By Rubén Tzanoff
In the Catalan regional elections, Socialismo y Libertad (SOL) endorses a vote for the Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) against the constitutionalist parties and the defections of the majority independence parties. The CUP’s proposals against the subjugation of democratic and social rights constitute the only anti-capitalist electoral option against the ’78 regime. We will do so critically, due to the ambiguities that persist in some of its proposals. We explain the causes of our vote.
Serious health, economic and social crisis
Daily reality unfolds in the midst of a serious health situation that has not yet been reversed by the slow and uneven application of vaccines. The budget cuts to public health executed during years and the ineffective responses of the European Union-Spanish State tandem, cause a high cost in human lives. At the socio-economic level, the crisis of the capitalist economy causes the closure of sources of work, layoffs, an increase in unemployment and precariousness, the deterioration of wages and pensions. And it deepens inequalities: while working people suffer, the banks, the great employers and the privileged continue to accumulate million-euro profits.
The government, the regime and the system
The PSOE-United We Can coalition defines itself as “progressive and left-wing”, but it heads a bourgeois government that says one thing and does another: it promises positive transformations for working people, but then they mutate into measures favorable to bankers and businessmen. When there are some changes, they are so partial that they configure simple momentary palliatives. The ’78 regime is out of date, with royalty discredited by corruption and a questioned judiciary. Its magistrates are the ones who rule that there are persecuted leaders, activists and artists, political prisoners and exiles for defending the right to self-determination in Catalonia. The judges do not cease to interfere with Catalan politics. The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) imposed the holding of the elections on February 14, when they had previously been postponed to May 30 due to the incidence of Covid-19 infections in the middle of the third wave. This is the framework in which the regional elections arrive.
The “Illa effect” and the constitutionalists
The Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC), a subsidiary of the PSOE, has presented the candidacy of Salvador Illa, until a few days ago Minister of Health and as such, one of the main culprits of the disastrous measures adopted. Polls indicate him as a possible winner, with the pro-independence parties polling under 50%. The result is yet to be seen, because the polls do not always guess the forecasts or are manipulated. And if this were the case, one thing is to obtain more votes than the rest and quite another to get enough support to be president. There are reasons that feed the scope of the “Illia effect”: the inconsistencies and confusions introduced by pro-independence leaders, the announced debacle of Ciudadanos, which may cause a drain of votes towards the PSC and the eventual growth of abstention due to fear of Covid-19 infection. The fanatics of the “unity of Spain” and the defense of the monarchical-parliamentary regime are so fired up that Pedro Sánchez dived head first into the campaign and Ciudadanos demands that the PSC form a government with them and not with the “separatists.” Another party that may grow is Vox, at the cost of votes lost by the PP. The extreme right deploys its electoral politics against the rights of workers, women and immigrants, receiving an active repudiation in almost all the places where it rears its head.
The divided independence movement
For their part, ERC, PDeCat and JxCat present separate candidatures. They were fell behind popular aspirations for independence and with the mandate expressed in the 1-O Referendum. Divided by their apparatus fights, they caused confusion in many freedom fighters and set a course that brings them closer to the recovery of a limited autonomy than to the realization of the Catalan Republic. Both of them supported the inauguration of Pedro Sánchez, the PGE and sowed expectations in the oppressors. In society, they headed a government that sustained capitalist profits, washed its hands of the closure of job sources and did not privilege investment in public health. They even used the Mossos d’Esquadra to carry out evictions and suppress street struggles. You cannot place confidence in the variants that represent the interests of the Catalan bourgeoisie, that is why you should not vote for them.
The CUP and the Nou Cicle
During the Government of Quim Torra (JxCat) which was dismissed by the regime and the subsequent administration of Pere Aragonés (ERC), the CUP has positioned itself in the Parliament and in the National Congress as an opposition, being critical of the Spanish and Catalan governments, demanding measures for the rich and the IBEX35 companies to pay for the crisis. At the same time, the CUP adopted positions with which we have fraternally expressed our dissenting opinion. We did so because they were open to the possibility of integrating a possible future Government and they extended their hand to sectors that act as a transmission belt for the Catalan bourgeoisie with the proposal of “Strategic Unity”. In addition, they signed an agreement with Guanyem, which placed Dolors Sabaters at the top of the list, which colored the pre-campaign with a reformist and personalist profile.
In response to this course, Endavant, a component of the CUP, published a critical statement. Other groups also expressed their discomfort and, fundamentally, the territorial assemblies did so. The leadership corrected some aspects of the campaign, first with the signing of the “Political Agreement for Confluence” and then with the “Document of the Extraordinary Political Council + GAP”. The documents taken as a whole and the program “Un Nou Cicle per Guanyar” have not totally overcome the ambiguities, but there are positive postulates in the direction of sustaining the break with the capitalist regime and system.
A critical vote
For all the above, SOL endorses a vote for the CUP, against the constitutionalist parties and the inconsistencies and defections of the majority independence formations. Its proposals against the subjugation of democratic and social rights constitute the only anti-capitalist electoral option against the regime of ’78. We will do so critically, due to the ambiguities that persist in some of its positions. And we stand next to the comrades who fight to keep the anti-capitalist project from decaying into the reformist possibility into which SYRIZA, Podemos, the Comuns or Bildu fell. There is an iron dilemma: take the path of class independence, a socialist Catalan Republic, governed by the workers and the people; or ride the coattails of the bourgeois interests that lead self-determination into a dead end.
We are addressing the organizations that claim to be socialist, revolutionary and internationalist. It is a fact that we have not agreed on forming a Radical Left Front as we have proposed, nor on the vote for 14F. Anticapitalistas has not yet spoken publicly. The CRT has done so by voting null or abstention and the Red Current by voting for the Candidacy of the Reprisals. For its part, Lluita Internacionalista (LI), who is a member of the GAP (Political Action Group), will vote for the CUP and from SOL we will also do so, although in our case, critically. Beyond the different electoral tactics, it is still necessary to take steps to form a pole that expresses alternative positions in a unitary way, with the horizon of forming a Left Front.
We have to turn everything around
The government, the 78 regime and the capitalist system cannot progressively resolve the major problems of health, housing, education, destruction of the environment, patriarchal machismo, xenophobia and discrimination that affect the majority of society. If they remain standing, it is not because they are all powerful, but because of the support provided by the political and union leaderships.
The fight against the pandemic requires a single, public, free and universal health system. At the same time, we must not allow liberties and elementary social rights to be cut with the excuse of Covid. To face the current austerity measures and those still to come, it is necessary to rebel and demand the UGT and CC.OO. to convene a plan of struggle leading to a general strike. It is essential to resume the struggle for self-determination and amnesty. The powerful must not be allowed to sow fear, passivity and resignation.
More and more peoples of the world are saying “enough!” in Latin America, Lebanon, the United States, Tunisia, Belarus and closer in France and Italy. They point out the way forward so that the workers and peoples do not pay for the crisis. At the same time, building revolutionary socialist alternatives with mass support is becoming an increasingly urgent task and it is the strategy for which those of us who are members of SOL and the International Socialist League militate.