José Ovejero: "" The Communist Manifesto ’gives the possibility of recovering the faith in which things can be changed"

“The modern worker, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks more and more below the living conditions of their own class. The worker becomes impoverished, and impoverishment grows even faster than population and wealth”

“You reproach us, then, for wanting to abolish private property whose essential requirement is that the overwhelming majority of society not own nothing”

Phrases taken from The Communist Manifesto (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2021)

In 1848, two young men aged 27 and 29, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels respectively, wrote The Manifesto communist, a pamphlet that almost two centuries later continues to influence those who defend that politics should be a tool to improve the living conditions of the social majority. And also, increasingly, to the political leaders who stir up the specter of Marxism and communism to weaken and discredit welfare states and representative democracies. As the founders of the Communist League in the 19th century warned on the first page of their manifesto: "All the powers of old Europe have allied themselves in a holy hunt against that ghost."

“Socialism or freedom, communism or freedom, say some of the most shameless leaders of our political scene to hide as conjurers all the measures that have been taken to the detriment of the freedom and well-being of citizens. The Manifesto is part of a political culture from which there has been a struggle to reduce the levels of exploitation of the weakest by the strongest, to achieve a less predatory society”, writes the writer José Ovejero in the preface of the new version of The communist manifesto, which he has translated and edited for Galaxia Gutenberg.

A book that also includes the prefaces of the most important editions, including those by Rosa Luxemburg and León Trotsky, as well as comments and analyzes by current intellectuals such as Marta Sanz, Iván de la Nuez, Santiago Alba Rico, Wendy Lynne Lee and a prologue by the Vice President of the Government of Spain and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz.

We talked with José Ovejero about the validity of this pamphlet, the relevance of publishing a new edition at this time, as well as about the findings that a new translation of the 1890 German edition, prepared by Engels himself, has brought him .

In the preface with which this edition opens, you note that "The ghost that haunts Europe is that of self-serving ignorance." Is this the reason why you decide to embark on a new edition of The Communist Manifesto? Because right now?

When they proposed it to me, I thought it was a good time to resume a conversation, which is what one does when re-editing and translating classics of thought. It seemed to me that this conversation was very pertinent because from certain sectors of society there is an interested and demonizing simplification of what the left is, Marxism and any thought that opposes hegemonic doctrines, capitalism, or that wants to touch up many of them. his features.

The communist manifesto gives the possibility of recovering the faith that things can be changed, that there is something beyond capitalism, that if we unite and have a purpose we can transform the world; that it is not a question of recovering a utopian thought, but a realistic and practical thought, with short and long term objectives. The enthusiasm and faith that The Communist Manifesto conveys are very important because one of the great achievements of the dominant discourse is to have made us lose faith and hope.

"The assessment that Marx and Engels make of the situation of women in capitalism has become outdated"

There is also a claim for the historical contribution that The Communist Manifesto has made, as well as the thought of Marx and Engels, without whom many of the social advances we enjoy today and our way of looking at the world would not be understood. How do their proposals continue to be present in our lives?

We've taken many of your ideas for granted. The left has done it, but also Christian democracy, the welfare state... This is not something for radicals or left-wing extremists. The communist manifesto gives an impulse, a direction to the workers' struggle. Without him and without the First International, the trade union movements would have taken much longer to develop. We have to think that it was written in 1848, a time when workers cannot vote or are represented in Parliament, when unions are prohibited... When the violent aspect of the manifesto is now criticized, we have to ask ourselves what else could be done then.

In fact, over time, Marx and Engels gradually tempered that revolutionary fervor and saw that there are other possibilities to advance the workers' struggle. And all the advances achieved are today assumed in our daily lives. Sometimes it is said that it was Bismarck who introduced Social Security, but it is documented that he would not have done it if it had not been for the fear of the revolutionary left, of the unions; if there had not been a desire to distance the working class from Marxism.

And yet, there are people who get scared when they talk about Marxism or something that has puzzled me a lot: they have even asked me why we are so benevolent with Marxism and so little with fascism. They are radically different things. Nothing good ever came of fascism, only violence, discrimination, extermination. On the other hand, there have been exploitative uses of Marxism, which deviated from many of the ideas of Marx and Engels and which have caused millions of deaths. But, also, a good part of the best that exists in our society has come out.

In fact, also in his preface he explains how Ortega y Gasset, who rejected the revolution, maintained that without his threat, the wealthy classes would not have accepted the most basic reforms. But today we do not glimpse that capacity for influence. We have seen it with the protest of the workers of the Cádiz shipyards. The majority of the population, also belonging to the working class, does not feel identified with the fight for their rights, even when the only way they have to defend them is by demonstrating in the streets. Capitalism has convinced a good part of the workers that they have to assume their poverty and exploitation in silence, with resignation. What does reading The Communist Manifesto contribute to the self-esteem of workers?

A rereading makes us rediscover class consciousness. Because it exists. But it is the rich who are clear about their class consciousness, who are fully aware of which class they belong to and what their interests are. Through the so-called cultural battle, through the media and a cultural production interested in and dominated by certain economic interests, it has achieved that the working class, in addition to blurring itself, is not understood as such but as the middle class, losing sight of its interests. There is also a part of the blame that the left must assume because it has not been able to defend them in many cases.

There is a part of the working class that feels abandoned in its economic interests, and that has rediscovered a certain conscience only in questions of identity, patriotism, gender identity... The communist manifesto puts back on the table the interests and concerns of the working class which, of course, are not the same as those of 1848. But, many of the things that its authors say could be applied today. Without using the term, they speak of globalization, of what this expansion of capitalism throughout the world means; of precariousness, of what the recurring crises of capitalism mean for the working class, for the most disadvantaged... In other words, all this is still here, and they must continue to be the concerns of the workers.

Another of the most current aspects of the pamphlet is the debate on education. Its authors respond to the bourgeoisie by arguing that they do not want to appropriate education, but to take it away from the ruling class. And in territories such as the Community of Madrid, we are seeing how its leaders maintain that educating in democratic values ​​for coexistence is indoctrination. In this sense, education continues to be a central theme of the ideological debate.

That part is marvelous, a rhetorical prodigy in which they answer to the bourgeoisie that yes, they want to end bourgeois education and culture because what they offer workers is neither of the two things, but training. And far beyond the Community of Madrid, we can see that we have returned to that idea of ​​education and culture as training, as preparation for the job market, which is a contradiction because that job market is getting smaller and smaller.

The evolution of unemployment rates has been increasing for years. It is said that we have to prepare our children for a job market, for a competitive world, and we are putting an end to the much broader idea of ​​culture, education, training, achievement - that word that has gone out of style. We would have to go back to Marx and Engels, and say that this is indeed the culture we want to put an end to, and that we want a much broader culture that serves the happiness of human beings and the expansion of their personal resources.

It is interesting how he states that eradicating the dependence of the working class on the bourgeoisie would put an end to the prostitution of women. In any case, as you point out in the preface and Wendy Lynne Lee develops in her analysis, an update in feminist terms of the pamphlet is necessary. In this new reading, what has most caught your attention in the text?

Precisely because the assessment made by Marx and Engels of the situation of women in capitalism has become outdated. An approach that, in turn, is now being claimed by new thinkers. That idea that what is urgent is the proletarian revolution and that once we finish with capitalism, the rest of the oppressions will end, including that of women. That discourse that claims based on race, gender, or sexual orientation must be set aside, because they are an obstacle to the authentic struggle, which is that of the proletariat as a whole.

I was interested in adding the Marxist feminist vision that says that patriarchy is necessary for capitalism, but that it does not depend exclusively on it, but that it existed before and that, therefore, it is an issue that must be addressed differently too.

In fact, Engels addressed this issue again in his essay The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. He resorts to Marx's notes to study the origin of patriarchy from an anthropological point of view, but that does not lead him to a new reflection on how women's demands must be included in the fight against capitalism.

Another aspect that most strikes me is that in the first part of The Manifesto there is an exposition of what we call historical materialism, which has permeated our societies much more than we think. For example, the fact that we consider that culture is not something that comes only from inspiration, but also from the social conditions in which said culture is produced. That we have assumed that the history of societies is that of class struggle, that property influences the ways of conceiving history, cultural production... See how that pamphlet so criticized and condemned by many people has radically transformed our vision of world. Also that of non-Marxists.

"The first to be horrified by what happened to their thought would be Marx and Engels"

Another interesting point is how they approach the question of the homeland, a concept that is being reappropriated by part of the left when they defend that the homeland is public health and education, for example. In The Communist Manifesto, it is argued that there is no homeland for the proletariat, but in your opinion, what would be the contemporary vision of Marx and Engels on this issue?

Marx and Engels evolved a lot in their thinking because they wrote The Manifesto when they were less than 30 years old. That phrase "the worker has no homeland" has been used a lot, with which they wanted to say that the proletariat is subjected to the same conditions of exploitation everywhere and that, therefore, what makes sense is that they unite and that stop with nationalistic and patriotic ideas. But later, they began to realize that the emancipation of the working class in England was not going to automatically bring that of the Irish and that national demands could be a useful instrument for the rebellion of the workers.

Therefore, over time they were not so anti-nationalist and, furthermore, it must be remembered that it is a pamphlet, of great rhetorical quality, but in which the ideas are poorly developed. To fully understand it, you have to go to later works.

The prologue by Yolanda Díaz, which ends up defending that El manifesto comunsita is a defense of democracy and freedom, was instrumentalized by the far-right media to accuse her of defending the crimes of Stalinism; You were urged to translate My Struggle, among other nice things, to which she responded in an article in El País... But neither Marx nor Engels are responsible for the use that has been made of their ideas to impose dictatorships or carry out genocides. Based on The Communist Manifesto, what would its authors think of what Stalin did with his proposal?

They would be the first to be scandalized and horrified because they were very clear that, after the revolution, a restructuring phase had to come to pass from a bourgeois state to a proletarian one. The tendency had to be the disappearance of the State once the class struggle ended, but what the USSR did was a hypertrophy of the State and, furthermore, a dictatorial hypertrophy.

The idea of ​​the dictatorship of the proletariat has been cited a lot, but neither Marx nor Engels were thinking of a dictatorship as we conceive it today after having lived through the brutality of the 20th century, also that of the communist dictatorships. Their idea of ​​dictatorship is a response to what they consider to be the bourgeois dictatorship, in which capitalism has its own state structures, imposes judges, the entire state administration, which does not allow workers to vote...

And that dictatorship is the one that is opposed by the proletarian dictatorship so that the State restructures itself and also its property relations, while answering to the people for all the decisions it makes. Once there is only one social class, it would be necessary to eliminate the State and that power. All this disappears in Stalinism, in Maoism, so the first horrified with what happened to their thought would be Marx and Engels.

How do you think The Communist Manifesto should be conceived, used, today?

It must be used as an awareness of what has not changed, why it has not changed and who is harmed by this lack of change. How capitalism tends to perpetuate itself in a much more skillful and brutal way than Marx and Engels believed, and how any attempt, not just for revolution, but even for something much smaller such as rebellion, is undermined and crushed immediately. Nothing can happen without knowledge and the problem is that we are way behind, and they are winning because, with few exceptions, they have the media in their hands, because the speech that is reproduced, especially in times of crisis, is the speech of the capital.

Is there another classic creation you'd like to translate and reissue?

Right now I don't feel like it because I'm a writer and, due to various circumstances, I've translated four books in the last two years. But if I felt like it again, I would lean towards some classic of anarchism, like The Conquest of Bread, by Kropotkin. I would be interested to see what it would be like to maintain a dialogue with anarchist thought, which perhaps has been left out of the political conversation more than Marxism, and to see what remains of that discourse.