RedWorker

Critical account of the history of Podemos from a left-wing perspective.[B]

I. The origins of Podemos.

[/B]Spain was in the middle of a crisis. In 2011, social-liberal (PSOE) Zapatero's government, which established wide-ranging austerity and was hit by mass unemployment, was replaced by conservative (PP) Rajoy's in early elections. Despite propagandistic rhetoric which portrayed Rajoy as the mortal enemy of Zapatero, in reality little changed. The wide-ranging austerity continued, so did the mass unemployment. They both came from the same political standpoint.

By now, any trust in the traditional institutions of the political system, such as the PP and PSOE parties, was regarded as a joke among youth, and among all there was massive disapproval of Rajoy's government. However, the main opposition party, the social democratic United Left (IU), had made only modest gains. In the 2011 elections, IU scored 6.9%, and by 2014 favourable opinion polls were giving it at most a 15%. This, however, signified a significant improvement from 2008's 3.8%. The origin of IU is the Stalinist [I]Communist Party of Spain[/I], which then became Eurocommunist and then social democratic.

It is in this scenario that the Podemos phenomena appeared in 2014. The Spanish section of the unified Fourth International (USFI) - a party named [I]Anticapitalist Left[/I] - had, internally, written up a document which called for a new mass movement and established a short programme of 10 demands. It concluded the document with the word: "PODEMOS!" ("We can"). It was only later, after Podemos was already known, that these internal documents became leaked.

Then, the document was released publicly under the name "[I]Mover ficha[/I]", with Anticapitalist Left not being mentioned. The signatories of the document included Juan Carlos Monedero (Pablo Iglesias' personal friend) and Teresa Rodriguez, a teacher, member of a trade union and, finally, member of Anticapitalist Left, though her description in the document did not include this last fact. The document's last words in this new edition: "We say: Podemos". The newspaper [I]publico.es[/I] published the document in January 2014.

Pablo Iglesias, not to be confused with PSOE's founder Pablo Iglesias, was not a signatory of the document, yet he became the 'public face' selected to reveal the Podemos project. It was two days later that it was announced that Pablo Iglesias would be the public face of the project. Pablo Iglesias was a professor at university and known for his participation in talk shows, as well as the TV programme he hosted, though not on mainstream TV. Pablo Iglesias was a former member (1992-1999) of the youth wing of the aforementioned Communist Party of Spain.

The process of preparation of a party list for the European elections of May 2014 started. Podemos tried to seek unity, among others with IU, but finally the result was a single party list.

Podemos had open primary elections (this is very rare for Spanish political parties), through both Internet and real life, in which anyone could vote no matter what party affiliation or sympathy. The result was Pablo Iglesias being elected as the party list's head, with two Anticapitalist Left members securing top positions within the list.

Podemos had no real media coverage, and the biggest exposure was a debate in the [I]La Sexta[/I] mainstream TV channel among minor political forces. Podemos' spending on the electoral campaign was several orders of magnitude lower than that of other political forces. On May 2014 the European elections happened, and the results were: PP 26%, PSOE 23%, IU 10%, Podemos 8% (compare to previous result: PP 42%, PSOE 39%, IU 3%)

The programme of Podemos to the European elections was collaboratively written and structured around [I]Anticapitalist Left[/I]'s manifesto. It contained calls for an unconditional basic income and nationalization of key sectors of the economy.

[B]II. The aftermath of the European elections.[/B]

A week after the election, an opinion poll was released which showed Podemos at 16.7%, PP 15.1%, PSOE 8.3% and IU 6.1%, considering the direct intention of vote without extrapolations.

From then on, Podemos received a lot of [I]constant [/I]media coverage, and a lot of it was mindless propaganda against it by the established power. But as time progressed, it became shown that sectors of the established power openly tolerated or even sympathized with Podemos.

As time passed, a clique formed around Pablo Iglesias, increasingly trying to battle the influence of [I]Anticapitalist Left[/I], made more nationalistic and petty-bourgeois appeals. They steered the project in a populist direction. This clique was known [I]as la promotora[/I] by those concious of it.

This image shows Podemos' rise in opinion polls:

[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/ElectionMonthlyAverageGraphSpain2015.png/800px-ElectionMonthlyAverageGraphSpain2015.png[/IMG]

(Blue = PP, red = PSOE, purple = Podemos, brown = IU)

Anticapitalist Left's base of supporters was to be found in the real membership of Podemos, whereas the [I]promotora[/I] clique's base of supporters was to be found in those who only knew about Podemos or had a sympathy to it.

It became increasingly clear that Podemos needed some form of organization. Thus on 12 and 13 June, a [I]technical team[/I] was elected through the Internet, with anybody being able to vote, which was to make the preparations for being able to collaboratively prepare this form of organization. Any group was able to present themselves as candidates to the elections, but it required a well-elaborated team of 25 people and the time was very short. The conditions for these elections were prepared by the clique, which already had everything ready.

Despite pleas to make the time longer, the clique refused. Thus the elections had only two lists to vote for, the clique's and another one of unknown people, with the former being voted by 86%. It was also known that the alternative list proved to be a failure with it completely breaking up, with some members publicly acknowledging they didn't even know why they were there.

Thus the clique, which managed to get enough power and have control of enough apparatuses as well as social media and technical teams, had successfully appointed itself to the ruling position. This was the crystallization, the expression, the confirmation of a struggle which was already being overwhelmingly won against Anticapitalist Left.

It is well known, if not openly stated, that the inner core of this clique consists of co-workers and personal friends of Pablo Iglesias, who have appointed themselves as the intellectual vanguard, and are becoming rapidly in love with personal power, even at the expense of contradicting everything they ever claimed to stand for. The way they act reveals that they care foremost about personal power, and ideology is only used as an afterthought, as a justification of this.

This [I]technical team[/I] prepared the so-called [I]Citizens' Assembly[/I] (a party congress - the name is in line with the clique's propagandistic themes). The aim of the Citizens' Assembly was to adopt five resolutions, to decide the organization model of Podemos (in three documents), and then to elect office specified in that organization model. It is worth mentioning that any group was allowed to submit resolutions, or a party model which was to be approved.

Of course, the technical team, which was appointed by the clique, specified the principles under which this 'assembly' had to take place. They established that anyone could become a member of the party through the Internet, in about two minutes and paying no fee, and then vote on key party decisions. This was done because random people from the Internet would know Podemos only for Pablo Iglesias, whereas the real life people involved in the party would not have blindly followed Pablo Iglesias.

So the opposition founded the [I]Sumando Podemos[/I] initiative, bringing dozens of party models together, whereas the clique submitted their own party model. The most important difference was that the clique's party model disallowed members of any other party, such as Anticapitalist Left, from taking any internal office within Podemos. So, the only real opposition was done for if this party model was approved.

3 Podemos MEPs backed the opposition's model, whereas another MEP and Pablo Iglesias himself backed the clique's model. Pablo Iglesias and the other major leaders of his clique threatened to leave Podemos if they were not backed fully on all votes. The clique's party model was voted by 80.71% of voters, with merely 12.37% voting for Sumando Podemos. Needless to mention, this vote was done under the conditions imposed by the clique.

Then the elections to fill the office which fit this party model happened. Of course, the opposition had been outlawed by the selected party model, so the general secretary was Pablo Iglesias with 96.87% of the vote (next candidate had 1.01% of the vote), and 100% of the seats of the Podemos ruling council were won by Pablo Iglesias' party list. By now, it became clear that the opposition was completely defeated, and all power was held by Pablo Iglesias' clique.

The more Pablo Iglesias' clique progressed, the less democratic Podemos became, the more power the clique held, the more the clique's personality got corrupted and became submitted to their personal power, and the more populist appeals that were made.

[B]III. Dictatorship of Iglesias' clique.

[/B]It becomes clear that even though Podemos started as a participative and democratic project, it now concentrates more and more power in one group - which at the same time is the only visible one, with all other groups eliminated.

Even though the programme to the European elections was written in May 2014, the clique called for a new economic programme to be written in November 2014, replacing the old one, citing a necessity of a new programme which adapted to the 'new reality'. Even though the older programme was collaboratively written with participation by the people of Podemos, the new programme was to be written in the shadows by a team appointed by the clique, and with no approval of anyone but the clique. Neither the order to create a new programme nor the new programme itself was approved by anyone but the clique.

The aim of the new programme was to dismantle the old demands, structured around Anticapitalist Left's manifesto. The demand for an unconditional basic income, for nationalizations of key sectors of the economy, and all other significant demands went away. What was left was comparable to the PSOE's programme.

As this happened, Pablo Iglesias' personality adopted a new discourse. Whereas he identified as a [I]Marxist[/I], [I]left-wing [/I]and a [I]communist[/I], he claimed that such things are only [I]intellectual fantasies[/I], and that [I]the reality is different[/I]. Does it not become clear now, that all people who have such a discourse, are in reality people who do not want any real change...!? The only aim of this discourse was to justify the degeneration of Podemos! It becomes clear that anyone with such a discourse becomes a rehash of the PSOE. Pablo Iglesias said that the [I]ruling ones[/I] [B]fear[/B] the [I]real possibility of change[/I] while [B]laughing[/B] at leftist politics. But whereas Marxists have always been feared by the [I]ruling ones[/I], does it not become clear now that they laugh at Podemos, if not openly sympathize with it!?

Pablo Iglesias, therefore, openly adopted the language of the right-wing. He started praising small business like mad, said that one has to be a 'patriot' and put the interests of the country before the individual, and adapted his discourse to the conservative point of view. And the whole ideology of Pablo Iglesias only serves as a justification, as an afterthought for the personal power that he has become so obsessed with getting, which has eaten up his personality.

In fact, Podemos now even declare: "we are neither left-wing nor right-wing", and Pablo Iglesias said that if a 0 is the extreme left and 10 is the extreme right, then everyone from 0 to 8 belongs in Podemos.

It is clear that almost every single one with any power in Podemos is closely associated with Iglesias, and in many instances the members of this clique are co-workers if not personal friends. Despite the pseudo-progressive rhetoric of Pablo Iglesias, one can see more similarities with populism than anything else.

What is not clear is what exactly will follow - either authoritarian populism, social democracy or liberalism.