This is a translation into English of a contribution submitted to us, and previously posted, in Spanish.
Valencia, August 5, 2012
In recent weeks bourgeois economists and media commentators have continually discussed and considered the possibility that the Spanish state will formally suspend debt payments and ask for a total rescue by the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). At this time the Spanish economy is one of the weak links of the world capitalist economy and, in its own way, is travelling the same road as the Greek economy, devastated by a series of “adjustments” for the sake of financial capital’s interests. In contrast with the Greek case, a collapse of the Spanish economy, approximately 7% of the EU’s gross domestic product (GDP), especially if it happens in parallel with a similar collapse in Italy could cause Europe to go under and would have serious implications on a world scale.
In recent months Spanish state bonds with a 10-year maturity have been paying interest of 6.5% to 7.5%. Further, short- and long-term bond interest rates have become equal, as a result of international finance capital’s lack of confidence in the Spanish economy. A similar process went on in Greece, Portugal and Ireland before they were rescued. Some bourgeois analysts speculate that with these financing costs, the Spanish state will be unable to make its debt payments before the end of the year. In anticipation of this situation, several of Spain’s autonomous regions have sought financial rescue from the central government through membership in the Autonomous Liquidity Fund which is already unable to meet its needs for financing.
Facing this situation, the European Central Bank (ECB) has had to publicly affirm “that it is ready to do everything that may be necessary to preserve the euro.” As a result of this, interest rates on Spanish bonds went down to about 6.5 %, and the Madrid stock exchange slightly recovered its level of turnover. Afterward, under pressure from the German government, the ECB backed away and Spanish bond interest went up again. Apart from this, the effects of a potential injection of liquidity (or bond purchase) by the ECB would be short-lived and probably would provide only momentary relief until new episodes of panic were unleashed in the Spanish economy. The latter is stuck in a downward spiral, with devastating social effects. The capitalist crisis and the reaction to the crisis of the bourgeoisie themselves (Spanish and European) to preserve their class interests is pushing the Spanish economy toward total disaster. In particular, we are facing the second recession in less than three years. The prediction is that the GDP will decrease by 1.7% in 2012 and by 0.5% in 2013, according to the most optimistic bourgeois analyses.
The recession has brought the Spanish bourgeoisie and the Popular Party (PP) government, its current executive arm, to make brutal attacks against the working class. Their objectives are to maximize the exploitation of labor by reducing wage costs and minimize social expenses in order to facilitate the payment of interest to the banks. The PP’s policy (like that of the rest of Europe’s governments) requires a strong attack on the workers’ pockets in order to subsidize the bourgeoisie. The cuts in public health and education, the reduction in the unemployment allowance, the reduction in public employees’ wages by some 7%, the rise in the value-added tax (VAT, the pension cuts and the rest of the measures injurious to the workers are necessary to subsidize the reductions in the entrepreneurs’ social tax payments, the absorption by the state of the bankers’ losses and the prompt payment of interest on the public debt to the same bankers whom the European states themselves have rescued. Meanwhile, the policies of the current and previous governments have in the last few years caused the unceasing growth of unemployment, reaching rates of 24.6% and of 50% among the youth in some regions of the country. There are close to six million with no jobs and many more with crap jobs.
The climate of social outrage is spreading ever wider. The Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), which initiated the current bourgeois offensive, and its accomplices, the two largest union federations, the Workers Commissions (CCOO) and the General Union of Workers (UGT) are trying to capitalize on this outrage. The latter, as well as the United Left (Izquierda Unida or IU) have tried to capitalize on the discontent of the working class and the middle classes, who have held spontaneous protest demonstrations and massively joined the sectoral protests called by the unions, which still are not calling a general strike.
The pressure of the ranks on the leaderships of the CCOO and UGT to call a general strike and keep it going have been increasing in recent weeks. In particular, there have been many isolated protests and strikes like those of the miners in Asturias and other zones of the country, like León and Teruel (which have been deactivated by the unions with no gains, after more than 2 months of struggle). This also includes some struggles, like that of the John Deere agricultural machinery factory workers, which triumphed after long days of confrontation, halting wage cuts and layoffs. Another example of an emerging struggle was the calling of a national railroad strike on August 3. Social discontent has reached such an extreme that that even police forces and firefighters have participated in social mobilizations and have joined public sector workers demonstrations. Army soldiers and non-commissioned officers have also demonstrated their rejection of wage reductions. It is noteworthy that the atmosphere breathed in many demonstrations is of enthusiasm, confidence and combativeness. In spite of this, only the Basque nationalist labor unions, ELA and LAB, organized independently of the CCOO and UGT, have called a general strike for next month, September.
Evidently all the conditions are present for a general strike at the national level to be successful. However, the CCOO and UGT keep offering to negotiate with the government. (They have even met with Angela Merkel to request that she “authorize” the Spanish government to run a higher deficit.) In all this time they have called only one march for September 15 (a Saturday, not a working day) and proposed as its only objective that the government’s economic measures be submitted to a referendum vote. It would seem that the CCOO and UGT union bureaucrats didn’t know that what’s lacking to defeat the PP’s (and PSOE’s) plans is a hard-hitting plan of struggle and a clear alternative to capitalism. Reality every day shows the workers the raw reality of the sinking of capitalism. A little more than 6 months after the last elections it has been more than clear that governments change but the crisis gets worse all the time, and the cuts cause more bleeding.
One lesson to draw from the social response against the PP’s policies is that it calls into question the policies of the CCOO and UGT leaderships to try to put a brake on the process and prevent the unification of the sectors affected by the cutbacks in great general strikes, sustained over time, which would paralyze the country. The spontaneous street occupation before the big labor stoppage in the spring is proof of the atmosphere of discontent of the union ranks with their bureaucratic leaderships. In particular, the July 19 mobilizations and other struggles are pressuring the union leaders, who it is hoped for their own survival would not be able to continue their policy of demobilization and submission. This strategy has nothing to do with the real living environment in the factories and enterprises and affecting families hard-hit by unemployment. Before the general strike of March 29, 2012, the leaderships of the CCOO and the UGT did everything possible to put a brake on the struggles. Thus, in order to survive, the working class has no alternative but to break with its leadership’s policy of class collaboration, pulling out of this scourge from above if they intend to confront the bourgeois attacks with any possibility of success. To defeat the PP government and the general strategy of big European and international capital, there is only one road: the overwhelming, decisive and massive struggle of the population all together.
The main union federations will probably end up calling a strike before year’s end, which will without doubt be late, as all the government’s attacks will be implemented. Such a strike will be nothing but the apparatus’s desperate attempt to save face, given the natural and growing discredit they suffer in the eyes of the immense majority of the proletariat. The class character of the CCOO and UGT is very well known by all class-conscious and revolutionary workers. Both federations not only are dedicated to the management of plentiful state subsidies, but also act as outright employers through ownership positions in various corporations. (Insurers, travel agencies, legal consultancies, pension funds or “training” centers form part of the unions’ business.) Further, beneath this fabric of the union bureaucracy is an extensive network of middle managers who function in the purest client-sponsor fashion. The latter, together with wage workers directly associated with them and folded up together with the union apparatus, form the unique and genuine social base of the CCOO and UGT leaderships. This evidently does not mean that there are no honest, fighting rank-and-file workers among them, but they are so enormously confused that they form part of a structure completely alien to the interests of their class.
Facing this panorama, the key question is: how should class-conscious workers and communists respond, who today are dispersed individually and in different groups with no real strength in the working class? The answer can only be to defend unconditionally the proletariat’s interests and to also struggle within the working class to advocate the necessity of the socialist revolution.
This proposal clashes with the political program defended by a multitude of organizations and individuals situated on the left, from the IU to various anti-capitalist and Trotskyist-descended organizations. Almost all of them are dedicated to pressuring and tailing the CCOO and UGT leaderships from the left, hoping that the strike call will come from their rotten leaderships and sowing hope that these leaders will be able to abandon the policies of the social pact. As a result of this markedly reformist strategy, many honest comrades act as a trailer of the mass movement, so tailing the union bureaucracy as to seriously harm the strategic interests of the working class. A real general strike can be called only if the working class defeats the union bureaucracy. The call should be implemented by the ranks in their workplaces, openly fighting the CCOO-UGT leaderships. Obviously, if the latter call a general strike, we should join them, but always while fighting the union leadership which at every moment is ready to betray any strike. In any case, including the calling of a general strike, the most important and pressing tasks for those of us who are staking all on the proletarian revolution must continue to go towards the unification and strengthening of the different detachments of the vanguard of the working class – today dispersed and engaged in sterile disputes and partial struggles which go nowhere – in order to raise the alternative of communism to the exploited.
As part of our propaganda we must intervene pedagogically among the workers on the character of the class dictatorship of capitalism and the fact that the current crisis is inherent in capitalism. After having created the world market, capitalism has since almost a century ago turned into a reactionary system which is dragging humanity down into the worst barbarism. Some of its consequences are two world wars and innumerable other wars, hunger throughout the greater part of the planet and the destruction of the environment. Now, after having attained moments of artificial economic growth, based on speculation and bubbles, capitalism has since 2007 been crashing in the worst crisis in its history, with states, enterprises and banks sunk in insolvency with no way out. The result of this is that while hunger and misery continue to grow and millions lose their jobs, a few get richer all the time.
To sum up, in Spain and the rest of the world, capitalism is bringing the workers to generalized misery and the loss of rights. What happened in Spain during the last 30 years demonstrates this. Since the PSOE’s labor reform of 1984, attacks on the working class have been on the increase. Working conditions have gradually worsened. In particular, since 2010, under another PSOE government, the degradation attained a dizzying pace. With the PP government’s new measures, the attacks are reaching rates which unfortunately will be small in comparison with the new attacks to come. The bourgeoisie recognizes the discontent which their policies are generating and will generate. Thus their attacks will certainly be accompanied by increasing political repression, as happened with the student demonstrations in Valencia last February, the repression of the miners, and the surrounding of the congress by riot police this past July during the spontaneous demonstrations in Madrid. We revolutionaries must use these attacks to unmask the trick of illusions in the democratic state before the workers (and the illusion that everything can be fixed with a new change in government). This will also work to begin the organization of the working class as an autonomous social force. We have to debate these questions within the working class at the same time that we struggle against the government’s measures and the union bureaucracy. If we limit ourselves only to trade union struggles, leaving politics aside (as the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie wish), we are ideologically disarming the working class and preparing the way for coming and future defeats. The development of class consciousness and the critical recovery of the experiences of more than 200 years of struggle provide us with the means to overcome the current situation and be able to respond to the capitalist attacks and avoid the dead ends into which the CCOO and UGT are leading us. If we don’t do this, we’ll end up in a situation similar to that of the Argentine working class after the crisis of 2001 which destroyed President De la Rúa’s government. The weakness of the Argentine bourgeoisie and its political divisions generated in that brief period a situation in which there was a lack of governmental leadership. However, the lack of a revolutionary alternative and the tailism of a large part of the left made it so that the most radical reformist sectors and the spontaneous movement of the masses led the workers to a political defeat which permitted the political regeneration of the bourgeois regime in Argentina.
The situation in Spain is such that it could go down the same road which Argentina has been following for a decade. Now in Spain it’s more evident than ever that either the bourgeoisie gets saved or the workers get saved. There’s no room left for the workers to be saved with reformist politics or minor temporary remedies. In recent years it’s been more than clear that no matter the political label of the alternating governments, the bourgeoisie is going to use all the means in its reach to implement “adjustments” against the workers and popular sectors, and rescue plans for bankers and entrepreneurs. Now is the time for us to stand firm against these attacks, to fight for a program which preserves us from this barbarism and raises a workers’ revolutionary alternative. This is the only way out that we workers have from the current crisis, not only to preserve our most elementary conditions of existence, but also to stop the other “ways out” they want to sell us, like the xenophobic nationalism which would take us back to the worst moments of 20th century European history or to the reactionary utopia of a continental unification led by the bourgeoisie. We workers must start to raise a revolutionary solution to the crisis of the EU. The current situation and the period which is opening up are creating the possibility that there will be many ears ready to hear our ideas. This is an opportunity which we must not waste to struggle in a principled manner for the class independence of the Spanish proletariat. This struggle necessarily implies working for the development of the revolutionary vanguard party which represents the establishment of the most advanced working class consciousness. It’s therefore fundamental to win to communist ideas the emerging vanguard which stands out and will stand out in the struggles against the politics of the current PP government and its predecessors of the PSOE.
We thank Comrade Bengoechea for his contribution above, which is intended to begin to spark a conversation among socialists as to how to intervene in the global economic crisis as it affects the Spanish state. The LRP does not have concrete knowledge of the situation on the ground in Spain --essential to developing the program and party for the struggle. However the sentiment expressed by the writer regarding the union bureaucracy is shown to be correct in too many situations internationally: the union leaders only want to call general strikes as short events for the workers to let off some steam, with no real intention of mobilizing for an indefinite strike to actually defeat austerity.
Comrade Bengoechea also writes that if the union heads call a general strike, of course workers and revolutionaries would support the action. However, the LRP sees the need to make our own general attitude toward the unions clear: the need is to build a revolutionary opposition in the unions, and to do that we favor extremely active participation by revolutionaries. The fight for leadership remains the pivotal question for the working class. A revolutionary party leadership has to be built to replace the labor bureaucracy. As part of this process, revolutionaries must not only support a strike if it is called under the current miserable union leadership, but, importantly, revolutionaries must also join other workers in making demands on this union leadership that express the need for a serious all-out mobilization.
We favor raising concrete steps and measures that the unions must take, with the understanding that the details of tactics are best developed by revolutionaries on the ground. In general, proposals and demands are needed to try to force the bureaucracy to do what the workers want and need, and prevent a disastrous sellout. The potential for betrayal is inherent in the nature of reformism. Through their own experience of powerful struggles, our class learns to not only see that the reformist leaders have to be rejected, but also that the working class does have the power to fight capitalist attacks successful. In fact our class has the power to make a socialist revolution.