By Working Class Platform – El Salvador
El Salvador is experiencing its darkest moment in recent history. It seems that the cycle is repeating itself and authoritarianism has come to us again. We find ourselves living under a dictatorship, which contradictorily has popular support. But at the same time, its measures are leading us into ever more difficult circumstances: hunger, pain, death and repression are undoubtedly our destiny. Facing such a situation, sectors of the revolutionary vanguard can not remain indifferent, and we must move from a defensive to an offensive position, and assume the tasks of the historical moment in which we are living.
El Salvador needs to put an end to capitalism and its submission to imperialism
Our country is a semi-colony of U.S. empire because, although we are not Puerto Rico, in practice there are characteristics of our country that have consolidated a relationship of direct dependence on U.S. imperialism:
- Dollarized economy: We have neither our own currency nor our own monetary policy, we depend totally on the ups and downs of the dollar in the world economy. In addition, the whole economic apparatus is set up for the benefit of those who use the dollar to do their business.
- Free Trade Agreement: This annexationist trade policy makes our trade balance tilt unfavorably towards U.S. production but also defines percentages of our production destined exclusively to the U.S., without obtaining fair compensation for them. This increasingly weakens our public finances, turning our territory into a tax haven for the production of goods at low cost without recognizing the value of our labor force.
- Migration/Remittances: The United States is the recipient of the highest percentage of Salvadorans who migrate (for whatever reason), providing them labor, but also making the Salvadoran economy depend on the remittances that our compatriots send. This also facilitates the consumerist mentality that benefits the empire so much, disintegrating our families and taking away our main resource, our people.
- Gringo military and police enclave: It is no secret that the ILEA (International Law Enforcement Academy) operates in our country, in which police personnel from Central America and the broader Latin American region are trained. We have also ceded sovereignty by allowing the installation of an air base in Comalapa where the United States has two parallel runways, which are large enough for any type of military aircraft to operate on them. This is located near San Salvador, on the Pacific coast and at a strategic point that allows for control of the Gulf of Fonseca, the triple border between Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
The structures outlined above are a function of the fourteen families that have mutated into large business groups that own the country and part of Latin America: Poma Group, Simán Group, Quiroz Group, Agrisal Group, Calleja Group, Kriete Group, and which today operate under the shelter and complicity of the transnational bourgeoisie. With the control of the state apparatus, the Bukele Group, these families that are no longer fourteen, yet they are increasingly profiting within the capitalist framework that permits the extraction of local wealth, control of the state apparatus and corruption, and clearly identified monopolies. At the same time, they are also maintaining national business through both internal and external debt.
Confronted with this reality, the creation of a bourgeois nationalism is not enough. This was the mirage that Bukele awakened at the beginning. Likewise, the creation of a welfare state that the “left” FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) bet on in the laying of its foundations was not enough, much less the voracious neoliberalism of the right-wing ARENA (Nationalist Republican Alliance) party.
It is necessary to break with capitalism and its guarantees that the wealth produced by the working class (in a broad sense) always goes to the owners of the means of production, and in the case of El Salvador, the business groups (families) mentioned above. This rupture must occur at both the economic level with all imperialism (American, Chinese, European, etc.) and also, at the political level, mainly with the country of the North American empire. This is necessary because nothing that has been done so far, from the military and “democratic” governments, has solved the problems of the people in El Salvador: poverty continues to affect a high percentage of the population, unemployment continues to affect the ability of working people to provide for themselves and their families, pushing people to migrate, disintegrating families and society itself, and creating breeding grounds for violence and increasing inequality.
- Arena, FMLN and Bukele demonstrate that they are not an alternative
The working class has already lived through the experience of ARENA in power for 20 long years, the FMLN for 10 years, and now Bukele for 5 years.
ARENA ruled the country at its ease for two decades, implementing the neoliberal model that only deepened the problems of El Salvador. Then the FMLN ruled for a decade, blaming its failings on its lack of power to implement the necessary social transformations. However, the truth is that it merely sold a leftist discourse and it did not break with the neoliberalism that ARENA implemented. Further, the FMLN betrayed the people who trusted in the change that were promised, and it dismantled the social organization that allowed people to make demands for much-needed changes. And as if that were not enough, it also became embroiled in two corruption cases that have taken their toll, turning the party into a minimal political force and a negligible element in the broader social struggle.
Nayib Bukele is currently enjoying his illegitimate and unconstitutional second term, and has already demonstrated that his economic policies are not at all contrary to imperialism. Although he speaks of sovereignty in his speeches, and has even publically distanced himself from imperialism, in practice it is clear that his priority is to facilitate business and attract investors to continue plundering and destroying the few resources the country has. And while his security policy appears to be an enormous success, it lacks solidity, and is reactionary and will prove ultimately ephemeral because instead of fighting the causes and roots of violence, that is to say migration, inequality, poverty, family, social disintegration, and a lack of opportunities for all, it has opted for the iron fist. Although it has brought Bukele electoral gains, it lacks both soundness and the possibility of continuity beyond the period of the current regime. Unfortunately, violence will resurface, either in the form of gangs or in another form. In summary, Bukele is only building a dictatorship through the persecution and criminalization of those who do not think like him while he concentrates more and more power and enriches his family/business group.
- The only way out for El Salvador is the struggle for socialism
This socialist solution consists of putting all the wealth that is produced in the hands of the working class. This is only possible by expropriating the bourgeoisie from the control of the means of production, establishing a democratically planned economy, which produces what the people decide and need for their development, and the monopoly on foreign trade. This is only possible in the framework of the struggle for socialism in Central America, in which the bourgeois states are overthrown and transformed into New Workers’ States, based on workers’ and people’s councils. The reorientation of international relations will also be necessary, including their replacement by those that benefit the country, instead of plundering it. At this point it is important to differentiate what we are talking about with respect to the histories of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and China. Although they call themselves communist or socialist, in practice and in the background they are capitalist states. It is enough to review what has been said so far regarding the planned economy, the establishment of relations free from plunder, and putting the people and not business at the center, to understand clearly the difference between them and our socialist vision. In the case of the above countries, their main economic resources are in the hands of the national and foreign bourgeoisie, so that the wealth produced is not at the service of the people. In addition, their main leaders are new bourgeoisie.
This solution that we propose must be done with Central American unity. Our countries were born as one: a great Central American nation that, separated by selfish interests, has made us believe that the paths forward are also separate. However, the truth is that we share much more than what they have said separates us. Moreover, in the global concert of nations, it is impossible to carry out the proposed transformations alone and in isolation. And the fact is that, just as capitalism is global, the solution must also be global, and in our case, it begins with Socialist Central America.
This solution is only possible strategically if the struggle for socialism in El Salvador and Central America is linked to the struggle for world socialism.
- This is only possible through a revolutionary solution
We cannot achieve this task through the means offered by bourgeois democracy, that is, through elections that only serve as a release valve in a cyclical manner over time. Electoralism makes the people place their yearnings and hopes for change in electoral cycles that only deceive them and keep them in submission in favor of a capitalist state. It is important to defend bourgeois elections as spaces to denounce the excesses of corrupt politicians, but as a class we must defend our own methods and mechanisms, our own State and our own institutions. The Bukele regime is the best example of why we cannot trust bourgeois institutions that are genuflecting to the ruler of the day. However, it is important to clarify that although we tend to associate REVOLUTION with WAR OR ARMED RESISTANCE, we have to say that the method for today is not a guerrilla warfare. Rather, we call for the insurrection of the masses to overthrow the government and take power, knowing that the guerrilla is only one tactic among others. For us, the strategy is the seizure of power by the working masses, so it is not a task for a privileged group, but for all working people.
- We need a political instrument
None of this is possible without a political instrument of the working class in the broad sense, meaning a party that is for those of us who have only our labor power to survive, and who live from the labor of our efforts. It must be independent of the bourgeoisie and belong to our own class. This political instrument has not yet existed in our country. We have not yet had an instrument not centered on elections, but rather on the struggles of the working people, whose main task is to confront the framework of the Bukele dictatorship, and to win over the people to the struggle for a revolutionary and socialist way out.
The second task of the political instrument is to educate the masses in the socialist and revolutionary program so that they can fulfill their role in the struggle for power.
Therefore, this instrument must have certain characteristics. It must be:
- Internationalist, because it understands that the triumph of the revolution is not possible individually and in isolation.
- Classist, because there is no room for the bourgeoisie or oppressors, it fights against all types of oppression and is constituted by the best elements of the working class.
- Conspiratorial, because we face a dictatorial, repressive and murderous regime.
- Democratically centralized, because its decisions are widely discussed and constructed by all and once voted, they are also respected by all, even by those who were in the minority when voting.
- Self-financed, it will depend on the resources of the working class itself and not on any bourgeoisie, nor on any mechanism that may or may not want to influence the decisions in a different way than the one decided by the people.
- Combative, because it is forged and built in the struggles of the working class.
The first task of this organization is to elaborate the transitional program for the socialist revolution in El Salvador, which starts from the needs of the masses to elaborate a set of democratic, economic and socialist demands to win the vanguard and the Salvadoran people to the struggle for socialism and revolution. We must provide the class with a revolutionary leadership, which cannot be improvised, it must be built beforehand.
“For us it is not a question of reforming private property, but of abolishing it; it is not a question of alleviating class antagonisms, but of abolishing classes; it is not a question of improving the existing society, but of establishing a new one.”
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Circular to the League of Communists, 1850.
San Salvador, September 15, 2024
Declaration of the Platform of the Working Class, Salvadoran section of the International Workers League to the revolutionary vanguard in El Salvador.
