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Workers' Front (Spain)
Political party in Spain From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Workers' Front (Spanish: Frente Obrero, FO) is a Marxist–Leninist political party in Spain. It was founded as a mass organisation by the anti-revisionist party PML (RC) in October 2018 and registered as a separate political party in March 2019. As of 2024, it is headed by Roberto Vaquero. It considers itself a "patriotic and revolutionary movement that fights for and on behalf of workers, for and on behalf of Spain", with the goal of implementing "drastic changes" in Spain and "ending the current regime".[19]
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History
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The Workers' Front was established on 14 October 2018 at the Ateneo de Madrid as a front organization of the Marxist–Leninist Party (Communist Reconstruction) (PML (RC)).[1] Subsequently, the Workers' Front expanded to several cities in Spain, such as La Coruña, León, Ponferrada, Zaragoza, and Cádiz.[20]
The party was founded by Roberto Vaquero, who also founded the PML (RC) in 2009. The party was temporarily suspended from activities in 2016 when Vaquero was arrested in 2016 for organizing the transport of Spanish militias to the People's Defense Units in Syria to fight against ISIS; Vaquero was suspected to have ties with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is considered a terrorist organization by the European Union, although no evidence was found. Vaquero was in jail for 49 days, and the party resumed activities in 2017, before Vaquero founded Frente Obrero (FO) in 2018.[21]
In 2021, the party participated in Okupas, a Spanish squatting movement. FO occupied a prestigious building in the Mercado de Colón district in Valencia. It organized a food bank and the homeless shelter in the building, attacking the local government for not helping over 1000 homeless people in Valencia. The party also hung the flag of the Second Spanish Republic on the building.[22]
In May 2021, members of the party organized a protest against the leader of the Podemos party Irene Montero, in Valencia. The party accused Montero and her party of "leaving the workers in the lurch", claiming that Podemos organizes bailouts to banks and companies while Spanish workers are going "months without pay and suffering evictions". FO protesters argued that the feminist and pro-LGBT stances taken by Montero are "symbolic struggles that do not represent reality".[23]
On 12 June 2022, their first congress was held. During the congress the decision to become a political party was approved by the members. Representatives from other organizations, such as the Polisario Front, spoke during the congress.[24]
In the 2023 Spanish general election, the party gained 46,530 and won no seats.[15]
In late 2023, the group announced they would be participating in the 2023 Spanish protests against the PSOE government.[25]
Since then, they, and especially their leader Vaquero, have gained a presence on social media and even national television in Spain, participating in debates on current political issues in programs such as Horizonte, on channel Cuatro.[26]
In the 2024 European Parliament election in Spain, the party won 66,242 votes, improving its result from the 2023 general elections where it received 46,274 votes.[27]
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Ideology
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Frente Obrero has been described as a party that adheres to Marxism–Leninism with conservative stances on social and cultural issues.[28][29] It has also been described as Stalinist.[30] The party is strongly connected with the PML (RC), and the Italian historian Steven Forti describes it as oscillating between National Bolshevism and "hardline Stalinism".[31] The party is also described as communist by the Spanish newspapers of record, such as El Mundo, who classified FO as "a communist, republican, anti-oligarchic party".[32] The party rejects the labels of political left and right, arguing that they "are two sides of the same coin".[8] However, the leader of FO describes it as "the militant, working-class left",[33] and it is also considered left-wing by political commentators as well as political scientists;[35] it has also been commonly described as far-left,[36] with one Valencian newspaper arguing that the party is "about as far left as you can get".[22] The European Conservative described the party as a representative of the "patriotic, pre-woke, pro-work left."[8]
The leader of Frente Obrero, Roberto Vaquero, also wrote of the party: "The need for workers' reorganization is vital, it is necessary to fight for workers' and revolutionary unity in a broad, united front of all workers. With this aim in mind, the Frente Obrero was born, which only tries to serve the unity of all those who want to rebuild a revolutionary, working class and militant left, which truly resists this system and its single thinking, which defends the workers, our country and which of course is aimed at the transformation and progress of our society." He defined FO as a "national political and revolutionary front with the aim of fighting for the unity of the workers and for the transformation of our society, it is committed to a popular and federal Republic aimed at socialism."[37]
Program
In their program A Spain for the Workers, they defend national sovereignty, Hispanic identity, free university education,[38] the nationalization and socialization of the Spanish economy, energy sovereignty, nuclear energy, increasing the minimum wage, supporting the rural sector, promoting birth rates, creating more public housing, introducing rent control and limiting immigration.[39] The party also focuses on class struggle and a planned, communist economy. FO also wants to preserve the "classical, Christian" culture of Spain, and supports Spanish republicanism.[40]
In its program, the party calls for "the overthrow of the monarchy imposed by Franco" and its replacement by a "federal, popular republic on the path to socialism". It calls for a dictatorship of the proletariat, calling for the suppression of "the repressive apparatus of the State: the judiciary, administration, police", installing a government that would be "democratic regime for the working class" but "dictatorial for the bourgeoisie and other exploiting classes."[41] The party's federal popular republic is to pursue "the recovery of Spanish national sovereignty", reindustrializing the country, nationalizing the Spanish economy, "repealing the successive labor reforms that have strengthened free and cheap dismissal for companies", expulsion of all foreign military bases, closing the border with Morocco, and immediatelly expelling all immigrants who committed crimes. The party opposes the European Union, arguing that "Spanish sovereignty is being held hostage by the EU" which "dictates how much and what we produce, tying our hands and feet, denying us the future we deserve."[42] The party also opposes capitalism, the, NATO, surrogacy, feminism, deindustrialization, queer theory, the Trans Law, affirmative action, Islamization,[43] cosmopolitanism and political correctness.[38]
Classification
Spanish political scientist Jasiel Paris argues that the Workers' Front represents the "classic left" or Old Left and stands to the opposition of the postmodernist left; for Workers' Front, "Marxism sought the empowerment of workers (who in Spain are mostly white, heterosexual men), while the postmodern left seeks empowerment against white, heterosexual men." Paris notes that the Workers' Front should be compared to the Eastern European communist parties such as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Macedonian Left and the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova, as these parties together with the Workers' Front combine "a socialist economic vision with a cultural vision that we could call conservative because it is patriotic, protectionist and family-oriented."[41] FO is also considered similar to the German Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht.[44]
The party is considered to be a representative of nationalist left and conservative left. It is characterized by its traditional values and closeness to nationalism – focusing on the workerist, blue-collar perspective – and its proposals reiterate criticism against "gender ideology" or the "LGBTI lobby."[45] The party opposes immigration, advocates strict border control and argues that the wages of Spanish workers are declining because of liberal immigration laws. However, the party also stresses that "immigrants are not to blame" and are "victims", with the real culprit being "the capitalist system, which promotes this type of migration to exploit them and lower wages in Spain" and that "the most rancid right uses immigration to generate hatred and social confrontation". Thus, the party recommends strict control of immigration, including the immediate expulsion of illegal immigrants.[30]
Social issues
Frente Obrero is heavily critical of socially progressive left-wing parties. The party accused Podemos of being "a pawn at the service of big business and banks", while arguing that Más País is "leaving the workers on the street". FO argues that the mainstream left-wing parties of Spain alienated the workers and caused the rise of the far-right Vox by embracing neoliberal economics as well as "gender ideology".[46] It also argues that there are many similarities between fascism and liberalism,[47] and rejects feminism, animal rights movement, social democracy and the LGBT movement, with Vaquero stating: "No matter how many revolutionary symbols and terms they use to disguise themselves, they are part of the system, they are part of the problem. For them, everything is fascism, but they defend the system's single mindset. They are closer to what they accuse everyone else of than they realise. [...] Workers don't care about queer theory, inclusive language, quotas and other nonsense. This “woke left” does not represent workers, nor does it provide solutions to their problems. For this reason, many workers are becoming disillusioned and criminalising the left, moving closer to positions such as those of the PP or even VOX."[33]
While Frente Obrero defines itself within the framework of Marxism–Leninism, it heavily incorporates nationalist and patriotic themes into its message. The party stresses and promotes the need to defend the national sovereignty of Spain, as well as revolutionary patriotism and national pride. Within its communist rhetoric, the party particularly stresses the policies and ideas of Stalinism.[48] It also condemns the May 68 protests, with party leader Vaquero claiming: "The left today is the heir of May 1968, when, as Pasolini said, the most working-class people in that conflict were the police, who were at least the sons of peasants. The students were, for the most part, the sons of rich people, since money was needed to study. The left today is empty, there is no revolution."[27]
The party also opposes the independence of Catalonia, arguing that the pro-independence Catalan parties "do not even represent independence" and instead have "fostered Islamization and mass immigration in Catalonia". The party calls for Catalan voters to reject "Islamization and the fictitious separatist process".[49] The party instead proposes to turn Spain into a federation.[8] It also supports Spanish ownership of Ceuta and Melilla, and decries Moroccan claims to these cities.[50] Frente Obrero also claims the Spanish ownership of Gibraltar, calling it a colony which is an "important strategic enclave that does not belong to them [the United Kingdom]" and arguing that its native population was expelled by the British.[38] The party supports Kurdish independence,[33] as well as the self-determination of Western Sahara.[42]
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Criticism
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The party has been criticized by other leftist organizations as transphobic because it denies what it calls "gender ideology" and the idea that gender identity (especially being a woman) is only a feeling.
Moreover, critics consider it reactionary and racist because of its strong opposition to the increasing presence of Islamic immigration not integrated into European societies (allegedly disrespectful of women's or LGBT's rights, other times linked to higher crime rates than the native population, or with violent events motivated by religious fanaticism).
In addition, they have been compared (negatively) to the far-right party Vox[51][52] because of some coincidences in the aforementioned ideas.
It has also been accused of giving credit to the Great Replacement theory.[53]
In November 2022, the party was attacked for organizing a march at the Complutense University of Madrid that exalted Joseph Stalin. The event resulted in members of the party clashing with local far-left student organizations, including the Trotskyist Workers' Revolutionary Current.[54]
The party has been called a "left-wing Vox" given its conservative stances on social issues, such as its opposition to immigration, LGBT rights and feminism, as well as attacking the "Islamization" of Spain and "gender ideology". The Spanish magazine The Objective argues that Frente Obrero "is reminiscent of Vox's in some points: immigration control, promotion of births, and opposition to positive discrimination against women."[55] El Español also notes that the party took a mildly defensive tone towards Vox, arguing that Vox is not fascist or far-right; instead, Vaquero argues: "They are right-wing populists; now, they call everything politically incorrect fascist and they are distorting the term."[41] However, Spanish political analyst Asier Balaguer Navarro rejects this claim, writing: "Yes, in the sense that many of its proposals, precisely those that coincide with the conservative party, have a lot of social resonance, and are easily assimilated by the electoral objective of the party; also yes, because of the confrontation with political correctness, defense of the unity of Spain or the rejection of the "woke laws". But that is where the similarities end. The Workers' Front is against the EU, it still has a communist base in which the public and the planned are a substantial part of its economic theories; it is openly republican, anti-NATO, secular..."[40]
The party has also been called National Bolshevik.[31] In an interview, Vaquero strongly rejected this classification, stating:"National Bolshevism, as a term, is used by people with little understanding of ideology or politics to criminalise those who do not fit in with the revolutionary fads of the system. If you are a patriot, you are a National Bolshevik. If you disagree with the government's nonsense, you are too. If you disagree with the ravings of the Queer lobby, you are too. If you are against the bourgeois Catalan independence process, of course you are too. And finally, if you say that class struggle is the main thing and that the transversality of struggles only reinforces the system, oops! Then you're definitely a Nazbol. It's absurd. National Bolshevism does not draw on Marxism. It is twinned with fascism, and we are anti-fascists, but for real, not as a fashion, an aesthetic marked by the system itself."[33]
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Elections
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The FO participated in elections for the first time in the 2023 Spanish local elections. They ran in Vilalba dels Arcs (Catalonia), Santa Margalida (Balearic Islands), Mislata (Valencian Community), and Mandayona (Castilla–La Mancha), winning one seat in Mandayona.
Election results
Cortes Generales
European Parliament
Regional parliaments
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See also
- Workers Party of Britain, a minor British political party also backed by an anti-revisionist communist party (CPGB-ML)
- National communism
References
External links
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