iniuialives.o be sure me nreroren needs time to reconstitute militarily solid elements that are worthy of confidence, but its project can fail only as a result of the capacity of the soldiers and workers to take decisive new steps in the organisation of self-defence, within the framework of the Noe Saude, a representative of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, was warmiy greeted when he spoke at a meeting in London last week. But despite that it was seizing power on 11 November, and the Soviet Union's announcement that it will recognise the MPLA Government, its position is now in deadly danger following the gigantic onslaught launched by the reactionary forces of the FNLA, UNITA, South Africa and Zaire. Already the strategic regions of Benguela and Lobito have fallen into the hands of reaction; Zaiois troops are launching an offensive in Cabinda; while in Luanda the MPLA are heroically holding The fall of Luanda will force the MPLA to return to simple guerilla warfare in those regions where it still maintains a base. Much will depend in the coming days on the self-activity of the neighbourhood committees - who face the threat of intense repression if the FNLA return to Luanda. The British labour movement must demand now that the Labour Government gives immediate recognition to the MPLA. above all, how to finish for good with this machine of exploitation and oppression.
To advance along this road, our comrades of the LCR-ETA (VI) put forward a series of democratic slogans: liberation of the political prisoners; re-establishment of the right to strike, to meet, to organise; abolition of all censorship; separation of Church and State; dissolution of the repressive bodies; purging of the army, the administration, and the police, and punishment of the Francoist executioners; elections by proportional representation of constituent assemblies in the territory of the Spanish State; election of a national assembly for each oppressed minority to exercise freely its right to self-determination.
KEY POINTS
These are the key points for any real attack on the apparatus of the Francoist dictatorship, whatever the government and the regime which succeed it.
The most effective and fruitful is in such a way that the working class can impose them even if the bourgeoisie won't discuss them, even if the bourgeoisie engages in a wholehearted defence of the Francoist heritage - in other words, by means of the revolutionary general strike.
This is not to say that the overthrow of the dictatorship will necessarily take the form of such a general stike. means of struggling for these demands But to work within the perspective of a revolutionary general strike al- geoisie ready means a series of very concrete tasks. Instead of hiding from the workers the truth about the class character of the bourgeois army so as the better to gain the approval of democratic officers, it means building and developing soldiers' committees like those linked to the workers commissions in Alava province during the last strikes in Euzkadi (the Basque country).
SELF-RELIANCE Instead of claiming that it is possible to take over from the inside the trade union apparatus closely linked to the Francoist State, it means developing, unifying and centralising the workers commissions, the organs independent from the State which the workers have built for themselves during the years of underground struggle. Instead of relying on the generosity of this or that prince, it means developing the pickets and the other lessons of self-defence of workers' struggles. Instead of putting trust in this or that form of bourgeois domination, it means nourishing all the seeds of workers democracy: the sovereign assemblies, the elected and recallable committees.
WORKERS' FRONT Instead of a 'broad coalition' government going from the right to the left, as Carrillo suggests, it means a front of workers' organisations on a class programme, offering a comprehensive perspective to the peasantry as well as to the urban petty bourWhat matters to us about bourgeois democratic freedoms is that they create the most favourable conditions for the organisation and strug gle of the workers. That is why we demand these freedoms, without in any way tying this demand to a positive proposal by the bourgeois power, whether it be a constitutional monarchy or a parliamentary republic It is especially dangerous to counterpose the republic to the dictatorship without going any further. For the flower of the proletariat, for the workers who remember the struggles of their class, the short-lived Republic signifies not a glorious memory but the restoration of bourgeois order throughout 1936 and the repression of the Catalan proletariat in May 1937 - the school of capitula tion and defeat in the face of the tascist counter-revoruton SOCIALISM To the workers today, we say on the contrary: let us struggle together for the overthrow of the dictatorship, and the dismantling of its machine, but let us not start again on the sad road of yesteryear. This time we can do it, we must not stop halfway there The 'republican stage' has already cost us too much in the past. We must not stop until we have removed the very root of the dictatorship unitl we get rid of capitalist exploitation. There must be no pause, no halt between the democratic revolution and the proletarian revolution, the socialist revolution!