We publish the following article from the Spanish anti-State, anti-market communist group Barbaria.
THEY WILL NOT SILENCE US. WE WILL SPEAK FOR OUR DEAD
No, we know that well. The hundreds of dead and missing are not the result of uncontrolled nature. It is not the result of a fate that could not be dealt with.
We are not satisfied with the “meteorological” explanation, the litres that fell, the rivers that overflowed…
The causes are deep, they have to do with the foundations of capitalism: how it crowds workers into marginal and lower-income areas of cities to better exploit them, or how it protects and privileges productive and commercial activity, without caring about leaving all people unprotected, at the mercy of their fate in the midst of the storm.
There are also their “managers”, different dogs with the same collar. On this occasion, these shits, these nobodies, whether they are called Mazón or Sánchez, plus some Bourbon, add to their usual titles of lackeys the fact that they are responsible for the deaths and the tragedy experienced. We will not forget their names, and at the first opportunity we will make them pay.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE CATASTROPHE
Both the meteorological service and the hydrographic confederation had foreseen the catastrophe. On Tuesday, October 29, torrential rains saturated dry basins, caused rivers and ravines to overflow, and swept away and flooded a large part of the Horta-Sud in Valencia with water and mud. Tragedy was in store.
From that moment on, and without any foresight from the State (regional or central), it is the neighbours who save neighbours and help with the most basic tasks. Without water and without electricity, they survive and organise themselves in the absence of the “government” and its military and police “forces”. The testimonies that reach us are shocking, but also heroic: people and families who support each other, even risking their lives, and make sure that the disaster does not become even worse.
On Friday, November 1, the “authorities” and their “forces” are still nowhere to be seen, but the solidarity of the people is manifest in an extraordinary way. Thousands of people organise themselves from the city of Valencia and descend in columns on foot to the villages of La Horta to help, to bring water and food, to support their peers with their encouragement. The State is alarmed, and begins to make solidarity difficult, to try to structure it and give it the form it needs to suit its interests. It begins to disorganise solidarity in the form of volunteering, and in a catastrophic manner (as cannot be otherwise in the hands of the capitalist State) it tries to dismantle it.
On November 2, five days after the flood, the army arrived with heavy machinery and a strategy to clear the streets and towns of blockages, and uncover the enormous tragedy that was still hidden by the mud, debris and piles of cars.
The “volunteers” are beginning to be assigned to infamous tasks (cleaning shops and large stores) which the solidarity workers refuse to do. They have not gone there to help businessmen and multinationals, but to help their brothers and sisters, their equals.
By now, hundreds of people have disappeared and hundreds have died. The damage is extensive and thousands of people, the vast majority of whom are workers, have been left with nothing.
On the 3rd, the Catalan government prohibits the flow of “volunteers” to the affected areas, citing an orange alert, a way of avoiding protests and confrontation with the politicians who visit the area that day, politicians who are odious and hated by the population, regardless of their political affiliation or the rank they occupy in the State apparatus, whether they are kings or presidents. But despite the prohibition, people continue to go down to the villages of La Horta. As a result, confrontation occurs and Felipe VI, Mazón and Pedro Sánchez have to flee Paiporta under the cries of “assassins,” mud and stones.
REASONS FOR THE MASSACRE
Because it has been a massacre, because to a large extent it could have been avoided, because it has been created by a catastrophic and predatory system such as capitalism and managed by its State (autonomous and central, it’s all the same shit) that only obeys the laws of profit and capitalist gain.
Elements that lead to massacre:
- Development and absurd and uncontrolled construction are not the work of corrupt politicians, greedy businessmen or clumsy urban planning, but rather it is the way capital has of bringing workers closer to the cities where work and consumption are concentrated, regardless of where and how it was built, with inferior quality and in natural spaces where water and rivers have flowed naturally. It is not surprising that there are names such as Torrent (for a town) or Cañada or Rambla for a multitude of streets, names that reveal where the water flowed and where it will flow again when it rains too much. It does not matter where it is built, what matters is the immediate benefit without measuring the consequences for the workers, who are nothing more than merchandise for them (the rich, the bourgeois, their politicians), another commodity that can be replaced.
- The cold drop has always existed in these regions, but the high temperatures of the Mediterranean Sea due to global warming mean that the intensity and frequency of torrential rains are increasingly greater. Capitalism is the system that has accumulated the most knowledge of the effects of human action on its ecosystem, but it is also the most destructive mode of production against it. Its need to accumulate capital leads it to need ever greater amounts of energy and raw materials, no matter what. It is an internal dynamic that cannot be stopped, and that necessarily places us in a scenario in which the catastrophe experienced can be recurrent over time.
- The lack of prevention has also been part of the massacre, one of the cruelest parts. Despite the warnings, despite the predictions and despite the risk being known since Tuesday morning, nothing was done, the flow of work-commodity could not be interrupted, stopping production is something unimaginable for the political managers of capital. Nobody, neither the Generalitat, nor the central government, nor the opposition (which is now trying to profit from it) suggested that people should not go to work or to shop or to study centres; they did not suggest evacuating the inhabitants of the “flood zones” (well known). The world of merchandise and value must not be altered, any human sacrifice is not enough for the bloodlust of capitalism and its bastard managers.
- And once the crime is committed, it ends with chaos in the care of the victims. With hardly any state help until the 5th day and putting obstacles to self-organisation. The State makes it clear that its function is not the “care” of the people but the care of the world of money, of merchandise and of the dominant classes, and in any case the control and repression of any attempt at organisation from below, of human solidarity.
SPONTANEOUS SELF-ORGANISATION
Capital and its media never tire of repeating everywhere that human beings are selfish by nature, that we only look out for our own small and personal interests, that we don’t care about anyone; in short, that we are wolves towards each other. They want to put into us what they are, what their system of exploitation, their class system, represents. This refrain is as old as capitalism. Tales to scare us.
What they will not be able to hide is the solidarity and self-organisation of the people in the midst of tragedy. They will not be able to hide from everyone the spontaneous organisation in the face of the massacre and brutality of a system that hates life. Contrary to what they preach, we have seen thousands of men and women offering their selfless, passionate and active help in the affected areas. They cannot bear to see how in the towns and cities people organise themselves to satisfy their needs without waiting for the State to give the order. This is what frightens them: that the cash register does not ring, that many goods have become use value, to be enjoyed without being bought. The capitalists and their media, that servile and well-paid carrion, have quickly come out to denounce the theft and plundering of their property. The State only appears to defend private property with blood and fire.
The mountain of corpses grows bigger every day, every hour, the devastation is terrifying, but they only think about saving their four fucking bags of muffins, two pairs of shoes and a television… We will not forget this either.
At this point the answer is obvious: this is what happens to us when we live under the boot of the capitalist system, whether its political managers are right or left.
In the coming days we will witness a carnival of “reproach”. Those who now call for demonstrations against the “fascist” government of the Generalitat are opportunists who try to take political advantage of our dead, of our misery. When left-wing political parties like the unions are equally guilty and responsible for promoting and managing unbridled development, turning their backs on the natural territory, because the only important thing is the generation of wealth (for the rich, of course) and the extraction of benefits (surplus value) at the expense of the working class.
Because let us not be fooled, this is the reason for the existence of both parties and unions: the staunch defence of the capitalist mode of production, being the necessary intermediaries both politically and ideologically, fostering the illusion that this system can be reformed, made more “humane”. They cannot be asked to be anything other than what they are.
It is time to mourn the lost loved ones, to recover their bodies, to give a dignified burial to the deceased. It is time to clear the rubble and recover the little that we have in this miserable life. It is also time to clench our fists and clench our teeth. But above the flood of feelings, it is time to understand in depth the real causes that have caused the tragedy. The essential thing is that capitalism cannot stop activity, workers must produce in their workplaces, and “citizens” consume the goods produced. The wheel of capitalist valorisation cannot be stopped, at any price, even by turning towns into immense mousetraps.
Nature has not suddenly gone mad, it is the result of a profound alteration caused by the competition between capital and productivity, which prevents the reduction of greenhouse gases, as well as the accelerated production of superfluous goods, mere “junk” lacking meaning. And even recognising the naturalness of floods and inundations, which have always existed, the exponential increase and their appearance in areas where they did not previously occur (remember the floods in Germany and Belgium in 2021 and their 167 deaths) respond to causes that are social. It is capitalism.
Although, seen individually, any of us could have been “hit” in a car, and even some businessmen have been swept away by the flood, those who are the worst off are the workers, crowded into their slums, harassed by property speculation and a precarious and miserable life. It is no accident that uncontrolled urban development has crowded millions of workers together, often building their houses with their own hands, in streams or dumps for decades. It is these workers, who come from impoverished areas of the countryside, who are now paying with their lives for capital’s greed for labour. What seems like mere misfortune is in fact the confirmation of a class society.
In the face of so much pain and suffering, it is comforting to see the solidarity that has spread everywhere. Outside the State and all kinds of administrations, people recognise each other as equals, as brothers in misfortune. We need to focus this energy well. Difficult days are coming, in which the impotence in the face of so much destruction will be compounded by the action of all the supporters of the system, from the extreme right with its “national” and racist solutions, brandishing a supposed “people” that includes us all, to the extreme left, with “new” proposals for “radical” reforms and its harassment of the right.
But there is another option. To bring the reflection to our environment, at work, in class, among friends and family. The tragedy concerns us in what we are as a proletariat, no matter what sector. To discuss in depth the real causes, placing the analysis of capitalist laws at the centre of the debate. There are no half measures, no intermediate solutions. Anything other than attacking the capitalist system at its roots is to perpetuate its devastating effects in each and every one of its manifestations.
The mud will be cleaned, the cars and furniture removed. Hopefully, a new class consciousness will emerge from this, a new dignity, which will honour all the dead, present and past, and which will shout to our enemies, all that cohort of politicians, policemen, businessmen and beggars of the capitalist system, that what we want is a community without capital, without money or goods, without a State. That we want communism.
It’s not for today, but perhaps we can swell the ranks of those who want to fight relentlessly.
Because they will not silence us, we will speak for our dead.