Peoples or Nations: the nationalism (I)
EUSKAL HERRIA AND THE KINGDOM OF NABARRE, OR THE BASQUE PEOPLE AND ITS STATE, AGAINST FRENCH-SPANISH IMPERIALISM
I – Peoples or Nations: the nationalism
Iñaki Aginaga y Felipe Campo
Pro Libertate Patria, gens libera state. (“Remain ready, you free people, so that the homeland be free.” Motto of the Infanzones (Commoners) of Obanos, adopted in the Act of Federation of the Board of Infanzones with the Good Boroughs, against the despotic Government of the Capetian Philip the Fair, consort to Queen Jeanne I of Nabarre. Obanos, Nabarre, 1297. Original in Latin.)
“[...] Scimus, Sanctissime Pater et Domine, et ex antiquorum gestis et libris Colligimus, quod inter Ceteras nationes egregias nostra scilicet Scottorum natio multis praeconiis fuerit insignita, [...]. Quia quamdiu Centum ex nobis viui remanserint, nuncquam Anglorum dominio aliquatenus volumus subiugari. Non enim propter gloriam, diuicias aut honores pugnamus set propter libertatem solummodo quam Nemo bonus nisi simul cum vita amittit.” (From the Declaration of Arbroath, Abbey of Scotland; addressed to Pope John XXII at Avignon, 1320. Original in Latin.)
(“We know, Most Holy Father and Lord, and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find, that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown, [...]. For, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under the rule of the English. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.” Translation compiled by Alan Borthwick.)
The Peoples do resist; therefore they exist. They are not Peoples only because they exist; they are so and exist because they resist: the resistance is their mode of existence. Their very Resistance does itself make that “a People is a People”, identifiable under the imperialistic military aggression, occupation and Terrorism; and – in passing – brings ridicule upon the condescending “theoretical superiority” of some doctrinarians of the historical materialism and the so-called scientific socialism.
The failure of some doctrinarians to understand the Peoples’ rights and to admit – let alone vindicate! – their national independence has been historically a functional adaptative consequence of their innate and “natural” Nationalism, as members that they were – sometimes adoptive, after having disowned their own one – of nations whose imperialistic character they were also incapable of perceiving and much less of posing. And this is so because the fact of starting from this new approach implied the re-definition of their reductionist dogmas about the class struggle understood merely as a domestic-national phenomenon, to come to see it as an inter-national conflict in the cases where the imperialism of these metropolises had established itself over other Peoples and States that they were subjugating and exploiting, and whose national independence they denied and fought. However,
“Imperialism is a perennial problem of human existence; for powerful nations and individuals inevitably tend to use the weak as instruments of their purposes. [...] A class war: originally designed for industrial society and aborted there, has become the dominant pattern of international relations between the established ‘democracies’ and the third world.” (Reinhold Niebuhr; ‘The Irony of American History’, 1952.)
In short, those interested simplisms about the class struggle did very opportunely conceal the fundamental class struggle at inter-national level that the imperialism represents as a general historical phenomenon, founded from the beginning on the support given to that enterprise of domination/exploitation of other Peoples – and on the benefit obtained from it – also by the People of the oppressor nation: the “Great” Powers which those theorists precisely belonged to and to which they did, a priori, attribute in addition a false moral-political-cultural superiority of deep racist roots that “justified” their contempt towards the subjugated Peoples.
“Calling Polish independence a ‘utopia’, and repeating this ad nauseam, Rosa Luxemburg exclaims ironically: Why not raise the demand for the independence of Ireland?
“The ‘practical’ Rosa Luxemburg evidently does not know what Karl Marx’s attitude to the question of Irish independence was. It is worth while dwelling upon this, so as to show how a concrete demand for national independence was analysed from a genuinely Marxist, not opportunist, standpoint.
“It was Marx’s custom to ‘sound out’ his socialist acquaintances, as he expressed it, to test their intelligence and the strength of their convictions. After making the acquaintance of Lopatin, Marx wrote to Engels on July 5, 1870, expressing a highly flattering opinion of the young Russian socialist but adding at the same time:
“‘Poland is his weak point. On this point, he [Lopatin] speaks quite like an Englishman — say, an English Chartist of the old school — does it about Ireland.’ Marx questions a socialist belonging to an oppressor nation about his attitude to the oppressed nation, and at once reveals a defect common to the socialists of the dominant nations (the English and the Russian): failure to understand their socialist duties towards the downtrodden nations, their echoing of the prejudices acquired from the bourgeoisie of the ‘dominant nation’.
“Before passing on to Marx’s positive declarations on Ireland, we must point out that in general the attitude of Marx and Engels to the national question was strictly critical, and that they recognised its historically conditioned importance. Thus, Engels wrote to Marx on May 23, 1851, that the study of history was leading him to pessimistic conclusions in regard to Poland, that the importance of Poland was temporary—only until the agrarian revolution in Russia. The role of the Poles in history was one of ‘bold (hot-headed) foolishness’. ‘And one cannot point to a single instance in which Poland has successfully represented progress, even in relation to Russia, or done anything at all of historical importance’. Russia contains more of civilisation, education, industry and the bourgeoisie than ‘the Poland of the indolent gentry’. ‘What are Warsaw and Cracow compared to St. Petersburg, Moscow and Odessa!’ Engels had no faith in the success of the Polish gentry’s insurrections.” Etc. (V. Lenin; ‘The Right of Nations to Self-Determination’, 1914.)
Thus, and on the one hand, the false dichotomy that this mechanistic and distorted version of the class struggle did establish between “the social question” – posed strictly at the domestic-State level and as if it was the true and sole class struggle – and “the national question”: which is the authentic class struggle established by imperialism at the international level but that this spoofed theoretical version does not recognize as such; and, on the other hand, the disavowal and relegation of this so-called “national question” as “reactionary and anti-revolutionary”: something that every “good revolutionary” was therefore supposed to despise (and which is what imperialism intended and continues to pretend with all this, in order to keep the subjugated Peoples in total confusion and division under their authentic class struggle at the international level), were to constitute from then on the fundamental ideological mechanisms of that new “definitive instrument of liberation of Humanity”, which did purportedly establish on “new scientific and socialist” bases the deceitful justification for the maintenance and continuity of the criminal imperialistic domination of always over the subjugated Peoples.
In short, that manipulated “socialist” instrument of ideological mystification was designed to deceive the subjugated Peoples and keep them away from their true liberation from colonialist imperialism; it was not in vain that it had been invented by authors who all belonged to imperialistic and colonialist countries, and not to Peoples and Countries subjugated under their imperialism.
The manipulation of the theory and terminology of the Socialism (as well as of other “isms”), in order to achieve through it a purported “progressive justification” for the criminal domination of the Peoples: subjected to the status quoand “the Constitution” established by imperialism, is a further illustration of the constant recuperation of thought throughout history, at the service of the National-imperialistic priority. The ideology characteristic of imperialism and fascism is constituted by the integration of the thinking activity in the purposes and means of the Nationalist-imperialistic wholeness.
So, the imperialism: after having used in its favour the theocratic-religious arguments provided by the Bulls and other Papal instruments – ‘Laudabiliter’ in 1155 against Ireland, and ‘Pastor ille coelestis’/‘Exigit contumacium’ in 1512-1513 against the Kingdom of Nabarre – so as to justify with them its domination over the Peoples and their annihilation, and once the effectiveness of those instruments had decayed (albeit without ever having expressly rejected them), passed to exploit for the same purpose the new “revealed truth and the dogmas” that were provided by the “Socialist Religion” duly manipulated – just the same as the other – always against the Peoples’ freedom.
However, it is undeniable that the classical theorists of socialism never gave rise to these manipulations:
“If, in our political agitation, we fail to advance and advocate the slogan of the right to secession, we shall play in the hands not only of the bourgeoisie but also of the feudal landlords and the absolutism of the oppressor nation. Kautsky long ago used this argument against Rosa Luxemburg, and the argument is indisputable. [...]
“Let us consider the position of an oppressor nation. Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot. The interests of the freedom of the Great-Russian population require a struggle against such oppression. The long, centuries-old history of suppression of the oppressed nations’ movements, and the systematic propaganda in favour of such suppression coming from the ‘upper’ classes, have created enormous obstacles to the cause of freedom of the Great-Russian people itself, in the form of prejudices etc.
“The Great-Russian Black Hundreds [ultra-nationalist Russian groups] deliberately foster these prejudices and encourage them. The Great-Russian bourgeoisie tolerates or condones them. The Great-Russian proletariat cannot achieve its own aims or clear the road to its freedom without systematically countering these prejudices.
“[...] Whether the Ukraine, for example, is destined to form an independent state is a matter that will be determined by a thousand unpredictable factors. Without attempting idle “guesses”, we firmly uphold something that is beyond doubt: the right of the Ukraine to form such a state. We respect this right; we do not uphold the privileges of Great Russians with regard to Ukrainians; we educate the masses in the spirit of recognition of that right, in the spirit of rejecting state privileges for any nation.” Etc. (V. Lenin; ‘The Right of Nations to Self-Determination’, 1914.)
The right of independence against the imperialism has always been a customary and inherent fundamental right of all Peoples; at least of the Peoples able to exercise the right of legitimate self-defence, inseparable from their right of self-determination or independence from imperialism. All Peoples, dependent and independent, do assert their inherent rights of self-determination and of legitimate self-defence against foreign aggression, subjugation, occupation and colonization. For its part, the United Nations’ General Assembly has recognized this in numerous resolutions:
“The General Assembly, Faithful to its resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960 containing the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, Mindful of the importance of the universal realization of the right of peoples to self-determination and of the speedy granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples, [...], Recalling its resolutions 2588 B (XXIV) of 15 December 1969, 2787 (XXVI) of 6 December 1971, 2955 (XXVII) of 12 December 1972, and 2963 E (XXVII) of 13 December 1972, as well as resolution VIII adopted by the International Conference on Human Rights held at Teheran in 1968, [...], Disturbed at the continued repression and inhuman treatment inflicted on peoples still under colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation, including inhuman treatment of people imprisoned because of their struggle for self-determination, Recognizing the imperative need to put an early end to colonial rule, foreign domination and alien subjugation, 1. Reaffirms the inalienable right of all people under colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation to self-determination, freedom and independence in accordance with General Assembly resolutions 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960, 2649 (XXV) of 30 November 1970 and 2787 (XXVI) of 6 December 1971; 2. Also reaffirms the legitimacy of the peoples’ struggle for liberation from colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle; 3. Calls upon all States, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations and with relevant resolutions of the United Nations, to recognize the right of all peoples to self-determination and independence and to offer moral, material and any other assistance to all peoples struggling for the full exercise of their inalienable right to self-determination and independence; [...]; 6. Condemns all Governments which do not recognize the right to self-determination and independence of peoples,” etc. [United Nations’ General Assembly Resolution 3070 (1973)]
“The General Assembly, [...] 1. Calls upon all States to implement fully and faithfully the resolutions of the United Nations regarding the exercise of the right to self-determination by peoples under colonial and alien domination; 2. Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, particularly armed struggle;” etc. [Ibid. 33/24 (1978)].
And also:
“The General Assembly, Recalling its resolutions 2649 (XXV)..., 2955 (XXVII)..., 3070 (XXVIII)..., 3246 (XXIX)..., 3382 (XXX)..., 33/24... and 34/44..., and Security Council resolutions 418 (1977)... and 437 (1978)..., Recalling also its resolutions 2465 (XXIII)..., 2548 (XXIV)..., 2708 (XXV)..., 3103 (XXVIII)..., and 3314 (XXIX)..., concerning the use and recruitment of mercenaries against national liberation movements and sovereign States, [...], Considering that the activities of Israel, in particular the denial to the Palestinian people of their right to self-determination and independence, constitute a serious and increasing threat to international peace and security, [...], Reaffirming the importance of the universal realization of the right of peoples to self-determination, national sovereignty and territorial integrity and of the speedy granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples as imperative for the full enjoyment of all human rights, [...]; 2. Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle; [...]; 7. Reaffirms that the practice of using mercenaries against national liberation movements and sovereign States constitutes a criminal act and that the mercenaries themselves are criminals, and calls upon the Governments of all countries to enact legislation declaring the recruitment, financing and training of mercenaries in their territories, and the transit of mercenaries through their territories, to be punishable offences, and prohibiting their nationals from serving as mercenaries, and to report on such legislation to the Secretary-General;” etc.” etc. [Ibid. 35/35 A (1980)]
When they are acting in their own legitimate self-defence and resistance against the imperialistic aggression, for which they are fully legitimized and entitled, the determination of the subjugated Peoples’ means of struggle is a mere matter of strategy, not of moral.
People (not population or “citizenship”), territory (not administrative colonial demarcation), national freedom and right of self-determination (not alien domination) do integrate the Nation and found its State. The national question is the issue of the policy and the right of Nations; and the national question of the subjugated and colonized Peoples is only a species of the national question in general. The denial of these Peoples and/or of their freedom and right of self-determination; of their historical features, memory and continuity that shape them as Nations established on their own territory; eventually of their own States freely and historically constituted: occupied and annexed by means of aggression and violence; as well as of the crimes committed against them in the enterprise of terrorist and imperialistic expansion, this all is the characteristic of the totalitarian and fascist Imperialism and the task of its legists and ideological agents.
In a broad sense the nationalism – free, oppressor or oppressed – is the way of being of the Nation; of every Nation. The Nation is the active, agent and constituent subject of both nationalism and inter-nationalism. Without plurality of Nations and nationalisms there would not be international conflicts: without Nations there are no inter-national relations nor possibility of inter-nationalism. Both components: Nation and nationalism, are constitutively correlated and inseparable, and cannot be destroyed – whether partially or totally – separately.
In the strict sense of the word, the Nationalism is the extreme, aggressive and oppressive way of being of the Nation, which thus constitutes itself as imperialistic Nationalism. We have therefore first of all “the offensive nationalism of the oppressor Nation”, which raises in the attacked “the defensive nationalism of the oppressed Nation” and that involves, correlatively, the Resistance and the defensive struggle for national freedom.
The so-called “national question” can be ignored, denied, distorted, secluded or avoided for some time; but, for the astonishment and indignation of the institutional Nationalism-imperialism in any of its forms (of course also of the social-imperialistic Nationalism of purported opposition, which presents itself as “socialist”), it always remains and reappears unless the genocide, extermination and destruction of the People which endure them be total. Apart from this national question, understanding and explanation of international relations are impossible.
The imperialistic Nationalism produces the Resistance. Now then, while the imperialistic Nationalism of the dominant Nation remains hidden, the struggle of the oppressed Nation for its freedom is maliciously denounced as “nationalism” by the propaganda of the National-imperialistic political groups (National-socialist or National-fascist): either they be “Parties”, “Trade-Unions” or “intellectuals”, as a part of their ideological attack against the freedom of Peoples. A designation as “nationalism” that sometimes is naïvely and dangerously accepted without a further caution by the dominated People itself, which does not perceive the great and negative import the term is accompanied with. Thus, the imperialism does artfully transfer its own crimes on the account of the colonized People’s “nationalism” – which of course is reported as the only one in existence, the cause of wars and slaughters, the sole one which do divide the Peoples etc. – whilst hiding its own imperialistic Nationalism: the sole real responsible one, the first and efficient cause of the crimes committed in the establishment of the imperialistic enterprise, as well as of all their consequences.
However, one nationalism does not divide anything because it is not possible to divide by one, nor does make opposition to anything, because there must needs be at least two both to be opposed and to divide. Given the ideological imperatives of their own propaganda in their fight against the freedom of Peoples, the agents of the imperialistic Nationalism do not flinch from the destruction of reason and common sense nor from absurd: no matter whether it be in formal Logic or in Mathematics. But their impudence: a mere practical implication of the support they get from their monopoly of criminal Violence in order to be able to express themselves without contestation through their monopolies of propaganda, indoctrination and ideological intoxications of masses or mass-media, does in addition allow them to state as a starting point their intellectual and moral superiority, or leastways the correlative inferiority of dominated classes; much incredible though this might appear, in view of the worthless junk and corruption underlying the current ruling classes’ mean veneer.
Faced with this, and as alredy said Marx, “the dominated classes may reply with a smile of calm contempt to the vile abuse of the lackeys of the press and to the learned patronage of well-intentioned bourgeois doctrinaires, who utter their ignorant stereotyped commonplaces, their characteristic nonsense, with the profound tone of oracles of scientific immaculateness”. And Lenin, when in the text we have quoted alludes to “the systematic propaganda in favour of such suppression coming from the ‘upper’ classes, puts the word “upper” in quotation marks to question/deny any alleged superiority.
In its confrontation against the defensive nationalism of the oppressed Nation, all imperialistic Nationalism does not only divide: it does oppress, repress, threaten, kidnap, extort, rob and kill. But if imperialism can, at times, submit and destroy the Peoples, nonetheless there are not Peoples that resist the imperialism, and Peoples that submit themselves. The Peoples do never “incorporate” or submit “themselves”, if they have forces to prevent it: the resistance is their mode of existence. The Peoples fight for their freedom while they are alive, and if they do not do it is because they are already dead; although the point of no return may be uncertain, and the apparent clinical death can be often suspected of functional hibernations or lethargies of a risky diagnostic and perchance surprising outcome. The “peoples” that do not fight for their freedom are already food for predators and scavengers, or scum, “junk peoples” to be recycled or incinerated for the annexed services of recuperation and sanitation.
The struggle for national freedom is vital sign and expression. It carries in itself its immanent foundation, justification and demonstration; because the political and ideological resistance against the imperialistic aggression and the totalitarian occupation, and against the monopolies of violence and propaganda and the Terrorism of masses, would be impossible and unthinkable if there would not occur the general cultural and sociological conditions that precede, constitute, explain and make it necessary. The struggle for national freedom is the inevitable outcome of the imperialistic aggression; is inseparable from the imperialistic system of domination.
However, in the absence of a consistent strategic development and a political agent: capable of having a real bearing on the sociological, economic, political and ideological rapport of forces, the deep will and spontaneous determination of an entire People will be of little use. In the world in which we live there are no tricks that allow to do without a strategic line, in conformity with the reality of the forces in presence, and inseparable from the general democratization of political and ideological institutions present in the bossom of the subjugated People. The decisive factor lies in the capability or in the incapability of the oppressed People to develop its secondary ideological-political structures, and to adapt them to its primary resources and conditions; with the strategic qualification as a result. In the absence of that qualification, the future of that People will continue to be problematic.
The Empires are founded by means of war, conquest and occupation, annexation, repression and terrorism; but are not those ones the means which consolidate the Empires and make irreversible their effects. These ones are only consolidated through genocide, extermination and expulsion of the natives; through deportation, colonization, exclusion and assimilation, repopulation, implantation and transplantation of populations, jointly or successively applied; they are the most direct, fast, complete and safe means for it. If wants to perpetuate its domination, avoiding the emancipation of the subjugated Peoples and States on a fixed-term, the dominant State must seize the opportunity of the effective but limited advantage that gives it the military and administrative domination in order to change the social base of the occupied Country. “On condition of paying the price, making a full use of the strength of an army, it is not impossible, in the 20thcentury, to bring down a quasi-unanimous popular will of resistance or of liberation.”
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