BRAZIL AFTER THE ELECTIONS
Villares, etc.). In some cases the workers have succeeded in winning wage increases, and in most cases they have fought their struggles independently of the official frade unions, through clandestine commissions organized in the factories. The importance of the emergence of such struggles, even if they are elementary ones, is absolutely incontestable given the present situation in Brazil. The student milieu, for its part, is increasingly feeling the influence of an active vanguard that even in the blackest period of reaction and repression has not ceased to struggle for the reorganization of the academic centers, against capitalist rationalization of the universities, and against education for profit. The struggles against repression have resulted in the formation of Committees for the Defense of Political Prisoners. in the countryside, the struggles of the rural laborers, semiproletarians, and small landowners, although they have gone unnoticed by observers in the urban centers, have not disappeared; in some cases, they have even resulted in violent and tough conflicts. Atomized, fragmented, alienated, and brutalized by the situation of extreme poverty, exploitation, and oppression under which they live, the masses spontaneously viewed November 15 as an opportunity to deliver a resounding "No" to the military dictatorship. Inevitably, this action will have consequences for the future, and it deserves to be analyzed in more detail.
The protest of the masses against the military dictatorship resulted in a victory of unexpected
• proportions for the bourgeois party of "democratic opposition. " The growth of the Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (MDB — Brazilian Democratic Movement) surprised even the party's own ranks, as well as its blindest and most optimistic collaborators. The MDB won the Senate posts in sixteen states. It won more than a third of the seats in the Federal Chamber (thus registering an increase of 100 percent), which now enables it to form commissions of inquiry, to summon ministers, to oversee commissions, and so on. It obtained majorities in the legislative assemblies in the states of So Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Paraná, Amazonas, and Acre, in addition to Guanabara. It increased its weight in the municipalities, where it won in places that had been traditional bastions of the ARENA (Aliança Renovadora Nacional -Alliance for National Renewal). The MDB won 70 percent of the votes of more than 32 million voters. But in no way did the electoral results represent a victory for the masses. Paradoxically, while the masses condemned the dictatorship that oppresses them, they did so by strengthening a party of their own class enemy, the bourgeoisie. In fact, the major end result of the change in the character of the MDB after the elections is that it has ceased to be a bourgeois party condemned to ostracism. It has now been transformed into a new element in the relationship of forces among the various sectors and factions of the ruling class. It now represents not solely the middle layers and petty-bourgeois sectors affected by the actions of the monopolies, but also appears as the mouthpiece of many industrial and agrarian sectors that have been hit by the failure of the whole sectora policy of the regime. It is beginning to constitute an element of contradiction in the hegemonic bloc of the bourgeoisie, particularly in the wake of the decline of the absolute domination of North American capital and of the relative increase in investments originating from Japan and the Common Market countries. The number of MDB candidates of working-class origins was extremely small (although there were a few such candidates, they were firm supporters of the trade-union bureaucracy); the dominant component was the industrial and bureaucratic bourgeoisie. In the rural areas, which always vote for the government, the growth of the MDB was a result of the campaign to defend the interests of the latifundistas and the demands of the middle and big rural bourgeoisie. This campaign was absolutely not based on denouncing the poverty and superexploitation of the rural laborers or on the struggle for a radical agrarian reform. But what else could have been expected from a bourgeois party?
The links between the MDB and the bourgeoisie will not be weakened now; they will be strengthened more than ever, as could have been expected given the popular support garnered by its candidates. The new role assumed by the "opposition party" will be that of a "party of order" supporting the strengthening of the regime and thus opening new channels of communication between the ruling class and the military government in an economic and political situation whose prospects are rather uncertain.
Why did the workers and toilers support the MDB and its candidates in the elections? It is absolutely necessary to answer this question. In the first place, it was because of their own weaknesses and the great weakness of their vanguard. In the preceding elections (1970), the abstention rate was 46 percent, and of the ballots cast, 50 percent were void. This did not represent a high level of mass consciousness, however; rather, it was a reflection of total apathy, fear, and indifference. This year, the masses wanted to express their discontent with the dictatorship, but they did so in a spontaneous fashion, without following the lead of a party representing their class interests. At the same time as it expressed a protest against their oppressor, the vote also reflected their inability to see clearly politically and to find the best means of striking at and weakening the oppressor. The vote for the MDB was the expression of an enormous discontent that coexists with a low level of consciousness and organization among the broad masses. The MDB appeared as the only visible opposition force; it made use of the mass communication media (mainly television) and posed questions that identified it with the interests of the masses. It thus succeeded in capitalizing on the popular discontent that has accumulated over the years. No one has any illusion: The vote of the toilers for the MDB and its candidates represented a condemnation of the military dictatorship much more than a statement of allegiance to the "democratic" bourgeois opposition. In fact, the past record of the MDB as an opposition party does not provide much ground for enthusiasm. The MDB is the product of a bastard fusion of the old PSD and the remains of the PTB around a watchword invented by a decree of the military dictatorship; later it was "purged. " It was the opposite of everything a "democratic *opposition should have been. It opted for collaboration with the military dictatorship and for moderation, becoming an accomplice in all the crimes committed by the bourgeois military government against the people. At a time when the Brazilian bourgeoisie was liquidating democratic rights in order to save its regime the
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BRAZIL MDB did not have much interest in mobilizing the masses and simultaneously trying to hold them within the framework of the classical democratic game. It feared the masses as the devil fears holy water. Nor is there any reason to have illusions about the future of the opposition party. Whenever it is necessary to contain the mass struggle, the MDB will eppeal to the workers and to the masses in general with the aim of bolstering the rule of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship. The statements of the main leaders of the MDB are rather significant in this regard: "Thanks to this victory, the MDB is being transformed into a party of national expression that has access to the private councils of the government and can thus collaborate in a policy of détente that ought to consist of pacifying Brazilian society. " (Danton Jobim, MDB senator.) "The victory of the opposition will provide President Geisel with a popular cover for altering the orientation of the economic and social policy followed by the lost two governments. " (Pedro Simon, parliamentary deputy and president of the MDB in Rio Grande do Sul.) "Any attempt to overcome the division of the nation will be valuable." (Marcos Freire, MDB senator elected from Pernambuco.)
Now that the elections are over, there remains 4 only a sad and disappointing reality for those who hoped (or hope) to see the MDB become a "party allied to the wage earners. " The people voted for the bourgeois "opposition" in its death agony, thus lending it new strength and allowing it to become the major instrument for legitimizing the dictatorial regime. The regime has to legitimize itself through the intermediary of a bourgeois opposition in order to channel popular discontent into passive integration. The very dynamic created by the electoral campaign demonstrated this urgent necessity to all the professional politicians of the bourgeoisie. The workers and the masses, prepared to demand a settling of accounts, supported the MDB hoping that it would take immediate action. This created an atmosphere marked by relative pressure from the masses on the eve of November 15, and this made the MDB "foxes" rather uncomfortable. In the places where public demonstrations were organized (mainly Rio Grande do Sul, Pernambuco, and Guanabara) the masses did not remain within the limits defined by the MDB; they raised antidictatorship slogans that could not be co-opted, given the bourgeoisie's narrow room for maneuver. It was because of this 26 threat of political radicalization that the MDB of São Paulo, drawing the lessons of the demonstrations held earlier in other states, canceled its victory meetings and celebrations. This is the only way to understand the role played by the group of autênticos - who received a very significant vote - and the formation of the "young wings" of the "democratic youth" of the MDB. These sectors acquired significant weight in the student movement, in the trade unions, among the leftist intellectuals, and even among the revolutionary left. This wing of the MDB, which achieved some success in the elections and has proven capable of making meaningful denunciations of the dictatorship (the names of those killed under torture were read out publicly in Guanabara), is nevertheless taking up the task of demobilizing the people after the elections and is proposing reconciliation within the MDB. Regardless of any "good intentions, " the compromise made by this wing of the MDB with the bourgeois policy of the party will help the workers to gain confidence in their own strength and will make them shed their illusion that well-intentioned parliamentarians are worth more than "subversion.
"A victory for democracy! " exclaimed the unan→ imous chorus of the prognosticators prostituted to
"bourgeois democracy. The official government spokesmen washed their hands of the matter: The government, they said, "was not overthrown"; in fact it had won a victory for its "détente" policy. The ARENA suffered a defeat, but that was because of "external factors, " like the international economic crisis, inflation, and so on. The government had already said, through the medium of the head of the parliament, that "whoever wins will come into the government, and a strong opposition, active and politically rejuvenated, can only strengthen the government and the regime." The fact is that the election results were paradoxical: Although it suffered defeat at the polls, the military dictatorship found itself relatively strengthened in the institutional sphere. The political way out proposed by the Geisel government clearly represents an implicit admission of the social isolation of the dictatorship, which has never managed to obtain the support of the masses and the wage earners. Through the medium of a "high level of negotiation" the government is trying to reactivate the parliamentary political game to a certain extent. Maintenance of the ultraightist and fascist "hard line" of Medici, Delfin Netto, General Humberto Souza Mello, and the security organs of the armed forces would only have widened the chasm between the dictatorship and the masses, which would have been undesirable for the regime in the
current period. Nevertheless, the "hard-liners" did not miss a chance to strike back on the sly. If their counterattack had succeeded it would have enabled them to postpone the elections, arrest oppositionists, and thus attempt to repeat what happened in 1970, when on the eve of elections the repression was stepped up heavily. Contrary to what had been thought by the apologists of "possible democracy, " the elections unleashed strong centrifugal tendencies and created divisions within the bloc in power. The institutional strengthening of the dictatorship will be a sort of political "interregnum" in a palace conspiracy; but the dictatorship will not be able to control the situation indefinitely. In view of the uncertain days of international economic recession, of the stagnation of the national economic "boom, " and of the inability of the Brazilian bourgeoisie to meet the vital demands of the laboring masses, the military dictatorship will try to gain time. That is the purpose of the "strong opposition, active and politically rejuvenated."
But the elections also set the stage for the gov-emment institutions' being overtaken by the very dynamic of the mass movement in a transifional epoch, which places the socialist revolution on the agenda as the only possible solution, given the insoluble contradictions of capitalism. Among the combative sections of the workers and students movements an accelerated process of organizational recomposition and political clarification is going on. The revolutionary vanguard and the far left are finding it possible to emerge from their deep political torpor. Free debate has begun again within the vanguard and is stimulating political rearming as a prelude to action. As for the masses in the broader sense (especially the workers), the victory of the MDB will not result in their being lined up to support the double game being played by the bourgeois opposition. The vote received by the MDB will inevitably open up a situation favorable to breaking down the conservatism of the masses. This becomes clear when account is taken of the fact that the attempt to damobilize the people, in which both the autênticos and the "moderates" of the MDB are participating, is like cold water thrown on the hopes that had been raised. The malady that afflicts this party, its leadership as well as its more active rank and file, will enormously accentuate rather than ease the crisis of the bourgeois opposition. Nevertheless, it does not follow from this that the masses will immediately enter into revolutionary turmoil. The effects of the past defeats of the workers movement and the nonexistence of a revolutionary vanguard with a mass base, combined with the constant crisis of the "democratic" bourgeois opposition, will continue to act as powerful factors fostering conservatism and political vacuity. The masses do not exist apart from their organizations, politically at least. Outside these organizations "the masses" are atomized individuals, fragmented by the alienation of labor, united only psychologically. Thus, instances in which the struggles go beyond the limits laid down for them, particularly in the workers movement, will occur in a profoundly uneven, atomized, and completely disorganized manner. This is a contradictory feature of the coming period and is itself an expression of the very deep contradiction between the subjective factor (the level of consciousness and organization of the masses), which is less developed, and the objective factor, the inability of capitalism in Brazil (or anywhere else) to resolve its own contradictions. The resolution of the contradiction between the objective and subjective factors is, as it has always been and will be, a challenge to the revolutionary vanguard. %. of questions to tharmac lves and the revolution
Revolutionary Marxists must now pose a number ary vanguard, principally the most conscious and combative workers: Is "redemocratization" fostered by the military bureaucracy the best solution for the bourgeoisie? Will the aggravation of the economic, political, and social contradictions that the Brazilian bourgeoisie will have to confront in coming years enable it to carry out a "redemocratization from above"? Can the very social forces that tried to perpetuate an "indigenous fascism" through terror suddenly change their spots and give rise to "flowering democracy"? The bourgeois republic was always the best form of rule for the bourgeoisie. Boxing in the masses with reformist parliamentary contests, with the periodic election of candidates who are indentured to the bourgeoisie but carry out their policies "in the name of the people, " conceals the class dictatorship against the exploited and has always enabled the bourgeoisie to ideologically mask the real nature of its state power. The more deeply the bourgeoisie moves into its period of decay - and this is as valid for Srozil as it is for the rest of the world - the less it resembles the bourgeoisie of the ascending period of cupilalism. For this historically moribund class, the crucial question does not lie so much in its sub¡ective desires as in its objective capacity to reproduce and maintain the capitalist system. The military dictatorship in Brazil represented a political solution founded on the defeat of the masses and the complete destruction of the organized workers movement; these were the preconditions for capitalist accumulation. The fact that this solution was adopted illustrated the hegemony of the bourgeois sectors fied to imperialism. In 1968 Institutional
27
BRAZIL Act No. 5, the "coup within a coup, " gave relatively complete form to the dynamic that had started in 1964 (when the Goulart regime was overthrown). During the course of the past ten years, the armed forces rose to the position of the "sole party" of the bourgeoisie, substituting themselves for the old, worn-out bourgeois politicians. "Violence without words replaced the violence of words."
The lessons of Chile and Argentina did not pass unnoticed by international big business, and still less by the Brazilian bourgeoisie and the military camarilla. The experiences in those coun tries showed that the traditional bourgeois parties and the reformist workers parties could not prevent a confrontation between the masses and the bourgeois regime, nor could they prevent the anticapitalist and anti-imperia list dynamic of the permanent revolution from unfolding. The reformism of the Unidad Popular was replaced by Fascism. Peronist Bonapartism was reploced by the armed bands of the rightist parallel police. The misfortune of the Brazilian bourgeoisie is that in the short term it does not command sufficiently powerful reformist forces or Bonapartist bourgeois leaders. And it fears the mosses. Moreover, was it not under the banner of the Bonapartism of Vargas that the masses on several occasions threatened te over throw the institutions of the ruling class? With Institutional Act No. 5 the de Medici government - the most fascist of all the rightist governments since 1964 - eliminated any "populism" from the bourgeois leadership. The repressive antipopular and antiworker wave unleashed by the de Medici government deprived the ruling class of the instruments and political organizations it needed to hold the masses in check. From the standpoint of the immediate needs of the time, this was necessary in order to consolidate the bourgeois regime and pump up the capitalist economy; but in the long term it left the ruling class with no support except its Prerorian Guard, except pure and simple repression. The hands of the bourgeoisie and the gorillas are covered with too much blood for them to speak of "redemocratization, " to tolerate the free organization of the people and the existence of workers parfies having the power to negotiate with them. The bourgeoisie as a whole is much more afraid of the radicalization of the masses and the recomposition of the workers movement than it is of its own internal struggles. In order to maintain its rule it will not hesitate to suppress one or the other of the bourgeois sectors that do not hold hegemony. 9, of wo conditions this in rumble under tits A despotic dictatorship can crumble under either drive it to a point of such degeneration and corruption that the regime collapses of its own decay or if the bourgeoisie finds that the only way it 28 can save its regime in face of a mass upsurge threatening its rule is to grant democratic concessions. In general, Greece and Portugal illustrate the first category; Argentina during the period of the Great National Accord illustrates the second. In what direction are the present struggles among the factions in power in Brazil moving? They certainly do not suggest that the Brazilian dictatorship is on the point of collapsing from decay or that it is inevitably moving toward such an end. It is quite clear that a division presently exists between fwo bourgeois wings, both solidly linked to the monopolies, to the mulfinational trusts and their interests. On the one side there is the "hard wing, "which calls for the Chilean-type methods, that is, a toughening of repression and the exclusion of traditional bourgeois leaders from decision-making centers. On the other side, there is the Geisel wing, which is trying to reactivate a controlled parliamentary game, to grant some autonomy to ARENA and to the MDB, and to strengthen the regime's facade -but without ending the fascist repression. The "institutionalization" of the dictatorship appears to be the most sophisticated and effective sort of rule from the standpoint of one sector of the bourgeoisie. This sector is trying through institutionalization to maintain the armed forces as the fundamental pillar of the regime and at the same time to allow a more intense, though rigorously controlled, parliamentary game to unfold as a means of diminishing tensions within the bourgeoisie and extending bourgeois domination over broader sections of the masses. Concurrently, the level of fascist repression against the masses is being kept up. In other words, with one hand the military dictatorship is offering a dialogue to the big bourgeoisie; with the other hand it is continuing to violently repress any insubordination among the masses. That is the sort of "redemocratization" the Geisel faction is capable of offering. It is probable that the clash between these more sophisticated conceptions of rule and the conceptions advocated by the truculent "hard wing, " along with differences over the pace at which "institutionalization" should be introduced (differences pitting the most impatient sectors, of the "O Estado de São Paulo" type, against the "moderation" of Geisel), will produce an increase in tensions within the bourgeoisie during the coming period, thus opening up some breaches in the system of rule. While this is true, it is also certain that these conflicts and tensions, even if they continue to mount and spill out of the offices and antechambers of the ministers, will by themselves never lead the bourgeoisie to seek a solution of the redemocratization type unless there is pressure from the masses.
That is why waiting for "redemocratization" to be touched off spontaneously by struggles within the bourgeoisie without being concerned with organizing and mobilizing the industrial proletariat independently of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaderships amounts to condemning the revolutionary movement to suicide. The only way democratic rights can be won by the masses in the current conditions of Brazil is for the workers in struggle, organized and mobilized massively, to force the bourgeoisie to beat a political retreat. And this revolutionary upsurge of the masses, when it comes, will not at all stop at democratic conquests. It will persist until there is a direct and decisive confrontation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, until the complete destruction of the capitalist system. There are no more reforms to carry out; there are no more democratic "stages" to be traversed. The era of permanent revolution has long since begun and it will end only with the victory of socialism on a world scale.
What next? What is to be done after the elections? Would offering critical support lo to the MDB or to tho "autêntico" wind of the MDB hasten the recomposition of the organized workers movement? Would it strengthen the workers vanguard? Or would it channel discontent so as to legitimize the dictatorship? Revolutionary Marxists, as well as other currents of the revolutionary left, called for casting a blank ballot during the elections and centered their campaign around the organization of the struggle against the dictatorship through independent and autonomous action. While it is necessary to reject all ultraleftist conceptions that refuse participation in any elections under the pretext that elections are by definition bourgeois or are of no interest to the workers movement, it is also necessary not to make a fetish of elections. When communists can use them freely, parliamentary elections can serve as a tribune from which to issue political denunciations, to talk about workers and popular struggles, to carry out propaganda about the revolutionary program, and to popularize mobilizing slogans. Above all, they must be used to propagandize and agitate for a superior form of democracy, that of councils or soviets under the control of the masses. Nevertheless, a position of critical support to the MDB, or at least to its best candidates (the autênticos, the youth wing) became generalized throughout the left, and especially throughout the far left, during the elections. The MDB was seen as the "best means for strengthening democratic rights. " It was explained that the autênticos of the MDB would denounce the dictatorship in Congress, that they would defend a part of our program, " that it would be "voluntarist right now to propose to reconstruct the proletarian vanguard, "that the "defeats of these past years show that the masses are more in crisis than is the vanguard, " that "the left needs room to breathe, and for that the indicated solution is to work legally within the MDB, " and so on. Revolutionary Marxists had to denounce this false position, which amounted to counterrevolutionary immobility. The validity of the denunciations of the dictatorship issued by the autênticos during and after the elections was not challenged. But such denunciations would not have been produced by any support to the MDB, even critical support. In the concrete conditions of the moment, parliamentary elections are not simply a grotesque farce; they also fail to offer even minimal guarantees, even to the bourgeois parliamentarians. To lend such support now would be to play the bourgeoisie's game, to provide a cover for the institutionalization of the dictatorship, to contribute to bolstering the democratic facade of the dictatorship.
It is necessary to speak clearly: If the autênI denunciations they have issued, why do they ticos of the MDB are consistent about the remain in the MDB, channeling popular discontent so that it can be absorbed by the regime? Why don't they break with the bourgeois leadership of the party and with the MDB itself? Why don't they call on the workers to have confidence only in their own strength? Precisely because the masses, when they voted for the MDB, were voting against the dictatorship rather than in favor of the bourgeois leadership of the MDB, it is more than ever urgent to deepen this attitude and not to limit or co-opt it. And if the vanguard is very weak and the masses are very backward today, that increases the importance of this task. The slightest gains that can be made in advancing the consciousness and independent organization of the masses will prove decisive in the coming period. The opportunist and tail-endist policy toward the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaderships, which repects the betrayal of the workers movement by the reformists of the CP, has fallen into its own trap. This policy is unable to find a way out of the vicious circle into which it has placed itself: Critical support to the MDB, which, because of its own subordination to the bourgeois parties, will lead its defenders to uncritical support. This pragmatism has its price: the self-liquidation of a vanguard that claims to be revolutionary, for this pragmatism abandons the central task of the vanguard at the present time - the struggle to advance the consciousness and independent organization of the proletariot -in the name of "shortcuts" that lead nowhere except to total impotence and subordination to the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaderships. And the most lam-
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BRAZIL entable thing is that this "new discovery" of "critical" support is not at all new in the history of the workers movement. Since the beginning of this century that sort of policy has resulted in many defeats and big retreats, the lessons of which can be drawn. back to its prehistoric stages. What is needed is a step forward, not two, three, and more steps backward. It is exactly because of the MB's character as a bourgeois party and because of the character of parliamentary elections that it is necessary to fight against these illusions, to demystify and clarify before the masses and the workers vanguard all the electoralist and reformist deviations that hope to resolve through a vote what cannot be resolved except through the direct action of the masses, through their self-organization from the bottom up. The choice is not MDB or ARENA; the point is not to choose the lesser evil. The important thing is to know what policy strengthens the working class and weakens the bourgeoisie and what policy does the opposite.
Revolutionary Marxism is the conscious ex12 pression of an unconscious social process. • In each phase, at each moment of the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, it always represents the overall interests of the whole workers movement. If is in this sense that revolutionary Marxists - whose interests are no different from those of the workers movement, for they represent the most clear-sighted wing of that movement - call for the independence of the workers vanguard from the bourgeois parties and the petty-bourgeois leaders. The tactic of casting a blank ballot, a tactic centered on the organization and reconstruction of the vanguard, points in the direction of deepening the potential for going beyond bourgeois limits that exists among the masses, of strengthening the posifions of the proletariat to the detriment of those of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship. From the immediate standpoint, the campaign for the blank ballor had as its objective beginning a process of regrouping the revolutionary vanguard, of clarifying politics in order to take action. At no time did we foster any illusion as to the possibility of immediately transforming the process of outflanking the bourgeois leaderships into revolutionary mass action. The campaign for the blank ballot was centered on the question of independent organizafion, thus clearly showing that participation in parliamentary elections makes sense only when the revolutionary vanguard and the workers parties can have a guarantee of a minimum freedom of opinion and speech. In the long term, our propaganda will 30 have strengthened the idea that democratic conquests are not granted by governments but are won by the masses in struggle. The final balance-sheet after the elections indicated the failure of the vanguard, its isolation from the masses; in other words, the lack of a revolutionary leadership. Only such a leadership could strengthen the struggle against the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaderships, tearing the best elements of our proletariat from their influence in order to attract them to revolutionary Marxism.
But the balance-sheet of the elections also 1.g the revolutionary left. The dictatorship is showed that new possibilities are open to caught in an impasse: How can it strengthen its class domination without permitting an explosion of mass struggles in an extremely tense social situation? The masses have demonstrated their discontent and dissatisfaction with the dictatorship. Their vote was political, despite the years of apathy under the de Medici government. All this makes the dictatorship tremble and indicates that new breaches can be opened in the apparent monolith of the bourgeois regime before it can find a new equilibrium - if it ever does. It is indispensable for the Marxist and revolutionary currents to solve as soon as possible the problem of the absence of leadership of the working class in order not to allow the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship to build up the political and social support that it now lacks. That is why it is necessary to call on all revolutionary groups to praclice unity in action in order to reinforce the organized workers movement (by forming workers committees and commissions for common action, as in the case of trade-union elections in 1975, for example), to organize self-defense of struggles and of workers organizations during periods of repression and persecution of vanguard worker militants, and to organize political campaigns against the dictatorship. Unity in action is indispensable to the formation of committees to defend political prisoners and to denounce the conciliationism of the MDB and the opportunism of the so-called autênticos. But this unity in action will not mean the absence of a profound political debate among the components of the revolutionary left. Political and programmatic clarification must be carried out through an ever deepening free debate around immediate tactical problems and the final objectives of our movement. What is needed is to find a policy that is adapted to the presently atomized condition of the re olutionary vanguard in the struggle against capitalism and the dictatorship and that in the long run will foster the formation of a revolutionary Marxist workers party.
SPAIN continued from pg. 32. are in danger of death. We do not know exactly when the trial will be held, but it may begin at any moment. That is why we must begin now to prepare ourselves so that the masses, with the working class at their head, can respond energetically to this attempt at multiple murder. That is why we are making this appeal to the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. Because Eva Forest and her comrades need international solidarity if they are to escape death. Because we, Trotskyist milifants of the entire world, are the most consistent defenders of the struggle against the oppression and repression engendered by international capitalism; and because, in the end, the overthrow of the Francoist dictatorship is part of the international struggle against capital. Without international solidarity of the sort that was organized in defense of the working class and the revolutionaries of Chile, Vietnam, and Palestine, it will be very difficult to block the plans of Francoism, to make the dictatorship retreat once more, and to succeed in pressing forward the struggle for its overthrow. Today an international front against repression must be developed around the defense of Eva Forest and her comrades and against the Francoist dictatorship. That is why we are appealing to you, for it is through our organization, the Fourth International, that the working class and the popular masses of Europe and other places will take up this struggle in the manner most able to defend their own interests internationally. We are sure that you will be able to rise to the challenge that Francoism has issued, as one of the additional internationalist tasks that the Trotskyists of the world must take up. That is why we must begin today to develop propaganda and agitation and to popularize these slogans: STAY THE HAND OF MURDEROUS FRANCOISMI FREED OM FOR EVA FOREST AND HER COMRADES! FREEDOM FOR ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS IN THE SPANISH STATE! DOWN WITH REPRESSION! DOWN WITH THE DICTATORSHIP! Knowing that we can count on your precious support, we send you our revolutionary greetings: FOR THE WORLD SOCIALIST REVOLUTION! Trotskyist political prisoners of the Francoist prison of Segovia, members of the LCR/ETA-VI: Armendariz Tainta, Javier. Arrested April 7, 1969.
Condemned by a military tribunal to 12 years in prison.
Arregui Enave, Julian. Arrested June 1972. Condemned by the War Council to 12 years in prison. Arrizabalaga Basterrechez, Andoni. Arrested April
1969. Condemned to death by a military tribunal in Burgos (the sentence later commuted to life imprisonment). Bilbao Cos, Josu. Arrested January 1969. Condemned by a military tribunal to 15 years in prison. Bedialauneta Laca, Andoni. Arrested April 1969.
Condemned by the War Council to 25 years in prison. Carrera Aguirrebarrena, Antxon. Arrested March
1969. Condemned by the Burgos trials to 12 years in prison. Eguireun Totorica, Jose Luis. Arrested March 1971.
Condemned by a military tribunal to 20 years and by the Public Order Tribunal to 6 years in Garcia Arambarri, Inaki. Arrested April 1969. Condemned by a War Council to 25 years in prison. Garitaonaindia Garnacho, Carmelo. Arrested March
1971. Condemned to terms of 5 years and 20 years in two trials before the Public Order Tribunal; still must go before a military tribunal;
risks a 20 year sentence. Guesa laga Larreta, Enrique. Arrested April 1969.
Condemned in the Burgos trials to 50 years in prison. Ibargutxi San Pedro, Josu. Arrested April 1968.
Condemned by a military tribunal to 46 years in prison. Izaguirre Esnal, Felipe. Arrested April 1969. Condemned by a military tribunal to 10 years in prison. Jaca Aranalde, Patxi. Arrested April 1968. Condemned by a War Council to 20 years and by the Public Order Tribunal to 6 years. Lorono Echevarria, Josu. Arrested May 1969. Condemned by a military tribunal to 142 years in prison. Sarasketa Ibanez, Inaki. Arrested May 1968. Condemned to death by a military tribunal (sentence commuted to life imprisonment). Solaguren Urruchurtu, Lucio. Arrested in 1969.
Condemned by a military tribunal to 20 years in prison. Urquiza Arrasate, Luis Maria. Arrested in 1969.
Condemned by a military tribunal to 21 years in prison. Viar Echevarria, lanak. Arrested in 1969. Condemned by a military tribunal to 20 years in prison and by the Public Order Tribunal to 5 years; a further trial before the Public Order
Tribunal pending, 5 year sentence possible. Zubicaray Osa, Juan Maria. Arrested January 1973.
Condemned by the Public Order Tribunal to 3 years in prison. Zugadi Ramirez, Pedro Maria. Arrested in 1969.
Condemned by a military tribunal to 16 years in prison. B
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