Seville Manifesto
Posted on March 29, 2009
From the International Luxemburgist Network website:
REBEL, MAKE THE RICH PAY FOR THE CRISIS
Adopted by: SAT, CGT, USTEA, CNT (Federación Local de Sevilla), SOAC, REDI-Sevilla, CUT, Jaleo, IU (Consejo Provincial de Sevilla), Democracia Comunista, En Lucha, PCE (m-l), Corriente Roja, Nación Andaluza, Izquierda Anticapitalista, Estudiantes UPO For mass demonstration in Seville, Dec. 14, 2009
The government, political parties, and mass media have acknowledged the economic crisis as expressed in the collapse of the construction industry, steep declines in the stock market and losses in the financial sector. Nonetheless, from the perspective of the working class, we have been suffering from the crisis for years in the form of labor subcontracting and outsourcing, falling real wages, increases in the cost of living, the impossibility of finding affordable housing, unemployment, undermining of civil liberties and many other attacks.
We have known for quite a while that the crisis is not an accident, nor the result of strange causes that come from outside the system. The enormous expansion of those that work under precarious conditions, the deregulation and ‘flexibilizing’ of the labor market, and the cutbacks in social services are all part of a political economy designed to enrich, at whatever price, the capitalist class. Those that are responsible for the systematic application of these measures have names: the governments of the last 25 years, the members of the CEOE and big bankers and corporations, the heads of the CCOO and UGT that have all collaborated in these attacks and destruction of the conditions of work and life of the population. This is a crisis of the entire capitalist system.
In spite of the propaganda of the mass media, and the irresponsible declarations of the political class, we know that immigrant workers are the principle victims of this crisis. The police repression, the anti-foreigner laws, and the rapacious corporations relegate the immigrant workers to invisibility with no rights. We have to recognize that the native and immigrant workers have a common struggle against the large corporations and for the defense of social and labor rights for all.
We workers have learned that when the bosses and the government talk about crisis we have to tremble: in their language ‘crisis’ is the magic word that they use to justify attack on our rights and salaries, layoffs and cutbacks in social programs.
The government, far from attending to the problems the people face, is taking economic measures to save the big capitalists, precisely the ones responsible for our crisis, by again robbing us, using the public treasury to try to save a system that we have proved does not work. They tell us there is no money for jobs and housing, while the inject million of euros into the bank accounts of the wealthiest.
When the government only defends the bankers and industrialists, when the biggest unions look the other way, and continue signing pacts behind our backs, when the politicians show themselves incapable of defending our rights, we have to mount a process of united mobilizations of native and immigrant workers and all the people that are not willing to accept this intolerable situation.
FOR A RESCUE PLAN FOR THE WORKING CLASS
No to layoffs and labor deregulation measures (ERE’s) No to the 65 hour work weeks For a minimum salary of (SMI) 1000 Euros Guarantee funds of the financing of the municipalities to create an employment plan and public works to address the needs of the unemployed. Regularization and rights for all immigrants. For a land reform that guarantees sovereignty and food security. For a packages of measures that guarantees access to safe and sanitary housing for all For the recuperation under public control of the banks, energy, transport and other strategic sectors.
All these measures are possible and necessary, but to achieve them
THE MOBILIZATION OF THE MASSES FROM BELOW IS ESSENTIAL. NOW IS THE MOMENT.
REBEL — MAKE THE RICH PAY FOR THE CRISIS.
