Since May 15 [2011] until now, the famous chant, “They don’t, they don’t, they don’t represent us” is constantly more deeply tfelt by millions of us, and no wonder...

Because, when the capitalist politicians in Congress approve billion dollar bailouts for banking or their new law on mortgages, they are voting to defend those who are confiscating our right to have a home; they are voting to keep hundreds of thousands of evictions that have led many workers to suicide and to condemn those who are homeless to perpetual indebtedness.

Because when they approved the labor reform, they voted that thousands and thousands of families should be without work, under greater uncertainty, cheap layoffs and the end of historic achievements of the working class. Because when austerity plans and cutbacks in health care are approved, they are playing with our health and with our lives; they are leaving us without hospitals, without stretchers, without basic medical care, if we are on strike, or if we are not considered “citizens,” like the immigrants. 
Because when they approve cutbacks in education, they are voting to leave more teachers out of work, to close high schools, to take away their heat in midwinter, to allow firms to enter the universities, to increase the registration fees, forcing thousands to abandon their studies. They are voting to restrict, even more, the children of the working class from setting foot in the departments. 

And, to top it all, while they are doing all this, cases are coming to light showing that this political caste is imposing all these measures because it is tied to the big businessmen and bankers, by a thousand and one links of corruption, bribes and old-boy networks.

This minority of capitalists, through its own political parties, is making decisions about our lives; we, the majority, the working class, are living through a tragic present, and the young people [will experience] a dark future.

Does anyone doubt for whom they are ruling? What can this regime, born from the “exemplary” Transition of 1978, Franco’s heir, with a parasitic monarchy that believes that we are its buffoons, offer us? A regime that denies the nationalities the right to decide and imposes a sacrosanct unity of Spain, defended by the army and the crown. That finances another reactionary institution like the church and gives it permission to interfere in our lives, and now it wants to make us also retreat from essential democratic rights, like the right of women to decide about their own body. With a legal system that does not hesitate to endorse evictions or prisons for those who struggle, but leaves Urdangarín and every corrupt politician unpunished. A repressive regime that supports the impunity of the criminals from the dictatorship, and also those guilty of state terrorism, torture and political repression employed in the democratic stage, through scandalous reprieves, at the same time that it is criminalizing and repressing those who are in struggle now.

We are the majority: the working class, the people and the youth … the one that is intensifying its response to the big social problems and this regime. 

The feeling of anger against this regime has been intensifying and being expressed in different ways, through numerous political and social movements, workers’ struggles and strikes, those of the student movement, young people in a precarious situation and without a future, that have begun to lose fear and to revolt. 

May 15 was a big movement that revealed this questioning. It began with the shout, “They call it democracy, and it isn’t.” Then we saw the struggles of the student movement, heralding more profound processes. The “Tides” appeared against the cutbacks in public services. The platforms against evictions, next to the solidarity networks that do not hesitate to resist the repressive forces when they are depriving their neighbors of their houses. We also experienced the resistance of the working class against layoffs, against the closures of their factories, or the working-class young people against job insecurity, and, especially, during the two strike days, March 29 and November 14. Moreover, we are living through strikes with a lot of fighting spirit, like the strike of the miners, who, when they arrived in Madrid, generated a lot of affection among the young people of May 15, who were shouting, “They do indeed represent us!”

The anger of the workers, the people, and the youth is increasing against a King that relaxes by hunting elephants and with his big deals, and with the parliamentarians of this democracy that have been rendering enormous services to the capitalists. An anger that, moreover, feeds on the increase of suffering, in view of unemployment, evictions and cutbacks, since it is increasingly clear who the ones responsible for the crisis are: Guilty! is heard in the streets in front of the banks and the headquarters of the parties, in the demonstrations at the houses of the corrupt politicians, and a long list ...

What constituent process do we need?

The utopia of a capitalist democracy that will solve the big social and democratic problems

The extreme disrepute of the regime and its institutions makes the idea of opening a new “constituent process” begin to win influence among different groups. On the one hand, from the left and the angry young people. But also, from the PSOE itself, with the aim of saving it, and even from the most reactionary right wing, that talks about plans of “regeneration,” in order to impose more centralism, more order, more repression.

For big groups of the young people and the workers, this process must carry out a break with the regime of ‘78, by knocking down some of its essential pillars, like the monarchy or national oppression, and setting up a broader democracy, while some groups are beginning to question for themselves incipiently capitalism as a system of exploitation, from which the working class and the people have nothing to expect.

At the same time, different organizations of the left, defending much more limited processes of change, are beginning to take part vigorously in the discussion about the constituent process. One of the most active is the IU, Izquierda Unida. From this formation, there is talk about the need for a democratic rebellion, but when they set out to be specific about it, it is only in measures of cosmetic reforms of this regime. As a general orientation, they propose taking the unrest from the streets to Parliament, and, from there, promoting a constituent process that starts from the current institutions. On the one hand, they want to emulate Suárez, who, as he himself boasted, went from dictatorship to democracy, “from the law to the law,” and, on the other hand, Santiago Carrillo, who, being at the head of the PCE, managed to divert the rise of workers’ and young people’s’ struggles against the dictatorship to the so-called “agreed-upon break,” that gave rise to the current regime. To achieve that, they are demanding the resignation of the government and the calling of new elections, relying on the increase in votes that the surveys grant them, and in the hope of being able to form a government of the lefts, with the PSOE and backing from the social movements, that will lead the political and social reforms necessary for such a regeneration. A regeneration that ought to lead to a Third Republic, politically comparable to France or the United States, with some “social” measures of limited state intervention in the economy.

Other groups, located to the left of the IU, are raising the idea of a constituent process in an almost identical way, that is, by means of a combination of pressure from the street and the winning of electoral positions by some type of plural left front. That is the case of the Anti-capitalist Left (Global Revolt in Catalonia), that increasingly talks about a constituent process, suggesting as a task to open it, the need for a convergence of the entire left in an election contest. The model encouraged is the Greek coalition Syriza, and its aim would be to get a government of the left with a minimal program that included the renegotiation of the debt (formulated as no payment of the “illegitimate” debt, without specifying what debt is legitimate), nationalization of the failed and bailed-out banks, and the beginning of a constituent process from the current institutions. They have even offered support for the call made by the Benedictine nun Teresa Forcades and the neo-Keynesian economist from the Jesuit group Pax Christi, Arcadi Oliveras, in favor of a Catalan constituent process, that, and in this, it does not differ from the way of the IU, should be promoted from an election candidacy that includes even the CUP, and the anti-capitalist left, even ICEUiA, and the groups more to the left of the PSC itself. Clearly, in this appeal, from such “pious” promoters, such important pending democratic matters, like the separation of church and state, among many others, are completely absent.

Down with the regime of ‘78!! For a revolutionary constituent assembly!

The aspirations for a constituent process, by an ever-increasing number of young people and workers, will not be able to be resolved, if this process is thought of as something achieved through an institutional or merely electoral strategy, with the social mobilization as a mere complement of “pressure,” even though elections can be an area that the anti-capitalist left can use to campaign for and promote the denunciations and demands of the workers and the people. But, for a constituent process really to be able to put into discussion and resolve the fundamental demands of working people, we cannot expect that this will take place within the frameworks of the current regime and its institutions; rather, it will have to be on its ruins.

Discussing the end of the Bourbons? Whether the nationalization of the entire financial system is needed? Of all the firms that are being closed and leaving thousands in the street? The expropriation of the 3.4 million empty apartments owned by speculators? The self-determination of the nationalities? Neither the Crown, nor the PP, nor the PSOE, nor the Constitutional Court or the army, is going to allow anything like that. And, without addressing those matters and many others, the big democratic aspirations and the big social problems that are afflicting millions, it is impossible to solve them. 

So, overthrowing the regime of ‘78 and the monarchy is an unavoidable task. And, for that, the revolutionary mobilization of the working class, together with the rest of the groups of the people, will be necessary. On this road, it is key to deal with the big obstacle represented by the union bureaucracy, that keeps the working class confined, preventing it from being able to go out on the stage and take hold of all the workers’ and people’s demands. The chant, “They don’t represent us,” has also reached the unions; for that reason, we need to “revolutionize them” and fight to recover workers’ democracy, the assembly, the unity of all the groups of workers (laid off, permanent, temporary, foreigners …), coordination of the struggles …, and thus construct revolutionary wings in the unions that will end up expelling the parasitic bureaucrats that are now running them. But beginning a constituent process in order to establish a Third Republic, inspired by the European “imperialist democracies” or by the United States, is “changing something, so that nothing will change.” Because the same people will go on governing that are doing that now: the caste of corrupt politicians in the service of those that really have power, the big banks and businessmen. One has only to see how, in the capitalist crisis in the different countries, whether constitutional monarchies or parliamentary republics, the same plans for rescuing the banks, austerity and cutbacks for the workers, are being applied. As they brought up from the Occupy Wall Street movement, they are the 1% against the 99%, over and above the form of the state, with a monarchy or a bourgeois republic.

From Clase contra Clase, we defend the necessity of fighting for a republic of the workers, that, at the same time, will resolve the big democratic aspirations, give a solution to the big social tragedies of unemployment, the evictions, poverty … by carrying out the expropriation of the capitalists. However, we are aware that we who fight for this strategic solution are still a minority. There are thousands of young people and workers that are questioning the Regime of ‘78 and want to throw the Bourbons into the trashcan of history, but who, at the same time, continue to have hope in the mechanisms of bourgeois democracy, and, for that reason, they are demanding “a real democracy,” or “more democracy,” without yet seeing the perspective of workers’ power.

For that reason, we propose that a revolutionary constituent process is necessary, one that will be opened by the struggle of the workers and the people, setting up bodies of self-organization from which to be able to topple the regime and impose the calling of a revolutionary constituent assembly, elected by universal suffrage of all those older than 16, natives or foreigners and in only one national constituency, that will guarantee that all the votes have the same value. An assembly of this type will be the only one qualified to discuss and resolve all the big democratic and social demands.

We are convinced that the struggle for this Assembly and for a program of profound and radical democratic demands, together with a program of a workers’ and people’s solution to the crisis, will allow going from criticizing the monarchy and the regime of ‘78 to questioning the capitalist system as a whole. 

For an alternative of the workers, the youth, and the people, against the crisis and this capitalist democracy

Against this democracy for the rich, corrupt and an heir of the dictatorship!!

More and more, the mask is falling off this democracy, and it appears as what it has always been, a democracy for the rich. It is necessary to put an end to the entire caste of professional politicians, bought by the capitalists, that are applying all their plans without a word of complaint. 

Eliminating the monarchy and allowing the exercise of the right of self-determination of the nationalities should be the starting point, but it must be followed by a series of other measures of radical democratization of the society, like the elimination of the presidential institution (one man with a power of veto over millions!) and the dissolution of the reactionary Senate, by imposing a single Chamber with legislative and executive functions, where all the Deputies can be recalled, and their wages will be the same as that of a teacher or a worker. End the caste of judges, hired because of their contacts, and replace them by jury trials and judges elected by universal suffrage. 

Also, end the reactionary institutions and the existing legislation of exception, like the law of parties and the National Court. And put an end to the silence, oblivion and impunity that the Amnesty Law offers for the criminals from the dictatorship; impose trial and punishment for all of them, also for those who have continued to torture under “democracy,” as well as the nullification of all the lawsuits and trials against the militants, release of the political prisoners and nullification of the sentences against the political prisoners from the Franco era, that this “democracy” continues to consider as valid. The case of Yolanda González, murdered in 1980 by Emilio Hellín, who has continued acting as an “advisor” of the repressive forces in recent years, is another sign of this impunity. Finally, it is necessary to put an end to another basic democratic injustice: the existence of second-class citizens, without rights, and, therefore, it is necessary to repeal all the laws on aliens and guarantee all the rights to immigrants.

That is, we propose not imitating the political forms of the European imperialist democracies, but being inspired by the revolutionary traditions of the communards of the Paris Commune of 1871, a heroic exploit of the workers, that, although it was not until the end that it touched the central sources of the bourgeoisie’s power, based on the economy, and was then massacred in blood and fire by reaction, we can take inspiration from its profound changes concerning the purely political reorganization of society.

No more repression or criminalization of social protest!

In recent years, we have seen repression increase before every social protest. From the Mossos d’Escuadra on May 15 or in the general strikes, to the National Police against the students of Valencia or against the young people and groups of the poor that demonstrate against the Congress. Now the “blue” police are appearing, acting like the “gray” police used to, previously. To this is added a campaign about IDs and massive fines, that is already affecting thousands of people throughout the country, and arrests during demonstrations. The cases of Alfon (in preventive prison after November 14), Laura Gómez of the CGT (preventive prison after March 29), and many others, show what the function of the repressive forces is. 

Against this offensive, the greatest unity among the organizations of the left, the workers’ movement, the human rights movement is necessary... to win the dropping of the charges and trials against all the militants, the end of persecution and criminalization of protest. Moreover, against the acceptance as “natural” that Mossos, Ertzainas and national police brutally charge our protests, it is necessary to fight to recover basic traditions of self-defense, like marshals for the demonstrations and self-defense committees, that, furthermore, can also be needed against private thugs or bouncers, hired by employers or groups from the far right, as is already beginning to take place now, increasingly, in countries like Greece. And, in the same way, to guarantee our right to strike, we must defend the picket lines, the only tool we workers and students have to make this right effective and an essential instrument of struggle. 

These measures are a part of the struggle for an indispensable task to preserve the lives of young people and the safety of workers and the poor, the dissolution of all the police forces, that carry out the orders of capitalism, of the bourgeois state and of its gangs of corrupt politicians and an expression of the most reactionary institutions of this political and social regime. The security tasks should be organized by the workers’ and people’s organizations.

For separation of church and state!! Church tutelage, out of our lives and off our bodies!!

One of the “relics” that we have kept from Franco’s nationalist-Catholic dictatorship are the privileges that the Catholic Church enjoys in Spain, and that results in the fact that this obscurantist and reactionary institution still keeps economic power and big educational and social influence. We must fight for the immediate nullification of the Concordat with the Vatican that establishes this situation. We must end all the fiscal subsidies and privileges of the Church; the priests and the nuns must go to work! Some expenditures that are approximately 10 billion euros annually. We must advance in the expropriation of ecclesiastical property, accumulated during centuries of association with the exploiting classes, beginning with the educational centers, in order that they be integrated into a single public educational network. This fight against the Church’s influence also passes through confronting the entire offensive against basic democratic rights, like the right to abortion or gay marriage, that they want to carry out a “papal request” about, and fighting for the radical expansion of these, as the definitive and real inclusion of abortion in the public health system would be. In this sense, the struggle for the separation of the church from the state is intimately linked to the struggle for the rights of women and the LGTB groups. 

The capitalists must pay for the crisis! For a working-class and popular program in the face of the crisis, against the big problems of unemployment, housing, job insecurity, and in defense of education and public health. 

This regime is the one that allows the wave of ERE’s, the wage freeze, job insecurity, temporary contracts, no increase in the amount of unemployment compensation, nor of pensions, the labor reform.... Meanwhile, tax cuts and fiscal assistance to businessmen are continuing. We, the workers and the people, must impose our own solution to this crisis, by fighting for a workers’ program against the crisis, that will propose measures like: 

– Against the tragedy of millions of unemployed workers: Distribution of the hours of work, without a cut in pay, among all hands, until unemployment is ended. Immediate prohibition of layoffs and cancellation of all the ERE’s. For nationalization without compensation of every firm that closes or lays off workers, for starting production in them under workers’ control. An urgent increase of the minimum wage to 1,200 euros.

– Against job insecurity and the division between female and male workers: No more job insecurity! Everyone on the fixed, permanent staff, with the same rights. For the prohibition of temporary hiring and the ETT’s. Against the division between native-born or foreign workers, “documents for everyone,” and down with the Law on Aliens and the CIES.

– In view of the problem of housing and the evictions: No more evictions, no more families in the street! Expropriation without compensation of banking, under workers’ control, and of the millions of empty dwellings from the speculators. For a single government credit agency, that will respect small savers and will cancel the usurious mortgages that are impoverishing working-class families. 

– In view of the reductions in health care and education: No more cutbacks! Not one Euro more to pay their debt and save the banks! For increasing the budget for education, based on ending the agreements with Catholic and private education, ending the hiring and transfers with private health care, and on big taxes on the great fortunes and the profits of the banking system and the employers. For the nationalization of all the religious and private high schools, for their inclusion in a single public and secular network, and the nationalization of all the private health care centers, for their entry into the public system. Down with the LOMCE and Wert’s educational counter-reforms. All businesses, out of the university; for a government of students, PAS and PDI, with a student majority, that will guarantee a university without fees, at the service of the workers and the people. In order to fight for this program, it is key to achieve worker-student unity and a movement led from assemblies of the rank and file, democratically coordinated.

Distribution of wealth or expropriation of the expropriators?

As we see it, a workers’ and popular program that will be proposed to solve these big problems, cannot do that by respecting the capitalists’ profit and big properties. One of the ideas suggested by different groups of the left, unions and some movements, is that of a different “distribution of wealth.”

The idea of “distribution” points towards a different type of measures, of a redistributive character, but it conceals the profound cause of economic and social inequality, hunger and poverty. And the problem of the type of distribution is closely connected to decisions about investment and the direction of production. Because before wealth can be “distributed,” between the beneficiaries of the returns on capital (profits, rent, and interest) and the wage earners, between the active and non-active (young people and the retired), between fractions of the national income subject to taxes or not, etc., – first, it must have been produced. And this control of the investment decisions is, in turn, closely connected to the form of ownership of the means of production, distribution, and communication, as well as the forms of financing. In other words, there cannot be “a different distribution of wealth” in the future, without going completely against the economic regime of “private property” and of capitalist exploitation, in which, the businessmen and the bankers are the “owners” of the main means of production, because of which, they confiscate the wealth that we workers all produce. Therefore, organizing and managing the wealth that we produce among everyone, necessarily goes through expropriating the dynamic branches of industry, commerce and banking, the great fortunes and the parasitic groups of the bourgeoisie of this imperialist Spanish state, like the large estates, in the hands of some few families, many of them nobles, the big construction and real estate firms, the big businesses, the strategic sectors, like water, energy and transport companies, and the whole financial system. Only in this way will we be able to resolve the big demands of the workers and the people, to guarantee free, quality education, healthcare and public services, and also respond to the needs of other groups of the people, stricken by the crisis, like self-employed workers or small businessmen. That is, this is a program to weld the unity of the working class with the rest of the groups of the people and the social movements, by confronting the crisis from an anti-capitalist perspective.

For a workers’ and socialist solution to the crisis of the Regime of ‘78

End the Bourbons… in order to establish a Third Republic or a Republic of the Workers?

It is necessary to end, once and for all, the reign of the Bourbons. For more than three centuries, this feudal institution has managed to survive, thanks to its historical alliance with the Spanish bourgeoisie, that has converted it into the big advocate and arbiter of the interests of the big Spanish capitalists. It is necessary to topple this reactionary institution, a direct legacy from the dictatorship, of genuine idlers and parasites, at our expense.

In the context of the big crisis of the political regime and the disrepute of the monarchy, thousands of young people and workers are now raising the three-colored flag. For many, the fall of the monarchy and the struggle for a Third Republic is associated with a more just society, up against the big capitalists and the church, linked to the ideals of the left, socialism and even, for some, the social revolution of July, 1936. The three-colored flag collects a very broad imagery, that, at times, does not coincide with the real nature of the Second Republic: a bourgeois democratic regime that was inspired by the imperialist democracies of France or Great Britain, as an alternative and brake on the workers’ revolution, that ended up erupting in the Civil War and was suffocated in the same republican rearguard. Those groups that see in the struggle for the Third Republic a way to overthrow the current regime and carry out a process of a break with the monarchy and the capitalist system itself, must separate themselves from those that are adopting the struggle for the Third Republic as a re-issue of the true character of the Second Republic, that is, as channeling popular discontent towards a change of political regime that will safeguard the “personal property” of Spanish capitalism. 

The particular historical development of the Spanish bourgeoisie, with a big differentiation and internal rivalry, with a large part of its deals tied to the good favors of the state, with historical backwardness in the high-speed race of the big capitalist powers... has converted it into a class “in need of” mediating institutions like the crown or the predecessor of Juan Carlos I, the Leader.

This does not rule out the possibility that there will again be “switching sides,” from monarchical to republican, in the ruling classes, as happened already in 1871 or in 1931. However, these “conversions” always sought a rapid social stabilization and left the doors open to a restoration of the Bourbons on the throne. The definitive end of the Bourbon monarchy is an historic task that belongs to us, to the workers and the poor, to carry out, through a revolutionary struggle against this regime. The fight for a program of profound and radical democratic demands, next to a program of a workers’ and people’s solution to the crisis, like the one that we pointed out previously, will undermine the bases of the monarchy and the regime of ‘78. Before the eyes of millions of young people and workers, this fight can show that, in order to resolve entirely and really all the unsatisfied democratic and social demands, questioning the entire capitalist system is necessary. 

In this sense, from Clase contra Clase, we are part of the struggle against the Bourbon monarchy from this perspective, the struggle for a republic, but not of the employers and bankers, rather a workers’ republic. Because, with Juan Carlos I and his family, the class for which his dynasty has been working for decades, also has to fall, the Spanish bourgeoisie, the class that has kept his family on the throne for almost two centuries.

For the right of the nationalities to self-determination! For a federation of workers’ republics of the Iberian Peninsula!

Winning the right of self-determination of all the nationalities is a joint task of all the workers and groups of the poor of Spain. In this task, nothing can be expected from the peripheral bourgeoisies. These have been integrated into the regime of ‘78, by accepting national oppression, in exchange for being able to make good deals as part of Spanish imperialism. Now, some, like CiU, are raising the democratic national rights, in a demagogic manner, in order to contain the popular struggle for the right of self-determination and to capitalize on it in their negotiations with the central government. We Catalan, Basque, Andalusian, Aragonese, Madrid … workers have an enemy in common. The very one that denies the democratic rights of the nationalities is the one that is unloading the crisis on us, in the form of unemployment, the destruction of historic achievements, evictions and poverty.

It is necessary to work for the alliance of the workers and groups of the poor of Catalonia or the Basque Country with those of the rest of Spain, to topple the regime that is denying the right of self-determination, with a struggle waged with complete political independence, in a fight against the Spanish bourgeoisie and all the wings of the Catalan and Basque bourgeoisie. For that, it is indispensable that the workers of the rest of Spain take as their own, the struggle for the right of self-determination of Basques and Catalans, including independence, if a majority decided it that way, and thus weld the unity needed to be able jointly to build a free and voluntary Federation, which, for us, can only be conceived of as a Federation of Iberian Socialist Republics.

Confronted with the bankruptcy of the Europe of capital, we must fight for the Socialist United States of Europe!

Now the EU is laid bare before the eyes of millions as what it always was, a big anti-worker and anti-popular project of the different imperialist bourgeoisies of the continent. The austerity measures of the Troika (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF) and the different national governments have left behind the confidence that previously reigned in the EU and the euro as a guarantee of prosperity. This popular rejection of the EU is taking place at the same time that it is going into a tailspin as an inter-bourgeois project. For that reason, the struggle about who pays the costs of the crisis, not only at the level of each national state, but among the different countries of the EU, is breaking every trace of “cooperation” among the states, and it exposes the attempt of the most powerful countries, especially German imperialism, to impose the bulk of the burden on the weaker imperialisms, like Greece or Portugal, even on Italy and Spain. This is the profound basis of the reappearance of the nationalist xenophobic cancer in many countries. Although this cancer is in its initial stages, it has begun the process of accumulating grievances and hatreds, that can again reopen one of the darkest pages of European history. 

To stop this dynamic completely, it is essential that we workers raise a perspective and a clear program, in the face of the crisis of the Europe of capital. We cannot share the idea of strengthening the institutions of the EU to “save Europe,” nor reforming the EU, by intensifying the unification and giving it a more social content, as Syriza defends in Greece. Nor the proposals to leave the EU and return to the national currencies, without connecting that to a program of expropriation of the capitalists and moving forward in continental unity headed by the workers, as the Stalinists of the KKE in Greece do, or the PCE here, that “on the left” prepare the road to nationalist solutions which subsequently could even be raised by bourgeois groups of a populist extreme right wing.

The Socialist United States of Europe is the only progressive solution. That is, the overthrow by the workers of the different political regimes of the different states, and, on their ruins, being able to carry out the expropriation of the capitalists and a real and voluntary union of the different countries, where the bourgeoisie, that wants to lead us to new catastrophes like those experienced in the twentieth century, has been defeated by workers from the different countries, without capitalists.

A people that oppresses another people will never manage to be free. Down with Spanish imperialism!

Spain exercises imperialist oppression, together with the rest of the powers, over hundreds of the peoples in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. It is necessary to end immediately the military missions overseas, that in countries like Afghanistan or Lebanon are part of the occupation troops. Return of the two colonial enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla to Morocco. And there must be an end to the backing and support of reactionary regimes like those of the Arab world and other countries, usually led by the monarch himself, a great friend of murderous dictators like Mohamed VI or the Emirs of the Gulf. 

Stop the economic plundering by the Spanish multinationals like Repsol, Telefónica, Endesa, the Santander or the BBVA, in the semicolonial countries. While some of these firms are laying off thousands in Spain, like the last 7,000 of Telefónica, they are filling their safes with the profits obtained in those countries. The struggle against these firms here, goes through fighting for the return of their possessions to the different countries where they are doing business. 

From indignation to the struggle for a socialist revolution

Today, we who defend this revolutionary perspective and program to confront the current situation, are still few. But the social and political crisis is worsening every minute. For that reason, more than ever, from Clase contra Clase, we believe that it is urgent and necessary that those groups and we individuals that intend to overthrow the Regime of ‘78 and Spanish capitalism, begin to take steps in order to be able to defend and fight jointly for those points that we have indicated in this program, with those with whom we agree. To do that inside the unions, in the workers’ struggles, in the student movement, the movement for the democratic rights of the nationalities, against the monarchy.... At the same time that we try to struggle shoulder to shoulder for what we agree on, we believe that we must continue moving forward in explaining with what program and with what strategy we will be able to achieve victory in the decisive battles that are approaching. Because of that, we also view as urgent that the whole anti-capitalist left, we all, should begin publicly to deal with these discussions, in our press, the web, through talks and debates …, especially in front of the thousands of young people and workers that are joining the struggle. This will allow continuing to clarify agreements and differences, and being able to go on adding forces and jointly forming groups, all those organizations, activists, groups of workers... we who agree on fighting for a working-class, socialist, revolutionary and internationalist strategy. It is a matter of taking steps in a task that we consider indispensable, the need to build a big revolutionary workers’ party, that will prepare itself to intervene in the coming class battles, that the crisis of the regime of ‘78 and capitalism are preparing. A task that completely exceeds our small group or the sum total of other small groups that claim to be Trotskyist or come from Trotskyism, and that will only be able to be resolved through fusion with some of the thousands of young people and workers that are going out to fight and will move forward, to revolutionary conclusions. A party that we must not think of and build solely on a national level, but as part of the need to build a big international party for socialist revolution, that will retake the historic legacy and program of the most recent revolutionary International, the Fourth International, merging it with the groups of young people and the working class, that, in different places of the world, are going out and will go out to fight against capitalism and for a world without exploitation or oppression. A party that will fight because the working class will forcefully raise all these demands, that the worldwide workers’ movement has historically made its own, like those that respond to the serious social problems produced by capitalism and its crises. 

Something that now has a crucial importance, to accompany the aspirations of millions from a perspective that intends to defeat and overcome the capitalist state. In the course of this struggle, so that it can achieve a victory, it will be necessary to fight for the emergence of bodies of direct workers’ democracy, as the soviets were in the Russian Revolution or the revolutionary committees of the Spanish Revolution. These bodies must become the foundation on which is constructed a new type of democracy, a workers’ democracy or a democracy of the exploited, that will, once and for all, put an end to capitalist exploitation and respond to the demands of all the workers and groups of the poor. A social and political regime diametrically opposed to the existing one, a regime that can only be conceived of as a workers’ republic and a self-organized government of the workers and the people, that can only be the result of a social revolution. 

This is the perspective for which we Trotskyists of Clase contra Clase are fighting. Taking advantage of the revolutionary crises that the current crisis can open, as new historic opportunities, so that we workers can defeat the capitalist system, that only leads us to barbarism. For the victory of a revolution that will open the road, through its extension to the whole world, the broadest workers’ democracy, the advance in the development of the productive forces that will allow considerably reducing the working day... to a society where social classes in which we have spent centuries divided, no longer exist. A new society, where the exploitation of some human beings by others can only be seen in the history books, and with it, the rest of the oppressions by gender, race, nationality, culture, and every type that is functional for it. A communist society in the Marxist and revolutionary sense of the term, and, therefore, irreconcilably opposed to the meaning associated with the monstrous Stalinist regimes of the twentieth century, that is, a society without a state, without classes, and without money, based on the free association of all the producers. 

Toxo and Méndez “do not represent us”: we must transform the current bureaucratic union model

A big debate, or, rather, a crossroads for the working class, concerns the role of the unions. These, a result of hundreds of betrayals and pacts of the leaders of the CCOO and the UGT, are increasingly discredited among groups of workers and, especially, among the youth who face job uncertainty.

It is for that reason that it also becomes necessary to change the union model imposed during the Transition. In this model, the role played by some union leaderships, called “majorities,” although they only have 10% of the Spanish working class as members, has been strengthened. They are completely adapted to the system and “live” off of it, and they have changed our unions into completely anti-democratic machines, in which the members are not taken into account at all: or, perhaps, the rank and file were the ones that decided to perpetuate a “social peace,” while they are advancing with our historic achievements? Who gave a green light to extending the retirement age to 67? The form of the Enterprise Committee as a body of the workers’ representation has undergone a very strong bureaucratization. The institutionalization as bodies not subject to recall, elected every 4 years, which has facilitated, caused, a split between the representatives and those represented, allowing them on many occasions to sign agreements and betrayals behind the backs of, and against, the workers. The struggle against the current attacks entails a fight for a democratic union model, controlled by and at the service of the workers. The Enterprise Committees should be subject to recall, elected every year from the rank and file assemblies, where the workers will make the decisions, and thus recover them as tools of organization and struggle for all the workers, the young people with job insecurity and the great mass of the unemployed, at the same time that we are moving forward in reacquiring our own unions. The struggle for unifying all the ranks of the workers is essential: factory workers, service-sector workers, workers with job insecurity, immigrant workers … it is a key part of managing to seize the leadership of the workers’ movement from the sell-out union leaders, by organizing the groups that they do not defend and developing forms of representation and decision making from workers’ democracy. Reestablishing the decision-making general assemblies above the divisions into categories or union abbreviations. Maximum coordination of the struggles, and, in that way, building revolutionary wings in the unions that will end up expelling the parasitic bureaucrats that now manage them and put an end to the increasing top-down management.

The leaders of the CCOO and the UGT do not represent us! We must transform the unions into weapons for the struggle!

Translated by Yosef M.