Nationalism and the 'national question'

Vote is tight in Catalonia

On 5 December, the Spanish Supreme Court withdrew its international arrest warrant against Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and four other members of the government who have sought refuge in Belgium. Other Catalan politicians, arrested in Spain, have however been refused bail and will have to run their campaigns for Catalonia’s 21 December elections from jail. Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy still hopes to regain control on 21 December by scaring lukewarm supporters of Catalan independence into voting for anti-independence parties. The opinion polls still show little movement. They...

Catalonia: rights and unity

Editorial from Solidarity 454 On Saturday 11 November, 750,000 people (on the city police’s count) demonstrated in Barcelona to demand the release of Catalan government ministers and pro-independence association activists jailed by the Madrid regime to await trial on charges such as sedition. A general strike called by a pro-independence union confederation, Intersindical-CSC, under the slogan “Defend Our Rights”, on Wednesday 8 November, also had impact. The reports suggest it was more through demonstrators blocking railway lines and roads than the major concentrations of workers deciding to...

Madrid tries to bludgeon Catalonia

The people of Catalonia are caught up in a macabre game of bluff and who-blinks-first. The democratic way out is for the people of Catalonia to be able to vote in a fair referendum on independence. Previous polls have indicated no majority for secession, and many on the left in Catalonia (for good reasons, we think) oppose creating a new border; but if there is now a majority for separation, then Madrid, and the EU, should respect it. Over a hundred years ago, in a classic statement of Marxist and democratic ideas on disputes between nations, Lenin described the procedures in the secession of...

Catalonia: oppose Rajoy’s repression!

Around 450,000 took to the streets of Barcelona on 22 October to protest against Madrid’s threat to impose direct rule and the arrests of activists. The CUP — the left-separatist party that props up Puigdemont’s coalition of right-wing and left-wing nationalists — has called for a mass mobilisation and resistance to prevent direct rule from going ahead. Catalan civil servants are likely to refuse to administer Madrid rule, and the Madrid government has threatened to remove from post all employees who fail to follow the instructions of a directly-administered regime. A potentially explosive...

Catalonia: no to Madrid clampdown!

The Spanish government in Madrid says that it will suspend regional autonomy and impose direct rule on Catalonia from Thursday 19 October unless president Carles Puigdemont abandons his push for independence for the territory. A Madrid clampdown would, soon if not immediately, lead to violent clashes such as happened when the Spanish government tried to stop Catalonia’s 1 October referendum. The Catalan police might well side with the Catalan government against Spanish government forces. On 10 October Catalan president Carles Puigdemont fell short of a full-scale declaration of independence...

Catalonia: right to choose yes, new borders no!

As Solidarity goes to press on 10 October, Carles Puigdemont, the president of Catalonia, has announced his response to the referendum on independence in Catalonia his government called on 1 October. The Spanish government declared the referendum illegal, and deployed heavy Spanish police force to try to stop it, but it largely went ahead. 92% voted yes, on a 43% turnout. A series of opinion polls carried out by the Catalan government since 2011 has in recent years shown a slight majority against independence, most recently 49%-41% in July this year. Puigdemont asked the Catalan parliament...

Letters

Colin Waugh’s review of The Russian Revolution: When Workers Took Power is right that Marxists must learn from the experience of workers’ struggles: revolutionary socialism certainly is dialogic. The Bolsheviks followed those principles and this helps explain their success in 1917. However I disagree with Colin’s critique of Kautsky and Lenin about the relationship between socialism and the working class. Colin claims Kautsky asserted that “Marx and Engels created their conception of socialism in isolation from workers” and that Kautsky assumed “the essentials of modern socialism were defined...

Recognise Kurdish referendum result!

On 25 September, 3.5 million people (97.7%) voted for independence for Iraqi Kurdistan. Aso Kamal of the Worker-Communist Party of Kurdistan and a Coordinator for the Centre for independence of Kurdistan spoke to Solidarity . We have been campaigning for a referendum since 1999. We have had conferences in Kurdistan and across Europe, Canada and Australia and we have lobbied for support for a referendum. The issue has come to the fore since federalism has been in collapse across Iraq since the rise of Daesh. The Baghdad Government is Shia Islamist and they have opposed Kurdish rights...

For Catalonia's right to decide; against separation

Spanish riot police unleashed violence against people voting in a referendum on Catalan independence on Sunday 1 October. Recent estimates (on Monday 2 October( number those injured at 884, and it seems miraculous no one was killed. As soon as the Catalan regional government set a date for a binding referendum, the right-wing Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy declared its intention to prevent the vote taking place. On the Prime Minister's appeal, the Spanish constitutional court ruled the referendum illegal. State police then geared up to prevent the referendum by force, confiscating...

Babel-socialism in the light of the Kosova war

There is a story in the Bible about the Tower of Babel. Humankind starts to build a high tower to climb up to the heavens. Offended by this presumption in creatures He has created to be His helpless supplicants and playthings. God punishes them. Where before there had been only one language, humankind wakes up one morning speaking many —all the languages of the earth. God had ensured that the combination of divided humanity in such enterprises as building a tower up to heaven will be impossible in the future. Thus the old story-makers tried to account for the existence of many languages in the...

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