Catalonia: Identity Politics a Dead End for Workers

With Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announcing plans to remove Catalonia’s separatist leaders and crush the region’s drive for independence, workers face a no-win proposition, a clash between rising fascism and nationalist identity politics. No matter which side prevails, workers will continue to be divided and exploited by the capitalist profit system.
With the U.S.-centric world order in accelerating decline, capitalism is in disarray throughout the world. On October 1, long-simmering tensions intensified when Catalonia staged an independence referendum. In scenes reminiscent of the fascist Francisco Franco regime that ruled Spain into the mid-1970s, Spanish police responded with clubs and rubber bullets, injuring 750 people. Even so, a reported 2.3 million turned out to vote, with 90 percent choosing to split from Spain (Telegraph, 10/2). In response, Spain has threatened to impose new elections for the region’s presidency (to replace the secessionist Charles Puigdemont), suspend the Catalonian parliament, and send in the police and army. Two prominent separatists were jailed without bail.
Catalonia’s independence movement is misleading millions of workers to unite behind the region’s capitalist bosses. The violent battle to come will place workers in the crossfire. Only a communist revolution led by Progressive Labor Party, can smash national and regional borders. Only a communist society can meet the needs of the international working class.
Nationalism: Bosses’ Tool
Nationalism and identity politics are reactionary responses to capitalism in crisis. Since the 2008 global recession, Spain’s workers have suffered with one of the weakest economies in Europe. Even after a recent “recovery,” the country’s unemployment rates stands at 17 percent—and 39 percent for youth (tradingeconomics.com). To protect their dwindling profits, Spanish capitalists have imposed austerity pay freezes and spending cuts. Catalonia is Spain’s most prosperous region, accounting for 20 percent of the nation’s economy and 25 percent of its exports. In the absence of a mass communist movement and working class consciousness, some workers in Catalonia resent those in poorer regions who may get a few crumbs from Catalonia’s high tax bill (CNN, 9/29). They don’t yet see that their true enemies are the blood-sucking capitalist bosses, whether in Madrid or Barcelona:
The contemporary project of independence offers the hope or illusion of a new nation unencumbered by austerity, corruption, and what Catalan nationalists view as Catalonia’s excessive contribution to the rest of Spain in the form of taxes and transfers to less wealthy regions. This narrative, however, ignores Catalan elites’ implication in corruption scandals, as well as Catalan nationalists’ record in government of applying unpopular austerity policies on behalf of the economic elites of both Spain and Catalonia. In the discourse of Catalan nationalism, that is, the politics of identity has trumped the politics of class. (Foreign Affairs, 10/18).
Catalonian Separatism Bad for EU, U.S.
Catalonia’s Brexit-style movement is bad news for capitalists everywhere, from Spain to the U.S.-aligned European Union to the region itself. If Catalonia became independent, its bosses could lose free trade within the EU. One of Catalonia’s biggest banks has already moved its headquarters to another part of Spain; a second bank, along with many other businesses, is considering doing the same (Vox, 10/10).
The rise of Catalonian nationalism is not unlike the movement for Scottish independence or Britain’s vote last year to leave the European Union. It’s also echoed in the mass support for U.S. Racist-in-Chief Donald Trump’s moves to exclude Muslim and Latin immigrants. Workers are being won to the backward idea that uniting around nationalism and shutting out the world will protect them from unemployment, pay cuts, and deteriorating schools and housing. It is Progressive Labor Party’s job to show workers that out suffering is caused not by our working-class sisters and brothers, but by the bosses who exploit us for maximum profit. Racism and nationalism weaken our class and stop us from fighting back.
Under communism, there will be no capitalist bosses dividing us. There will be no money, no unemployment, no recessions. Nobody will profit off someone else’s back; everyone will have housing, food, and security. Only a world based on working-class unity and collectivity can meet workers’ needs. This is the world that Progressive Labor Party fights for.
Destroy Capitalism with Mass Revolutionary Violence
The brutal police violence in Catalonia reminds us that capitalists don’t play nice when their interests are threatened. When the voters came out, the “democratic” nation of Spain used state terror to smash anti-Spanish dissent. It even shut down the Internet! The bosses won’t let workers vote away the capitalist status quo. Real change will come only with an organized, mass, united working class that is ready to use revolutionary violence. Progressive Labor Party fights to unite the working class under the red flag of communism. Join us!

****

Brief History of Spain

The two major nationalist movements in Spain are based in Catalonia and the Basque Country. For nearly a century, local bosses in those two regions have built movements around local nationalism. In the 1920s, after World War I and the Russian Revolution upended the old European power structure, national liberation and separatist movements gained momentum across the globe, from Egypt and India to,Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Spain.
In Spain, a unified country for over 500 years, both the Basque Country and Catalonia saw the formation of independence parties in 1922. This coincided with a period of infighting within the Spanish ruling class. One one side stood the old elite, the monarchists and big land owners; on the other, the new rising liberal capitalists. In 1931, the liberal wing won a temporary victory and established a Spanish Republic. To keep the loyalty of local Catalonian and Basque bosses, the Republican government gave them significant autonomy.
The Spanish Republic was short-lived. In 1936, the monarchists and most of the Spanish military allied under the Spanish fascist party, the Falange. The ensuing Spanish Civil War became the opening battle of the World War II, and the focal point for a mass, international anti-fascist movement led by communists. International Brigades of volunteers were organized by the Communist International and spirited into Spain to take on the fascists. More than a million Spanish workers were killed, as well as many thousands of communists and anti-fascists fighting on the side of the Republic. While the ant-fascist forces lost the battle in Spain, their courageous struggle inspired workers around the world to ultimately defeat the Nazis.
In Spain, which was nominally neutral in World War II, the ruling class united under Franco’s murderous regime. The Basque and Catalonia independence movements were suppressed, though they staged periodic insurrections. But in the post-war period, Spanish fascism became a political problem for the dominant U.S. and German bosses who were fighting the Cold War against the Soviet Union and portraying themselves as champions of democracy.  When Franco died in 1975, the Spanish ruling class transitioned to a liberal democracy to gain membership in the European Community, forerunner to the European Union.