Podemos: radical blueprint for democratic reform

Carolina Bescansa, Pablo Iglesias, Ada Colau at Caja Magica, Madrid. December 13, 2015. Demotix/Jorge Gonzalez. All rigths reserved.Arguably the flagship policy of Podemos in this
election campaign is not the proposal for a guaranteed basic income of 600
euros, nor is it the progressive raising of the minimum wage to 800 euros, but
the introduction of a recall referendum, in the case of a breaching of the electoral
contract.

Initially proposed by an anonymous user on the
Podemos Reddit forum (Plaza Podemos), during the open consultation on the
party’s programme, this policy attracted enormous support and as often been
referred to by Pablo Iglesias during TV debates, as evidence of the party’s
commitment to voters. The text of the proposal states that, “electoral
programmes have to be understood as contracts with citizens. Therefore Podemos
will set minimum contractual commitments, which, if breached, will raise a call
for new elections.”

The recall (revocatorios) – which would require
the support of 158 MPs and 15% of the electorate – is just the most visible of
wide-ranging proposals for political reform that constitute a central plank of
Podemos’ programme in these general elections. They revolve around a project of
radical overhaul of State institutions and their “opening up” in the service of
the citizenry, to reverse the current skepticism of the electorate towards
politicians.

Such proposals for political reform have much
to say about the new political vision put forward by Podemos and the centrality
of the issue of democracy and state reform in the fight against oligarchic
power, and a society of extreme economic inequality.

Citizenism
and the ‘opening up’ of the State

The emphasis on political reforms and the
creation of mechanisms of grassroots control stems from a diagnosis of the
present conflict as one opposing not so much social classes, in a simplified
sense, (such as the working class vs. the capitalist class), but ordinary
citizens vs. political and economic oligarchies.

This is the vision that has sometimes been
caricatured by anarchists and Marxists in Spain as “citizenism”, as a
neo-populist ideology of the citizen, which forsakes the aim of doing away with
capitalism, contenting itself with some limited reforms. Citizenism puts
forward the idea that the root cause of the present state of economic
inequality, is not just to be found in the natural imbalances of the capitalist
system, but in what Colin Crouch has described as a “post-democratic” condition
– one in which citizens continue voting, but it does not really matter any
more, due to the internal solidarity of the political class, regardless of its
nominal political colours, and its alliance with big business.

It prescribes a strategy of radical reclaiming
of state democracy and the restoration of its founding principles, as a tool to
confront the power of economic and political oligarchies. 

This narrative of an oligarchic society that Podemos
has painted, by referring to political elites as a self-serving “caste”,
detached from its erstwhile organic social bases, is one that has powerfully
stuck with the Spanish electorate. As opinion polls stand to demonstrate,
Spaniards have never been so cynical about their government and political
parties, since the return of democracy in 1978. If in this election two new
parties – Podemos and Ciudadanos – stand to challenge the continued existence
of the two-party system of the Popular Party (PP) and the Socialist Party
(PSOE) – this is a signal of the depth of discontent of the electorate towards
mainstream politics.

The reasons for this disaffection are well
known. They were listed by Pablo Iglesias in his final address to the nation in
the last TV debate, when he invited his fellow citizens not to forget about the
many corruption scandals (Gürtel, Bárcenas, Tarjetas Black) and the many
political decisions taken against the will of the majority of the population
(labour reform).

The antidote to this situation of disaffection
with the state and party politics – Podemos activists believed from the party’s
inception in early 2014 – is not in a moving away from the state, an “exodus”
strategy of the type advised by their Marxist Autonomist teachers, starting
with Antonio Negri, but in a strategy of radical intervention in the State, and
its reclaim for good purposes. If Negri once famously described the State as
“the object of hate”, Podemos activists are taking a view closer to the one of
Nicos Poulantzas: the State as a condensation of political struggles, a
battlefield between popular classes and the ruling classes, and in given
historical conditions, also a weapon in the hands of the People.

It is significant that 5 of Podemos’ key
proposals, including anti-corruption measures and social rights, have been
framed as "constitutional guarantees", modifications of the
fundamental law of the country, in order to make sure that the political
changes introduced by the "purple wave" are established deep in the
architecture of the State, making them more difficult to modify by adversaries,
as Podemos leaders have often explained.

What we see emerging in this context is a new
vision of the role of the State and of its relationship with citizens. While
the socialist movement aimed at conquering the State, and the
extra-parliamentary left and anarchists wanted to construct a space outside the
State, the attitude of Podemos is different from both traditions.

It aims at an “assault on the institutions”
(asalto a las instituciones) which is obviously not meant to be an armed
assault, a storming of the Winter Palace, but an intense and sustained
intervention against and within the State, an “opening up” of its institutional
architecture, so that it can serve the interests of the many ordinary and
anonymous citizens whose interests and views have for so long been overlooked,
and the more so since the inception of the crisis.

This is ultimately the very political logic
that we have already seen at play in the Cities of Change (Ciudades del
Cambio), in Barcelona and Madrid, since the rise to power of Ada Colau and
Manuel Carmena, and the way they have started working in favour of ordinary
citizens, through concrete measures such as putting a stop to evictions and by
opening processes of citizen participation in local decision-making.

Constructing
a popular democracy

The emerging vision of the State and the role
of the citizenry can be understood not just by listening to the speeches of
Podemos leaders that often make reference to the need to “take back our
institutions”, but also by looking at the specific policy proposals of
political reform.

Besides the already mentioned right of recall,
the party’s platform proposes a number of measures to initiate direct
democracy, popular participation and transparency. All these proposed
mechanisms ultimately have the same aim: to address the present democratic
deficit, and make citizens feel again that they are citizens rather than just
the subjects of the State apparatus. 

Podemos proposes a number of instruments of
state-based direct democracy, which include popular initiatives (allowing
citizens to draft new laws), popular deliberations (participatory budgeting and
use of public spaces), popular veto (a referendum to repeal laws). Some of
these direct democracy institutions are already well established elsewhere in
the world, most famously in some Swiss cantons, and some states in the US, such
as California. However, none of them is present in Spain at the moment, where
also referenda are strictly consultative and can only be called by the
government.

On top of these direct democracy institutions,
the platforms propose a number of measures to ensure greater popular
participation in decision-making and transparency. Proposals include the
participation of the citizenry in the legislative process with the streaming of
all debates; seats assigned to ordinary citizens during debate; and open
information about budgeting, public works and services published online; the
creation of a citizen observatory responsible for assessing public policies;
besides the elimination of privileges for politicians; and a tightening of
measures against corruption. Rather than a complete doing away with the
representative system, the gist of this vision is a hybrid system of
participatory representation, in which elections of representatives, go hand in
hand with forms of direct participation of the citizenry, ready to remove politicians
if they betray their mandate.

This project of a popular democracy – which is
not Podemos’ own invention but the manifestation of a broader movement for
democracy in Spanish society spanning from the 15-M to the municipal initiatives
– seems to respond to the new fears and preoccupations of the electorate, which
ravaged by economic distress and insecurity about the future, is yearning to
regain some form of control about its collective destiny, similar to the sense
of accountability available before the neoliberal onslaught in the 1980s. It is
a yearning for a recuperation of popular sovereignty, amidst a world dominated
by oligarchic power.

This desire has however to confront some
formidable obstacles. The problem is not just the political viability of these
measures in the short to mid term, or the degree to which they can be a channel
of actual democratization rather than a vehicle of plebiscitarianism,
reinforcing the power of the charismatic leader.

Any project that aims to reconstruct popular
sovereignty at the national level, will also need to confront a globally
interconnected world, and in the case of Spain, the membership of the European
Union – as factors that seriously restrain any possibility of controlling one’s
own economy and society, due to the inability to decide on monetary policies
and restrain capital flows.

What Podemos' strategy argues is that it is unrealistic
to think that we can change Europe by creating a “People of Europe” (as
discussed by Etienne Balibar, and recently debated in openDemocracy) almost out
of thin air, through an act of political voluntarism.

The only realistic way forward is to start from
reclaiming the institutions that we already have right now, the cities, the
municipalities, the regions, and the national parliament and government, going
from the local up to the nation-state, and from there move up to the
supra-national level. First we take Barcelona, then we take Spain, and in the
meantime the eurocrats in Brussels can start to tremble.