An in-depth interview with Pablo Iglesias, leader of Podemos, the party that is shaking up Spanish politics

For the Spanish version of the interview click here.

Interview by Haris Farmakis

After the spectacular success of the newly formed Spanish political party Podemos in the recent European elections in Spain and Pablo Iglesias’ candidacy as President of the European Parliament on behalf of the Coalition of the Left, we have had the opportunity to read a number of features on them in the Greek and other media, such as the Observer.

Podemos, meaning 'We Can', was officialy founded on March 11th, 2014. It has largely grown out of the Indigados movement of popular protest at the politics of austerity and the growing inequality gap. As a party it seeks to create a new form of citizen politics. “We want to build a political majority that reflects the social majority of Spain,” Pablo Inglesia told The Guardian in a recent interview. Its meteoric rise has continued since the European elections, coming third in a recent poll by CIS with 14.6% of respondents saying they supported the 4-month old party (in the European elections it recieved about 8% of the vote). 

So, when we met Iglesias at the Resistance Festival in Athens and requested an interview, we thought we should try to do something slightly different;: Since the questions were sent the next day by email, we asked him to take his time and to try to respond substantially, without taking into account time or space considerations.

He obliged and after one week he sent us the long and informative replies that comprise the following interview and which will, we believe, help those that are looking for genuine answers to the pressing questions we are facing today, get a somewhat better idea of what Podemos and its most prominent representative stand for. Hopefully, it will also contribute towards opening a useful dialogue between Greek and Spanish citizens, here in The Press Project and elsewhere. 
 

What are the reasons for the success of Podemos? How far do you think you can go?
 
One of the founding hypotheses at the time of the launch of the political initiative Podemos was that, on one hand, there was a diffuse indignation that could potentially rupture from the regime and stood in favour of recovering the democratic sovereignty, which was not necessarily expressed within the framework and the proprietary codes of the tradition of the Left.  Thirty years of ideological defeat of the Left was forcing us to think that all this popular fatigue with the situation that the country is going through was not finding a way out through the existing channels and political institutions. On the other hand, we also thought that at these exceptional political circumstances, the gap between the citizens and the dominant political model was calling for opening moves, on the part of political initiatives, towards the citizens.

We understood that there were many people that were outside the political organizations, people that were not voting in the party congresses or would not see themselves being reflected in the symbolism of the Left, but were sharing the social consensus about issues of common sense, something that, at the same time, showed the erosion of the political regime that emerged from the restitution of democracy in Spain in 1978. The open for the citizens primaries, the placement of emphasis on the question of democracy, the social certainty that banks could not repossess family homes while they were being bailed out with public funds, the defense of public services understood as the basis of a democratic system, are some of the aspects that society understands must be defended. The success of Podemos in the elections comes through the effort of harvesting politically this accord that had grown socially, knowing that access to the media could serve to transmit our discourse to many more people and to use our presence there as a springboard to accumulate political power.

How far we can go will depend on our own good virtue and on the fortune that the future holds for us. Podemos has not come to life just to be a witness party; it has a clear purpose to help bring about the necessary political change in favour of the social majority.
 
 
What is the internal organization of Podemos? Have you developed the structures that will allow wide, substantive, democratic participation of its grass roots members?
 
The case of Podemos is a case of a work in progress. Instead of building first an organisation and launching later the candidacy for the elections, we did it in reverse order. Disobeying all the manuals and the methods according to which all political projects are born, we first gave rise to the longing for the sea and then we started to build the ship, as Professor Monedero says. Podemos was born hurriedly, with a view to satisfying a double political objective: Unblocking and kicking the political panel, redefining the framework of the discussion and of the political positions, launching a candidacy in the elections and, in parallel with this emergence, generating a process of popular empowerment from below. At the moment there exist 400 circles of Podemos, groupings of citizens that are working for political change and which are organised according to territory, sector or subject.

The big organisational task that we have ahead of us is to be able to combine democratic forms with the flexibility and efficacy that are necessary in order to give a political battle, without turning into a party that depends on looking inside, towards its organisation, rather than offering political tools to the citizens. In the coming autumn a grand assembly of citizens will take place, with the name ‘Yes, it is possible’, where Podemos will become equipped with an organisational structure that will know how to incorporate a variable geometry, that is, it will know how to apply distinct methods of participation, adapted to the distinct life-forms and commitments of the population.

 
Podemos and Syriza are talking about a coalition of the peoples of the south in Europe, against the economic and political dominance of the northern countries’ establishment, in particular Merkel’s coalition, and the austerity policies and antidemocratic institutions (such as the Troika) imposed by them. Can you tell us how this could be achieved in practical terms and how it could work constructively within the European Union and Eurozone frameworks?
 
The first step was to travel to Greece and get to know the situation of the country first hand and to strengthen the fraternal relations with Syriza and Alexis Tsipras that are, without doubt, the ones that are better positioned to symbolize the expectations of the countries of the South against the Troika policies that are impoverishing the people. At the same time, we understand that my candidacy for the presidency of the European parliament, represents the candidacy, not only of GUE-NGL (Euroepan Coalition of the Left), but also of all the democrats that defend democracy and sovereignty of the peoples of the south of Europe that refuse to be converted into colonies of the north that offer cheap labour. We think that neutralising the policies of pillaging in the south of Europe is the best way to defend democracy for the whole of the continent, thereby recovering the values that have made this continent the bastion of political and social rights. Since we are profoundly pro-European, we need to break this false approach that interprets as Eurosceptics all those that criticise a European model that is at the service of finance, condemning the peoples to a debt-driven economy, and presents as pro-Europeans those that impose policies of impoverishment. Without democracy there can be no Europe, for this reason we need to recover democracy, so that the project of EU includes the citizens, instead of working for the private benefits of the banks.

 
Do you think that the Eurozone can be reformed into a currency union that works for the peoples of the south as well as of the north, or should we aspire to demolish it completely and search for new forms of economic cooperation in Europe?

I believe that this does not depend so much on our own perceptions than on the actual development of events. I mean, whatever approach we take on how power relations can be structured, it will remain just a simple opinion. For us, one thing is clear: It is the institutions and the political models the ones that have to adapt to the needs of the people and to democracy, not the other way around. Hence, democracy and the citizens do not have to submit to the unelected powers that decide for everybody. This is something that is very difficult to carry out within the existing model of the EU, so it is the Eurozone itself the one that needs to take note and to change substantially the European design, so that democracy occupies its proper place. Our aspiration is not to demolish the EU, but to guarantee democracy; it is the EU the one that needs to address this question.

 
There is growing concern about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement that is being secretly negotiated between the US and the European Commission. Are you going to work towards building a broad pan-European coalition to oppose the agreement?
 
We certainly need to find instruments to denounce the consequences that the TTIP brings for the whole of the European population and welfare system. This treaty is in the area of responsibility of European Commissioner for Commerce Karel de Gucht, who is currently under investigation for defrauding the Belgian tax authorities for the sum of 900,000 Euros. This is not only a negotiation that is being carried out behind the backs of citizens, in a completely opaque manner, but also its implementation represents the death sentence of labour rights and public services in favour of the speculative interests of the big corporations. Far from increasing the people’s liberty, this agreement will submit it to conditions that depend on the arbitration of economic agents that nobody has elected.

This is an agreement that, by reducing even more democracy and strengthening the imperium of the private interests, rests on the devaluation of our conditions of life. All regulations, all our entrenched rights, which impede the commercialisation of our lives at low cost, will be erased in order to guarantee free trade. Public health, labour rights, education and ensemble of social rights and public services, are presented under this agreement as hurdles or obstacles that impede the competition and the profit of actors that are used to acting in the margins or against the well being of social majority. Every type of exercise of the popular sovereignty is rolled back at the extortion of the speculators. The only ones that will be free because of this agreement will be the investment funds, the big corporations and the insurance companies, all eager to convert collective rights into individual services.

 
In your speech in the Resistance Festival in Greece you talked about the counter revolution that is taking place in Europe, rolling back civil, political and social rights that were won in the French Revolution. However, many people who suffer the diminution of their rights are not reacting to the demise of Democracy. Do you think that these people realize what is happening, or are they misinformed? Could it be that they understand but have lost their ability / will to react?

I do not believe that people do not care about democracy. As I understand it, this is a process that is more complicated than a simple individual decision to demand more democracy. The processes of social transformation and the mobilisation cycles do not terminate with the demonstrations, they generate new changes in the collective subjective and in turn on the perceptions about what must or must not be done in order to maintain a model of common life. It is necessary to have the political mechanisms that know how to read well the climate that society breathes and that are capable to articulate politically all these social pains.

The first and principal barrier against democracy has been, historically, the ideological inoculation with fear and the submission of the population. They want to make us think that the collective character should be such as to leave things to be done by the ones that know how to do them, without questioning the situations that we are going through, because they are presented as the result of a natural economic drift, the fixing of which will come from the same ones that generate the malaise. Fear incapacitates the ability to think that things can be made in different ways, it ferments pessimism of anthropological type, combined with retreat to a possessive individualism. These are the foundations of fascism in times dominated by fear in the middle of uncertainty. When this logic is flouted, space for discussion opens and through this the democratic reclamation of decisions, in other words, the origin of popular sovereignty. Hence, the question is not so much about a lack of ability to react, but about dynamiting the existing ideological dominion through the social struggles and the political discourses that reconfigure the space of decisions.

 
You also said that the people that are pulling the strings in politics and the economy are mafiosos. If this is the case, how do we break their grip on power?
 
We can see that the representatives of the citizens have emancipated themselves from their commitments and have rendered the bases of representative liberal democracy invalidated. When the economic power does not present itself in elections, but still governs through the years, and is re-appointed systematically every day, it completely colonises politics, democracy is hijacked. When the public administrations are used as platforms that work in the service of private interests, ceding public contracts in exchange of favours, or legislating in order to secure financial pillage, we can affirm that corruption is a system of government, even if it is sometimes legal. In this sense, political representatives cease to be the mailmen of the voters, they become the butlers of the powerful. It is necessary to recover democracy and this will pass through the establishment of guarantees of citizens’ control over their representatives and through the social demand in favour of the surrendering of the accounts and the transparency of their keeping. It is necessary to re-politicize the economy, that is, to accept that the economy is a form of power, which, at the moment, is not subsumed under the democratic control by the citizenry.

 
The free market economic policies are usually presented to the people as the only practical solution, being contrasted with failed socialist models. The dominance of the markets in economic life is indisputable. What is the alternative way that you propose for the economy? How can people be persuaded that the alternative is realistic?
 
We could say that the circle of mobilisations of 1968, finally in its defeat, ended up adopting the form inaugurated with the fall of the wall in 1989. In this sense, 1989 is the inverted image of 1968. The established idea of the end of conflicts, with the unstoppable extension of capitalism in its hegemonical phase of financial power, seems to render impossible whatever other viable form of life imagined as not being dominated by the logic of exchange value. I think that the Left has spent too much time settled in the nostalgia of its failures and this can do nothing more than express the worst symptom of the defeat: the lack of a life-project. On the other hand, social democracy has succumbed to the framework imposed by neoliberalism and has settled for presenting itself as the face of neoliberalism that is a little bit nicer, but never as something distinct. TINA (there is no alternative) has been the triumphant slogan of the ideological expansion of capitalism during the last 30 years. But, as David Harvey very well teaches us, capitalism never solves its crises, it only displaces them temporarily and spatially, and its inherent tendency for hyper-accumulation carries the stamp of the crisis at the moments at which it cannot absorb the surplus of capital and labour.

The regulatory model that emerged from the Second World War, with the triad of State, production and consumption, constituted a temporary way of resolving the problem of the absorption of surplus, but one that clearly entered into crisis in the middle of the 1970’s. The case of the Soviet Union has perhaps been wrongly interpreted, without consideration of the historical situation of Russia, where the 1917 revolution was for Russia the equivalent to what the Glorious Revolution was for England in the 17^th century or the French revolution for France, as this is understood by the British historian Christopher Hill. Russia lived its process of original (or primitive) accumulation in the 20^th century.

However, independently of the special characteristics of the USSR and taking equally into consideration the development of the western countries, we must realise that a realist socialist alternative in the 21^st century does not pass through the nationalisation and central administration of the totality of social life. This is neither desirable, nor necessary. The state needs to play the role of a political brake to financial speculation, but it must not play the role of totalising the social, cultural and political life. We need to create a model where singularity as well as collective and individual autonomy have the capacity to develop with the material base that assures this, at the same time that commercial interchange, i.e. commerce understood through exchange value, stops playing a dominant role with respect to use-value, this is to say, with respect to the institutions, rights, and services that are directed towards the well being and not towards profitability. We need to create new criteria of citizenship, adapted to the material, social and continental composition of our historical times, capable of designing the outline of a new type of well-being for our century. In any case, the first step is to invalidate the idea that what we have now is the only thing we can have and to realise that together we can change things.

 
How do you think that the economic crisis is likely to develop from now on? Is it likely that it will have another acute phase and if yes, what form could this take? Or could it be that we have entered a prolonged period of stagnation, with the crisis being contained, but not resolved?
 
The problem of the direction that the crisis may take is also a problem of the perception that we have of it. As the years pass from the time when what we have called ‘crisis’, but is nothing but a scam, started, the danger exists that certain situations that until recently were unacceptable, start appearing natural in the collective imagination and in ordinary life. In Spain, even before 2007, when the crisis was already a reality for whole generations of workers and precarious workers, the concept of the mileurista (thousand Euros worker – i.e. someone who earned one thousand Euros) appeared as something scandalous: to live with a thousand Euros a month was an arduous reality for someone to go through. Today, the concept of the mileurista is obsolete, since what was considered an injustice before, is converted now into an acceptable situation. In this perverse logic, when salaries continuously fall, to earn what a few years ago was considered little money, is now considered a good salary.
I think that the crisis is not going to cease, because the idea that the market has the capacity to regulate itself and to resolve its own crisis, is a fallacy for the ultra-liberals that live in a world of butterflies. The solutions are always political, for the good as well as for the bad. The debate between interventionists and non-interventionists is a false debate, as the current situation is the result of political decisions that were taken in the years ‘80, ‘90 and 2000, it is not a natural outcome of the human condition. Politics needs to take the initiative in the opposite direction from the one that is now being taken, so that the economy is a sphere inside society instead of society being absorbed by the economic sphere.  

In Spain, Italy and Greece, we are experiencing a radicalization of a growing number of young people, people who are demanding to have a say in their future, through political participation  in parties that challenge the establishment from the left, such as Podemos, M5S and Syriza. Do you think this can be generalised and transformed into a progressive wave that will change politics, the economy and society across Europe? Can it counter the turn towards the far-right that is also taking place in many European countries?
 
I believe that the political possibilities in all of these cases share common aspects, but one needs to apply a distinct formula for the diagnosis of each situation. The socio-cultural and economic composition and the historical inheritance, force us to interpret each case in a distinct manner, attending to the individual characteristics. The same, let us say objective situation, can run its course in very different directions, depending on how the political narrative of events is constructed. The way in which what is happening is explained and the different solutions that are laid out to the pain and the reality suffered, do not ever follow a line marked by the history’s horizon, this is definitely wrong. 

Slavoj Zizek, in his books Repeating Lenin and A Plea for Leninist Intolerance, explains how the Nazis in Germany were able to capture the dreamlike sense of injustice that was latent in the population by offering a digestible narrative to society, marked by racist and antisemitic tonalities. One of the principal political battles is precisely the political definition of these ordinary aspects of life that are not usually defined as something political. The outlines of a society can be interpreted in very different ways, even if these interpretations stem from just sentiments in their original articulation. The Nazis changed the communist class antagonism for the racial antagonism, with Jews as the characteristic element. We know that politics is not about articulating the ‘good truth’, but about being capable of ‘turning word into flesh’ and expanding the democratic sentiments of liberty in the spaces where reactionary sentiments dominated by fear can take their place.

What needs to be done in order to transform the social majority that indisputably exists against the oligarchic rule that we are experiencing, into an electoral majority?  Can the left be pragmatic and astute enough to build coalitions that will be in a position to take power in the near future, like the establishment parties did in countries like Greece and Italy?
 
I consider of fundamental importance that we change the order of the factors under consideration, in order to change, in this case, the product. What I want to say is that, what we now consider as normal was not so originally. The Left sometimes appears as if it shows more attachment to its symbols, its colours and its songs, than to the social reasons and the expressions of struggle that motivated them in their times. I believe that we have to recover the idea of the starting point that is never the same, but which reminds us that the ones that want to change things do not owe respect to the manner of expression (of our struggle), but to what this expresses. In my opinion, it is a mistake to try to interpret the state of things starting from ideology and moving towards the bottom, instead of starting from the bottom in order to refresh the ideologies and to oxygenate the analysis.

Thinking that it is the task of the population to adapt to certain postulates that are construed a priori, without taking into account the reality that this population is living through, is one of the eternal walls against which the Left always hits. These decades of profound transformations have muddied the reference stage where the old positions of another epoch were situated, when things were screwed up but we knew where everyone stood, an epoch when this rough but clean conflict, as the sociologist Marco Revelli writes, was clear. What is always maintained in history is the democratic enlargement, but the formula according to which this political aspiration is to be fulfilled varies according to the material reality of each epoch. We know already that all that is solid melts into air and all that is holy is profaned.

The audacity of the Left and its capacity to form governments will not come because it will be repeating tirelessly that it expresses the truth and that the only thing that is missing is to say it again until it becomes reality. The Left will be capable of exercising power when it will know to read, comprehend and imitate its own people. The coalitions should not reflect the negotiations between leaderships and delegations, they should instead be alliances that are looking towards political change and not towards the allotment of quotas between the different organisations.