Summary:
1. National or international tasks of the proletariat
2. The socialist revolution and the right of the nations to self-determination
Any socialist revolution carried out in a country is part of the World Revolution and cannot be considered as a magnitude closed in itself, but as a step, a means to accelerate the triumph of the proletariat throughout the whole world, because the communist revolution can only win as a world one. From this comes the duplicity of tasks, national and international, which the revolutionary proletariat has to undertake; this is the base on which the international proletariat rests. This is the way to establish a mutually benefiting action: by making the revolution in your country the imperialist front is weakened and we contribute to disperse their forces, favouring the revolutionary process in other countries; at the same time, the struggles and victories of the different revolutionary forces are to the advantage of the successful advance of the revolution in the country where the proletariat has succeded in seizing power from the bourgeoisie.
However, as we have been confirming, in the European revolutionary movement there is not always a just relation between the national and international tasks of the proletarian revolution. Thus, while ones eliminate the national tasks as if they were contrary to the achievement of the internationalist mission of the working class, others forget the international context of the revolution and of its socialist character, and by doing this, they reduce the proletarian internationalism to a kind of solidarity among the peoples of Europe. In short, both tendencies hide, in practise, the main contradiction that exists between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in each developed capitalist State; they substitute it by the contradiction between the "international proletariat" and the imperialist bourgeoisie in one case, while in the other they replace it by the contradiction between oppressed people/oppressor nation. And if the main contradiction is hidden, the question of the revolutionary strategy and tactics, the problem of the alliances, the tasks of the proletariat and the very conception of the proletarian internationalism will be totally diluted and distorted. Otherwise, both tendencies also coincide in that they do not take into account the neccessity of the independent organization of the working class and the leading role of the Communist Party.
The explanation of the fact that such mistaken interpretations have arisen interest on the revolutionary forces of the imperialist countries, has to be looked for mainly in the particularly difficult conditions in which the present European revolutionary movement has arisen. The revisionist degeneration, promoted and speeded after the 20th and 22nd Congress of the SUCP (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), left the proletariat completely unarmed ideological, politic and organically. The reformism of the old socialdemocracy was reinforced with the destruction of the communist parties carried out by revisionism. Using the prestige acquired by the communist resistance to nazi-fascism, the revisionists lended themselves to spread their damaging influence among the proletarian masses; task in which they were favoured by the postwar economic growth and the subsequent promotion by the bourgeoisie of a numerically important working-class aristocracy.
Apart from some countries like Spain (where due to the permanence of fascism and the scarce socialdemocrat and revisionist influence as a consequence of our civil war, the working-class movement has started its reorganization in spite of many difficulties), in most of the imperialist metropolis the revisionism and the socialdemocracy still maintain a considerable influence among the masses. But this situation starts to change in the 60's due to the development of important struggles carried out by the most combative and youngest sectors of the industrial proletariat, to which other non-proletarian layers of the population confronted with monopolism have joined. From this moment, important sectors of the student and proletarian youth, as well as the progressive intellectuality, have stood out in the struggle against the over-exploitation, the fascistization of the State, the national opression and the imperialist aggressiveness. The tide of struggles that took place in May 1968 and those in solidarity with the heroic Vietnamese people, and the great victory which put end to the criminal yankee aggression marked deeply to a whole generation of revolutionaries.
Undoubtedly, in that revolutionary awakening of the masses the struggle maintained by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party against the revisionist conceptions had a decisive influence, as well as his valuable contributions - in spite of being so many times distorted or interpretated in an oportunistic way by many of the so-called "marxist-leninist parties" that proliferated!!! all over the metropolis. Nevertheless, the ideologic and political confussion has been the dominant guideline in the European revolutionary movement, although it has not prevented, in spite of all the difficulties and handicaps, the progressive development of the revolutionary struggle as an objective need opposed to the economic crisis, and to the growing fascistization present in all the imperialist States, stimulated by the heroic example of the struggles for the national liberation of the oppressed peoples.
The fact that the new revolutionary movement suffers from serious limitations, due to its inter-clasist character and the subsequent ideological amalgam provocked by it, does not prevent it from playing a first-order role in the fight against imperialism and the reformist and oportunistic tendencies. Due to all these reasons we can not start - as some parties and organizations that call themselves communists do - from a frontal and discrediting criticism, because we are convinced that if this new revolutionary movement persists on the struggle, after some time the revolutionary conceptions of the proletariat ended up prevailing in its ranks and the line favourable to the reconstruction of the party finally will prevail.
The general crisis which affects all the capitalist system is aggravating all the social contradictions and it is natural that all those sectors which join the struggle also contribute with their conceptions and prejudices. "Those who expect the `pure' social revolution -in Lenin's words- will never see it [...] The socialist revolution in Europe cannot be another thing but an explosion of the mass struggle of each and everyone of the oppressed and discontent. Unavoidably, sectors of the petty-bourgeoisie and of the less advanced workers will take part in it -without their participation the mass struggle is not possible, no revolution is possible- contributing with their prejudices, their reactionary fantasies, their weaknesses and mistakes. But, objectively, they will attack the capital; the conscious vanguard of the revolution, the advanced proletariat, performing this objective true of the mass struggle of different origins and objectives, variegated and aparently dismembered, will be able to unite and lead it, conquer the Power, seize the banks, expropiate the trusts, hated by everybody (although due to different reasons) and apply other dictatorial measures, that constitute in its whole, the overthrowing of the bourgeoisie and the victory of socialism, victory that will not be able to purge inmediately the petty-bourgeois scum"(1). Hence, we must not forget that only the proletariat, leaded by its vanguard detachment, the Communist Party, is able to guide sucessfully all that revolutionary tide; it is the only class able to join, clarify politically and lead consequently all the exploited and oppressed towards the overthrowing of the bourgeoisie and the settlement of the socialist society. Hence, we can neither admit the attempts of basing the theory and the practice of the proletarian internationalism on conceptions and strategies which are alien to its ideology.
The confussion present in the communist ranks in and out of Europe and the present dispersion of the revolutionary movement, as well as the aggravation of the inter-imperialist contradictions and the increasing of the revolutionary struggles in all the fronts, make more necessary than ever to work to establish new forms of international organization which play essentially the role played in the past by the international workers associations. But in order to achieve this it is unavoidable to develop the ideologic struggle to separate the true communist and proletarian conceptions from those which are nothing but mere distortions of marxism and expression of the petty-bourgeois conceptions and fantasies. It was not by accident that Lenin said "Undoubtefully, in order to create an international marxist organization it is essential that in the different countries should have forces ready to create independent marxist parties"(2). It is obvious, on the other hand, that the non-existance of this international forum and of those communist parties must not be an obstacle to the debate, the exchage of experiences or the mutual help. We would be advancing in the tightening of the ties among the international revolutionary proletariat.
Nowadays, when the generalized crisis of capitalism in more and more sharpened under the leadership of the USA, and when they take agreements and establish plans in order to front the revolutionary movement, the internationalist dimenssion of the proletariat revolution is more evident. But the problem raises, as we have been saying, when coming to understand the proletarian internationalism. This is the case of the ones that propose that the main enemy of the proletariat in the European capitalist countries is the imperialism and, particularly, the yankee imperialism. Consitent with their approach, they even consider as an "utopic pretension" trying to "free the 'own' land from the imperialist chain" and they inforce the creation of a single organization of the European proletariat -with a politic and militar character- which adopts a common strategy and tactics. In general, to come to these conclusions they rely on the tendency of the imperilaist integration, which is emphatized by the NATO and the EEC. Let's take some of their argumentations. "In the phase of crisis and tendency of the war -they affirm- the Multi-national Capital is recomposed against in the central territories against all the class contradictions which raise there, and it uses all its forces to develop in each particular territory". At the same time, the insist that "the proletariat in the metropolies must be considered as a unique class, spread on different territories, but sharing the same fundamental characteristics"(3). Although these affirmations are not completely false, among other things, some fundamental questions are put aside such as the uneven development of the proletariat -and therefore, of the revolutionary forces- and the existance of inter-imperialist contradictions generated by the very competitive character of the capitalist system.
Undoubtively, to overthrow the capital as an international force, the union of all the workers in the world is necessary; and it is necessary because its class enemy is international, as well as the conditions of its liberation. Only in this way, as Lenin said, can we interpret Marx's words on the lack workers lack of mother country, and only in this sense can the proletariat be considered as "a unique class, spread on different territories". It is true that capitalism tends towards the integration and the proletariat towards the unification, but that is only a tendency which cannot be absolutized putting aside the uneven development of capitalism. Insofar as the proletariat develops, seizes power and avances in the process of the construction of socialism in each country, the basis wiil be set for the vanishing of the national differences of the proletariat. In Marx words: "The workers do not have home country. What they do not possess cannot be taken from them. But, inasmuch as the proletariat must on the first place seize political power, raise to the condition of national class, constitute a nation, is is still national although, certainly not in the bourgeois sense. The national isolation and the antagonisms among the peoples diappear day after day with the development of the bourgeoisie, the freedom of trade and the world market, with the uniformity in the industrial production and the conditions of existence which corresponds to it. The dominion of the proletariat will make then disappear even sooner"(4). Due to this, the international character of the struggle of the proletariat is not in contradiction with the accomplishment of its national tasks, but it presuposes them as something necessary for the achievement of its international mission. This was also the sense of Lenin's words when he spoke on the unity of the international tactics: "While the national and statal differences among the peoples and countries still exist -and these differences will subsist long time after the instauration of the dictatorship of the proletariat at a world scale- the unity of the international tactics of the communist working movement of all the countries will require, not the suppression of variety, not the suppression of the national particularities (which is, nowadays, an absurd dream), but the such an application of the fundamental principles of communism that will correctly modify these principles in their details, that wiil adopt them, that will correctly apply them to the national nation-statal particularities"(5).
The proletarian internationalism in its development has gone through several stages. In each of them the solidarity of the working class has had a characteristic content and has accomplished the most urgent tasks which were presented to the revolutionary world movement. It was the internationalist the ones that, during the I World War denied all their help to their bourgeoisies and they contraposed a revolutionary civil war to the robbery war; they were also the ones that did not deny the support to the first socialist country, renouncing to some partial achievements, when it had to face the siege and the nazi-fascist aggression. But today, when the field of the conquests has grown considerably, when it is not a question of preserving a conquest as it was before -in which the defense of the USSR was a prioriatian international task-, the contribution of the revolutionary proletariat is to make the revolution in its own country and contribute to the to its triumph all over the world. Precisely now, when the conditions cannot be bettered, due to the fact that imperialism is drawing back and it is harassed everywhere, it is the best moment to put into practise what for the classics of marxism is a basic principle of internationalism: to make the revolution in each country. "There is only one effective internationalism which consist of devoting to the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle within each country, of supporting this fight (by means of progaganda, with moral and material help), this line of conduct and only this one in all the countries without exception"(6).
As we have previously pointed out, those who consider that the socialist revolution is not possible in each country in Europe do not take into account the uneven development of the imperialist countries nor the very conditions in which the struggle of the proletariat develops in each European country. "The financial capital and the trusts do not attenuate -as Lenin said- but they stress the difference between the rhythm of growing of the different elements of the world economy"(7). That is the objective base which invalidates any conception that tries to maintain the thesis of the "ultra-imperialism". In fact, monopolism tends to the world trust, but this tendency is subject to such conditions, conflicts and conmotions of all kinds that before we come to an "ultraimperialist" integration of all the national finantial capitals, imperialism will have inevitably exploded and will have transformed itself into its contrary. Hence, elaborating a revolutionary strategy or a new conception of the proletarian internationalism, based on something which does not exist and will never exist, will mean to build castles in the air. What are these unions "on the top" but castles on the air? These unions put aside the main task that must be carried out by the European revolutionaies, which is to reconstruct the Communist Party and organize the working class creating a powerful revolutionary mass movement in each country. Without putting emphasis in these objectives, all the revolutionary strategy is doomed to failure since it is not based on marxism-leninism, nor on the experiences of the international communist movement, nor on the particular reality of each country nor mainly on what should be its main base: the proletariat, or to be more precise, the industrial proletariat; a proletariat that in most of the European capitalist States is subject to the reformist influence. And the task of the communists is more necessary since the struggle against monopolism is an interclassist struggle and there exist a tendency to confound the proletariat with all those social groups which fight in a more or less consequent way in its side; not to speak of the ambiguous and confounding concept of "metropolitan proletariat", in which are even included the non-proletarian working layers of the population and even the lumpen. With such ideas, it is difficult to identify what the classics of marxism have been understanding by proletarian internationalism.
Another subject in which the defenders of the "simultaneous revolution" in Western Europe base themselves are the preparatories of war which are being carried out by the NATO. Of course, it is not going to be us the ones that deny the fact that the imperialists, in order to get over the crisis they are undergoing, dream of recovering the ground they have lost and of finding a way out of the crisis through the war on a large scale nor arewe going to deny that those preparatories are addressed mainly against the USSR and the socialist countries. But from this position, to the fact that these plans can be really put into practise, there is a long way. The existance of three fronts in the struggle and the general crisis which the imperialist system is undergoing, when it is only a weak link, are enough reason to dissuade the aggressors of any adventure of these proportions without exposing oneself to the nuclear hecatomb or digging your own tomb. Mao saw it clearly in 1946, when the II World War had just finished and when the field of the revolution was even weaker than today: "The forces of the world reaction and the danger of a war do exist. But the democratic forces of the peoples of the world have surpassed the reactionary ones and they are still advancing: they must, and undoubtedly they are able, to surmount the danger of the war"(8). It is clear that if it were not for the fact that, fortunately, the front of the socialist countries is a powerful reality -notwithstanding the problems and backwardness which have occurred in many countries- long time ago that "war between the East and the West", that is is foreseen by many, would already have taken place. Therefore, subordinating, at this stage, the revolutionary strategy to the outbreak of a possible imperialist or inter-imperialist war and its transformation into a revolutionary civil war is nothing but the less probable of the hypothesis, due to this it would be a mistake to submit to it the revolutionary strategy. On the other hand, it will be very difficult to prevent an imperialist war only by means of sporadic guerrilla actions, no matter how successful and important they are, if the revolutionary vangard does not break with the militarist schemes and takes root in the working masses. Precisely this is the fear of the bourgeoisie that is centering its contra-revolutionary strategy in their respective States in preventing the link of the revolutionary organizations with the masses. In spite of the fact that the weakness of the European communist movement is evident, the reaction starts to be more worried about defending itself of the first outbreaks of the revolutionary struggle in their countries, than in taking a war outside their own borders. Not to speak of haw they are going to react in the moment when that weaknes changes into a greater strength... Hence the best way to impede the imperialist war and sharpen to own inter-imperialist contradictions is to develop a powerful revolutionary mass movement and make the revolution in each country.
Achieving this will not be an easy task nor short in time, but it will be the result of a protracted people's war. The organization and the armed struggle won't be enough either, and definitively, the independent organization of the proletariat and the reconstruction of the communist parties destroyed by revisionism will be necessary. This is the most urgent task in which the European communists have to centre our efforts at the same time that we have to work to tighten the internationalist links and we advance in all the fronts of the revolutionary struggle, included, of course, the front of the armed resistance, spearhead of the revolutionary struggle against the monopolist State and imperialism.
In the hat of the aggravation of the social contradictions, in some European countries the national question is regarded as a burning problem which affects to ample sectors of the population. Although this kind of struggles and the very contradictions in which they develop are not comparable in many cases (it is not the same the national liberation struggle of the Irish people as the one of the Basque people against the national oppression or that of the Corsican people), in general, they present a series of common features such as their inter-classist character, their confrontation to the imperialist policy and domain and the carrying out of armed struggle, following the models of the national liberation movements of the colonial or depending countries in Asia, Africa or Latin America. From that follows their popular,anti-imperialist and revolutionary character.
However,we cannot forget that these popular movements, since they lack a proletarian leadership, are to a great extend influenced by the petty-bourgeois ideology, mainly in Europe. The organizations that lead these movements try to present their way of carrying out the armed struggle as the only way of reaching socialism affirming, as some nationalist organizations in Spain do, that "the statalist strategies are counter-revolutionary"(9). Such theories, which advocate for the division of the proletariat in each State according to their nationality, have nothing to do, although they try, with the position of the proletarian internationalism. To affirm that the socialist revolution in Europe must necessarily go though the so-called national liberation struggles without taking into account that we are in the times of imperialism and that the socialist revolution means trying to make history go back to the stage of the democratico-bourgeois revolution or to equal in a subjective way the situation of the oppressed nations in Europe to that of a colony or a dependent semi-feudal country.
If there exists a European nation which still suffers the feudal tie and that complies with those conditions, that nation is Ireland; and even so, the Irish patriots must, necessarily, take into account the new situation. In this sense, it is illustrative to study the two positions maintained in the Irish liberation movement which in fact, are nothing but a reflection of the conceptions that, in general, have been maintained about the national problems in the revolutionary movement of the metropolies. As Jim Lane, leader of the IRSP, affirms: "Sinn Fein looks at the national independence as its main objective. When we analyse a situation from a socialist point of view, they do so from a republican-nationalist one, which, ceirtainly, leads to take into account first the nationalist considerations over the main interests of the working class"(10). In this sense, J.Conolly, founder of the first Irish marxist party, the ISRP declared: "If tomorrow you would defeat and eliminate the English army and you would hoist the green banner on Dublin castle, your efforts would be void unless you would also instaure the socialist republic. If this were done other way, England would lead you through its capitalists, its landowners its financers, through all its institutions comertial and private and will cultivate and water this country with your mothers' tears and the blood of your martyrs"(11). His words would be fully confirmed some years later with the formal independence of the largest part of the Irish territory which was, in fact, turned into a British neo-colony. But if there is something that also gives relevance for some time to the Irish example, it is the importance that for the Irish full independence and socialist revolution has the internationalist solidarity of the British proletariat. The lack of this active solidarity explains to a great extend the permanence of the British domain after so much wasted heroism. And if the solving of the Irish national problem is closely linked to the struggle for socialism, to the struggle of the proletariat of the metropoli against the bourgeoisie, then so it has to be in the oppressed nationalities within each imperialist country.
Let's have a look at the Spanish case. Our country is one of the multinational States of the capitalist Europe where the national problems have a decisive importance in the struggle against the Spanish fascist oligarchy and for the future of the socialist revolution. Unlike other countries in which the democratico-bourgeois revolution could "solve" -at least temporarily, with respect to the bourgeoisie- the national question, in Spain the problem has been aggravating since a revolution of this type has not taken place and due to the permanence of fascism. The Basque Country, Galicia and Catalonia -except the cases of the Canary Islands or Ceuta and Melilla which are the remains of the old Spanish colonial empire in Africa- are nationalities oppressed by the fascist Spanish State. However, in those nationalities the bourgeoisie has abandoned long time ago the independentist flickleness when it integrated in the heart of the oligarchy, and therefore the proletariat is the only class which is interested and can solve once and for all the problem of the national oppression. On the other hand, with the monopolist development, the proletariat in these nationalities has extraordinarily increased, being the Basque Country and Catalonia the most industrialized areas in Spain, with the particularity that they have a great number of working non-autochthonous population. In this way, the existance of strong ties of coexistence and solidarity among all the proletariat, forged in dozens of years of struggles, and the very process of present struggle tend (notwithstanding the attempts that the bourgeoisie is making the break it into pieces) to the most tight union in the struggle against the common enemy: the capitalist monopolist State. Hence in our case we have always advocated for the formation of a unique Communist Party of all the proletariat of the nationalities of Spain and for the most close struggle of all the peoples of Spain against the monopolist capitalist and imperialist Spanish regime.
Nowadays, in the motropolies where there exist oppressed nationalities, the most urgent task of the communist must be to achieve the grouping of the vangard of the proletariat in a single Party to make the socialist revolution. This is the only way to make effective the full equality of rights of all the national minorities and to make true the right to self-determination of the oppressed nations, that is to say, the right to the free politic separation. "The communist of the oppresor nation must carry out a task of propaganda of the differenciating fact of the different peoples that are integrated in the State and of the existance of the national oppression; they must develop a constant work of internationalist education of the masses based on the respect to the national differences as well as to their right to elect freely their own destiny as a nation, their right to separate, to constitute as independent States; on their side the communists of the oppressed nations also have to start from the internationalist class positions, from the interests of the proletariat as a whole, and also establish firmly in their tasks of propaganda and agitation that not only once the State had been overthrown and through the socialist revolution could the right to self-determination be effective, advocating for the tightest and most fraternal union of all the nationalities in their struggle against the common enemy (the bourgeoisie and its State) and for the creation of a unique Communist Party"(12).
This double activity of the communists constitutes the only way of integrating in the same struggle the internationalist duties of the proletariat together with the vindications of the national popular movement; it constitutes the only way of agglutinating the different forms of the class struggle in a single movement oriented to the destruction of the capitalist system, to the realization of socialism and, obviously, to put an end to the national oppression. As Lenin pointed out already in 1916: "The socialist revolution is not a single act, it is not a battle in a single front, but a entire epoque of exacerbated class conflicts, a long series of battles in all fronts, that is to say, in all the matters of economy and politics which can only culminate in the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. It would be a great mistake to think that the struggle for democracy can separate the proletariat from the socialist revolution, or atenuate this, etc. On the contrary, in the same way that it is imposible to have a triumphing socialism that does not implant the complete democracy, it is also imposible that a proletariat which does not sustain a multiple struggle, consequent and revolutionary for the democracy gets ready for the victory over the bourgeoisie"(13). And it is in this sense that the communist must defend the right to self-determination as one of the basic vindications of political democracy.
Nowadays, it is very umprobable -all the accumulated experience proves so- that the nations oppressed within the frontiers of the imperialist States accede to the sovereignty on their own, from a localist perspective, without the concurrence and the closest union of all the proletariat of the different nationalities that conform each State without its overthrowing. This means that the old projects of the nationalist bourgeoisies, now assumed partly by the petty-bourgeoisie, are impossible without destroying at the same time the States which are strongly centralized and militarized. At most the national struggles led by the petty-bourgeoisie can reach a situation of "ulsterization", that is to say, to maintain an isolated focus of parmanent rebellion and to illusions of "counter-power", "liberated quarters", etc...
As long as the proletariat does not assume the resolution of the national problems which capitalism has left unsolved -which can not be solved under this system-, and as long as there is no political leadership in the struggle against the State, the nationalist movements will be advocated to the impasse in which they are for a long time. Conscious of that, the communists at the same time that they defend and support the consecuent struggle for the right to self-determination of the oppressed peoples, for the democratic vindications of the national minories and the independence of the colonies, they show their disagreement with all those that, in one way or other, propose the creation of national liberation fronts and the elimination of the role of the working class as a leading force, as well as its division for the profit of the petty-bougeoisie which tries to defend its interest in view of the risk of its disappearance as a class. The only way that would permit the oppressed nationalities of Europe accede to the right of self-determination and to the proletariat of the oppressed nations reach socialism, necessarily goes through the closest union with all the proletariat of each State and the formation of a unique Communist Party to carry out the overthrowing of the power of the bourgeoisie. There is no other way.
Notes:
(1) V.I.Lenin: "Balance of the disccusion on self-determination".
(2) V.I. Lenin: "Socialism and War".
(3) Direct Action: "A revolutionary task, the international struggle", published in "L'Internationale", number 9, July-August 1984.
(4) K. Marx-F. Engels: "Communist Manifest".
(5) V.I. Lenin: "Leftism Childish disease of Communism".
(6) V.I. Lenin: "The tsaks of the proletariat in our revolution (Project of platform of the proletarian party)", September 1917.
(7) V.I. Lenin: "Imperialism, superior phase of capitalism".
(8) Mao Zedong: "Some appreciations on the present international situation".
(9) Documents of the II Congress of HASI (People's Revolutionary Socialist Party).
(10) Interview with Jim Lane, "L'Internationale", number 6, April 1984.
(11) "National question and Social Revolution in the countries oppressed by imperialism", edited by OCML "Voie Proletarienne"
(12) "Class struggle and national movements in Spain", edited by PCE(r).
(13) V.I. Lenin: "Socialist revolution and the right of the nations to self-determination"