[We publish here a new pamphlet, from our comrades in Barbaria, about the recent floods in Spain that have killed over 200 people and caused injury to many more. It can also be found here in English, Spanish, Russian, Catalan, and French.]
By now, we know the story well. The hundreds of dead and missing are not the product of uncontrolled nature. It is not the result of a fatality against which nothing could be done. We are not satisfied with the “meteorological” explanation, the litres fallen, the overflowing rivers…The causes are more profound, having to do with the foundations of capitalism: how it crowds workers into marginal and lower-income areas of the cities to magnify their exploitation, or how it protects and privileges productive and commercial activity without any regard, leaving all people unprotected and at the mercy of their circumstances amid the storm. There are also the system’s “managers”: different dogs with the same collar. On this occasion, these bastards, these nobodies, whether they are called Mazón or Sánchez, plus some Bourbon, add to their usual titles of lackeys the responsibility for the deaths and the tragedy being experienced. We will not forget their names and at the first opportunity, we will make them pay.
MOTIVES OF THE MASSACRE
Among the elements that contributed to the massacre, which could have been avoided in another type of social system, are developmentalism and the absurd and unbridled construction, which is the way capital brings workers closer to the cities where work and consumption are concentrated, regardless of where and how it was built, with minimal quality and in natural spaces where water and rivers have always flowed naturally. There is also the catastrophic trend that capitalism leads us to with climate change because although the cold drop has always existed in these regions, the high temperatures of the Mediterranean Sea due to climate change make the intensity and frequency of torrential rains increasingly greater. The lack of prevention has also been part of the massacre, one of the cruellest parts and, at the same time, the one that best evinces the priorities of all States in capitalism: that proletarians go to work, that their children go to school, and that the world of commodities and value is not altered, no matter who has to die to make it happen. And once this crime is consummated, it is capped off with mayhem in attending to the victims, with hardly any state help until the 5th day and putting obstacles to our self-organization. The State makes it abundantly clear that its function is not the “care of the people” but the wellbeing of the world of money, of commodities, of the interests of the dominant classes, and in any case, the control and repression of any attempt at organization from below, of human solidarity.
SPONTANEOUS SELF-ORGANIZATION
Capital and its media do not tire of repeating that human beings are naturally selfish. They want to impose on us what they are, and what their system of exploitation, their class system, represents. What they will not be able to hide are the solidarity actions and the self-organization of working people amid the tragedy against the brutality of a system that hates life. Contrary to what they preach, we have seen thousands of men and women offer their selfless and passionate help in the affected areas. They cannot stand to see how in the towns and cities people organize themselves to satisfy their needs without waiting for the state to give them the go-ahead. This is what frightens them: that the cash register is not ringing, that many commodities have become use-value, to be enjoyed without being bought. The capitalists and their media, that servile and well-paid carrion-eater, have been quick to denounce the theft and plunder of their property. The state only shows up to defend private property with blood and fire.
IS THIS BECAUSE OF A FASCIST GOVERNMENT?
Those who are now calling for demonstrations against the “fascist” government of the Generalitat from the left of capital are opportunists who are trying to make political capital out of our dead, out of our misery. Both left-wing political parties and trade unions are equally guilty and responsible for promoting and managing an unbridled developmentalism, totally indifferent to the natural environment, in which the only important thing is to continue the accumulation of capital and extraction of surplus value at the expense of the proletariat. Both are thus necessary intermediaries, politically and ideologically, fostering the illusion that this system can be reformed and made more “humane.” They cannot be asked to be anything other than what they are.
It is time to mourn our disappeared loved ones, recover their bodies, and give dignified burials to the deceased. It is also time to clench our fists and grit our teeth. But above and beyond the flood of feelings, it is time to understand in depth the real causes that have led to this tragedy. The essential thing to grasp is that capitalism cannot stop the movement of commodities; workers must produce commodities in their jobs, and the “citizens” must consume the goods produced. The wheel of capitalist valorization cannot be stopped, at any price, even by turning villages into huge mousetraps.
In the face of so much pain, and so much suffering, it is comforting to see the solidarity that is everywhere. Outside the state and all kinds of administrations, working people have recognized each other as equals, as brothers and sisters in misfortune. We need to focus this energy. There are difficult days ahead, in which the impotence that we feel in the face of so much destruction will be compounded by the actions of all those who support the system, from the extreme right with their “national” and racist solutions, waving the flag of a supposed “people” that encompasses us all, to the extreme left, who will cook up and put forth all manner of “new” proposals for “radical” reforms in their political competition with the right.
But there is another option: to take this reflection to those in our social environment, whether at work, in our university classes, or among friends and family. This tragedy concerns us all as proletarians, no matter what sector; we must discuss in depth the real causes, placing the analysis of capitalist laws at the centre of the debate. There are no half measures, no intermediate solutions. Anything short of attacking the capitalist system at its roots can only perpetuate its devastating effects in each and every one of its manifestations. The mud will be cleaned up; cars and furniture will be removed. Hopefully, from it a new class consciousness will emerge that honours all the dead, present and past, that shouts to our enemies, the whole cohort of politicians, cops, businessmen and beneficiaries of the capitalist system, that what we want is a community without capital, without money and commodities, without the state; that we want communism. Because we will not be silenced and we will speak for our dead.
Grupo Barbaria (Spain)
November 2024
League of Internationalist Communists 