EUZKADI HERRIA: New Hope Found Amidst Recent Errors
By Anxetu T.
Not to be mistaken with the Communist Party of Euskadi (the Basque sister-party of the Spanish CP, as politically moribund as are any of the former cheerleaders for the Soviet Union and now embracing reformism), the Communist Party of the Basque Homelands (Euskal Herrialdeetako Alderdi Komunista)emerged in 2002 and stood for elections in 2005, when it achieved 12.5 percent of the vote and gained nine seats in the local parliament. It is organized within the larger arena of the Basque National Liberation Movement, which also includes the armed organization of the ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna; Basque Homeland and Freedom), which has been engaged in armed struggle against the Spanish state since the days of Franco in 1959, but which recently declared a unilateral cease-fire.
It has been acknowledged for some time that the entire Basque National Liberation Movement (BNLM) has maintained strong ties to the Irish Republican Movement for decades, most recently with the Provisional IRM, and therein lies a significant problem. Despite the living example of failure on display within Ireland’s occupied six counties as a result of the ill-considered Provisional “peace process” that culminated in the Good Friday Agreement; despite revelations that the head of the Provisional’ international department for the past many years was, in fact, a British intelligence agent; and despite the disastrous results of a previous unilateral cease-fire declared by the ETA, which the Spanish used as an opportunity to arrest leaders of the Basque national liberation struggle, the ETA went forward with a permanent declaration of a cease-fire in 2006.
The International Republican Socialist Network opposes such declarations on a number of grounds, but chief among these is the recognition that the overthrow of the system of capitalist production, which is essential to securing the interests of the vast working class majority in any industrialized nation, is unlikely to come about as a result of the capitalist class seeing the error of its ways and relinquishing the reins of power to the working class. Moreover, the simple fact is, in contemporary society, wherever capitalist relations are securely in place, the state will rule in the interests of the bourgeoisie; and that state will to a greater or lesser degree attempt to preserve as a much of a monopoly on the use of armed force as it possibly can. Thus to deny an organization representing working class interests access to armed force is to ensure a disequilibria of class forces, to the advantage of the enemies of our class; both in terms of situations of day-to-day conflict (strikes/lock-outs or bourgeois defense of property, for example) and in the eventual revolutionary struggle to overturn capitalism and the state that protects it. Beyond this, we object to such cease-fire declarations because they appear to provide endorsement from the revolutionary left of the validity of bourgeois law and its state enforcers, which cannot but aid in reinforcing the ideology of the ruling class already internalized far too much by working people.
There are equally important strategic reasons, however, for opposing not only the unilateral cease-fire declaration, but also the entire process of peace negotiations with the capitalist state. Simply stated, our objection to such negotiations is that they represent to the surest road to defeat for the revolutionary aspirations of the working class, as they do for the national liberation movement. The capitalists do not negotiate when the revolutionary movement is weak. At such times the will use whatever methods of terror and repression they need to resort to in an effort to crush any center of rebellion that rises to challenge them. It is only when the revolutionary movement gains sufficient popular support and has become effective enough to inflict damages that cannot be offset by the profits achieved from imperialist/capitalist exploitation that the oppressor will be prepared to engage in negotiations; and there lies an important lesson.
Negotiations are part of the tactical arsenal brought to bear by the oppressor state against a liberation movement, nothing more. Thus, those who approach such negotiations with a presumption of achieving a just resolution to the struggle exhibit a naivety for which no excuse can be made. The history of capitalism and the history of the revolutionary struggle has illustrated time and time again that the bourgeoisie will falsify, cheat, lie, swindle, bully, and murder to maintain its interests, but what they will not do is allow those interests to be undermined. Thus all negotiations represent only one thing: a change of tactics designed to ensure that the interests of the ruling class are secure. Negotiations, therefore, will always result in a loss of ground by the liberation forces.
The lesson is this: When the oppressor state calls for negotiations, re-double your efforts, because you are winning.
The negotiations will always result in the liberation movement securing less than it might have, had it not negotiated. Those who doubt the perspective are invited to look to Ireland’s six counties, Guatemala, El Salvador, Columbia and any number of other nations whose armed struggle was ended through negotiations and examine the present status of the revolutionary movement there.
Another revolutionary socialist party had been organized within the context of the BNLM, that being Herriko Alderdi Sozialista Iraultzailea (Revolutionary Socialist Party of the People), which had declared its purpose to be extending the program of the BNLM into the globalized arena. It has been disbanded, however, calling into question whether it was simply a vehicle of convenience.
There is also a socialist trade union organization associated with the national liberation struggle, that being the Langile Abertzale Sozialista (LAB, Patriotic Workers Committee). While such an organization is a welcome component of any revolutionary tendency within the BNLM, the LAB has not exhibited a specific orientation towards the revolutionary syndicalist traditions of the Iberian peninsula, which would turn it from being the broker of labor power within capitalism that trade unions can often be, into a vehicle for overturning the system of capitalism itself.
The BNLM cannot be categorized as a republican socialist movement itself, but it is clearly the political community, within which genuine republican socialist revolutionaries can be expected to have organized, and the advent of the EHAK within that milieu may represent the beginning crystallization of a Basque republican socialist movement. The International Republican Socialist Network fully supports the struggle for national liberation and socialism min Euskadi and is now engaged in making what small contribution we are able to provide to the material welfare of the prisoners of war of the ETA.
Not to be mistaken with the Communist Party of Euskadi (the Basque sister-party of the Spanish CP, as politically moribund as are any of the former cheerleaders for the Soviet Union and now embracing reformism), the Communist Party of the Basque Homelands (Euskal Herrialdeetako Alderdi Komunista)emerged in 2002 and stood for elections in 2005, when it achieved 12.5 percent of the vote and gained nine seats in the local parliament. It is organized within the larger arena of the Basque National Liberation Movement, which also includes the armed organization of the ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna; Basque Homeland and Freedom), which has been engaged in armed struggle against the Spanish state since the days of Franco in 1959, but which recently declared a unilateral cease-fire.
It has been acknowledged for some time that the entire Basque National Liberation Movement (BNLM) has maintained strong ties to the Irish Republican Movement for decades, most recently with the Provisional IRM, and therein lies a significant problem. Despite the living example of failure on display within Ireland’s occupied six counties as a result of the ill-considered Provisional “peace process” that culminated in the Good Friday Agreement; despite revelations that the head of the Provisional’ international department for the past many years was, in fact, a British intelligence agent; and despite the disastrous results of a previous unilateral cease-fire declared by the ETA, which the Spanish used as an opportunity to arrest leaders of the Basque national liberation struggle, the ETA went forward with a permanent declaration of a cease-fire in 2006.
The International Republican Socialist Network opposes such declarations on a number of grounds, but chief among these is the recognition that the overthrow of the system of capitalist production, which is essential to securing the interests of the vast working class majority in any industrialized nation, is unlikely to come about as a result of the capitalist class seeing the error of its ways and relinquishing the reins of power to the working class. Moreover, the simple fact is, in contemporary society, wherever capitalist relations are securely in place, the state will rule in the interests of the bourgeoisie; and that state will to a greater or lesser degree attempt to preserve as a much of a monopoly on the use of armed force as it possibly can. Thus to deny an organization representing working class interests access to armed force is to ensure a disequilibria of class forces, to the advantage of the enemies of our class; both in terms of situations of day-to-day conflict (strikes/lock-outs or bourgeois defense of property, for example) and in the eventual revolutionary struggle to overturn capitalism and the state that protects it. Beyond this, we object to such cease-fire declarations because they appear to provide endorsement from the revolutionary left of the validity of bourgeois law and its state enforcers, which cannot but aid in reinforcing the ideology of the ruling class already internalized far too much by working people.
There are equally important strategic reasons, however, for opposing not only the unilateral cease-fire declaration, but also the entire process of peace negotiations with the capitalist state. Simply stated, our objection to such negotiations is that they represent to the surest road to defeat for the revolutionary aspirations of the working class, as they do for the national liberation movement. The capitalists do not negotiate when the revolutionary movement is weak. At such times the will use whatever methods of terror and repression they need to resort to in an effort to crush any center of rebellion that rises to challenge them. It is only when the revolutionary movement gains sufficient popular support and has become effective enough to inflict damages that cannot be offset by the profits achieved from imperialist/capitalist exploitation that the oppressor will be prepared to engage in negotiations; and there lies an important lesson.
Negotiations are part of the tactical arsenal brought to bear by the oppressor state against a liberation movement, nothing more. Thus, those who approach such negotiations with a presumption of achieving a just resolution to the struggle exhibit a naivety for which no excuse can be made. The history of capitalism and the history of the revolutionary struggle has illustrated time and time again that the bourgeoisie will falsify, cheat, lie, swindle, bully, and murder to maintain its interests, but what they will not do is allow those interests to be undermined. Thus all negotiations represent only one thing: a change of tactics designed to ensure that the interests of the ruling class are secure. Negotiations, therefore, will always result in a loss of ground by the liberation forces.
The lesson is this: When the oppressor state calls for negotiations, re-double your efforts, because you are winning.
The negotiations will always result in the liberation movement securing less than it might have, had it not negotiated. Those who doubt the perspective are invited to look to Ireland’s six counties, Guatemala, El Salvador, Columbia and any number of other nations whose armed struggle was ended through negotiations and examine the present status of the revolutionary movement there.
Another revolutionary socialist party had been organized within the context of the BNLM, that being Herriko Alderdi Sozialista Iraultzailea (Revolutionary Socialist Party of the People), which had declared its purpose to be extending the program of the BNLM into the globalized arena. It has been disbanded, however, calling into question whether it was simply a vehicle of convenience.
There is also a socialist trade union organization associated with the national liberation struggle, that being the Langile Abertzale Sozialista (LAB, Patriotic Workers Committee). While such an organization is a welcome component of any revolutionary tendency within the BNLM, the LAB has not exhibited a specific orientation towards the revolutionary syndicalist traditions of the Iberian peninsula, which would turn it from being the broker of labor power within capitalism that trade unions can often be, into a vehicle for overturning the system of capitalism itself.
The BNLM cannot be categorized as a republican socialist movement itself, but it is clearly the political community, within which genuine republican socialist revolutionaries can be expected to have organized, and the advent of the EHAK within that milieu may represent the beginning crystallization of a Basque republican socialist movement. The International Republican Socialist Network fully supports the struggle for national liberation and socialism min Euskadi and is now engaged in making what small contribution we are able to provide to the material welfare of the prisoners of war of the ETA.