It leaps across frontier,
defying all barriers, it laughs at the threats and curses of the ruling
class and it sweeps aside the forces of the state. It cannot be halted.
The mass protests that are spreading from one country to another have
caught all the forces of the old society by surprise. They do not know
how to react. If they do nothing, the movement grows, but if they
attempt to crush it, it will grow much more rapidly.
It leaps
across frontier, defying all barriers, it laughs at the threats and
curses of the ruling class and it sweeps aside the forces of the state.
It cannot be halted. The mass protests that are spreading from one
country to another have caught all the forces of the old society by
surprise. They do not know how to react. If they do nothing, the
movement grows, but if they attempt to crush it, it will grow much more
rapidly.
May 15, Madrid. Photo: arribalasqueluchan!In
Spain tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets over the
last week. In demonstrations that seemed to come from nowhere,
demonstrators filled city plazas all over Spain in a wave of outrage
over government austerity policies and high unemployment rates. The
“experts” were taken completely off guard. Where had this movement come
from? The youth is apolitical, they said; the youth is apathetic.
For
years people have been patient, suffering in silence the impositions of
different governments. This created the optical illusion that people,
especially young people, were “apathetic” and indifferent to politics.
But this supposed indifference was only in relation to the existing
parties, not to politics per se.
It took a severe economic slump
to bring this mood of anger to the surface. But the anger was already
there beneath the surface. Superficial bourgeois commentators did not
see this because they confine themselves to superficial observation.
They see only the surface but are blind to the contradictions and
processes that are unfolding beneath the surface.
Overnight, this
supposed indifference has changed into its opposite. A new kind of
politics is born: the politics of the street. This is regarded with
horror by the ladies and gentlemen sitting in the Cortes, who regard
themselves as the supreme – indeed the only – representatives of the
Nation. But the real Nation is not in the Cortes. It is the working
class and the youth of Spain.
A conflict of generations?
Protests
have sprung up in over 150 cities and cities. It is a cry for change,
an outpouring of indignation of people who feel that nobody represents
them and nobody listens to them. The crowds camped out in Madrid and
across Spain are not demonstrating against this government but against
the system and the whole political class that upholds it.
young revolutionaries want to maintain order in the Puerta del Sol, to
avoid the accusations of “anarchy” and “hooliganism”. There is a crèche,
a kitchen area and even, it seems, a vegetable patch. The protest
organisers have urged those taking part not to confront the police, and
have tried to discourage the distribution of alcohol. “It’s a
revolution, not a drinking party,” read one sign. Brooms donated by
supporters are being used to keep the square clean. But a far bigger
broom will be needed to clean out the Augean stables of the bourgeois
political regime.
The movement in Spain began with the youth.
Naturally! It is the youth that carries on its shoulders the main burden
of the crisis of capitalism. It is the youth whose future is being
taken away by a decrepit and palsied system. It is the youth that has
nothing to lose and a world to gain by fighting. And it is the youth
that is prepared to fight.
But this is much more than a movement
of the youth. This is not, as some cynics have tried to depict it, a
“conflict of generations”. It is not a struggle of the young against the
old. It is a reflection of a general mood of discontent in society,
felt by young and old alike. They are frustrated by mass unemployment,
angry at the financial markets controlling government policy and
indignant at with wide-scale corruption:
“I’m happy that they’re
finally protesting. It was about time,” Maria, an elderly woman visiting
her grandson in the Puerta del Sol told the BBC ”They want to leave us
without public health and public education,” says another. “Half of our
youth is unemployed and they have raised the age of retirement,”
someone else adds. And everyone says: “We are having to pay for an
economic crisis that we didn’t cause but which was provoked by the
banks.”
“Spain is not a business. We are not slaves,” read one of
the hundreds of protest posters glued to the Puerta del Sol’s metro
station walls. That is the real voice of the Spanish people. This is a
movement that contains within itself all that is alive, all that is
healthy, all that represents hope for the future. It is a struggle of
the living forces of society against the dead and decaying forces of the
old order. It is the emergence of a New World that is struggling to be
born.
The revolt is spreading
The movement is not confined to Spain. The Guardian warns that “a
youth-led rebellion is spreading across southern Europe as a new
generation of protesters takes possession of squares and parks in cities
around Spain, united by a rejection of mainstream politicians and fury
over spending cuts.”
A lot of young people have been forced to
leave Spain precisely because of the situation. And they want to
protest too. Demonstrations have been arranged for outside the Spanish
embassy in London and in other European cities. The Spanish example is
being followed in Italy where protests are also planned in Florence and
other Italian cities, including Rome and Milan.
Italy so far has
not been forced into the sort of austerity measures imposed on Spain,
Portugal, Greece and Ireland. But its economy has barely grown in the
past 10 years and there is increasing evidence of exasperation with its
billionaire prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The tag
#italianrevolution has already appeared on Twitter.
Nor is the
ferment confined to the countries of southern Europe, In the last few
days the signs of popular discontent and anger are surfacing in one
country after another. In Georgia thousands of opposition supporters
have poured onto the streets of Tblisi to demand the resignation pf
President Mikhail Saakashvili. The demonstrators gathered outside
the parliament, before marching on to the presidential palace, where
they plan to hold an ongoing protest.
Correspondents say turnout
is falling and the opposition seems increasingly unsure of how to
continue its campaign. After a brief pause on Sunday, more than 20,000
opposition supporters returned to the Georgian parliament building for a
fifth day, chanting “Misha, Go!” They again blocked the capital’s main
street, cheered on the main opposition leaders and began to march on the
presidential palace.
The movement has spread to the Czech
Republic, where the trade unions have held a major demonstration on
Prague’s Wenceslas square. According to organisers and the police more
than 40,000 people came out to protest government reform plans. The
demonstrators were protesting against the government’s wide-ranging
reforms in the health care, tax, social security and pension systems
that will hit Czech workers, pensioners and the disabled.
In
occupied Iraq Friday May 20, 2011 saw another round of protests in
Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. The people are demanding jobs and services, but
now they are focusing their anger on the government of Nouri al-Maliki.
A banner was seen entitled “Title Of The Play: Corrupt Government.”
Another called for the end of arbitrary arrests by the security forces.
Still larger protests are expected in June.
Last but by no means
least, two weeks ago thousands of teachers, social workers, union
members and others took to the streets of New York in a march against
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plans for wide-ranging budget cuts, and
against the Wall Street bankers they blame for the city’s budget
deficit.
Activists reported that the NYPD had arrested several
marchers, but the demonstration remained cheerful, with colourful signs
and raucous chants. The demonstration, called by the May 12 Coalition,
gathered together at least 10,000 marchers. Thousands came from the
United Federation of Teachers (UFT), which faces more than 4,000 teacher
cuts if Bloomberg’s budget is enacted.
Rev. Al Sharpton, UFT
President laid the blame for the budget cuts squarely at Bloomberg and
Wall Street’s feet: “Wall Street recovered, hedge funds got stimulated,
and now they want to lay off teachers and close day care centres,”
Sharpton said. “We’re going where they sent the money,” he said of the
march.
Organizers claimed the city could prevent budget cuts by
reinstating the state’s “Millionaire Tax,” ending subsidies for large
companies that failed to meet job-creation. This event was a
demonstration not just against the Bloomberg budget plan but also as an
effort to “make the banks pay.”
This demonstration follows the
militant movement of the workers of Wisconsin, which was directly
inspired by the Egyptian Revolution. Randi Weingarten, president of the
UFT’s parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers, noted
she has travelled the country in the past few months fighting against
teacher cuts in states across the nation. “I never expected to come home
to see New York act like Wisconsin,” she told the crowd.
Ban defied
At
least 30,000 people packed the Puerta del Sol plaza in the heart of
Madrid on Friday night. This was their answer to the attempt of the
government to ban the demonstrations, citing a law against “political
events” on the eve of elections. The law went into effect at midnight on
Friday, but the demonstrators remained defiant and the authorities
could do nothing. Spanish law forbids political rallies on the day
before elections to allow for a “day of reflection”. But the people of
Spain are reflecting as never before on the state of society. They are
not only reflecting – they are acting to change an intolerable
situation.
But as the ban came into effect, the crowds stayed put
and police did not try to disperse them. The electoral commission had
ordered them to leave ahead of local elections on Sunday. But although
the legislation was upheld by the supreme and constitutional courts, the
police were not able to clamp down on the demonstrations. They remained
on the sidelines, mere observers of the events unfolding before their
eyes. By their actions they have shown that no law written on paper can
withstand the power of the masses, once they are mobilized for action.
Earlier
in the week, electoral authorities in the Madrid region denied an
official request by the organisers to hold a rally in the Puerta del Sol
from 8:00 pm last Wednesday. The election authority refused the
request, hiding behind the excuse that it was not submitted with 24
hours’ notice as required by law and the argument that the demonstration
“could affect the electoral campaign and the freedom of citizens with
the right to vote”. The fact that this decision negates the right of
citizens to demonstrate was conveniently ignored.
It looked as if
the government would order the police to break up the crowds in city
squares across the country after setting a deadline for people to
disperse by midnight on Friday. But as the deadline approached, Vice
President Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba displayed growing indecision about how
the government should deal with the protesters. Initially he said the
government would ”enforce the law,” but he then toned down this
stance, saying, ”The police are not going to resolve one problem by
creating another.”
What was the “other problem” that caused
Rubalcaba to hesitate? It was the fear that any attempt to break up the
protest by force could provoke a social explosion. At the stroke of
midnight officers kept a discreet presence on the edges of protests in
Madrid. About 15 police vehicles took up positions in and around the
square on Wednesday evening but police took no action and the police
presence diminished later. Demonstrators kept quiet as city clocks
chimed the beginning of a new day, many with sticky tape over their
mouths in a gesture to tell the world they had things to say but were
being gagged by the state.
A turn to the right?
The
elections resulted in a complete debacle for the PSOE. The Socialist
vote experienced a sharp drop in its two most powerful bases: Andalusia,
where it lost in all the capital cities and Catalonia, where the PSC
(Socialists’ Party of Catalonia) lost Barcelona, where it has ruled
since 1979. The PSOE also lost Castilla-La Mancha, which it has ruled
since 1983. They may even lose Asturias if the Foro Asturias party (FAC )
reaches a pact with the PP.
Pessimists will say that the Spanish
election results indicate a “turn to the right”. They will moan about
the “low level of consciousness of the masses”. These people are always
ready to blame the working class for their own impotence. They
understand less than nothing of the real processes at work in society.
The
truth is that the election results were entirely predictable. The
policies of reformism can never survive the crisis of capitalism. The
bourgeoisie crack the whip, and the Social Democrats immediately jump to
attention. In their haste to save the system, they forget all about
reforms and pass onto counter-reforms.
Reformism with reforms
makes sense to the workers. But reformism without reforms – reformism
with counter-reforms, cuts and austerity, makes no sense at all. This
causes disappointment and disillusionment among the workers, who punish
the government by withholding their votes. This has the additional
advantage of discrediting the idea of “socialism” in the eyes of the
middle class.
We have pointed out many times that the present
situation will be characterised by violent swings of public opinion – to
the left and also to the right. When the Social Democrats are in power,
the right wing opposition blames the “socialists” for falling living
standards, rising prices and taxes and unemployment. The right-wing
argues demagogically: “You see what these Reds have brought you? They
have brought the country to its knees.”
The workers of Spain have
delivered a crushing vote of no confidence on a government that has toed
the line of the bankers and capitalists. However, this cannot be
depicted as a victory for the right. Although the Conservative PP won a
victory in regional and municipal elections yesterday, its votes hardly
increased – just two points more than in 2007. These elections were not won by the PP, but lost by the PSOE, whose vote collapsed by 4.5 million.
The
right wing can use the discontent of the middle class to whip up
reactionary moods on immigration, terrorism and other issues. This
explains the increased votes for the PP. The surprise is not that that
their vote went up. The only surprise is that it went up by so little.
In Madrid capital where the PP has been in power for years, its vote
actually went down.
The outcome was decided by the millions who
did not vote or voted “blank”: the workers and youth who felt betrayed
by the Zapatero government and stayed at home – or in the Puerta del
Sol. The “indecisos e indignados” (the undecided and indignant ones)
reflected a general mood of disgust with the existing parties and
institutions. In Euskadi, Bildu, the electoral front of the radical
Basque Left, got a strong result and displaced the PSOE in second place,
achieving first place in Guipúzcoa, and also getting a remarkable
result in Navarra. The abertzales are seen by many as a more radical and
left alternative to the reformist policies of the PSOE.
Which way for the Left?
The
same phenomenon is occurring across the EU. Since the beginning of
crisis, all the existing governments have been punished at the polls,
but the Left has not gained in the same proportion. We must ask why. Why
is it that the Communist Parties, which would in the past have been the
natural beneficiaries of a collapse of the Social Democrat vote, have
not done so.
It is to the credit of United Left leader Cayo Lara
that he has joined the demonstrations and supported them. It is also a
fact that the United Left increased its vote by 200,000 in these
elections. This shows that there is a potential for the recovery of the
Left vote. But the question that must be answered is: why did the Left
not win more seats?
In these elections the PSOE has seen its votes
sink to the level of 1979. At that time the Spanish Communist Party
(the PCE) still disputed hegemony on the Left with the PSOE and
accounted for a big share of the vote. But after decades of opportunist
politics, the PCE has lost its mass following. The electoral coalition
to which it belongs, the United Left (IU) was only able to register a
slight increase – just one point – despite the socialist debacle, and
lost its bastion in Cordoba.
In a situation where the combined
“blank vote” and spoiled vote amounted to almost a million, why did the
IU candidates not succeed in attracting these votes? The leaders of the
Communist Parties have tried to “respectable”. They have discarded all
mention of socialism, class struggle and revolution. In many cases they
have abandoned the very name Communism. They have done their best to
imitate the Social Democrats and be as similar to them as possible.
They
have become so enmeshed in “institutional politics” that in the minds
of many workers and youth they are almost indistinguishable from the
others. We see this very clearly in those areas where the United Left
was minority partners in coalitions with the PSOE. In these areas the IU
was severely castigated by the voters.
This is the punishment for
decades of opportunism and reformism. The workers and youth would
understand a small Communist Party that stood in elections, fighting on
clear Communist policies. But workers are practical people. If there are
two “left” parties, one bigger, the other smaller, and there is no
fundamental difference in their programme and policies, they will vote
for the larger of the two (the “useful vote”), and the smaller will tend
to disappear.
We have seen this happen in one country after
another: in Italy, France and Spain. It is a supreme irony of history
that precisely at a moment in history when capitalism is in a deep
crisis, when the Social Democracy is losing support because of its
pro-capitalist policies, and when large numbers of young people are
coming onto the streets to fight capitalism, the Communist Parties are
not seen as a revolutionary alternative, but only as the fifth wheel in
the cart of reformism.
We must tell the truth. The Left has shown
itself to be completely unprepared for these events. Too many leaders
have allowed themselves to be infected by a mood of scepticism. They
have lost all faith in the ability of the ordinary working class people
to change society. They have abandoned any perspective of socialism and
reconciled themselves to the petty politics of “gradual change”,
“realism” and “pragmatism”. That is to say, they have reconciled
themselves to the maintenance of the existing order.
Too many
members of the so-called “vanguard” have convinced themselves that
socialist revolution is impossible. They try to convince the youth that
communism is an impossible utopia; that we must be cautious, not go too
far, and so on and so forth. They imagine that they know more than the
youth because they have lost the old fire. How can such people inspire
any confidence or enthusiasm in the young people who are looking for a
revolutionary way out?
The only way to find a road to the new
militant layers who are seeking the revolutionary road is to present
them with a real perspective for social revolution. It is necessary to
return to the genuine ideas of Communism, the ideas of Marx and Lenin.
On that basis, and on that basis alone, the Communists can find common
ground and a common language with the new generations that are willing
to fight capitalism but need a clear programme, policy and strategy.
What now?
The
results of the Spanish elections will be a shock to many people,
including those in the Puerta del Sol. The movement of rebellion on the
streets will almost certainly die down for a while. What the organizers
consider to be its strong point – its spontaneous character – is also
its weakest point. In order to go further it needs to be organized and
armed with a revolutionary programme and a scientific perspective. Above
all it needs to be linked firmly to the workers’ movement, which alone
can bring about a fundamental change in society.
elections indicated a massive rejection of the economic policies
implemented by the Socialist Government. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
explained that he has “paid a very high price” for these policies. But a
far higher price has been paid by the millions of Spaniards who find
themselves without a job. Last night he ruled out early elections and
said he will “work to strengthen the recovery”. This means more of the
same.
This is a certain recipe for defeat in the general elections of 2012. The headline in today’s Publico is: “The PSOE collapses as a result of its right turn.” And the subhead of El Pais
is: “The PSOE paves Rajoy’s path to the Moncloa with an unprecedented
defeat”. This appraisal is correct. It seems likely that the PP will
form the next government. But they will do so under conditions of deep
social and economic crisis.
The outlook for the whole of Europe is
uncertain, and after Greece, Ireland and Portugal, Spain stands exposed
as the next weak link in the chain. The International Monetary Fund has
warned that the euro zone debt crisis could spread across the region
unless European countries step up efforts to “fix their banks”. In its
latest economic outlook for Europe, the IMF said that the debt crisis in
Greece, Portugal and Ireland could affect the wider euro zone by
hitting bank lending and delivering a confidence shock, despite the
“rescue packages” that are already in place:
“Financial linkages
between countries with sovereign debt troubles and the rest of Europe
could potentially pose more risk to the outlook,” the IMF said on
Thursday. “Restoring fiscal health, squarely addressing weak banks, and
implementing structural reforms to restore competitiveness are key.”
This
means in plain language: you must pour more billions into the banks and
finance this by slashing “wasteful public spending” on such things as
hospitals, schools and pensions. The PSOE tried to avoid this, but
finally was forced to carry out the dictates of big business. But a PP
government will carry out these policies with gusto from the first
moment.
The demagogy of the PP will soon be exposed as Spain’s
economic crisis goes from bad to worse. The middle class will soon
discover that they are even worse off with the PP than with the
Socialists. The agitation of the youth will be intensified. And the
workers who were reluctant to seek a confrontation with the government
of the PSOE will have no qualms of conscience about fighting the PP.
The
more far sighted representatives of Capital look to the future with
foreboding. In Spain the ruling class is pushing for Zapatero to stay in
power. They realize that a PP government will lead to an open clash
between the classes that they are anxious to postpone, while squeezing
Zapatero like a lemon. However, the PP leaders are greedy for power and
pressing for early elections. Cinco Dias, the Spanish business
daily has warned the PP not to take advantage of their victory in the
local elections to reveal the bad debts of local councils, for fear of
causing panic on the money markets.
The perspective is for an
intensification of the class struggle. Hans Jörg Sinn, one of the main
bourgeois economic analysts in Germany is warning of a civil war in
Greece. The same can be true in Spain and other countries of southern
Europe. Through bitter experience the workers will rediscover the
revolutionary traditions of the past. The movement on the streets in
Spain over the last week is only a dress rehearsal for even more
dramatic events that will transform the entire situation.
London, 23 May
