Podemos: a different sort of party

My article on Podemos (CounterPunch, 13-15 February) has generated some thoughtful responses, including one from a French journalist friend who, remembering May 1968 in Paris, is worried that such "a social upheaval is not easily transformed into a viable political power."

As I told him, I think we may have some interesting disagreements — interesting because they provoke further thought. Some (at least ) of the campaign proposals for the European elections were quite unrealistic, but they served not only to get all those voters (1.25 million!) but to put the goals of a decent, more egalitarian distribution on the agenda for all the parties. And Iglesias and the others have taken the critiques into account, and refashioned the proposals to make them much more reasonable. The structure of Podemos makes it extremely flexible and open to pragmatic adjustments of this sort — not turnabouts decided by a leader (like Zapatero's disastrous reversal on the Socialist Party program in 2010), but responses to demands and critiques from the base.

Podemos has adopted the formal trappings of a political party (statutes, officers, etc.) because that's what the law requires for elections, but it is more of a social movement than an organized party. It's unlike any other party for the openness of debate, the fluidity of leadership and (unheard of in Spanish politics) the scant respect for hierarchy — Iglesias and his closest allies are generally respected, but not always heeded. In the primaries for municipal elections, Andalucía and Aragón already have chosen rival slates to Iglesias'. Susana (my accomplice) and I are involved in our Podemos circle here in Carboneras (a coastal village of 8,000 in Almería, Andalucía) for the same reason as most of the supporters across Spain, to shake up established, self-satisfied local structures that are doing too little for the community.

My correspondent suggests (if I've understood him rightly) that movements like Podemos "challenge  the two pillars of a decent European society : democracy and free market." First, I don't see how such an open, internally democratic movement as Podemos can be considered a challenge to democracy — but maybe there were such strains in the May 68 upheaval in Paris. And as for the "free market," I personally have been very impressed by the analysis of another Frenchman, Thomas Piketty. As Mohandas Gandhi said of European civilization, I think a free market would be a very good idea. But to try it will require some major reforms of the one we've got, so skewed to preserving the wealth of the wealthiest.