The terrible flood that hit southern Spain has already caused at least 207 victims and over 120,000 evacuees in Valencia and some areas of Castile-La Mancha and Andalusia.
In extending our deepest condolences to the families of the victims, we cannot fail to denounce the reckless nature of such tragedies which, in Spain as in Italy, are a consequence of the capitalist management of the territory and infrastructure without regard to the protection of people.
In Spain, as in Italy, military spending has been increasing for years. Financing the imperialist war takes resources away from public services and investments useful to the community, such as those for the prevention of hydrogeological risks. In Spain, as in Italy, capitalist profits have grown in step with real estate speculation and land consumption, while foresighted and rational urban planning has never been taken into consideration. In both countries, when faced with natural disasters, the priority for local capitalists and their administrations is to safeguard the continuity of profits even at the cost of the lives of the proletariat and the popular strata, victims of these announced disasters. Capitalism prefers the logic of emergency to that of prevention, because the former allows for greater profits.
The dead, injured and evacuees of the flood in Valencia, like those of the frequent “natural” disasters in Italy, are the victims of environmental imbalances caused by an anarchic mode of production such as capitalism. They are victims of capital that has no interest in stopping climate change, ceasing the predatory exploitation of the environment, territories and labor power. It is unrealistic to expect any serious change of pace on the part of the governments and bourgeois administrations, co-responsible for these horrors. It is completely illusory to believe in an alleged commitment of the EU and its bodies to a “green transition” in defense of the environment. The EU’s “green deal” is nothing more than promoting the transfer of capital from obsolete, low-profit sectors to “new” sectors that guarantee greater profitability. There are no “green” solutions to this serious problem precisely because, due to their sectoral nature, they ignore its dialectical relationship with the real cause of environmental disasters: the senseless exploitation of resources and the environment by an increasingly declining capitalism.
The struggle for the defense of the environment cannot be separated from the struggle for the overthrow of the power of that class, the capitalist bourgeoisie, which exploits and destroys the environment, for the construction of workers’ power, the socialization of the means of production and the centralized planning of the economy and the territories management aimed at preventing environmental disasters.
The Political Bureau and the International Department of the CC of the Communist Front of Italy, on behalf of the entire Party, therefore express their full solidarity with the Spanish people, with the residents of the regions affected by the catastrophe and with the comrades of the Communist Workers’ Party of Spain and the Young Communist Collectives, who in recent days have promptly taken action to provide support to the populations that were victims of the disaster.
Rome, November 02, 2024
COMMUNIST FRONT OF ITALY
The Political Bureau of the Central Committee
