Back to Catalonia, the Basque Country, Greece, Scotland and Ireland!
Clearly a trend. Clearly also areas wrested to one degree or another from the old imperialisms. Clearly on the periphery of the Old Continent - even though they might not be the so-called, "classic" colonial freedom struggles envisaged in the consciousness of the average Brit and given expression by Uncle Mac and his Winds of Change blowing through Africa speech!
From the point of view of working class Barcelona, West Belfast, the Bogside/Creggan, the central belt of Scotland (and Motherwell), Athens/Pireus, ...well, the national, political and economic struggle continues but not exactly in the same way or in the same conditions as a century ago.
However, as Tariq correctly identifies in the closing remarks of his Talk, none of the mainstream (centre) parties emanating from the Socialist Parties (2nd International) or the Communist Parties (Stalinised 3rd International) have anything to say on this! Well, they do but it's completely reactionary. That is they collapse completely into the Euro right position that the EU and it's institutions (especially now including its currency) is the last hope in face of the threat from the East - be it from Russia, the Middle East or China! (I personally heard this from a Refundazione MP in Florence around the time of the Social Forums). It, this collapse, is clear in the capitulation of the Syriza leadership (despite their peaceful referendum), the "timorous wee beastie" that is today's SNP leadership and the fatal gradualism which is now the watchword of the leaderships of Podemos, the Catalan Assembly, Sinn Fein and the Corbyn wing of the LP.
I'd say that not only has capitalism been a happy bedfellow of the late feudal/early modern period, the European Rennaisance, the Ancien Regime, the Enlightenment and Imperialism it is now impossible for any "progressive" political party to at one and the same time co-exist with it and at the same time defend any of the gains of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution even in it's heartland of Europe.
This has been a trend for over a hundred years but perhaps it has reached it's very own April thesis moment as the liberal, social democratic middle ground is annihilated between the anvil of the multinational corporations and the hammer blows of combined and uneven development outside of, but penetrating deeper and deeper into, the post industrialised first world.
How else can one explain why a mild form of civil disobedience such as we have just seen in Catalonia which was aimed at pushing forward to independence, be met by rubber bullets, 900 injuries, the stealing of millions of pre printed ballot papers and then the stealing of ballot boxes by Guardia Civil (new hats same old fascists); how else can it all be explained other than to recall Burntollet and the B Specials - and then bring us back to a May government of ghouls reliant on power courtesy of 10 members of the no surrender DUP party?
In such a world every one of those 2.7 million pro Catalonian independence votes - "legal" or not, registered directly in struggle are worth their weight in gold. Of course there was a reactionary counter demonstration - mobilised throughout Spain! There would be such a demo in this country - led by Princes William and Harry - in full uniform - if Corbyn and McDonnell ever got serious.
I think that we should be in solidarity with the independence movement in Catalonia in its current struggle against the Spanish state - unless we think that the Catalonian independence movement is just a livelier, more excitable version of Brexit? If we think this then we should say so and then work through the consequences of not supporting partial breaks such this and the earlier Greek episode, and say until we're all ready at the starting line and have had successful socialist revolutions there is no chance of breaking with the EU institutions or Troika. But would not such stageism have placed us with Martov and not with Lenin a hundred years ago this month?
Patrick Sikorski
In my view Spain is in a dangerous position. Its political leadership is totally corrupt to the despair of the pre AND post Franco generations. As it's corruption worsens so its state apparatus becomes narrower and packed with cronies. It inevitable that the most radical and energetic forces will find cracks in the national set up that provide leverage to get out of this mess.
ReplyDeleteThat's why the movement is weak and seems sectarian to others - because they don't yet spell out the sort of state they want to have if they are independent. They would reverse the splits in Catalan and win support from a huge part of the rest of Spain if they spelled out the sort of society they would build.
The paradox is to win independence the Catalan leadership have to win a large part of Spain to their brave and socially generous project. ( the opposite of all the language sand 'historic culture' stuff, which is what in the end stuffed the Welsh national movement just as the Scottish movement began to erupt.