International Conference Release Nº 4

We, the organizations AGORA GALIZA-UNIDADE POPULAR, HERRITAR BATASUNA and NACIÓN ANDALUZA -members of the International Conference- in view of the ruthless offensive that the bourgeoisie, under the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, has unleashed against the working class worldwide, and, in our specific realm of struggle, against all the Working Peoples of each of the nations oppressed by the capitalist and imperialist state called the Kingdom of Spain, want to manifest the following:

1- The pandemic generated by the appearance of the COVID-19 virus does not annul or deactivate the class struggle; on the contrary, it sharpens it, radicalizes it and deepens it by joining the rest of the structural crises that the capitalist system has been dragging on for many decades. This global and general crisis of the capitalist mode of production at a planetary level has been accelerated by this pandemic. Regardless of the origin of the COVID-19 virus, the priority task for the working class is to stop this pandemic as soon as possible and save as many human beings as possible. From here we express our recognition to all the workers who are making it possible with their dedication, risking their own lives in order to do that. 

2.- This serious illness does not make us forget that there are other bigger and more murderous pandemics at a planetary level, which strike the poor people, the Working Peoples, the world Proletariat in a merciless and endemic way, as a consequence of capitalist exploitation and oppression. The first is structural and planned hunger, constant genocide amidst the indifference of the bourgeoisie and all its satellites and subordinates.

3.- The bourgeoisie wants to take advantage of this worldwide shock to consolidate its power and improve its gains, to increase its profit rates, to expand the accumulation of Capital, to perfect its systems of repression and social control, to discipline on its own terms and further exploit the working class. The constant war between Labour and Capital never stops; it is the engine of the class struggle and the one with the clearest consciousness of this situation is the bourgeoisie itself.

4.- The Spanish State is deepening even more its crisis as a structure of domination of the oligarchy. The economic measures adopted by the Spanish government party coalition PSOE-Unidas Podemos to fight the coronavirus are insufficient and improvised. The package of measures of €200,000 million approved by the Council of Ministers, in reality is nothing more than a series of patches for the working class that will not avoid sentencing the vast popular sectors to exhaustion: neither the reduction of salaries, nor the ERTEs (Temporary Layoff Files), nor the increase in working hours, nor the loss of rights are prohibited… they are rolling back the conquests acquired through the popular and workers' struggle... Its aim is to cushion the contradictions of a society still dominated by the paralysis generated by fear. Pedro Sánchez (Spain´s Prime Minister) wants to gain time and satisfy the insatiably predatory nature of the oligarchy and that is why, for example, the State bears the costs of the dismissals instead of charging them to the business profits.

5.- The declaration of the state of alarm has been accompanied by a recentralization supported the government coalition parties PSOE-Unidas Podemos as well as by the majority of parliamentary groups. The decision making power historically delegated to the Autonomous Communities by the Health Ministry, the Transport Ministry, etc. has been taken back by the Spanish central government without it being known how and when it will be returned. The Emergency Military Unit and other military units such as BRILAT or the Legion are being deployed throughout the country, in an effort to normalize the presence of the Spanish Army among the population, the curtailment of freedoms and the militarization of our lives.

6.- The Bourbon monarchy continues to lose support in view of the scandals that are progressively spreading to all the members of the House of Bourbon. We have no doubt that –despite representing an absolute value of the hierarchical-social system, just as the Church was under Franco´s regime- it will be a pawn to be sacrificed by the oligarchy if needed be in order to survive as a ruling class, under the form of a Third Spanish Republic of bourgeois character.

In view of the above mentioned, the signatory organizations NACIÓN ANDALUZA, HERRITAR BATASUNA and AGORA GALIZA-UNIDADE POPULAR ask the working class and popular sectors not to allow themselves to be manipulated and instrumentalized, to exercise class solidarity, not to be victims of the collective psychosis promoted by the oligarchy's means of disinformation. Respecting at all times the measures that demand both personal and collective health, we have to weave networks of solidarity and self-defense neighborhood by neighborhood, factory by factory, to help each other, to deactivate panic and fear, to confront repressive measures and antisocial cuts that the bourgeoisie wants to impose.

This struggle will be long and hard, and worldwide. We call on the Working Peoples to prepare themselves for the energetic defence of the rights and liberties that have been won in so many years of struggle and that the oligarchy will undoubtedly try to reduce under the excuse of COVID-19 or the subsequent "economic recovery", that is, the recovery of the bosses' profit rates. Only our struggle -organized at the level of our respective nations and coordinated in an internationalist way- can tip the balance towards the popular side and prevent those responsible for this social catastrophe from continuing to beat us in the class struggle. Our goal is the world socialist revolution, on the road to a free world, without classes, states or patriarchy.

AGAINST THE OFFENSIVE OF THE BOURGEOISIE, REVOLUTIONARY ALLIANCE OF THE WORKING PEOPLE!

March 20, 2020.

AGORA GALIZA-UNIDADE POPULAR, HERRITAR BATASUNA, ANDALUSIAN NATION

(Member organisations of the International Conference)