WORLD WORLDWIDE SPAIN News Journal Update - (en) Spaine, LutaFob: (CNT) A Class Program in the Face of Collapse (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 We need to empower ourselves as a class and build our own institutions,

"our" proletarian, functional and efficient institutions. ---- Written
by Genís Ferrero, Secretary of Union Action at CNT Vallès Oriental. ----
Originally published on the El Salto Blog on 09/11/2023
https://www.elsaltodiario.com/el-blog-de-el-salto/programa-clase-social-colapso-capitalista
---- Translated by a FOBCE activist ---- Recently, several studies,
essays and articles have been published that address the issue of the
future of our societies in the face of the current economic cycle and
the various coinciding crises that we have been experiencing. Without a
doubt, these contributions must be received with total interest and
critical spirit, since the diversity of contexts today must make us see
the need for their study and, above all, their critical opposition from
the perspective of the emancipation of humanity.

Thus, from heterodox economic literature to scientific analyzes on the
biophysical limits of the economy should serve us to better understand
the possibilities, but also the limitations that our societies face in
the current phase of capitalism. The horizons that point to the
incapacities of current State models must help us to understand that the
possibility of human emancipation cannot occur under them.

However, far from determinisms that lead us to understand a collapse of
capitalism on its own in the face of these scenarios of war, economic
crisis, climate emergency, scarcity of raw materials, etc.; We
understand that this system based on the exploitation of man by man will
not disappear. Denying the political capacity of human beings to make
decisions that allow them to transform their present would lead us to
fall into a defeatist nihilism or to abandon ourselves to a destiny
predetermined by historical or divine laws.

Providing ourselves with the ethical and political determination to act
in favor of emancipation will inevitably imply analyzing our context and
reality beyond any idealistic proclamation. From this perspective, the
National Confederation of Labor (CNT) analyzed these issues in December
2022 at its XII Confederal Congress held in Canovelles (Barcelona).

The first of these contexts is one in which revolutionary organizations
have such a correlation of forces that they have the possibility of
"assaulting" political power, but not without facing all the
difficulties and complexities that this implies. The second scenario we
understand arises when revolutionary organizations respond to an attack
by the dominant classes and, in the course of this struggle, are
overcome with the implementation of their program.

We are aware that no analysis involves a foolproof recipe, nor can the
scenarios listed above be given perfectly or independently of some
elements of other scenarios. Thus, for example, no assault on power can
have signs of success against a State that is not in crisis that
originated previously.

The third scenario we believe to be the most plausible in the current
context and, given the correlation of forces in our society, we will try
to explain it briefly.

The current economic situation, which we pointed out at the beginning of
this text, is accelerating the limits of state institutions to guarantee
certain standards of living for the population. These limits that
already existed, and whose analysis questioned the very definition of
"welfare state", are being expanded in the current phase of capital
accumulation. This situation, we understand, will worsen and gradually
the State will no longer assume part of its functions, provide part of
its services to the population or will no longer be present in the
territory as we have come to understand. This situation of collapse that
has been warned from several areas has its most recent precedent in
2021, in the middle of the pandemic.

We understand that this "abandonment" occurs when, deliberately or due
to incapacity, the State fails to provide or assume certain services or
infrastructures that are not essential for maintaining the economy in
each context. In this way, a growing portion of the population is
progressively excluded from the basic elements for their survival and
reproduction, such as housing, health, employment, etc.

In these contexts, far from assuming that worse is better, potential
also opens up for revolutionary organizations, occupying this sphere of
action and implementing structures of mutual support and
self-management. This type of direct action that historically developed
movements like the Black Panthers in the USA in the late 1960s, to give
an example far from anarcho-syndicalism, or from the labor and
libertarian movement itself that in our country implemented a network of
class institutions during the first third of the 20th century.

Implementing this response capacity, and replacing it with institutions
independent of the State, based on solidarity and mutual support, will
logically depend on having reached a sufficient level of training and
performance. If we do not want this type of response to be spontaneous,
disappearing as soon as the most difficult moments of each crisis pass,
we must be able to create organization in capital letters by linking it
to an ideology and general program that visualizes a global alternative
in this society.

We believe that capitalism will not disappear in the face of this
collapse by itself, history shows us the adaptability that Capital has
to develop in absolutely changing contexts, even in the absence of the
State as we know it today in our country. Despite this, as
anarcho-syndicalists, we do not accept that it is possible to "wait" for
the creation of "suitable" opportunities to start acting, but that we
must anticipate and build organization.

This task has two dimensions, on the one hand the strengthening of our
union model through strategic resources that were approved in Congress
such as the Confederal Resistance Fund, the consolidation of the
Confederative Technical Cabinet, the creation and strengthening of
Employment Exchanges and Control Employment Union with the reinforcement
and support of company-to-company Collective Negotiation, social action
among the most precarious sections of the working class, as well as the
study and promotion of alternative forms of economy.

The other dimension lies in militancy, commitment and the ability to
"infect" the rest as much as possible that not only does the union help
to alleviate their material situation, but that there is a global
alternative and that everyone is needed to develop it. Pretending to
develop self-management structures like the ones we mentioned, they need
material resources, but also the help of many people who contribute
their support, but also their knowledge.

We need to empower ourselves as a class and build our own institutions,
"our" proletarian, functional and efficient institutions, putting our
experience and knowledge as workers to build everything that allows us
to live, reproduce and socialize as human beings, creating alternatives
that overcome the state of things.

We value more than they want us to believe, but it is urgent to move
forward.

https://lutafob.org/cnt-um-programa-de-classe-diante-do-colapso/
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