The Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the Workers of Spain (PCTE) makes the following considerations on the recent investiture of Pedro Sanchez and the formation of a new social democratic coalition government in our country:
The investiture initiates the third consecutive government led by the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, a government that is born in the middle of a context of internal and external tension, and before the horizon of an unstable legislature and of great relevance for the future of Spanish capitalism and its concretion in the power bloc.
The basis of the future executive power will be the government agreement signed between the PSOE and SUMAR. A document that clearly outlines the steps to be taken to comply with the demands imposed by the dynamics of capital today. As we affirmed in the last plenary session of our Central Committee, the present moment is dominated by the full entry into a second phase of management of the crisis catalyzed by the pandemic; a phase governed, essentially, by the demand for the intensification of the exploitation rates and the reduction of the public debt.
These objectives turn, fundamentally, into four lines of political application which are exposed in the agreement: increase in productivity, wage containment and flexibilization, opening of new niches of profitability for capital and progressive withdrawal of consumption subsidies. The slogan of the digital transition implies the investment, via Next Generation funds, of enormous amounts of money in the renewal of constant capital, in the modernization of the productive fabric in accordance with the needs of the reproduction of capital. It should be noted that the delivery of the funds is evaluated from European instances, their implementation is accompanied by the so-called «components», which means: all modernization of the productive fabric is carried out in accordance and in line with the EU plans, which imposes a number of requirements in their implementation frameworks and consequences. The second slogan of the modernization of the productive fabric is the so-called «ecological transition», state political materialization of «green capitalism» as a general strategy of European capitalism in the face of the crisis. Both slogans feed back and cross in the search for new niches of profitability and increased productivity.
The increase in productivity implies not only the transfer of enormous amounts of funds to private hands for the modernization of the productive fabric, but also the devaluation of the labor force. The most clarifying proof of this in the agreement is the decoupling of wage increases from the CPI and linking them to the «productivity» of the companies, which de facto means subordinating even more the material conditions of the workers to the needs and interests of the bosses. Only to the extent that the capitalists increase their profits will the nominal wage increase, which implies that the possible improvement of the nominal wage is determined by the necessary increase of inequality between workers and capitalists, leaving out the relation with their purchasing power, all this in a context of enormous high cost of living. Along the same lines is the advance of labor flexibility, of the on-demand use of the labor force according to productive needs, which will have a new manifestation in the so-called «Labor Statute of the XXI century».
This process of devaluation of the labor force and its destructive consequences on broad sectors of the class is accompanied by «compensatory» measures, the essence of the social-democratic form of management that tries to buffer the effects of capitalist exploitation by guaranteeing its development. The expansive fiscal policies that have characterized the management of this crisis, however, have been made possible by a suspension of the EU Stability and Growth Pact that ends in 2024, which means greater demands for the reduction of the public deficit. The government is relying on reducing the deficit primarily through economic growth, i.e. through the slogan of increased productivity and increased revenues. Here lies the question of «tax justice» and its inherent limitations, something that must be linked to what was explained in the previous paragraph: a hypothetical higher taxation of the capitalist class means an adjustment in the taxation of surplus value, i.e., the approach is that the rich pay more because it is aspired that they earn much more at the expense of the working class. This does not mean, of course, that they are the only ones who pay, since it is complemented by direct taxes on salaries and regressive taxes on consumption which especially affect those who have the least, that is to say, that workers will continue to contribute substantially to the sharpening of the exploitation they suffer. Brussels, moreover, has already announced the need for greater austerity in public spending and has demanded speed in the reduction of indebtedness, which will foreseeably have consequences throughout the legislature in the discrimination of certain social «aids», cuts, hidden privatization processes, etc., the mention of a «responsible and coherent» economic policy in the agreement is oriented along these lines.
The modernization of the productive fabric also implies a commitment to try to improve Spain’s position, strengthening in turn that of the EU, in the imperialist chain in a context of sharpening inter-imperialist contradictions and, consequently, of instability and aggravation of alliances and struggles between capitalist powers. In this line is the search for greater Spanish and European «strategic autonomy» in order to depend less on third powers, as well as the commitment to continue opening new markets and niches of profitability within the EU, Latin America and Asia. The greater integration and the strengthening of the imperialist alliance represented by the EU is also materialized in the disciplining of open conflicts, making clear in the government agreement the support to Ukraine in the war against Russia and a bet for «peace» between Israel and Palestine from the equalization of the colonialist power and the colonized people.
When not even all the destructive effects of the crisis catalyzed by the pandemic have been completed, a gradual reduction of growth rates is already becoming evident, and a scenario of a new recession is therefore in sight. The whole management of Spanish capitalism, and consequently the new legislature of the Government, will be absolutely determined by these frameworks of possibility and restriction. Between one crisis and another of capitalism, the times are becoming shorter and shorter, and its effects deeper and deeper, making evident the expiration of this system.
The agreement also evidences an increasingly evident mimicry between both partners, where the strategy of institutional «pressure» from within the Government and through the media, which has characterized the new social democracy in the last period, is reduced to its minimum expression. The new social democracy thus becomes a mere resonance of the PSOE that allows it to reach electoral support from social sectors that are somewhat «farther away», thus assuring the realization of the socialist program.
The legislature will be marked in turn by the agreements signed with the nationalist forces and, consequently, by the complexity of the parliamentary arithmetic for the legislative process. Among the agreements reached, there is no doubt that the commitment with Junts and ERC to elaborate an Amnesty Law has obtained the greatest media and social attention, largely due to its use as a resource for opposition by the Popular Party and VOX.
Our Party analyzes the proposal of the Amnesty Law as one more step in the agreed solution to the inter-bourgeois confrontation opened with the beginning of the «procés». Although it is certain that the PSOE would not have taken such a step if it were not as a bargaining chip to be able to form a government (understanding its controversial character not only before the right wing but also before other instances of the State apparatus, very particularly the judicial power), the truth is that it redounds in placing within the legal framework and the logic of the pact the permanent negotiation of the central power with the political representatives of the Catalan middle and petty bourgeoisie, reincorporating them into the governability and management of the Spanish state apparatus, at least temporarily.
From the PCTE we opposed frontally the different manifestations of repression throughout the “procés”, expression of the authoritarian approach to the different conflicts that alter the normal development of the state rule, as political concretion of the rule of big capital. Each authoritarian demonstration, each deepening and naturalization of the repressive path of the State, supposes a threat against democratic rights, a particularly serious threat for the workers and popular sectors. Consequently, we witness with concern the possibility that the Amnesty Law will equalize the executors of the direct repression and its victims, amnestying also the accused policemen.
At the same time, we believe it pertinent to point out that the list of victims of state repression against the workers’ and popular movement will continue to be very long once the Amnesty Law is passed. In Spain, the number of people affected with open cases due to the «Gag Law» reaches the figure of more than 3,000. A repressive law which the previous government promised to repeal and which today is not only still in force, but the prospect of its repeal has disappeared from the agreements between PSOE and SUMAR. The limited and selective character of the amnesty approach evidences its self-interested motivation for the political situation, showing once again that both harshness and flexibility are part of the multifaceted intervention of the capitalist parties and governments in the search for their own benefit and interest.
Beyond the amnesty law, the PSOE’s pact with Junts is no more than a declaration of intentions on future negotiations with little practical impact, but which serves Junts to justify its return to pactism before its electorate and the PSOE to get its votes. The rest of the agreements with the nationalist forces, particularly with the PNV and ERC, are given in the form of economic and competence concessions in exchange for guaranteeing the deployment of the government’s capitalist management program. Concessions and benefits which, far from being placed at the margin of the Spanish Constitution, are made possible and endorsed by it through the asymmetrical design of the Autonomous State as a mechanism for the conformation and cohesion of a power bloc integrating the bourgeois sectors represented by the peripheral nationalisms. The search for better conditions for the development of capitalist exploitation in their territories translates into agreements to guarantee the definitive transfer of competences and transfers.
Nobody should forget that the logics of cession and negotiation with the peripheral nationalisms from the central power have also operated during the governments of the PP. Its opposition, particularly to the Amnesty Law, is not only determined by representing the role of the opposition in the current situation, but also by the reactionary and nationalist growth that places the right wing of capital in a complex moment of balances and internal tensions. The frustration due to the electoral defeat in the PP and the realization of the difficulties for the formation of a government that the alliance with VOX entails open gaps and internal doubts in the party led by Nuñez Feijóo. This reality cannot be assessed apart from what has been experienced during the last weeks in the protests against the Amnesty Law, which show the internalization of the mobilizing path as a mechanism of opposition of the right wing of capital, but above all that this possibility is given by the reactionary rise as a result of the radicalization of sectors of the petty bourgeoisie and the middle strata, which also finds echoes in sectors of the state apparatus itself. This scenario defines the opening of a more than foreseeable process of recomposition of the right and ultra-right bloc which will mark the future of the reactionary opposition.
The working class and the popular sectors must know how to confront this reactionary upsurge without placing themselves, as social democracy has sought to do in recent weeks, in positions of legitimization and naturalization of repressive mechanisms constituted, essentially, against those interested in overcoming this system of exploitation. The fight against the growth of reactionary positions should not be dissociated from the general strategy of political and organizational recomposition of the working class, the only road to be able to fight by all means and forms the reactionary discourses and their propagation among salaried sectors and popular strata.
The PCTE consequently makes an appeal to the working class as a whole so that the opposition to the policies of the Government does not remain in the hands of those who only want to apply an even more virulent program for the benefit of capital and against our interests. And neither in those who from the Government and from the parliamentary tribune, enabling the general management policy of capitalism during this and the previous legislature, simulate a kind of «critical distance» trying to channel the frustration of the working class, once again, towards their electoral and institutional agenda.
The realization of the exhaustion and the limitations of the program of the new social democracy and of independence movement must turn into the advance of an independent, unitary and classist strategy, which begins by breaking the conformist and pacitist logics of social dialogue and the lesser evil in each work center, in each sector and in each neighborhood; stimulating struggles directed solely and exclusively by our own interests and not by the profit margins of the companies or the State. «Explain, convince and organize» must be the slogan of the moment so that more and more workers unite shoulder to shoulder and fight class against class. Those who want to contribute to open this own and revolutionary road have a place reserved in the ranks of our Party.