Much of the discussion centred on questions raised by J, one of the contributors to the libcom internet discussion forum. On the role of the CNT, he thought it was unfair to regard them as the ‘kingmakers’ of the republic when they never actually called for a vote. However, the CNT-FAI did more than neglect to put out their habitual call to abstain from voting, as Garcia Oliver explained in no uncertain terms: “Naturally, Spain’s working class, which has for many years been advised by the CNT not to vote, place upon our propaganda the construction we wanted, which is to say, that it should vote, in that it would be easier to stand up to the fascist right, if the latter revolted, once they were defeated and out of government” (quoted in Agustin Guillamon, The Friends of Durruti Group:1937-39, AK Press). This is similar to leftists today, who claim they don’t support the Labour Party in elections, but call on workers to keep the Tories out, or to vote Labour ‘with no illusions’ etc.
J pointed out that there was a lot of criticism inside the CNT for participating in the government at ministerial level, and not just from the Friends of Durruti group, but also their youth organisation. However, the participation in the state was not limited to a few leaders in the government - the organisation as a whole was involved at all levels. This was the end of a process of betrayal in which a working class organisation had gone over to the bourgeoisie, so it is natural there should be a proletarian reaction against it. Once an organisation has betrayed it is lost to the working class for ever, the CNT cannot come back any more than the Labour Party or the social democratic or Stalinist parties can.
The same is not true of individuals. The Friends of Durruti were all CNT members, which was a condition of being in the group. “For this reason the CNT and the bourgeoisie in general, try to present this group as an example of the revolutionary flame that still burnt in the CNT, even during the worst moments of 1936-37. However this idea is completely false. What marked the revolutionary approach of the Friends of Durruti was precisely its struggle against the positions of the CNT and its reliance on the strength of the proletariat, of which it was a leading part” (‘The Friends of Durruti: lessons of an incomplete break with anarchism’ IR 102). It expressed a healthy proletarian reaction against the CNT’s integration into the bourgeois state. Their membership of it did not stop them, very accurately, accusing the CNT of “treason” in the manifesto distributed at the time of the barricades in May 1937, even if they did withdraw this later.
The Friends of Durruti group was a political expression of the class movement of 19 July 1936, when workers struck and came out on the streets massively, and of the movement in Barcelona in 1937. Although coming from anarchism, this pushed them to converge with the positions of the Bolshevik Leninists around Munis, and to understand that revolution is an authoritarian act, “to replace the theory of libertarian communism with that of the ‘revolutionary junta’ (soviet) as the embodiment of proletarian power” (Munis, quoted by Guillamon). They were even accused of being marxist. But the force of the movement was not sufficient to push them to make a complete break with anarchism, and so they remained confused and fell back into anarchism when no longer sustained by the strength of the class struggle.
The problem of anarcho-syndicalism, according to J, is that it is an attempt at a mass organisation of workers, who are not necessarily revolutionary, that is also trying to be a revolutionary organisation aiming for the end to capitalism. This creates problems in that it will not necessarily elect a revolutionary leadership. In fact, as the ICC pointed out, in Spain the rank and file of the CNT was more radical than the leadership, who integrated themselves into the bourgeois state and “held that Companys should stay on as head of the Generalitat…” (Garcia Oliver, quoted by Guillamon). The problem for the working class in this period is that it cannot have mass organisations outside of revolution or temporarily during important class movements. In a period of retreat or defeat of the class struggle, like the 1930s, proletarian organisations are necessarily very small or tiny, as was the case for the Friends of Durruti and the Bolshevik Leninists.
For the ICC the events in Spain were an important preparation for World War 2, defining both the ideology and the Allied and Axis imperialist camps that would fight it out. J pointed out that France and Britain were essentially non-interventionist, so despite the intervention of Germany and Italy behind Franco and Russia behind the republic it was not quite the WW2 line-up. And, of course, the USA did not even begin to involve itself till much later. This did not stop the various powers from using the war in Spain to consolidate their imperialist alliances, nor from testing out weaponry that was to cause such slaughter and destruction a few years later.
Anti-fascism was one of the ideologies used in mobilising the working class for war in Spain that was also used in WW2. The ruling class needed to crush the last remaining undefeated section of the proletariat before launching another world war, something they had learned from the First World War, which ended with revolutions in Russia, Germany and Hungary and massive waves of struggle on every continent. By the mid 1930s the revolutionary wave had been defeated, most importantly with the proletariat in Germany crushed first by social democracy and then Nazism and the Russian proletariat crushed by Stalinism. At this time, there were still many very militant struggles, to the point that when Trotsky saw the strikes in France he thought they had the potential to develop into new revolutionary struggles. In fact the workers were diverted into support for the Popular Front, waving the tricolour and accepting the attacks on their working conditions necessary for the war economy. Similarly in the USA very large strikes were diverted into unionisation, developing the very institutions that played an essential part in recruiting workers for slaughter.
The working class in Spain remained undefeated in 1936 and was therefore able to react on its own terrain on 19 July. But it was diverted onto the military terrain and support for the democratic bourgeois state and slaughtered on the battlefield. Its defeat was therefore both ideological, persuading workers that defence of the capitalist state was necessary to their interests as a class, and physical, in the slaughter and in the repression meted out by both sides and particularly the Stalinists. The use of antifascism to mobilise workers behind the democratic state for imperialist war was generalised beyond the Iberian Peninsula with the call for workers to join the International Brigades and make collections to support the republic, instead of struggling on their own terrain for their own needs wherever their interests come in conflict with the bourgeoisie – which is the real way to show solidarity.
The contributors from libcom had to leave before the end of the meeting. Their presence had been an important first step in overcoming the widespread resistance in the ‘libertarian’ milieu to discussing directly with left communist organisations, and we hope it will be repeated in future forums. The discussion then moved on to the question of the relevance this discussion has for today. It is, of course, an important experience for the working class, and the issues are still very much alive.
Anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism have become particularly influential following the bourgeoisie’s campaigns about the ‘death of communism’ following the collapse of the Russian imperialist bloc and the USSR itself. There is growing interest in the CNT and IWW. Spain, and particularly the Spanish ‘civil war’, show anarchism having an important influence in the working class and in historic events.
The role of anti-fascism, which was essential to mobilising and disciplining the working class for war in Spain, remains an important ideological weapon today. For instance, it has been used in campaigns to persuade us to vote – for anybody – to keep out the BNP in Britain, or Le Pen in France.
The issue of how the working class shows solidarity to workers in other countries – not by collecting money for the ‘resistance’ in Iraq, or in going as a ‘human shield’ to Palestine, but in fighting the class struggle against our exploiters with the defence of our interests against theirs – remains just as vital today as it was at the time of the International Brigades.
Lastly, the force of the class struggle, which pushed the Friends of Durruti to start to question anarchist theories and develop the idea of the ‘revolutionary junta’, soviets, is also at work today. It can be seen in the efforts of tiny minorities of the working class to clarify, on discussion forums, in discussion circles, in groups like the EKS in Turkey (see WR 295). But today the proletariat is undefeated, and we have a new generation of workers entering the struggle, which gives much better conditions for that effort to bear fruit.
Lex 17/7/06.
On the site of the GCI [1] [3], under the heading “What’s new ”, dated March 21 2006, there is a leaflet, in French and English, on the anti-CPE movement in France. In this leaflet, the GCI, which often, pretentiously, boasts of developing analyses on the forces present in such and such a country, not only doesn’t say a word on how these events in France unfolded, but, further, it lies about these struggles, it attacks and denounces what has been the strength of the movement: the capacity to organise itself in general assemblies (GAs). All this enveloped in an ultra-radical language of denunciation of the CPE and the unions; but when it’s a question of making propositions in order to develop the struggle, the only thing that is said in the leaflet is the “general strike” and “violent actions to block the circulation of goods” (that’s to say road blocks, railway blockades, etc.)… Here, pure and simple, are trade union methods. Faced with the dynamic of the strike that animated the struggle against the CPE, the GCI proposes the union dynamic of struggle! And it has the cheek, lying about it, to criticise the students because they “march behind the unions”!
Straightaway, the leaflet deliberately mixes up the attempts of the bourgeoisie to confront the struggles with the initiatives decided during the struggle, attributing to the students the union appeals or the appeals to trust in electoral promises and even to let themselves be trapped in sterile confrontations with the police:
“And against all that (the CPE) how did they react?:
- By following like sheep those who break our struggles, negotiate our misery with our exploiters and send us back to work and school: THE UNIONS!…
- By swallowing the promises all kinds of politicians sell us about the miracle of change in order to bury our struggles in the ballot boxes.
- By falling into the trap of sterile confrontations where the forces of bourgeois order await and are thus stronger” (GCI leaflet).
This movement of struggle took the bourgeoisie by surprise. The government of Villepin hadn’t foreseen the impact that the attack of the CPE would have on the young generations of proletarians. It didn’t take the time to prepare this attack politically by putting in place a union and “leftist” strategy to accompany it [2] [4]. It’s for this reason that the different forces of the bourgeois state, the unions at their head, had to react on the hop, which left open a margin of manoeuvre to the students. Thus, it is necessary to clearly say that it wasn’t the students who followed the unions, but the latter who had to put themselves forward in order to try to outflank the struggle.
Practically, up to the demonstrations of the 18th March, the unions were not yet present and hadn’t imposed themselves on the movement. On March 7, in Paris, when the students of Censier met up to go to a massive demonstration, the CGT tried to put themselves at the head of the march with its troops and placards; the students stopped the unions from taking the head of the demonstration, themselves took the lead and put forward unifying slogans. The following day, the leader of the CGT, Bernard Thibault, declared on the television: “we are facing unknown acts”, and several journalists of the bourgeois media affirmed that “the CGT have been humiliated”. Thus, it wasn’t the students following behind the unions, but the latter who were obliged to follow behind the students. Even the following week, March 14, the main demonstration in Paris was spontaneous and followed no union appeal.
But it’s not only in the calls to demonstrations that this confrontation with the unions was expressed. In the universities themselves, there was a combat to take control of the GAs and the direction of the movement. The student union, l’UNEF, alongside militants of the leftists organisations (above all, Trotskyists), tried to take over the presidency of the GAs and monopolise the commissions which came from it; but in an important part of the universities, it was the elected presidency, controlled and mandated by the GA each day, which ended up imposing itself, always with the idea of dislodging the professional trade unionists.
Also on the question of the extension of the struggle there was a confrontation with the unions. Some GAs of the universities sent delegation to the industrial zones, but the unions at different places of work did everything to avoid any direct contact between these delegations and the workers, themselves taking charge of the reception of the students in order to try to fool them. Being wise to this manoeuvre, in some of the most combative universities, they didn’t renounce direct discussions with the workers and pickets were sent to the metro and bus stations where workers were on their way to work.
One could say similar things about the GCI’s affirmation that the movement put its confidence in the electoral promises of the politicians (“ swallowing the electoral promise…”). In fact the struggle itself is already a striking contradiction of the idea that the students believed in the electoral promises of the bourgeoisie. It wasn’t by voting that the youth imposed the withdrawal of the CPE, but by struggle. Throughout the movement, up to the imposed withdrawal, no political force of the bourgeoisie could flatter itself with having got to the head of a movement, which remained on a class terrain. It was only at the time of the actual demobilisation that the bourgeoisie tried to recuperate the lost ground, launching an ideological campaign in order to avoid the lessons being drawn: autonomous struggle, on a class terrain, pays. Thus it deployed its electoral and democratic circus, in trying to lead the young, well ordered and isolated, to vote for the left of capital in the next elections. It is evident that it’s quite possible that a good number of youth let themselves be led onto this terrain and that the left of the French bourgeoisie managed to channel a part of them to vote for it. But what is fundamental, what has taken on a historic significance, what comes out of these combats, are these lessons: how to struggle, how to organise the general assemblies and demonstrations, how to discuss, why and how we must look for solidarity, etc. This is what the new generation of workers has won. In this sense of the incorporation of a new generation into the struggle, the experience of the anti-CPE movement is, from all points of view, comparable to what the struggles of May 68 in France, 69 in Italy, or those of the 70s in Spain, for example, meant for the generations of that time [3] [5].
But the height of cynicism is reached by the GCI when it accuses these struggles of letting themselves be “trapped in sterile confrontations where the forces of order await us”. This group itself is constantly dazzled by “sterile confrontations” in Bolivia, Argentina or Iraq, where the working class is led into inter-classist movements and sometimes, in the worst cases, into inter-imperialist confrontations[4] [6]. In fact, the media has not stopped insisting since the beginning of March on the violence in the demos, repeating images of confrontations with the police, etc. The sole objective of this campaign has been to discourage the undecided from going to the demonstration or the assemblies.
From the beginning of the movement, the terrain of violence has been the terrain of the bourgeoisie. It’s the bourgeoisie that organised the provocation and assault on the Sorbonne. It is the ruling class, with the collaboration of the unions (by using their official stewards), which organised the confrontations at the end of the demonstrations, which organised and allowed attacks against the demonstrators by more or less uncontrollable gangs, but no doubt well followed by the police services. But it is false to say that the students let themselves be led onto this terrain. On the contrary, one of the aspects which expressed the consciousness of the movement, its will to unification, its maturity and its proletarian character, is the way in which it responded to this manoeuvre of the bourgeoisie, how it confronted this question of violence.
The night of the 10th and 11th of March, at the time of the police assault on the Sorbonnne, the most advanced students of Paris, who went to this faculty in order to bring solidarity and food to the besieged comrades, denounced the fact that they were about to fall into a trap. And its for this reason that they addressed the CRS, trying by all means to prevent repression and sterile confrontation; they succeeded in part, up to the moment where the provocateurs acted, which was the signal to begin the assault on the Sorbonne.
The movement also gave a response to the confrontations provoked by gangs manipulated by the police. Certain GAs in different places sent delegations to the suburbs in order to affirm that their struggle was also a struggle for the defence of conditions of life of the inhabitants of the estates, who plunged into massive unemployment and exclusion.
“…In fact, even if it is still very far from posing the question of the revolution, and thus to reflect on the problem of class violence of the proletariat in its struggle for the overthrow of capitalism, the movement has been implicitly confronted with this problem and has been able to respond in the sense of the struggle and being of the proletariat. This latter has been confronted since the beginning of the extreme violence of the exploiting class, the repression when it tries to defend its interests, imperialist war, but also the daily violence of exploitation. Contrary to exploiting classes, the class bearer of communism doesn’t carry violence within itself, and even if it can’t be spared the use of it, it never identifies itself with it. In particular, the violence it must use in order to overthrow capitalism, and which it will have to use with determination, is necessarily a conscious and organised violence and must be preceded by a whole process of the development of its consciousness and it organisation through different struggles against exploitation. The present mobilisation of the students, notably from the fact of its capacity to organise itself and to thoughtfully reflect on the problems posed to it, including that of violence, is from this fact much closer to the revolution, the violent overthrow of bourgeois order, than the barricades of May 68 could ever be”[5] [7].
But where the intervention of the GCI is totally abject is in its attack against the GAs. Without the least explanation, without any sort of argument, its leaflet says this: “BREAK the democrocretinism of the ‘sovereign and massive’ GAs, spit on the ‘elected and revocable delegates’”.
And yet it is precisely the GAs which confirm the class nature of this movement, its opening towards the whole of the working class, their search for extension, their development of discussion and consciousness. It’s these that prove that this movement of struggles in placed within the development of the mass strike that leads in the long term to decisive confrontations between the bourgeoisie and proletariat.
In the GAs, which have nothing to do with the parodies of assemblies that the unions convoke (even if that was the case at certain universities and, above all, at the beginning of the movement), the former took the struggle in hand by taking the responsibility for decisions and mobilisations, by discussing on all questions. In some GAs, this practice of looking for the unity of the working class was confirmed. They tried to bring together in one GA separate assemblies (workers, teachers, students…). Better still, these GAs were equally open to the intervention of some parents and grandparents who were thus able to transmit the experience of struggles they had lived through in 1960s and 70s. There were even some pensioners who were able to participate in the student’s GAs, thus showing, in practice, the unity of different generations of the working class and the transmission of experience.
In some GAs, you couldn’t help but be aware of the working class nature of this movement. Thus some questions were formulated in order to organise discussions on the history of the workers’ movement, asking the “oldies” to give their experience in the organisation of struggles.
In many GAs, the problem was posed of looking for the extension of the movement, and, to do so, some decisions were taken to organise demonstrations and delegations to go to the workers’ districts and the industrial areas.
And, above all, the GAs permitted the participation, the implication of the greatest number in the movement, in the struggles, intervening in discussions, making propositions, participating in strike pickets and delegations… With all their limitations, the GAs were a political experience of the first order for a new generation of proletarians who had just gone into struggle for the first time.
Despite all that, the sole thing the GCI remembers, the sole argument that it points to in order to justify what it calls the “weakness of assemblyism”, is that “The GA of Dijon met for 17 HOURS to decide on 2 days of mobilisation”.
We don’t know exactly what happened in the GA of Dijon, which cannot be considered as the epicentre of the movement; but whatever, the time taken in one GA can’t be an argument against it. In fact, in a movement of struggle, the sole manner of taking charge is that the GA is permanent, through which the workers can take charge of the responsibility for the struggle. Moreover, it is hardly a killer criticism to say that this GA has decided two, three or any days of mobilisation.
It remains thus to pose the question: what has the GCI got against general assemblies?
We know already, through other preceding positions, that this group “prefers” minority organisations which prepare struggles, such as… the Mothers of May Square!, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, “real expressions of workers’ associationism” as it says (4). And the leaflet in question now expresses a frontal opposition towards the GAs and their elected and revocable delegates as expressions of the workers’ struggle.
And yet, the tendency of workers’ struggles in the 20th century has always been to develop its general assemblies, with elected and revocable delegates, beginning with the mass strikes in Russia 1902, 1903, or 1905 and 1917 in Russia. The workers’ councils are nothing other than the unification and politicisation of the GAs in a revolutionary situation and at a much higher level. And that was the case later in the century, in Poland 1976 or in 1980, in Spain – Vitoria, in 1976 – just to give a few examples. And, negatively, at the moment of great workers’ struggles as those of May 68 in France, the unions did everything to nip in the bud any attempt to generalise the formation of GAs, in most cases by themselves taking control and leading the struggles into dead-ends. The mass strike, with the GAs and their elected and revocable delegates, is the form that workers’ struggles take in the period of the decadence of capitalism, it is the form that guarantees the direct, massive and unified participation of the working class in its struggles. This is what revolutionaries have to put forward.
The conjuring trick of the GCI consists of passing off the mass strike, the general assemblies, the elected and revocable delegates who carry the germ of dual power against the bourgeoisie, who bear in germ the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, as vulgar expressions of democratic cretinism.
What alternative does the GCI propose after having rejected the mass strike, the Gas, the direct participation of the masses in the unfolding of history and, in the long term, the dictatorship of the proletariat?
After a broadside of lies and insults against the movement of struggle in France, the GCI puts three “positive” propositions for, as the leaflet says, “to come onto the streets in a different way” in order “to be really victorious”:
- “strangle the dictatorship of the economy as our class brothers recently did, like Bolivia, Algeria, Argentina, Iraq, etc”;
- “…general strike outside and against the union’s masquerade”;
- “organise flying pickets, block traffic, goods, at crossroads, stations, airports”.
Let’s leave to one side this lying alternative, which has nothing to do with proletarian struggle (“strangle the dictatorship of the economy as (…) in Bolivia, Algeria, Argentina, Iraq”, on which we’ve already taken a position recently (4).
First of all it’s necessary to examine what the proposition of the leaflet means: we should come down into the street in a different manner to that which developed in this struggle against the CPE. And this “different way” is what? The “general strike”… Whereas the struggle against the CPE arose spontaneously, that it progressively affirmed its extension and its enlargement towards other students and towards workers. Progressively it became conscious of itself and its objectives, with the intervention of workers of different generations and revolutionaries. The general strike, by contrast, is convoked for a given day, without the engagement, without the implication and consciousness of the workers. But this latter serves the manoeuvres and orders of any political leadership, of a minority. Whereas during the struggles in France, the minorities were part of the movement or they joined up with the whole of the workers as part of a unity, at the time of a “general strike”, the minorities are separated from their class.
In fact we heard some “calls for the general strike” from leftists and anarchist of all types. Some appeals were pressing the unions so that they, in their turn, would call the general strike. These appeals had two tonalities: firstly those who put the future of the movement into the hands of the sole forces capable, for them, of making the government retreat and, on the other hand, those who, with their critique, wanted to force the unions into a corner. Whatever the intention, whatever the “good faith” of those who called for the general strike, one thing is certain: in the background, there is always the idea that it is the unions who must and can take charge. In fact the unions will not “decree” the general strike, but a type of “inter-professional” strike as they say, keeping all their cards in their hands in order to prevent the movement extending. Or else, as in May 68, to try to prevent the growth of the mass strike that started up after May 13, in order to “jump on the moving train” and thus try to derail it. The general strike is, in the best of cases, a confusion of terms or a well-maintained myth. Never has a general strike, ordained by the unions, made the state retreat, above all since the unions have fully become the servants of the state. And it is to play on words and on the credulity of the workers to pretend that the unions can be “forced into a corner”. Thus to better sell this adulterated merchandise of the general strike decreed by the unions (there exists no other), the GCI adopts a phraseology that is still more radical than the leftists’, calling for a “general strike outside and against the union masquerade”. In other words, struggle against the grip of the unions by utilising the arm that they alone master. To compensate for its political void, the GCI gets into a temper and hurls out all the insulting words in its miserable dictionary (weakness/democretinism…) in order to denigrate the GAs, that is the SOLE means to allow the movement to go forward, towards the extension of strikes, towards the first stage of the mass strike. It is not a question of terminology, but of knowing what is the strength, what is the sense of a movement.
The delegations and pickets of the movement against the CPE came from the GAs and were responsible in front of them. They were supported by them and expressed the force of the whole movement. On the contrary, the pickets to block roads and stations proposed by the GCI in its leaflet only appeal to minorities who prefer acting on their own initiative. Here again, under its “radical” grandiloquence, the GCI only achieves a radical form of trade unionism.
In short, “the form” of the struggle against the CPE in France is borne of the dynamic of the mass strike whereas “the form” proposed by the GCI is only that of the trade unions. To see that, it’s sufficient to return to the experience of the workers’ struggle of the last twenty or thirty years in order to understand who gains from the different general strikes convoked and decided on by the unions. As to “flying pickets, the blockage of goods at crossroads, stations, airports..” that goes no further than minority/commando type actions, advertising the acrid fumes of burning tyres across carriageways as the height of radicalism. Here the unions have the workers at their mercy and use such action to avoid the key question - going out to other places of work to call for real solidarity.
The importance of the movement in France has been to allow new generations of proletarians to gain experience about how to organise themselves and take charge of their own struggles, about what proletarian struggle means in the present period. And it is precisely this that the GCI attacks.
ICC, June ’06.
[1] [8] GCI: Groupe Communiste Internationaliste, or, in English Internationalist Communist Group. We have recently taken a position on the parasitic nature of this group in International Review no. 124, 'What is the GCI (Internationalist Communist Group) good for? [9]'.
You can read its leaflet here: www.geocities.com/icgcikg/leaflets/cpe_leaflet.htm [10]. We don’t know if, outside of its publication on the internet, this leaflet has been distributed at the demonstrations and GAs; in any case, in the different towns and mobilisations in which we’ve intervened, we haven’t seen one copy of it, nor heard any comment about it. This is not surprising: given so many lies in so little text and its contempt for the struggle, it’s possible that the GCI, despite the boastful style that characterises it, feared an adverse welcome from the students. On the other hand, they launched a strong appeal for others to reproduce and distribute the leaflet.[2] [11] See our article: ‘Theses on the students’ movement, Spring 2006 in France [12]’ in International Review no. 125.
[3] [13] ibid.
[4] [14] We will come back again on the GCI’s increasingly blatant support for the terrorist ‘Resistance’ in Iraq, which it mixes up with the struggle of the proletariat. See also the IR article mentioned above
[5] [15] ‘Theses on the students’ movement, Spring 2006 in France [12]’, point 14.
The death of 41 people and serious injuring of 40 more on the 3rd July due to a metro accident in Valencia Spain will not be well known to many reading this. In Britain, on the day it happened, this terrible disaster did not receive headline attention on news programmes on the TV or radio on the day. If it was mentioned it was the 3rd or 4th item, in some cases coming after items about a horse racing betting scandal. On the next day it was not front page news in any national newspaper. Such incredible disregard for the loss of human life is what we are used to from the ‘humanitarian’ and ‘democratic' press when it comes to the 3rd world, but when it comes to Europe or the US such a disaster is usually given headline coverage. For example, the flooding of the Danube in the spring was given prominent coverage, as was the collapse of the roof of a skating ring in Germany in the winter. So why this frankly incredible decision to relegate this disaster to the inside pages and give it lesser importance on the TV news?
Such a disaster on a relatively new (18 year old) metro system highlights the level of degradation of the mass transport systems. It can only serve to remind those who have to endure the London underground and its archaic infrastructure of the daily danger they are in.
It also happened in the same week as the first anniversary of the London bombings. The lack of any expression of concern by Blair or his ministers faced with such a disaster in a fellow EU country is certainly linked to the degradation of human relations in this rotting society, particularly as a result of deepening imperialist tensions. The Spanish state’s withdrawal of troops from Iraq and its moves towards Berlin and Paris left Blair and the British bourgeois looking weak. Thus the dead and wounded in Valencia are of no interest given that they offer no means for influencing Spanish imperialist policy.
This cold indifference to suffering expresses the real moral priorities of the ruling class. The England team gets knocked out of the world cup and it is headline news; a major disaster happens and it is of secondary importance. The nationalistic carnival that has accompanied the World Cup is more important than basic human solidarity.
WR, 6.7.06
On the 3rd of July, the worst metro accident in the history of Spain and one of the most serious in Europe claimed the lives of 41 people in Valencia and left more than 40 seriously injured.
A spontaneous solidarity rapidly developed in response to this catastrophe: instead of stampeding in order “to save themselves”, the victims helped each other; workers and those living nearby came to help, there was a magnificent mobilisation by fire fighters, health workers gave their help freely, there were massive donations of blood...This solidarity which expressed a profound concern for others is in stark contrast to the individualism and the dog eat dog attitude that oozes from every pore of the present society. A solidarity that roundly refutes the image peddled by the media, politicians and ideologues, that we are a horde of egotists who are only out for ourselves and who are only concerned with selfish and irresponsible consumerism.
This human, social solidarity is the first thing we want to express to the victims and their families. A solidarity marked by pain and indignation.
Pain, because once again -as has already happen with the accident on the London Underground 3 years ago or as happened with the Atocha bomb attack in Madrid – its is the workers who were the victims of this catastrophe. They were the majority of the victims at Torrente, a dormitory town near Valencia.
Indignation due to the shameless lies about the causes of the accident. All politicians -from the PP to the ‘Socialist’ PSOE- along with the media, have said it was due to the train going too fast, throwing the blame on the driver, who was killed in the accident.
The message is clear: the cause was HUMAN ERROR, the irresponsibility and guilt of the worker. How bad and irresponsible human are! This is not the first time this has happened: the investigation of the railway accident at Almansa three years ago, where there was serious evidence of deficiencies in the infra-structure, signalling and security systems, ended up throwing all the blame on a rail worker, who was jailed for three years.
By means of this policy, capitalism and its state washes its hands, claiming that it has absolutely no responsibility for what happened, and spreading the idea within the population that it is the workers who are guilty.
It is clear that the train was going at 80 kilometres an hour, which is double the speed at this point. This has been shown by the train's black box. However, this has been presented as a truth by the media, pushing to one side a whole series of very important considerations whose analysis will allow us to understand that there is ANOTHER TRUTH about the causes of the accident.
First of all there has been silence about that fact that the driver had a temporary contract; he had not been hired as a driver but as a station worker and had received no training: “His work contract with FGV was organised through an external business which has a new form of contracted known as temporary appointment. However, Jorge Álvarez, from the independent railway union, reported that the driver had worked as a train driver since May although he did not have a permanent job. His job was as a station worker and had an adjusted temporary employment contract as a train driver. ’They told him that he needed 14 days training, when previously he would have had at least a year as an assistant driver’’” (El Mundo 4-7-06).
A temporary worker, without training, is put in charge of driving a train all day. This was a very heavy responsibility, a source of undoubted tensions, stress and suffering. But, at the same time, it meant every day putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of travellers in danger.
It has been said that it is possible that the driver may have fainted. This leads us to the second serious irresponsibility of the authorities who boast so much about their “solidarity”. For years, as a consequence of the policy of massive lay-offs and reduction in personnel, trains are now only driven by one driver. There is no longer a duo -a driver and assistant. If something happens to the driver and the situation cannot be controlled, the passengers are abandoned to their fate.
These 41 deaths are the result of two policies carried out by all governments and businesses: CASUALISATION AND MASSIVE LAY-OFFS
Another very important element of the problem is the disastrous state of Line 1, where this accident took place. A year ago there was an accident on the same line due to problems of insecurity, material deterioration, the lack of maintenance, about which absolutely nothing was done! Concretely, “The section in which the accident happened is a bend in very bad condition. It is very narrow and at the entrance to it there is a small pothole, what is called a garrotte where the track moves and which causes a small zigzag” (Testimony of trade unionist reported in Levante 4-7-06)
But “this bend, already bad, has had nothing done to it to modify its track, because it would have meant the temporary closure of a transport route which is vital for the daily running of the system of a large city. Line 1 is the main prop of great success of the metro in Valencia, which in a year has more than 60 million journeys” (Levante 4-7-06). The Valencia metro is public property, managed as much by the PSOE (until 1995) as by the PP; and according to the sacrosanct laws of capitalist profitability they had not corrected a very serious problem, putting the lives of hundreds of thousands people at risk daily.
In order to swell profitability, in order to impose the policy of the permanent reduction of costs because of the crisis, the infrastructure is increasingly abandoned. This lack of renovation and investment in maintenance lays the conditions that led to disasters such at the one in Valencia. Both in the industrialised and the peripheral countries, these conditions are going to produce more such tragedies: in aviation, boats, trains, or through floods, storms and other effects of climate change.
This abandoning of the infrastructure, which is accompanied by the deterioration of working class neighbourhoods, and even the middle class ones, is in stark contrast to the multi-million investments in emblematic building and complexes, or in prestige events like the Olympics and the World Cup. In the case of Valencia, it was the visit of the Pope, and in 2007 it will be the Americas Cup.
The press of the “left” upbraid the regional government of the PP for its waste and propose “spending more on public services”. But this suicidal policy of pompous, pharaoh-like constructions, of mad housing speculation, is the only one that capital can have in order to try and maintain its economic machine afloat, faced with the increasing storms of the global crisis. The reality is that this type of thing is being practised just as much by the central government of Mr Zapatero, who has promised to put an end to housing speculation when in reality it has been even more rampant than under his predecessor. It is practised too by Zapatero’s municipal barons (Zaragoza and Barcelona, governed by the “Socialists”, without forgetting the incredible waste of the Seville Expo, the mirror in which the PP in Valencia is looking). We see the same policy in places such as London, Dubai, Shanghai or Athens, with governments of the most varied ideological colouration.
The tragedy in Valencia is part of a long list of catastrophes. On the one hand the more spectacular: massive floods, train bombings, blocks of flats and other buildings collapsing; and on the other hand, the daily suffering caused by millions of silent and invisible tragedies – the effects of casualisation, of poverty, unemployment, work accidents. At the same time, there is the deterioration of social and human relations that pours forth from all the pores of this social system, which is condemned by history and whose survival is the root cause of this terrible situation.
The only answer is to rebel, to struggle. The international working class has begun to understand that this is the only road it can follow, as demonstrated by the movements of the students in France in March, the metal workers of Vigo in May, the textile workers of Bangladesh in June. Only the development of this struggle, which is going to cost much effort and will have to overcome enormous obstacles, can eradicate the causes of such catastrophes, barbarity and suffering.
International Communist Current 4-7-06
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/wr/296_popfront
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/public-meetings
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/july_06_gci#_ftn1
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/july_06_gci#_ftn2
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/july_06_gci#_ftn3
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/july_06_gci#_ftn4
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/july_06_gci#_ftn5
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/july_06_gci#_ftnref1
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/124_gci_icg
[10] http://www.geocities.com/icgcikg/leaflets/cpe_leaflet.htm
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/july_06_gci#_ftnref2
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/125_france_students
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/july_06_gci#_ftnref3
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/july_06_gci#_ftnref4
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/july_06_gci#_ftnref5
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/french-students-movement
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/spain