We reproduce there after the statement the ICP-Proletarian has published on the huge and dramatic floods in Spain.

At least 100 dead, dozens missing, thousands of homes destroyed, families losing what little they had to survive... Victims of an entirely predictable and avoidable “tragedy”. Only in the capitalist world, where the death of children is less important than a few hours’ work, can events like those in Valencia take place.

A “cold drop” is a common Mediterranean meteorological phenomenon that occurs regularly on the Levantine coast and has been recorded since historical records began. It is a sudden cooling, on contact with land, of warm air from the sea. When this happens, water in a gaseous state suddenly turns to liquid and falls violently to earth. As well known, this is a normal phenomenon at this time of year, well known to the local population, and one for which the authorities should be prepared, as they are confronted with it quite frequently... Once again, however, the hundreds of deaths that will inevitably follow show that the destructive potential of natural meteorological phenomena has increased exponentially as a result of the capitalist system.

Valencia is not only the region of the “cold drop”, in recent years it is also one of the regions of the country where the galloping urbanization of the territory and the consequent destruction of the natural landscapes that served as a natural channel for this type of phenomenon have been the most massive.

How many urban developments built over the last century bear the name “Rambla de...”? [1] How many streets are named “Torrent”? This clearly shows that the relentless pursuit of profit has not even taken into account the natural events directly linked to the “cold drop”: the destructive force of water and all the other phenomena associated with it. In the capitalist era – in contradiction to the knowledge acquired since the beginning of sedentary life (when construction remained within the limits of the waters of the ancient lagoon, on the very spot where the cathedral and, around it, the medieval city stand today) – the city of Valencia developed around a river and occupied, by urbanizing it, all its natural expansion space. The same thing happened in many neighboring cities: the insatiable need for land to build, produce and speculate on led to the construction of neighborhoods and industrial zones precisely where it was known not to be needed.

We have seen the consequences today, but you do not have to go far back in time to encounter similar events. In 1957, on October 14 and for the same reasons as yesterday, the Turia River, which flows through the city, overflowed its banks, flooding the immediate neighborhoods and killing 81 people. This event prompted the government to divert the river and channel it out of the city. Yesterday, nature showed that it does not care about all the bureaucratic decisions made by the sickly head of the bourgeoisie and once again razed the old canal and the 1957 neighborhoods to the ground. In 1987, on November 3, a little further south, in the La Safor region, another flood destroyed the town of Oliva. A few years earlier, in 1982, the bursting of the Tous reservoir dam had devastated the Júcar basin, killing eight people. In less than a century and taking into account only the most serious events, such is the “unpredictable” and “unpreventable” reality, according to the authorities.

The reality is that local, regional and national governments were warned of what could happen on October 29. They knew it not only because they knew (there is not a meteorologist who does not!) that in autumn, the risk is at its highest in these regions, but also because for at least two days, the weather services had been warning of what could happen. But neither the experience of recent decades nor these warnings were enough: the cost – the only “reality” for capitalists – of paralyzing productive activity, evacuating populations and minimizing human risks is far lower than the severity of the destruction. Firstly, because in capitalism, a human life will never represent more than half the value of the capital invested or the profit that can be made from it. Secondly, because capitalism does not suffer destruction, but develops in and through it, it finds in catastrophes a vital impetus of the first order: where a proletarian sees misery and death, a capitalist sees business opportunities, high profitability and little competition.

This explains why yesterday, after the authorities themselves had sounded the alarm (at 8 p.m., when it was already clear at 6 a.m. that the day was going to be tragic), a multitude of business owners in the area forced their employees to report for work, under threat of dismissal, to work the night shift. This explains why the owners of the large suburban shopping areas forbade workers to leave their jobs when the floods had already begun, and why later, when the threat of disaster was clear, the emergency services did not mobilize to get them out: even a life is not worth the turnover of a few hours, is what any bourgeois thinks.

As politicians, artists, entrepreneurs and the whole panoply of the bourgeoisie’s servants begin their lamentations about the dead, let us be clear: the majority of these dead are proletarians, and they lost their lives because they could not find shelter anywhere, because they had to work despite the warnings of the emergency services. Because the bourgeoisie is capable of maintaining very expensive infrastructures, tens of thousands of production plants, tourist sites, etc., but is not capable of providing basic emergency aid in the face of a known and more than likely danger like the “cold drop” of these days. On the government side, regional and national, the democratic spectacle of parliamentary polemics and squabbles now begins: between the two, the rival will be blamed so that the proletariat accepts that this disaster is the work of the terrible fascist right or the criminal left. The reality is that both work solely and exclusively for the bourgeoisie, whether in the PCE, the PSOE or the PP: all are guilty of yesterday’s deaths. Soon the new priests of the “climate religion” will appear to explain to the proletariat that responsibility for these events lies not with the bourgeoisie as a whole, but with a handful of entrepreneurs who, with their backward production model based on coal and oil rather than green energy, are promoting climate change. And from their pulpits, opportunely encouraged by the press, they will propose yet another policy of collaboration between the classes, with the supposed aim of halting the climate catastrophe that awaits us.

But the reality is that these tragedies, veritable massacres, will not disappear until the mode of production that creates them is destroyed. As long as the capitalist system, which finds more profit in death, destruction and reconstruction than in prevention, does not disappear, the causes which amplify any natural phenomenon to the point of making it lethal for human beings will not disappear. As long as a social class, the bourgeoisie, has been able to conquer land and space for trade, implement the most advanced production technologies, but is unable to secure the cities where the proletarian workforce lives, these situations will be repeated in the same area and in a short time. And as long as the agitators and propagandists who seek to improve, reform and change what is necessary for capitalism continue to call on the proletariat to trust democracy and collaboration with the bourgeoisie to bring it about, the proletarian class will face not only its natural enemy, the bourgeois ruling class, but a whole army of its collaborators who will fight to keep the workers in the condition of perpetual victims.

Tomorrow, proletarians will bury their dead and pray that such a catastrophe never happens again. In the meantime, the bourgeoisie will channel through its state the billions that will enable it not only to resume, but to expand production in the destroyed factories, and to grow its businesses through reconstruction. The proletarian class, which today seems to be absent from social life, both politically and organizationally, and which gives the impression of being able to offer only deaths in catastrophes such as this one, is historically the bearer of the only chance of overcoming the misery of the capitalist world and the tragedies that continually accompany it. It suffers silently in bourgeois catastrophes as well as in everyday peace, in floods as well as at work, where it contributes thousands and thousands of deaths every year to the maintenance of commodity production. But, because it is at the center of the capitalist world, because it holds in its hands the production of all social wealth, because it constitutes the majority of the population in every country, it can get rid of the bourgeois class and annihilate its world, opening the door to a future where true abundance finally arrives, the true balance of the human being in his natural environment. This is undoubtedly the future, namely the real strength (today only potential, tomorrow real) of the proletarian class. But to realize this future, to show its true strength, the proletariat must return to the terrain of class struggle, it must fight against the enemy classes, both in defense of its immediate interests, those linked to the most basic survival, and in the general political confrontation against the political and social domination of the bourgeoisie.

Capitalism is responsible for all disasters!

Only the class struggle of the proletariat can put an end to its “tragedies”, by wiping it off the map! For the resumption of proletarian class struggle!

For the reconstitution of the communist, international and internationalist party!

[Translated by the IGCL from French]