Strategy and tactics; political class and unity (XXXIII)
XXXIII – Strategy and tactics; political class and unity
Iñaki Aginaga and Felipe Campo
I
The policy – all political reality: like its warlike and juridical species – is the determination of social behaviour by means of violence. Violence is the specific means of policy. So, policy and non-violence are incompatible: without violence, there is no policy.
It is impossible to differentiate one policy from another one by their means, that is: by the presence or absence of violence, because, however different their ends may be, they all use the same means. The distinctions that could be established between democracy and despotism, between the defensive action and the aggressive action, between the “good” violence and the “bad” violence, are completely irrelevant in this respect: violence is violence, and therefore all behaviours involving violence are – ontologically – seamlessly identical, as regards the nature of such a means.
The “non-violent democrats” advocate non-violence and democracy at the same time; but democracy is the political power of the People, namely: its violence. It is possible to stand, without contradiction, “against all violence coming from where it may come”; but it is not possible to stand at the same time in favour of the political ways: “legal, legitimate or democratic” though they may be or pretend to be, since all of them involve violence. A non-violent policy is a contradiction in terms, a vacuous attempt against all formal or general logic, a hypocritical denial of the most evident reality, whose consequences are always suffered by the weak and the helpless. There is no possibility for establishing an opposition between a violent policy and a non-violent policy. A policy can be opposed or not to another one; but it cannot, without formal contradiction, be opposed to violence.
Yet despotism, imperialism and fascism do not consist simply of violence: they consist of criminal Violence, exercised in violation and persecution of fundamental human rights and above all of the right of self-determination or independence of Peoples. Democracy (demo-kratía = power of the people) is also a “cracy”, and therefore does not consist of non-violence: it consists of violence, the same as any political régime.
The distinction between the democratic policy and the despotic one, as far as their respective resource to actual or virtual violence is concerned, is established:
a) qualitatively by their respective ends. When they are democratic, violence is licit since it is exercised in defence of the fundamental human rights against those who seek to violate them, and above all in defence of all Peoples’ right of self-determination or independence: first of fundamental human rights and precondition of them all, according to International Law formulated by the United Nations. And when the ends are despotic, violence is criminal since it is exercised for the destruction/violation of those rights. And
b) quantitatively by the differential doses: respectively controlled or uncontrolled, which occur in both systems.
Now then, the essence of the political activity is strategy. Without such implication, the various expressions of human activity that have society as their object may well constitute either moral judgments, science, art or literature, but not policy. All policy is constituted as such by a strategic reference: without strategy, there is no policy. The strategy is constituted as a dynamic expression, motor and consequence of the rapport between the social forces in presence. The preservation or modification of this rapport: in one’s own benefit and to the detriment of the adversary, is the object of the political activity; everything else is music of fair.
In the absence of a strategic framework of reference, all purported policy of democratic opposition to the established despotic power turns into chaotic accumulation without sense: neither theoretical nor practical. Once it has been integrated under the strategic conditions of the imperialism and fascism, the potential energy of such an infrastrategic “policy of opposition” gets dissipated into “persuasion and dialogue, alliances, institutional pathway with elections, very positive conferences, dialogue tables and historic opportunities”; into sterile performances and turmoil, demonstrations and “general” strikes of demonstration, real or symbolic hunger strikes, individual attempts, silly and costly uproar and protests that are very dearly paid, imaginary peace negotiations and processes, consultations to know the opinion over consultations to decide over it is not known what etc. etc. And in the meantime the years and centuries pass without fundamental alteration of social relations.
All policy implies a strategic structure of ends and means, which does socially produce, maintain or modify the rapport of forces on which it is founded. The nature of that policy: either it be progressive or reactionary, depends on its actual outcome. Only the strategicmodification of the rapport of forces in favour of the popular classes constitutes the reality of political progress. The strategic ends and means do mutually imply and constitute each other: the ends constitute the means; the depth of the ends does condition and produce the extension of the means. All social group, either it is capable of realizing itself as an agent in this dimension, or else suffers an inescapable process of widespread liquidation.
In policy, the mere will of the Peoples counts for nothing unless they are able to constitute the force: strategically structured, with which they can achieve their will. The People that – as a basis and structure of its behaviour – renounces to the strategic imperative, or that lacks its own strategy, does inevitably adopt the strategy and make the policy of imperialism and fascism; the rest is verbiage.
Without strategy there is no policy, and the purported Basque political class: formed by the liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta and its satellites and branches, for more than forty years at least it’s not that it is having a misguided strategy, the question is that it does not have none except that of the established imperialistic power. All the popular virtuality of the Basque People has been ruined by cultural, ideological and political backwardness, primitivism and under-development, thanks to the decisive contribution of the “moderate and radical”, armed and unarmed institutionalists.
Without strategy there is no tactic either: the tactical choices, which only in the strategic approach do exist, disappear with the ruin of this one. Only an opposition strategically different from the imperialism allows to fight it from within and from without, “legally” and illegally. A strategy with some authentic content can to a greater or lesser extent be wrong; but its own dynamics and its effect: ideological and politically integrative, are already an invaluable advance over the absence of strategy.
The imperialistic Nationalism and the Fascism can only be combatted with democratic forces: wherever they are, with elections or without them; but always through a coherent, permanent and consistent ideological and political oppositionof strategic level. If the democratic opposition forces do not exist, or if – even if they exist – they cannot or do not want to attain a strategic level, then they can be combatted with nothing. Yet, the maintenance of a permanent and sterile agitation: with all its disastrous cost in terms of a tragic sequel of repression and general economic and social ruin of the oppressed People, is the ideal scene for the unscrupulous or the incompetent rabble-rousers, who have decided to establish their ‘modus vivendi’ by exploiting the illusion that it is possible to combat the imperialistic Nationalism and the Fascism with an infra-strategic opposition, which is therefore totally useless.
It is precisely what we have in our Country: an infra-strategic opposition to the French-Spanish nationalist, colonialist and fascist Imperialism led by the incompetent and/or treacherous Pnv-Eta bureaucrats, which does ineluctably emerge as such from the very moment in which the French-Spanish régime of military occupation on the Basque People and its State, the Kingdom of Nabarre, has been recognized as non-violent, non-Nationalist, legitimate and democratic; which is what such liquidationist bureaucracies have been doing from 1977-79 up to the present day.
The Peoples and the Nations do only mobilize themselves for purposes that deserve their effort. For a subjugated People and under the conditions of an imperialistic and colonialist régime of military occupation (whether it be in Ireland or in Algeria, or in the American Colonies, where the terrorism of the colonists and the Founding Fathers gave rise to the current USA), the national independence is an end that – as can be understood – does encounter natural difficulties in the aggregation of means, until the necessary social resources are gathered. Yet, arduous though it may be to make this effort of aggregation, there is no alternative that can save it, since the abandonment of this end implies the liquidation of democratic policy and ideology, of the international right of self-determination or independence, and of the policy of national freedom.
The Basque People will – perhaps – mobilize itself with a similar difficulty for the restoration of its historic State against the French-Spanish National-imperialistic occupation, domination and colonization; but it will never mobilize its forces for a French “department” with a prefect, or for a false, granted, regional and provincial Spanish “autonomy”. The Peoples do mobilize themselves for great causes and at all events for national Freedom; they don’t do it for humiliating dishes of lentils.
There is no a differentiated political class but as an organ of a strategic function. In the absence of an autonomous strategic expression and function, the organ responsible for implementing it: the political class, either it ends up atrophied or degenerated. Without strategic function nor principles, there is no political organ; and without strategic organ nor function as a first condition, there is no other policy than that of the ruling régime. Without strategy there is no policy or tactics, there is only ideological charlatanism, bureaucratism, corporatism and political decomposition. There is no agent or political Parties of one’s own, either; and under these conditions the so-called official political class becomes necessarily an ideologically and politically integrated part of the imperialistic structure of domination. In such a situation, the purported political parties are corporations that try to exploit for their own benefit the conditions of the imperialist order in which they were born, and that they have accepted and assumed.
For their part, the new professional “specialists and politicians” do only have as such ones the sums they charge and the privileges they enjoy; they have thus obtained, so far, the compensations that their condition needs and the populist move requests. With the help of these impostors, and as a consequence of modern “democratic decentralization” of the Spanish fascist imperialism in the Second Francoism, everything that was outside the totalitarian control has passed to be within it. Successive initiatives, variants and parliamentary and extra-parliamentary, governmental and judicial appeals: either local or continental, do eternally prolong the same state of affairs; to which these phoneys that present themselves as politicians, are submitting their administered and victims.
The truth and the reality of a political régime are not founded nor revealed in the “upper echelons” of the administrative bureaucracy and its protocolary ceremonies, nor in the parliamentary speeches, nor in the ministerial statements or in the contributions of the “cultural” services and the officially recognized Parties and Trade-Unions. They are founded and exposed in the composition and the material activity of the repressive bodies, and in the “edifying”, unambiguous and aggressive statements of principles that accompany them. Exclamations such as “Let’s come for them”, or “This is putting an end with the pro-independence campaigners once and for all” (just two examples of a constant manifestation of hatred, aggression and contempt towards the subjected Peoples, thus recognized as different), are the banal, honest, lucid and sincere expression-confession of a genuine and effective national and political conscience of the French-Spanish imperialism, and leave a little place to the illusionist and spiritualist ideological intoxication of its military, civil, or ecclesiastical propaganda services.
Without a strategic resistance to the fascist imperialism, the democratic opposition and human rights disappear, since fascist legality, on the one hand, and democratic opposition/human rights, on the other, are contradictory terms. The strategic sense of the existing norms and institutions depends on the rapport of forces, which determines the real powers that be: from the Parliaments to the repressive bodies. Fifty years of delusions, ravings and fraudulent propaganda of the armed and unarmed institutionalists, have had to pass before the “concessions” and ambiguities of the intra-totalitarian transition of Francoism: opportunely denounced from the very moment of the Pact of Munich (1962), have appeared in the eyes of everybody in their true content. (Naturally not of everybody, and inevitably it is necessary to leave aside the purported and irremediable official “political class”: the former “lehendakari” Garaikoetxea, after having collaborated in the first, is still urging the Country from the mass media “to undertake a second transition with determination, courage and democratic spirit”.)
The first need for an enterprise of opposition to the imperialism consists of the formation of a strategic agent capable of altering the political basis that founds the present imperialistic régime of military occupation; and the first condition for this is to start from the affirmation – not from the denial – of that régime as imperialist and fascist. In a situation like ours, there can be no one so foolish as to ignore in good faith the general reality of the occupation régime and – consequently – the conditions demanded by a strategic opposition in line with the reality of the forces in presence; nor so naive as to believe, in good faith, that he lives in a Country “where the armed forces do not exist and where there is no room for criminal violence” (when the occupation régime is based precisely on them), or that its twofold Francoist Party – both in the traditional version of the Pp and the transitive version of Falange-PsoE, along with their respective offshoots – is a truly democratic party. Yet, with a bit of “goodwill” (?) and a lot of bad faith, one can believe whatever he wants to and suits him better, which is what the liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta does. Naturally, this can be good for different purposes, but not for opposing the imperialism.
All defence of violated fundamental rights involves “legality and illegality”. Indeed, in the struggle for freedom under the imperialism and fascism, we cannot afford to be confined to remain either in “pure” legality or in “pure” illegality. Now then, their mutual integration can only be structured in the strategic systematization: without their prior strategic integration, legality and illegality do not mutually combine, complement or support but destroy each other.
Without a strategic base, the opposition degrades itself and ranges between collaborationism and attempts. The “armed struggle”, the “revolutionary war”: which is a complement – not an alternative – to “the institutional path” – is reduced in reality to the increasingly symbolic, difficult, expensive and exceptional attempts, which hide the reality of the terrorist, imperialistic and fascist Violence of the occupying State. The institutional opposition and the “armed struggle” do initially begin with the “tactical” and ideological opportunism, and are resolved in the covering-up and apologia of State Terrorism, imperialism and fascism.
The administrative or “autonomous” institutions can be and have sometimes been appreciable tactical instruments in the strategy of the self-determination processes. The so-called autonomy “allows a Nation: which is being maintained by means of violence into the boundaries of a given State, to definitely constitute itself as a body of a nation, meet itself, learn to know and organize its forces, [and] choose the most appropriate moment to declare” the independence. But it can only occur where and when, insofar and inasmuch as more or less democratic and representative institutions do translate, redound and serve “the living wave of the popular will, which bathes, penetrates, directs them”, as “all historical experience shows us”. “We can then witness now and again the funniest skips in the ‘representatives of the People’, who, suddenly encouraged by a ‘new spirit’, make hear completely unexpected accents.” Without the Resistance of the Peoples: which goes beyond the action of the institutions, the democratic opposition and human rights disappear, since the totalitarian legality and its institutions are the closed antithesis of democracy, opposition and human rights.
Neither is there any possibility of external alliances or negotiations, if they are not based on the own resources and on an autonomous strategic alternative. Apart from them, we won’t have any other policy or ideology than those of the real imperialistic system of domination, and we will have to keep trembling whenever the word “tactics” is pronounced in this Country. In the world in which we live, there are no tricks, shortcuts, detours or solutions of easiness that allow the popular forces to make the economy of a strategic line in compliance with the reality of the forces in presence: a line that is inseparable from the general democratization of the political and ideological institutions; or that allow them to escape the unavoidable exigency of attaining a qualified development of the own basic resources.
The strategic qualification is the only possible way out for the subjugated Peoples, that is: the creation of a system of ends and means inscribed in the structural rapport of forces, and able to modify it in their own favour through an opposition of strategic level. Liberty or death is really the only alternative remaining for them. The decisive factor lies in the own capability or in the own incapability of the oppressed People to develop secondary structures: ideological-political; and to adapt them to its primary resources and conditions: which are the social forces of base, with the strategic qualification of the latter as a result. In the absence of that qualification, the future of that People will continue to be problematic.
But the bureaucratic mentors of the officially approved “opposition”: the liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta, not only do they have no the slightest idea of how to carry out or promote such a task: they have not the slightest intention nor the least desire to do it either. They would put an end, if they did so, to the privileges, exemptions, sinecures, honours and benefits that for the last forty years they have been enjoying and have made enjoy to their clientele. All this, obtained in fair reward for the services rendered in the stabilization, consolidation and legitimization of the “new” régime; in the ideological conditioning and intoxication of public opinion; in the destruction of all freedom of expression; and in the sabotage of the strategy and institutions of the democratic forces. As long as those accomplices, collaborationists and companions of route will remain to be useful – albeit unpleasant – servers for the occupation régime, there are no serious indications for them to fear that the fruitful set-up can be interrupted. As far as they are concerned, it’s enough to just hear its local spokespersons making sure that they will not save efforts so as to move away from such a disastrous eventuality. And it would be naïve to believe that any ideas and wills expressed on an individual level, or spontaneous impulses of unqualified masses, could change this state of affairs.
II
All despotism makes sure for itself: sometimes after centuries of wars, occupation, exclusion and colonization (through the plantation, trans-plantation and supplanting of populations), the monopolies of violence, information, deculturación, indoctrination and permanent ideological intoxication of the subjugated Peoples, alienated thenceforth from early childhood; as well as the administrative control of the production and distribution of resources. They are set up thus the despotic State and its afferent “legality”, which its propaganda services: in the creation/establishment of the dominant ideology, describe as “the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical violence within a given territory”. (Max Weber.)
Having done the French-Spanish imperialism all this for centuries against our People and our legitimate State, the Kingdom of Nabarre: with aggression, dismemberment and annexation of its Territories and the abolition of our State institutions; and after the integration of the purported “Basque intelligentsia and political class” – formed of the liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta, its branches and satellites – into the imperialistic régime of the Second Francoism from 1977-79 until today, this task of ideological intoxication etc. has been reinforced since then with the local mass-media pre-identified as “Basque”: both the press as well as the Spanish radio-television that they call “euskal irrati-telebista”. From these mass-media it is daily hammered on the Basque People: with the voices and faces of these local collaborationist agents, the ideology of the French-Spanish imperialism, of its régime and State; accepted and presented by them as “the régime and State of our own, non-Nationalist, non-violent, legitimate and democratic”.
Starting from there, modern imperialism and fascism do - periodically and almost constantly - call for "elections" according to their ideological and political needs. And, of course, in an imperialistic, colonialist and fascist régime of military occupation the "elections" are won by the system that organizes them: "the rules of the game" are established for that purpose and changed whenever necessary, the people who vote are those that the monopoly of criminal Violence and propaganda want them to, and it is voted what they want to, when, the way and where they want to; all of which implies starting from the untouchability of the imperialistic régime and the acceptance of its premises and its entire ideological system as "legitimate, democratic" etc. Those who pretend that things are otherwise, all they seek - or in any case do objectively favour - is to deceive the Peoples, divert their efforts, ruin their resources, and incapacitate them for the tasks that the real situation of imperialistic domination imposes on them.
[On this issue of "the elections", see our article ‘“Elecciones” totalitarias bajo el imperialismo, o la falsificación de la democracia’.]
Things are quite clear and do not leave a place for misrepresentations: under the conditions imposed by the imperialistic régime of military occupation, confronted to reaction and fascism, either the forces of democracy have strength, or they do not have it. If the democratic forces are real, they come out with their own strategy, distinct and without confusion. They enlarge and exploit the slightest possible contradictions – even functional, superficial or isolated – existing in the Nationalist and Fascist reaction, instead of creating the conditions for their remedy and the subsequent integration of the “right-wing”. Similarly, in their strategy against Fascism and Nationalism “coming from wherever they may come”, they focus and emphasize the difference – strategically and tactically capital – between the main contradiction and the secondary contradiction, rather than reverse or confuse them. They therefore deepen and highlight the structural, fundamental and permanent contradiction between the forces of reaction, on the one hand, and the forces of freedom, democracy and human rights, on the other; and consequently they affirm both the exigency of the fundamental right of self-determination or freedom of Peoples: first of human rights and precondition of the rest of them, as well as the demand for immediate independence of their legitimate States from the imperialism. They do not dilute, do not integrate themselves in strategic or tactical voting, demonstrations and deployments of the imperialistic and fascist reaction: admitted as “democracy” etc.; or in the face of the first scarecrow or retardant competitor of Mussolini that the current and real despotism waves before its scapegoats.
On the contrary, the purported and auxiliary “democratic and left-wing” forces: which spread the panic before the appearance of the “extreme right”, do hide and displace the main contradiction existing between the forces of reaction and the forces of freedom and democracy, by getting involved and focusing on the contrary in the apparent internal and functional “contradiction” between the forces of the right-wing themselves: either extreme or traditional; with which they recuperate for imperialism the democratic forces, by deviating them from their true objectives and integrating them into the totalitarian system of domination. A political class that is worthy of the name does lead a social group forward, does not pull it back up to make it disappear, as these false democratic forces do.
That’s how – plunged into their drift – the armed and unarmed “Basque institutionalists” of our Country: from the Pnv to the Eta, did in 1977-79 join the imperialism and fascism in power in order to reduce any attempt of resistance, simple information, criticism or self-expression; while insulting, persecuting and slandering in addition (by calling them “eladios”, Basque opus-dei, agents of the Cia etc.) those who sought to implement a consistent democratic political line. They have backed since then the fascist régime of military occupation by means of their participation in its imperialistic “elections” and institutions, with the abandonment of any strategic opposition; and by means of their votes and their deputies and senators: “democratically elected” – as they say – according to the rules dictated and imposed by the State Violence and Terrorism, they have stabilized and enshrined it as “democratic, legitimate, non-Nationalist and non-violent”. They have thus located themselves in a full apologia for Francoism and in the exaltation of State Terrorism. Because, as it is evident, only in a genuine democracy – and not in the mock that the imperialism presents as such – can we have democratically elected representatives; and the democratic imperialism and fascism are contradictory in terms. Their usual formal hypocritical reserves to justify themselves: on the purported “democratic deficit, because no régime is perfect”, or “the vindication of historical rights”, and their false “denunciation” of a non-existent “state of emergency” etc. which hides the absolute fascist normality (with the attempts as an excuse), they all are tricks that only deceive those who want to be deceived.
The armed and unarmed “Basque institutionalists”: parties of the ideological and political abandonment and betrayal, have led their followers to the darkest despair, periodically torn by delirious accesses of collective euphoria that prepare the successive and increasingly deep depressive phase. They have handed over the People and the Country that they claim to defend, tied hand and foot, and have put them to the free-disposition and hetero-determination of the States which are impatient to end with them at all costs. They support the monopolies of violence and propaganda; do actively and directly participate in the repression in full agreement with the armed forces of military occupation, which they describe as democratic and non-violent; persecute the freedom of expression and information; and enhance the sabotage of the strategic Resistance to the occupation. They ask forgiveness for the damage caused to imperialism, and condemn “all violence coming from where it may come” that opposes the imperialistic and fascist criminal Violence: the constituent of the war of aggression and the monopoly of imperialistic armed forces.
The Basque People endured with remarkable firmness (mainly thanks to the spontaneous popular resistance, socially embodied, and to the strength and abnegation of its family cells: isolated and surrounded in an environment of unlimited hardship, repression and terror) an ideological siege of forty years in the general conditions of the archaeo-fascist, primitive and poorly considered régime of General Franco; which was assisted already at that time by the infiltration in our Country of the agents of Spanish social-imperialism. But it bears very badly the much more powerful blows of the Second Francoism in which the whole Spanish political class has been integrated: the modernized, reinforced, assisted, adapted, renewed, deceptive and devious régime in which the Spanish imperialism has managed to transform itself with the support of the indigenous collaborationism.
A primitive People: rustic, childish, naïve, gullible, ideologically poorly armed, weakened in its sense of national identity and dignity, widely ignorant of its historic right and State, morally undermined and diminished, cornered, blamed and on the defensive, abandoned and – in the end – betrayed by its purported political class, it resists badly the new ideological terrorism that accompanies the political terrorism; that is: the avalanche of poisons, the massive doses of narcotic, psychotropic, analgesic, hypnotic, neuroleptic, anxiolytic, analeptic, psychotonic, euphoretic and hallucinogenic drugs that the modern monopolies of criminal Violence and propaganda of France and Spain make daily fall upon it. The armed and unarmed “institutionalist” bureaucracy: from the traditional or official Pnv to its corollary the Eta, is the Trojan pusher-horse of the fascist-imperialistic ideological intoxication in the occupied territories of the Basque People.
Due to its historical, political, geographical and cultural conditions, it was for the Basque People the task to provide the self-determination model adapted to the occupied Peoples of similar characteristics. But not only has it been unable to fulfil its mission; it has also been completely inept at integrating and using the model and experience – either fortunate or unfortunate, as the case may be – of the others. Carried by the hand of the armed and unarmed “institutionalists”: from the Pnv to the Eta, the Basque People has imitated the mythicized, distorted and completely inadequate examples and models that they have proposed to it, rather than to apply those that suit its own characteristics and conditions.
Politically limited and weakened for centuries by the action of the French-Spanish-Roman/Vatican imperialism, its purported ‘intelligentsia’ and political class has proved to be little or nothing able for the strategic implementation and for the maintenance and continuity of its own State institutions: as it’s expected it should be done in the conditions of current international policy. Its low quotient of internal and external aggression limits its capacity for resistance and legitimate self-defence.
As is generally the case with the weak, peaceful and primitive subjugated Peoples, our People tries to delude itself and impress the adversary by concealing and compensating for its insufficiency with attempts and wars lost in advance, heroic adventures, silly and episodic riots, or futile and fatuous outeburst that do weaken it more and more and make it particularly vulnerable; but it proves incapable of understanding and confronting the strategic vision of modern States, and the continuity and perseverance of their hypertrophied Administration.
Other Peoples, as much or even more disadvantaged, have shown the capacity of perception of the political reality, strategic lucidity, spontaneous or mediated swiftness of adaptation, reaction and initiative, and operational articulation of their associative virtuality, which have allowed them to compensate for initial inferiority frequently overwhelming, and to resist aggression with considerable success. But being small, and also stupefied and disturbed by an indigenous intelligentsiaand a political class of incompetent collaborationists and/or traitors, this is more than what a Country can bear. And it’s that anti-imperialistic policy and national independence, on the one hand; and stupidity or mental alienation, on the other, are incompatible realities.
Not even a demographics similar to that of China could resist such a handicap as that of the Pnv bureaucracy and its “moderate and radical”, armed and unarmed satellites. Unable to face the reality, these indigenous puppets of the imperialism contribute to the spreading of vain illusions by all means that the monopolies of propaganda put at their disposition, knowing that the Peoples who do not find out about the world in which they live are a helpless prey of their predators. Starting from that, with this pattern of behaviour, all autonomous and democratic policy is impossible: the existing one is to be suffered, without any possibility of making any other.
A subjugated People that, under the monopoly of violence resulting from war and military occupation (whether foreign or domestic), is not able to face up morally and materially to the reality of imperialism, it has already chosen submission: the first phase of its liquidation. If – preferring illusions to reality – it doesn’t want to or cannot see and face the strategic imperative, nobody is going to do it for it. The submission, in any form that it may occur, has sometimes its advantages; but he who – as basis and structure of its behaviour – ignores or renounces to the strategic imperative, adopts the strategy and makes the policy of imperialism and fascism. To the strategic vacuum ensue the institutional vacuum, and the absence of a real political class of its own.
A People lacking vitality: which cannot or does not want to resist alien aggression and domination, is doomed to be liquidated immediately or after a more or less prolonged period of oppression and humiliation. Its very existence is a cursed existence, which the fascist propaganda begins by denying it in the idea as such an existence, for to better destroy it in practice. The survival of a People is the permanent objective and the main motor of the anti-imperialistic struggle.
The modern dominant States do sometimes propose and leave pathways to a vain hope, which are often enough for containing and dividing the actual or virtual opponent. A People without a credible policy is always prey to the illusions, mirages and “realistic” solutions of easiness that the imperialistic and fascist propaganda arouses. Faced with a radical and uncompromising strategy: which is what does inevitably require having to deal with a Nationalist imperialism that denies the very existence of the occupied People and State, a part of the “opposition” does always prefer “the possibilistic, realistic, safe, comfortable and profitable pathway, without adversaries and without complications” that the power itself offers, much preposterous though it may be. But the reality that corresponds to such illusions and conveniences does not exist.
This “possibilistic pathway”, which – as we will see – is absolutely “impossibilistic”, is expressed with such statements as: “reform, dialogue and negotiation on conditions of equality for all, in the total absence of violence, by exclusively political and democratic ways, in a new scenario without limits nor interferences, from the unity of action of the political and social agents, for setting the implementation of a process of self-determination for whose start is necessary condition the existence of a social climate free of political violence, neither legalized nor of response” etc.; statements that imply the non-existence of the Nationalist, Colonialist and Fascist Imperialism, that is: do assume as already resolved the problems that are to be solved.
Indeed, the “moderate and radical” local supporters and apologists of “the democratic path in the most absolute respect to the institutions and in the absence of any violence” have it very clear that “the solution of the political problems of this Country is in the dialogue”; that, “the same as in the Basque Country, also in the rest of the world the way and the key of the solution are in the dialogue and respect for the sovereignty of Peoples”. Now then, this new “brilliant” contribution of the “moderates and radicals” is going to be of no use to the problems in question, since these ones will not be healed and solved by denying them or supposing them as resolved: either it be with straight or with crooked intention. The fact that the Pnv-Eta propaganda has to resort to pieces of nonsense of this calibre to keep tricking their victims, reveals by itself the degree of mental confusion and political impotence to which they have led the society to which they are pretending to provide solutions and remedies. They can feel satisfied with their service!
As it is evident, however many absurdities may be formulated and accumulated one after the other, so as to conceal or distort the reality and to blind the pathways of action and information, such a way of proceeding has never solved anything. Because imperialism does not consistof “the total absence of violence”, of “the existence of a social climate without political violence”, or of “respect for the sovereignty of peoples” etc. etc. Quite on the contrary, it consists of the permanent military occupation of the subjugated Peoples and States, and of the violation of their fundamental rights and, above all, of the international rightof self-government, independence or self-determination of all Peoples: first of the fundamental human rights and precondition of them all, and of integrity and independence of their States legitimately constituted on the principle of Self-Determination or Independence of all Peoples; fundamental and peremptory rights (‘ius cogens’) that have been recognized – not constituted – as such in the Charter of the United Nations and in numerous and relevant Resolutions of its General Assembly.
However, in a situation of strategic liquidation, a clientele unable to cope with the political reality and its demands does seek, request and accept the ideological illusions that allow it to forget its condition. Responding to such demand for illusions is the ideological function of the “moderates and radicals”, with the decisive support of the fascist monopolies of propaganda and ideological intoxication of masses. The ideological addicts have no remedy, as long as they have their supply guaranteed. An official “opposition” politically and ideologically ruined, such as it is the Pnv-Eta “official Basque opposition”, ensures for free the daily production, distribution and consumption of such a disgusting pigswill. The dependency has already arrived to such an extent that the deprivation and “cold turkey” of the masses do only allow high-risk treatments.
The ones and the others: between the Pnv bureaucracy and the Eta bureaucracy, are dragging along the ground the dignity and honour of this Country, making it impossible the political and ideological restoration and implementation whose bases had been in fact attained long ago. They have ruined the political and ideological resources of this People, which have been sacrificed to the ineptitude and the miserable and petty interests of the “institutionalists and warmongers”.
Between pure “institutionalism” (on one side), and the attempts (on the other), the “mixed-model”: bietan jarrai, is not a combination, an intermediate variant or a tactical trick, it is the inevitable transition for – starting from the abandonment of the attempts – reaching to the adoption of the ends and means of the traditional institutionalist “reformism”: which spares all the fundamental premises of the Spanish imperialistic and fascist régime of military occupation. In this transition, successive collapses, detachments and landslides originate the intermediate spaces and “Parties”, the locks and stopovers of the journey. A permanent and functional institutional service of commuter buses: with food and shelter, acclimatization stations and harbours for passengers, covers the interstellar spaces of local policy; and facilitates, disguises and makes it more discreet and less painful the inevitable round-trip transit between the stations of origin and arrival.
III
“Politics cannot be separated mechanically from organization.” (V. Lenin.)
The absence or deficiency of a political class occurs in many countries: small and great, because the social production of a political class needs of some suitable conditions and of a “social stratum” that rarely arise, even with important limitations. The consequences of an absent or deficient political class, without being necessarily fatal, can be serious even in independent States and in time of peace, where the mere inertia of the Administration: ensuring the normal management of the “ordinary affairs”, makes them less dangerous. Instead, for a Country subjugated by a foreign régime of military occupation: Imperialistic, Nationalist and Colonialist as it is the case in our Country, there is no the least possibility of establishing a policy of national revolution or liberation that is “administratively inert”, since continuing in the inertia of the situation means continuing to make fatal advances along the path that inevitably leads to national liquidation. In such cases, not being able to reverse that inertia: to reverse the march – whether it be fast or slow – towards disaster because of the want of a political class and organization that are sufficiently competent, honest and free from manipulations, is an ever-fatal handicap.
The want of a true political class against imperialism is an endemic evil of this People, which has lacked the historical, social, economic, political and cultural conditions to create one. In such circumstances, and in the absence of a political class of its own, the resulting vacuum produces an area of suction that is filled by a bureaucracy made up of a swarm of incompetents, ignoramuses, upstarts, scroungers, chatterboxes, irresponsibles and exhibitionists coming from all walks of life: refugees “in politics” without even knowing – nor wanting to know – what on earth is that; a rabble who “discover” in themselves a political vocation and destination in the opportunism, the handpicked bureaucratism, the corporatism, the administrative corruption, the collaborationism, complicity and betrayal at the service of imperialism and fascism. If the productive workers – farmers, carpenters, bakers etc. – in the Countries under a foreign régime of military occupation had the technical level corresponding to that of their political class, the conflict would quickly be resolved by a general collapse of production and consumption; but, to our disgrace, a political Party like the Pnv offers unique conditions for characters who in a serious Party would have no other place than the auxiliary services, supposing that someone did trust them. All of them: splendidly paid as professional politicians, are (bad) amateurs by their performances.
No one could properly qualify the purported Basque political avant-garde as such a political class: a true reactionary rear-guard of nutcases, dreamers and chatterboxes, since they are declared agents of the established power. With the auxiliary services of the official Pnv and its armed and unarmed satellites, the French-Spanish imperialism and fascism have an inexhaustible, multipurpose and low-cost deposit of useful fools and lunatics.
The first thing that appears to he who considers the characteristics of the “official Basque political class”: from the Pnv to its satellites and derivatives, it is not that its unpresentable armed and unarmed representatives do present a simple ideological or political deficit; it is not that they simply have a mistaken policy. What can be immediately seen in them is that they ignore the very essence and substance of Policy and Law; that they do not know or want to know what all it’s about, nor do they have any need of it either. The level of their manifestations is that of mental under-development which – properly verified – would deprive them of any approval in any activity other than the one that they do perform, as local auxiliaries and conveyor belts of the French-Spanish imperialism and fascism, and of their political-religious allies. However, and against what their continuous manifestations in the field of policy can induce to believe, the care that the Pnv officials and its satellites provide to their own personal interests does already show that they are not – clinically speaking – mentally retarded or disturbed people; although the consequences for this Country be similar or worse than if they were so.
The local Collaborationists and Accomplices of the imperialism are not, in general, so crazy as to have them locked up, unfortunately for the Country that has to suffer them. About the bureaucrats of the Pnv and its satellites in general one wonders to what extent they are fools, loonies and mentally deficient persons, or outstanding and skilful demagogues and scroungers; whether they feign and lie, or if they lie to themselves due to their wishful thinking; whether they don’t know due to invincible ignorance, or they don’t know because – a very definition of the bad faith – they do the necessary so as not to find out what they do not want to know. The fluid lines that in the Pnv separate the ones from the others are not always easy to determine. The Pnv bureaucrats and their surroundings seem foolish, and they largely are so; but not so much as they seem to be. The same as all the freeloaders of the régime: from the last collaborator up to the Royal family, they have very clear who’s in command here and where is located the – red – line that they are not allowed to cross and that, indeed, do never cross.
Unfortunately, a modern society cannot ignore the difficult and contingent need to produce a political class and a bureaucratic organization of its own: relatively competent and democratically controllable, in order that the Peoples be no longer directed from outside themselves even in their efforts of opposition. The need is all the greater for the oppressed Nation than for the oppressing one, since the latter can make do, impose upon others and even benefit itself from a material of a negligible or despicable quality that, quite on the contrary, would be fatal for the former.
Yet, a political class is a social product that is difficult, rare and expensive to obtain. As it happens with the culture or language, it’s not possible to appoint, improvise or manufacture it with tutorials of Jesuit rhetoric, pre-electoral courses, evening classes and “lessons of high policy” for footballers and other specialists (in which there will enter and from which there will come out Jesuits, footballers and “moderate and radical” electoral candidates: that’s what they all are made for). This while bearing in mind, in addition, that we should take it for solved in all this issue, by begging the question, the annoying problem of determining who is to instruct the instructors. Jumping to policy from “the forward or the goal line of the Athletic” – the same as from the journalism, the ecclesiastical Ministry or another specialty – is something that cannot be achieved by co-optation and a three-week course to prepare “elections” (eminences excepted)
To describe as mediocre the present Spanish political class – to say nothing of the French one – is to do it a favour; but its talents and its stances: although not typical of geniuses (since those are reserved for the Pnv, which has always suffered from over-production of them), do know or perceive at least what the political practice is about, at the service of an Administration endowed with unlimited powers by the Spanish Army, which is the real political class and backbone of Spain since 1812. Instead, nullities, negative numbers and idiots like the ones integrating the indigenous “political class” here, those could have no site in any part; which, unfortunately for us, forces them to confine themselves in this poor Country where they operate as local auxiliaries of the imperialistic real political power.
Already since the early days of “Basque nationalism”, the position of its representatives: limited to the claim of “the autonomy of Euskadi”, came to replace a true national and State democratic institutionalization; which: the same as Finland, Lithuania and the other Baltic States had done since 1917-18, should necessarily have been based – for one hundred years now – on the affirmation both of the right of self-determination or independence of the Basque People, and of therestoration– the continuity, validity and actuality – of our own State: the Kingdom of Nabarre. Yet, none of this was ever done by its leaders despite the voices that warned about it, as there happened with Anacleto de Ortueta since 1931; and this even though President Agirre recognized its need.
On the contrary, and after they had thrown the Country – without preparation, without any possible escape and without having a single effective ally – into a lonely, “unforeseen”, improvised and suicidal war against the Spanish and international Nazi-Fascism of the Axis Powers, the Basque political sub-class ended up recognizing in 1977-79 and up to the present the régime of the Second Francoism and its imperialistic and fascist Spanish State as “the own, non-Nationalist, non-violent, legitimate and democratic” régime and State; then leading the democratic opposition to the dead-end of “the institutional pathway” within the autonomy-trap of a tri-provincial Spanish region that Pnv-Eta and the Spanish régime call “Euskadi”, and to its corollary: “the armed struggle”. All this has resulted in an effective means of conditioning, limitation, fixation, containment, exhaustion, reduction, manipulation, intoxication, recuperation, corruption and demoralization of the Basque popular forces.
But there occurs that, in reality, the supporters of “the institutional path and the armed struggle”, that is: the Pnv-Eta liquidationist bureaucracy and its satellites, do not believe in the Basque People; nor in its historical State internationally recognized for a thousand years; nor in the political capacity of the Basque People; nor in an opposition of strategic level corresponding to the actual rapport of forcesthat this People could perfectly mobilize and present should it was not being blocked by these traitors and their infrastrategic policy, since believing in all this would expose and jeopardize both the system of betrayal and collaborationism with imperialism of which they are a part, as well as themselves in their “capacity” as managers of it, which they fear above all; nor do they believe either in the reality of imperialism that they are hiding/deniying, nor in the Resistance against imperialism.
“Moderates and radicals” have plunged into defencelessness, division, strategic nullity, political putrefaction and ideological and mental alienation the People which they claim to defend, to which they have made believe that all real Resistance: whether legal or illegal, is not only politically but also logically impossible. The result is fifty lost years of lies and vain hopes, to end up returning to the same starting point but in much worse conditions than before. The result is impotence, division and demobilization of popular forces down to a level far below than that of their spontaneous capacity, because the Peoples do only unite and mobilize around projects that correspond to the dignity and fundamental interests of their respective Nations and States. For projects that are contrary to these fundamental premises, the Peoples do not unite and mobilize, they only do decompose. It is the price that this People: which has gone astray and without strategy, has to pay for the illusions and the escapism, the minimalist shortcuts and the maximalist detours that – proposed by the tricksters on duty – it has had the misfortune to assume. Or, in reality, for its “inability” or stubborn refusal to pose the treatment of the political problems in the sole ground that constitutes them: the rapport of forces and their strategic modification in favour of the oppressed classes.
The division and confrontation between its own political base thus become irremediable, because there is no political unity but in strategic function: without this there can be no unity, nor there is any need of it either. “Few times there has been a People so politically willing and united as it was that of the Basque Country. But its leaders have not known how to unite.” This widespread and explicit alien statement seemed to found in the lack of unity of the leaders the source of the strategic disaster. Actually, the strategic liquidation did precede the lack of unity. Indeed, it is not possible to found a political unity without a constituent reference to the strategic unity, nor has any meaning without it, and the institutionalist bureaucracy had already liquidated the strategic base of Basque national liberation policy since the liquidation pacts of Paris (1957-61) and Munich (1962), to end up joining Fascism of the transitive Francoism in 1977-79. Thus, in the absence of that strategic base, the divisions and additional clashes between the own political base – because of the most irrelevant or weak circumstantial or personal reasons – are inevitable, and only show that the strategic destruction and political division had occurred already before.
In such a situation, the calls to unity are empty and hypocritical words: it is better a clear and progressive division than a fallacious and reactionary “union”. (In this regard it is necessary to clarify, in the face of charlatanism – and brass – of those who accuse others of divisionism, that all division is, at least, a thing between two: not even God Almighty can divide by one; but, for these unscrupulous individuals, it is always the others who divide, not themselves.) Now then, the question is to know what is being divided and what for. If the “union” is to do the things wrong, it is better to separate: in such a case, it is precisely this “lack of unity” that allows us to preserve the factors of ideological and political restoration and regeneration. The key to the unity is to establish a strategic basis for it. Because, put another way: upon a relevant political-strategic basis, organic dysfunctions and divisions could still be possible; but without it, division and disintegration are inevitable.
The inevitable “failure” (depending from which side you look at it) of “the institutional path and the revolutionary war” (i.e. the attempts) does strengthen and feed the bureaucratism, corporatism and nepotism, and nourishes the open cronyism and the nude corruption. Every one of them could not care less for the social cost of all this for our Country. Their supporters quickly evolve in phonies, tricksters and opportunists, on the one hand, and gullible and unwary patients which pay the consequences, on the other; yet they can manage to get by so for centuries, while the joint – material and moral – revenues of the bureaucracy and its clientele remain assured.
Undoubtedly, there is something of a childish and rustic depravity in the blindness and stubbornness with which a considerable social group runs towards its own doom, while obstinately persisting in an impassable, ruinous and dead-end path; such as is the one that for more than half a century is being proposed to our People by the liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta and its satellites that form the “official Basque political class”. This path consists in endeavouring on ignoring or rejecting our nterprise of liberation from French-Spanish imperialism, which is only possible through the restoration of our own State, the Kingdom of Nabarre; on admitting quite to the contrary as legitimate, democratic and our own ones the occupying States of France and of Spain, which do officially and “constitutionally” deny the existence of the Basque People as a distinct People, with its own language and its own original and international rights distinct from those of Francespain; and in believing that, within the imperialistic, colonialist and fascist institutions and legislation of those occupying States: structurally constituted upon the denial of our People and State, the survival of the Basque People and its language will be assured with granted “statutes and autonomous governments”, and with “Basque study societies and observatories of linguistic rights”, exhausted and fully recuperated by imperialism, and that the facts make a mockery of them every day.
Inevitably, these stubborn childish or rustic games have quickly been transformed into instruments of confusion, corruption and destruction of the popular forces of the Basque People. Such amusements and compensations have cost here the “joke” of half a century lost – for now – in a catastrophic regression of our policy of national liberation in the face of French-Spanish imperialism, with all its partially or completely irreparable consequences.
One may wonder how a cornered People, which is struggling for its survival, can content itself with passively contemplating the collapse of the only expectation of health that remains (which lies in the National Resistance strategically constituted upon the double national-State affirmation of the Basque People and of its own State, the Kingdom of Nabarre, and in the permanent denunciation and rejection of the French-Spanish imperialistic régime of military occupation), and with hiding its head under the wing and consuming the by-products of consolation offered by its indigenous executioners: the Pnv-Eta bureaucracies and their satellites Ea-Eh bildu-Sortu-Geroa bai and the rest of the “social and cultural” associations/foundations etc. that support them, at least by never denouncing them for what they are; all of them auxiliary local agents of French-Spanish imperialism which they have adopted as a legitimate and democratic régime/State, and their own.
“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” There can be held the greatest doubts and harboured the worst fears about the political will of a society that to such an extent refuses to assume the reality of imperialism, and the inevitable and objective needs of the struggle for freedom. “The beings that do not defend themselves are always the same. They see the abyss to open before them and, yet, plunge in it.”
There are cases in which a reform: apparently and formally institutional, is not really only that, since its true dynamics and meaning come to it from outside the institutions; but in such a situation, the established power is interested in disguising what constitutes a violation and flaw of the institutional system itself. That’s why it presents the engine of the external Resistance as institutional reformism; and the reformist instance, as a revolutionary one: which contributes to the ambiguity characteristic of the institutional act. However, whatever may be the shape, time, rhythm or means that it can adopt, a revolution is not a simple institutional reform but a change of structure: a social, economic, political and ideological change; a transfer of political power. In this sense, an enterprise of national liberation against imperialism and colonialism is always and necessarily a revolution.
Of course, there is no political class or organization that is able to create a revolutionary situation for national independence where the fundamental – social, political and ideological – conditions to do so are missing; yet, even with these conditions existing, an incapable, indecisive, defeatist and corrupt bureaucracy, and a purported political class and vanguard that actually retards absolutely and relatively upon the conscience and demands of the spontaneous popular Resistance (as it’s the case here), are enough in themselves to ruin the most favourable of the ideological-political complexes already extant.
The Peoples oppressed under imperialism can endure many things; but to tolerate as their own a corporatist, incompetent, irresponsible, conceited, corrupt, indecisive, defeatist, manipulated, infiltrated, collaborationist or complicit political bureaucracy, and framed in the auxiliary services of that imperialism as an integral part – ideological and political – of the structure of fascist domination and military occupation that it maintains over the subjugated People and Country, that is a handicap that they cannot afford. And all that is the liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta under French-Spanish imperialism; which these bureaucrats, due to the salaries and shenanigans of treason that they obtain in exchange, have been admitting for almost half a century now as a legitimate and democratic régime and “the State” of their own, according to an incessant affirmation that they do not stop repeating.
The ideological and political eradication of the Pnv-Eta bureaucracy and its satellites is a public health task without which the restoration of the Basque democratic forces is impossible; as forty years of organic, ideological and political disaggregation have demonstrated. Getting rid of the costly, disastrous and sterilizing tyranny of such a bureaucracy: at the same time incapable, rotten and manipulated by the French-Spanish régime of military occupation of our Country that for them is democracy, is the first condition of the democratic recovery for the Basque People.
The political organizations, the same as all, are living bodies: they try to survive, grow, fatten, reproduce and multiply apart from or at the expense of the others. Based on their “current” possibilities and impossibilities, those organizations create a virtual, fiduciary or fictitious sphere; a bubble whose hypertrophy occurs in a balloon: a non-dirigible balloon that grows inflated and expanded so much faster as its walls do stretch, thin out and weaken up to the puncture, consumption or final burst. The political “novae”: without base nor strategic perspectives, are soap bubbles in the real system of forces; even much more so in the French-Spanish imperialistic system established in our Country.
Every People has, to an important extent, the political class which is imposed to it; yet also, in a good measure, the one which it seeks and deserves, and not always the means to face up to it. In any case, there are not individual ideas or wills that will change neither. It would be a mistake and a comfortable escape to believe that the bureaucracy that makes up the Pnv-Eta group and its respective satellites does not correspond at all to its “base”. Quite on the contrary, that two-faced burocratic group does perfectly overlap with the current situation of political impotence, subservience and anulment: which is the situation which it has created and to which it has managed to reduce our Country.
This Country is, surely, the only one in the world where the incapability and failure of its representatives and leaders, and the catastrophes that they cause, do not end up in the eviction or execution by firing of that purported political class but in the exaltation of its “merits” and the confirmation of its functions. With such a fatal guarantee, the Pnv-Eta group has led this Country to disaster, and does not have the slightest will nor the tiniest damned clue of how to get out of it.
[See, in this regard, our article ‘El conglomerado burocrático Pnv-Eta: Agentes para la penetración del imperialismo franco-español entre el Pueblo Vasco’, published on this page on 20-March-2019.]
It is understandable that the dominant ideology tries to obscure the concepts that are needed for this task through all its available mass-media, which are enormous: as much so as it is the capacity of criminal violence which these mass-media are based upon. And even more so if – as is the case – it can use the services of an indigenous “radical opposition” that is volunteered or sold for it, after having assumed the latter all the fundamental postulates of the transitive fascist régime and its imperialistic State: accepted by the Pnv-Eta bureaucracy and its satellites as its “own, non-Nationalist, non-violent, legitimate and democratic régime and State”.
Nobody may invoke – no one expects them to be invoked either – extenuating circumstances or mitigating factors based on good faith or non-guilty ignorance, regarding concepts acquired long since. Here he who is not aware of the facts is because he doesn’t want to. There is no worse deaf than he who won’t hear, nor a greater fool than he who doesn’t want to learn. What is happening today in our Country is the predictable and expected result of the venality and the irremediable theoretical and practical inability of the “Basque” political sub-class in functions; and of its participation both in the strategic system of the French-Spanish imperialism, as well as in its fascist apparatus of corruption and repression of the freedom of expression, information, communication and criticism, in return for paltry but profitable advantages. It is the necessary consequence of the lack: whether it be original or acquired, of any political strategy of liberation against imperialism.
Because of the clique formed by the liquidationist bureaucracy Pnv-Eta and its satellites: Ea-Ehbildu-Sortu-Geroabai etc., the Basque People has lost its best opportunities for making profitable its capacity to implement a real policy of liberation against French-Spanish Nationalist and Colonialist Imperialism; and has wasted and ruined all the sacrifices that for so many years and so many centuries it has consented to preserve its existence. The Basque People: lead at the hand by an incapable and corrupt band that has been supplanting and replacing for sixty years a true Basque political class and its authentic strategic formulation in the face of imperialism (both of which our People either does not know, or in which it does not recognize itself), has once again shown its youth, its cultural and scientific retardation, and its lack of sense and of ideological and political qualification. Therefore, it is high time to return to reality after having lost fifty years in lost illusions.
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