IRL, Informations recueillies à Lyon, then Informations rassemblées à Lyon or Informations et réflexions libertaires, was a libertarian magazine from Lyon that existed in various forms from ’71 to 2002. These 3 texts, taken from issue 51 (on the theme of anarchism and the Third World) and assembled in the form of a debate, attempt to put the relationship between anarchism and national and anti-colonial liberation struggles back into perspective.
Five members of IRL — Paris have met on several occasions to discuss national liberation struggles in the Third World. The following text is the result of those meetings. The three people who wrote it were particularly interested in the problems of nationalism, the State and anarchists in relation to the Third World, without claiming to provide answers, but with the hope of opening up a (fruitful, of course!) debate.
“Each people repeats the experience of its predecessors, but in its own way, in its own context. Class consciousness does not erase, whether we like it or not, the awareness of belonging to a community of language, territory and customs other than the metropolitan proletariat”. (“Noir et rouge”).
Approach towards nationalism
The concepts of Nation and State
In political speeches and writings, the terms nation and state are often confused, as if they were one and the same. Yet, the nation-State is a recent reality. Historically, the political divisions embodied in States have very rarely coincided with peoples sharing the same culture.
In other words, each state has often functioned as an apparatus of domination over several ethnic groups rather than a single nation. Thus, the Spanish state controls not only the Spanish, but also the Basques and the Catalans; the Ethiopian state represses the Ethiopians, the Eritreans, the Tigrayans and others; the Turkish state controls the Turks, the Armenians (they are no longer there) and the Kurds… This led “Noir et Rouge” to say in 1957 that “the division of the world into nations is in fact only a division between States … Here and there, minorities remain, fragments of foreign or original “nations” … Their status ranges from tolerance to persecution and the proscription of their language, depending on the State and within each State, depending on the regime or government” (“Noir et Rouge” Anthologie, p. 189).
This confusion between the state and the nation is at the root of a number of errors of assessment: some anarchists irrevocably reject any national demand because “it’s the state” or because it inevitably leads to the state. Moreover, the most radical Marxists join them, not because the critique of statism is always present in their analyses, but because they too are concerned with analysis in terms of social classes. A correct concern, but one whose simplistic application is erroneous, in our opinion.
According to these anarchists and Marxists, the adoption of a classist analysis requires the negation of national data, which find their translation in the national ideology as a vertically unifying ideology.
The complete substitution of national struggles for class struggles is a just position if it can be achieved. However, internationalist workers’ solidarity acting as a negation of borders and nations has only found its realisation in the minds of the thinkers who support it. The mistake is not in defending utopias, but in supporting utopias that are impossible to achieve, and in seeking simplification when the thinking that underpins all action requires us to nuance our positions, so that they are credible in the eyes of those who are fighting. We must not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Internationalist consciousness is nurtured and developed within national frameworks. This does not mean endorsing the chauvinist policies of “communist” parties, but asserting that class struggles remain relevant within the borders imposed by states.
Supporting national demands is not, in fact, a way of raising the class struggle to its highest level, but neither is it a way of putting it in the cloakroom. If international solidarity is to be real, it must take account of the constraints imposed by unequal historical development between nations and by the advent of imperialism. The intrusion of imperialism into different countries forces revolutionaries to support the most oppressed masses in colonised countries and in national liberation struggles…
Ethnocentrism consists in imposing on those who live under foreign domination the same watchwords for struggle as those who benefit, even involuntarily, from that domination. It is clear that class struggles in our perspective, taking into account national liberation struggles, lose none of their importance: our support is directed at the classes most oppressed by the imperialist system and a vigilant and uncompromising critique is made of the anti-libertarian aspects of the national struggle (the constitution of a state, the use of religious ideology…).
A nation is a community that lives in a common territory and presupposes a linguistic, cultural and economic unity that has been built up historically. Artificial and forced grouping by a state does not make a nation out of individuals living in the same territory, although in the long term political unification could give rise to a common national expression. But the transformation of state grouping into national expression depends on a number of factors, the main ones being the cultural resistance of the peoples who could make up the nation and the effectiveness of economic unity.
It goes without saying that before the appearance of the nation, which presupposes economic unity as well as cultural unity, states existed as ideological and military apparatuses of repression and class domination.
They were based on a sprawling policy: expand as far as possible and annex as much as possible, without taking into account the cultural characteristics of the conquered peoples. This is why pre-national states took the form of dynasties or empires. There are many examples of this in history: Romans, Bysantines, Mongols, Vandals, Goths, Normans, Turks…
Only tyranny, wisdom or ideological/religious reasons (e.g. the Crusades) could open up or limit the conqueror’s appetite and dictate the size of the empire.
The emergence of nationalism
In the West, the emergence of the nation coincided with the development of capitalism. Commodity production, through the destruction of feudal structures, gave rise to the German, Italian and French nations.
The French Revolution, carried out by and for the bourgeoisie along with the other social classes, swept away the monarchy and replaced the religious ideology of the state (god-king) with a political ideology (the nation, the citizen) better able to legitimise the new economic organisation. In a special issue on nationalism, “Noir et Rouge” explains the use of the nation as a means of legitimising political power in the French Revolution: “the quid pro quo between popular liberty and national sovereignty was aggravated by the French Revolution. The nation, opposed to the absolutism of the monarch, in turn became a metaphysical and moral absolute imposed on the people…”. (p. 185).
In this case, nationalism is the exacerbation of the national idea and the ideological expression of the interests of the bourgeois classes in power. It is highly effective for them in that it places them as the symbol of the group’s identity in the face of the expectations of other groups. It is also effective in propagating the illusion of the equality of the individuals making up the group. Finally, it lies in the lie that characterises the state, which consists in confusing its interests with those of the people and the nation, and thereby condemning any social movement within its borders. In revolutionary moments, it is in the name of the national interest that the dominant classes seek, and often succeed, in recuperating a revolution by propagating the spectre of foreign occupation. The case of the Commune is very instructive in this respect. It is not surprising, then, to see revolutionaries reject nationalism as a bourgeois and reactionary ideology.
In the East, the nation came into being before capitalism insofar as economic unification was made possible by a centralising mode of production. Thus, under the Pharaoh, the Egyptian nation was already a reality thanks to the unifying efficiency of agriculture. Centralising power and oriental despotism gave rise to the Chinese nation before the Middle Ages, and the tributary merchant mode, thanks to the role of distant trade, favoured the emergence of the Arab nation in certain periods when trade flourished and up until the Renaissance.
Nations based on trade are very fragile in the sense that they depend on trade routes and road controls. Some cities in the East have experienced vertiginous growth and rapid decline depending on the commercial situation.
In the face of the universalisation of capitalism, nations have been disorganised in favour of artificial divisions imposed by imperialism and the struggles between the blocs. The borders of Africa and South America do not correspond at all to natural divisions. When nations disappeared as a result of the internationalist imperialist divisions of capital, the peoples who nevertheless retained a cultural-linguistic unity tried to survive. In our time, this survival has taken the form of a struggle for national liberation.
For oppressed peoples, this struggle is of vital importance, because it is not only their economic interests that are affected by the expropriation of their land and their proletarianisation, but also their very being and all the factors that make up their identity. As F. Fanon said in “The Wretched of the Earth”: “Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to oversimplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people. This cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women”. (Maspéro, 1981, p. 166)
These historical reasons do not allow us to confuse the nationalism of the oppressed with Western nationalism, which served after the bourgeois revolutions as an ideology that erased class struggles. Nor is it a question of confusing national struggles in Third World countries with revolutionary tasks proper, but of supporting the will of peoples to defend their cultural identity against the homogenising aims of monopoly or bureaucratic capitalism, because the libertarian revolution is either a revolution in the plural or it is not. In its special issue on the national question, “Noir et rouge” concludes that “the federation of peoples can only replace the juxtaposition of states at the end of a general process of egalitarian geographical redistribution of human activities…”.
We say that we must not confuse the national struggles of the oppressed with revolutionary tasks, because nationalism remains an inter-class struggle in which landless peasants, latifundists, wage-earners and bosses rub shoulders…
The alliance of these classes against external hegemony and the compradores meant that the national front was a dynamic field of internal struggles. The dominant classes within the front try to use the oppressed masses as a mass of manoeuvre and to direct the national struggle by insisting on traditionalism and the most retrograde and mobilising elements of national culture, such as religion.
This national resistance as a misunderstanding, to use J.M. Chester’s term, must be conducted with caution, so that the dominant classes do not remain leaders of the struggles and constituents of the future state, and so that revolutionary elements of the international culture (self-management, direct democracy, federalism, etc.) are grafted onto the revolutionary elements of the national culture of the oppressed peoples.
Abdel
Nationalism and the struggle for national liberation: the impasse of the state
National consciousness in the Third World was accentuated or developed in the shadow of colonialism. Colonialism was characterised both by foreign occupation and by cultural erosion based on racism; the nationalism of colonised peoples was therefore a response based on the principles of the right to be different and the right of peoples to autonomy. Independence, whether won through struggle or organised “peacefully” by the colonising powers, did not solve the problem of national liberation. The economic weakness, corruption and intrigues of local rulers to keep their power meant that foreign control over the “independent” state was still a problem. The 2 superpowers share areas of influence in which they intervene (directly or indirectly) in accordance with their own interests. Intervention can also be carried out by former colonising powers (see France’s role in Black Africa, among others), so the fight against the ruling power is always waged under the banner of national liberation. On the other hand, there are always independence movements in the Third World.This is due to the aberrant demarcation of the borders of many States after colonisation, a demarcation that did not respect ethnic realities, but it is also due to the fact that certain ethnic conflicts are the direct consequences of the creation of “modern” States that have upset ancestral inter-ethnic relations. Lastly, colonisation is still direct in South Africa, Palestine and New Caledonia…
This mosaic of different realities explains why national liberation struggles are the main vectors of revolutionary struggles in the Third World, but both the content and the aim of these struggles limit their revolutionary function.
Although the construction of a state, as a body outside society, was not always the ultimate goal of national liberation movements, it was the constant consequence of their “victory”.
European colonisation acted on the scale of continents and vast cultural units; anti-colonial movements were naturally led to envisage political and economic structures capable of uniting the various peoples in vast territorial and cultural units. Pan-Africanism is an example of a vision that sought to enable African peoples to live in a federalist-type structure, respecting differences and avoiding ethnic conflict. This vision showed a spontaneous libertarian sensitivity, but the greed for power of the leaders and the policies of the colonising powers, which created independent African states from scratch and ensured their submission, sounded the death knell for any hope of a libertarian dynamic in the pan-African struggle.
In fact, the creation of a state is less the direct aim of national liberation struggles than a consequence, a consequence of the content and manner in which the struggle is waged (see the other two parts of this article), and also a consequence of a stifling international context.
In leading the struggle against external exploitation, national liberation movements do not have the necessary strength to oppose the logic of states and the world economy. If they are not to die out, these movements must therefore, at least in the advanced stages of their struggle, have a state and economic development project that enables them to secure allies guaranteeing definitive success over the exploiter, or foreign coloniser.
The victory of national liberation movements in the Third World can therefore only be achieved if the economic and power structure is harmonised with the dominant structures. Beyond all the existing local variants (African-style socialism, the Islamic state, etc.), it is the same alignment with models that show their bankruptcy every day. The culmination of a dead end.
Luc
Anarchists and national liberation struggles
One observation must be made at the outset: the almost total absence, in Third World countries, of movements or even individuals claiming to be anarchists. A number of consequences flow from this (sad) reality: judging the conflicts in this part of the world from the outside, libertarians find it difficult to appreciate them.
The lack of information, the difficulty of forgetting Western patterns in order to integrate others, the activity developed in their own country, etc… do not encourage them to concern themselves with struggles which are far removed from their daily lives in every respect. Especially as the content of these struggles does not encourage unreserved support.
Quite the contrary: the assertion of national identity results in the valorisation of a people or ethnic group and the development of xenophobic feelings towards “foreigners”.
As bearers of a state project, national liberation movements sought to replace one nationalism with another, one power with another.
All political tendencies coexisted within the great nationalist family, and the composition of the “Fronts” was highly ambiguous…
Anarchists tended to see the colonisers and the colonised as back-to-back. Fearing that they would compromise themselves in a struggle whose objectives were contrary to their own ideas, they preferred to distance themselves cautiously from it. But this attitude traps them:
- Firstly, it leaves the field open to Marxism. (With a few exceptions, such as the support given by some libertarians to the Algerian struggle during the war of independence). As a result, their vision of society seems to be aimed at the West alone, and the socialist model becomes the only possible alternative in the eyes of the oppressed, even though it has amply demonstrated its failure.
- Secondly, by refusing to take a position between the various protagonists, anarchists reinforced the position of the imperialist aggressor. By not providing any international aid to the victims, they were helping to perpetuate the established system of exploitation. Any reference to nationalism provokes in many of them a kind of “a priori blockage” which makes them lose sight of the reality of colonialism…
In the name of this reality and in the light of historical experience, it is nevertheless appropriate to question such a foundation, to see if the anarchist idea might not benefit from being defended in a different way. Its credibility depends on it. To abandon the terrain of struggle — on the pretext of preserving ideological purity — by considering the national liberation movement as a whole, condemnable in every way, is not a constructive approach.
A nationalist current is a complex and ambiguous set of interests. It serves as a springboard for the representatives of the future ruling class, eager to overthrow colonial power in order to satisfy its ambitions. But it also represents for the colonised population a means of escaping their miserable situation and liberating themselves.
Nationalism is based on a sense of belonging, on a set of cultural and linguistic values shared by a community. Oppressed countries set these values against the oppressor, to assert themselves as different from the oppressor and claim the right to control their own destiny. Libertarians, on the other hand, reject the levelling of cultures. They value the differences between peoples — because they make them rich — and defend the federalist idea (1). So they cannot ignore the aspiration of a colonised people to have its cultural identity recognised.
What’s more, certain ideas put forward during the struggle are likely to meet with their approval. For example, the self-management experiments developed just after Algerian independence by many farm workers were in line with an anarchist project, but not with that of the National Liberation Front.
Obviously, for anarchists, it is not a question of defending any nationalist struggle on the pretext that it is a response to external aggression (the example of Iran is enough to rule out this idea: between Khomeini, a high religious dignitary, and a Shah supported by American imperialism — in other words, between the plague and the cholera — which to prefer?) Rather, it is a question of examining the content of the nationalist claim of the programme proposed as a replacement for what exists, in order to detect its (possible) revolutionary aspects. The aim is to provide critical — not unconditional — support to the exploited, in line with the objectives defined.
Where possible, anarchist action in favour of colonised countries can take place on several levels:
- Thus, by replacing the class struggle in the fight against imperialism. In other words, by insisting in the colonised countries on the idea that the proletarians of the aggressor countries are not imperialists, even if they objectively play into the hands of the imperialist state and the capitalists (when they manufacture the weapons used against the oppressed populations, for example).
- By striving to establish relations between the oppressed classes of the imperialist and colonised countries. To do this, anarchists must fight against the “nationalisation” of the working classes in the Western states, i.e. against their submission to nationalist ideology (“let’s make French” and other leitmotifs of the trade unions and so-called communist parties…) and seek to develop internationalist sentiments in them. In fact, the exploiting classes of the colonising and colonised countries are much more internationalist than the exploited classes (it’s in both their interests, but the former perceive this much better than the latter: the multinationals and the world arms market are clear examples of this). Relations between “feudal” Third World countries and the bourgeoisie of oppressor states become conflictual when their interests come into conflict at a given moment in economic development, with the former realising that only the acquisition of power can satisfy their ambitions (the bourgeoisie and the intellectual classes expressed the nationalist idea in colonised countries long before the other classes). On the other hand, relations between the oppressed of the exploiting and exploited countries are not conflictual, but, blinded by state propaganda, they are rarely aware of this.
- By attacking the aggressor states to demolish their ideology. In the case of Israel, for example, anarchists must criticise the State as a State, but also denounce the Zionist ideology that underpins it, the imperialism of a power of exception comparable to South Africa. Nevertheless, they have to show that any state can contain fascist elements. Fascism is an aberration of the state and can appear whenever its leaders feel the need for it. Furthermore, criticising Israel in order to help the Palestinian people does not lead to support for the PLO, which is in favour of creating a Palestinian state…
In practice, it is often difficult to help a national liberation struggle from the outside, without giving guidance or lessons. But thinking about the possibility of providing such assistance can help to advance the debate. The content of nationalism in liberation struggles is very different, depending on the individuals and groups who use it. In itself, nationalism has a purely negative value: it helps to put an end to exploitation. On the other hand, once in power, nationalism, based on the valorisation of an ethnic group or people in relation to “foreigners”, develops a veritable mystique which aims to erase existing class differences and transform the exploited into exploiters. To prevent this now classic pattern from multiplying ad infinitum, anarchists need to make their voices heard. Critical support is a means of opposing the creation of a state, of countering the totalitarian ideology conveyed by dominant nationalism. It can send an anti-authoritarian message to Third World countries, proving that the anarchist project concerns them too. also concerns them.
Vanina
