Thousands celebrate the second anniversary of the 15-M, Madrid, May 2013. Demotix/Betsabe Donoso. All rights reserved.Despite the fact that all of us militants in traditional left
organisations did not like it, the truth is that when 15-M exploded in May
2011, public squares were full of people while revolutionary organisations
remained empty of activists. Capitalism had done its job of ideological
indoctrination, defending its interests; with social majorities perceiving the
traditional left more as an enemy than as an ally.
Capitalism had done its job of ideological indoctrination,
defending its interests; with social majorities perceiving the traditional left
more as an enemy than as an ally.
The scenario has not changed much since then; revolutionary
organisations remain empty and people look towards other options for change,
from the left to right, options that do not walk along traditional ideological
avenues.
In the context of a liberal-bourgeois regime that puts its rule to
the test of democratic elections, a people can advance its own aspirations for
social change to the extent that it wants and it is allowed to do this through
elections, but no further. The limitations for creating a project for social
majorities able to win elections from within the classical lines of the
traditional left are by now obvious. We can be certain that this ideological
defeat of the left is not the fault of Podemos.
In effect, since 1989 the left had tried to struggle without much
success from within its classical conceptual schemas, against the denial of
class struggle imposed by the new hegemonic neo-liberal ideology and against
the majoritarian vision of an ‘end of history’, to recall Francis Fukuyama’s
term, as par excellence the myth of capitalism.
It has attempted this time after time, in multiple forms, with
similar results: increasingly empty political organisations with negligible real
impact on society and no ability to influence political life. Simultaneously,
the popular discomfort already manifest in the streets, produced as a direct
and unavoidable consequence of the neoliberal dynamic, was slowly and gradually
shifting towards ‘new’ political scenarios, looking for alternatives to the big
utopias that had historically been associated with the traditional left.
Political postmodernity at its purest.
The defeat of the traditional left is not the fault of Podemos;
this has been the situation over recent decades and we continue to experience
it today. It is the case, however, that
Podemos is a direct outcome of this dynamic: a new political actor born in these
circumstances, as a current actor ‘of the present moment’, and a descendendant
of both the left’s own fraught history and its political evolution in our
society. The defeat of the traditional left is not the fault of Podemos; this has been the situation over recent decades and we continue to experience it today.
As its own leaders have repeatedly stated, Podemos was not born to
bear witness, but to win, and this entails being able to adapt to both the
historical context and to the ‘common sense’ of the epoch from which the big
social majorities draw their understanding of the world.
Changing the minds of
majorities
To escape the situation of weakness in which we (the popular
forces) find ourselves, from this unfair system that causes us so much harm, neither
our good wishes nor our good intentions will be sufficient; instead, this will
require our capacity to generate a consciousness for change in social
majorities. And as history teaches us, this is something that comes with the
evolution of the material and ideological struggles that we manage to effect,
with its own victories and defeats, its own advances and roll-backs, its
projects that are born and die.
To demand from Podemos to be able by itself to overcome the
limitations that characterise our times – that the neoliberal hegemony has so
ably been imposing as socially dominant throughout its communicative machine –
is to demand the impossible; or rather, it would be asking Podemos to forget
about winning elections in order to become a residual force.
We live in the world that we live in, we have the societies that we
have; the constraints before us are manifold, before any prospect of reaching a
winning scenario. Podemos has not given up on being part of the left, it has
simply renounced being part of this left that can be content with losing, time
after time. While this is not a guarantee for success, it is at least guarantee
for a fight for victory with real hopes of winning.
Against immobility
Podemos managed to reanimate this hope of victory within the
Spanish state, and this is already an important ideological victory. The simple
fact of being able to think that it is possible to defeat the regime’s long-established
parties in one election, from a leftist national, popular perspective, is a
victory in itself, against the traditional immobility of Spanish politics.
It is also, we will have to admit, a victory against the
immobilism of this left, defeated by history. While Podemos stands a chance, it
is absolutely impossible for the traditional left to win, at least in the current
circumstances. Let’s accept this fact. Let’s not transform the left into a
blind faith, a religious sect that remains content with just being faithful to
its own dogmas, time after time, despite its absolute incapacity for reaching
its goals.
Let’s play with the rules imposed by our ‘adversary’ – we have no
other option; let’s play on their boards, their tables and battlefields, but
let’s not play a game we have lost before we even started;
‘Gramsci-Lenin-Gramsci’, as Garcia Linera would say.
Let’s assume that ‘common sense’ belongs to the ‘enemy’, and let’s
struggle in order to transform it. Let’s assume that
‘common sense’ belongs to the ‘enemy’, and let’s struggle in order to transform
it, or least to advance it in favour of our political interests as much as we
can by transforming the ‘political-ideological’ battles into electoral power,
in order to hit the ‘enemy’ hard, till we can defeat it by kicking it out of
power at the ballot box. Only after this will we be able to move from this scenario to construct a
cultural hegemony that would permit us to revive precisely what such an enemy destroyed
in the past: the traditional values of the left and its relevance for people’s
lives, that is, the big utopias.
We need to develop the tactical capacity to analyse the present
situation and plan our future movements with our eyes set not on the next move,
but rather on the whole game, in order to detect the living contradictions in the
opponent, in order to weaken and defeat it.
We must be able to strike hard when necessary but, above all, we
must be able to devise a strategy capable of maximising our political gains,
given the knowledge we have about the political strategies used by our
political opponents and the ones they might use in the future. This is the
model to be followed, the model used in Latin America, from the ‘Caracazo’
onwards: a sum of chess, boxing and games theory. The political dynamics specific
to the Spanish state were not born with Podemos, neither will they end with the
coming general election.
The long game
From our current position of weakness and lack of extensive social
support, we will not be able to strike this criminal political system, unless
we move our pieces on the board in a manner that positions them strategically,
with future political and ideological battles in mind.
It is not worth developing good short-term movements if they prove
of little use in hitting the enemy later, due to our lack of a long-term
strategy. Whether we like it or not, the system plays the card of the ‘defeat
of the left’, that is to say, the system lives in the awareness that most
people locate anything related to the classical revolutionary left as beyond
the confines of ‘democratic normalcy’.
In this knowledge, let’s give our riposte, and anticipate their
next movement in order to decipher the plan for future moves, ahead of their implementation.
Podemos discovered the formula for doing this, and it can serve as a great
lesson for a whole set of the forces on the (Spanish and European) left, regardless
of its most immediate electoral result.
