A revolutionary organization is above all correct ideas, perspectives, a program and methods, all of which constitute the central basis on which to build an organized structure with the objective of preparing the revolutionary leadership that the working class needs so that it can fulfill its historical task. , the socialist transformation of society.
This is why Marxists must always start from a clear analysis of the objective, real situation of events, in order to intervene in them. Marx explained that “Philosophers have limited themselves to interpreting the world in various ways; the point is to transform it” (Thesis on Feuerbach).
General context
The current context of the capitalist system worldwide shows us all the clear symptoms of a historically exhausted system. In his works, Marx objectively explained that no social system disappears before having exhausted all its possibilities for developing productive forces. When a System stops developing the productive forces, which generate all the wealth of any society, it is historically condemned to disappear, to be replaced by a superior society that allows humanity to continue advancing. Otherwise, humanity will suffer relapses into barbarism that had been surpassed in the past.
From this point of view, the current and permanent general crisis of capitalism is the main characteristic that predominates in the entire world situation. In reality, the capitalist crisis makes it clear that we are facing a true historical turning point, facing an authentic historical crossroads, which shows the complete exhaustion of capitalism as a progressive system, now converted into a totally reactionary system, which at every step puts to humanity as a whole under the threat of its own survival as a species on the planet.
In this context we live in totally turbulent times, where “the old has not finished dying and the new has not finished being born.” The new generations around the world today, for the first time under capitalism, do not aspire to live better than their previous generation. This is the objective basis for the accumulation of deep unrest and growing social polarization. This is why we can affirm that we are fully entering one of the most convulsive and revolutionary times in history. For this, we Marxists must prepare ourselves conscientiously.
A recent Oxfam study indicates that “the five richest people on the planet have doubled the level of their wealth from 2020 to 2023.” In just the next 10 years, it is expected that just one of these super-millionaires will have wealth in excess of a trillion dollars. In every corner the ruling class flaunts its growing and repugnant wealth, which condemns the overwhelming majority of society to live in increasingly precarious conditions, with increasing levels of misery and rampant poverty throughout the planet.
In this situation it is evident that a whole series of social plagues are developing, which reflect the dead end in which world capitalism finds itself. Everywhere we see an increase in the symptoms of the crisis of capitalism, which is not only an economic crisis, but also translates into a total state of pessimism about the future, starting with the strategists of the system themselves, who are aware of having become a piece of china for the very future of humanity.
We live in an authentic maelstrom of chaos that does not stop, with an increase in conflicts at all levels, which manifest themselves in growing violence, a general decline of culture, crises of morality, education, science and even in the very foundations of the bourgeois family. In this situation it is logical that the ruling class exudes pessimism about the future, which sees that we are heading towards an entire historical era of revolution and counter-revolution on a planetary scale never seen until now.
The capitalist system, based on private ownership of the means of production and national borders, has become a monumental obstacle, an absolute brake for humanity as a whole. In recent years we have seen the development of global phenomena that represent a guillotine on the neck of the human species: the development of the Covid19 Pandemic is a clear warning of the current reactionary character of capitalism, which is heading towards new pandemics under the current capitalist chaos, ultimately responsible for phenomena such as climate change, the increase in conflicts and national oppression, war massacres as we see in Ukraine or Gaza,… All of this “adorned” with misery, poverty and waves of refugees from one end to the other. another on the planet. Never before were Lenin’s words so true when he stated that “capitalism means endless horror for the masses.”
Throughout the world, the fight against this situation obviously cannot come from the hands of the ruling class, the big capitalists, bankers and oligarchs of the land. These solutions must be firmly ruled out as not coming from the ideas and program of the reformist leaderships, which never went beyond the framework of capitalism’s existence. In the current objective context, within the limits of the System, the policies of the reformists who claimed to aim to improve the living conditions of the masses no longer make sense. All these reformists, from one end of the planet to the other, have become “counter-reformists”, driven by the need of the bourgeoisie to fight against the crisis of their System by dumping its effects on the shoulders of the world working class. .
If it weren’t for the tragic social consequences that all this has, it is quite comical, to spend weeks laughing, to see the way in which all the strategists of the bourgeoisie and the group of reformists, who for some incomprehensible mystery still claim to be left-wing , faced the economic and financial crisis of 2008, as well as the COVID Pandemic starting in 2020, throughout the planet.
For decades we have heard them affirming that “capitalism is the only social and economic system capable of functioning” and the nagging refrain that “the State should not intervene in the economy.” Well, in all countries, regardless of whether there were formally “right or left” governments, the big businessmen, the big corporations and the bankers from all over the planet resorted to the same policy: looting the public coffers of the States, transferring huge sums of hundreds of billions from public budgets into their pockets. With this they tried to avoid a total collapse of the economy and finances of world capitalism, a complete bankruptcy of the world capitalist economy.
The so-called “bank and business bailouts” have been the fruit of conscious policies of the ruling class so that from the already empty pockets of the majority of society billions go directly into the pockets of the 1% of society. A true drain on the overwhelming majority of the world’s working class, condemned to cuts and reductions in all of its historical achievements, in order to maintain and increase the very deep pockets of the planet’s super-rich. All of this was done by transferring the mountain of private debt from banks and large companies, now converting it into a gigantic mountain of public debt, debt plus interest that they now intend to make the working class of all countries pay.
But this policy of increasing the mountains of debt, with public money going to the private sector, also has its logical limits. Through this policy they initially avoided the collapse, which they anticipated would provoke a revolutionary wave throughout the planet. But in reality they have not managed to solve any of the underlying problems of the world capitalist economy. In the best of cases they have only managed to postpone the problems, increasing them, for this next period. As we said, these problems are organic to the System itself, which express a brutal crisis of capitalist overproduction, which develops in a “slow agony to the death of the System.”
Everyone knows that “money does not grow on trees.” The result of the orgy of spending, using enormous sums of money that did not really exist, has meant the construction of a gigantic mountain of debt. Global debt currently exceeds the historical record figure of $307 trillion in 2023 (data from the Institute of International Finance). This figure covers the debt of governments, companies and households. We can and must categorically affirm that these figures represent an enormous mountain of debts that will never be paid.
The first stages of the global crisis of capitalism opened enormous and varied revolutionary opportunities and possibilities, across the five continents. From the so-called “Arab Spring”, passing through the enormous mass movements of the “indignants” around the world, with a clear rise in the processes of revolution in America, Asia, Africa and Europe.
This has simply been a first announcement of a new era, which will be characterized by enormous opportunities for the working class to fight for the socialist transformation of society. The triumph of a revolutionary process in a country, on any of the five continents, will change the entire situation worldwide. It will inspire and be an enormous example to follow for the masses of the entire world, who, by arming themselves with a genuine revolutionary leadership, will be able to tear down the weak walls of capitalism, sending this rotten System to the historical trash heap.
Outlook for Spain
Spain has always been the typical example of backward capitalism, with a ruling class that was always characterized by arriving late to all its historical events: the Spanish bourgeoisie was incapable of completely carrying out the bourgeois revolution and of fulfilling its obligations. historical tasks. Likewise, it was incapable of developing the capitalist economy, not arriving in time with the development of the so-called “industrial revolution.”
The Spanish bourgeoisie never fulfilled its duties and will never fulfill them again. These pending tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution are inscribed in the program of the proletarian revolution, which includes the tasks of separation of the State-Church, carrying out agrarian reform and guaranteeing the complete rights and freedoms of the different peoples that make up the current Spanish State, including the rights of oppressed nationalities such as Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia, etc. to independence.
The reality is that the Spanish State and its monarchy constitute a prison for people in the Iberian Peninsula, as well as in poor capitalist nations such as Mexico, Colombia, or Argentina where multinationals and Spanish imperialist corporations exploit and oppress millions for profits. to the oligarchy of the 1% of capitalists in our country.
For this reason, no progressive task can be expected from the Spanish capitalist class, nor democratic in historical terms, even if Sánchez’s capitalist government announces the freedom of Catalan political prisoners, or the abolition of prostitution. These measures are not a “gracious concession” from Sánchez’s capitalist government, but the product of a long struggle by the Catalan people and Spanish women.
The backward character of Spanish capitalism was the basis on which the domination of the bourgeoisie was established, which has always been united by thousands of visible and invisible ties with the big bankers and landowners, owners of large areas of land. This development of Spanish capitalism has always given it a very specific character of unequal and combined development, also modeling the development of the working class and day laborers, which throughout its own historical development learned and gained great revolutionary traditions, that have characterized at each stage the development of the class struggle in the Spanish State.
If we have to choose a word to define the current situation of the entire situation in Spain, almost without a doubt this word would be PRECARIETY. And a situation where precariousness reigns can only mean instability, uncertainty, bitterness and ultimately a dialectical preparation of enormous social upheavals that we will see develop in this next period.
Normal people, normal workers and young people, only aspire to be able to look to the future with certain certainties, with certain guarantees that they and their families will be able to move forward. However, such a vision is ruled out for most today. The crisis of Spanish capitalism makes it impossible to give the slightest guarantees for the future for the overwhelming majority of society.
Today the labor market in the Spanish State has an official precariousness rate of 40%. This represents a constant return to the past for the entire working class, which was brutally attacked in all of its rights and living conditions at each stage of the crisis of capitalism, fundamentally after the 2008 crisis.
Today, workers, and especially young workers, suffer firsthand the brutal consequences of the attacks that we have been enduring. Today salaries are more than 7% lower, in real terms, than the salaries before the 2008 crisis. The biggest attacks materialized in the Labor Reform approved by the Rajoy government, in order to facilitate and reduce layoffs and eliminate negotiation rights, remain in force, despite all the misleading propaganda of the PSOE-UNIDAS PODEMOS government, with the Minister of Labor Yolanda Diaz at the helm, in the sense that they were going to repeal that PP Reform, and later say that they would reform it with an agreement between employers and unions, … In the end they made mere cosmetic changes, which do not affect reality, which results in worse working and living conditions.
In the Spanish State right now, 10% of the population accounts for 54% of the country’s total wealth, compared to 8% owned by half the population. Social and economic inequalities have reached historic highs in this last period. With more than a third of the jobs being precarious, more than 36% of the workers, this means that the possibility of going from one day to the next to unemployment permanently hangs on the necks and minds of the workers, which currently affects officially 12% of workers. According to government data, of the 12 million workers, 2 million are unemployed. These figures almost double among young people, where unemployment levels reach 30%.
Precariousness and total absence of perspectives for the future. According to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), 55% of young people up to the age of 30 live at home with their parents, given the economic impossibility of being able to emancipate themselves. All of these data taken together represent a complete recipe for social explosions in this next period, which will be of a totally virulent character as they are fueled by years and decades of bitterness, hatred and frustration, all of which today condemns capitalism to the overwhelming majority of the population, especially the youngest sectors of the population.
Regime of ’78
In the Spanish State we are living under the roof of the so-called Regime of ’78, the year in which the Spanish bourgeoisie was able to put up the scaffolding that allowed it to abort the revolutionary process in which Spain was installed after the fall of Franco’s military dictatorship, with the invaluable collaboration of the traditional leaderships of the workers’ organizations, without which this would not have been possible.
The Spanish Constitution of 1978 was presented as a democratic constitution, but in reality it consecrated and kept alive the entire system inherited from the dictatorship, starting with the private ownership of the fundamental levers of the economy, continuing with the installation of the Monarchy (to Juan Carlos I of Borbón designated him directly as King Francisco Franco), the reactionary structures of the Judiciary, the Chain of Command of the Army and the Police,… and the approval of an Amnesty Law that meant the prohibition of trying crimes of the dictatorship.
In the ’78 constitution, limited and unrealistic democratic rights are “enshrined” in practice. There is talk and talk about the right to work, except for the unemployed who do not have that right; of the right to Housing, except for those who cannot buy at golden prices the homes built by large construction companies and real estate companies,…
At the same time, it is such a “democratic” Constitution that it denies fundamental rights, such as the ability of citizens of a nationality to freely decide what type of ties they wish to continue maintaining with the rest of the peoples that make up the so-called Spanish State. The simple exercise of the right to self-determination was excluded from this constitution. So democratic that the king can dedicate his entire life to doing unclear business, with impudence, but he can never be judged for these things,…
On May 15
The enormous pre-revolutionary mobilizations that Spain experienced with the one known as the 15-M Movement of 2011 put the squares of Spanish cities full of young people and workers, clearly questioning the entire existing situation. As a spontaneously nascent movement, 15-M became a movement that questioned the very bases of the functioning of capitalist society: against the evictions that banks were and are carrying out, leaving people without homes and empty houses; against government bailouts of big banks; against the privileges of the minority of social parasites, including the privileges of the so-called “royal family”,
In short, we were facing a movement that questioned the foundations on which the Regime of ’78 was established and that could have been openly overthrown, proposing its replacement by a government of the workers, the youth and the oppressed. This is the true meaning of everything that the birth of PODEMOS expressed at its core, as a political organization that emerged from the bowels of the 15-M movement.
It is clear, it was even more so in those moments of struggles in the squares and streets of the Spanish State after May 15, 2011, that the old leaderships of the traditional organizations of the so-called left had merged to the core with the structures of the Regime of ’78. Since before the death of the dictator Franco, the leaders of the PSOE and the PCE had been turning and turning their positions towards the right, accepting the entire established order of things and had come to constitute themselves as bastions of the regime itself.
From nothing, the struggle movement promoted the creation of an organization, in which the influence of the movement itself on its leaders made them question from the bottom up the maintenance of the Regime of 78 itself. At that time we could listen to what would be the maximum leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, make speeches in leftist terms, paraphrasing Marx when he stated that “they would take heaven by storm.” And based on the conscious mobilization of workers and youth this could have been possible.
After the founding of Podemos, in May 2014 in the European elections this organization obtained 5 MEPs (without relying on the traditional electoral campaigns of hundreds of millions of euros that large banks and corporations lend for them). At that time, Podemos already had 100,000 members and in a few months, in October 2014, the party already had 200,000 members. On December 20, 2015, in the general elections, Podemos actually became the main political force of the Spanish left, with more than 20.68% of the votes and a representation in the Parliament of 69 deputies.
All these data demonstrate the enormous potential acquired by the movement of our class, which made leaps and bounds advance the consciousness of millions of workers and young people. But once again, these data demonstrate the enormous importance of our class having and preparing a genuine revolutionary leadership to at the key moment direct all the fighting potential of our class towards the task of taking power. In the words of Lenin, “History will not forgive any delay to the revolutionaries who can triumph today (and who will surely triumph today) and who tomorrow risk losing a lot, perhaps losing everything.”
But this last period showed that ultimately the leaders of Podemos (even in the case of Pablo Iglesias, perhaps the most honest of them) were not consistent Marxists, but at best left-wing reformists, who did not see beyond of the very limits of the capitalist system.
This led him, in the words of P. Iglesias, to affirm over and over again nonsense such as that “the key is not a right-left axis, but democracy-dictatorship.” From a theoretical point of view this meant a total surrender to the system and to do so they followed the often followed policy of “institutional or parliamentary cretinism.” The leaders of Podemos, who thought that they were much more intelligent and clever than the old social democratic leaders of the PSOE and IZQUIERDA UNIDA, began to flee from the mobilizations in the streets, from relying on the social support that the mobilizations provided to believing that they From institutional and even ministerial offices, they could change things, leaving the working class and youth on the sidelines.
Following the December 2015 election results, Podemos leaders negotiated with the right-wing PSOE leadership and became part of Spain’s first coalition government since Franco’s death, which they pompously called “the most progressive government in history.” from Spain”.
You, my friend, can peel an onion layer by layer. But friend, we must remind you from Marxism that, if you try to hunt a tiger paw by paw, the almost certain result is that you will end up being that tiger’s food. And this, precisely this, is what has happened with the leaders of PODEMOS AND IZQUIERDA UNIDA, once they became part of the government of the bourgeoisie led by Pedro Sánchez and the right-wing social democrats of the PSOE, which for many decades has not They are nothing more than open agents who defend the interests of the ruling class, Spanish and international, as we see these days in their cynicism in relation to the massacre in Gaza by Israeli Zionism.
Pablo Iglesias abandoned the Vice Presidency of the government and left Irene Montero, Alberto Garzón (then top leader of IU-PCE) and the famous and perennial member of bureaucratic apparatuses, Yolanda Diaz, whom Pablo Iglesias also joined since his departure from the government. I designate as head of the list of the following electoral candidacy.
The Spanish working class is rich in great revolutionary traditions throughout its history. It is the working class that expelled the Bourbon monarchy in 1931, proclaiming the republic; the same one that led to the rise of fascism in the proclamation of the Commune of Asturias in October 1934 and that for weeks allowed the Asturian workers, with the miners at the front, to have power in their hands for weeks; the same one that spontaneously and then against the social democratic and Stalinist leaders themselves, aborted the triumph of the fascist coup d’état in July 1936 (the fascists had to carry out a civil war for 3 years to crush the workers; it is this class that I endure and fight against the Franco dictatorship for 40 years,…
At this time, with a clear social polarization to the right and left in Spanish society, if we do not see the open development of even a general process of workers’ struggles, it is due first and foremost to the great obstruction that the bureaucratic apparatuses of the the unions, of CC.OO. and UGT, which are guided by a constant and permanent policy of betrayal of the working class, practicing a union policy based on AGREEMENTS AND CONSENSUS, CONSENSUS AND AGREEMENTS.
Despite this harmful role played by union leaders, recent years have not been exempt from important workers’ struggles throughout Spain. From the struggles of the so-called “Tides”, in defense of Health, Education, Public Pensions, to very tough and police-repressed struggles from a government that calls itself “the most progressive in history”, such as the struggles of the Metal workers in Cádiz, Ferrol, the struggle of the workers of the Michelin factory in Álava,…
In a context where the Spanish capitalist economy is clearly heading towards recession, within the context of the global crisis of world capitalism, in these coming months the confrontation between classes in the Spanish State is inevitable. We do not know the date, it is impossible to predict, but a serious analysis based on the material base of society indicates that any spark can ignite the social powder keg in the coming months, in this next period.
After a brutal drop in Spanish GDP in 2020 of almost 12%, in 2022 capitalism was able to emerge from the confinement imposed by the global COVID pandemic by growing 5.8%. But for the following year this growth dropped to 3.4% and for this year everyone speaks of growth below 1.9%, even with FUNCA predicting less than 0.7%.
Before the capitalist economy has entered recession again, we already see a total social collapse of the so-called “political center”, which has caused the disappearance of the party with which sectors of the Spanish bourgeoisie had proposed replacing the PP, harassed by chronic corruption. institutionalized. Today CITIZENS, the name they had given to that party, is out of the game. The much-vaunted rise of Spanish fascism, represented by the far-right Vox, is clearly in decline.
The leaders of the PSOE continue to stand fundamentally thanks to the fundamental errors that those who call themselves to the left commit every three minutes. But it is quite probable, we would say most likely, that Pedro Sánchez will be unable to hold out and exhaust the entire legislature on this occasion. Social instability can lead to general elections in Spain at any time.
Everything indicates that the leaders of the PCE-IU, based on a totally petty and right-wing policy, will be incapable of recovering any fundamental social support they had in their day. Last year we witnessed a strong internal response to the leadership of the PCE, from the ranks of the Communist Youth, which were dissolved by the leadership of the PCE, using the typical methods of old Stalinism, all of which has caused the last congress of the Communist Party, this organization has split in two, with one sector proposing to remain in the PCE and another almost 50% that has decided to split and seek to build the organization in the Socialist Movement, a youth organization that is making important advances among sectors of youth in certain regions and areas of the Spanish State, which reflects that there is an increasingly broad layer between youth and workers who are looking for ideas, an explanation and an alternative to the world in which we live.
Can
On the other hand, as we said, the policy of the Podemos leadership has caused this organization, which sponsored a great future for the left in the movement, to be currently in a situation of terminal crisis. Podemos’s great electoral advance in the recent past, the result of its abandonment of the social struggle, has given way to a tremendous weakness in its presence in the institutions. In the last general elections, the new electoral coalition headed by Yolanda Diaz obtained the paltry number of 31 parliamentarians, of which only 5 of them have been elected from among the Podemos leaders.
The current situation of Podemos is that we are witnessing a flight of its leaders, most of whom are moving even more towards right-wing positions. Podemos is experiencing the worst of this world, having lost the ground of the street, of its influence in social mobilizations, now they have also lost their representation in the institutions. Headquarters without militancy close and opportunists, like rats on a sinking ship, jump to where they can continue to maintain perks and salaries.
Graphically we can see what the situation is in two moments, close in time, but totally distant in their political and social meaning:
• January 17, 2014, in the Madrid neighborhood of Lavapiés, Pablo Iglesias presented the formation of Podemos, which made the entire establishment of the Spanish bourgeoisie tremble.
• March 20, 2024, in the same neighborhood of Lavapiés, Pablo Iglesias inaugurates a bar-restaurant, where he symbolically presents the revolutionary drink of the moment, a Martini which he has named “Durruti”, the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist leader of the 1930s, which before his assassination at the entrance to Madrid was turning towards the program and positions of internationalist Trotskyism.
Build the forces of a Marxist leadership
In these coming months we will be able to have greater clarity about all this. In the recent Galician elections Podemos and Yolanda Diaz’s new brand, Sumar, did not obtain any representation. Now there are elections called in Euskadi and Catalonia, as well as elections to the European Parliament. All of them can lead to the de facto disappearance of Podemos and that Sumar, on the right of what was previously Podemos, is left with the simple objective that the specialists in occupying positions continue sucking at the ministerial teats, until there are finally elections. general.
In any case we can be sure of one fundamental thing. This period we have entered makes the struggle of the Spanish working class completely inevitable to avoid continuing to be crushed by the ruling class in its constant thirst for benefits and more benefits. In the development of this struggle, the working class needs to forge a revolutionary leadership, based on the correct ideas of Marxism. Nothing can replace this need.
Without such a leadership it will be impossible for the working class to take power and build its own necessary workers’ government, which puts on the table the expropriation of the wealth that today is in the hands of big businessmen, multinationals, bankers and landowners. This is the precondition to begin talking about putting an end to the endlessly growing horror that capitalism does not subject, taking control of the fundamental levers of the economy to plan it and make it work on the basis of the growing needs that exist in society. .
This is the perspective of Marxism and in view of it we can only propose that every worker, every conscious young person get to work alongside us, in the historical task of building a genuine revolutionary leadership, which at this moment is the number one priority task that we have ahead of us. For this reason, we are launching La Marx España with the aim of regrouping revolutionaries who are looking for a political tool with which to end capitalism in Spain, and in Europe.
We are part of Marx International and we make this call to all consistent Marxists, and those who approach Marxism to join this call and amplify it, taking it to all corners of our country.
If you agree with the points presented in this call, come to us, contact us in your city, find us on social networks, send us your WhatsApp, email, and join the activities and meetings.
