Only 24 hours had elapsed since the bad electoral results of the coalition government parties on May 28 were made known before Pedro Sánchez announced that the General Elections would be brought forward to July 23.
By Corriente Roja
This calculated urgency served the PSOE of Pedro Sanchez as a means of evading self-criticism in the face of the loss of 5 regional governments and more than 400,000 votes in the municipal elections, as well as reinforcing the central idea of his electoral campaign and that of those who want to govern with him: the “strategic” vote against the far right.
Why is the far right making gains in the face of “the most progressive government in history”?
If reality were to follow the narrative that “the government is transforming the country,” there would be no social discontent. But the reality the working class is facing has imposed itself on their discourse, meanwhile, they try to paint a rosy picture of a social landscape where only a privileged minority is doing well.
Despite their insistence that they are the government that has achieved the lowest inflation in Europe during the month of June (1.9%), in reality, we find ourselves with a rate of accumulated inflation at 11.76% since June 2021. So the loss of purchasing power for the working class will continue, since wages rose only 2.8% on average at the end of 2022. In addition to this, the EU demands that the budget stability rules be reissued in 2024. Whoever governs will have to adjust the public deficit to 3% (included in the current Stability Plan 2022-2025 sent to Brussels) and face the problem of public debt, which will result in cuts to everything in the public sector, including pensions.
Faced with “the milestone” of the “progressive” Labor Reform of Yolanda Diaz, we find ourselves with a labor market where the vast majority of contracts are part-time, meaning most are living on poverty wages. In addition, the labor market continues to function in terms of temporary contracts which have been repackaged as permanent-discontinuous in order to falsify statistics, and permanent workers can be fired just as cheaply as with Rajoy’s reform.
Meanwhile, the energy sector has doubled its earnings compared to 2022, a year in which it already broke records. And the banking sector earned €5.696 billion in the first quarter alone, which is 13% more than in the same period in 2022.
They also boast of having approved a new Housing Law in the last year of their mandate with a huge propaganda campaign. This law is a total fraud and does not even prohibit evictions (during the time their “social shield” was in place, there were 79,628 evictions and now there are 56,000 open eviction cases). Pedro Sánchez’s electoral promise to make available 50,000 houses from the Sareb (“the bad bank”) for the public housing stock is not encouraging either. In addition to the fact that 1,400,000 more homes would be needed to reach the European average. What lies behind the announcement is that the government is buying up apartments that were already bailed out with public money, while giving away public land to private companies so that they can do business building homes “at more affordable prices.” In contrast to the underinvestment in public housing, we find that “the progressive government” approved the largest military budget in history in the same year.
Nor did they fulfill their promises to repeal the Gag Law[1] or close the CIEs[2]…
So are we facing a “reactionary wave”?
The explanation for the advance of the far right given by PSOE and those aspiring to form a new coalition with them is that people are becoming more right-wing “by osmosis,” since, according to them, they could not be doing better.
There are many reasons why the impoverished layers of society are distancing themselves from “progressive policies,” since in practice they have only perpetuated and deepened the precarious lives of the majority. While at the same time, these policies have continued to favor and enrich the bosses. But this distancing is not only happening in terms of a pull towards the right. On May 28 we saw that broad sectors of the most impoverished and precarious working class either abstained or voted blank or null. They did not see the use of voting in a democracy for the rich. They did not see the point of voting for the “left” who breaks its promises when it comes into power while it continues using its phony rhetoric. In 104 municipalities which coincidentally have the highest levels of unemployment and poverty in the state, the rate of abstention reached over 50%.
And SUMAR?
SUMAR is the new organizational umbrella of the institutional left after Podemos’ collapse. Its project is not even to redirect the struggles and mobilizations that arose after 15M into the fold of the institutions, as Podemos did. Now their objective is to channel the social discontent, the fear of the right, and a reluctant vote, into the creation of a new coalition government with PSOE. They aim to achieve this within the framework of the bourgeois monarchic regime and by perpetuating the two-party system to which Podemos submitted itself at the expense of its own destruction.
How do we fight the right and the far right?
The right and far right are consolidating forces in opposition to a “left” that perpetuates social problems. Without putting an end to the social conditions that allow for the strengthening of the right and far right, the latter will continue to exist. A supposed left that watches over the maintenance of social classes and does not propose a break with the monarchic regime inherited from Francoism, nor the purge of the judiciary of Francoist judges will continue to support the growth of the far right. A left that does not provide resources for the laws against gender and LGBTIphobic violence, or repeal the current immigration law, is a left that will always give political oxygen to the far right.
The most powerful weapon that the working class has is its independent organization. Not only against the far right, but also against those governments that, in the name of progressivism, apply starvation policies that fan the reactionary flame among the masses. And these same masses are the ones who, without a real socialist alternative, accept the false solutions of racism, LGBTIphobia, male chauvinism, and Spanish nationalism against the rest of the nationalities of the State.
That is why this July 23, from Corriente Roja, we call for a null vote, a protest vote. This is because we are not going to get the measures we need by voting every four years for those who call themselves progressive and end up making right-wing policies. We have to wrest them from the capitalists and their governments, in the streets, our neighborhoods, and our workplaces. This is the only way to confront the institutional advance and ideological offensive of the right and the far right and the threats and attacks on our democratic rights.
Let’s fight the right wing, the far right, and all capitalist governments with a Program of Struggle for:
- Decent salaries and their mandatory and automatic updating according to the Consumer Price Index
- Combating unemployment with reduced working hours without reduced wages
- The repeal of the 2010, 2012 and 2021 Labor Reforms
- Legalization of the undocumented immigrant population within the state territory
- 100% public healthcare, education, and pensions
- No evictions without adequate housing alternatives, for a public rental housing stock, and the expropriation of the empty apartments in the hands of Sareb and the banks.
- Expropriation of the strategic sectors of the economy for economic planning at the service of social needs and environmental sustainability. Expropriation of the banking system and state credit system for this purpose.
- Agrarian Reform: expropriate large estates to be collectively operated by agricultural workers, under environmental sustainability criteria.
- For the right to the people’s self-determination! For a binding referendum to be able to choose between Monarchy and Republic! For a free union of Iberian Socialist Republics!
- More resources for prevention, care, and protection against racism, male chauvinism, transphobia and LGBTIphobia! No to debt repayment: we will not pay for their speculation with our Public Services!
- Urgent measures against climate change! Resources to protect the population from the immediate effects of global warming and economic restructuring by and for the social majority, no to polluting production for capitalist profit!
- Out with the EU and the Euro! For a socialist Europe of the workers and the people.
Translation: John Prieto
[1] In Spanish: La Ley Mordaza
[2] Migrant detention centers
