Berenguer’s Resignation

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I recollect that I wrote to you by way of "speculation" how good it would have been had the boycott forced the monarchy to its knees, or at least to one knee. Now this is an accomplished fact. The immediate political significance of Berenguer’s resignation is not great, in and of itself, but its symptomatic significance is tremendous. The impotence of the monarchy; the degeneration of the ruling cliques; their lack of self-confidence; fear, fear, fear of the people, of the revolution, of the morrow; their attempts by means of extreme concessions to forestall the most terrific consequences: these stand out in the resignation of Berenguer and the semi-capitulation of the king. Marvellous! Truly marvellous! One could not imagine anything better! The superstitious respect for power in the consciousness of the people will be relentlessly undermined by all this. A wave of satisfaction, of confidence, of daring will go through millions of hearts, warming them, inspiring them, spurring them on.

The general revolutionary situation in which the proletarian party must act is now eminently favourable The whole question now lies with the party itself. Unfortunately, the communists were not the stars in the boycotters' performance. That is why they did not achieve any important victories in the campaign of the last two or three months. In periods of stormy revolutionary flux, the authority of the party grows rapidly, feverishly — if, in decisive turns, at new stages, the party immediately advances the necessary slogan, whose correctness is soon confirmed by the events. … In the course of the last few weeks and months, opportunities have been allowed to escape. But it does no good to look back now. We must look ahead. The revolution is only beginning. We can win back a hundredfold what we have allowed ourselves to lose.

The constitutional-parliamentary problem is becoming the centre of official political life. We cannot adopt a nonchalant attitude toward this. The slogan of the revolutionary constituent Cortes must now be advanced, to my mind, with double force.

We must not recoil from using distinctly democratic formulations. For example: universal suffrage without discrimination because of sex, from the age of eighteen, with no restrictions. Eighteen years for Spain, a southern country, is perhaps even too old. We should stake everything on the youth. …

… The question of the united front of all communist factions, the official party included, will inevitably come up on the agenda. The masses will feel in the coming weeks and months the strong need for a united and serious revolutionary leadership. Squabbling among the communists will irritate the masses. They will force unity — not forever, because events may once more fling the various factions in different directions. But for the coming period, the rapprochement of the communist factions seems to me absolutely inevitable. Here too, as in the question of the boycott, as well as in every other live political question, that faction will win that takes the initiative in uniting the communist ranks. The communist left must itself become united and organized to be able to take the initiative. It is necessary to create immediately a well-organized faction of the Left Opposition, no matter how small it may be to begin with, which will publish its own bulletin and its own theoretical organ. Of course, this does not exclude the participation of the Left Communists in broader organizations; on the contrary, it assumes it, but at the same time organizing the Left Opposition is the indispensable condition for this participation.