Spain's dis-United Left
This month we publish two viewpoints on the situation within Spain's
Pedro Montes and Jesús Albarracín are members of the United Left's federal leadership, and associated with the "Critical Sector" current in has it acted with the same degree of disloyalty towards IU as the PDNI did.
Time will tell whether this current, which is dispersed and uneven in its level of implantation, will loyally defend its positions inside IU or whether it will play the trade unions.
Jaime Pastor is a leader of the Alternative Space current, which won
9% of delegate votes at the United Left's 5th Assembly last December.
A Balance Sheet of the 5* Federal
Assembly - Pedro
Montes and Jesús
Albarracín
An analysis of an assembly dominated from beginning to end by the question of the incoming leadership must start by explaining the results of the election of the members of the Federal Political Council
("The Council) - the IU leadership body - decided by the assembly.
Only 1,286 of the
1,370 accredited delegates participated in the election of the new Council. Of this number, 112 cast blank ballots, signifying rejection
(for different reasons) of the majority federal slate headed by
Julio Anguita, who received 966 votes.
The Alternative
Space ticket obtained
108 votes and the so- called Third Way slate
102. Of the 89 members elected to the Council,
73(82%) come from the the majority, and 8(9%)
from each of the other two slates.
Party of the New Left?
The
Democratic
Party of the New Left
(PDNI) was expelled from IU before the congress. This was a party favourable to the Maastricht Treaty, and wanting to make agreements with the social democrats at whatever price.
@domshe
12 International Viewpoint #297
The PDNI also supported Spain's union leaders when they agreed to make layoffs cheaper and easier and reduce pensions in the name of "modernisation." The Third Way
Despite their departure, the spectrum of political views represented in IU has not been significantly reduced. The Third Way current, which has significant support from the majority sector of Spain's biggest trade union federation, the Workers Commissions (CCOO), occupies practically the same right-wing political space as the PDNI. Though it has not openly put forward its positions yet, nor the role hitherto performed by the PDNI, undermining IU's public image and, in the final analysis, doing the dirty work for the
The basic, latent problem in IU has not changed. There is a massive political struggle taking place between the more moderate, defeatist left, and those sections of the left which are still oriented to militant struggle in both the political and trade union fields.
The future of IU, and particularly the behaviour of the Third Way, depends on the policies of the leaders of the "official"
sector of CCOO, notably its general
Antonio Gutierrez. He denounces imaginary interventions by IU and the Spanish Communist Party (PCE)
in CCOO "but has openly put "his" union confederation at the service of the PDNI or the Third Way.
Although the Third Way's results in the assembly were greater than the current's numerical weight among the delegates, they did correspond to their real support within IU.
The positions and practice of the current are implicitly accepted by some sectors and intermediate leaderships, including the majority.
Although its base is dispersed and does not represent a homogeneous layer, the right-wing inside IU is directly or indirectly represented by the Third
The implantation and infthe right is luence of stronger than one might have expected. Particularly within a political force that claims to be on the anticapitalist left.
Alternative Space
The Alternative Space is more difficult to evaluate. Its results in the assembly did not reflect its weight among the delegates, to say nothing of its grassroots support. It has taken advantage of the
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* Europe United Left.
• £2.50/$4. Cheque payable to P. Rousset, IIRE, Postbus 53290, 1007 Amsterdam, Netherlands discontent provoked by the majority slate among wide layers and the high percentage of blank votes.
In Madrid, one of its stongholds, Alternative Space obtained its delegates to the assembly through the umbrella of the Federation majority, which is among the most right wing and bureaucratic in the IU. Once at the congress, it proposed its own delegate slate!
Alternative Space is composed of a heterogeneous combination of layers of diverse origins, with little cohesion, and a weakly shared political basis.
Despite the public role played by leaders like Jaime Pastor or the ecologists, Alternative Space is more of a conglomerate than a current, in which positive agreements are given less priority than reacting against the federal majority or the PCE apparatus. This is sometimes justified by the bureaucratic practices from which IU is not exempt, but it is not enough to give political cohesion to the current.
To some extent, this is a platform that exists to protect the interests of an assortment of leaders with weak bases. The leaders of the Alternative Space have "invested" in dissidence, an investment that gives good returns due to the majority's concern to demonstrate that plurality is a hallmark of IU.
The ambiguity of the Alternative Space is such that is difficult to say whether it is on the right or the left of the IU majority-since everything fits in the category of "alternative"
In practice, however, it is on the right; in terms of social policy, and in the way it relates to the class struggle. The current advocates a 'red, green and violet' alternative, but its red credentials are unclear. Some members of the Space even have ties with the official sector of CCOO).
There is a gap between the rhetoric and the reality of the Alternative Space They put themselves forward as champions of internal democracy, but in their Madrid stronghold they have not stopped supporting a bureaucratic and unscrupulous regional leadership.
The Alternative Space's victory at this 5th Assembly is likely to be artificial and ephemeral because of its lack of ideological consistency and the diversity of its components. Its real influence 1s very limited, though there is the risk that the media might use the Space as a launch pad for continuing to harass IU, presenting it as a divided organisation with permanent internal tensions. Inside the majority
The federal majority has come out of the assembly as politically disperse and contused as it went in. None of the serious problems of leadership were resolved. IU of the outgoing leadership, all the members of the FPC elected at the 4th assembly continue in the same posts.
Unfortunately, the departure of the PDNI has not served to promote a clarification of political positions within the IU including the sectors that supported the federal majority. On the contrary, the ideological hothouse of this majority was reproduced in the 5th Assembly.
The political documents adopted (Manifesto and Programmatic Fundamentals) express a coherent, reinforced left line - anticapitalist objectives, the struggle against neoliberalism, autonomy from the PSOE, a proposal for unity of action on the left, the 35-hour week, mobilisation as the key strategy, a federative Spanish
But at the same time, the "new" leadership and Council are a clear repetition of their predecessors. They even include those who have (actively or passively) fought the positions of the federal leadership, and are very close to the Third Way.
The political degeneration represented by the saying "paper accepts anything written on it" has been accepted. The majority refuses to express disagreements on past or future policies, keeping every position of authority for itself, so that its policy can be imposed, regardless of the documents approved by the 5th Assembly. Weak leadership
Although the majority of the delegates opted for a firmly lett policy, a leadership capable of carrying it out did not emerge at the 5th Assembly. Partly because a leadership core did not emerge capable of implementing the line. But also because many opposition elements, who to a greater or lesser degree reject the federal line, remain in the central leadership and above all, in the regional federations. And these are the IU structures that have the resources to put decisions into practice.
The gap between the documents and the composition of the leadership, and the lack of a leading group with acknowledged authority, are very negative aspects of this 5th Assembly.
This gap between theory and practice was identified, the outgoing leadership's organisational report, as a fundamental concern. In exactly the same terms as it was at the 4th Assembly! Again we heard self-criticism for the poor functioning of the federal leadership tasks not carried out, compartmentalisation, lack of communication, duplicating work, power struggles, excessive numbers of bodies, etc.). But it seems that none of these problems are going to be resolved.
Spain * All of which gives rise to the concern that as an exercise in reflection, evaluation and correcting errors, this 5th assembly may prove to have been a fiasco.
This lack of leadership became evident as the Assembly developed. There was no team in charge to follow the debates and detend the documents of the outgoing leadership. And no-one to impose a candidate list for the Council based on political criteria, in face of the terrible pressure for seats from the federations, On a subject as important as the statutes, widereaching changes were introduced, the repercussions of which no-one was in a position to judge.
On the equally essential question of how to put the IU's 'federalism' into practice, delegates approved motions in lavour of reintorcing the authority of the federal leadership, and broadening the powers of the federations.
In the final analysis, this Assembly ended in political disarray. It's still impossible to produce a definitive set of texts, and no-one really knows what parts of which ammendments were approved.
The majority remains as ill-defined as before, and with the same divisions and tensions. We will have to wait for the composition of the Presidency and the Executive Commission to see how the balance of forces between the various viewpoints has changed, and whether there is any greater political clarity within the leadership bodies. And the far-left?
There is some evidence that the revolutionary left has been reinforced, though this has yet to be confirmed in practice.
The most important aspect of the 5th Assembly from our viewpoint was the presentation of the new force that will be responsible for the IU's policies in Catalunya. After the breakdown of relations between the IU and the Initiative for Catalunya (IC), sections of the latter, along with other parties and groups, like the Catalan Communist Party (PCC) and the Alternative Left (EA - 4th International), have founded a new organisation with anticapitalist, radical demands.
Unlike IC, this new Catalan sister organisation will participate fully in the IU Federal Political Council. This can only move IU's centre of gravity towards the Jesús Albarracín is a member of the Executive Committee of the Comisiones Obreras (CCOO). Pedro Montes is a member of the Presidency of the Madrid federation of Izquierda Unida. Both are members of the Federal Political Council of IU. Militants of the Fourth International, they are also members of the editorial board of Quadernos Internacionales..
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION
1s still a rather inefficient organisation - its message, decisions, and objectives are only weakly translated into action, and its mobilising power is practically zero.
Nevertheless, continuity has been imposed. Despite the critical balance sheet
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From PCI to PDS by Livio Maitan