A View From The Left-Finish The Spanish Civil War

Spain

 

Independence for Catalonia and for the Basque Country!

 

Down With the European Union! For a Socialist United States of Europe!

Workers Vanguard No. 1066	17 April 2015

Spain

 

Independence for Catalonia and for the Basque Country!

 

Down With the European Union! For a Socialist United States of Europe!

 

Last November, 2.3 million people in Catalonia defied the central government of Spain and voted in an unofficial referendum on independence. More than 80 percent of those who voted answered yes to both questions posed: “Do you want Catalonia to be a State?” and “If so, do you want Catalonia to be an independent State?” The vote was the culmination of years of growing pro-independence sentiment in this region of 7.5 million people in the northeast of Spain. The rabid chauvinism of the Castilian bourgeoisie, coupled with European Union (EU)-imposed economic austerity, has brought to the fore the centuries-old divisions between the central government and Spain’s smaller, oppressed nationalities, such as the Catalans.

The massive participation in the November 9 vote was a powerful riposte to the Spanish parliament’s decision last April to outlaw a referendum on independence. It was also a clear indication that the direction of national sentiment in Catalonia is strongly toward separation from Spain and not toward assimilation. In accordance with this, the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) demands: Independence for Catalonia!

As revolutionary Marxists, our advocacy of Catalonia’s secession from Spain is aimed at removing the question of national oppression from the agenda in order to bring to the fore the necessity for a fight by the working class against the capitalist class enemy in both Spain and Catalonia. The capitalist rulers, whether Castilian or Catalan, use nationalism to obscure the fact that working people do not share a common interest with their “own” exploiters and to sow divisions between workers of different nationalities. An independent Catalonia would demonstrate more clearly to the workers there that the Catalan bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalists are no fighters for liberation from exploitation and social oppression. Independence would also shake up the capitalist order in the rest of Spain as well as give a jolt to the imperialist EU, which would help open the road to class struggle.

We reject the assertion by the Castilian bourgeoisie and Spain’s monarchy of the “indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation.” This was enshrined in the bourgeois-democratic constitution adopted in 1978, three years after the death of General Francisco Franco, whose bonapartist dictatorship held sway for almost 40 years. The Spanish constitution explicitly denies the democratic right of self-determination for Catalans, Basques and Galicians, which are distinct nationalities with their own languages. The ICL has always upheld the right to self-determination of these oppressed nations in Spain.

A central obstacle to working-class unity in Spain in the post-Franco period has been the extreme chauvinism directed at the Basque people. There has been a long struggle for Basque independence. Every “democratic” government, including under the Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), has continued the Franco dictatorship’s bloody campaign of terror against Basque separatism. The profound divisions between workers in the Basque region and those in the rest of Spain are reflected in the predominance of separate, nationalist trade unions in the Basque country. It has been evident for some time that these divisions cannot be overcome except through the struggle for independence for the Basques. While the ICL has long upheld the right of the Basques to secede and vigorously defended Basque victims of capitalist state repression, we have been remiss in not advocating Basque independence until now. Independence for the Basque country!

There does not currently appear to be mass sentiment for independence in the part of the Basque country lying across the northern border of Spain in France, or in northern Catalonia in France, where Catalan is spoken. The Ligue Trotskyste de France, section of the ICL, nonetheless upholds the right to self-determination of the Basques and Catalans, i.e., their right to secede from the French state. This would include the right to join an independent Catalonia or Basque country. The ICL also upholds the right of other Catalan-speaking regions of Spain, such as the Balearic Islands, to join an independent Catalonia. Our call for independence for Catalonia and the Basque country is an application of the Leninist position recognizing the right to self-determination of all nations. As Lenin wrote in his 1916 The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination:

“The right of nations to self-determination implies exclusively the right to independence in the political sense, the right to free political separation from the oppressor nation. Specifically, this demand for political democracy implies complete freedom to agitate for secession and for a referendum on secession by the seceding nation.”

Only by supporting independence for Catalonia and the Basque country can the proletariat in Spain demonstrate that it opposes the national chauvinism of its own ruling class, enabling it to win the confidence and class solidarity of workers in the oppressed nations and remove suspicion or distrust. At the same time, the workers of the oppressed Catalan and Basque nations must struggle for political independence from their respective national bourgeoisies, which wield the call for “national liberation” as a tool for deceiving and dividing the workers along national lines.

Bourgeois Rivalries in Multinational Spain

The Castilian bourgeoisie’s determination to prevent any prospect of an independent Catalonia or Basque country is in no small part due to the fact that these are among the most industrialized and economically productive regions of Spain, with huge concentrations of finance capital. Today, Catalonia (with 16 percent of the total population) contributes about 20 percent of Spain’s gross domestic product. The second-largest bank in Spain is the Basque Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), which has extensive investments in Latin America. A retired Spanish army colonel snarled in a 2012 interview: “The independence of Catalonia? Over my dead body and those of many others.” Given Spain’s bloody history, these are not idle threats.

Following the collapse of Spain’s real estate bubble in 2008 and an ensuing financial crisis, part of the world economic depression, the imperialist rulers of the EU and the Spanish bourgeoisie have subjected working people to mass layoffs and savage austerity, with over 5.4 million currently out of work. This situation has fueled bourgeois nationalism on all sides.

The national ruling party, the Popular Party (PP), descends politically from Francoism and embodies pro-monarchy, right-wing Catholic reaction. It has intensified anti-Catalan sentiment in a transparent attempt to distract attention from the bourgeoisie’s responsibility for the ongoing economic crisis. For years, the PP has blocked attempts by Catalonia to gain greater autonomy from the central government and refused to renegotiate the terms under which tax income is distributed between Madrid and Barcelona (Catalonia’s capital) and what share of the national expense is devoted to Catalonia. The PP merchants of homelessness and hunger have hypocritically promoted the chauvinist stereotype of Catalans as greedy and lacking in “solidarity” with the poorer parts of Spain.

The vile chauvinism emanating from Madrid has provoked a strong reaction in Catalonia. A catalyst for this anger was the decision in 2010 by Spain’s Constitutional Court to overturn numerous articles of Catalonia’s 2006 autonomy statute, including the section that recognized Catalonia as a nation. This was the outcome of the PP’s legal challenge against no less than 128 out of 223 articles in the statute. The day after the Constitutional Court decision was announced, over one million people in Catalonia protested, carrying banners reading: “We Are a Nation!”

The Catalan bourgeoisie, represented by the Convergència i Unió (Convergence and Union) coalition and its more left-sounding tails in the Esquerra Republicana (Republican Left), who together currently dominate Catalonia’s Generalitat government, mirrors the Castilian bourgeoisie’s hypocrisy. They have conveniently blamed the economic crisis in Catalonia on the rest of Spain, pointing to unfavorable terms of taxation and lack of infrastructure investment by the central government, which are hurting their profits. Simultaneously, the Generalitat has itself shoved austerity down the throats of workers and the poor.

Following the demise of the Franco regime, the Catalan bourgeoisie saw its task as trying to gradually acquire more autonomy from the central government. The Basque and Catalan bourgeois nationalists had extracted concessions by supporting at different points both PSOE and PP governments when those parties did not win enough votes to form a national government on their own. However, after the economic crisis hit, the PSOE government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero initiated the austerity drive. It had also earlier reneged on some of its promises to Catalonia. When the PP was elected in 2011, it was able to form a government without the support of any of the regional bourgeois-nationalist parties, enabling it to act with unrestrained hostility against any decentralizing tendencies and thereby pushing more of the Catalan bourgeoisie toward independence.

Also a key factor in the turn toward independence by a section of the Catalan bourgeoisie is Catalonia’s weakening link to the Spanish market—for years it has sold more of its manufactured goods on the international market than domestically, with a large proportion of these exports going to other EU countries. Catalonia’s relative weight in Spain’s economy also declined as the result of a conscious policy by the Castilian bourgeoisie to build up the areas surrounding Madrid as an industrial center in the 1960s and 1970s. This diminished the relative economic dominance of Catalonia and the Basque region and established more of a direct economic rivalry between the different national bourgeoisies.

EU Fuels National Chauvinism

While the Catalan bourgeoisie remains divided over the question of independence, all sides, including those that favor secession, are committed to the reactionary imperialist EU. The Catalan bourgeoisie has profited from the EU and, despite the devastation wrought by EU-imposed austerity, many working people in Catalonia who support independence favor staying in the EU.

The ICL has stood from the outset in principled opposition to the imperialist EU and its monetary instrument, the euro. The EU is an unstable consortium of rival capitalist states, dominated by the main imperialist powers, principally Germany. These powers seek to increase their competitive edge against their U.S. and Japanese imperialist rivals, exploit the workers throughout Europe and subordinate the weaker European countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland as well as those in East Europe. Through the mechanism of the euro zone, Germany and other creditor states demand that debtor countries become more “competitive” by slashing wages, pensions and social spending. Recognizing that the euro would be an instrument of the EU imperialists, the ICL opposed its introduction. We stated that capitalism is organized on a national basis and that a common European currency was not viable.

For all the Catalan bourgeoisie’s talk of attaining “fiscal sovereignty” and opposing Madrid-imposed austerity, its pledge to stay in the EU means ceding control over interest rates, spending and monetary policy to Frankfurt and Brussels. And the imperialist masters of the EU have made clear that they don’t look kindly upon secessionist moves that could further destabilize the capitalist order in Europe. Thus, German chancellor Angela Merkel last August made a point of conspicuously supporting Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy against any move toward independence by Catalonia.

The EU rulers have whipped up nationalism, pitting workers in countries like Germany, Britain and France against those in weaker countries. The failure of the reformist workers parties and trade-union bureaucrats to oppose the EU has spurred the growth of reactionary and outright fascist forces that channel discontent over austerity into hatred of immigrants and Muslims in particular. Maintaining vulnerable layers of workers with few legal rights helps the capitalists drive down wages and working conditions for everyone. In opposition to these divide-and-rule schemes we say: Full citizenship rights for all immigrants! No deportations!

Opposing all forms of nationalism, we seek to lay the programmatic foundations for building revolutionary workers parties as part of a reforged, Trotskyist Fourth International. Only such parties can lead the working class in seizing the means of production and expropriating the bourgeoisie internationally through a series of socialist revolutions. Instead, reformist leftists promote the fantasy of building a “social Europe” under capitalism. Down with the imperialist EU! For a Socialist United States of Europe!

Free All Basque Nationalists Now!

The workers movement in Spain and France must forthrightly oppose the sinister crusade by the Spanish and French states against the petty-bourgeois nationalists of Basque Homeland and Freedom (ETA) and their sympathizers. The reformist misleaders of the PSOE and the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) have instead spent years lining workers up behind the Castilian bourgeoisie and against the Basques. In the campaign against the Basques, Madrid has banned political parties and protests, shut down newspapers and rounded up sympathizers of Basque independence—repressive measures that have been used throughout Spanish history to crush militant workers’ struggles also.

On January 10, more than 75,000 people marched in the streets of Bilbao to demand an end to the Spanish state’s practice of “dispersing” Basque nationalist prisoners to far-flung locations, with protesters raising chants demanding freedom and “total amnesty” for Basque militants. Two days later, the Spanish state carried out raids in four cities, using charges of money laundering and tax evasion to arrest 16 people dedicated to the legal defense of Basque activists. Those victimized included 12 lawyers, many of whom were due in court in Madrid for the start of a trial of 35 people charged with belonging to a terrorist organization.

As part of this transparent political witchhunt, the Civil Guard searched the offices of organizations including the pro-independence Basque trade union Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak (Commissions of Patriotic Workers), which represents tens of thousands of Basque workers. There they seized 90,000 euros in small bills and coins that had been collected at the demonstration two days earlier. We demand the dropping of all charges! Down with anti-Basque repression!

While we Marxists oppose ETA’s nationalist outlook as well as the petty-bourgeois strategy of individual terrorism it once practiced (ETA has now renounced armed struggle), we defend ETA against state repression. Acts of retribution against individual representatives of the capitalist state and ruling class are a losing substitute for, and obstacle to, the necessary struggle to replace the entire rotting capitalist system by mobilizing the social power of the working class in socialist revolution. While the acts that Basque militants have carried out against the capitalist state and its agents are not a crime from the standpoint of working people, the reactionary logic of nationalism leads to appalling acts of indiscriminate terror as well, such as ETA’s criminal bombing of a supermarket in a working-class suburb of Barcelona in 1987. Such crimes have served only to drive Catalan and Spanish workers further into the arms of their own chauvinist bourgeoisies.

The Origins and Character of Catalan Nationalism

Catalonia has long had a strong sense of regional identity, with its own language, Catalan, now spoken by over ten million people in Catalonia as well as the Balearic Islands, northern Catalonia and Valencia. As a feudal principality under the Spanish crown, Catalonia repeatedly came into conflict with the monarchy. It was highly symbolic that the November 9 referendum took place around the time of the 300th anniversary of the defeat of the Catalan principality in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714. Catalonia had backed the Habsburg claim to the Spanish throne against the Bourbons and was punished by the Bourbon victors with the suppression of its parliament and traditional liberties. (As a result of that war, Louis XIV, a Bourbon himself, consolidated France’s hold on Roussillon, the part of Catalonia north of the Pyrenees.) Known as la Diada, the day of Catalonia’s surrender, 11 September 1714, is today commemorated as the National Day of Catalonia.

The birth of Catalan nationalism dates not to a war over royal succession but to the era of the consolidation of industrial capitalism in the 19th century. It was through the emergence of textile manufacturing in the 18th century in Barcelona that a nascent bourgeoisie first appeared in Spain. Catalan capitalism developed after the lifting of restrictions on trade with Spain’s colonies in 1780. The Catalan bourgeoisie thrived especially on the colonial rape of Cuba, where slavery was abolished only in 1886.

By the late 19th century, Catalonia and the Basque region had become the main industrial centers of Spain, with Basque industry centered on metallurgy and Catalan industry on light manufacturing. As the Catalan bourgeoisie came together to lobby the central government for protection of its industries, a Catalan intellectual elite increasingly saw itself as the leading voice for modernization in Spain. The 19th-century cultural movement known as the “Renaissance,” which promoted the Catalan language and arts, was a reflection of these economic and political developments.

Outside of the centers of Basque and Catalan industry, most of Spain remained mired in backwardness well into the 20th century. Dating back to the 16th century, the Spanish Habsburg monarchy helped suppress development toward a unified nation-state and encouraged regional divisions. Accumulating gold and silver from the mines in Latin America, the crown was hostile to the growth of trade and manufacturing within the Spanish territories of the Iberian Peninsula. A decadent monarchy and its medieval, obscurantist Catholic church ruled over a huge peasantry, which toiled under a landowning class derived from the old feudal nobility. As Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted: “Spain’s retarded economic development inevitably weakened the centralist tendencies inherent in capitalism.... The meagerness of the national resources and the feeling of restlessness all over the country could not help but foster separatist tendencies” (“The Revolution in Spain,” January 1931).

As large numbers of workers from different parts of Spain flooded into the Basque and Catalan industries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Catalonia became a center of working-class radicalism. Catalan nationalism was therefore characterized from its inception both by a timid fight for regional autonomy and support for the Spanish state’s suppression of workers’ struggle. Early nationalist organizations like the Lliga Regionalista (Regionalist League) stood for the repression of the convulsive wave of struggles that swept Catalonia in the early 20th century, from the Barcelona General Strike of 1902 and the anti-militarist, anti-clerical revolt known as the Tragic Week of 1909 to the General Strike of 1917 and the Barcelona lockout of 1919-20. It was fear of working-class revolt that led the Catalan bourgeoisie to support Miguel Primo de Rivera’s military coup of 1923. His regime proceeded to repress Catalonia’s limited self-rule, suppress the Catalan language and even shut down the Barcelona football club!

In 1930, in the aftermath of the onset of the Great Depression, the Primo de Rivera regime, already rotting from within, fell, ushering in a period of mass workers struggles in Spain. Following the collapse of the monarchy in 1931, a capitalist Republican government was formed, headed by a coalition of bourgeois Republicans with the Socialists. Under this regime, an autonomous Catalan regional government known as the Generalitat was formed, led by the bourgeois-nationalist Esquerra Republicana.

But the spectre of workers revolution drove the bulk of the Catalan bourgeoisie to support Franco’s counterrevolutionary forces in Spain’s Civil War of 1936-39. The Catalan bourgeoisie understood very well that Spain’s workers and peasants, who had been inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, were fighting not merely for a more democratic form of government but for a social revolution to end their exploitation and oppression. So the Catalan capitalists put their class interests ahead of their national aspirations, which were again to be crushed under the boot of Francoist repression.

Reformist Misleaders Betray Workers’ Struggle

Catalan nationalists today hold up Esquerra leader Lluís Companys, the president of the regional government when it fell to Franco, as a hero-martyr. In fact, Companys along with the Stalinist Communists, the Socialists and the anarchists sat in the Generalitat government that bloodily repressed the working-class insurrection of the Barcelona May Days of 1937. The Stalinists led the assault on the workers, but it was the leaders of the anarchists and the centrist Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM, which had earlier been part of the Catalan government) who were instrumental in persuading the workers to take down their barricades. This was a pivotal event in the defeat of the Spanish Revolution.

The betrayal of workers revolution showed vividly that the policy of forming a popular-front alliance with bourgeois parties like the Esquerra in Catalonia was utterly suicidal for the working class. As we wrote about the Barcelona May Days in “Trotskyism vs. Popular Frontism in the Spanish Civil War” (Spartacist [English edition] No. 61, Spring 2009):

“Power was in the grasp of the heroic Barcelona workers. Yet by week’s end, the workers had been disarmed and their barricades dismantled—a result not of military defeat but of sabotage, confusion and defeatism sown by the workers’ misleaders.... Victory in Barcelona could have led to a workers and peasants Spain and set Europe aflame in revolutionary struggle on the eve of World War II. Defeat opened the way to intense repression, including the suppression of the POUM and the murder or imprisonment of its leaders. Having thus disarmed the proletariat, the popular front opened the gates to Franco’s forces and a bloody reign of rightist reaction.”

While the working class of Spain paid for the popular-front betrayals of its leaders with blood, the reformist misleaders never abandoned the politics of class collaboration. The rapid industrialization of Spain through large foreign investment in the 1960s and early ’70s increased the size and self-confidence of the working class, which heroically challenged the Franco regime in its dying days. Following Franco’s death in 1975, Spain exploded in a wave of protests and strikes against the regime’s brutal suppression of trade unions, leftist parties and national minorities. However, the leaders of the PSOE and the PCE sought to rein in these struggles and channeled them toward a “peaceful” transition to bourgeois democracy. The PSOE and PCE supported the 1978 constitution that recognized Franco’s chosen successor, King Juan Carlos, as head of state of a Spanish “nation.” Today, the PCE sellouts have the audacity to call for a referendum to get rid of Spain’s corrupt monarchy.

The situation today is very different from the period of the Civil War and the workers’ insurgency in the mid-late 1970s. Marxists have to take this into account in dealing with the concretes of the national question. The recognition of the right of a given nation to secede does not necessarily mean that one would advocate secession at a particular time. Lenin often used the analogy of the recognition of the right of divorce, which of course does not mean that one demands the dissolution of any and every marriage.

At the time of the Civil War, the Catalan and Basque proletariat stood at the head of their class in a revolutionary situation that posed pointblank the possibility of overcoming national divisions through the workers coming to power. It would have made no sense to advocate independence at that time. But for some years now, it has been evident that relations between the Basque and Spanish workers have been poisoned. And in Catalonia today, discontent within the proletariat is increasingly manifesting itself not in an assimilationist direction—i.e., seeing its fate as joined with that of the Spanish proletariat—but rather in pronounced separatist sentiments.

Rotten Social Democrats and Bourgeois Populists

The PSOE demonstrated its hatred for oppressed nationalities when it unleashed death squads, dubbed “anti-terrorist liberation groups” (GAL), against the Basque people in the 1980s. Today the PSOE is united with the ruling PP in chauvinist opposition to a Catalan referendum. It calls for making Spain a federation, in which Catalonia would supposedly have greater powers. This amounts to minor tinkering with the existing setup of regional autonomy, the essential point being that Catalonia will remain under the thumb of Castilian chauvinism. A similar position for a federated bourgeois state is held by the Izquierda Unida (IU) coalition, led by the PCE.

The post-1978 political order in Spain is unraveling. The parties that have dominated the electoral arena, the PSOE and PP, have both undergone a sharp drop in support, associated with their implementation of widely hated austerity measures. The presumption of a unitary Spain has been challenged in Catalonia and elsewhere.

Stepping into this breach with the mission of refurbishing Spanish bourgeois democracy is the Podemos party, a formation based on the petty bourgeoisie that issued out of the 2011 Indignados movement. Podemos is totally committed to maintaining the EU. Like the Indignados movement—and like its Greek counterpart Syriza—the populist Podemos claims to represent all classes of people against the political and business elites, which it has dubbed “la casta” (the caste). Podemos’ populism is designed to obscure the understanding that the fundamental division in society is class and that only the proletariat, through the seizure of power and the destruction of capitalism in all countries, can eliminate exploitation. As Marxists, we oppose Podemos on principle as a bourgeois party.

While claiming to uphold Catalonia’s “right to decide,” Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias stated in a 27 December 2014 interview with El Periódico that a “unilateral declaration” of independence is not possible and that Podemos therefore proposes a “constitutional process.” This amounts to a negation of the right of Catalonian self-determination, which means the right of the people of Catalonia—not a Spanish constitutional process—to decide whether or not to secede.

Podemos’ popularity has predictably attracted a gaggle of opportunist pseudo-Marxists to its orbit. Shameless lawyers for Podemos, the En Lucha (In Struggle) group affiliated with the British Socialist Workers Party declared: “Pablo Iglesias is not a Lenin, but it is better for everyone to fight against capitalism in a framework in which Podemos is strong.” While tailing Podemos, which opposes “unilateral” independence for Catalonia, En Lucha in Catalonia works with the Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP—Candidacy for Popular Unity), whose goal is an independent Catalan government headed by the two main bourgeois parties there.

The Language Question

The question of language policy has been a major flashpoint for Castilian chauvinist reaction in Spain. The minority languages were officially repressed by the state under Franco. The 1978 constitution imposed Castilian (Spanish) as the official language of the state, which all have the duty to know. If you were to believe the chauvinist hysteria, Spanish is supposedly under threat and Spanish speakers are victims of terrible discrimination in Catalonia. That this is a complete fiction is confirmed by the fact that 99 percent of the population over the age of 15 in Catalonia can speak Spanish (with a literacy level of 95 percent). In Catalonia, most people also have facility in Catalan. Some 80 percent can speak Catalan, and Catalan literacy is at 60 percent.

The Madrid government’s sponsorship of a 2012 education reform bill that aims to recentralize education powers, foster religion and “Hispanicize” Catalan pupils prompted mass protests. The Catalan regional High Court ruled in 2014 that 25 percent of a school’s curriculum must be taught in Castilian Spanish if a single pupil requests it. This amounts to a naked attempt to impose Spanish-language instruction in schools in Catalonia. Similar policies are being pursued in the Balearic Islands.

The autonomous region’s language “normalization” law of 1983 gave Catalan privileged status in education, state administration and the media. In the mid 1990s, Catalonia began to provide primary and secondary school instruction exclusively in Catalan, with a few hours of Spanish language and literature a week. The 2006 statute of autonomy stipulated “the right and obligation to have a sufficient oral and written knowledge of Catalan and Castilian upon completing compulsory education.” The same statute asserted that it was a “duty” for people living in Catalonia to know both official languages, Catalan and Castilian.

A major concern of the Catalan Generalitat was to ensure that second-generation immigrants learn Catalan. There were two large waves of immigration to Catalonia in the postwar period—the first in the 1950s and ’60s from other areas of Spain and another several decades later from Latin America, East Europe and North Africa.

As Marxists, we warn against those who seek to divide the working class on the pretext of defending a particular “national culture,” which as in Catalonia inevitably discriminates against other nationalities. Thus, today an essential condition for getting a job in the public sector in Catalonia is knowledge of Catalan. We are against the imposition of any official languages. We demand equal language rights for all! We are for a public, secular, ethnically integrated school system with full provisions for instruction in Spanish, Catalan and other languages as needed by the local population. These rights apply to speakers of Arabic and Romanian as much as to those whose native language is Catalan or Castilian.

Forge a Leninist Party!

Lenin stressed that “the national programme of working-class democracy is: absolutely no privileges for any one nation or any one language; the solution of the problem of the political self-determination of nations, that is, their separation as states by completely free, democratic methods” (Critical Remarks on the National Question [1913]). Through adherence to such a program, the Bolsheviks were able to rally the working people—Russians, Jews, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Ukrainians, etc. —to overthrow the rule of the capitalists and landlords in October 1917.

The national question is today posed with burning intensity in Spain. Championing the independence of Catalonia and the Basque country provides an acid test of the ability of any workers organization in Spain to oppose its own bourgeoisie. Those parties that have betrayed the proletariat in the past, such as PSOE and PCE/IU, not surprisingly are now lined up behind the Spanish capitalists in seeking to maintain the “unity” of the Spanish bourgeois state, which many times over has had the blood of the workers and oppressed nationalities on its hands.

The terrible economic crisis ravaging workers and the poor in Spain and elsewhere cries out for workers revolution and the establishment of a soviet federation of workers republics in the Iberian peninsula, part of a Socialist United States of Europe. The crucial instrumentality for this is a Leninist-Trotskyist party, which must be built as part of the fight to reforge the Fourth International. Such a party will incorporate dearly purchased lessons from Spain’s own history, particularly those laid out by Trotsky and his comrades in the 1930s on the need for proletarian independence from all bourgeois forces.

Stand Out Against Drones: No Killer Drones! No Spy Drones

When: Wednesday, May 6, 2015, 12:00 pm to 2:00 pmWhere: M.I.T. • 77 Massachusetts Avenue • Main Entrance • Cambridge

U.S. drones have killed thousands of innocent people - most recently two hostages, one American and one Italian, both aid workers in the middle east.
We will read the names of victims and protest MIT's connections to the weapons industries and the kind of research that develops these terrible weapons.
Sponsored by United for Justice with Peace.

United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice. Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP today.
info@justicewithpeace.org	617-383-4857	www.justicewithpeace.org

Please, Please, Please Mister Brown, Mister James Brown

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Fritz Jasper, the crazy lazy ex-record, CD, and video store owner (before the big Blockbuster and Tower Record-type chains blew him away and who were subsequently blown away by Netflix and Amazon on-line type operations so that many brick and mortar operations like his and theirs became passé), had been talking to his lawyer, Sam Lowell, whom he had known since back in college when they shared the same dorm floor at Boston University at 700 Commonwealth Avenue, about how music had changed, or rather more correctly how music had moved on to other forms while their tastes stayed essentially the same, since they got wound up in their mutual love of Motown/soul/blues/James Brown music.

Back then more than one dorm floor mate, and not a few girlfriends, looked askance when blaring from their stereo would come that high heavens James Brown beat that one could not exactly trace but which got to some primordial truth, and if they were a little drunk (or later when drug-of-choice became the “in” thing) they would unabashedly try to make their lily white asses put on some “funky” primitive James Brown moves. Moves so primitive and basic that James had picked them up by accident and discarded when he was about sixteen. Yeah, plenty of people looked askance and with good reason when Fritz and Sam went on their James Brown binge. Of course even guys, white guys, with serious moves like Mick Jagger, a guy with some definite James Brown moves on the concert stage paled when the heat went up and James was in please, please, please high dudgeon.  

All this talk by Fritz coming from that traditional Fritz place as Sam well knew, that seemingly never-ending need to trace the roots, the roots of what James Brown was all about, all about what for lack of better name became the genre of soul music. They had started out just like lots of guys just liking the music, the beat. That never-ending need to know roots addiction had been the legacy of their late friend Peter Paul Markin who had been on that BU dorm floor the first two years of school before he got caught up in the doings out in San Francisco in the great Summer of Love, 1967 and left school which shortly thereafter got him a trip to Vietnam courtesy of the United States Army which he never talked about much but which both men had believed right until the end that he had never gotten over and which caused him to go over the murky deep end in the late 1970s.

Markin, who loved James Brown as much as they did although not as demonstratively when drunk, always seemed to have about two thousand facts in his head at any given time about any given subject, including James’ roots in gospel, in blues, hell, going back to someplace in ancient Mother Africa. In his hometown of North Adamsville not far from Boston Markin had a reputation among the guys he hung out with for always having those damn facts to counter any argument, right or wrong. Usually right. Frankie Riley and Allan Johnson the guys who knew him best, knew him from junior high school dubbed him “The Scribe” in high school and that name got tabbed on him at BU once Fritz found out from Frankie at some dorm party Markin threw Freshman year.  

Sam, Fritz and Markin had all agreed, agreed once Markin “won” his argument about the roots that drove James Brown’s music that he was “boss” not just because he was the “godfather” of that soul music they devoured but because when he came on the scene in the 1950s with Please, Please, Please he brought something new to the American songbook. Not classic rock and roll, no way, no way it fell into the Elvis/Chuck/Bo/Buddy/Jerry Lee mix, as Markin was at pains to announce one night when they had had too much cheapjack Southern Comfort some rummy or wino had purchased for them at Jimmy’s Liquor Store in Kenmore Square once he got his money from them for his own bottle of some cheap wine. It was a different beat that he produced and that they grabbed onto. Surely not folk, no way although that genre too had its roots devotees including Markin for a minute (Sam never could abide that stuff but got dragged for that minute by Markin when he “discovered” some old Delta blues guys and hokey white mountain music guys he had heard on some radio show on Sunday night). Not be-bop jazz then in its heyday through the bad boys of “beat,” none of those things but something more primitive, good roots primitive, going back to some mist of time Mother Africa beat that got passed on through the generations to Mister James Brown. So that was how rooted he was, that roots stuff was the stuff that was running through James’ brain as he tried to take that beat in his head and make people jump, to celebrate, at first mainly blacks down South and then once white kids got hip to his sound the whole freaking world, the world that counted anyway.           

So Sam and Fritz freaked out (an old “hippie” term Sam still used from his 1960s days when he got dragged, no that was not right, he went willingly with Markin on a few hitchhike trips to California during the summer breaks and after Markin got out of the Army and Sam had graduated got caught up in the whole counter-cultural scene out west. Fritz worked the summers so was never washed by that Markin travelling on the road breeze) when a serious James Brown movie, Get On Up, produced almost naturally by the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger who owed James some serious debts came out in 2014. They both eagerly looked forward to seeing the film, did so, did so twice in fact. Freaked out to see how Markin had had it right from the biographical flash-back scenes interspersed with the music presented in the film about Mister Brown’s sense of musical roots.

They also picked up another thing that Markin, like James minus that damn Mister James Crow southern racist anti-black thing a boy “from hunger” who only had gotten into BU as a special student with a scholarship based basically on guys who showed promise but were “under-achievers” in high school, had mentioned back at BU that it had been a very close question about whether an uneducated (formally anyway) black kid growing up in the post- World I South, out in the country, in the countryside outside of Augusta, Ga, an Army town as Markin well knew having gone to basic training at Fort Gordon located there (oh yeah, and the town where the then very white Masters Golf Tournament only is held Markin, who in early high school had been a caddie so knew about that Masters bit too), to a derelict and ill-fit mother and wife and child beating father  would make it to twenty-one never mind becoming a world famous celebrity. (Markin always carried a certain doomed “half Mick, half mountain hillbilly” sense about himself in his morose moments, unfortunately, which proved too true in the end).

But see Mister Brown carried that beat in his head, carried it right to the end and he never let go of that notion. Of course there are many stories about musical performers who almost had it but for some ill-omened reason fell short so some luck was involved. Finding a big time friend, Bobby Byrd, who got him out of jail and also a guy who knew enough to latch onto James’ wagon and go as far as he could with him despite his own considerable lead singer dreams and plans. Being at the right place at the right time when the first record producer insisted to his bewildered boss that he knew what he was doing by letting James let it rip his own way on Please, Please, Please and the rest is history.  Although not without the problems of keeping high-strung musicians satisfied, drugs, financial difficulties, martial problems, and loss of friends and fellow performers for lots of reasons, mainly because he was number one and there was no number two really in his company. No question Mister James Brown had a very clear perception of who he was, how he wanted to handle everything from finances to his image and stage presence that came through in the actor who played Brown Chadwick Boseman’s performance.          

After the second time Fritz and Sam had seen the film in downtown Boston they went to a Starbuck’s to compare notes about things they might have missed the first time. It was there that Sam made a couple of personal points not directly connected to the film but since James Brown had been part of the scenery of the life of their 1960s generation they can be tacked on here. First a few years after James Brown released his Please, Please, Please in the 1950s Sam had been at a junior high school dance at Myles Standish in Carver where he had gone to school the DJ played that song and Sam, spying a girl he had been eyeing all night until his eyeballs were sore, went over to her and lip-synched James’ song and it worked. Second, years later in the late 1980s when the comedian Eddie Murphy had started his “Free James” campaign at a time when Brown was in jail Sam had been working with a group of young college students whom he had assumed would not necessarily know who James Brown was when he shouted out “Free James” to see if he would get any reaction. Jesus, all of a sudden there was a hall full of college kids picking up the chant shouting back “Free James.” Yeah, get on up.          

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Once Again On The 1960s Folk Minute-The Cambridge Club 47 Scene

 

 

 

Joshua Breslin had not been the only one who has recently taken a nose-dive back in time to that unique moment from the very late 1950s, say 1958, 1959 when be-bop “beatnik” complete with beret and banter was giving way to earnest “folkie” in the clubs that mattered around the Village (Gaslight, Geddes), Harvard Square (Club Blue, Café Blanc) and North Beach (Ernie’s, The Hungry I) to the mid-1960s when folk music had its minute as a popular genre. The best way to describe that turn, by way of the late folk historian Dave Von Ronk, was that earlier in that period, especially the period after Allen Ginsburg’s Howl blew the roof off modernist poetry and Jack Kerouac’s On The Road had the Army-Navy surplus stores cleaning out their rucksack inventories, when “beat poets” held sway and folkies were hired to clear the room between readings he would have been thrown in the streets if his voice and quirky folk songs did not empty the place. But then the sea-change happened and Von Ronk would be doing three full sets a night and checking every folk anthology and misty record store recordings to get enough material. People may dispute the end-point of that minute like they do about the question of when the turn the world upside down counter-cultural 1960s ended as a “youth nation” phenomenon but clearly with the advent of acid-etched rock (acid as in LSD, blotter, electric kool aid acid test) by 1967-68 the searching for and reviving of the folk roots that had driven many aficionados to the obscure archives like Harry Smith’s anthology, the recording of the Lomaxes, Seegers and that crowd had passed.

As an anecdote, one that he would use whenever the subject of his own sea-change came up, in support of that dateline that is the period when Josh stopped taking his “dates” to the formerly ubiquitous home away from home coffeehouses which had sustained him through many a dark home life night in high and later when he escaped home in college, cheap poor boy college student dates to the Harvard Square coffeehouses where for the price of a couple of cups of coffee, expresso then a favorite since you could sip it slowly and make it last for the duration and rather exotic since it was percolated in a strange copper-plated coffee-maker, a shared pastry of unknown quality, and maybe a couple of dollars admission charge or for the “basket” that was the life-support of the performers you could hear up and coming talent working out their kinks, and took them instead to the open-air fashion statement rock concerts that were abounding around the town. The shift also entailed a certain change in fashion from those earnest flannel shirts, denims, lacy blouses and sandals to  day-glo tie-dye shirts, bell-bottomed denims granny dresses, and mountain boots or sneakers. Oh yeah, and the decibel level of the music got higher, much higher and the lyrics talked not of ancient mountain sorrows, thwarted love, or down-hearted blues over something that was on your mind but to alice-in-wonderland and white rabbit dreams, carnal nightmares, yellow submarines, satanic majesties, and wooden ships on the water.             

Some fifty years out others in Josh-like fits of nostalgia and maybe to sum up a life’s work there have been two recent documentaries concerning the most famous Harvard Square coffeehouse of them all, the Club 47 (which still exists under the name Club Passim which traces its genealogy but to that Mount Auburn Street spot in a similar small venue near the Harvard Co-Op Bookstore off of Church Street).

One of the documentaries put out a few years ago (see above) traces the general evolution of that club in its prime when the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Rush, Eric Von Schmidt, the members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band (the forming of jug bands, a popular musical form including a seemingly infinite number bands with the name Sheik in them, going back to the early 20^th century itself a part of the roots revival guys like Josh were in thrall to), and many others sharpened up their acts there. The other documentary, No Regrets (title taken from one of his most famous songs) which Josh reviewed for one of the blogs, The American Folk Minute, to which he has contributed to over the years is a biopic centered on the fifty plus years in folk music of Tom Rush. Both those visual references got Josh thinking about how that folk scene, or better, the Harvard Square coffeehouse scene kept Josh from going off the rails, although that was a close thing.        

Like about a billion kids before and after Josh in his coming of age in the early 1960s went through the usual bouts of teenage angst and alienation aided and abetted by growing up “from hunger” among the very lowest rung of the working poor with all the pathologies associated with survival down at the base of society where the bonds of human solidarity are often times very attenuated. All of this “wisdom” complete with appropriate “learned” jargon, of course figured out, told about, made many mistakes to gain, came later, much later because at the time Josh was just feeling rotten about his life and how the hell he got placed in a world which he had not created (enforced when questioned by one Delores Breslin with Prescott Breslin as a behind-the scenes back-up) and no likely possibilities of having a say what with the world stacked against him, his place in the sun (and not that “safe” white collar civil service job that Delores saw as the epitome of upward mobility for her brood), and how he didn’t have a say in what was going on. Then through one source or another mainly by the accident of tuning in his life-saver transistor radio, which for once he successfully badgered to get by threatening murder and mayhem if he didn’t when all his corner boys at Jimmy Jack’s Diner had them, on one Sunday night to listen to a favorite rock and roll DJ that he could receive on that night from Chicago he found a folk music program that sounded interesting (it turned out to be the Dick Summer show on WBZ, a DJ who is featured in the Tom Rush documentary) and he was hooked by the different songs played, some mountain music, some jug, some country blues, some protest songs. Each week Dick Summer would announce who was playing where for the week and he kept mentioning various locations, including the Club 47, in Harvard Square. Josh was intrigued, wanted to go if only he could find a kindred for a date and if he could scratch up some dough. Neither easy tasks for a guy in high teen alienation mode.           

One Saturday afternoon Josh made connections to get to a Red Line subway stop which was the quickest way for him to get to Harvard Square (which was also the last stop on that line then) and walked around the Square looking into the various clubs and coffeehouses that had been mentioned by Summer and a few more as well. You could hardly walk a block without running into one or the other. Of course during the day all people were doing was sitting around drinking coffee and reading, maybe playing chess, or as he found out later huddled in small group corners working on their music (or poetry which also still had some sway as a tail end of the “beat” scene) so he didn’t that day get the full sense of what was going on. A few weeks later, having been “hipped” to the way things worked, meaning that as long as you had coffee or something in front of you in most places you were cool Josh always chronically low on funds took a date, a cheap date naturally, to the Club Blue where you did not pay admission but where Eric Von Schmidt was to play. Josh had heard his Joshua Gone Barbados covered by Tom Rush on Dick Summer’s show and he had flipped out so he was eager to hear him. So for the price of, Josh thought, two coffees each, a stretched-out shared brownie and two subway fares they had a good time, an excellent time (although that particular young woman and Josh would not go on much beyond that first date since she was looking for a guy who had more dough to spend on her, and maybe a “boss” car too).

Josh would go over to Harvard Square many weekend nights in those days, including sneaking out of the house a few time late at night and heading over since in those days the Red Line subway ran all night. That was his home away from home not only for cheap date nights depending on the girl he was interested in but when the storms gathered at the house about his doing, or not doing, this or that, stuff like that when his mother pulled the hammer down. If Josh had a few dollars make by caddying for the Mayfair swells at the Carver Country Club, a private club a few miles from his house he would pony up the admission, or two admissions if he was lucky, to hear Joan Baez or her sister Mimi with her husband Richard Farina, maybe Eric Von Schmidt, Tom Paxton when he was in town at the 47. If he was broke he would do his alternative, take the subway but rather than go to a club he would hang out all night at the famous Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford just up the steps from the subway stop exit. That was a wild scene made up of winos, grifters, con men, guys and gals working off barroom drunks, crazies, and… almost every time out there would be folk-singers or poets, some known to him, others from cheap street who soon faded into the dust, in little clusters, coffee mugs filled, singing or speaking low, keeping the folk tradition alive, keeping the faith that a new wind was coming across the land and they, Josh, wanted to catch it. Wasn’t that a time.          

URGENT: Calls Again Needed to Save Mumia's Life! Stop the attempted murder of Mumia through medical neglect! Keep the pressure on!
HEAR Mumia’s 26 April message thanking the movement!		Please call these numbers and any other numbers you have for the Prison and the Governor. (Dialling code from UK for the USA is 001.  Pennsylvania is five hours behind London.) John Wetzel Secretary, Department of Corrections ra-crpadocsecretary@pa.gov 717-728-4109 717-728-4178 Fax 1920 Technology Pkwy, Mechanicsburg PA 17050 John Kerestes Superintendent SCI Mahanoy 570-773-2158 x8102 570-783-2008 Fax 301 Morea  Road, Frackville PA 17932 Tom Wolf PA Governor 717-787-2500 governor@PA.gov 508 Main Capitol Building, Harrisburg PA 17120 Susan McNaughton Public Information Office PA DOC Press secretary: 717-728-4025 smcnaughton@pa.gov
Mumia's Condition Grave Take Action NOW!
On Friday, April 24, Mumia Abu-Jamal was visited by his wife, Wadiya Jamal, who reported that his condition has worsened. She saw him again on April 25 and he appeared even more gravely ill.  Everyone is asked to call the prison and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections immediately. Please continue to call on throughout this week. Mumia was released from the prison infirmary three days ago even though he was in no condition to be in general population. His request to be seen by independent medical specialists was denied by the PA Department of Corrections. Yet he is in need of 24-hour care and supervision. He is too weak and in this state he may not be able ask for help.
Please call the numbers listed.  Along with Mumia's name his prison number is AM 8335.  Call local news sources in your area that would report on this crisis. Share this email with your contact lists. Get out the information via any social media you use especially Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #MumiaMustLive. Demand that prison officials call Mumia’s wife and his lawyer Bret Grote to discuss his condition. Demand that Mumia Abu-Jamal see a competent doctor of his choice immediately, that he be taken to the hospital for emergency care and not be left to go into a diabetic coma.
It is clear that Pennsylvania prison officials are intent on carrying out their plans to murder Mumia through medical neglect. This situation is urgent.  Every call matters.  Every action matters.  Call your friends, your neighbours. We must speak out now before it’s too late. For more information: Free Mumia, Move organization, Campaign to Bring Mumia Home, International Action Center and Mumia’s Facebook.
Circulated  by: Women of Colour Global Women’s Strike & Payday men’s network

 

 

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Artists’ Corner-

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists, Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the hide-bound Academy filled with its rules, or be damned, spoke the pious words of peace, brotherhood and the affinity of all humankind when there was sunny weather), those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society in its squalor, it creation of generations of short, nasty, brutish lives just like the philosophers predicted and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gazebo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man, putting another man to ground or laying their own heads down for some imperial mission.

They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course. 

And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, beautiful poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and dreams, and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e. cummings who drove through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors sprayed with blood, man blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones, and broken dreams, like Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as they marched in formation leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly mown grass in their thousands as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of them, in those freshly mown grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all sputtering in his words confused about what had happened, suppressing, always suppressing that instinct to cry out against the hatred night, like old school, old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful old English pastoral sentiments before the war and then full-blown into imperium’s service, no questions asked old England right or wrong, like old stuffed shirt himself T.S. Eliot speaking of hollow loves, hollow men, wastelands, and such in the high club rooms on the home front, and like old brother Yeats speaking of terrible beauties born in the colonies and maybe at the home front too as long as Eliot does not miss his high tea. Jesus what a blasted night that Great War time was.  

And as the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, artists, beautiful artists like Fernand Leger who could no longer push the envelope of representative art because it had been twisted by the rubble of war, by the crashing big guns, by the hubris of commanders and commanded and he turned to new form, tubes, cubes, prisms, anything but battered humankind in its every rusts and lusts, all bright and intersecting once he got the mustard gas out of his system, once he had done his patria duty, like speaking of mustard gas old worn out John Singer Sargent of the three name WASPs forgetting Boston Brahmin society ladies in decollage, forgetting ancient world religious murals hanging atop Boston museum and spewing trench warfare and the blind leading the blind out of no man’s land, out of the devil’s claws, like Umberto Boccioni, all swirls, curves, dashes, and dangling guns as the endless charges endlessly charge, like Gustav Klimt and his endlessly detailed gold dust opulent Asiatic dreams filled with lovely matrons and high symbolism and blessed Eve women to fill the night, Adam’s night after they fled the garden, like Joan Miro and his infernal boxes, circles, spats, eyes, dibs, dabs, vaginas, and blots forever suspended in deep space for a candid world to fret through, fret through a long career, and like poor maddened rising like a phoenix in the Spartacist uprising George Grosz puncturing the nasty bourgeoisie, the big bourgeoisie the ones with the real dough and their overfed dreams stuffed with sausage, and from the bloated military and their fat-assed generals stuff with howitzers and rocket shells, like Picasso, yeah, Picasso taking the shape out of recognized human existence and reconfiguring the forms, the mesh of form to fit the new hard order, like, Braque, if only because if you put the yolk on Picasso you have to tie him to the tether too.          

And do not forget when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary human clay as it turned out sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….           

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