The majority of the Parlament of Catalonia had announced months ago the announcement for a referendum of self-determination, for the next October 1, where the question would be "Do you want Catalonia to be an independent state in the form of a republic?".
The monarchy of the Bourbons and Rajoy have responded to this with a true coup d'etat in Catalonia. The Civil Guard searched the Departments of Economy, Governance, Treball, Foreign Affairs, Social Affairs, other organisms of the Generalitat and private companies. They arrested 13 people linked to the government of the Generalitat and the owner of a printing press where the ballot papers for the referendum were supposed to have been printed. To this day there are more than 4,000 civil guards sent to Catalonia to "stop the referendum". Dozens of them attempted to enter the central premises of the CUP, but protesters prevented it.
The government also froze the accounts of the Generalitatand intervened the Information Technology Center, arresting its director, since the purpose of this institution was to count the result of the referendum.
The monarchy, Rajoy and all his lackeys after the attack on August 17 on the Ramblas, had tried to agree a national unity, with which they even tried to subdue the Catalan independence feeling, but during the national unity march of August 26 it was proved that the Catalans would not lower their arms. The attack and that supposed national unity failed to stop the referendum so they now take action against the Catalonian people through repression.
The Bourbons and Rajoy, with the direct support of the PSOE and Ciudadanos, have carried out a true coup d'etat in Catalonia. Just a week ago the government even banned an activity in Madrid that supported the right to decide of the Catalolianpeople. While in Catalonia propaganda material on the referendum wasconfiscated,they closed websites and entered in the media and printing presseswith the police, seizing more than 10 million ballots for the elections. The reformist left of Podemos and the PCE-IU, in their own way, have also boycotted the Referendum with the excuse of not supporting it because it was unilateral and not agreed with the government and the monarchy. As if a referendum for independence could be agreed under the regime of the Constitution of 78!
The parasites of the Bourbon monarchy, heads of the financial and imperialist capital of the Spanish State, will never allow even the right of the Catalonian people to decide their future, as they have already shown. Together with the government of the PP and the support of the employers' parties, they will defend the regime of the Constitution of the 78 and the Pacts of the Moncloawith everything at their reach.
As Trotsky put it in the summer of 1934, "It cannot be forgotten for a moment that Spain as a whole and Catalonia, as a constituent part of that country, are now governed, not by Catalonian national democrats, but by the Spanish imperialist bourgeoisie, allied with the great landowners, the old bureaucrats and the generals, with the support of the national socialists. All this association intends to maintain, on the one hand, the servitude of the Spanish colonies, and, on the other hand, to assure the maximum of bureaucratic centralization of the metropolis; that is to say, it wants the crushing of the Basques, the Catalans and of the other nationalities by the Spanish bourgeoisie."
The struggle for the right to self-determination of the Catalonian people must be a struggle of the working class throughout the Spanish state to break up with the regime of 78 and the infamous Pacts of the Moncloa. If the workers do not defeat the monarchy, there will never be a right to self-determination for the Catalonian people, neither bread, nor labour, nor freedom for the rest of the working class of the Spanish state.
Get out the hands of the parasitic monarchy and the government of Rajoy from Catalonia!
For the unconditional right of the Catalonian people to self-determination, including independence, if theychoose so! Revolutionary general strike throughout the Spanish state!
IN CATALONIA, IN ORDER TO HAVE THE RIGHT TO DECIDE: FOR A NATIONAL CONSTITUENT CATALONIAN ASSEMBLY ON THE RUINS OF THE REGIME OF ‘78 AND THE BOURBON MONARCHY
The Catalonian national bourgeoisie, while proclaiming the right to a referendum for the people of Catalonia, did not take a single serious step to carry it out. They did not go beyond the Disconnection Law voted in the Parlamentand it could not be otherwise. The cowardly Catalonian national bourgeoisie, linked by thousands of business ties and interests to the Spanish financial capital, can bargain for its business with the Spanish bourgeoisie, even using for this the struggle for self-determination as cannon fodder and bargaining chip, but they are incapable of bringing the national struggle to the end, since, as an exploiting class, they fear as a plague the proletarian revolution which attacks not only the property of the bourgeoisie of the oppressing nation, but also its own.
The workers of Catalonia along with those of the Spanish state, leading the fight in alliance with the poor middle classes, are the only ones who have the strength to face the Monarchy and the parasites of Spanish and Catalonian financial capital. This was shown by the dockworkers of Barcelona, they have the strength to stop and not to serve the cruise services where the PP hosts the Civil Guard.
The working class that has no business that ties it to the bourgeoisie, only chains to be broken, is the only one that can expropriate all the banks, like theCaixa, BBVA, Santander, Sabadell, etc, without payment and put them to work under workers' control.
The working class is the one who can call his brother soldiers who are in the NATO army and set up committees of workers and soldiers.
The working class of the whole of the Spanish state is the only one that, with its methods, can guarantee the right of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia to their self-determination.
There is no possibility that the Catalonian, Basque or Galician people, have their right to self-determination if it does not end with the parasitic monarchy.
The working class of the whole of the Spanish state is the only one who can guarantee, for example, from the union of graphic workers, the printing of the ballot papers for the referendum; the workers of the trucks could transport them to Catalonia and the teachers and custodians of the Spanish state, together with those of Catalonia, could guarantee to open the schools so that the Catalonian people can vote. In order to have the right to decide, the Catalonian people need to organize self-defense committees together with workers from the rest of the state to take care of ballot boxes and ballot papers.
It is shown that, for the Catalonian bourgeoisie, independence means doing better business and they use the referendum to bargain a better slice of them from the bourgeoisie of the Spanish state. On the other hand, for the working class and the Catalonian people, independence means getting rid of the parasitic monarchy and the entire financial oligarchy and having a job and a decent life.
In order for the Catalan people to have the right to decide, a truly free and sovereign Catalonian National Constituent Assembly is needed, which is really representative with the election of one deputy per 1,000 inhabitants, whichlegislate and execute and impart justice, with a single chamber, with officials who can be revoked at any time and earn the salary of a worker.
A Catalonian National Constituent Assembly whose first task is the expropriationof the banks without payment and under workers' control and the return of their homes to the thousands of evicted workers.
A National Assembly that imposes progressive taxes on large fortunes, which allocates hours of work between employed and unemployed with a salary equal to the family basket.
However, this Catalonian National Constituent Assembly would have no real power if it does notdisarm the bourgeoisie and settle in the armament of the people, since if it took a single measure that would put at risk the property and interests of imperialism and the bourgeoisie, as the only way to conquer the just demands of the exploited, the armed forces of the Spanish state and NATO, would dissolve itwith gunfire.
For that reason, only a workers' and people's government based on self-determination, armament and direct democracy will be the only one that can completely guarantee a democratic Catalonian National Assembly.
That is why we, Marxist revolutionaries, affirm that a workers' republic is a million times more democratic than the most democratic of the bourgeois republics. Because only the proletariat, which is the only truly national class, which has no interest attaching to imperialism and imperialist Maastricht Europe, rising as the vanguard of the oppressed nation, can conquer the rupture with imperialism and expropriate the banks, the factories, the lands and all the property of the transnational corporations and the imperialist and native bourgeoisie. And it can ensure that there is bread, work, housing, health, education and a decent life for all exploited.
Only the triumph of the proletarian revolution can fully and effectively solve the democratic-revolutionary tasks that the decadent bourgeoisie can no longer fulfill in this imperialist age, such as national liberation. In the same way, only the working class in power can effectively grant the full right to national self-determination - including the right to separation - to oppressed nationalities that did not become a nation state before the advent of imperialism. The national question was, is and will be, then, a fundamental motor of the international proletarian revolution. The resolution of this national question through the right of the Catalonians to their independence, if they wish, is a necessary requirement for the Free Federation of Socialist Republics of the Iberian Peninsula that will only have a future on the ruins of the Maastricht European Union with the European working class that builds the Socialist United States of Europe.
THE FIGHT OF THE CATALONIAN PEOPLE IS THE FIGHT OF THE WORKING CLASS OF THE WHOLE SPANISH AND EUROPEAN STATE
We insist that in order for the Catalonian people to have the right to decide, the parasite monarchy of the Bourbons, the government of Rajoy and the regime of the constitution of 78, inherited from the Franco regime, must be thrown down.
Unfortunately, the leaderships of the working class, the bureaucratic unions and the parties of the reformist left have expropriated the heroic struggle of the Spanish people as a whole that has shaken the monarchy with its "Republic of the Indignant". The bureaucracy of CCOO and UGT tied the hands of the working class to fight, while the Spanish imperialist financial capital made them pay the crisis, stealing their jobs, their wages and their houses. They refused at that moment to carry out a revolutionary general strike to sweep the monarchy.
While in all those years, Podemos and the PCE-IU, the left of the Crown, told the masses that with the self-reformed monarchy one could eat, have work and freedom.
Today, unfortunately the working class of the Spanish state is divided. The monarchy is strong and robs the Catalonian people to the minimum right to decide their future.
We cannot afford this. Throughout the Spanish state we follow the example of the dockworkers of Barcelona who refuse to render services to the ships where the Civil Guard is housed. Different labour organizations and trade unions, such as CGT-Catalunya or the Catalonian Intersindical Alternative of Catalonia (IAC) speak of organizing a general strike in Catalonia, we need to extend this struggle to the whole Spanish state: For a revolutionary general strike!
This fight we need to give it together with our class brothers from all over Europe from whom the different imperialist rulers have taken their conquests, their jobs, their wages and bread for their children.
The leaderships of the European proletariat, from the social democracy and Stalinism of the Communist Parties to the renegades of Trotskyism, many of themself-named as "anti-capitalists", proclaimed their struggle for a more social European Union, as if it were possible to socialize the Maastricht of the European powers and their imperialist gangs, while imperialism made the workers pay for the crisis.
May the European working class breakthrough, there are the forces to face the parasitic monarchy of the Bourbons and all the imperialist governments of the European Union! Let us destroy the imperialist Europe of Maastricht to its foundations and build the Socialist United States of Europeon its ruins!
Throughout Spain: Revolutionary General Strike!
Dissolution of the Civil Guard and all the repressive forces! Committees of soldiers of trade unions and workers' organizations to disarm the monarchy and its killer caste of NATO officers!
We must defeat the collaborationist bureaucracies that want to tie our hands!
Freedom now to all the political prisoners for fighting fromCatalonia and of all the Spanish state! Free Alfon, Bódalo and the more than 400 Basque prisoners!
Down with the regime of the Spanish monarchy sustained in the Pacts of the Moncloa, oppressor of the Basque, Galician and Catalonian peoples!
For the right to self-determination of Catalonia and all peoples oppressed by the crown! For the right to independence of Catalonia!
Down with the monarchy! May the Republic of the Indignant breakthrough!
For a FEDERATION OF FREE SOCIALIST REPUBLICS OF THE IBERIAN PENINSULA!
Off with the NATO!
Down with the utopian and reactionary "European unity" of Maastricht!
For the triumph of the socialist revolution which institutes the dictatorship of the proletariat in France, Germany, England, Italy and other imperialist powers, and which restores it under revolutionary forms in the former workers' states of the former USSR and in Russia, to conquer the SOCIALIST UNITED STATES OF EUROPE from the British Isles to East Siberia, the only way to end up with exploitation, wars, massacres, genocide and national oppression in the old continent!
Democracia Obrera – FLTI-CI of the Spanish State |
From left to right: Vicepresidente Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, President Mariano Rajoy, King Felipe VI, President of the Generalitat of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont, Major of Barcelona Ada Colay
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