According to Karl Marx, the empty stomach cannot be immersed in philosophy. The Charter of Human Rights considers, among other things, the right of the human person to good food to be fundamental. The First Socialist Revolution, which this year celebrates its centenary, began with cries of “bread, peace and freedom”.

However, in these times of suffocating hegemony of warrior and neoliberal capitalism, it is increasingly difficult to combine rights inseparably. Capitalism forces us to choose one or the other among different rights. Examples: employment (bread) or environment (health). Producing polluting coal mines, fracking, nuclear power plants or more cars. Another, bread or human rights: armory, military aeronautics, explosives factories, etc.

Almost all trade unions cannot get out of this trap when they give priority to jobs over other considerations. The priority, despite the fact that the concept of sustainable development is endorsed in the congresses. Of course, the political parties, the majority debtors of the opinions of the voters. There are exceptions. I know of an ecologist mayor of León who, by refusing to open the closed mine, almost lynched the inhabitants of his village. Of course, he lost the mayor's office.

I saw the mayor of Cadiz, José María González Kichi, of Podemos, caught in such a serious dilemma, when Jordi Éché asked him severely: “Antimilitarist and human rights activist for a long time, as well as the mayor of Cadiz with the highest unemployment rate in Spain. Do you agree with the monarchy of Saudi Arabia, which is a misogynist human rights violator, to build with it military warships in the Cadiz shipyard?” “Yes. It is our workers who need these jobs.” I wasn't surprised by the answer, but it did grieve me.

Mayor Kichi is not a politician in use. He is an honest man, delivered to his people, who does not drink under the institutions and who will surely return to his profession and to his fundamental militancy when he leaves the mayor. Fate, or whatever, will spare me from the trance in which the human rights of one over the other must be chosen or put in place. Despite the doubts, I think there are red lines that cannot be crossed. ), one of which is that it cannot coincide with the manufacture of equipment to crush remote people in exchange for a wage.

Other roads. Let us fight, for example, for Universal Basic Income. This would give the public the opportunity to give up industries that are harmful, risky or unnecessary. The terms of that rent for another occasion.