The parliamentarianism, the trade-unions, the ballots, the peaceful strikes controlled by the big capital, the policy of alliances with the fractions of the monopolist bourgeoisie that the so-called working- class parties are carrying out are useless. But even if that policy does not solve any problem condemning at the same time the working-class and popular movement to the most complete impotence, we cannot say that it has succeeded in closing any perspective for the movement. It is rather the contrary: that reformist and conciliatory policy (which does not reform anything nor conciliates anybody anymore) is teaching millions of workers and other toilers better than hundreds of books where they must not take their steps in the future and has already led a considerable number of mainly youth to take up arms and to seek a true way out. Apart from the accusations that are made against this movement, with which we will deal later on, we want to highlight here its historical character, that is to say, the inevitability of its appearance and development, as well as the links that join it to the movement of the masses. >From now on, we'll have to get used to these two concepts: political movement of resistance and guerrilla struggle. These two concepts, that we have not invented, refer to two complementary parts of the same reality. By political movement of resistance we understand the sum of strikes, protests, demonstrations and other actions that take place by thousands everyday and everywhere in a semi- spontaneous way and that escape any control of the authorities and of the tamed parties. The guerrilla armed actions form part of this vast movement as its spearhead. If that ample politic movement of resistance did not exist, these actions would not take place as regularly as they do now, and the groups that carry them out would not be able to resist for long (they could not resist the repression nor renew themselves). On the other hand, undoubtedly, that resistance movement would have succumbed, long ago, to repression or victim of the demoralization that it causes if it had not found in the guerrilla organizations and in the kind of struggle that they carry out an even firmer resistance; if the repressive forces and the government that commands them had not found a continuous answer to their crimes and if, all in all, the armed struggle had not offered the whole of the movement the only really possible way out that exists. In a few words, the movement of resistance of the ample people's masses has given birth and feeds the guerrilla continuously and this one, in turn, keeps straight and makes easier the continuous development of the movement of people's resistance to the capitalist system. It will be easily understood that a movement of these characteristics is indestructible and that it will only disappear together with the same causes that have originated it. We know that many of the self-called "revolutionaries" will throw themselves upon us, accusing us of being heretics and other things of the same sort, since this conception presented above breaks with the allegedly Marxist preconceptions that they have; but we do not care about it! We don't believe in the "democratization" of the capitalist politic system in its current stage, nor in the chances given by the big bourgeoisie to allow the working class and other popular layers to reach "socialism" in a peaceful and legal way. This has not happened before, it does not happen now, and it will not happen in the future; but, on the contrary, we realize that as the general crisis of the system aggravates and the revolutionary struggle of the masses breaks out everywhere, the reaction of the bourgeoisie grows each time more, its politic regime tends to suppress all the politic liberties and the economic and social improvements and establishes progressively a fascist form of power, although it tries to hide this fascistization as good as it is able to. The capitalist society has long ago reached its highest degree of economic development, from which its decadence, its internal decomposition, starts. In this historic phase is opened a long period of disturbances that forces the masses to adopt forms of struggle that are very different to the ones used in previous periods, to those used in the stage of the peaceful and parliamentary development of capitalism. This was already foreseen by the classics of Marxism, and if someone has not already understood it, we must say that nothing remains immutable, even less -as many pretend- the tactics of the struggle of the proletariat. As Lenin justly pointed out "Marxism unconditionally requires that the problem of the forms of struggle be focused historically. To raise this question leaving aside the specific historical situation is the same as not understanding the foundations of dialectical materialism". And he continues: "in different moments of the economic evolution according to different politic, cultural-national and living conditions, etc., stand out in the first place different main forms of struggle and, in relation to this vary, at their time, the secondary, accessory ones. To want to answer merely yes or not to a given means of struggle, without entering to consider in detail the specific situation of the movement in question in a given stage of the development, means to abandon completely the field of Marxism"(1). Now well, which have been the methods of struggle that have stood out as the main ones in the different moments of the economic evolution and according to the different politic conditions? Lenin also gives us a clear explanation concerning this: "In the 1860s socialdemocracy rejected the general strike as a social panacea, as a means to overthrow all at once the bourgeoisie through a non-political via, but it fully recognized the mass politic strike [...] as one of the necessary means of struggle under certain conditions [...] Socialdemocracy admitted the barricade struggle in the streets in the 1840s - rejecting it, on the contrary, by the end of the 19th century in view of some specific data- and showed itself fully ready to revise this last conception and to recognize the convenience of the barricade struggle after the experience of Moscow, in which, according to K. Kautsky, appeared a new tactics of this kind of struggle"(2). On our part, we will complete Lenin's exposition adding that later on, from the second decade of this century to the mid 30s, communism advocated for the combination of the legal and parliamentary struggle with the clandestine organization, the active participation of the communists in the trade unions with the preparation among the masses of the politic general strike and the armed insurrection. The ultra-reactionary offensive of fascism compelled to modify this tactics from the 1930s on. This shift in the tactics was imposed as a necessity under those conditions; once these had disappeared (with the defeat of Nazi-fascism) a new change should have taken place, but this change never took place, and from there come many of the problems that the international worker movement is facing. The accommodation of the communist parties to the bourgeois legality made easier the development in their bosom of the revisionist trend that has led them finally to their complete degeneration. This is the cause, apart from the above mentioned, that explains the fact that the emptiness left by the communist parties had given place to the appearance of a new revolutionary movement with a tactics more appropriate to reality. Historically, notwithstanding those continuous changes of tactics that are imposed by each economic and politic situation, we can say that the general tendency of the revolutionary movement from the beginning of the century (from the entrance of capitalism in the finance monopoly stage of its development and the start of the new revolutionary era that this brought about) is to use new and each time more varied forms of defence and attack, which are materialized in which we have called politic movement of resistance and guerrilla struggle. As we have pointed out on other occasions, these new forms of struggle appear in an inevitable way as a consequence of the chronic economic and politic crisis that the capitalist system undergoes; they are the result of the increase of exploitation, of the growing unemployment and of the poverty to which an each time greater number of workers and other labourers of the country and the city are submitted (in spite of the short period of prosperity that followed the end of II World War); this movement of resistance is also the consequence of the manifest impossibility of making, on the part of the workers and other toilers, an efficient defence of their interests through the legal, peaceful and parliamentary via, given the high degree of economic concentration and parasitism reached by the dominant classes, and also, and very particularly, of militarism and unleashed reaction to which their politic regime has come. Today we are not in the time of the free economic competence and the rule of the democratic constitution, when it was possible for the working class to organize itself and use the bourgeois institutions to "fight against those very institutions" as Engels pointed out. Today we are in the time of monopolism and politic reaction, when the bourgeoisie itself has long ago broken the democratic legality that ruled all its acts in other times; when the monopolist capital has eliminated all the juridic and institutional obstacles that hindered its open counter-revolutionary action. This change in the politic situation already appeared at the beginning of the century coinciding with the formation of the monopolies in a series of countries. I World War made this clear; but, we can affirm that, until the 30s, together with the accelerated tendency towards fascistization and monopolism, some politic and economic forms of the previous period still subsist. Fascism came to end with the latter (by the very necessity of the capitalist competence in those countries that were in worst conditions to carry it out), establishing the economic control of the finance oligarchy upon all the branches of the economy and a police and terrorist politic regime upon the working- class and people's masses with the aim of destroying their organizations and breaking any resistance. It was logical that the tactics of the struggle of the proletariat conserved, up to that moment, a part of the old forms of struggle together with the new forms highlighted by Lenin and the practice of the Bolshevik Party, even if, as Lenin pointed out, the former should subordinate to the latter, that is to say, to the new methods of struggle generated by the new economic and politic conditions and by the revolutionary movement of the masses in accelerated development. "The old forms -said Lenin- have been broken, since its new anti-proletarian, reactionary content has acquired an enormous development"; therefore, Lenin pointed out that it was necessary to "transform, overcome and submit all the forms, not only the new ones but also the old ones, not to conciliate with the latter but to know how to transform all of them, the new and the old, into a complete, definite and invincible weapon of communism"(3). Now well, the revisionist parties and other groups not only have not combined the new and the old forms of struggle, but they have cornered, little by little the first ones (labelling them as "old-fashioned and useless") to keep only the really old forms of struggle that are completely useless. And from these positions they address their demagogic attacks against the new revolutionary movement that, in a more or less right and conscious way, does nothing else but to apply Lenin's teachings and the methods of struggle that correspond to the new historical conditions. As we have seen, these conditions are no longer those of the bourgeois democracy, not even those that took place when Lenin and the III International pointed out the necessity for the working-class revolutionary movement of using all the forms, both the new and the old ones, combining them. Nowadays, we cannot say that any possibility of legal, syndical and peaceful struggle is closed, since the crisis in which the system is immersed and the great ampleness reached by the movement are creating new possibilities for the legal work. But we have to highlight that this legality is no longer the bourgeois legality but a very different one; it is a legality imposed by the struggle of the masses, it is a legality created by the revolutionary movement and in front of which the reactionary bourgeoisie can do nothing or very little. Therefore, only the combination of the revolutionary movement of the masses with the armed actions, and only that, can corner the bourgeois State even more and create the general conditions (politic, ideological and organizational) for the total destruction of the system and its substitution for a completely new one. The big finance capitalists and their lackeys try to frighten the masses and to contain their independent politic movement threatening every day with the scarecrow of the fascist military coup. This makes evident the solidity and the true character of the "democracy" that they defend: a democracy with the authorization of the generals and the police at the exclusive service of the finance interests. The reformist and conciliatory policy that has predominated during these last years among the working- class and popular movement has allowed the capitalist State to tie the hands of the workers and other toilers for a long period of time. This has allowed the bourgeoisie to exploit them to the maximum, at the same time that it readjusted its system of domination in an "atmosphere of peace". In this way they have succeeded in imposing in a legal and peaceful way, without resorting to a coup, not only the economic control of the monopolies but also a politic form of power of a fascist type that does not allow anyone to make nor to say anything without the permission of the authorities. With this, the big bourgeoisie has done nothing else but to finish "cleanly" the work started by Mussolini, Hitler and Franco. For this same reason, we can say with complete certainty, that there will be no other fascist coup in Europe, since the mission that the fascists-without-mask had been entrusted with, everything they had to do, has been done by the bourgeoisie without having to resort to them again, with the collaboration of the so-called "left" parties. In Spain this experience is being put into practice now due to the complete bankruptcy of the old-type fascist system. But we know that, in essence, everything is the same as before. The Power continues in the hands of its former owners, the economic basis has not changed a little, but they rather try to use this change of facade to sow confusion among the masses and to plunge them in abject poverty even more. The only thing that has really changed is the incorporation to the regime of the reformist parties that were displaced from this process of fascist renovation that has been carried out all throughout Europe with their collaboration. The monopolist bourgeoisie threw itself upon the proletariat suppressing all its democratic conquests; it has tried to demoralize it and has finally destroyed its vanguard parties With this it has delayed the revolutionary process for some time, but it cannot impede it in any way no matter how many efforts and traps it makes. Today we are in a situation that places the finance bourgeoisie in the same position as the one occupied by the feudal lords during the epoch of the bourgeois rise and, in such an epoch, the revolutionary methods of struggle and the revolutionary legality imposed by the masses through the combat impose themselves with an uncontainable force. The resort to the armed struggle is one of the main characteristics of the revolutionary movement in our time, the epoch of the decadence of the capitalist system and of the proletarian revolution. This form of struggle stands out more each time as the main one and all the others will have to subordinate to it as time goes by. There are always those who link the armed struggle only to the conditions of the colonial countries and to the national movements; hence, they also label the guerrilla struggle in the industrialized capitalist countries such as it is being developed as "anarchism" or "adventurism", as something strange and isolated from the mass movement and without any possible way out. Does this opinion correspond to reality? Let's see it in relation to Spain. We must refer to the phenomenon of ETA and to the people's resistance movement in the Basque Country. Here we find the clearest example of a guerrilla struggle which is closely linked to a resistance movement of a true mass character that covers all the layers of the population. Nobody dares to deny this reality nowadays. Now well, a widely spread opinion attributes this phenomenon to the special national conditions of the movement. Only the national oppression and the national aspirations of this people would explain, according to some, the appearance and development of ETA and of the powerful people's resistance movement in the Basque Country. But the fact is that the Basque Country is not the only place where there are national oppression and national aspirations which are deeply felt by ample sectors of the population and, however, as it is well known, the same phenomenon has not taken place in Catalonia nor in Galicia. As regards other factors (as the economic exploitation, the class structure and the geographical configuration) we don't believe that there are better conditions for the development of the armed struggle there than, for instance, in Galicia. Neither is the clerical-bourgeois ideology much more rooted in Galicia than in the Basque Country. As it is well known, the Church and the bourgeois "parliamentary" nationalist parties have always profited from an ample support in the Basque Country and have represented an obstacle for the people's movement. However, this has not impeded the development of the resistance movement and the guerrilla. So, by the force of the facts, the formation of this powerful movement can only be attributed to the triggering of the armed struggle. Lenin clarifies this problem when he exclaims: "Stop to study it specifically, gentlemen!, and you will see then that the yoke and the national antagonisms do not explain anything, since those causes have always existed in the Western periphery, while the guerrilla struggle has been generated only by a given historical period. There are many places in which in spite of the existence of oppression and national antagonisms, the guerrilla struggle does not take place, and, however, sometimes it develops without the existence of any national oppression. The specific analysis of the problem shows that the explanation does not lie in the national oppression but in the very conditions of the insurrection. The guerrilla struggle is an inevitable form of struggle in times when the mass movement has already come, in fact, to the very insurrection and when bigger or shorter intervals between the big battles of the civil war are opened" (4). Nobody dares nowadays to call "anarchism", "terrorism" or "adventurism" the guerrilla struggle that followed the "big battles of the Civil War" in Spain. This struggle lasted till the mid-1950s. When that guerrilla struggle started it was considered as just and necessary by all the democrats and revolutionaries of the world. Later on, this form of struggle has not manifested itself with so much strength and as clearly as before, but nobody can deny that it has existed in a latent state in the revolutionary strikes of the miners and metalworkers, in the demonstrations of insurrectional character and in the constant clashes between the demonstrators and the repressive forces that have provoked dozens of deaths. This struggle has arisen again in Spain as a prolongation of the previous ones, although this time it is more linked to the current politic and economic crisis of the regime. The Party must take a clear and well-defined position on this issue; what, in fact, is currently doing. We have to take into account that we live in a time of an almost permanent civil war (and it will very probably last for a long time) and, therefore, in a time like this "the ideal of the Party of the proletariat is a battle-hardened Party". We are not the ones to be against nor to make propaganda to discredit the revolutionary armed struggle nor the organizations that practice it, because this means to go to the side of the oppressors in the inevitable struggle. In any case, we will adopt a critical attitude, from the point of view of the politic and military convenience of certain actions. "But in the name of the principles of Marxism we will unconditionally demand that the civil war would not be left aside with trivial and monotonous sentences like the ones of anarchism, Blanquism or terrorism"(5). We have affirmed that the armed struggle stands out as one of the main forms of struggle of the revolutionary movement in the current historical context, and this is absolutely true. But we cannot deduce from it that this form of struggle is the only one nor that the Party, as such, should devote itself to practice it. The Party was entrusted with a different mission: to educate the masses and to organize the politic movement of resistance with the aim that the masses themselves help today and join tomorrow in a growing number the movement of armed struggle that will overthrow fascism. Without this task of us, neither the guerrilla nor the mass movement would have any chance, and they would be annihilated by the better organized forces of the reaction. That this task can create us -and in fact it is already creating us- many difficulties, arrests and a certain disorganization, cannot be denied. However, we have to be fully conscious of the fact that those momentarily difficulties, if we have enough courage and we know how to keep ourselves in our post, in the vanguard place that corresponds to us, can only favour us in the long-term. We have to take into account that, as Lenin said, "any new form of struggle brings about new dangers and sacrifices; it inevitably 'disorganizes' the organizations which are not prepared for it ... any guerrilla action, no matter which one, provokes a certain disorganization among the combatant ranks. But from this we must not draw the conclusion that we must not fight. What must be deduced from this is that we have to learn to fight. This and only this"(6). Envia gratis tus postales musicales de Navidad desde http://www.mixmail.com
