years of the most abject class collaboration, he will still carry the And not only because of his bureaucratic manoeuvres (which help) but also because of the unconvincing nature of the alternatives.

That is one of the reasons that the growth of opposition to the Carrillo line in the Party has still coincided with the massive haemorrhage of 100,000 members was expunged, so as not to give offence, at the 1977 Congress) and complete support for the internal repression and external military expansion of the Soviet bureaucracy.

But mixed with this Stalinist-loyalist line, which strikes no chord in the working class, is a roughly articulated critique of the grosser aspects of Carrillo's class collaboration.

'Afghans'

It is that which gives the "Afghans" some support among working class sections of the party rank and file, looking for a solution to a political situation which has recently come within a hair's breadth of restoring full-blooded Francoism to power.

leaders of the "Afghans", says:

•The Party leadership has justified the policy of consensus with the right by the need to consolidate democracy and to allow political stabilisation. Five months after the February 23 coup it is hard to say that the policy has been a success."

Moncloa

Carrillo is, however, obliged to defend his policy all the way. Even on the signing of the Moncloa Pact, which blatantly subordinated the interests of the working class to the economic needs of the crisis-torn Spanish bourgeoisie, Carrillo says that if he had the choice he'd sign it again - though with less enthusiasm than If Carrillo holds onto control of his crumbling party it can be expected that he will take the measures he has always preferred to