Quotations from Chairman Carrillo

Santiago Carrillo's 218-page Eurocommunism and the State is the strongest written argument for Eurocommunism yet made by one of its leading proponents. The book sounds all the familiar Eurocommunist themes: independence from Moscow, democratic plurality, universal suffrage, respect for human rights. But the Spanish Communist leader goes much further: he flatly rejects the Soviet Union as a model for Western European Communism, calling instead for a socialist but democratic Western Europe that is dominated by neither the Soviet Union nor the U.S. He examines the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat and finds it undemocratic. In short, he gives the Soviets plenty to get angry about.

At the same time, Carrillo gives the West plenty to think about. He explicitly points out, for instance, that Communists must not be confused with Social Democrats, and in effect he demolishes the notion, harbored by some Western observers, that Eurocommunism is committed to peaceful change in all situations. Excerpts:

WHERE MOSCOW WENT WRONG. [The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968] was the last straw. Any idea of internationalism ended for us ... Progress of the socialist movements in the developed capitalist countries would aid Soviet society and Soviet Communists in making progress in their transformation [from the present dictatorship] into an authentic workers' democracy. This is a historic necessity that would greatly benefit the cause of socialism. So it is all the more lamentable that in 1968 our Czechoslovak comrades were not allowed to continue their experiment.

EASTERN EUROPE. Inequalities persist, there are vital problems ... The great unresolved question survives: that of democracy and of conflicts and contradictions that a unilateral propaganda machine dissimulates but does not resolve.

REVOLUTION. We are not returning to social democracy! ... We do not rule put, by any means, the possibility of taking power through revolution, if the dominant classes close democratic channels and the circumstances that make revolution possible were to come about. [But in Spain today] we affirm that it is possible to go from dictatorship to democracy without force.

THE MISSION OF EUROCOMMUNISM.

Eurocommunism must show that the victory of the socialist forces in Western Europe will not multiply Soviet power nor presuppose the extension of the one-party Soviet model. It will be an independent experience with a more advanced socialism that will have a positive influence on the democratic evolution of the [socialist models] existing today.

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