By centralizing French state, throughout history and to this day, it has been associated in particular with notions such historic "progress", "modernity" against the "medieval" and even more politicized concepts as they are "progressivism," the "universalism", the "Lights" etc., etc .; or, put another way, with notions of "left", mainly from a discourse that foregrounds the "Republic" or the "republican values", notions that, in the Spanish State or in the nations of the UK still contain a whole load subversive and revolutionary ideas, but in the Hexagon are emptied of substance and are completely bourgeois .
We must stress that the French state is, of all existing to date, one in which, certainly, the bourgeoisie less unceremoniously got rid of monarchical, aristocratic and administrative institutions, within which had nested since the late Middle Ages to "adulthood" of the eighteenth century.
Since then, the French bourgeoisie can be coated with this aura before their own masses and the whole world. Someday, however, will be necessary, no doubt, to confront this golden legend with reality, in terms, for example, radical agrarian revolution (did this affect many aristocrats and big landowners, who, in other cases, They were simply replaced by "buyers"?) while there was a large peasant class (today only are farmers), or in terms of importance of Catholicism galicano the dominant thought that at present "secular" is declared.
However, the French State, when venturing not to issue a claim independence (very minority sentiment among the peoples of the French state, representing a maximum of 20% in Corsica), but simply to affirm the existence of peoples
There in that State, he is often accused of "wanting to turn the wheel of history backwards," of wanting to "resurrect the county of Auvergne or the Duchy of Aquitaine", etc., etc.
This is such a stupid argument, which, as often happens to leave us speechless, with his mouth open, not knowing what to say.
And although it is a matter to be studied in depth because, as stated above, this reasoning is absolutely dominant.
So, what can we respond to this "argument"? Well, just answer the question does not lie in the late county of Auvergne or the Duchy of Aquitaine, even in the Republican Corsica, but on this
map :
The map shows, in white , geographic territories, according to a number of criteria (economic, social, "connective" -from access to information, to cultural or access to public services) are territories inclusion; and blue, the territories of exclusion, neglect, peripheries .
Sample essentially where wealth, power and impact of both concentrate on the French State, and where the focus exploitation and all forms of oppression.
What is depicted clearly is a ring of whiteness, schematically Rouen-Tours-Auxerre-Reims, with Paris at the center, ie a Paris Basin from which, since the mid-nineteenth century, it was said (Jules Michelet ) it was the "real France", while the rest was "not at all the same"; or by 1940 (the fascist Louis-Ferdinand Celine, antioccitano declared), that its "10 departments pay more taxes than the rest" state, which was certainly true and precisely translate the concentration of wealth; and that it be also precisely (by chance?) where the state historically has been deployed since the thirteenth century .
Moreover, the metropolis-link (Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes, Lille are also observed in white , etc.), links the central power ; a number of coastal regions where bourgeois holiday produce some economic effects; or areas such as Alsace or the northern Alps, benefiting from the proximity of Germany and Switzerland (European economic backbone).
And the rest ... blue more or less dark: blue stains on the white metropolis are excluded urban areas (suburbs "ghettos", "sensitive urban zones"), whose population is now largely of non-European origin ( and, once, it came from other countries in Europe ... or just the field and other remote regions of the state!); and above all, much less visible in the media, a number of relegated in rural areas , as well as former industrial basins , now in decline, where an amazing level of proletarianization occurs ... corresponding largely to our nationalities, whose mere mention is "want to return to the duchies of the Middle Ages".
Ultimately, what we have is, on the one hand, areas where the force of (poor or rural) proletarian labour produces wealth and on the other, the areas where the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie are , cashing the system to: the social order that reflects this map is precisely what we want to topple.
Does the French State centralizer, expression of historical "progress"? Yes , indeed ... In the sense that it is the expression, the product and the instrument of capitalism as an historical step back and "superior" feudalism
But that capitalism It has never existed either without multiplying crimes against working people, and today, the agenda is precisely topple!
How, then, pretending to be "anti-capitalist" and settle for a state of affairs that is his work ?
As a specific historical phase, capitalism faced, in fact, with the forces of feudalism (aristocrats, religious and other "anti-modern") but also ... conducted a relentless war against the masses to with chains Capital ; aspect (of course) written by the bourgeoisie History has sought to silence or minimize, but that Marx described perfectly in the case of Britain.
And once the war was won, as we all know, the base was and remains the exploitation of labour and extortion of this , pressure that has been stepping on the masses of the world (since capitalism prevails over all or almost the entire planet) as the system has been sinking in the crisis since the late nineteenth century (1873 crisis and following). As a result, instrument (the state in the sense of its institutions) and accrual basis key (the State within the meaning of the territory) of developing capitalism and its driving class, the bourgeoisie, the French State (absolutist, then alternatively Republican constitutional monarchy later definitely bourgeois Republican) swept indeed old fiefs and "state within a state" representing the Church ... but not only : also crushed the myriad of small republics popular peasant constituting each village or mountain valley, and even the bourgeois republics of cities, coexisting with authority manor or to which it overlapped; and above all it denied the reality of the people that went annexing the rhythm of expansion (Occitan, Breton,Basque and Catalan, Corsican, and Picard ch'tis, Alsace and Lorraine, etc.) to transform them into "subjects "King and then on" citizens "of the Republic, that is, labor force intended to generate capital growth.
It exploded in the service of capital, the working masses and repressed to blood uprisings, peasant revolts of the seventeenth century (the Croquants Occitan, the Red Hat Breton) to the communes, 1871 (Paris, but also from Marseille, Lyon, Narbonne , etc.).
Much earlier and much better than many self-proclaimed "Marxists" (including today), understood the fundamental political importance of culture; and therefore imposed the masses the language and culture of the ruling class (language produced in the French Academy from bourgeois noble and great speech of the Loire Valley), from the sixteenth century (Edict of Villers -Cotterêts 1539) in the administration and from the bourgeois revolution (speech Abbe Gregoire, 1790) in daily social life: when he thought the bourgeoisie, "they (workers and peasants) talk and think like us, only will move within the limits that we have set for them ... " That was, especially, the role of school -that other great sacred cow of all "" bourgeois, including the self-proclaimed "left Marxist" - played from the seventeenth century under the protection of the Church, and in 1880, with Jules Ferry (singer, moreover, of colonial conquest), became "public, free, secular and compulsory".
The latter exposed, by the way, things in the following terms: "In faith schools, youth receive an education entirely directed against modern institutions" . In this case the attack was aimed against the Church ... but also and especially against it represented the counter to the peasant masses, who had definitely subdue the bourgeois republic. He added immediately: "If this state of affairs is perpetuated, it is feared that other schools, open to the children of workers and peasants, which principles will be taught completely opposite, inspired perhaps in a socialist or communist ideal will constitute, taken in loan of more recent times, for example, that violent and sinister period between March 18 and May 24, 1871 " . In this case, the allusion, transparent allusion is to the Paris Commune, first test of proletarian dictatorship in the history of mankind!
And all this, what we have seen, the French government did the service for the benefit of a Capital consists of a bourgeois pyramid whose top is the Parisian bourgeoisie , and historically linked directly to state power at your service; capital whose conquered and denied (a "province" of pro vince in Latin, namely a country "previously defeated", that is, I won! ) became the workforce , and state territory, the first accrual basis (before embarking on the conquest of overseas colonies) for the production of wealth, a wealth that is directed and mechanically concentrated around Paris where dwells the "bourgeoisie-master", the main bourgeois; which leads to the social organization of the territory, divided into centers and peripheries , which clearly shows the map. A socio-territorial organization into centers and peripheries, product of a capitalist social order in which we intend to finish just ...
All this must be said however,
has never ceased to arouse resistance , as shown, for example, this other map:
This map shows the collective rebellions (ie, popular riots) by cantons against the forces of bourgeois order between 1800 and 1859, a period of "industrial revolution" in the subsumption of the masses by capitalism was made of a particularly brutal. And if you notice, of course, a concentration of these uprisings in the working-class suburbs of Paris, which make eventually stagger regimes, as in 1830, 1848, etc. (Paris where the workers are gathered, moreover, a proletariat ... immigrant from all "provinces" of the state), is also clearly that it is on the periphery -particularly in Occitania, Brittany and neighbouring regions Chuanería lands and North miner where insurrectional resistance against the triumphant capitalist order ... Territories are largely concentrated in blue the first map; one blue that now represents nothing less than the "fields" of the People's War that we undertake.
The French state is neither an "expression of progress" taken abstractly and idealistically (idea, unfortunately, shared by people who "Marxists" are claimed), nor a "floating" above entity classes and their struggle : is - organically identified with it - the political-military and ideological-cultural apparatus of the kind that we fight, the bourgeoisie!
Our struggle is not a struggle "to resurrect" the county of Auvergne or the Duchy of Aquitaine: it is
a struggle to overthrow this state , the walls of this prison , and liberate the peoples and their workers it locked.
We are not, to be honest, "independence" even "autonomy"
simply do not accept that bourgeois paradigm.
We are revolutionaries who want socialism. We want to seize as much territory as possible , as well as men and women who populate them, the capitalist order to establish socialism in them, which is the process that should lead to communism.
And on these geographical areas released, where we will have abolished the capitalist social order, starting with their guardians institutions, the bourgeois state , intend to establish new social relations and in particular, new relationships between the territories and populations , including national peoples (the nationalities without their bourgeoisie); relationships that are not about domination and subordination of others (as the first of the forms of domination, the Capital, will have been demolished), but democratic, fraternal federation and union among the peoples , until the world torn from the clutches of capitalism into communism. A federation of peoples, as Lenin said and repeated means free people , freed from their prison-states and all relations of domination, oppression or national denial : " labour internationalism means class solidarity expressed mutual support between workers of different nations, but respected in their peculiar way of being national . "(Argala).
What we want, really ... it's
just what I imagined Lenin for young USSR that was born under his eyes , but unfortunately it was ruined by the "
police spirit great Russian "as pointed as the great Bolshevik leader in his later writings, as well as chauvinist and reactionary bourgeois nationalism (especially in Ukraine), exacerbated by the enemies of the "Fatherland of the Workers' (Nazi Germany and, later, NATO)
1
For all the above, our claim of Occitan people, far be a "romantic" more nostalgic manifestation of the medieval past, it is inseparable from being communists.
