Proletarians of all countries, unite!" is one of the key slogans of the Communist Manifesto. Some seem to have forgotten this exemplary principle and transformed it into: "Proletarians of all countries, unite with your bourgeoisie!

When the bourgeoisie makes an appeal to swell the ranks of nationalism, there will never be a shortage of those who, with "progressive" talk, will want to drag the workers in and disguise themselves as champions of socialism. They really are only belated imitators of Fichte and Wagner, worthy heirs of those German Social-Democrats who pushed the German proletariat into the slaughter of the First World War.

The nationalist philistines can only be confronted with proletarian internationalism: the worldwide union of all workers across borders and against all bourgeoisies. The nationalists' paradise is the clash between workers and the rise of new frontiers.

It is easy to see how nationalism, painted red, has had a great influence on the Spanish left for too long. From the Spanish patriotism of the PCE of the 30s, to the abertzal*[1]* the CUP and the like from the late sixties to the present. Each Spanish territory seems to have generated its nationalist hooligans, with red star flags, various historical laments and feudal nostalgia. These groups, saviours of homelands previously happily forgotten, have tried to mix a curious concoction between an appearance of Marxist lexicon and the most picturesque petty-bourgeois and clerical ideologies. For example, Sabino Arana or Blas Infante. One, the post-Carlist Basques, known for his racist outbursts and his ultramontane[2] clericalism, the other, the Andalusian lawyer, known for petty-bourgeois nationalism defending a new fantasy homeland and for its affiliation with Islam. Picturesque both, without a doubt.

But in the sixties, amongst the excrescences of parish groups and seminaries, the "communists" of national liberation appear. Following in the footsteps of the counterrevolution, they gave a few strokes of red paint to nationalism and presented the provincial versions of the "national union" as the most revolutionary thing a communist could do.

What were their revolutionary programmes? Manifestos against the oppressive Spanish state, removal of Spanish flags and paying lip service to a "socialism" that was not even such, rather it was state capitalism. It's about time we call them for what they really are: nationalists who do not even go as far as social patriots, because social patriot means socialist in words and nationalist in deeds. These are nationalists who speak as nationalists and call the result socialism by putting a red patch on the current flag ... or a purple stripe, which is the same. These nationalists act as true parasites, in a continuous search to take advantage of the struggles of the workers, do not miss the opportunity to poison us with nationalist propaganda. It is clear that they almost always fail in their intention to confuse the workers, so they must nurture their ranks of young petty bourgeois, excited by the national struggle that promises them positions of government in a future independent state. However much they see themselves as communists, they are nothing more than the romantic and idealistic vanguard ... of the same bourgeois state we already know. At the height of nonsense, there is no shortage of those who try to respond to these patriots with Spanish patriotism dressed in Marxist quotations ... against nationalism. Cultural attachments can be felt, of course, but it is despicable to use cultural tastes as a symbol of political struggle in defense of homelands and nations. And it is even more so if they call themselves Communists. The communist struggle is indivisibly linked to internationalism, which is nothing but proletarian anti-nationalism, because our struggle is not the struggle of the proletariat of one country or another, of one sector or another, but the struggle of the world proletariat.

The time for bourgeois nationalist revolutions has already gone. All over the world, political nations have arisen, at different points in time, and the struggle of any particular bourgeoisie to take control of a state no longer has any progressive meaning. The next scenario is that of the alternative between the world revolution or a new imperialist world war.

Therefore, all those who remain in the defence of a nationalist cause, whatever it may be, are true reactionaries in the face of historical evolution. The call for the defence of the right to self-determination - already widely dismantled by Rosa Luxemburg - serves as the new flag of opportunists, social patriots and outright patriots of which we have so many examples. All of them, in the faithful service of the petty bourgeoisie, loser in the suddenly revealed crisis, faced with monopolies and capitalist centralism.

Although televised trash should be kept at a distance, sometimes pearls are found in the mud. In a debate that took place late at night between two economists, a Spanish Socialist and a separatist Social Democrat, the real reasons that feed the conflict were on show; the interests of the Catalan petty bourgeoisie. The economist made the criticism that, since the disappearance of the Franco regime, the productive and economic importance of Catalonia had been decreasing to the detriment of Madrid. The Catalan petty bourgeoisie has been losing business opportunities, while the Spanish bourgeoisie (which includes the Catalan bourgeoisie), has been concentrated in the capital of the country. For a few minutes, amongst the murmur and the shouting of the TV show, the true anger of his class was evident. And the fact is that under Franco some lived better.

Is it to these petty bourgeois in action that certain "communists" pay homage as vassals? If they want to be the mamporreros[3] of a reactionary petty bourgeoisie, it is to be expected that they do not find the support of the working class, nor of the Marxists who refuse to collaborate.

The response to nationalism and opportunism is internationalist action, uniting with workers around the world in the struggle for better living conditions. It is time to openly demonstrate against particularism and the lovers of native lands, who would gladly throw us into a fight against their neighbours for the defence of their masters' interests.

Nuevo Curso, Granada

14 November 2017

This document is the third in a series which we have translated from Nuevo Curso in response to the nationalist hysteria on both sides in Spain and Catalonia. The first two can be found here

[1] Basque nationalists

[2] advocating supreme papal authority in matters of faith and discipline

[3] Madams, brothel keepers