Spanish State- February 10th, 2017
On 11 and 12 February, the Second Citizen State Assembly of Podemos takes place in Vista Alegre * ...
The congress of Podemos:
a smokescreen that hides reality from the exploited
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The supporters of Podemos: renegades of Trotskyism following the “new left”
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The working class and the exploited who saw their heroic struggle of 2011-2014 with their "Republic of the Indignados" expropriated by Podemos will not participate in its Congress. Once the masses were removed from the scene and workers are under the yoke of CCOO and UGT union bureaucracy, the three sectors of Podemos sit down to discuss how to continue to deceive the masses, supporting the Monarchy and the regime of 1978.
Podemos gets to this congress of Vistalegre II with its formation divided in three sectors; two have the majority, one of Pablo Iglesias and one of Íñigo Errejón, with about 45% of the delegates each, and the one of Anticapitalistas, led by Miguel Urban, with 10%. At this Congress, three documents and three leadership proposals will be voted.
The ideological differences between these three sectors could be summarized as ranging from the more liberal social democracy of Errejón to the sociological and Gramscian reformism of Pablo Iglesias, who became a Social-Democrat, to the renegade "anti-capitalism" of Anticapitalist Trostskism. NPA French), diluted more and more in the new social-democratic policy.
Anticapitalistas and Pablo Iglesias say they are inclined to mobilize, although they propose it as a secondary appendage of the parliamentary work necessary of the monarchical regime, whereas Errejón bet by the work almost exclusively in the institutions without allusion to the street. For its part, Anticapitalistas focuses on its commitment to the decentralization of Podemos in its organizational side refusing to make a political critique.
Regarding PSOE, both Iglesias and Errejón are oriented to seek agreements with PSOE, while Anticapitalistas proposes in principle to avoid agreements with him. No matter how much noise there is, both sectors of Iglesias and Errejón have gone from supposedly to combat the "bipartisanship" of PP and PSOE, as two legs of the system, to maintain as a unique proposal a "Government of progress" of Podemos with the PSOE at local, regional and state level.
Regarding IU (United Left), Errejón wants Podemos to keep it as an autonomous and independent organization and wants to block a possible organic union with IU. In this aspect, in the pre-congress stage Errejón was able to take from the sector of Pablo Iglesias that any future fusion with another organization must be endorsed by two thirds of the members. Anticapitalist is to form a social and political block "counter-hegemonic" with the rest of the reformist left, in the style of IU and Alberto Garzón.
To sum up, their differences are only shades, of fractions of Podemos that is a necessary pillar of the regime, which function is to cover and to support by left the monarchical regime of the 1978 with to prevent from workers breaking in the way of the socialist revolution. This is the reality and not the one that wants to draw Podemos and the renegades of Trotskyism that go to their tail.
They all agree on a key question: democratize capitalist system. Well, this is an old argument already settled in scientific Marxism. Revolutionaries -in their split with social democracy at the beginning of the 20th century- already argued that even the most "democratic" of the republics, if it remained in hands of the bourgeoisie, was the worst dictatorship of capital against the exploited.
Thus, Lenin discussed against renegade Kautsky: " Can it be that the learned Kautsky has never heard that the more highly democracy is developed, the more the bourgeois parliaments are subjected by the stock exchange and the bankers? This does not mean that we must not make use of bourgeois parliament (the Bolsheviks made better use of it than probably any other party in the world, for in 1912–14 we won the entire workers’ curia in the Fourth Duma). But it does mean that only a liberal can forget the historical limitations and conventional nature of the bourgeois parliamentary system as Kautsky does. Even in the most democratic bourgeois state the oppressed people at every step encounter the crying contradiction between the formal equality proclaimed by the “democracy” of the capitalists and the thousands of real limitations and subterfuges which turn the proletarians into wage-slaves. It is precisely this contradiction that is opening the eyes of the people to the rottenness, mendacity and hypocrisy of capitalism. It is this contradiction that the agitators and propagandists of socialism are constantly exposing to the people, in order to prepare them for revolution! (...) Kautsky turns his back upon it and begins to extol the charms of moribund bourgeois democracy. "(The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Lenin, 1918).
As we see, Marxism has already answered the question that democracy in general does not exist, but has a class character. What these Social Democrats of the "new left" do is to wrap the bourgeoisie with a sweet role, to "democratize" Maastricht and its imperialist NATO governments to take care of capitalists’ pockets. A true lie that hides its most brazen servility to the bourgeois state and the Bourbon monarchy.
A circus of bourgeois democracy that hides the real situation of the exploited in the Spanish State
The previous discussion within Podemos -on the way to its congress- had already taken almost a month, between interviews, attacks between different wings by Twitter or articles in the papers. While they argue and argue in the circus of bourgeois democracy, the working class and exploited of the Spanish State live a totally different situation. Unemployment reaches almost 19%, millions of workers are outsourced working thousands of hours with a minimum wage and garbage contracts, etc. Hundreds of working families have been evicted from their homes by the bank fraud with mortgages. Thousands of Moroccan immigrants are exploited in the worst jobs and are constantly persecuted by the police.
Hundreds of fighters are prosecuted by Ley Mordaza (Gag Law) which, to set just one example, does not allow a concentration or demonstration without asking permission from the authorities and, in the case of not asking for it, it cannot be more than 19 people because you can be fined or processed.
The reality will not be in the assembly of Podemos: over 400 Basque fighters are prisoners scattered throughout the Spanish State. The oppressed nationalities of the Spanish State cannot have their right to self-determination, such as the Basque Country, Catalonia or Galicia.
Alfon suffered a set up by the police and a trial where he was sentenced to four years in prison for defending workers' right to strike and has been imprisoned for 20 months. Nahuel, a young man who fought against evictions and against animal abuse has been in prison for over a year without trial, etc.... The wire wall in the colonies of Ceuta and Melilla so that immigrants do not enter is not so different from the US wall with Mexico or the ones of State of Israel.
This is the true Spanish State of the Bourbon monarchy: millionaire profits for exploiters and unemployment, precariousness, persecution and imprisonment for the fighters.
While the worst attacks against the working class have passed and keep passing, Podemos wants masses to believe that the solution to their problems lies in the bourgeois parliament. It is necessary to speak clearly, the exploiters, the ones of above, will only retreat with a great fight in the streets of all the exploited ones, with strikes, pickets, revolutionary mobilization, conquering their organisms of self-organization, and with the working class getting ready to seize power. Because capitalists retreat or give away concessions when their property and dominion are threatened.
The real discussion here is either in the footsteps of Kautsky and his "perfect democracy" that looks after the profits of the capitalists or, as Trotsky said: " While explaining constantly to the masses that rotting capitalism has no place either for the alleviation of their situation or even for the maintenance of their customary level of misery, while putting openly before the masses the tasks of the socialist revolution as the immediate task of our day, while mobilizing the workers for the conquest of power, while defending the workers’ organizations with the help of the workers’ militia – the Communists (or the Socialists) will at the same time lose no opportunity to snatch this or that partial concession from the enemy, or at least to prevent the further lowering of the living standard of the workers." (" Once more, whither France? ", Leon Trotsky, March 1935).
* https://vistalegre2.podemos.info/