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Title: The Catalonian Affair Author: Miguel AmorĂłs Date: December 20, 2017 Language: en Topics: catalan independence, Spain, nationalism, reformism Source: Retrieved on 11th May 2021 from https://libcom.org/library/catalonian-affair-miguel-amor-s Notes: Text for a speech at a meeting of the Coordinadora AntiprivatizaciĂłn de la Sanidad (Madrid) [Coalition Against the Privatization of Health Services] Translated in December 2017 from the original Spanish-language text provided by the author.
It is shocking, and even more so when viewed from afar, to see the
pressure that the political oligarchy of Catalonia has been able to
exert on the Spanish State, but what is really extraordinary is the
popular support it generated, in part due to its own efforts, but also
because of the simultaneous convergence of a certain number of factors
that are favorable for the so-called “procès”. The Catalonian question
is part and parcel of the crisis of the State. No one can be unaware of
the fact that political Catalanism participated in the drafting of the
post-Franco Spanish constitution and that it played a stabilizing role
during the “transition” from the dictatorship to the system of amnesiac
parties, facilitating on various occasions the “governability” of the
State from which it now wants to separate. In exchange for these
services, it obtained certain rewards. A web of political-economic
interests crystallized around the Generalitat, the municipalities, the
county governments and the other institutions of the autonomous region
of Catalonia, responsive to the most powerful financial and commercial
interests. The capitalist dynamism of Catalonia demands a considerable
increase of local decision-making powers that is inconsistent with the
centralist tendencies of the old monarchist State. Its supporters hoped
for a redistribution of power in the form of a new “Estatut” of
autonomy, affecting the control over the region’s infrastructure, and
above all over its judicial and fiscal affairs. However, the decision
announced by the Supreme Court in 2010, which in practice rescinded the
promised Catalonian Magna Carta, dashed these hopes and was the signal
for a radical change in the strategy of the Catalonian bourgeois
oligarchy, which could not even deal with the debts incurred by the
executive branch of the Generalitat. Having set itself the short-term
goal of independence, it gained the support of all those sectors that
could consider themselves harmed by the economic crisis, by the corrupt
and authoritarian central government, by Spain’s reactionary right wing,
by the Bourbon monarchy and by capitalist globalization: owners of small
businesses and shopkeepers, the wage earning middle classes, government
employees and members of the regional police forces, trade unionists,
students, mayors, municipal councilmen and residents of small cities and
agricultural towns, irredentist separatists, etc. There was a resurgence
of a “Catalonian people”, prepared to obey the directives of its leaders
transmitted to them by an effective apparatus of mobilization (the ANC,
Omnium, TV3), always behaving peacefully and civilly, in accordance with
previously established guidelines that were broadcast in detail. By
emphasizing the disdain of the Catalonian patriots for nationwide
fronts, for general assemblies, for the kale borroka [Basque insurgency]
and for wildcat strikes, nationalist propaganda succeeded in creating a
world apart, peaceful, with its own symbolism, its heroic figures, its
convivial image and its shared spaces, with a discourse, a people,
victims and enemies made to measure. Appearing before an imposing
demonstration of popular acquiescence, like those convoked by the
executive branch of the Generalitat, the pro-sovereignty
parliamentarians could present themselves as scrupulously compliant with
the mandate granted to them by a well-trained population, which, far
from meeting in assemblies to debate and constitute itself as such, put
all its faith in its political leaders and its media directors.
The concept of a “people” is inherent in the concept of sovereignty,
since the sovereign people is the source of a new legality, more
“democratic” than state sovereignty. Therefore, the people engaged in
struggle against Spanish colonialism have the “right to decide”, that
is, the right of self-determination, to secede from an oppressive state
and to have their own government, preferentially a republic. As
authentic “democrats”, interpreters of the popular will, the
pro-sovereignty deputies voted for the new legal course of
self-determination in order to subsequently participate in good-faith
negotiations with the Spanish State, which, as was to be expected, was
not willing to join such deliberations. This was the weak point of the
pro-sovereignty strategy, which transformed the spectacle of separatism
into a comedy. The end of the “procès” was not as heroic as the day of
the referendum. After the big demonstrations against the repression, in
which numerous Spanish loyalists also participated, and after the climax
of the symbolic declaration of independence in the Catalonian Parlament,
a simple government decree was sufficient to return everything to
normal. It was not independence that was on the agenda, but “dialogue”.
The heroic “people” stayed home watching television, while the interim
managers appointed by the ministries of the central government occupied
the local councils without the need for the intervention of a single
agent of the public forces. The transfer of the headquarters of La Caixa
and the Banc de Sabadell signaled a headlong flight of businesses that
clearly revealed, along with a controlled fall in stock prices and a
decline in tourism, the defection of the capitalist executives from the
“procès”. This was the second mistake of the pro-sovereignty movement,
i.e., the idea that they could be sure of capitalist support despite an
initial slump in profits. The third mistake was the internationalization
of the Catalonian cause. The pro-sovereignty forces played their last
card quite well, that of seeking international “mediation”, but the
diplomatic battle ended with the victory of the central government,
since no State supported the “procès”. As in the game of snakes and
ladders, the pro-sovereignty bloc landed back on square one, once again
resorting to the obligatory victim narrative and internecine battles
over the movement’s leadership, utilizing, as usual, Catalonian culture
and frivolously accepting new elections for the autonomous region with
the aggravating circumstance of having provoked the rise of a powerful
Spanish loyalist movement. Did they really need to go to so much trouble
for such meager results?
It is obvious that the Catalonian crisis was serious enough for the
State to arrange for a different status for Catalonia under its
jurisdiction, with greater autonomy, but it will not be the current
pro-sovereignty elements who will negotiate this transformation. The
enemy—the loyalist bloc—has emerged morally and electorally reinforced
from this conflict. The urban working class masses, depoliticized by
decades of social democracy and Stalinism, have become
“constitutionalist” without knowing anything about the Constitution. In
the working class neighborhoods of the Barcelona metropolitan region, in
the big cities, and all along the Mediterranean coast, Spanish flags are
flying. As was so often the case in the past, the degree of sovereignty
will be determined by the parties that are not in favor of sovereignty.
It is an irony of history. It is also obvious that Catalonia will be
ungovernable if any attempt is made to rule it without any concessions
to the pro-sovereignty movement. The latter’s many contradictions will
not detract from its electoral support. If things have not turned out as
planned—and while it is clear to those who have not been convinced by
the official account of the meaning of the sovereignty movement that the
“procès” was, more than anything else, a very cleverly staged farce—what
might nonetheless seem strange but really is not at all odd is the fact
that for most of its supporters none of this makes any difference. The
pro-sovereignty movement was an excellent manipulator of emotions. Its
followers wanted to hear exactly what their leaders told them, without
worrying too much about the falsehoods or the demagogy that the messages
thus conveyed might contain. And this is still the case. Deception and
truth are not distinguishable in a sentimental and hypnotic context,
because nationalism is a faith and its goal lies in heaven above. What
the masses wanted was catharsis and that is just what they got. The
emotional discharge made possible by the enormous stage sets filled with
crowds of extras was accomplished realistically enough, and in the end
other, lesser discharges would take place in the upcoming ceremonies of
a pure independence for which no one has to be sacrificed. This is what
counts, not the truth.
The most disturbing aspect of the whole business is the fact that
dissident minorities took the bait and confused what was a dispute
between two factions of the ruling caste with a struggle for popular
liberation. A vulgar redistribution of power was mistaken for a social
conflict! Without the least hesitation they enlisted in an electoral
mobilization that, even in the most generous interpretation, had no
other intention than to constitute a State similar to the existing one,
only on a smaller scale. A Little Spain [Españita], as the late AgustĂn
GarcĂa Calvo said. People who not so long ago were persecuted by the
Mossos and insulted in the Catalonian Parlament were suddenly applauding
the Catalonian forces of repression and were willing to risk their lives
in defense of the voting stations set up by the executive branch of the
Generalitat [the Govern], eager to participate in an inter-classist
movement without questioning in the least its leadership and its goals.
It is not easy to explain how nationalist clichés penetrated them so
thoroughly, or what brought on such a pathological intellectual collapse
on a mass scale, or how such widespread frustration could take such an
irrational and trite political form. We are witnessing the funeral of an
era, that of reason, that of the conscious proletariat, that of the
class struggle, and passions have been placed at the service of
unreason. It is true that it has been some time since the autonomous
workers movement disappeared, leaving in its wake the wreckage of a
sense of class uprootedness and defeat. And it is even more true that
social exclusion has not generated an anti-capitalist movement, not even
at the most elementary level. The determinant factor in our current
situation, however, is the politicization of the wage-earning middle
classes, which were until recently the electoral base of the traditional
parties, a phenomenon responsible for an abandonment of social questions
in favor of the political struggle. The state- or anti-authoritarian
socialism of the proletariat has been overshadowed by the civil society
movement of the new middle classes, which are decidedly nationalist in
Catalonia, and self-management has been sidelined by the “assault” on
institutions. The end of the working class as a transformative social
force has left the initiative to other, more socially conservative,
Keynesian, profoundly statist classes, and, in the meantime, the rebel
minorities, the libertarian ghetto, the alternative trade unions and the
so-called social “movements” merely reflect the decline of class
consciousness, the loss of memory, and the forgetting of the lessons of
the past concerning the experiences of the false struggles of the middle
classes and their politics.
The movement that displays the most abundant signs of decomposition is
anarchism, which is hardly even the shadow of its former self. It has
succumbed to every reactionary ideology and its disarray is so profound
that nothing could have been expected from it but that it would serve as
the pimp of sovereignty, the spearhead of vulgar trade unionism, the
exponent of apocryphal identities and the mouthpiece of postmodernism.
These roles will only serve as temporary stepping stones towards more
highly paid activities, integrated into the dominant system, such as
social economy, institutional environmentalism, civil society politics
or populist nationalism. In the past, anarchism always existed in
symbiosis with the workers movement, to which it contributed ideals, and
often enough, courage. Any anarchist from that era would have said that
nationalism was nothing but an attempt by the bourgeoisie to divide the
proletariat; that the nationalist conflict was a false conflict
(Madrid-Catalonia, central state-Catalonian people) whose purpose was to
conceal the real conflict (bourgeoisie-proletariat); that the issue was
not nationality, but anti-capitalism; that the real colonized and
oppressed people were not the Catalonians, but the workers; that the
workers have neither a fatherland nor a State. In the anarchist press of
the past we easily find analyses of nationalism from a class point of
view. And in practice, anarchists were frequently engaged in conflicts,
often bloody ones, with nationalists. The line separating anarchism from
nationalism was well-defined, and this is what today’s pro-sovereignty
movement has succeeded in erasing. The pro-sovereignty movement, by
setting itself up as the principal social and political force, has
polarized society, obliging all the other forces to define themselves in
relation to it, for or against, that is, to take sides. The
pro-sovereignty caste is the only caste with an explicit project for a
“State” and a “country”, and this is why it was easy for it to outflank
the civil society “left” and render it impotent. It knows what it does
not want and where it wants to go, even if it does not have a very clear
idea of how to get there. And while the genuine civil society movement
tries to remain above all “blocs” with increasingly higher doses of
ambiguity, most anarchists have jumped aboard the pro-sovereignty
bandwagon with the fatuous hope of finding cracks in its edifice where
they can promote their social causes and identity issues.
Anarchism has lost its “bond” with the workers, but it seems to have
discovered a solid enough connection with nationalism. The rights of
labor have joined forces with the liberty of peoples, and ballots have
joined forces with direct action. Anarchism has converged with the
Catalonian Left in the Committees for the Defense of the Referendum,
first, and then with the Committees for the Defense of the Republic,
becoming esoteric and populist, since it defends an illusory “people”
and fights on behalf of a phantom State. It is prepared to serve as the
cannon fodder for the pro-sovereignty movement, that is, for a fraction
of the bourgeoisie. The CNT and the CGT themselves have university
professors serving as the general secretaries of their organizations;
the crème de la crème of the citizenry direct these organizations that
have nothing anarchosyndicalist about them except their names. And the
worst thing of all is that libertarian reformism and pro-sovereignty
have not given rise to an extreme left that would seek to draw
clarifying lines in the anarchist movement. The latter is not capable of
such a thing, and is no longer capable of conceiving a social project
that is clearly demarcated from the pro-sovereignty and civil society
movements. It is not capable of constituting itself as a radical social
current distinct from the other substitutes for such a current such as
the CUP, Podemos or Los Comunes. The neo-anarchist ideology revolves
around the concept of “the people”, an idea borrowed from primitive
bourgeois nationalism. “The people”, however, is not a political
subject, much less a class distinct from the bourgeoisie, a socially
homogeneous and unified majority that fights for liberation and to
construct a State that would guarantee its liberty. It is indeed true
that there is no revolutionary subject, since there is no workers
movement that could perform such a role. But there is no Catalonian
people, either; what is called by that name is only the product of the
institutional propaganda of the pro-sovereignty movement, a submissive
mass of voters related to one another virtually through social networks
and apps on their smart phones, rather than the manifestation of an
independent will emanating from a collectivity that is conscious of its
past, forged with direct relations and real common interests. In the
final analysis, the Catalonian people is an entelechy by means of which
the pro-sovereignty caste turns itself into a national class and
constitutes itself as a nation, for which purpose it only lacks its own
State. Patriotism is a statist religion. This is the reality that lies
behind the alleged “sovereign people”: a public relations image, an
abstraction that leads to other abstractions like “fatherland”,
“nation”, “democracy” or “State”. A myth that allows a few clever social
climbers to speak in its name and to claim its institutions as their own
patrimony, for their own personal advancement. In a world of full-blown
globalized capitalism, there are only exploiters and exploited, whether
or not they are Catalonians, there are only a ruling class and the ruled
classes; there are only leaders and led, oppressed masses and the State,
and there is room only for nationalist false consciousness or
revolutionary class consciousness, for narrow-minded patriotism or the
universal ideals of emancipation. There is nothing to be expected from
the fatherland but abstract liberties, ruled over by a privileged caste;
real liberties will be the product of a class struggle prosecuted to its
ultimate consequences.
From today’s real antagonisms, a new proletariat must arise that is
inaccessible to ideological fashions, to the alien projects of other
classes, to palace coups, to nationalist illusions. Despite some
unexpected results, such as, for example, the decline in tourism, the
real estate crash, and capital flight, for which we are sincerely
grateful, social struggles must follow their own paths and display their
difference. There are conflicts in which one must participate and others
in which one must not. It is not about a war between flags, or a
competition among the secondary manifestations of political phenomena.
Nor is it a matter of putting together a populist salad with all the
ingredients. It is a specific way of acting and a struggle to the death
for ideas, typical of a revolutionary collectivity that is trying to
take shape.