Text published in “Worker Solidarity”, Gijon, 25 from December to 1909, and that has not lost its validity
Vote, but listen – Ricardo Mella
Had, on the eve of the last elections, the humor of looking into the paradise of a certain theater where an electoral rally was being held. For me it was a new spectacle in which old friends with broad ideas took part with new people with very limited orientations..
I left with my head hot and cold feet. I had to endure a regular migraine of political providentialism and, naturally, I suffered the consequences.
I am amazed. They do not spend days through the people. There is no strong experience to open their eyes. There is no reason that apart from the routine.
Like believers who trust Providence, Thus the radicals, Although they are called socialists, They continue to put their hopes in the councilors and deputies and ministers of the respective party. "Our councilors will do this and the other and the beyond." "Our deputies will conquer so much and as much as much." “Our ministers will decree, They will create, will transform how much must be decreed, create and transform. " Such is yesterday's teaching, Today and tomorrow. And so the people, whom he appeals at all times, Keep learning that you have nothing else to do but to vote and wait patiently for everything to be done. And it goes and votes and wait. I was tempted to ask for the floor and attack the routine fallacies that numb the people. I was tempted to shout at the worker present there and in a large majority:
"Vote, Yeah, vote; but listen. Your first duty is to get out of here and then act on your own. Go and in each neighborhood opens a secular school, found a newspaper, A library; Organize a Culture Center, A union, A worker circle, a cooperation, Something of how much you have to do. And you will see, When you have done this, as the councilors, The deputies and the ministers, Although they are not your representatives, The representatives of your ideas, They follow this current of action and, To follow her, promul; administer according to these trends, Even if you do nothing to them; They govern, in the end, According to the environment for you created directly, Although I cursed what do you care what they do. Whereas now, how you cross your arms and sleep on the laurels of providence-vow, councilors, deputies and ministers, however radical and socialist they may be, they will continue the routine of empty speeches, of foolish laws and of the cominera administration. And you will long for popular instruction, and you will continue as donkey as before, you will cry for freedom and as tied as before to the ring of the salary you will follow, you will demand equity, Justice, solidarity, and they will give you guts and more gums of decrees, of laws, regulations, But not a pinch of what you have right and do not enjoy because you do not even want to take it by your hand.
“Do you want culture, Liberty, equality, Justice? Well, go and conquest, Do not want others to come to give them. The force that you do not have, Siting everything, They will not have a few, small part of yourself. That miracle of politics has never been made, It will never be done. Your emancipation will be your work itself, or you will not emancipate in all centuries.
"And now see and vote and rivets your chain."
Ricardo Mella
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