Saturday, June 11, 2016

Spain Elections: 'Podemos' coalition is a spanish version of SYRIZA; a social-democratic fraud

Alberto Garzón (left) with Pablo Iglesias.
COMMENTARY.

The electoral alliance between 'Podemos' and 'Izquierda Unida' (United Left) in Spain aims in offering an alternative of Capitalism's management. The leaders of the two parties, Pablo Iglesias and Alberto Garzón hailed the formation of the coalition as a "historic step". Amid anti-austerity fever in the country, polls in Spain show that the 'Unidos Podemos' coalition could unseat the long-established the center-left 'Socialist Party' (PSOE) for first time in Spain's political history.  Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias said the party has offered to form a coalition with PSOE after the election. "We need to agree with them [the PSOE] so that we can have a progressive government", he said.

What does Iglesias mean by "progressive government" is something we can easily understand by having a look at the 'Podemos' ideology and political program. In fact, the electoral alliance of Iglesias' party with 'Izquierda Unida' (in which the opportunistic Communist Party of Spain-PCE participates) is a spanish version of SYRIZA. It consists a social-democratic formula which uses radical slogans in order to foster illusions to spanish people that "another capitalist world is possible". The 'Podemos' program, like SYRIZA, does not - in any case- questions the EU and NATO membership of Spain. On the contrary, it tries to offer an alternative political vision within the boundaries of the capitalist system.

Like SYRIZA, 'Podemos' and their allies try to create the basis for the mass-manipulation of Spain's working class. Like SYRIZA did, the 'Podemos' coalition utilizes people's disaffection for the continuous austerity imposed by the governments of the Popular Party (PP) and PSOE in order to present a supposed alternative to neoliberal policies. In fact, like SYRIZA, 'Podemos' is the other side of the same coin- the other side of the bourgeois political management. 

The pro-people measures that 'Unidos Podemos' present in their program consist an illusion, as long as the keys of the country's economy belong to the capitalists. The 'Podemos' proposals about a plan for the "democratization of the EU", the "change of EU governing model" or about "an international summit for the debt" are similar to the fake pre-electoral promises of SYRIZA in Greece. It is another social-democratic fraud which aims in the entrapment of the working people in the logic of Capitalism's management. 

The experience of the last decades in Europe- as well as in Latin America- shows that there is no such thing as "Capitalism with a human face". 

In Defense of Communism, 11 June 2016.