The Progressive Character of Catalan Nationalism

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As to the so-called nationalism of the Catalan Federation, this is a very important and serious question. Mistakes on this point may have fatal consequences.

The revolution in Spain raised all the problems with a new force, including the national question. The chief carrier of the national tendencies and illusions is the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, striving to find support among the peasantry against the centralizing role of big capital and the state bureaucracy. At the present stage, the leading role of the petty bourgeoisie in the national liberation movement, as in every revolutionary democratic movement in general, inevitably brings into the movement numerous prejudices of various kinds. From this source national illusions also seep in among the workers. In general and as a whole, this is probably the situation at present in Catalonia; perhaps also in the Catalan Federation. But what has been said does not at all diminish the progressive, revolutionary democratic character of the Catalan national struggle — against the Spanish great-power chauvinism, bourgeois imperialism, and bureaucratic centralism.

It must not be forgotten for a minute that Spain as a whole and Catalonia in particular are at present governed not by Catalan national democrats but by Spanish bourgeois imperialists in alliance with the landowners, old bureaucrats, and generals, and with the support of the Spanish national socialists. This whole fraternity stands on the one hand for the continued subjugation of the Spanish colonies, and on the other for the maximum bureaucratic centralization of Spain itself, that is, for the suppression by the Spanish bourgeoisie of the Catalans, the Basques, and the other nationalities. At the present stage of developments, with the given combination of class forces, Catalan nationalism is a progressive revolutionary factor; Spanish nationalism is a reactionary imperialist factor. The Spanish communist who does not understand this difference, ignores it, does not advance it to the front rank, but on the contrary covers up its significance, risks becoming an unconscious agent of the Spanish bourgeoisie and being lost to the cause of the proletarian revolution.

What is the danger of petty-bourgeois national illusions? That they are capable of dismembering the proletariat of Spain along national lines, which is a very serious danger. But the Spanish communists can successfully fight against this danger in only one way: by pitilessly denouncing the violence of the bourgeoisie of the ruling nation and in that way winning the confidence of the proletariat of the oppressed nationality. Any other policy would be tantamount to supporting the reactionary nationalism of the imperialist bourgeoisie of the ruling nation against the revolutionary democratic nationalism of the petty bourgeoisie of an oppressed nation.