Last year, the working class celebrated May Day amid the sound of war drums. Since then, the aggressivenes of the big monopolistic powers has been increasing and this year, some of our class siblings are indeed plunging into the wild ordinariness of the imperialist war. Since October 2023, the Palestinian working class and people are suffering the open genocide of Israel — the eye of the storm of a regional escalation of tensions taking place in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and their surroundings.
This is one of the scenarios that makes us feat that a war that can become a generalized phenomenon in the world is increasingly nearer — though it has not reached such level yet. The conflicts are whirling and the tension is increasing in Southeast Asia, in some countries of Latin America, and the Middle East. The direct involvement of the European countries around the war in Russia and Ukraine is increasing. Although the bourgeoisie represented by the Spanish state apparatus of power is still far from being interested in actively involving itself in a generalized war, it is actively involved in the international developments; and it is involved as one of the main imperialist powers.
This year, the Spanish Government has actually renewed and reinforced its commitments with NATO. In the 75th anniversary of the founding of this organization, the PCTE called in April several rallies in the main cities of our country in order to denounce the militaristic and warmongering escalation it is leading. As the armed wing of a section of the capitalists of the world, it is one of the main players in the spreading of the risk of armed conflicts for the control of strategic resources, markets, and transport routes for commodities. It is heading us to the confrontation with the representatives of other sections of capitalists.
In the same line, the European Union adopted in 2021 the implementation of the European Defense Funds (EDF), which have had a special impact in the Spanish industry. Spain is present in 7 out of 10 projects started by the EDF. Companies like Navantia, GMV Aerospace and Defence, and INDRA are some of the most funded companies, along with German and French ones.
The war industry is not a sector isolated from the rest of dynamics and interests of Spanish capitalists, but an inseparable part of the tools the bourgeoisie and its representatives have to defend its interests. As Lenin noted when assessing contemporary capitalism, the imperialist war is the continuation of the imperialist politics. The tensions and war times are an indissoluble part of contemporary capitalism; this is why, also in the time of peace, the imperialist powers are taking the measures required for the defense of their interests in eventual open clashes.
Together with the movements in the industry, which mean an increase in the militarization of the economy, pro-war speeches are beginning to be spread in several places in order to try to convince the Spanish working class that war is an opportunity to “create employment”, for industrial development, and so on. In this date, which is a legacy of the working class and should be an arena for its struggles, the PCTE remembers that workers will become cannon fodder again if we do not act against the imperialist war and all the actors willing to use it in order to ensure their interests. Our party also openly condemns NATO and the EU as the institutions of imperialism directly involved and interested in the present and future imperialist war conflicts.
In the Spanish political scene, the same capitalist crisis that is worsening the international conflicts is expressed in increasingly larger figures of exploitation. Every figure on employment used by the Government to smite its chest has a counterpart that explains how the Spanish capitalist economy has just recovered and transformed some of its characteristics at our expense. For example, the celebrated fall of the rate of temporariness “to European standards” has happened, among other things, because a much more flexible and unstable model of employment has been guaranteed even for “permanent” contract modes. A big part of new employments, for instance, are part-time, seasonal permanent, or too precarious and unstable, therefore they cannot be the livelihood of a worker for too long. The average duration of the contracts signed in 2023 was the historical minimum in the last decades — 46 days, seven days less than the year of the pandemic and two less than in 2022.
These are some of the characteristics of the labor model “of the 21st century” promoted by the European Union. The social democracy is a proud ambassador of its implementation in Spain. Nowadays, its political actors (PSOE, SUMAR, PODEMOS) have already exhausted their ability to suggest any project nor appeal different from the one represented by the PSOE, or they are even integrated in practice within it. Furthermore, they have no capability of proposing measures that overcome the room for possibility of capitalism. This is reflected, for instance, in the discussion on the reduction of the working day. This measure is not presented in any moment as a social need to which the economy is going to be subdued, but on the contrary — it is presented as a measure to increase productivity and the creation of capitalist profits. Therefore, nothing will ever be as beautiful as we could think of. What is being presented in media as a discussion on the reduction of the working day is actually part of a project to modify the working day and probably deregulate it and give it a larger flexibility in a near future.
Along with this larger exploitation, the working class finds itself under an inflation that has not stopped, a decreased purchasing power. This just means a devaluation of the price of workforce, and this is one of the realities the capitalist crisis can manifest.
Despite the amount of all these attacks to our interests, the wage devaluation, the danger of war, and so on, no wide social answer has been generated, but rather a climate of political apathy and contained rage is becoming rooted. This is sterile for the articulation of a defense for our class.
This year, we have witnessed local and sector strikes and protests, worthy struggles for wages and against the employers’ violence in different sectors and companies. They were however isolated, out of the line of action of the main trade unions. Unfortunately, the trade-union boards have continued to develop their trust to the Government and the containment of the mobilization after the last elections, when the opposite path should be precisely walked — using these conflicts, these examples, to accumulate organizational and struggling experiences and start putting our class to the offensive for once after years of restraint.
From here, we will be able to generate an independent and class-oriented organization capable of resisting the current threats but, at the same time, serves as a means to recover the power and foster the hope of a different future. The Communist Party of the Workers of Spain is proposing a political program for the working class based on such a premise. It is necessary to break with pactist and reformist strategies as well as with those who seek to keep us submissive while our lives is becoming increasingly more choking. On this May Day, let us start walking towards the union, the organization between workmates, between neighbors; using the tools available, not renouncing to any front — together, shoulder to shoulder, class against class.
Long live the struggle of the working class!
Long live May Day!