Statement of the CNT-AIT Spain before May Day 2020

“The State protects us”, ”entrepreneurs are the ones who create the wealth”, ‘’we have to protect the welfare state’’, ‘’we are all in the same boat and have to pull together’’. 

We hear things like this from the propaganda channels of those in political or economic power time and again, encouraging and interclass unity of the whole society, seeking a civic consensus that legitimizes its system and its crisis. However, the cyclical crises of the capitalist system in general, and the COVID-19 crisis in particular, demonstrate that the working class is the one that takes society forward, providing health services, transport, care, production and distribution of food. It is the one that creates wealth with its physical and intellectual effort; despite this, the means of production and consumer goods are not at the service of humanity, but are used by the bourgeoisie to enrich themselves, miserably and selfishly, protected and legitimized by the State.

Capitalism is for workers and the planet like a virus for the organism – a system based on the exploitation of one class over the other, in the sexual division of labor and even invisible care. It is a virus that generates violence, inequality, wars, migrations and natural disasters. A virus that when it does not kill us weakens us and pushes us to a precarious life and misery. It is evident that we cannot expect anything from the political class, since its function is to sell us false solutions and serve the ruling class, thus legitimizing social inequalities.

The health crisis that we are experiencing worldwide will give way to an economic crisis of an enormous magnitude, the consequences of which will fall once again on the working class: job insecurity, evictions, millions of unemployed people, women combining unpaid domestic work with precarious work ... In addition, the State of Alarm will give way to a more controlled normality and to an authoritarian rearmament of the State, which it will take advantage of to cut back on rights and freedoms. Sounds familiar to us, right? Unemployment, repression, evictions, torture, jail, social control, etc.

But not all is lost. We have the only possible vaccine against the State-Capital axis: organization and struggle.

In a moment of absolute demobilization and general disorganization, it is necessary that we become aware of the capacity and strength that we have to transform society, seeking a model where social justice, cooperative work and the distribution of well-being and wealth triumph over the competitiveness, individualism and oppression promoted by the capitalist bourgeoisie. You have to organize – really organize - without half measures, and as was said before, go for everything. From below, without concessions. The organizations must articulate strength, showing that they are not ambiguous movements easily manipulated by those in power. We must build a real alternative that manages to mobilize on the street and that looks for collective fronts of struggle. Anarcho-syndicalism, in short, must be a revolutionary alternative.

Let us remember how our comrades fought in the past and how the great conquests of the working class have historically been achieved through organization and forcefulness, let stop letting ourselves believe that we belong to some middle class and fight to get out of this reality that alienates us. Let us become aware that it is through collective, anti-authoritarian and class consciousness and action that our reality must be radically changed.

For all these reasons, this May 1st we appeal to the working class to come out of that ideological and cultural confinement in which they find themselves, and understand that only an organized and conscious working class can stand up to tyranny.

Either we kill capitalism or it will kill humanity.

We will return to the streets.

CNT-AIT