Map of Occitania
Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr is pleased to publish this contribution from an Occitane Comrade of
Servir le Peuple not only you inform you about the struggle of the Occitane People over the last 800 years but also for you to study and debate the theoretical conclusions.
Our Welsh struggle against the British State and the Occitane struggle against the French State has well has current national struggles against the Spanish State can inform one another, there is rich potential of learning from each other experiences has there are universal has well as specifics lessons in struggles against the British State, French State and Spanish State.
In February 1972 revolutionaries from nations trapped inside the British, French and Spanish States issued the
Brest Charter in Brittany for Independent Socialist Republics in Western Europe, we need to revive that spirit of the Brest Charter in the 21st Century and we believe publication of this study will assist that process.
This document is not the
exact translation of the French
one, but it follows the main ideas of these. All apologizes to comrades, but
translating a text like this ever means remove its force]
8
CENTURIES LATER…
Exactly 800 years ago, on
September 12th of 1213, the battle of Muret (near Toulouse) was the begining of
the end for our just-born Occitan nation. Began then the political liquidation
of our Nation and People, under the rule of royal intendants and later
napoleonians and ‘republicans’ prefects until, under the sinister Third
‘Republic’ of monopolies born in the blood of the Communes repression (1871)
and ended in the shame of Pétain’s full powers (1940), the attempt to negate us
even as a People.
Since 1180, Capetian King
of FRANKS Philip II August launched himself to conquer the western part of
present French ‘Hexagon’, which was under the rule of Plantagenets (also kings
of England), from Normandy to the Pyrenees including so the western part of our
Occitany, the duchy of Aquitaine and Gascony : so he became king OF FRANCE. But
in the central and eastern part of our Nation (Languedoc and Provence), which
was under the rule of Earls of Toulouse and/or Kings of Aragon-Catalonia, the
conquest took the form of a bloody CRUSADE, on the pretext to extirpate the Cathare heresy (a kind of christian
communist-mystic current) that our aristocracy protected, as it was also
tolerant to Jews, Muslims from Spain and so on. Just like today, imperialism
launch its plundering wars on the pretext to ‘eradicate terrorists’ and other
twaddles. This Crusade was led by a small baron of the Paris region, Simon of
Montfort (who also owned lands near Leicester, his son is known in Britain for
his role in the Magna Carta of 1215). Those hordes of ‘crusaders’ attacked so our
country and people, perpetrating horrendous massacres like in Beziers (1209) : ‘Kill them all, God will recognize his ones
Hymne à la Liberté en Occitan
Resisted first, to the
invasion, the People, the cities and the small nobility. The Earl of Toulouse
(Raymond) was hesitant and even, first, joined the crusaders (!), before
changing side facing their horrors. The King Pedro II of Aragon did so, as he
needed Pope’s support to his conquering plans in Spain, against Andalus muslim
states (battle of Navas de Tolosa, 1212). So was 1213 a turning point, with
Pedro of Aragon pacting with Raymond of Toulouse and deciding to stop the
invasion. Unfortunately, they were like ‘punished’ for their initial indecision,
and their Occitan-catalan-aragonian armies were crushed on the battle field.
Some years later, Philip August’s successors (Louis VIII, ‘Saint’ Louis IX)
intervened directly and achieved the conquest beating the last resistances.
Languedoc, a kind of ‘confederation’ of fiefs and cities republics, ‘aristocratic
republic’ as would later write Engels, was submitted and annexed to the Crown
in 1270. Aquitaine and Gascony would be disputed some centuries more between
France and England (Hundred-Years War) and definitely submitted after Wars of
Religion (16th century), when Henry IV (of Albret and Navarre) became
King of France ; Provence was given
to a brother of ‘Saint’ Louis IX (the Duke of Anjou), as ‘autonomic’ fief of
the Crown, but definitely annexed in 1480.
So, as often in a mode of
production in crisis (at this time, feudality), the ruling class of a Nation
had submitted the ruling class of another to appropriate its working and
productive forces : that’s what we use, then, to call IMPERIALISM. Capetian
Kingdom of France, State of the French aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie, to-be
monopolies ‘one and indivisible Republic’, was born.
This ruling class was made
of, on one part, declining aristocracy surrounding the Capetian monarchy and
eating in its hand (some of those making themselves gentlemen farmers, agrarian capitalists), and on the other,
of the BOURGEOISIE of Paris region, seeing there a way to supplant and
subordinate the others bourgeoisies of others regions and nations.
Some people
can say this tragedy took place 800 years ago, ‘an eternity’ ; just as some
people (the same) slander ‘repentance’ for African’s slavery, indigenous
genocide of Americas or Australia, colonial conquests and massacres : "that was sooooo many years
agooooo" ! Just as if present
could be something else that the fruit of the past.
But anyway, this bloody
Conquista remind us the present fierce
exploitation of whole continents (Asia, Africa, and Americas), the criminal
occupations of Palestine or Iraq, Afghanistan or Kurdistan, and the people’s
resistances to it, with its most advanced form of People’s War in India,
Philippines, Turkish State or Peru… It remind us, and dialectical materialism doesn’t know coincidence.
There’s two kinds
of ‘barbaric’ mode of production and political system : a nascent one, accumulating with greed its first big fortunes ; and
an agonizing one which, to preserve
the privileges it accumulated, doesn’t step back in front of any crime. The Modern State, like the French one, between the 13th and 18th
century, blended both. And now,
monopoly capitalism is in terminal crisis but, also, ‘replaying’ again and
again the throes of primitive accumulation, in some backwarded part of the
World (like central or south/southeast Asia or deep Africa or Amazonia).
And imperialist States are the direct products
of these ancient Modern States. The Conquista
of our People gave birth to the French State, the Kingdom of France, political,
military and ideological apparatus of a declining Frank aristocracy and an emerging
and greedy Paris-and-around upper bourgeoisie ; and the present French
monopolist state, built by 1789 bourgeois revolutionaries, Napoleon and others
(until the ‘republicans’ of Jules Ferry and Clemenceau and De Gaulle) is the
direct product of it. The string form
past to present is absolutely continuous.
French State, as any Modern State, is born from a CENTER,
headquarter of the allied monarchy and upper bourgeoisie ; conquering by steel
and then gunpowder lands and peoples (Brittany, Corsica, Artois and Flanders,
Lorraine an so on) becoming PERIPHERIES,
exploited lands and peoples. It extent then these peripheries in concentric
circles, even overseas, becoming an Empire.
Just as the Castellan/Spanish State, born from conquering Andalus and then subordinate
Aragon, Catalonia, Navarra and Basque Country ; or the British State, born from
conquering Wales and Scotland and Ireland ; or later (by and for the lone
bourgeoisie, allied with a ‘liberal’ monarchy), the Italian State conquering
the Kingdom of Naples, the Mezzogiorno…
In a reference work about
our ‘Southern France’, Engels correctly says the conquest achieved in the late
15th century (we could even say early 17th, with Henry
IV), and then our country resisted… 300 years, so until 1789. And, can we even
say, Engels (who was also… a capitalist and ever had a positive vision of
bourgeois and industrial ‘revolutions’) stops
history when it’s convenient for him, because the ‘democrat-socialist’
massive vote of 1848-49, the resistance to the bonapartist coup of December
1851 (bonapartism was known for its ultra
centralism, with almighty prefects appointing mayors), the Communes of 1871 or
the Great Wine Revolt of 1907, were
still Occitan resistance, even if there wasn’t separatist intention (but
there neither was during Wars of Religion nor any revolt under Absolute Monarchy,
nor in 1831 Welsh Merthyr Rising against the British Crown !).
That’s only after World War
2, in the forests of cranes and buildings of the ‘Glorious Thirties’ (1945-75),
that our Occitany could seem disappeared forever. But only seemed. Because at
this same time, the great anti-imperialist struggles shaking the World, from
Vietnam to Angola, pushed a part of our People to hold the head high again,
after centuries of political suppression and even, since the late 19th
century, three generations of national and cultural suppression as a
People (ethnocide). However, this
movement remained prisoner of strong theoretical limits. It never really seized
the sword of Revolutionary Marxism (which yet led the Third World struggles
inspiring it) as a TOOL to understand the Occitan Problem under its light. It
saw all these events we have exposed and claimed proudly about this ‘tragedy of
Occitan people’, but never understood
their materialist and logical string, and never understood the tremendous revolutionary ferment contained in
their own claims. Cause if the Conquista
of Occitany was the birth act of French capitalist-imperialist State, our
People’s Liberation can only mean its death !
So this movement failed,
all the more since there’s in Occitany no autonomist nor independentist
bourgeoisie as in Catalonia or Basque Country or Quebec. For historical
reasons, Occitan bourgeoisie is politically and ideologically ‘French’, the
system it’s part of implies it in
subordinate position – French State is not polycentric
like Spain or Canada or Germany. Upper bourgeoisie resisted a little under
monarchy but since the bourgeois revolution has done well of the French State,
and the middle and petty bourgeoisie too, even if it sometimes protest against
Paris centralism and ‘bureaucracy’, like in the 1950’s Poujade movement. For 8
centuries, all Occitan bourgeoisie and other ‘elites’ have sold themselves or
disappeared ! The ‘heart’ and ‘key’ of Occitan Question is clearly, totally and
only in the working and people classes, there’s no other way from south of
Pyrenees to follow.
Thinking about and
understanding all of this finally led some of us, ‘occitanist’, to seize
Marxist theory and its wonderful power, and some others, ‘Marxists’, to look at
and understand the Occitan Question and how it was at the heart of existence
and, so, continuity of this French capitalist State we fight.
This led us to two main conclusions :
1°/ The capitalist World we
know is built from CENTRES (concentrating through the centuries political,
economical and ideological/cultural power), dominating PERIPHERIES
concentrating poverty and exploitation. These Peripheries are spread in
concentric circles around the Centres (and ‘relay-centres’), from the suburban
ghettos of big cities to the most starved ‘Third World’. That’s the way
capitalism, for the moment it equipped itself with (modern and then bourgeois)
State, negate former social and
political organizations. So, it’s
absolutely logical that Revolutionary Proletarian Struggle, negation of capitalism by communism, DEPLOYS ITSELF from Peripheries to the
Centres.
Peripheries are the ‘countrysides’ of each country and the World, this is the real universality of Mao’s
Protracted People’s War. Inside each capitalist State, revolutionaries have
to identify where are the ‘countrysides’/Peripheries and where are the
‘cities’/Centres, to deploy their struggle from the ones to the others.
This, without any doubt
about sincerity and class struggler’s generosity (letting besides some openly
and violently Jacobins groups), has
often been misunderstood by many revolutionary persons and groups in our State.
Sometimes because of their geographic ‘central’ position (Paris or
‘relay-centres’ like Lyon, Nice, Nantes), and because of misunderstanding and
(so) not calling into question the linked privileges of it ; sometimes because
of their SOCIAL ‘central’ position, seen (rightly or wrongly) as LINKED to the
State’s existence (public officers or workers, working aristocracy, workers of
companies with State orders) ; and sometimes, because of pure alienation (under
the two others influence). They want to TRANSFORM this old French State in a
‘socialist republic’ (possibly with a recognizing of ‘cultural-and-democratic-rights-of-minorities)…
but not DESTROY it, as it’s to be done, to built something completely new,
something that, to be clear, can be only the work of masses in revolution, not
of ‘political engineers’ in a bureau.
2°/ All the misery of ‘occitanism’ since WW2 comes
from remaining, for 90% of its already skinny troops, in a REFORMIST
perspective : autonomist, regionalist, ‘decentralist’ – but even independentist
like in Catalonia, not breaking with capitalism, for us communists it remains
reformism. Or, sometimes, in an utopian
socialist perspective, which lead exactly to the same : as said Lenin, "No revolutionary theory, no
revolutionary movement". They didn’t consider Occitan Question in the only frame allowing its solution : World Proletarian Revolution whose new wave
is grewing up all over the World ; and they never considered Occitany, in
the French State, as obviously the first ‘countryside’ of revolutionary
struggle : the biggest and most peopled one, and above all, the older and
FOUNDING one – as it’s precisely from its conquest that French State’s born. To
not place their struggle in this perspective, to not giving it this dimension,
‘occitanists’ were doomed to fail.
For not being Marxists (or
so few), most of them misunderstood dialectical and historical materialism :
History as a negation of negation process. That means that any
economical & political system in history is negated by another ‘superior’ (in the sense of ‘historically
necessary’), and then this one is negated by another ‘superior’ (which negate the negation) and so on. With Modern State negating the old duchies, counties, baronies, abbeys,
countryside peasants communities and cities bourgeois ‘republics’,
‘aristocratic republics’ as was, according to Engels, a big part of medieval
Occitany, capitalism negate feudality.
And capitalism was an often dolorous, but necessary historical stage for
humanity : nobody can deny the huge scientific and technical progress it
brought to humanity. Above all, capitalism allowed emergence of HUMANISM, by
making human being the only owner of his labour strength (under
feudality that wasn't clear : feudal lord still was eminent owner of the
lands and people living in, this contradiction was the principal one of
this production mode). That was the historical
task of capitalism and its political expression, the Modern State.
But, doing so, capitalism
also DESTROYED, CRUSHED with never-seen violence the ancient traditional
communities and ways of live, to put every 'free' worker in the slavery chains of
selling every day his labour strength to capitalist employer (overseas,
capitalism also practiced genuine slavery !). Actually, capitalism is obliged
to produce humanism, but, to develop itself, it must every time trample
this humanism it just produced.
Now, all these people are proletarians
or semi proletarians, parked in their peripheries ; capitalism has reached
to its terminal crisis, and people wants COMMUNISM.
And the basic cell of the future socialist society we’re fighting for, the People’s Commune, is actually nothing but the medieval urban, countryside or mountain ‘republic’, on an higher level ; as could
say José Carlos Mariátegui for Peru’s pre-colonial peasant community (ayllu) or John MacLean for Scottish clan community, or even… Marx, on his later years of life, about
Russian mir. French Modern State, for the historical necessities
of capitalism, negate medieval
Occitany and its social system ; but now, it’s to be negate in its turn by this Occitany on an higher stage, Free an
Socialist Occitany, revolutionary Occitany which would be a little stone of the
Communist Universal City.
So, we reached to the conclusion that in the French State, the Occitan Question (asked in a
reformist way for half a century by the ‘occitanists’) has no answer out of the general frame of Proletarian Revolution ;
of People’s War deploying itself from the Peripheries of bourgeois
political-military and social-economic construction to the Centre ; our Occitany not only being one of the most
oppressed peripheries (in terms of poverty, unemployment, lack of services
etc.) but also the FOUNDING one, on which French State is born as a
WORLDWIDE exploitation and oppression capitalist project. And it has no other possible solution out of the tool
for our revolutionary Liberation : the Communist
Party of Occitany.
Consequently, this 8th
centennial of Muret’s bloody battle, sealing our people’s conquest and, giving
birth to French State, the fate of so many other peoples on Earth, is the
moment to announce the formation of a Building
Committee for Occitany’s Revolutionary Communist Party ; tool of
revolutionary struggle in our Occitan periphery/’countryside’, tied to all
genuine revolutionary forces in the French State to overthrow it, and overthrow
capitalism whose it’s the political, military and ideological instrument.
ÒSCA
LO COMITAT DE CONSTRUCCION PEL PARTIT COMUNISTA REVOLUCIONARI DE LAS TÈRRAS
D’ÒC !
PÒPLE
D’ÒC ENDAVANT CAP A LA REVOLUCION PROLETARIANA!
SOCIALISME
E LIBERTAT !
f Servir
