Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: personal networks, political strategies and the making of democracy
- PART I PERSONAL NETWORKS, POLITICAL TRADITIONS AND STATE POLICIES
- PART II SYNDICAL PRACTICES, SOCIAL STRUGGLES AND POLITICAL PROTESTS
- PART III POLITICAL PRACTICES, REPRESSION AND STRATEGIC RESPONSES
- 8 The revolutionary paradox: the changing political line of the Spanish Communist Party
- 9 A place in the struggle: personal networks and political practices in El Marco de Jerez
- 10 The other side of darkness: the repressive practices of the Franco regime
- 11 Contingent connections: the relationship between the workers' commissions and the Spanish Communist Party
- 12 Fighting with two faces: the strategic combination of legal and clandestine spaces
- PART IV POLITICAL STRATEGIES AND THE DEMOCRATIC PROJECT
- Bibliography
- Index
11 - Contingent connections: the relationship between the workers' commissions and the Spanish Communist Party
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: personal networks, political strategies and the making of democracy
- PART I PERSONAL NETWORKS, POLITICAL TRADITIONS AND STATE POLICIES
- PART II SYNDICAL PRACTICES, SOCIAL STRUGGLES AND POLITICAL PROTESTS
- PART III POLITICAL PRACTICES, REPRESSION AND STRATEGIC RESPONSES
- 8 The revolutionary paradox: the changing political line of the Spanish Communist Party
- 9 A place in the struggle: personal networks and political practices in El Marco de Jerez
- 10 The other side of darkness: the repressive practices of the Franco regime
- 11 Contingent connections: the relationship between the workers' commissions and the Spanish Communist Party
- 12 Fighting with two faces: the strategic combination of legal and clandestine spaces
- PART IV POLITICAL STRATEGIES AND THE DEMOCRATIC PROJECT
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Communists did not invent the workers' commissions. But when they emerged we saw them as something original … as a highly effective means of struggle, and we made every effort to spread that struggle.
Santiago Carrillo, in Nuestra BanderaFinally the Communist Party has found a way into the workplace. After half a century of looking for one, it now has its syndical ‘transmission belt’.
Victor Alba, El Partido Comunista en EspanaThis is the story of the making of democracy in Spain. Its basic empirical premise has been that its two principal protagonists were the workers' commissions and the Spanish Communist Party; and this premise has been defended on the grounds that these political actors were not only the first to enter the historical scene in opposition to the Franco regime but also the standard bearers of the struggle, around which other opposition organizations could begin to rally. Its main analytical assumption, on the other hand, has been that the strategic success of these actors was owing to their combination of legal and extralegal struggle as it evolved in the institutional context of the Vertical Syndicate; and this has been justified by the partial conversion of the high ground of the institutional terrain of Francoism to democratic purposes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Making Democracy in SpainGrass-Roots Struggle in the South, 1955–1975, pp. 184 - 198Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989