Pedro Insua @PedroInsua1
December 18, 2020 01:51
Sánchez, Zapatero and Rubalcaba, during the 39th federal congress of the PSOE. Jorge Barreno Madrid
The fundamentalist left (or reactionary, or feng shui, or gauchist, or whatever you want to call it) – that is to say, from the podemism, to understand us – whose representatives move or claim to move in the coordinates of Marxism (of historical materialism or communism), assumes, without further explanation, the reality, both historical and present, of the Catalan nation, the Basque nation and the Galician nation (or even other fragments of the Spanish nation such as Andalusia, Asturias, Extremadura, etc.).
What is more. The almost axiomatic evidence of Spain’s plurinational character is of such a nature for this left that anyone who dares to raise any doubts about it is sent, ipso facto, by the force of the evidence itself, to the class of the extreme right, reactionary, caveman (facha) and against which podemism claims to fight mainly (anti-fascism).
Thus, according to this evidence, this fragmented plurinational consciousness comes, it seems, from the very heart of the left, from the communist left for more signs – or at least it has something to do with it directly -, leaving to the right, to the extreme right (fascism), any other perspective that preserves in some way the reference to Spain as a national unit.
But what does this fragmented national consciousness have to do with historical materialism? And, on the other hand, what does the dissolution of Spain through separatism have to do with communism?
In the Marxist conception, the idea of nation is a product formed by the bourgeois state that appears with the great capitalist industry and that is going to destroy any previous ethnic nationality -of a regional, regional, local nature- conceived as a hindrance anchored in previous productive relations -like the feudal ones- that have already been overcome.
In this way, it is from the format of a canonical nation -England, France, Italy, Spain, Russia, Germany, United States-, in its configuration as a bourgeois state, that the revolutionary transformation, integral, not by fragments, towards a socialist state is posed.
Industrialisation and centralisation, in this sense, are two historical processes that are presupposed from historical materialism in the formation of the contemporary nation, and in whose framework the class struggle -proletariat/bourgeoisie- that leads to the communist revolution takes place. The resistance to the disappearance of these ethnic nations, which are fragmented, is a reactionary resistance, which seeks the preservation of social relations – feudal, stately – already overcome as a consequence of the formation of the bourgeois state.
F. Engels will say it so clearly:
“Those remnants of a nation relentlessly trampled on by the march of history, as Hegel says, those remnants of peoples, become each time, and remain until their total extermination or denationalisation, fanatical carriers of counter-revolution, just as their whole existence in general is already a protest against a great historical revolution. This is what happened in Scotland with the Gaels, who supported the Stuarts from 1640 to 1745. Thus, in France with the Bretons, support of the Bourbons from 1792 to 1800. Thus, in Spain with the Basques, support of Don Carlos“.
(F. Engels, The Magyar Struggle, 1849)
The idea of a fragmented nation of Galician, Basque and Catalan nationalism, however, comes from a conception that has nothing to do with Marxism and historical materialism. It is even opposed to it, insofar as it conceives of the nation as a reality prior to industrial development – e-technical, to say the least with Mumford -, even pre-political – arcadic -, by postulating the existence of these peoples as original peoples who now claim a right to self-determination in the face of the centralising action of the bourgeois state.
That is to say, the separatist action of nationalism is far from a revolutionary action, in the Marxist sense. On the contrary, such a separation, which would take place within the framework of the fractional ethno-linguistic nation, would fall directly into the reaction by being a step backwards in the centralisation of the state’s action, as a bourgeois state.
Marx will say it very clearly, in reference to Germany, which is not yet unified:
“In a country like Germany, where there are so many medieval reminiscences to be swept away, and so much local and provincial obstinacy to be broken, under no circumstances can cities and provinces be allowed to put obstacles to the revolutionary activity that needs to emanate from the centre. […] As in France in 1793, so is the task of the German revolutionary party today: to centralise the nation”.
(Marx, circular from the Central Committee to the Communist League, 1850)
In short, Spain’s plurinational consciousness can in no way be justified on the basis of Marxism. Neither from a theoretical point of view, from historical materialism, because nationalism is an idealism, nor, even less, from a practical, revolutionary point of view, because separatism is reactionary.
I have said.
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