(Article written by the members of the Aragón Mutual Aid Women's Council, published in the newsletter 'Colectividad' number 15 in March 2025). ---- We live in turbulent times that are often difficult to interpret, as the rise of the far right worldwide, nationalist and protectionist policies, and rampant colonialism are events that take us back to other times and remind us of the pre-World War era. These same times were also golden years for freethinkers like Marx and Engels and the theory of historical materialism and class struggle, Bakunin and Kropotkin and the theory of mutual aid, Errico Malatesta, popular revolutions... everything has a reason, a cause and effect. While these are turbulent times, they are also times of opportunity if we know how to react.
Who said the class struggle was dead? It wasn't Warren Buffett, by the way. This new/old third world war, disguised as blocs but still the same story since the French Revolution: rich versus poor.
Europe's role on the geopolitical stage is uncertain. With Trump's rise, we've seen how traditional strategic alliances have been rendered invalid. Undoubtedly, these are times of change that bode ill, times of playing the cards.
The moves are clear: in the Middle East, the United States and Israel have been destabilizing countries while massacring entire populations for decades to secure the energy route from the United Arab Emirates to Europe. This isn't a political issue, as they don't care about allying with extremists; it's a monetary one, since anything goes to generate profit. Colonialism 3.0 in action.
Meanwhile, Russia is securing its presence in Africa, where few countries escape its influence, guaranteeing its supply of precious minerals and control of uranium and rare earth mines. Furthermore, it supports nuclear programs in Ethiopia and Uganda and, through its collaboration with Africa Corps, manipulates conflicts with ISIS to its advantage.
At the same time that France sees its uranium suppliers disappear, putting Europe in an energy bind, China is establishing a commercial foothold in Latin America with its so-called "soft colonialism."
Europe watches its influence fade, supposedly caught between two blocs in what appears to be a plan to dismantle the last vestiges of the welfare state, while the pact between Putin and Trump seems poised to divide the old continent.
This instability is pushing Europe toward increased military spending and reduced investment in ministries dedicated to the state-run care system. Education, healthcare, and social services will, as always, be the hardest hit, dragging us toward the systematic privatization of public services, which the major international lobbies relentlessly pursue. This race, which has been gaining momentum in recent years with the dismantling of state-owned enterprises and the continuous attacks on healthcare and education, is resulting in a consequent social polarization that is dragging the European working class into vulnerability and exclusion.
We all know that in capitalism, for some to get rich, others must become poorer, and that is the purpose of this new global establishment.
The injection of Russian capital into far-right parties and Trump's support for them in Latin America seeks, among other things, to pave the way for the legislative changes necessary for mass privatization. These self-proclaimed patriotic parties are prepared to dismantle the social safety net with the tools of economic deregulation.
How will this affect all of us, especially women? Without having the space to delve into a more complex analysis, we can sketch a picture of what is coming.
The reduction in public funding for education, healthcare, and social services will be the final nail in the coffin. We will move from a public model based on avoiding monetary profit to one of speculation and surplus value, while the slice of the pie they reserve for themselves will be stolen from the working class.
Social assistance, a large sector of feminized labor, along with social benefits, will be severely compromised by lowering the level of services, as part of the plan, so that more and more families turn to private healthcare, private schools, private nursing homes... as we say, their pie gets bigger every day.
On the other side, we working-class families are trapped in the housing crisis and precarious employment, struggling to survive while the burden of care work, which at one time sustained the welfare state, will once again fall on our shoulders.
Women with some financial means will be able to outsource care to the global care market, that market of migrant labor that these same ultra-nationalist parties, and others supposedly on the left, are ironically marginalizing. They abandon these workers in a legal gray area, trapped in the labyrinth of insurmountable bureaucracy that condemns them to the outskirts of society-a country within a country, a society without rights, where they are paid black market prices.
We are focusing on the economic aspect and have lost sight of the military career path. There is already talk of reinstating mandatory military service. Do you know where the young working-class people, tired of poverty, without the right to care, excluded from quality education, without access to an education that teaches them to be critical thinkers, will go? Can you guess what the method will be for earning that civil status of a full citizen? Our young people will become meat for the grinder if we don't stop it.
It is vital that we work together, overcoming our divisions and reclaiming our shared vision. All working-class women face the same hardships: monetary inequality, time poverty, an excessive burden of care work, and invisibility in male-dominated spaces. As migrant women, we also experience marginalization, a lack of basic rights, and limited access to healthcare and social services. We must end the dual systems of civil rights and ensure that these rights are universal. Only an egalitarian society can achieve true freedom for its members.
Faced with this future, we cannot stand idly by. Women must unite to build strong bonds that will allow us to organize ourselves as an alternative society, enabling us to confront them in the streets and in our neighborhoods. This unity will allow us to go door-to-door to our neighbors and, together, fill the void that a retreating state will leave behind.
So that when they come-and they will-they find us standing in front of them, arm in arm, fighting for ourselves, for our families, for our neighborhoods, for our future.
https://apoyomutuoaragon.net/oportunidades-frente-a-tiempos-oscuros
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Link: (en) Spain, Aragon, AM: Opportunities in the Face of Dark Times (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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