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This new party contained within it both Maoist and Trotskyist elements. By late 1975, the Trotskyites had gained control of the group, and the Maoists withdrew.[447]

The first chairman of the new party, Gunnar Andresson “claimed that the new party was the rightful heir to the original ICP.” Eric S. Einhorn reported that “With its warnings against modern revisionism and Soviet ‘social imperialism,’ the ICP-ML has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and is mentioned frequently in the Peking Review.”[448]

Although the ICP-ML participated in the 1979 elections it was reported that it “drew little voter support.” In that year, it denounced the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea, in its periodical Stettabarattan (Class Struggle).[449]

The leaders of the ICP-ML were apparently somewhat confused by the struggle within the Chinese Party that succeeded the death of Mao, with the purge of the Gang of Four. Interviewed by the Trotskyist newspaper Neisti on the subject, Gunnar Andres-son said, “It is our judgment that this is a struggle against the revisionist course and the revisionism that Wang Hug-wen and the others stood for. It is our appraisal that Hua Kuo-feng is faithful to Marxism-Leninism and the working class. … This struggle has been under way since the end of the Tenth Congress. … At a certain point this led to the clique around Teng Hsiao-ping being unmasked. Although Wang and his associates were not supporters of Teng and his revisionist course, they were only the left face of revisionism.”[450]

However, the ICP-ML apparently rapidly clarified its position and expressed its support for the successors of Mao. Eric S. Einhorn reported in 1979 that “With its warnings against modern revisionism and Soviet ‘social imperialism,’ the ICP-ML has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and is mentioned frequently in the Peking Review”[451]

The party continued its Chinese allegiance. Arti T. Gudmundsson, by then chairman of the party, signed a statement together with leaders of a Danish Maoist group denouncing the 1979 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and “Soviet foreign policy in general.”[452]

By 1988, Eric S. Einhorn reported that “After brief flurries in the 1970s, Maoism and Trotskyism have no organizational structures … in Iceland.”[453]

Conclusion

Maoism succeeded in gaining more support in the Scandinavian countries that it did in most of the rest of Europe. In Denmark and Norway, aside from the Maoists’ influence among students, they for a while succeeded in gaining a tiny but noticeable foothold in the labor movement. In Sweden, they were the major political force within the movement against the Vietnam War. Even in Finland they apparently constituted at least an annoyance to the pro-Moscow Communists. In Sweden and Iceland, they assumed the traditional Communist Party name when the older parties adopted different designations.

However, by the late 1970s, Maoism was on the decline in Scandinavia. The principal Danish Maoist party had begun to move away from the association with the ideas of Mao Tse-tung. In Sweden, one of the Maoist groups had moved into the Albanian camp. In Iceland, Maoism had apparently disappeared as a recognizable political group by the late 1980s.

Maoism in Spain

With, the relative relaxation of the regime of Francisco Franco, beginning in the 1960s, and his death in November 1975, the Communist movement and other political groups opposed to the dictatorship revived, or came into existence for the first time. Spanish Communism had divided into a number of different “parties” by the time of Franco’s death, and this splintering continued in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These included not only the traditional Spanish Communist Party (PCE) and splinters from it, but several different Trotskyite groups.[454]

Starting in the 1960s, the PCE veered in a “Eurocommunist” direction, under the leadership of its Secretary General, Santiago Carrillo. However, this orientation of the party aroused considerable opposition within its ranks, leading to several splits. One of these was the Workers Communist Party of Spain (PCOE), led by Enrique Lister, who had been one of the principal military figures of the PCE during the Spanish Civil War, which Carrillo maintained was financed by the Soviet Union.[455] By the middle 1980s there also existed the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain (PCPE), the Progressive Federation (FP), the Party of Socialist Action (PASOC), and the Roundtable for the Unity of the Communists (MUC), headed by Santiago Carrillo, who had by then been expelled from the PCE,[456] None of these was Maoist.

Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist)

Among the first groups formed in opposition to the PCE line carried out under Carrillo’s leadership were those that came to form the first Maoist-oriented party in Spain, the Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist) Partido Comunista de Espana (Mamsta-Leninista). According to an official account by the PCE-ML, “At the beginning of 1964 there developed three Marxist-Leninist groups in the interior of the country, with ramifications in the European emigration, in addition to one in Colombia.” Known by the names of their publications, there were the Spark (La Chispa) the Revolutionary Workers World (Mundo Obrero Revolucionario), Proletarian (Proletario) and Democratic Spain (Espana Democratica).

According to this report, the Spark was “composed in more than 95 percent of militants of the PCE, some veterans of the war and some middle-ranking cadres, with a more than 90 percent working class origin.”[457] It had groups in Madrid, Catalonia, Andalucia and Switzerland, and reportedly “was the most cohesive group, most consequent on the struggle against revisionism within the Party.”

Revolutionary Workers World was “fundamentally of proletarian extraction, predominantly of newly recruited members in Spain, together with old militants in France.” The Proletarian group “was formed by various anti-revisionist nuclei, some of whom had never belonged to the PCE.” It had members principally in Madrid, Bilbao and Paris.

Finally, Democratic Spain “was formed completely by militants in Colombia, and except for one person had no base in Spain, and thus contributed but little to the process of unification of the groups.”

These groups finally united in December 1964. The official report noted that “Once the process of unification of the three principal groups began, there was constituted a Central Committee, in which the three groups were represented. After a bitter ideological struggle against some opportunist and Trotskyite elements, it was agreed to convoke the First Plenum of the Central Committee, enlarged by representatives of the different organizations of the country.” That meeting, December 14—17, 1964 established the Partido Comunista de Espana (Marxista- Leninista).[458]

Three subsequent Plenums were held, in 1967, 1968 and 1970. It was reported that in 1967 the party had sought to unite all pro-Maoist groups in Spain, but its efforts had failed.[459] Finally, in April 1973, the first congress of the PCE-ML met. It “approved the report of the Central Committee, and elaborated an important political resolution.”[460] According to H. Leslie Robinson, that congress “voted … to ‘revolutionize’ the methods of party management, develop party and mass organizations everywhere, reinforce the party in rural areas, and reinforce and accelerate the creation of armed defense and combat units.”[461]