15 May 2011: Spain awakens (?)

[vanlose kid]

*

[Joe Hillshoist]

"Politicians like the ones here in Madrid that go around spending money on official cars only seem to care about their own careers and about going one better than the opposition,"

Gee I thought that only happened here.

[JackRiddler]

http://counterpunch.org/castro05232011.html

May 23, 2011
Will NATO Start Bombing Spain?
The Unsustainable Position of the Empire

By FIDEL CASTRO

Nobody can assure us that in its agony, the empire won’t be dragging human beings down to catastrophe.

As we know, while our species remains alive, everybody has the sacred duty to be optimistic. Ethically, any other behaviour wouldn’t be admissible. I remember well that one day, almost 20 years ago, I said that there was an endangered species: Man.

In front of a select group of bourgeois government leaders, flatterers of the empire, among them being the immense well-fed bulk of the German Helmut Kohl, and others like those forming the chorus of Bush Sr., less dismal and alienated than his own son, W. Bush, I couldn’t help but express that truth which I was seeing as being very real, even though it was more distant than it is today, with the greatest sincerity possible.

Turning on the television at about 12:15 at midday, because someone told me that Barack Obama was giving his announced speech on foreign policy, I paid attention to his words.

I don’t know why, despite the piles of dispatches and news I listen to on a daily basis, not one of them mentioned that the guy would be speaking at that time. I can assure the readers that there are not a few stupidities and lies that, among the dramatic truths and facts of all kinds, I read, I hear or see in pictures every day. But this case was something special. What was the guy going to say at that time in this world overwhelmed with imperial crimes, massacres or unmanned planes dropping deadly bombs, that not even Obama, now master of some life and death decisions, was imagining when he was a student at Harvard just a few decades ago?

Of course nobody should suppose that Obama is master of the situation; he merely handles some important words that the old system in its origin granted the “Constitutional President” of the United States. At this point, 234 years after the Declaration of Independence, the Pentagon and the CIA still have the basic instruments of the imperial power created: technology capable of destroying the human race in a matter of minutes, and the means to penetrate those societies, dupe them and manipulate them shamelessly for as long as they need to do so, thinking that the power of the empire is boundless. They trust they are handling a docile world, without even a single disturbance, for all future time.

It is the absurd idea upon which they base tomorrow’s world, under “the kingdom of liberty, justice, equal opportunities and human rights”, incapable of seeing what is really happening with poverty, the lack of the basic services of education, health, jobs and something worse: meeting life’s needs such as food, drinking water, house and many others.

Strangely enough, can anyone wonder for example what would happen with the 10 thousand dead per year as a result of drug-related violence, basically in Mexico, to which we could add the countries of Central America and several of the most populated countries in the southern part of the continent?
I harbour absolutely no intention of offending those peoples; my purpose is just to point out what is happening to others almost on a daily basis.

There is one question that has to be asked almost immediately: what is going to happen in Spain where crowds are protesting in the country’s main cities against the unemployment of 40% of the young people, just to quote one of the causes of the demonstrations of that fighting people? Could it be perhaps that they are going to start bombing that NATO country?

[justdrew]

and what did they accomplish? they got a bunch of worthless fucking conservatives elected.

stupid damn thing to do. grin on dumb-asses.

[JackRiddler]

and what did they accomplish? they got a bunch of worthless fucking conservatives elected.

stupid damn thing to do. grin on dumb-asses.

How do you know who they voted for?

Among other things, they're out to reform yet another election system that favors a two-party dichotomy.

They think neoliberalism as deployed by both of the major parties is shit, and they want to end it. How long they're able to stay in the field may be the most important question.

Do you think maybe the PSOE shouldn't have rammed through an unpopular austerity program?

.

[justdrew]

and what did they accomplish? they got a bunch of worthless fucking conservatives elected.

stupid damn thing to do. grin on dumb-asses.

How do you know who they voted for?

Among other things, they're out to reform yet another election system that favors a two-party dichotomy.

They think neoliberalism as deployed by both of the major parties is shit, and they want to end it. How long they're able to stay in the field may be the most important question.

Do you think maybe the PSOE shouldn't have rammed through an unpopular austerity program?

.

I suspect they didn't have much of a choice but to make cuts. When money isn't available it can't be spent.

Everything always comes down to a "two-party dichotomy" - it's the nature of human crowds. Us and Them. majority party and everyone else. Of course people will always want to form up into a majority party so they can be with the 'winners' - then what choice does everyone else have but to band together against the majority?

This is only offset-able by means of a strictly controlled political system, and that can not be established, because those rules would have to be sacrosanct, unalterable, and enforced. by who? Instead were stuck with this so-called democracy, this nomic game where the rules of play change faster than any laws, and administrative bureaucracy can never accomplish anything since it's in perpetual reorganization.

seriously, who the heck are they protesting to? and really, for what? More free money from the government? Who do they think CARES what they think? If you want to change the world, go out and take it the hell over. Gain CONTROL over something. accumulate and use power. that's the only way it happens. ever.

[barracuda]

Brutalidad en la Plaza de Cataluña

[justdrew]

I can't watch.

[JackRiddler]

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/26/t ... employment

"Toma la Plaza": Frustration with Unemployment, Budget Cuts Fuels Grassroots Protests in Spain


Tens of thousands of Spanish protesters are demonstrating across the country calling for better economic opportunities, a more representative electoral system, and an end to political corruption. The pro-democracy protests started on May 15 in Madrid when people gathered in the central plaza to advocate for change, calling the budding movement “Toma la Plaza,” or “Take the Square.” In the past week, protests have spread to more than a dozen cities across Spain. The country has the highest unemployment rate in Europe—nearly half of its population under 30 years old is jobless. Protesters are sustaining their decentralized movement through donations of food, fuel and even computers. Daily assemblies democratically vote on all decisions, and local committees are assigned different tasks, from cleanup operations to legal affairs. We speak with independent journalist Maria Carrion and protest spokesperson Ivan Martinoz in Madrid. [includes rush transcript]

[[VIDEO AT LINK]]

JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to Madrid, Spain, where the central square, known as Puerta del Sol, has become an urban encampment for tens of thousands of protesters. They are calling for better economic opportunities, a more representative electoral system, and an end to political corruption.

ALEJANDRO, unemployed electronic engineer: [translated] I hope this changes our situation and that we improve our quality of life. We have a right to regular jobs, a future and a decent salary, to more opportunities in life, the chance to get a house, to pay for that house, without being enslaved, but especially a better quality of life.

JUAN GONZALEZ: The protests started on May 15th and have since spread to more than a dozen cities across Spain. The country has the highest unemployment rate in Europe. Nearly half of its population under 30 is jobless.

AMY GOODMAN: The protests continued this past weekend despite a ban on demonstrations the day before local elections. Spain’s conservative party made major gains over the Socialist incumbent, but protesters remain undeterred. They’re sustaining their decentralized movement through donations of food, fuel, and even computers. Daily assemblies democratically vote on all decisions, and local committees are assigned different tasks, from cleanup operations to legal affairs.

To further discuss the protests in Spain, as well as Sunday’s local elections, we turn now to two guests in Madrid by Democracy Now! video stream. We are joined by Maria Carrion, independent journalist, who is a former producer of Democracy Now! And we’re joined by Ivan Martinoz, a spokesperson for the pro-democracy movement, Toma la Plaza, Take the Square.

It’s great to have you both with us. Maria, why don’t you lay out the big picture so people in the United States and around the world understand what has been happening in Spain, the significance of this movement, and what it’s called?

MARIA CARRION: Well, it has many names. One of them is Take the Plaza. Another one Democracia Ya, or Democracia Real Ya, Real Democracy Now.

And what has been going on in Spain—you very well pointed it out—is that there’s a massive unemployment rate. Five million people are unemployed, and a large percentage of them are really young people. The crisis, the economic crisis, has really affected all aspects of society. And the Socialist government has panicked, and basically it’s trying to avoid a Portugal or a Greece-like bailout, or an Ireland-like bailout. And it’s doing so by cutting back tremendously on social welfare programs, on education, on a number of key things that the Socialists ran on and that people expected.

And so, as a result, people have taken to the streets, they have organized, and they’ve almost turned their backs on the political system. The political system is broken. The elections on Sunday proved that, because a party that basically ran on no platform, which is the conservative PP, swept through municipal and regional elections, won almost everything, and based on nothing, and also with a large number of candidates who are being either investigated or tried for corruption. So, young people have taken to the squares, not only in Puerta del Sol, but almost everywhere in Spain. And the movement is even spreading beyond Spain, because we’re really sharing the same global situation. People are saying, no matter what happened on Sunday, the entire system has to change, not just—this is not just about two-party system, because the two main parties are really not responding to people’s needs.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Maria, how did this change occur, given the fact that when the Socialists came in, José Luis Zapatero, after those terrorist bombings in Spain, there was so much hope; and he withdrew troops from Iraq, the Spanish troops from Iraq; he attempted to institute—well, he did institute gay marriage and gender equality? What happened to the Socialist government that it became so distant from its own people?

MARIA CARRION: Well, part of what happened is really that all these agencies, like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, and so on, began to go after the Spanish debt and talk about how Spain is not—you know, was not going to be able to sustain its social spending. And together with the IMF, really has been—they have been asking the Spanish government to make cuts. And I think Zapatero panicked. And, you know, he’s dealing with massive, massive unemployment, in large part caused by the housing bubble, because a lot of people who are out in the street now with no jobs were in construction and were in other aspects of the economy that were sustained by this housing bubble. So they began to basically institute conservative economic policies.

So they started off on a good note, in the sense of some social programs like gay marriage and like withdrawing the troops from Iraq. But at the same time, you know, their economic policy is cutting back on pensions, raising the age for—you know, to be eligible for a pension. You know, basically pensions are going to be cut by 20 percent because of these reforms. You know, they began to disconnect from their own electorate.

As a result, what you find with these elections is that the PP hasn’t so much gone up as the Socialists have gone down tremendously and lost many, many votes. Some of those votes actually have gone to smaller parties, like the Izquierda Unida, which is to the left of the Socialist party. A lot of them were blank votes. Almost a million people decided to cast a protest vote and just vote blank. And some people stayed home. And so, you know, I think that, you know, listening to the IMF and listening to these agencies that are saying the only way to get out of crisis is to cut social spending, cut social spending, while not resolving the unemployment problem, has created this disconnect between the population and government.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Let me bring in Ivan Martinoz. The influence on the young people who are protesting, the impact of what’s been going on in the Arab world, especially Tunisia, which has always had close relationships with Spain, could you talk about that, as well?

IVAN MARTINOZ: Yeah. Obviously, it’s not the same situation in Spain as in the Arab countries. I have to say, we have freedom, or a certain amount of freedom here. But what has affected us is the spontaneity of the people over there, that it’s probably the same that has happened over here in Spain. People feel outraged by the political class. That’s something I’d like to say, because we believe, in our movement, this is not against the Zapatero government or the PSOE. This is against the whole political class. We’ve come to a point in which we don’t feel represented by them, which is what we pay them for. And we have seen that it’s not a matter of asking them to represent us or to tell them to please do what they should do, but we have to force them, because they, on their own, are not going to do what they have to do.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re watching pictures of tens of thousands of people who have taken over the square. Ivan, can you talk about how the mobilization took place? And what are the countries that have inspired you?

IVAN MARTINOZ: Well, this is not truly inspired by anything, as long as it was absolutely spontaneous. There was a—as Maria said, there was a demonstration that took place on the 15th of May, and at the end of that demonstration, a couple people decided to stay camped in Puerta del Sol. I’m talking just about 200 people the first day. They were kicked out of the plaza violently by the police. And many people just the next morning went there to see what was going on. And that was considered a new demonstration and was forbidden by the government. So, what happened then is that spontaneously, spontaneously, everyone said, "Well, how can we not demonstrate? How can we not say what the lack of our systems are? How can we not ask for our rights?" And that was the beginning of it all.

That created an horizontal, non-vertical assembliary movement in which everyone is a mutual—an eventual volunteer. Of course, it needs a huge—a lot of organization. Many of our energies are focused at the beginning on that organization. But due to the goodwill of the people, to the logic of all the movement, and mostly the level that we, as citizens, are approaching, our consciousness are being awakened. And that makes us move in any way. We are mostly pacific ones, a pacific movement. We are—we want to be legal. This is not a fight against the system or the government. The system is wrong at this moment and needs to be changed. Politicians are not going to do it, so we have to force them to do it. And the way to organize all the people, all the tens of thousands of people in the Puerta del Sol and in all of the main cities in Spain, which is over 30 demonstrations taking place now, is just a good organization and horizontal one. I mean, we don’t want any pyramidal organization in which we have a leader you can look at, because that’s not the point of it, of this. This is the people standing against something that they feel—they really feel—it’s not worth, it’s not fair. And it’s our right, is to get something better. That’s about it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Ivan, Ivan, I’d like to ask you about the role of the Spanish trade unions while all of these austerity measures of the Zapatero government were being implemented. What were the trade unions, supposedly representing the interests of the workers, doing during this time?

IVAN MARTINOZ: At the end, as I said before, this political system we have, in which we include the trade unions, it’s a very dark one. It’s a political system that gives the back to the people. So, at the end, what the people in the street think in Spain about the trade unions is that they haven’t been representing them anymore. They have just been dealing with the enterprisers and just negotiating with them, so that all of them can get as more as they can, and of course forgetting about the people.

AMY GOODMAN: So, how is this expected to play out? What is the list of demands that you have made—as you talk about people in the square doing things democratically, food is being brought in—and also the role of social media in all of this, Ivan?

IVAN MARTINOZ: Well, we have—at the moment, we have general reunions every day, in which all the new points are considered and decided. At the moment, we are working on four main points, which is a renewal of the election law, which would end up in each vote meaning the vote and the voice of one person; more control of the corruption, not only in the political area, but in all the high areas of our society; the true separation of powers, because, as you all know, in Spain, and probably most of the world, but we’re talking about Spain now, all the law power is very related to the political parties. So we find that every four years, when we get a new government, a new political party in the government, all the judges, the top sides of the—top parts of the judges, are just on the side of the politics. So we have no real separations of powers. And we do want—I mean, it’s not that we want; it’s that we are going to have a real separation of powers.

And the fourth one is control over the politicians. It’s very usual and very harmful to see in Spain, whenever you see a Congress meeting, to see more than half of the seats empty. We pay the politicians to represent us, and they have to go to the Congress. They have to tell us what they decide, and they have to let us decide for ourselves. It’s not of them. So, if one politician doesn’t go one day to work—we see it in the camera, because we’ve got the meanings, we’ve got the technology—he doesn’t get paid. That’s—it’s as simple as that. It’s the same as happens with me, as with everyone else.

Those are the four points we are working at the moment. We have working commissions right now working on them. And tomorrow, Friday, we are having a general meeting to put them all together, all what they have decided. And on Saturday, we are going to start meetings in every neighborhood and every town of Spain. Only in Madrid, which, you know, in terms of space, it’s a small space of Spain—only Madrid, there will be 250 meetings on Saturday, after which, on Sunday, will come back—well, the camp will still be in the Puerta del Sol, and all the people from these neighborhood extensions meetings will come, and we will put together all this infrastructure so we can go on and, as I said, not ask the politicians to do what they should have done much earlier, but force them to do it, because they are not going to do it by themselves.

AMY GOODMAN: Ivan Martinoz, we want to thank you for joining us. Ivan Martinoz is the spokesperson for the pro-democracy movement in Spain. And Maria Carrion, a former Democracy Now! producer, independent journalist.

The demands for democratic reform are vital. I wonder how explicitly banks and capital and debt are at the center of concern. The bit about absent legislators sounds like middle class propriety wishing that politicians would put up better appearances, not be so openly corrupt and arrogant. Or US conservatives and populists complaining about Congressional salaries, rather than Congressional malfeasance.

.

[vanlose kid]

*

Spain's election results may lead to a more unpopular government

If the authoritarian Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba takes over from Zapatero, it's likely to worsen relations between public and state

Luke Stobart
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 28 May 2011 14.00 BST

The growing gulf between Spain's PSOE government and its population is not likely to close after Zapatero steps down as prime minister, as is expected to take place shortly. His now very likely successor is the government's "strongman" – seen by some as the most able to push through unpopular austerity.

Despite the conservative Popular party's success in last Sunday's municipal and regional elections, there is little evidence that Spaniards want a more rightwing administration. The centre-left PSOE lost three times more votes than the Popular party gained – hardly an endorsement of the latter. Furthermore, surveys continually detect hostility towards both parties and politicians in general. In an April survey, over 46% of interviewees said they "strongly distrusted" opposition leader Mariano Rajoy; almost the same figure as for Zapatero.

This historic level of disaffection with Spain's political class has been a major factor in the continued city square occupations. These have now spread out into local neighbourhoods and are confronting eviction attempts by police.

Disaffection with Spanish democracy also may help explain one of the biggest upsets in the municipal elections on Sunday: the pro-independence coalition Bildu in the Basque country picked up more council seats than any other party in that territory. This leftwing party, which the Spanish right has described as "pro-terrorist" but has openly condemned violence, was very nearly prevented from standing by the supreme court at the request of the government. It is a great irony that the biggest victor in the elections was the only political option previously deemed unsuitable for Spanish democracy.

The PSOE has lost great popularity, which reached a peak after it removed Spanish troops from Iraq in 2004 – by adopting a far-reaching austerity programme. Previously, Zapatero repeatedly promised he would "not make workers pay for the crisis".

Yet since the elections there have been two responses by the PSOE that suggest it will stay on its new course. Firstly, it has announced it shall not modify its economic programme, which includes labour "reforms" against "absenteeism" and on union bargaining rights.

It is hoped that by the general elections such measures will have helped resuscitate collapsed investment. However, similar gambles by the Greek and Irish governments have not worked. Instead, reduced public spending has depressed private demand and larger crises have ensued. Such a panorama is unlikely to weaken the current protest by the "no future" generation and may encourage more.

A second issue is that of Zapatero's likely successor. After the PSOE's worst election result under democracy, regional "barons" (presidents) successfully managed to dissuade Carme Chacón, the young defence minister, from standing for prime minister in primaries. They did so by threatening an emergency congress in which less PSOE members would directly vote.

Most commentators agree that this leaves the door wide open to the man who already arguably wields the most governmental power, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. Since last autumn he has been deputy prime minister, interior minister and government spokesman.

General consensus has it that Rubalcaba, an ex-university lecturer, is highly intelligent. A sign of this was when he stepped into ministry of labour discussions with the unions when an agreement on pensions was stalling. Union leaders had held a general strike in September against legal changes facilitating dismissals of an already precarious workforce. So Rubalcaba suggested a limited tempering of the changes in exchange for the unions accepting an increase in the retirement age to 67 years. The union leaders accepted, much to the outrage of the population, 79% of whom rejected the increase.

Arguably, Rubalcaba's ability as a self-defined "strategist" is matched by his authoritarianism. Not only was he responsible for the attempt to ban Bildu, but was also a key player in the controversial militarisation of the airports during a labour dispute before Christmas. In this conflict, air-traffic controllers were forced to land planes in front of armed soldiers. Since then, strikers have been sacked and threatened with long-term prison sentences.

When once asked to describe himself, Rubalcaba quoted a literary detective: "If I were not bad, I would be dead, and if I were not sweet, I could not live" – an intriguing answer but one which acknowledges a dark side.

If Rubalcaba does take over, it is hard to imagine a new convergence between government and the street. Instead, the political crisis of recent weeks may just be the beginning.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... intcmp=239

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[JackRiddler]

.

Report on the occupations confirms a bit of what I suspected -- the lame bourgeouis wish that corruption would just go away so the system can function properly, doctrinaire pacifism and middle class propriety sapping the rootsy vitality, over-centralization, devolution to populist speechifying -- but also shows new and powerful energies at work.

http://counterpunch.org/gelderloos06072011.html

June 7, 2011
The Lines of Conflict
Spanish Revolution at a Crossroads

By PETER GELDERLOOS

Barcelona.


It started with a protest announced via Twitter, Facebook, and various listserves, scheduled for May 15, a week before the countrywide elections. Democracia Real Ya, "Real Democracy Now," was the name of the platform and its central demand. The protest took place simultaneously in dozens of cities throughout Spain. In Madrid there was a massive turnout; everywhere else it passed without incident, easily lost amidst a series of other protests that have been occurring with increasing frequency in response to the Labor Reform, social cuts, and home repossessions.

But the night of May 15 and the following day, the protests transformed into occupations of central plazas in every city where people had taken to the streets under the slogan, "real democracy now." The central principles of the Real Democracy Now platform, adopted to a greater or lesser degree in other cities outside of Madrid, were unity among people indignant at the present situation, assembly decision-making, no political parties, no ideologies, and nonviolence. The occupation movement explicitly evoked the revolts in the Arab world. With blogs and cellphones they mimicked the high-tech component that Western media identified (and exaggerated) in the popular movements in Tunisia and Egypt. But their gains on the ground were quicker and most substantial than their extension through cyberspace. Within a week, there were permanent encampments in a hundred cities throughout the Iberian peninsula, as well as numerous support actions. In Catalunya alone, 121 permanent or temporary occupations and other gatherings were reported before the elections of May 22.

Early on, police in Madrid tried to evict the occupation at Puerta del Sol, beating, arresting, and harrasing dozens of people. But the crowds only came back larger. After that, the authorities decided to adopt a cautious stance on a national scale, and in a fine bit of political farce, the Constitutional Tribunal, the Spanish supreme court, announced that a careful study of the law led them to believe the occupations could be allowed to continue through election weekend, even though holding any political protest or gathering on Election Sunday or the prior Saturday, the "Day of Reflection," is a blatant violation of the Spanish Constitution. In reality, the Constitutional Tribunal were merely expressing a pragmatic aversion to provoking a pre-election surprise.

The elections came and went, the rightwing Populist Party picked up several strongholds of the governing center-left Socialist Workers' Party, but on the whole the two main parties lost a huge chunk of the vote, while extreme right fascist and anti-immigrant parties, or far left and Catalan or Basque independence parties gained ground. Most significantly, abstention loomed at between one-third and one-half of the electorate, while blank and null votes doubled or tripled in most districts.

The elections ended, but the encampments didn't.

Since last year's general strike on September 29, which in Barcelona turned into a veritable—if only day-long—insurrection, Spain has been alight with protests, occupations, pickets, and acts of disobedience or sabotage. Meanwhile, the system has lost its ability to constrain resistance using the usual channels, since the two major labor unions (CCOO and UGT) have signed onto the Labor Reform, a typical neoliberal austerity package that cuts education and health services, fires public sector workers, and pushes back the retirement age. Increasingly, people have been collectivizing their rage and taking action in a variety of ways that range from the spectacular to the anonymous, constituting a resistance that on the whole has been impossible to pinpoint.

Until now. The Real Democracy Now occupations have become the vessel to channel all this resistance and outrage. But as the central occupations steadily dissipate with the passing of time, internal debates are raging that have not been reflected on the outside, neither in the pedantic journalism with which the media hope to subtly patronize the movement and discipline it towards greater pragmatism, nor in the triumphant and populist manifestos broadcast throughout cyberspace. These debates mark a strategic watershed that may determine whether the structures of protest we create will be used against us, as has happened so often in the past, or whether on a general scale we can finally identify and attack the social structures responsible for the array of privations we've suffered for as long as we can remember.

A skeptical view of the occupations can help us see what is valuable in them, and what is self-defeating. To anyone who was already paying attention to resistance at the grassroots in Spain before May 15, it is undeniable that thousands of people were already taking action, often at the neighborhood level or in the workplace, in response to the economic and social war being waged against them. Nor is the approaching end of the occupation movement an end to this web of struggle. In Barcelona, many pre-existing neighborhood assemblies have started weekly meetings and protests in their local plazas, while several neighborhoods that did not previously have an assembly are now forming them. In other cities, struggles against mortgage evictions or ecologically devastating development projects are continuing with renewed vigor and visibility.

What was useful about the occupations was that they provided a space for people to meet, for oldtimers to hear new voices and for newcomers to find accomplices; they revealed a collective strength; and they created a rupture with the quotidian reality that has us convinced of the illusion of social peace transmitted daily by the media. Only in such a rupture can people begin to realize that the current system is neither inevitable nor accidental but a deliberate sham that we can and must dismantle. Only in such a gathering can people see that society is more than the cubicle, the checkout line, the metro, that we have the power to make something new. And in the occupations, our capacity for spontaneous self-organization was revealed. No matter how big the crowds grew, in every city people were able to meet all the logistical needs that arose, either informally or through the official structures of general assemblies and commissions.

But the occupations also displayed a number of obvious structural weaknesses. Ironically, while demanding "real democracy now," the protestors recreated a new democracy, just like the old democracy, much sooner than they had anticipated. Everywhere that the occupations grew to include more than a thousand people, the central assemblies that were used as a supreme organizational body became totally inoperative. Even the most experienced moderators to come out of the European antiglobalization movement had to admit that in the assemblies, real debate and meaningful consensus was impossible. Nonetheless, they continued to try to address the situation with more and better moderation.

A symphony of critiques and complaints arose from Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Sevilla, and elsewhere: assemblies were being manipulated by leftwing politicians or Trotskyists; the real decision-making was done in the commissions and the assembly just rubber-stamped every proposal passed by it; the centralized nature of the assemblies forced most people to be spectators and made paricipation impossible, especially for those who couldn't spend five to six hours a night in a commission and then in the assembly; the central principles of the Real Democracy platform, such as nonviolence, were imposed, sometimes by force, and shielded from debate; minorities were silenced; people in certain committees were accused of corruption; the ability to make populist speeches and sway the masses outweighed real debate; people with critical views or ideas falling outside the dominant progressive-democratic ideology were excluded, silenced, or even ejected, while in some cities fascists were allowed to participate in the name of unity.

In Barcelona, a proposal to decentralize the general assembly demonstrated the absurdity of the chosen structure. The proposal would have converted the commissions into autonomous working groups, and the centralized assembly into an "encuentro" where people could share ideas, resources, and proposals, but without having to get the approval of a majority in order to put an initiative into practice. Where differing initiatives conflicted, the working groups involved would coordinate and figure things out on their own. In reality, the Barcelona occupation already worked partially in this way, and the official organizational structure was just a thin veneer of legitimacy imposed atop a fairly chaotic and impressively creative and versatile organizing network.

The proposal was explained several times to the general assembly, and voted on two consecutive nights. Both times, nearly everybody present (perhaps ten thousand people) voted in favor of the proposal. And both times, the proposal was defeated. The first time, the vote was revoked on a technicality, that may have been the fault of an exhausted moderator. The second time, about thirty people, out of thousands, voted for "more debate." It had already been firmly established that debate was impossible in the mass assembly, so the proposal was sent back to the commission. But people in the commission had already reached an absolute consensus on the proposal after days of debate. In other words, the proposal to decentralize the assembly was impossible to realize because the assembly was inoperative, for the very reasons of over-massification that motivated the proposal in the first place.

In a short period of time, the experiment in direct democracy faced an upward limit. In the exhausting context of the cumbersome general assemblies, one could begin to appreciate delegation or representation (the bane of direct democracy) as a benign innovation designed simply to make the process workable. And as the majority of people realized they were just spectators, no different than in the existing democracies, and participation in the meetings began to dwindle, organizers might have come to appreciate democracy's coercive aspect: the social contract is nonvoluntary, and citizens can't simply walk away.

If we are not afraid to take the Spanish Revolution as a historical example, we find all the hypotheses of direct democracy contradicted and discredited. The exclusion, manipulation, and elitism that people have gotten sick of are not a result of term limits, campaign financing, lack of third parties, or corruption, any more than the economic crisis was a result of unethical decisions or lack of oversight (see : Joshua Clover's "Busted: Stories of the Financial Crisis"). Rather, these problems stem from the highest ideals of democracy itself, which have never been realized in any government that has yet existed, but are being put into practice in the plazas of Spain.

It is the paranoia rooted in the impulse towards centralization—the idea that one decision-making structure should be legitimized at the cost of all others, that social conflict should be avoided, that all decisions need to be approved by a higher power, that people cannot be trusted to organize themselves in decentralized networks—that demands a concentration of power and the concomitant exclusion, elitism, and repression. The scientific basis for the idea of centralization has already been undermined, in complexity theory, economics, computer science, the understanding of collective intelligence and emergent behaviors, and even in military strategy. But the Hobbesian myth of a need for a singular, centralized power to keep everything from falling apart remains necessary as long as that central power continues to exist, and thanks to its control over education and media, even those who claim to oppose it will be indoctrinated in the values that constantly regenerate it.

As such, the self-proclaimed May 15th movement and the Real Democracy Now platform constitute a two-pronged neutralization, at the theoretical and tactical levels, of any popular revolution that truly seeks to confront the problems that everyone in Spain is facing.

On the theoretical level, the architects of the Spanish Revolution are substituting a stultifying dose of populism for the increasingly radical analyses that were being collectively developed across the country in the months from the September general strike to May Day. On the tactical level, they are enforcing an extreme pacifism, which makes their references to the Tahrir Square and Iceland victories, both based around violent uprisings, appear rather demagogic.

Neither of these uprisings were violent. In Egypt the people were willing to fight back and defend themselves when attacked, but did not initiate physical attacks. For logical reasons, fighting back against a physical assault should never be called "violence." Also for rhetorical reasons, if I may say so.

Where anticapitalist analyses and critiques of State power were gaining visibility throughout Spain, the members of Real Democracy Now talk mostly about replacing the politicians currently in power, modifying the electoral laws in a way that would favor smaller parties, and legislate practices of ethical banking. Politicians have already been replaced countless times—that's the charm of democracy—and many countries already have important third and fourth and fifth parties, and nothing has changed. The populist, "anti-ideological" character of many of the occupations has silenced many a debate, and in some cases even resulted in people with a more radical analysis being pressured to leave. In multiple cities, banners deemed inappropriate (for criticizing the police, opposing the State in its entirety, or calling for active election boycotts) were taken down by self-appointed organizers.

Not good. Nevertheless, I have come to think finally that the only thing more pointless than elections as currently structured is election boycotts. Representation (i.e., proportional representation) is definitely better than plurality-rules, and I don't know about Spain, but hell yeah in the US the system of campaign finance is absolutely central to maintaining the system as is.

Far from revealing, let alone attacking, the roots of the problem, the Real Democracy Now movement congeals a widespread and critical resistance into a univocal posture of opposition devoid of content. In occupations where the Real Democracy Now platform has been the dominant ideological force, such as in Sevilla, the critical discourses produced in the assembly have been confined to sloganeering. The focus on corruption rather than governing structures or social relations locates the problem in the unethical choices of politicians and bankers, rather than in the very existence of a system in which power is managed by politicians and bankers. This is a populist leader's wet dream. Any charismatic swindler promising an ethical change can turn this hard won momentum into votes. Democracy has accomplished the same bait and switch so many times in the past.

No arguing with that.

On a tactical level, the pro-democracy activists have sanitized the movement by imposing an extreme pacifism, often violently. In a cultural context where the concept of nonviolence still has room for self-defense, blockades, or the sabotage of inanimate property, a good speaker can easily win majority support for a "nonviolent occupation." Subsequently, the ideologues of pacifism have verbally or even physically attacked people attempting to block streets, have insisted that the occupation remain within the confines of the plaza, have applauded police arresting thieves or football fans, and have silenced people insulting or yelling at the police.

Oh, I know about these kinds. It needs to be stressed however that non-violence, which I consider a necessary and intelligent strategy for pursuing change in mass societies, is not the same as this brand of doctrinaire pacifism. In fact, it's not even pacificism; what he's describing here is a literal over-interpretation of pacificism to the point where it becomes a fanatic determination to defeat the movement if the cops can't manage it:

During police actions, as when cops "cleaned up" Plaça Catalunya in Barcelona on May 27, taking away all the tents, computers, tables, kitchen, and other infrastructure, and beating all those who stood in their way, the pacifists insisted that everyone sit down and raise their hands, physically forcing many people to do so, and calling some people who refused "infiltrators." When the crowds finally surged forward and pushed out the police, the pacifists initially formed human chains trying to protect them. The crowds had to physically push through the pacifist cordon in order to eject the police from the plaza. On multiple occasions pacifists have accused the critics of nonviolence of being police provocateurs, while at other times they have glorified the police or claimed they were fellow workers only doing their jobs.

By never questioning journalists' manipulation of the term "violence," which is applied to protestors for the slightest infraction but rarely to police and never to bankers or governments, these dogmatic pacifists have turned themselves into auxiliaries for the mass media and the economic interests they represent. By basing their strategy on a hypersensitivity towards their public "image," they make themselves patently easy to manipulate by those same media institutions which just a generation ago were popularly considered to be the enemy. But the concept of enemies is antithetical to today's feel-good nonviolence, so these naïve activists continue to seek common ground with the architects of public opinion, and as usual, it's those with the resources who call the shots.

In sum, the Spanish Revolution is gaining ground precisely where it exceeds the principal limitations established by the Real Democracy Now platform. In the cities where the encampments signed on to the platform from the start, participation has dropped off sharply, and the homogenized discourses rarely exceed the level of slogans. Meanwhile, in cities like Barcelona, where the platform was rejected and the occupation established an independent character from the beginning, or in Madrid, where there is also a strong antiauthoritarian presence critical of the discourses of democracy and unity, the occupations became a place for intense and multifaceted debates, carried out autonomously among hundreds of people over the course of days and weeks; a place where new theoretical texts representing various and diverging lines of thought have been written, distributed in the thousands, and argued over; a place where people have the opportunity to gain experiences of self-organization, either inside or outside the official structure. In cities where the central structure was not challenged and critiqued, it soon consolidated power, pushed out critical voices, pushed out homeless people, immigrants selling beers, or others deemed antisocial, and imploded in a spectacle of boredom as most people left rather than sitting through an umpteenth meeting in which all they could do was listen to someone else talk.

Failure, in these cases, cannot be chalked up to the usual exhaustion and burnout after the first week's excitement. The level of activity in each encampment was inversely proportionate to its level of centralization. The greater the possibility of inclusion for multiple political trajectories, multiple organizing forms and styles, and a multiplicity, rather than a unity, of proposals and initiatives, the greater and more enduring the participation. In Barcelona, this decentralization has taken on a geographical as well as a structural aspect, as people begin to join or form neighborhood assemblies, which are holding weekly meetings in a central plaza in their respective neighborhoods. These meetings end in noise demos, protests, blockades of major avenues, or other actions more dynamic than those that came out of the central assembly in Plaça Catalunya.

In every period of mass indignation and rebellion, easy solutions offering false promises will be the ones that circulate the most widely. Taking advantage of populist rhetoric and the very values encouraged by the current system, these solutions tend to coalesce in superficial movements that squander the collective outrage and, at most, oblige the powerholders to change their masks. Spain, and the rest of the world, is in earnest need of a revolution, but contrary to consumer culture's demands for instant gratification, standing in a plaza with protest signs for a week, or two weeks, or a month, does not change anything. At most, it can provoke a crisis of governance that brings previously invisible conflicts to the fore. When these lines of conflict become obvious, when they charge in with clubs and rubber bullets, we must not pacify ourselves, sit down, raise our hands, and trust the journalists and lawyers to make everything okay. On the contrary, we must find the courage to trace these lines, through all obstacles, to their very sources, and then ask ourselves: are we ready to truly "change everything," as tens of thousands of people from Puerta del Sol to Plaça Catalunya shouted during the first heady days of the occupations, or do we want another placebo, to go back to the easy, albeit impoverished, life, and wait until the next crisis, the next false solution, a problem for the next generation.


Peter Gelderloos is the author of How Nonviolence Protects the State (South End Press) and Anarchy Works (Ardent press). He currently resides in Barcelona.