SPAIN: 3 The Left and then what?

Scan page 10

Gonzalez - successfully pushing the PSOE to the right rival for the political allie- the party is ruled. Many of giance of important sec these, too, have resigned tions of the working class. or been expelled.. And it has always been In the Basque country capable of taking the odd the whole leadership of the tactical left postion. For Eurocommunist faction instance it has opposed the broke with the Carrillo PSOE over its support for leadership and went off to But for the most part the alists of Euskadiko Ezkerra. Spanish CP no longer poses While retaining some of its any political threat to the worker militants, the rump PSOE. In the last two years of the Basque CP has it has endured convulsions become politically invisible.

The kadiko former part of year signed a pact with the employers and the government, known as the National Agreement on Employment (ANE), which is a typical 'Social Contract' The unions undertake to control the level of wage claims (in effect accepting real wage cuts) which the government and employers undertake to create new jobs (350,000 of them to be precise). And the result of the pact is equally typical. Wages have been held down below the rate of inCarrillo flation; but jobs have not been created.

Contempt for the pact has become widespread but concrete opposition has been very limited. This has mainly been because of the PSOE leadership, which has for over a year been relatively free of any left opposition.

There several reasons for that. One is the successful purge of the left in the PSOE and the UGT which took place between 1979 and 1981. A second is the relative decline of the far-left organisations, which grew like mushrooms in the post-Franco political climate.

The biggest of them, the Maoist Party of Labour (PTE) and the ex-Catholic Revolutionary Workers Organisation (ORT), fused with each other two years ago and have since been dissolved altogether. Another group with Maoist links, the Communist Movement (MC), still exists but counts for very little even in the Basque region where it is strongest.

Basque Basque left (EusIzkerra) r cently from a fus ion of ibe Basque C immunist Party and the politicalmilitary wing of ETA, has attracted a good deal of curiosity as a hitherto unknown political animal. But it is too amorphous, politically and organisationally, to form a major political pole of attraction and in any event it is restricted to Euzkadi.

In other regions local Socialist Parties have (as in Andalucia) all but disappeared beneath the PSOE's political steamroller.

As in the rest of Europe, the various Trotskyist groups remain fatally divided and marginalised, despite their growth in the mid-1970's. Most of them have strongly criticised the main organisations for their failure to mobilise against the coup. But, except in a few localities, the criticisms have failed to find an audience, though Trotskyist candidates dia poll a remarkably large number of votes in the recent Galician and Andalucian parliamentary elections (still not enough to gain representation).

Demise

But the main reason why the right wing leadership of the PSOE holds undisputed sway in the workers' movement at present is the demise of the Spanish Communist Party.

Not that the CP is in general a left critic of the PSOE. In fact its secretary general, Santiago Carrillo, has been criticising PSOE leader Felipe Gonzalez for adventurism in not recognising the threat to democracy in Spain.

Against the PSOE's present apparent determination to rule alone after its expected victory in the next general election, the CP puts forward a plan for a coalition with the liberal bourgeoisie (in which it includes the UCD) against the right.

Despite these positions to the right of the PSOE, the CP has been capable of being a pressure on Gonzdez because it has until recently been a serious the LOAPA.

as massive as the UCD.

First of all it has split between the pro-Moscow faction and the Eurocommunists around Carillo. In Catalonia the pro-Moscow faction has now established a new party, the Party of Catalan Communists which includes a majority of the working class base of the old PSUC (the semiautoniumous valallan Natalam. Communist Party) and which tends to take a more militant line than the CP on issues of the domestic class struggle.

Elsewhere in Spain supporters of this faction have been expelled from or have left the party in considerable numbers.

The CP has also been eroding at the other side from the activities of part of ther Eurocommunist faction who have objected to Santiago Carrillo's iron autocratic fist with which workers demand regional unite with the left nationSplits With the exception of a very few areas the Spanish CF has moved in three years from being an important, if minority, party of the Spanish working class to being a party debilitated by splits and public factional fighting. 100,000 out of 160,000 members have departed in two years.

It lies convulsed on the battlefield of Spanish politics, its limbs hacked off and its torso bleeding and scarred.

At the most recent Central Committee meeting Carrillo described this as a strengthening of the party because it had taught loyal militants to value the party. It looks as if the Spanish CP will be unable to survive any further such strengthening!

The collapse of the CP has • SO far rebounded entirely to the benefit of the PSOE, not so much in party membership as in potential votes.

Almost everyone in Spain expects a general election this autumn: it does not look as if the discredited UCD government can last until the full term expires in the spring of 1983.

Only a slightly lower number of people are willing to predict the result as follows: a working or even large parliamentary majority for the PSOE, the decimation of both the UCD and the Communist Party and the relative rise of Manuel Fraga's far-right Popular Alliance.

That result implies that perhaps within weeks Felipe Gonzalez will become Spain's first sociąlist premier since Indalecio Prieto in 1937. Unlike Prieto, Gonzalez will lead a government of the PSOE itself, not politically dominated from outside.

Military

That is about where the secure predictions end. TT Huge questions then loom up. Will the military and the far-right. allow such a government to take power? If so, how long will permit it to remain?

Ine answer to that question depends on others. What policies will PSOE government pursue? Will its election unleash a new upsurge of militant struggles as with the election of the Popular Front in 1935? There is little doubt that the PSOE leadership will try to pursue as cautious and moderate a policy as possible.

Office

But they will take office in conditions of extremely high unemployment and possible financial panic caused by their election. Workers and those affected by economic crisis will have great expectations of the first non-Francoist government for nearly 50 years.

At present the Socialists economic - programme contains very litle to deal with the material problems of Spanish workers. Like that of Mitterand or the Labour Party in Britain, it is a combination of more publie investment and wage control to expand production and jobs.

Allende

But before Francoism has been politically laid to rest, most Spaniards see the appropriate parallels not in Mitterand or Foot but in the origins of Francoism. or in the regime of Socialist President Salvador Allende in Chile.

And so many of them rightly view with alarm the fact that the PSOE stands on the threshold of power without any policy to destroy or even control the powerful Francoist caste which still leads the Spanish armed forces -no policy, that is, apart from appeasement.