of the right.
2. The emphasis put by Carrillo on the intervention of the army to impose the will of the people. This might take one aback. But in fact it is highly revealing.
Carrillo is less and less able to believe in a surrender pure and simple from the bunker, and a peaceful hand-over. He knows perfectly well that the regime will not fall by itself like a rotten fruit - it will have to be shaken to earth, to break the back of the old Falangist and clerical apparatus. But to accomplish this deed, Carrillo would rather not base himself on the mobilisation of the masses, generalising and centralising strike movements like those in Euskadi.
The fact is that he fears the revolutionary dynamic - even more rapid than in Portugal - which could be unleashed by such a mobilisation, going beyond a simple democratic rupture and sweeping aside all possibility of national reconciliation. Nevertheless, it is still necessary to overturn the tottering regime: so once again he is back to the same impasse, or the same contradiction.
PUTSCHIST
Carrillo resolves the question by becoming a putschist. The parties of the left are getting ready, creating the necessary conditions, offering the maximum guarantees via the largest possible alliance with th bourgeoisie....and the military, the young officers of the left (of course), all they have to do is to give things a little push by way of a limited and pre-determined coup. That's the kind of dangerous absurdities to which mistrust of the mass movement leads.
In fact, at a time when the whole world is speculating on the succession - the heritage and the inheritors - the problem still remains. It is not so much a question of who as of how In an article in Le Monde, Calvo Serrer insists: "We must forget Franco. In the present situation, it is up to the Francoists - and first of all, Juan Carlos.' We reply: we must forget neither Franco, nor Juan Carlos, nor the Francoists, nor their crimes; but Franco must die and his regime must fall. The important thing is to determine how it will fall. The result will depend on the way it is accomplished.
CP general secretary Santiago Carrillo To make a deal with the bourgeoisie, offering it national reconciliation, is to leave it with the initiative. To encourage a left-wing miliatry coup is to subordinate once more the liberating action of the masses to a conspiracy which gives the trump cards to the bourgeoisie.
It is the working class of Euskadi which has heroically shown the way to finish off the regime - that of direct action, of the general strike. It has also shown the means to this: the united front, welding together the workers' organisations around the kind of concrete and anti-repressive demands which are entirely missing from the programmes of the Junta and the Convergence.
If the struggle for the overthrow of the dictatorship learns from this school, then nothing much will remain of Franco, Juan Carlos, or the petty combinations of Fraga, Ruiz Gimenez, Calvo Serrer and their like. Nothing much will remain of the petty manoeuvres of ths ago, killing 27 people.
sions.
The armed opposition to the Phalangist attacks, which began with the Palestinian organisations, is now dominated by a left-wing and nationalist coalition of parties including the important reformist bloc around Kamal Jumblatt (a leader of the Druze community) and the Communist Party. There has also been an important shift in the character of the fighting. From early skirmishes it then moved to the consolidation of fixed fortress-like positions within the city, finally developing into what is now a fluid and critical all-out battle for control of the strategic suburbs and neighbournoods OL DeIrUE SECTARIAN The appearance of a sectarian civil war originates in the peculiarities of the Lebanese socio-political structure. Throughout its modern history, the most privileged section of the Lebanese ruling class has been drawn from the Maronite Christian minority, which collaborated first with the French and then with American imperialism following World War II. Political control was maintained in Lebanon by the institutionalisation of sectarianism in all aspects of public life.
As a result, political leaders tended also to be communal, regional or religious leaders and vice versa. The state guaranteed a large degree of autonomy to the various sects and important legal jurisdictions. Amongst these guarantees was an unusual constitutional structure which allocated political positions in accordance with a hierarchy of political power of the various sects. Thus the chief of staff of the army is always a Maronite, whereas the head of government is a Sunni Moslem.
However, in the late 1960s the original economic and social strucThe evening of 19 October saw the eruption in Lebanon of the latest round in a succession of escalating battles. enveloped Beirut ever since the militia units of the reactionary Phalangist party attacked a civilian busload of Palestinians and Lebanese Moslems in Ain Al-Rumanah more than seven monSince then there have been over a dozen official 'ceasefires. The latest version was proclaimed while cabinet ministers and parliamentarians huddled together under a hail of machine gun fire and mortar and rocket explor ture which provided the binding apart.
to the Middle East in commerce, lining rapidly since 1971, at the Her good sectors.
of confessional divisions.
Lebanese territory in the south.
Serous working class and student strikes, which have been given a tremendous push forward by the uation in the refugee camps in its that broke out in May 1973 with the Palestinian movement.
ARABALHADORES ALLONAL it has been a rather slow week for our Iberian Fund Drive, particularly so in com parison with the rapid tempo of events in Spain and Portugal. The coming months will place heavy responsibilities on both the LCR-ETA(VI) in Spain and the LCI in Portugal; help us to provide them with the material resources necessary for the Fourth International to play its full role in the unfolding Iberian Revolution.
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These have framework for the maintenance of such a political system began to fall The opening up of the Arab world to imperialism, following the Nasserite era of relative isolation, has meant that traditional Lebanese hegemony over capital inflows banking, and finance is gradually being undermined. Furthermore Lebanese agro-business exports to the Arab countries have been decsame time as the costs of production have been spiralling upwards Inflation is rampant in basic consum As a cumulative result of all of these factors, the standard of living has been steadily declining. This has had an effect on all sectors of the working population regardless pression On top ineffective. of all of these internal changes has been the growth of the Palestinian refugee population following the 1967 war and the Israeli scorched earth policy towards the south of Lebanon, inclucing their numerous threats to occupy strategic parts of PARALYSIS This situation has led to num- ruling class.
total paralysis of the state apparatus in the face of the Israeli threat. The growing presence of the Palestinian resistance nas also underlined the weakness of the regime, especially after the inability of the Lebanese state to resolve the dual power sitfavour in the major confrontation In the face of such developments, the time-honoured method of the Lebanese ruling class of dealing with bourgeoisie.
Left-wing militiamen in Beirut prepare to repel a Phalangist assault. The unity of Moslem Arab workers with the Palestinian commandos has so far defeated the onslaught of the Lebanese bourgeoisie and CIAfinanced 'Christians'.
social discontent — a government shake-up and selective sectarian rewas proving increasingly The Phalangist party - which recruits mainly from discontented sections of the Maronite Christian petty bourgeoisie - has been acutely conscious of the growing impotence of the capitalist state in Lebanon. It is a well organised and heavily armed party with a strong Lebanese nationalist programme that uses chauvinism and religious sectarianism to maintain the privaleged position of the Maronite wing or tre It is therefore primarily interested in ensuring that the battle lines in Lebanon are drawn purely on religious confessional grounds, because it is only in this way that it can extend its social base to the whole of the Christian community war. and thereby hope to inflict a decisive defeat on the left wing and Ar ab nationalist organisations.
BALKED The Lebanese ruling class has so far balked from backing the Phalangists all the way. This is not only because it is itself divided between a Moslem and a Christian faction. but also and primarily because even the top Maronite bourgeoisie are aware of the dangers of the possible intervention of the full force of the Pales tinian resistance movement. the Arab regimes and even Israel into the military situation. Such development would mean a complete loss of any semblance of political independence for the Lebanese The Lebanese army is therefore being held in check, although it is cooperating with the Phalandicte in numerous under. cover ways.
At the same time the right wing of the Palestinian leadership is trying to exert its authority over the more militant wings to stop their intervention in the situation.
The reformist left and the Arab nationalist organisations are fight ing this war without a clear alternative perspective. While they have correctly fought against the establishment of a military government, they have instead supported the so-called patriotic wing of the Lebanese bourgeoisie (i.e. the Moslem wing, which has historically been oriented towards the various Arab ruling classes rather than having a direct relationship with Western imperialism). This has of course played directly into the hands of the Phalangists, because it reinforces the confessional rather than the class character of the present ASSISTANCE However, it seems unlikely that the Phalangists will be able to accom plish their reactionary project without the full and undivided assistance of the Lebanese army. Even then, the military relationship of forces would not be decisively in their fav our. In either case what we are witnessing is the rapid disintegration of the Lebanese state as it has existed since the Second World War. The precise nature of what will replace this state - and, indeed, the effect it will have on the whole Middle Eastern arena — is still buried in the uncertainty of the outcome of the present battles M. Jaafar
4 angola red weekly 6 november 1975