Blackout in the Iberian Peninsula illuminates the failure of capitalism

On 28 April last, a giant blackout hit the whole of the Iberian peninsula, suddenly cutting off electricity and paralysing activity for almost eight hours; creating chaos and havoc on the underground, trams and trains as signals broke down; trapping people inside lifts, causing flights to be cancelled at airports; closing shops and creating a real hardship for the whole population

An additional phenomenon...

This spectacular episode is an illustration not only of the fragility of the most powerful states in terms of energy, but also one more symptom of an accumulation of scourges and disasters that are hitting a world that is itself increasingly disordered and chaotic. While this event is ‘unprecedented’ in Spain and Portugal, it is clearly not unique, and we could point out that many other giant power cuts have taken place in different parts of the world before. This was the case, for example, in India in 2012, one of the biggest to date, as was the blackout in parts of the north-east and mid-west of the United States, stretching as far as Ontario, in August 2003.

Although sometimes linked to climatic hazards, such as violent storms, electricity supply problems have often been caused by the failure of outdated or poorly maintained networks suffering from a lack of funding. The deep economic crisis, the lack of investment and growing social unrest, imperialist tensions between states, can only create the conditions for future power cuts with unpredictable but potentially dramatic consequences. Energy, as we can see from the current war between Russia and Ukraine, has become more of a strategic than a commercial issue, a weapon of war in itself[1].

At the time of writing, the causes of the huge blackout in Spain and Portugal (which also partially and temporarily affected France, in the Basque country) have not yet been established. Although network connections have been optimised to regulate electricity distribution, the blackout on the peninsula remains ‘unexplained’ by the authorities. There is no doubt that a cyber attack, even if the hypothesis was quickly ruled out, was a credible possibility given the current deterioration in geopolitical tensions.

In reality, beyond our ignorance of the causes and the need for caution, the ‘technical’ reason for the blackout is less important than outlining a political interpretation of what happened. Taken on its own, the phenomenon of this sudden ‘blackout’ can find a specific explanation. The question that seems most relevant to us is rather to underline the context in which the event occurred, as a phenomenon that sheds light on a system at the end of its tether.

... in the decomposition of capitalism

As with other phenomena that can occur and result in real tragedies, such a blackout must be understood in a context where accidents and disasters are accumulating, and where their rate of appearance, intensity and scale have been steadily increasing for more than thirty years. This is a global situation that Marx could not, of course, have imagined in his time, but which he was nonetheless able to anticipate by revealing the historical dynamics of the capitalist mode of production. In perceiving the internal contradictions of the system and the seeds of its crisis and future decadence, as with any mode of production and exploitation that has become obsolete, Marx noted that capitalism is special in that it gives rise to “an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity”[2]. Of course, the point here is not to attribute the blackout to a purely economic cause. What we want to say here is that the obsolescence of capitalism, a system which has been in decline for over a hundred years because of its chronic economic crisis and, above all, the absence of any prospect other than misery and destruction, is plunging the whole of society into convulsions that are now those of its final phase, its decomposition.

Indeed, “the phase of decomposition appears as the result of an accumulation of all the characteristics of a moribund system, completing the 75-year death agony of a historically condemned mode of production”[3]. With an economic and social crisis plunging proletarians and populations into poverty, heightened war tensions, the multiplication of disasters linked to climate change, industrial accidents and phenomena such as shortages, this power cut remains a symptom which, like others, can only increase dramatically.

That's what we've been pointing out in our articles for over thirty years, when these phenomena were less frequent and more spread out in time and space, allowing the bourgeoisie to better put across its own particular explanations in order to isolate individual cases and exonerate the system as a whole. So, for example, when it came to floods or droughts, the media simply referred to ‘natural disasters’. But as the number of phenomena increased, notably the Covid-19 global disaster, the media were obliged to invoke more clearly the ‘irresponsibility’ of ‘mankind’ or of this or that individual.

These days, apart from laying blame and looking for scapegoats, the bourgeoisie can always come up with a whole host of explanations, as it will probably be able to do at the end of its current investigation into this recent blackout. What it will never be able to tell us, however, is that its system is bankrupt and can only generate new tragedies. The blindness of the bourgeoisie is a reflection of its cynicism and greed, its accelerating descent into barbarity that only the proletariat will be able to overcome by making its revolution.

WH, 30 April 2025