SPANISH STATE
Written by Corriente Roja – Estado Español
Monday, 28 July 2014 21:00
With the unleashed social decadence caused by capitalist crisis, the accruing accumulation of poverty in the world and a greater concentration of capital in the hands of a few, more and more workers and peoples are witnessing the use of barbarism against us. War and famine become merely collateral damage attached to the benefit of imperialism besieging entire peoples.

The kidnapping of the Nigerian girls or the use of chemical weapons in Syria are situations that are becoming standardised. The “universal” morals that they are trying to impose on us by means of education and mass media is the morals of those who govern: the capitalists. They impose their morals, trying to prove that it is “eternal” and talk of “equality” and of “common benefit” but they boost competition and selfishness.

In the Spanish State, we are not immune to such double morals. A clear example of this is the way that financial elites use the alleged constitution of ‘78. This “untouchable constitution” proclaims the right to decent housing while hundreds of people are evicted; it proclaims the right to health service while hundreds die on the waiting list; it talks about public education for everybody knowing that it is only for those who can pay for it. The PP’s administration sentences to unconstitutional coups the oppressed peoples who claim for self-determination but, together with PSOE, they modify the constitution secretly and treacherously in order to allow the payment of the bankers.

In short, it is the kind of morals that consents to famine, to sexist abuse, police brutality homophobia, imperialist occupation and racism. Such morals is for those who benefit from profiting on the people; from their hard work and lives, the morals of the parasites of the system and those who administer it.

Even if workers did not spawn this kind of morals, it permeates our rank and file. As the need for survival accrues, so does the desperation of complying with the individual need no matter what, even moving as far as acting in detriment of a comrade or a member of our family. This is the morals of “anything goes.”[1] It is individualistic and oppressive morals, which produces splits among us and makes us get used to oppression but also to the use of oppression among us.

Proletarian morals: unity of the working class 

That is why, from the very beginning of the working class organisation, the proletarian morals was used as a weapon against capitalists, making the unity of all workers in struggle possible.  International solidarity, defending comrades against state repression and political discussion between proletarian organisations settling differences without using violence are different expressions of this type of morals.

One of the best known historic examples of solidarity among workers took place during the Russian Revolution, when Lenin returned to his country crossing Germany in a train authorised by the government of that country. The jackals of the bourgeoisie, of the government and of imperialism accused him of being “a paid agent” of Germany. Martov, a Menshevik leader and political adversary, in full confrontation with Lenin, stood in defence of Lenin’s revolutionary honourability.

We, the workers are not owners of the means of production or means of communication and we only possess our labour force. That is why our morals must have a clear class bias which is what will allow us to fight jointly the class that oppresses us: the bourgeoisie. The way thousands of fighters render even their own lives for the change of the social and economic system, the silence of thousands of revolutionaries who never yielded to torture, the defence of comrades goes to prove that a moral of defence and unity among workers is a must for our emancipation as a class.

Is it legitimate to use violence or threats against workers’ organisation with contrary political positions? 

Trotsky posed that “The fundamental feature of these approchements and similitudes lies in their completely ignoring the material foundation of the various currents, that is, their class nature and by that token their objective historical role. Instead they evaluate and classify different currents according to some external and secondary manifestation, most often according to their relation to one or another abstract principle which for the given classifier has a special professional value. Thus to the Roman pope Freemasons and Darwinists, Marxists and anarchists are twins because all of them sacrilegiously deny the Immaculate Conception. To Hitler, liberalism and Marxism are twins because they ignore “blood and honor”. To a democrat, fascism and Bolshevism are twins because they do not bow before universal suffrage.”

Bringing all this to brass tacks, Stalinist tradition tends to equalize all existing organizations that do not conform to their ideas – from fascists up to social democrats including such proletarian organisations as ours and treats us all with the same morals of “anything goes”. We agree that fascism is not to be discussed; it must be destroyed. However, and in spite of all our differences with Stalinism or other trends, we have never threatened anybody or harassed anybody, instead we have discussed up to the end at each university, institute or workplace.

The students’ and workers’ movement in the Spanish state is no stranger to these moral pressures and has witnessed threats and aggressions and even went as far as to regard them as something “normal” between organisations that are political “rivals”. But it is precisely because they are political enemies, the dispute has to be political and not violating proletarian morals, or else any kind of joint struggle and action between organisations would turn impossible and will make new activists that could become part of an organization to recoil in horror. This type of situations weakens the movements of joint struggle and makes it more difficult for workers to overcome in our struggles or even as much as defend ourselves from aggression.

No attack on workers’ movement is to be tolerated 

During the latest European elections, a comrade of our organisation saw a young man pasting stickers of Communist Reconstruction over our propaganda posters. When he saw what was happening, our comrade called his attention to this disrespect and received a strong kick on his behind from the other youngster. Subsequently, Communist Reconstruction contacted us to deny their involvement in the attack and rejecting such actions; further on, they published a communiqué reasserting this position.

In this case it was our turn to suffer aggression but unfortunately this is not the only case of aggression or threat in the workers’ and students’ movement. In recent months such actions that are more likely to belong to fascist bands or to police have been increasingly recurring. The Corriente Roja (Red Trend) wishes to express its maximum rejection of such actions and of those who commit them. This is a warning that we shall tolerate no threat or aggression towards our comrades and we call all workers’ organisations and the left to jointly face these kinds of facts. If we put no end to such practices, we shall be condemning any unity of action between different organizations and political trends, and driving the struggles where we are protagonists to their liquidation.

Historically, workers’ movement has been the movement of congresses, of plenary meetings, of assemblies, in fact of debates. Unlike capitalism, we postulate ourselves as the defenders of people’s right to speak up. We are the ones who fight every day against the silence of workers, so that they can become their own representatives of ideas and morals.

As revolutionaries it is our aim that workers should be the owners of their lives; of their economy and education. Our aim is the most revolutionary and the most difficult of projects. The Russian Revolution has proved that masses are to be part of their own politicization and education. That is why the means leading towards our ends must be examples set to the workers’ movement not to doom our future to a dictatorship against the proletariat the way it has already happened with the Stalinist bureaucratisation.

“Revolutionary Marxists will not be able to cope with their historic mission unless they split away from the public opinion of the bourgeoisie and their agent within the proletariat.” Leon Trotsky.

[1] A modern version of the method of “the end justifies the means”.