On the regional elections of Madrid Community on May 4:
Whether with the govern of PP and Vox or with that of the PSOE plus Unidas Podemos and Mas Madrid, it is the King, the Ibex 35 and the imperialist Maastricht who win, while the working class loses
Open the road to the Republic of the “Indignados” (Outraged) movement!
Let's destroy the 1978 monarchical regime with its parties
that are sold out to capital
Let's unite the working class for public health and education, decent housing, permanent work, pensions, against repression, precariousness, unemployment...
Our dreams do not fit in your ballot boxes!
As a consequence of the turn of the PSOE and Ciudadanos towards the impeachment (which eventually failed) against the PP of Murcia, the PP of Díaz Ayuso brought forward the elections in the Community of Madrid fearing that something similar could happen to him. Two days later the political spectrum was altered with the resignation of Pablo Iglesias from the vice presidency of the state government of PSOE-Unidas Podemos to stand as a candidate in the Community of Madrid with the aim of rescuing his party, which according to the polls, could barely reach the threshold to get parliamentary seats. Pablo Iglesias proposed an alliance with Más Madrid, the Errejon's faction of Podemos, which had obtained more representation in the last regional elections than Unidos Podemos, but Mónica García of Más Madrid refused, accusing Iglesias of wanting to opportunistically put himself in charge of their opposition work, quite light by the way, that she had led in the legislature against Ayuso. Since then, the electoral campaign began de facto around May 4 in the midst of the pandemic and the economic hardships the working class is going through.
Independent parties are running in this elections, but deep down they are grouped in two bourgeois blocs that are the two legs of the 1978 monarchical regime at the service of IBEX-35 and the imperialist Maastricht of the European Union: the patriotic and conservative right-wing with the PP and Vox on the one hand, and on the other hand the social-liberalism of the PSOE with the left of the Crown of More Madrid and Unidas Podemos. Supposedly, Ciudadanos is in the middle, which will probably not get seats, as it is in the process of decomposition, with their leaders fleeing to the PP.
We cannot expect anything from either of these two blocs of parties that defend the 1978 regime and its Moncloa Pacts that have taken away so many conquests from the working class, keep more than 400 Basque fighters in prisons and made a true coup d’état in Catalonia, beating up the Catalans who were gaining their independence on October 1, 2017. None of these parties really represents a solution for the working class and the nations that are oppressed by the Crown.
The 1978 regime and its constitution guaranteed the continuity of the monarchy set up by the dictator Franco, who imposed a regime of continuity in terms of the army, judges and state security corps and the impunity for crimes against humanity committed by the Franco regime and the Catholic Church. The establishment of this monarchical regime was possible thanks to the Franco regime's 1978 pact (called Moncloa Pact) with the PSOE of González, and the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) of Carrillo and Pasionaria (of which Unidos Podemos are heirs), plus the union bureaucracies of the institutional unions of CCOO of Marcelino Camacho and UGT of Nicolás Redondo, as traitors as the current Unai Sordo and José María Álvarez. This 1978 pact differs in nothing from the current one of Gabilondo and Sánchez, having the PCE-IU and Más Madrid inside.
This regime guaranteed the capitalist system of exploitation of the working class, the oppression of the oppressed nations within the Spanish state and the looting and plundering of the peoples of Latin America by the Spanish imperialist government and its transnationals, while maintaining their colonies in Ceuta and Melilla.
No change will be possible with elections (whether state, regional or municipal ones) if we do not overthrow the 1978 regime and its constitution that was only "reformed" once to guarantee the banks their profits over and above the public services with Article 135 imposed by the PSOE-PP in 2012.
All the parties with the possibility of obtaining representation in the elections of May 4 in the Community of Madrid are parties of the regime. Of course also that of Pablo Iglesias' who has been governing as a support of the PSOE in the state government after reaching the PSOE and Unidas Podemos pact, a pact that we knew they were not going to fulfill. In fact, they have not fulfilled any of the main points: neither repealing the labour reform of the PP (point 1.3 of the pact) nor the Gag Law (point 5.6) nor regulating the price of rents (point 2.9.3), lowering the electricity price (point 3.2), or initiating a dialogue with Catalonia (point 9.2). On the contrary, with the Government of which Pablo Iglesias has been vice president, the electricity bill has risen, leaving 4,000 families in the Cañada Real without supply in the middle of the cold wave. 30,000 families have been evicted in the middle of the pandemic. Real estate speculation has not ceased. With its new Housing Bill, they will give subsidies to the owner of apartments for rent, at the expense of taxpayers, instead of limiting the price of rents or expropriating empty houses in the hands of banks and hedge funds. At the same time that the hunger queues grow with an increase of 2 million and unemployment rises to 4 million, the much-vaunted Minimum Income, barely reaches 15% of applicants and the sustainability index in public pensions stagnates, especially when the government plans to increase the years of calculation for the pension. Meanwhile, health services have not been strengthened even in this time of pandemic.
For migrants, the most impoverished part of the working class, the state government of PSOE and Unidas Podemos has raised the fence of Melilla by 30%, new CIEs (Internment Centers for Foreigners) have been opened, the Canary Islands have become a territory of the European Union in which there are no legal guarantees, where illegal deportations and blockade of migrants have been carried out, turning it into a true Guantánamo in Spain.
PSOE and Unidas Podemos have governed for the powerful; they have been the direct representatives of the financial power and the employers, for example, rescuing large companies, carrying out ERTEs (temporary employment regulation, TN) that are paid by the public treasury, that is, the working majority and not the bosses, some of whom have millionaire profits. Despite having a bank tax in their programs, in the end the working majority will return to rescue the banks with their taxes since they will take a 2% commission from European funds, more than 3,000 million euros. To the multinational companies of the Ibex 35 the government has allocated 140 billion as direct aid, 70 billion of which goes directly to the public debt, which will be paid with future cuts, such as the labor and pension counter-reforms requested by the imperialist Maastricht of the EU. In labor matters, the agenda demanded from Brussels is being prioritized, instead of reforming subcontracting. The PSOE government and Unidas Podemos have also arranged and concealed the retirement of the corrupt "king emeritus" Juan Carlos I and refuse to investigate the corruption of the Monarchy, while they have thrown Pablo Hasel in jail for singing against the monarchy. They criminalize the youth who protest in the street, sending the police to brutally repress the demonstrations. The repressive drift of the PSOE and Unidas Podemos government has recently given another turn of the screw, turning down in Congress the repeal of the Gag Law and Sedition Law. In addition, they have prohibited demonstrations by social rights fighters while allowing those of the extreme right. The Government of Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Iglesias has refused to end the privileges of the Church, such as the theft of real estate registration by the Church, or to remove religion from the public school...
There is nothing that makes us think that a government of the PSOE of Gabilondo with Unidas Podemos of Pablo Iglesias and with Mas Madrid of Mónica García in the Community of Madrid will do something very different from what the PSOE of Pedro Sánchez and Unidas Podemos of Pablo Iglesias are doing in the state government. In the essence and beyond small cosmetic differences, a potential government of the PSOE - Mas Madrid - Unidas Podemos (and perhaps Ciudadanos) will carry out cuts as much as a hypothetical government of PP - Vox (and perhaps Ciudadanos if it survives) would do. Both hypothetical autonomous governments will follow the dictates of the King, the Ibex 35, the European Bank and the imperialist Maastricht's Europe.
For the revolutionary Trotskyists, who want to end the 1978 monarchical regime and make a socialist revolution, the elections and the bourgeois institutions are only a public forum of denunciation that we use in favor of a revolutionary movement that destroy them setting up workers councils in their place.
The undemocratic electoral system forces the revolutionary political forces that do not subscribe the regime to many requirements and impediments to be able to attend elections. And, as in these elections we see that all the candidates are in favor of the continuity of the 1978 monarchical regime and its oppression, we do not call to vote for any candidacy, but we propose the null vote instead.
We don’t call to vote for the regime parties, therefore we don’t call to vote for Unidas Podemos or Mas Madrid, the "left" of the regime
From its inception, Podemos has characterized for expropriating the Outraged movement to take it to the bourgeois institutions, thus fulfilling their role of preventing the revolutionary uprising of the masses and stabilizing the regime.
Unidas Podemos is a tool of the “new left”, a continuity of the pseudo-theories and program of Stalinism and social-democracy. Podemos was the grouping of reformist forces (Podemos, PCE-IU, Anticapitalists…) to support governments of PSOE and the whole bourgeois monarchic regime from the left.
Unidas Podemos and Mas Madrid only fight for a “real democracy” within the frames of the bourgeois institutions, as a left flank of the regime. It is a pre-emptive popular front with the shadow of the bourgeoisie inside, in which the working class is subordinated to the petty bourgeoisie.
In these groupings of the “new left” of social democrats and Stalinists, the ex-Trotskyists also included themselves up to last year, subordinating to opportunism and covering it up from the left.
We need to make a balance sheet of their entrance in local governments as well as in previous local councils of the “popular unity candidacy”, sponsored by the members of Unidas Podemos and Mas Madrid. Members of these parties ruled some City Halls and the working class learnt that those “City Halls for change” did not change a bit. That’s why they lost the following local elections, as in Madrid City Hall to Ahora Madrid of Manuela Carmena. It is clear that Podemos, its fractions, the PCE-IU, are the main obstacle to crush the monarchy and its regime in the Spanish State.
The revolutionary Trotskyists think the bourgeois institutions only can be used as a public tribune for denouncing. Within the bourgeois institutions, nothing substantial can be changed. The bourgeois state institutions cannot be democratized or changed its content by ruling an Autonomous Community or a City Hall. There is no way of winning space to build an alternative within the frames of this bourgeois regime from the state congress, the autonomic parliaments or city halls MP by MP, council member to council member, mayor to mayor.
Unidas Podemos and Mas Madrid are part of the bourgeois institutions and therefore they are a stoppage for the independent organs of the working class to emerge as autonomous bodies where the workers use the worker democracy to decide and take the solution of their problems into their own hands, without the straitjacket of the bourgeois institutions and laws that cannot be avoided from within.
Podemos and all its derivative candidacies, fighting for their “real democracy”, deny the class struggle as they try to water down the workers into individuals and citizens. They only assign them the role of expressing themselves politically within the frames of the bourgeois institutions, breaking the working class forces before the capitalists. Thus, the bosses, the government and the monarchy are really deciding the fate of the exploited, to which they remove their gains and fire from their jobs by thousands.
The force applied by the working class can defeat the bosses and the monarchy because of their role in production, expropriating the oligarchy as the only way to guarantee an improvement in the living standards, over the ruins of the bourgeois state, with the victory of the revolution.
Besides, in the conflict of national oppression in Catalonia, Unidas Podemos went further with its policy of isolating the workers and the Catalan people from those of the rest of the Spanish State, for them to kneel before the king and quit their struggle to crush the monarchy in Catalonia and the rest of the state.
Unidas Podemos only fight to be the crutch of PSOE and the best it could achieve are laws or budgets that do not challenge the factual powers, the regime of the king and the European Union. This is so because PSOE and Unidas Podemos follow the orders of the capitalist Maastricht (repaying the public debt to the banks, huge cuts in public deficit and others)
In these autonomous elections, the wish of Unidas Podemos and Mas Madrid is for Gabilondo’s PSOE to win, for them to hold him on their shoulders. In fact, they are basing their campaign in forming a PSOE-Unidas Podemos-Mas Madrid government, for which maybe they would need of Ciudadanos if they get seats. With a government like this, the conservative right of Ayuso's PP and Monasterio's Vox won't be stopped.
Gabilondo, over the shoulders of Pablo Iglesias and Monica Garcia, won’t behave differently from his time as Education Minister in Zapatero PSOE’s government. He won’t lower the amount of students per classroom in Madrid Community as he was responsible for the cuts in the previous crisis as member of Zapatero PSOE’s government as well as for the labour reform that made cheaper and more flexible the dismissals or others. He won’t behave any different from his time as president of the university rectors, empowering Bolonia Plan and the entering of banks to universities as markets. In this little time of “de facto campaign” we have, Gabilondo has said he won’t disturb Ayuso’s PP taxation and he won’t raise the patrimony tax or the heritage tax. He also said yes to private-concerted education.
Pablo Iglesias has announced that he would give one of the first candidacies in the tickets of Unidas Podemos to Julio Rodriguez, former army general, chief of the Defense General Staff (JEMAD) under Zapatero’s PSOE and who is currently the chief of staff of Pablo Iglesias. In Madrid, nothing will be different from what Pablo Iglesias is doing nation-wide.
Monica Garcia, from Mas Madrid, heir party to Manuela Carmena's, won’t have different stands to what she did when being Madrid’s mayor, for example, about the speculation Chamartin plan she approved.
Therefore, a PSOE-Unidas Podemos-Mas Madrid government won’t kick out the private companies from the retirees nursing homes. It won’t reverse the PP privatizations. It won’t commit to not giving a single euro of the public treasury to the private-concertated education. It won’t expropriate the real estate that is in the hands of hedge funds and banks. It won’t forbid the evictions. It won’t hire all the health workers that are needed. It won’t kick out the health private companies. It won’t reinforce public health at any way to be really effective. It won’t demand to open the patents of Covid-19 vaccines in order to have urgent massive vaccination. It won’t end the taxation of the almost tax-free zone that Madrid community has. It won’t tax the big fortunes. It won’t hire directly all the workers with outsourced contracts in the public sector. It won’t guarantee the university to be free. It won’t guarantee decent public services. It won’t reduce the working hours/day allotted for each shift so to share the work among the entire labor force until there’s work for all. Let alone it will propose to nationalize the banks and the strategic sectors.
The revolutionary Trotskyists of Democracia Obrera say that all of these and even more is what we need to get by uniting the working class under those demands. At the same time we cry out loud Enough of electoral trap! While those at the top are campaigning, the ones from below are losing all our gains!
The principled Trotskyists denounce the ex-Trotskyists that are calling to vote for a PSOE government
Stalinist, anarchist and ex-Trotskyist collectives and groups are calling to vote, whether critically or non-critically, for Unidas Podemos and/or Mas Madrid. The majority of this reformist left, at the left of Unidas Podemos, have a “take-the-lesser-evil” policy, the popular front and “democratic front” Stalinist policy, being in one of the two bourgeois blocs of the monarchic regime that Ibex 35 bourgeoisie controls and depend of the EU imperialist Maastricht.
We are referring to the position of ex-Trotskyists, fake Trotskyists groups, as Anticapitalists and Revolutionary Left (The Militant), which vilely prostitute the name of Trotskyism. We want to mention, in the first place, these two groups of the renegades of Trotskyism because the first one comes from Trotskyism and, even if it does not claim to be Trotskyist, its fame refers to it. About the second, it uses the name of Trotskyism to stain it. These reformist groups know that the clean banners of the Fourth International is the only place from where they can talk looking at the working class in the eyes. That’s why they falsify their standings and lie to the working class, to hide their anti-Trotskyist reformist policy.
Since 2013, Anti-capitalists put all their apparatus for the construction of Podemos, but they abandoned such formation a year ago, allegedly because it had entered the State Government of the PSOE. Well, now outside of Podemos they ask for the vote so that a government in the Community of Madrid of that same PSOE is possible with the votes of Unidas Podemos and MAS Madrid. Anti-capitalists ask for the “critical” vote to Unidas Podemos and MAS Madrid in order to block the way to Ayuso and Monasterio by betting on a PSOE government in Madrid, as if the path to the right could be closed. With this policy of the lesser evil, Anticapitalistas have once again positioned themselves as an extension of Podemos and, subsidiarily, of the PSOE, supporting the regime in the name of the more radical left.
On the other hand, the position of Izquierda Revolucionaria (El Militante) is to actively support the candidacy of Pablo Iglesias because supposedly it would be a shock; the fact that Podemos has betrayed the social mobilization and entered the state government of the PSOE to support the regime is not for them indicative that it will do the same in a government with the PSOE in the Community of Madrid. However, the worst part is that to justify its support to this popular front policy, Izquierda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Left) falsifies history by making us believe that thus they are holding the same position Trotsky put in opposition to the policy of "social fascism" of the Stalinist third period, when contrariwise they are adopting the Stalinist policy of popular fronts, renouncing class independence, which in the 1930s opened the door to fascism, putting themselves at the tail end of the petty bourgeoisie, a policy that Trotsky fought firmly against. Trotsky today would have turned against the two IBEX 35-dependent bourgeois blocs, both submitted to the king and the European Union, the one headed by the PP and the one headed by the PSOE.
We do not either agree with the positions of other groups of renegades of Trotskyism, such as the Morenoites of Corriente Roja (Red Current, LIT), who ask the PSOE, Unidas Podemos and MAS Madrid to "give them compelling reasons to vote for them." With this slogan, false hopes are given to the working class, who might think that this bourgeois bloc can make policies in favor of the workers. And neither do we share the position of the Lambertites of POSI, who are active militants of Más Madrid, just as in the 1980s they were in the right-wing factions of the PSOE, placing hope in the right-wing faction of the Podemos heirs of Manuela Carmena and Íñigo Errejón.
The revolutionary Trotskyists of Workers' Democracy (FLTI) tell the workers that we must break with Unidas Podemos and MAS Madrid because they sweeten the regimes of the ruling class and save their pockets. We Trotskyist revolutionaries know this and that is why we denounce the pseudo-theories and programs of the “new left”. All of them, the bourgeois reformists of the "new left" of Unidas Podemos and MAS Madrid of social democrats, Stalinists and ex-Trotskyists know this and that is why they act in the opposite direction as to prevent a revolution.
We tell the working class that its allies and its strength are not in the Madrid Assembly, or in the City Councils or in the Cortes or in any institution of the 1978 Regime, but in the world working class that today fights in the streets in the rest of the world. It is with them that we must coordinate our struggle.
The forces are there to confront the parasitic Bourbon monarchy and all the imperialist governments of the European Union! Let us raze the imperialist Europe of Maastricht to its foundations and build on its ruins the Socialist United States of Europe!
Let's unite the entire working class under clear objectives:
Let's reverse all privatizations!
Not a single euro from the public coffers to private-concerted education!
Expropriation of the entire housing stock in the hands of vulture funds and banks!
Ban on evictions!
Affordable Public Rental Housing Park!
Hiring of all the health personnel needed!
Out with the private healthcare companies!
Release the patents of Coronavirus vaccines so that there is once and for all an emergency mass vaccination!
Let's kick private companies out of nursing homes!
Madrid must not be a tax haven for the rich! True taxes on great fortunes!
Suppression of Internment Centers for Foreigners!
Stable employment for all workers in Public Administration hired out of the law through the fraudulent outsourcing!
Free and Public university!
Quality public services!
Reduction of the working hours for shift without reduction in salary until there is work for everyone!
Nationalization of banks and strategic sectors!
Down with the regime of the Spanish monarchy, sustained in the Moncloa Pacts, oppressor of the Basque, Galician, Catalonian peoples…!
Open the way to the Republic of the Outraged!
The only government that could be capable of defeating the Bourbons and guaranteeing the expropriation of the banks and transnationals without compensation and under workers' control is a provisional government of the workers' organizations and the poor peasants, a government supported by the workers' councils.
Dissolution of all fascist organizations!
Dissolution of the Civil Guard and all the repressive forces!
Self-defense committees, unions and workers organizations to disarm the fascist gangs, the monarchy and its murderous officer caste!
We must defeat the collaborationist bureaucracies that want to tie our hands!
Freedom now to all the political prisoners of Catalonia and the entire Spanish state!
Out from Ceuta and Melilla the hands of the Crown and the regime of 1978! Against the looting the peoples of Latin America by the Spanish imperialist government and its transnationals!
Independence of Catalonia now!
For a Federation of Socialist Republics of the Iberian Peninsula! For the Socialist United States of Europe!
"The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves".
DEMOCRACIA OBRERA - Estado Español
(WORKERS DEMOCRACY - Spanish State)
(member of the FLTI - Collective for the Refoundation of the IV International)
