In one of his first letters, our reader asked what the ICC thought about the Quebec national question.

Here is our first reply:

"As regards the Quebec national question, it's no different from all the other questions by movements for national independence for over a century now: these movements reinforce nationalist illusions and weaken the workers' struggle. We consider that any organisation which, in Quebec, supports the demand for the independence of the "Belle Province" helps, whether consciously or not, to weaken the Quebecois, Canadian and North American proletariat."

As regards the specific question of Quebec and the attitude to adopt towards the independence movement, you write in your message of January 1st: "Concerning Quebec, I understand your opposition to the independence of Quebec and to Quebec nationalism, but I don't believe that Canadian nationalism is more ‘progressive', far from it. I believe that we have to resolutely oppose all the campaigns for the defence of the Canadian state and for the maintenance of the ‘national unity' of Canada. Canada is an imperialist, oppressor state which has to be destroyed from top to bottom. I'm not saying that we should support the independence of Quebec and the native peoples, but we also have to reject any appeal to Canadian-English chauvinism, which is dominant within the Canadian state."

Clearly it is out of the question for communists to give the slightest support to Canadian-English chauvinism, or to any form of chauvinism. However, you talk about "Canadian-English chauvinism" and "Quebec nationalism". What is the significance of this difference in terminology? Do you think that Quebec nationalism is less pernicious for the working class than Canadian-English nationalism? This is certainly not our view. And to illustrate that, we can envisage a situation which is hypothetical but by no means absurd, in which there is a powerful movement of the working class in Quebec which does not at first spread to the Anglophone provinces. It is clear that the Canadian bourgeoisie (including in Quebec) will do all it can to prevent it spreading to these provinces and one of the best ways of doing that is for the workers of Quebec to mix up proletarian class demands with autonomist or separatist demands. In this way we can see that Quebec nationalism is the worst kind of poison for the proletariat in Quebec and Canada as a whole, probably more dangerous than Canadian-English nationalism, since it seems unlikely that a class movement of Anglophone workers would be inspired by opposition to Quebecois independence.

In a situation which has some similarities with that in Quebec, Lenin wrote about the question of Polish independence:[1]

"The situation is, indeed, bewildering, but there is a way out in which all participants would remain internationalists: the Russian and German Social democrats by demanding for Poland unconditional ‘freedom to secede'; the Polish Social democrats by working for the unity of the proletarian struggle in both small and big countries without putting forward the slogan of Polish independence for the given epoch or the given period."[2]

Thus, if we really wanted to be loyal to Lenin's position, communists would have to defend the independence of Quebec in the Anglophone provinces but reject such a position in Quebec itself...

For our part, we don't share Lenin's position: we think that we have to speak the same language to all workers no matter what their nationality or their language. This is what we do in Belgium for example where our paper Internationalisme publishes exactly the same articles in French and Flemish. This said, we do recognise that Lenin's position, even though mistaken, was inspired by a deep-seated internationalism, which is certainly not the case if you don't vigorously denounce nationalism and demands for independence in Quebec.

"I think that you have a profoundly mistaken view of the relationship between Quebec nationalism and Canadian-English chauvinism. The latter is DOMINANT within the Canadian state and nourishes anti-Quebec and anti-Francophone racism. The existence of this chauvinism and its deep roots in the Anglo-Canadian working class prevents any Pan-Canadian unity of the working class. It encourages the development of nationalist tendencies among the Quebecois workers. One of its aspects is the rejection of bilingualism, which in any case is more a myth than a reality in Canada. Most Francophones are obliged to speak English and most Anglophones don't speak or refuse to speak French.

"Contrary to what you say the workers' movement in English Canada is based on the defence of Canadian unity and the ‘integrity' of the Canadian state, to the detriment of the Quebecois and the First Nations. There will NEVER be working class unity in Canada as long as the oppression of national minorities and Anglo-Chauvinist racism lasts...

"It's one thing to reject Quebec nationalism and to consider that Quebecois independence is an impasse and even a deception for the working class, but to go from there to claiming that it is more ‘dangerous' than Anglophone chauvinism, which is quite similar to Protestant Orangeism in Northern Ireland, there is a huge gulf.

"The Canadian government does everything in its power to keep Quebec in the Confederation, including the threat not to recognise a positive result in the 1995 referendum and even to carve up an independent Quebec along ethnic lines, which amounts to calling for the partition of Quebec. Then there was the law on referendum clarity where the federal government gave itself the right to decide on the rules of the next referendum on sovereignty, whether at the level of the way the question was posed or the size of the majority needed to carry through with the independence of Quebec.

"Above all, don't tell me that Anglo-Canadian nationalism is less pernicious for the unity of the working class. I strongly invite you to educate yourselves more about the Quebec national question."

You have replied particularly vigorously to our suggestion that, in certain ways, Quebec nationalism could be "more dangerous than Canadian-English nationalism".

We don't contest the facts you put forward to support your critique of our position, in particular that "Canadian-English chauvinism...is DOMINANT within the Canadian state and nourishes anti-Quebec and anti-Francophone racism" and that it "encourages the development of nationalist tendencies among the Quebecois workers". We are also ready to accept that "Anglophone chauvinism is quite similar to Protestant Orangeism in Northern Ireland."

In fact, we are going to base our reply on this latter argument.

To begin with, we think that there is here a false interpretation of our analysis. When we write that Quebec nationalism may prove more dangerous for the working class than Anglophone nationalism, this in no way means that we see the latter as a kind of "lesser evil" or that it is less hateful than the former. In fact, it's true that, given that the Francophone population is subjected to a form of national oppression by the Canadian state, pro-independence demands can be presented as a sort of struggle against oppression. And it's true that the class struggle of the proletariat is also a struggle against oppression. And it's here that the greatest danger lies.

When the Anglophone workers enter into struggle, in particular against attacks launched by the federal government, there is not much chance that their fight could be portrayed as a demand for maintaining the national oppression of the Francophone workers because the latter would also be victims of the government attacks. Even if the Anglophone workers don't have a great deal of sympathy for the Francophones in normal times, it would be surprising if, during a conflict with their bourgeoisie, they were to treat the Francophones as scapegoats. History shows that when the workers enter into struggle (a real struggle and not a typical union action aimed at derailing and sabotaging workers' militancy), there is a strong tendency for them to express their solidarity with other workers with whom they share a common enemy.

Once again, we don't know the situation in Canada very well, but we have had many experiences of this kind in Europe. For example, despite all the nationalist campaigns aimed at the Flemish and Francophone workers in Belgium, despite the fact that the political parties and unions are organised on a communitarian basis, we have seen that when there are important struggles in this country the workers are not much bothered about their linguistic or geographical origins and that they actually gain a real satisfaction from finding themselves shoulder to shoulder with workers from other linguistic groups, even though in "normal" times they are constantly being set against each other. Another example was provided a year ago in one of the countries where nationalism has been a huge weight, Northern Ireland. In February 2006 the Catholic and Protestant postal workers came out on strike together and held demonstrations in both Catholic and Protestant areas against the common enemy.[3]

You write:   

"There will NEVER be working class unity in Canada as long as the oppression of national minorities and Anglo-Chauvinist racism lasts..." You seem to be saying that this means that the rejection of their own chauvinism by the Anglophone workers is a sort of precondition they have to fulfil before they can engage in struggle against the Canadian bourgeoisie. In fact, all the historical examples give the lie to such a schema: it's during the course of the class combat, and not as a precondition for it, that workers are led to go beyond all the mystifications, including nationalist ones, that the bourgeoisie uses to maintain its grip on society.

In the final analysis, if we say that Quebec nationalism may prove to be more dangerous than Anglophone nationalism, it's precisely because there is a form of national oppression against the Francophone workers. When the latter enter into struggle against the federal state, they run the risk of being more receptive to arguments that present the class struggle and the struggle against national oppression as two complementary struggles.

This question is analogous to the question of democracy and fascism. They are two forms of class rule, two forms of class dictatorship. The latter is more brutal in the way it exercises this dictatorship, but this doesn't mean that communists have to choose the "lesser evil" between the two. In fact, the history of the Russian and German revolutions between 1917 and 1923 teaches us that the greatest danger for the working class was represented not by the openly reactionary parties but by the "social democrats", those who benefited from the workers having much more confidence in them.

Let us take one final example of the danger of the nationalism of oppressed nations: Poland.    

The independence of Poland from Czarist oppression was one of the central demands of the 1st and 2nd Internationals. However, from the end of the 19th century on, Rosa Luxemburg and her Polish comrades began to question this demand, showing in particular that the socialists' demand for Polish independence ran the risk of weakening the proletariat of that country. In 1905, the proletariat in Poland was in the vanguard of the revolution against the Czarist regime. By contrast, in 1917 and afterwards, it didn't follow the same path. On the contrary: one of the most successful methods used by the British and French ruling classes to paralyse and undo the Polish proletariat was to give their support to Polish independence. The workers in Poland were then caught up in a nationalist whirlpool which made them turn away from the revolution unfolding on the other side of their eastern frontier, and in some cases even led them to enlist in the troops sent to fight against the revolution.

In the end, which nationalism proved to be the most dangerous? The odious "Great Russian" chauvinism which Lenin denounced, full of contempt for the Poles and other nationalities, but left behind by the Russian workers at the moment of the revolution, or the nationalism of the workers in the oppressed nation par excellence, Poland?

The answer is self-evident. But we should also mention the tragic consequences of the fact that the majority of Polish workers followed the sirens of nationalism after 1917. Their non-participation in the revolution, even their hostility towards it, prevented the Russian and German revolutions from joining up geographically. And if this junction had taken place, it is probable that the world revolution would have been victorious, sparing humanity from all the barbarism of the 20th century, which continues to this day.

"Concerning the national question, I can understand that you are opposed to national demands, but I don't think this should make you close your eyes to national oppression. For example in the 60s and 70s one of the main demands of the Quebecois workers was the right to speak French at work, since a large number of enterprises and shops, above all in the Montreal region, functioned solely in English. Much progress has been made at this level, but there is still much to do. In my opinion it is vital to support this kind of democratic demand. We can't say to the workers ‘wait until the coming of socialism to sort that out', even if capitalism is by its nature incapable of putting an end to national oppression...

"I don't think that this kind of (democratic) demand, while not being revolutionary, can undermine the unity of the proletariat. On the contrary! The right to work in your own language, even if it doesn't put an end to exploitation, is an indispensable right for the workers. In the 1960s, the Quebecois workers didn't even have the right to speak to foremen in French in certain companies in the Montreal region. Certain restaurants in the west of Montreal only had their menus in English and the big stores in this area only operated in English.

"As I mentioned in my message, the situation has improved a lot, but there is still progress to be made, especially in the small companies with less than 50 employees. At the all-Canada level, bilingualism is far from being a reality despite all the fine official speeches.

"Concerning the Quebec national question, you asked me why I use the term chauvinism for Canadian-English nationalism and I don't use it to describe Quebec nationalism. Generally the organisations of the left use the word chauvinism to describe Canadian-English nationalism, because it is the dominant nation within the Canadian state. This doesn't mean that Quebec nationalism is more ‘progressive' than its Canadian-English counter-part.

"The Canadian-English workers' movement already raised the banner of Canadian unity during the 1972 general strike in Quebec. The NDP (New Democratic Party) and the CTC (Canadian Labour Congress) denounced this strike for being ‘separatist' and ‘undermining Canadian unity'. In my view an internationalist position has to resolutely and without compromise oppose both bourgeois camps and both nationalisms (Canadian-English and Quebecois). Even if today a movement of the working class in English Canada has little chance of being based on the defence of the oppression of the Quebecois, Anglophone chauvinism is still present all over Canada and is prejudicial to the unity of the working class. Any defence of the Canadian state and its so-called ‘unity' is at least as reactionary as promoting the independence of Quebec."

We wrote a long reply to the comrade's various letters on this question of demands against linguistic oppression, which we will see in the sections that follow.

[1]. With a significant difference in scale: the oppression meted out to the different nationalities in the Russian empire cannot be compared to the attitude of the Ottawa government to the different nationalities in Canada.

[2]. "The discussion on self-determination summed up", July 1916, Collected Works, Vol. 22.

[3]. See https://en.internationalism.org/wr/292_solidarity.html [4].

Dear comrade,

With this letter, we want to continue our discussion on the national question, in particular the question of Quebec. The first thing we want to say is that we absolutely agree with you when you say:

"...we have to be clear that opposition to the Quebec independence movement has nothing to do with the defence of the Canadian imperialist state and that it completely rejects Canadian nationalism. The federal Canadian camp deserves no more support than the Quebec independence camp."

And also:

"...an internationalist position has to resolutely and without compromise oppose the two bourgeois camps and the two nationalisms (Canadian/English and Quebecois)."

Indeed, internationalism today means that you cannot give support to any national state. We have to be precise about the fact that we're talking about today because this wasn't always the case. In the 19th century, it was possible for internationalists to support not only certain struggles for national independence (classically, the struggle for Polish independence for example), but also certain nation states. Thus, during the different wars that took place in Europe in the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels often took the side of one or other camp when they considered that the victory of this nation or the defeat of another would serve to advance the bourgeoisie against feudal reaction (symbolised by Czarism). Similarly, in December 1864, in the name of the General Council of the International Workingmen's Association, Marx sent the US president Abraham Lincoln a message of congratulations on his re-election and of support for his opposition to the efforts of the southern states to secede (in this case, Marx and Engels vigorously opposed a demand for national independence!).

And here we come to the heart of the question of "democratic demands" that you raise:

"... in the 60s and 70s one of the main demands of the Quebec workers was the right to work in French...In my view it is indispensable to support this kind of democratic demand. We can't say to the workers ‘wait for the dawn of socialism to sort that out', even if capitalism is by its nature incapable of putting an end to national oppression". And again: "...I don't think that these kinds of demand, while not being revolutionary, can undermine the unity of the proletariat."

In order to be able to deal correctly with the specific case of "linguistic" demands (in particular the Canadian authorities' ostracism of French speakers), we have to go back to the general question of "democratic demands".

The formula is itself significant:

demand: this is something expressed (including by violent means) to an authority which is called on to grant it, whether willingly or under duress. It presupposes that the power of decision does not belong to those who express it, even if they can obviously "force the hand" of those who do hold this power through a favourable balance of forces (for example: a wage increase or the withdrawal of anti-working class measures obtained through a massive mobilisation of the workers that obliges the bosses to step back - which doesn't mean that they have been deprived of their decision-making power in the enterprise);

democracy: etymologically, "power of the people". It was Athens which invented "democracy" (which was very limited since slaves, foreigners and women were excluded) but it is the bourgeoisie which has "enthroned" it, so to speak.

The rise of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by the development of the different attributes of "democracy". This was obviously no accident but corresponded to the necessity for the bourgeois class to abolish the political, economic and social privileges of the nobility. For the latter, and in particular for its supreme representative, the King, power was essentially divine in origin. In the final analysis it was accountable only to the Almighty, even if, in France, for example, between 1302 and 1789 there were 21 meetings of the Estates General, representing the nobility, the clergy, and the "Third Estate", to give advice on financial matters or the mode of government. It was indeed during the last meeting of the Estates General that, under the pressure of peasant and urban revolts and the financial bankruptcy of the monarchy, the Third Estate launched the French revolution (notably by abolishing the privileges of the nobility and the clergy and limiting the power of the King). Following the example set by the English bourgeoisie a century and half earlier, the French bourgeoisie went on to establish its political power, which was hardly very "democratic" (especially of you think about the autocratic power of Napoleon the First, even though he was the heir of the revolution of 1789).

Universal suffrage

While it considered that the nobility should no longer be allowed to run things, the bourgeoisie only saw democracy in its own terms. Its slogan was "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" and it declared that "men are born free and remain free and equal in their rights". However, although universal suffrage was written into the Constitution of 1793, this only became effective on 2nd March 1848, in the heat of the February revolution. And it was some time later that universal suffrage was established in other "advanced" countries: Germany 1871; Holland 1896; Austria 1906; Sweden 1909; Italy 1912; Belgium 1919...just after the very "democratic" England in 1918. In fact, in the majority of European countries, in the 19th century, universal suffrage was not the basis of bourgeois democracy: since the right to vote was determined by a certain level of taxation (in some cases, a high level of taxation gave one a right to multiple votes), the workers and other poor people, in other words the great majority of the population, were excluded from the electoral process. This is why universal suffrage was one of the main demands of the workers' movement during this period. This was notably the case in Britain where the world's first mass working class movement, Chartism, was formed around the question of universal suffrage. If the bourgeoisie opposed this demand for so long, it was obviously because it feared that the workers would use the vote to challenge its power within the state. This fear was particularly strong among the more archaic fractions of the bourgeoisie, especially those who were closest to the aristocracy (which, in a number of countries, had abandoned its economic privileges, such as exemption from taxes, but had conserved a strong position within the state, above all in the military and the diplomatic corps). This is why this period witnessed alliances between the working class and certain sectors of the bourgeoisie. This was for example the case in Paris in February 1848 when the revolution was supported by the workers, the artisans, the "liberal" bourgeoisie (for example the poet Lamartine) and even "legitimist" monarchists who saw King Louis-Philippe as a usurper. Having said this, the class antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat came rapidly to the surface with the "June Days" when, following the workers' uprising against the closure of the National Workshops, 1,500 of them were massacred and 15,000 deported to Algeria. In fact, it was at this point that some of the more dynamic sectors of the bourgeoisie understood that they could make use of universal suffrage against the archaic sectors that were standing in the way of economic progress. Furthermore, during the ensuing period, the French bourgeoisie became quite accustomed to a political system which combined a form of autocracy (Napoleon III) with universal suffrage, thanks in particular to the weight of a reactionary peasantry. It was in fact an assembly elected by universal suffrage dominated by deputies from the countryside (the "rurals") which decided on the repression of the Paris Commune of 1871 and gave full power to Thiers to direct the slaughter of 30,000 workers during the "bloody week" at the end of May.        

Thus, two decades of universal suffrage in France were proof that the ruling class could definitely accommodate itself to this method of organising its institutions.

In the whole period that followed, Marx and Engels often warned against "parliamentary cretinism", and, drawing the lessons from the Commune, they underlined the necessity to destroy the bourgeois state. Nevertheless, along with the whole workers' movement with the exception of the anarchists, they continued to see universal suffrage as one of the main demands of the proletarian struggle.

And indeed, despite the dangers contained within it, support for this "democratic demand" was totally justified:

• it allowed the workers' parties, by presenting their own candidates, to distinguish themselves clearly from bourgeois parties on the terrain of the bourgeois institutions;
• it enabled them to use election campaigns as vehicles for propaganda for socialist ideas;
• it opened up the possibility of acting inside parliament (through speeches, proposed laws) as a tribune for this same propaganda;
• it allowed the workers' parties to give support to progressive bourgeois parties against the reactionary ones, in order to facilitate the political conditions for the development of modern capitalism.

Freedom of press and of association

In connection with the demand for universal suffrage, the foundation stone of bourgeois democracy, the working class also fought for other rights such as freedom of the press and freedom of association. These were demands that the working class put forward at the same time as the progressive sectors of the bourgeoisie. For example, one of the first political texts by Marx dealt with the censorship exerted by the Prussian monarchy. As the editor both of the Rheinische Zeitung, (1842-43) which was still inspired by radical bourgeois ideas, and of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49) which was influenced by communism, Marx constantly denounced the official censorship. This in a sense epitomises the fact that at this time there was a convergence around democratic demands between the workers' movement and the bourgeoisie, which was still a revolutionary class trying to get rid of the vestiges of the feudal order.

As regards freedom of association, there was a similar convergence between the interests of the proletariat and those of the progressive bourgeoisie. Furthermore, freedom of association, like the freedom of the press, was one of the fundamental preconditions for the functioning of bourgeois democracy founded on universal suffrage, since political parties are an essential element in this mechanism. This said, what applied to freedom of association on the political level did not at all apply at the level of the workers organising themselves for the defence of their economic interests. Even the most revolutionary of bourgeoisies, the one which led the French revolution of 1789, was ferociously opposed to this right despite all its grand principles of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". Thus, in a law promulgated on 14th June, workers' combinations were forbidden as "an affront to freedom and the Declaration of the Rights of Man", and it was not until the 1848 revolution that this law was amended (with many reservations, since the new formulation still denounced "attempts to restrict the free exercise of industry and the freedom to work"). In the end, it was not until 1884 that trade unions could be formed freely. As for that Motherland of Liberty, Britain, trade unions were not legally recognised there until June 1871 (and it has to be said that the union leaders, especially those who sat on the General Council of the IWA, had been opposed to the Paris Commune).

National demands

The national demands which took on a good deal of importance around the mid-19th century (they were at the heart of the 1848 revolutions across Europe) were an integral part of these "democratic demands", especially where there was a convergence between the old empires (Russian and Austrian) and the domination of the aristocracy. One of the basic reasons for the workers' movement supporting certain of these demands is that they weakened these empires and thus the feudal reaction, while opening the door to the formation of viable nation states. During this period, supporting the demand for national independence was a key issue for the working class. One of the best illustrations of this was the fact that the IWA was formed in 1864 by English and French workers at an assembly held in support of Polish independence. But the support given by the workers' movement didn't apply to all national demands. Marx and Engels condemned the national demands of the small Slav people (Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, Czechs, Moravians, Slovaks) because they were not in a position to set up a viable nation state and were an obstacle to modern capitalism, being caught up in the games of the Russian empire and holding back the development of the German bourgeoisie.[1]

[1]. See the 1849 article by Engels' "Democratic Pan-slavism" https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/02/15.htm [5].

The support the workers' movement gave to democratic demands was based essentially on a historic situation in which capitalism was still progressive. In this context, certain sectors of the bourgeoisie could still act in a "revolutionary" or "progressive" manner. But the situation changed radically at the beginning of the 20th century, above all with the First World War. From then on, all sectors of the bourgeoisie became reactionary because capitalism had completed its fundamental historic task of subjecting the whole planet to its economic laws and developing the productive forces of society on an unprecedented scale (starting with the most important productive force, the working class). The system was no longer a condition for human progress but an obstacle to it. As the Communist International put it in 1919, we had entered "the epoch of wars and revolutions". And if we look again at the main democratic demands mentioned above, we can see how they have ceased to be a terrain for the struggle of the proletariat.

Universal suffrage

Universal suffrage (which had not in fact been accorded in all the developed countries, as we saw above) became one of the principal means used by the bourgeoisie to preserve its domination. We can take two examples from the countries where the revolution went furthest: Russia and Germany.

In Russia, after the seizure of power by the soviets in October 1917, elections to a Constituent Assembly were organised on the basis of universal suffrage (the Bolsheviks had raised this demand before October in order to unmask the Provisional Government and the bourgeois parties who were against the election of a Constituent Assembly). These elections gave a majority to those parties, in particular the Socialist Revolutionaries, who had participated in the Provisional Government and served as a final rampart of bourgeois order. This Constituent Assembly raised great hopes in the ranks of the Russian and international bourgeoisie who saw it as a means to deprive the working class of its victory and return themselves to power. This is why at the first meeting of the Assembly, the Soviet power dissolved it.

A year later, in Germany, the war had, as in Russia, given birth to the revolution. At the beginning of November, workers' and soldiers' councils were formed throughout the country, but (as at the beginning of the Russian revolution) they were dominated by the majority social democrats, the same people who had participated in the imperialist war. These councils handed power over to a "Council of Peoples' Commissars" run by the SPD but also the "Independents" of the USPD who served as a left cover for the real bosses. All of a sudden, the SPD called for the election of a constituent assembly for 15 February 1919:

"He who wants bread, must want peace. He who wants peace, must want the Constituent, the freely elected representation of the whole German people. He who acts against the Constituent or who procrastinates about it, is depriving you of peace, freedom and bread, is robbing you of the first fruits of the victory of the revolution...such a person is a counter-revolutionary" (thus the Spartacists were "counter-revolutionaries". The Stalinists didn't invent anything new when a few years later they used the same term against those who had remained loyal to the revolution).

"Socialisation will take place and must take place... through the will of the labouring people who, fundamentally, want to abolish this economy animated by the search for profit by particular elements. But this will be a thousand times easier to impose if it is the Constituent which decrees it rather than being ordered by the dictatorship of some revolutionary committee."[1]

This was obviously a way of disarming the working class and leading it onto a terrain which was not its own, of emptying the workers' councils of any reason for existing (since they are presented as no more than a provisional institution until the next Constituent Assembly) and of preventing the councils from heading in a similar direction to that taken by the soviets in Russia, where the revolutionaries had gradually won a majority within them. At the same time as making grand "democratic" declarations to send the workers off to sleep, the socialists were getting together with the army HQ to plan the "cleaning out of the Bolsheviks", i.e. the bloody repression of insurgent workers and the liquidation of the revolutionaries. This is what they did in mid-January, following a provocation which pushed the workers of Berlin into a premature insurrection. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht (accused of being counter-revolutionaries because they were opposed in advance to the Constituent Assembly), were murdered, along with hundreds of workers, on 15th January. On 19th January the anticipated elections to the Constituent Assembly were held. This was the triumph of universal suffrage...against the working class. 

Freedom of the press

With regard to freedom of the press, in most European countries it was gradually won by the working class newspapers by the end of the 19th century. In Germany for example, the anti-Socialist laws which hindered the social democratic press (it had to be published in Switzerland) were lifted in 1890. However, although the workers' movement could express itself with almost complete freedom by the eve of the First World War, these gains were abolished overnight as soon as the war broke out. The only position that could be freely expressed in the papers was the one supporting national unity and the war effort. In the countries which participated in the war, revolutionaries had to publish and distribute their press illegally and clandestinely, as in Czarist Russia. This was true to such a point that Russia, after the February 1917 revolution, suddenly became "the freest country in the world". This sudden abolition of press freedom for the workers' movement, this overnight cancelling out of the gains of decades of struggle, undertaken not by the most archaic sectors of the ruling class but by the most "advanced" bourgeoisies, was one of the signs that a new period had begun, one in which there could no longer be the slightest common interest between the proletariat and any sector of the bourgeoisie. What was revealed by this assault on the workers' organisations' freedom of expression was not the great strength of the bourgeoisie but a great weakness, a weakness springing from the fact that the bourgeoisie's rule over society no longer corresponded to humanity's historic needs but was now the open and definitive antithesis of these needs.

Of course, after the First World War, freedom of the press was re-established for the former workers' organisations in the advanced countries.  But this freedom of the press was no longer the result of struggles of the working class coinciding with the interests of the most dynamic sectors of the bourgeoisie, as had been the case during the course of the 19th century. On the contrary, it corresponded to the fact that the bourgeoisie had managed to gain the upper hand over the proletariat during the revolutionary wave of 1917-23. And one of the major elements in the victory of the bourgeoisie had been its ability to take over the old organisations of the workers' movement, the Socialist parties and the trade unions. These organisations obviously continued to present themselves as defenders of the working class and used an "anti-capitalist" language which obliged the ruling class to organise the freedom of the press in order to create the appearance of a "democratic debate". We should also remember that in the wake of the Russian revolution, the bourgeoisie set up a cordon sanitaire around it in the name of democracy, accusing it of killing freedom. However, it soon became clear that this love for democratic freedoms could easily be set aside even by the bourgeoisie's most modern factions and not just by its most archaic ones. This is what happened with the rise of fascism in the early 1920s in Italy and at the beginning of the 1930s in Germany. Contrary to the view of the Communist International, which was criticised by the Italian communist left, fascism in no way represented a kind of "feudal  reaction" (even if it was supported by certain aristocrats who were all for law and order).  On the contrary, it was a political orientation supported by the most modern sectors of the bourgeoisie, who saw it as a means for advancing the country's imperialist interests.  This can be seen very clearly in the case of Germany where Hitler, even before he came to power, received massive support from the dominant and most modern sectors of industry, particular the steel industry (Krupp, Thyssen) and the chemical industry (BASF).

Freedom of association

Concerning the question of "freedom of association", it is obviously connected to the question of freedom of the press and universal suffrage. In most of the advanced countries, the workers' organisations could meet where they liked. But again we have to point out that this "freedom" was the other side of the coin to the integration of the former workers' parties into the state apparatus.[2] Furthermore, after the First World War, now that these parties had shown how effective they could be in dealing with the working class, the bourgeoisie showed them much more confidence and put them in power in several European countries during the 1930s, as part of the policy of the "Popular Fronts".  It turned not only to the Socialist parties but also to the "Communist" parties who had in their turn betrayed the proletariat. The latter indeed played the role of spearheads of the counter-revolution, especially in Spain where they distinguished themselves in the murder of the most militant workers. And in a number of other European countries they served as the recruiting sergeants for the Second World War and the main protagonists for the "Resistance", particularly in France and Italy. We should also note that the defence of internationalist and revolutionary ideas had become particularly difficult during this period. Thus Trotsky was denied political asylum in most countries of the world (which had become a "planet without visa" as he put it in his autobiography) and was along with his comrades subjected to permanent police surveillance and persecution. The difficulties facing revolutionaries were even greater at the end of the Second World War, when those who had remained loyal to internationalist principles were denounced - above all by the Stalinists - as "collaborators", persecuted and in some cases (such as Italy) murdered.

Again in relation to freedom of association, we should make a special mention of the trade unions. After the First World

War they also benefited from a good deal of solicitude on the part of the bourgeoisie. During the 1930s, they took part in the sabotage of struggles and above all in channelling workers' discontent towards support for the bourgeois parties who were leading the way in the preparations for imperialist war (support for Roosevelt in the USA, in Europe support for the Popular Fronts that were preparing to provide cannon-fodder in the name of anti-fascism). We should also note that it was not only the democratic sectors of the bourgeoisie that drew strength from the unions. Fascism also appealed to them once it had understood the need to keep control over the working class at the "rank and file" level. Obviously, in the fascist regimes, as in the Stalinist regimes, the unions' role as state organs and auxiliaries to the police was much clearer than in the democratic regimes. But even in the latter, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the unions overtly presented themselves as defenders of the national economy and played the role of police in the factories in order to incite the workers to make sacrifices in the name of reconstruction.

The "right" to participate in elections, which workers had fought for in the 19th century, became in the course of the 20th century an "electoral duty" orchestrated by vast media campaigns by the bourgeoisie (in some case, like Belgium, the vote has even become compulsory). In the same way, the "right" to belong to a union that workers once fought for became the obligation to join a union (in those sectors which practised the "closed-shop" system), or to go through the union to raise demands or go on strike.

National demands

One of the great strengths of the bourgeoisie in the 20th century, as shown during the First World War, was its ability to take the "democratic rights", which the working class had fought for so bitterly in the previous century, often at the cost of its own blood, and turn them against the class.

And this applies particularly to the "democratic demand" for national self-determination or the rights of oppressed national minorities. We saw earlier that this demand in itself was not at all proletarian, but could rightly be supported in specific cases by the working class and its vanguard. In contrast to what happened to the trade unions, "national" demands didn't acquire a bourgeois character when capitalism entered its phase of decadence, since they had been bourgeois from the start. But because the bourgeoisie had ceased to be a revolutionary or even a progressive class, these demands became totally reactionary and counter-revolutionary, a real poison for the proletariat.

There are plenty of examples. Thus, one of the main themes invoked by the European bourgeoisie to justify imperialist war in 1914 was the defence of oppressed nationalities. And since the war was fought between empires which inevitably oppressed various peoples, there was no lack of arguments: Alsace and Lorraine, against the wishes of its population, under the heel of the German Empire; southern Slavs dominated by the Austrian Empire; peoples of the Balkans oppressed by the Ottoman empire; Finland and the Baltic countries (without counting the dozens of nationalities in the Caucasus and central Asia) trapped in the "prison-house of nations" (as the Czarist Empire was called), etc. To this list of peoples oppressed by the main protagonists of the world war, we can obviously add the multitude of colonial populations in Africa, Asia and Oceania.

Similarly, we have already seen in our previous letter how the independence of Poland was to be a decisive weapon against the world revolution at the end of the First World War. We can add that the slogan "the right of peoples to self-determination" had no better defender at this time than the American president Woodrow Wilson. If the bourgeoisie that was about to take the leading role in the world showed such concern for oppressed peoples, it obviously wasn't out of "humanism" (whatever Wilson's personal feelings may have been) but because it had its own interests in mind. And that's not hard to understand: the majority of the world was still under the domination of the European powers who had won the war (or who had kept out of it, like Holland, Spain and Portugal), and the decolonisation of these areas would leave them open to a take-over by American imperialism (through less costly means than direct colonial administration), which was singularly lacking in colonies of its own.

One last word on this subject: although in the 19th century national emancipation had been associated with democratic demands against the feudal empires, the European nations who won their "independence" at the end of the First World War were for the most part led by fascist-type dictatorships. This was notably the case in Poland (with the Pilsudski regime) but also in the three Baltic countries and Hungary.

The Second World War, and the process which led up to it, also saw the extensive use of national demands. For example, it was in the name of the rights of the German minority in the Sudetenland that the Nazi regime took over part of Czechoslovakia in 1938 (the Munich accords). Similarly, it was in the name of Croatian independence that the Nazi armies invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, an operation supported by Hungary which came to the rescue of the "national rights" of the Hungarian minority of Voivodina.

In fact, what has happened all over the world since the First World War has totally confirmed the analysis originated by Rosa Luxemburg at the end of the 19th century: the demand for national independence has ceased to have the progressive role that it could once play in certain cases. Not only has it become a demand that is particularly harmful to the working class, but it is easily integrated into the imperialist designs of the different states and has served as a flag for the most reactionary and xenophobic bourgeois cliques.

[1]. SPD leaflet - see our series of articles on the German revolution in International Review n° 82.

[2]. In one of your messages you write that "the Canadian-English workers' movement has already raised the banner of Canadian unity during the general strike of 1972 in Quebec. The National Democratic Party and the Canadian Congress of Labour denounced this strike as ‘separatist' and ‘undermining Canadian unity'". In fact it's not the "Canadian-English workers' movement" which adopted this attitude but bourgeois parties with a workerist language and trade unions in the service of capital. 

Having said this, are we to conclude that the working class today can still support "democratic demands"?

We have seen what has become of the "democratic demands" won by the workers' struggles of the 19th century:

universal suffrage has become one of the prime means of masking the dictatorship of capital behind the idea of the "sovereign people"; it's one of capital's favourite tools for sterilising and derailing the discontent and the hopes of the working class;

• "freedom of the press" has been adapted very well to a totalitarian control of information through the big media institutions, whose job is to present the official version of the truth. In "democracy" there can be many views and many institutions but they all converge around the idea that capitalism in one form or another is the only possible system. And when necessary, the "freedom of the press" is officially curtailed, in the name of wartime restrictions (as was the case with the Gulf wars of 1991 and 2003);
• "freedom of association" (like freedom of the press) is only tolerated, and this includes in the great democracies, as long as it doesn't pose any threat to bourgeois power and its imperialist objectives. There are plenty of examples of flagrant violations of this freedom. To cite only the case of the world champion of democracy and human rights, the USA, we had the persecution of left-wing sympathisers during the McCarthy period, and in France, the dissolution of groups of the extreme left and the arrest of their leaders after the huge strike of May 68, not forgetting the persecution and even murder of opponents of the war in Algeria in the 50s. Since its formation in 1975, our own organisation, despite its very small size and very weak influence, has not been spared: house searches, the shadowing and intimidation of militants...
• as for "trade union rights", we have seen that this is the most effective way for the capitalist state to exert its control over the exploited "at the base" and to sabotage their struggles. On this point it's worth recalling what happened in Poland in 1980-81. In August 1980, the workers, without any pre-existing union organisation (the official unions being completely discredited), organised in general assemblies and strike committees, were able to prevent the Stalinist state from repressing them (as had been the case in 1970 and 1976) and even managed to force it to retreat. Their first demand,[1] the formation of an "independent" union, opened the way to the foundation of Solidarnosc. In the months that followed, the leaders of Solidarnosc, who not long before had been in prison or subjected to all kinds of persecutions, toured the country to put the lid on the many strikes that kept breaking out. They did this job so well that the working class gradually fell into disarray. It was when this work had been finished that the Stalinist state could regain control of the situation and decree the state of siege on 13th December 1981. The repression was particularly brutal (dozens killed, 10,000 arrests) and the pockets of workers' resistance were isolated. In August 1980, the government would not have been able to get away with this: any such attempt would have provoked a generalised response. Fifteen months' work by Solidarnosc is what made it possible.      

Today "democratic rights" and more generally "human rights" have become the major theme of most sectors of the bourgeoisie.

In was in the name of defending these "rights" that the Western bloc waged the Cold War for over 40 years against the Russian bloc. It was for the defence of "democratic rights" against "terrorist barbarism and Islamic fundamentalism" or the Saddam dictatorship that the US government launched the devastating wars in the Middle East. We will pass over many other examples, but it is also worth recalling that the defence of "democracy", before it was the flag of American imperialism and its allies after 1947, had already served as the theme for dragooning the workers into the biggest massacre in history, the Second World War. It is worth noting here that as long as it was an ally against Germany, the Stalinist regime, which could certainly vie with the fascists when it came to police terror and the massacre of whole populations (and in fact preceded them in this respect) didn't seem to bother the western governments in their crusade for democracy.

With regard to the parties of the left, i.e. the bourgeois parties who have more impact on the working class, the demand for "democratic rights" is in general an excellent way of drowning class demands and preventing the proletariat from affirming its class identity. What applies to "democratic demands" also applies to pacifism: faced with war, we regularly see mobilisations orchestrated by all sorts of political sectors from the extreme left to certain elements of the chauvinist right who consider that this or that war is not opportune for the interests of the nation (this is fairly common in France today where even the right is, in its majority, opposed to American policies). Behind the banner of "no to war" the workers, and above all their class interests, are completely drowned in a sea of democratic and pacifist consciences (when it's not out and out chauvinism: it's not at all rare to see bearded Muslims and veiled women taking part in the demonstrations against the war in the Middle East).

Since the First World War the position of revolutionaries towards pacifism has been to combat the petty bourgeois illusions it spreads. Revolutionaries have always been in the front line of denouncing imperialist war but this is never based on purely moral considerations. They have shown that it is capitalism as a whole which is responsible for wars, which are inevitable as long as the system survives, and that the only force in society which can really struggle against war is the working class, which has to preserve its class independence in the face of all the pacifist, humanist and democratic sermons.   

"Democratic" demands around the right to use your mother tongue

The first thing to say here is that the workers' movement has never considered the persistence of native languages, and thus demands for them to persist, to be "progressive" or "democratic". In fact, one of the characteristics of the revolutionary bourgeoisie was that it carried through the unification of viable nations, which involved going beyond provincial or local particularities linked to the feudal period. The imposition of a single national language was in many cases one of the instruments of this national unification (in the same way as the unification of systems of weights and measures, for example). This unification of the language usually took place through force, repression, bloodbaths: in fact, the classic methods which capitalism used to spread its hold over the world. Throughout their lives, Marx and Engels obviously denounced the barbaric methods through which capitalism established its hegemony over the planet, whether during the phase of primitive accumulation (see the admirable pages in the last section of Volume One of Capital)[2] or during colonial conquests. At the same time, they always explained that, despite its barbarism, the bourgeoisie was the unconscious agent of historic progress by creating a world market, by liberating the productive forces of society, by generalising associated labour through the wage system, in short by preparing the material conditions for the coming of socialism.[3]

Much more than all the other social systems put together, capitalism has destroyed all the civilisations, cultures, and thus languages around it. There's no use deploring this or trying to return to the past: it's an accomplished and irreversible historical fact. You can't turn the wheel of history back. It's as if you tried to go back to artisan labour or the small-scale, self-sufficient agricultural production of the Middle Ages.[4]

This irresistible march of capitalism has selected a certain number of dominant languages, not on the basis of any linguistic superiority, but simply on the basis of the military and economic superiority of the peoples and states who use them. Some of these national languages have become international languages, spoken by the inhabitants of a number of countries. There are not that many of them: today, we're essentially talking about English, Spanish, French[5] and German. With regard to German, which is of great richness and rigour, and which was the language of many fundamental works of world culture (the philosophical works of Kant, Fichte, Hegel etc, the works of Freud, Einstein's theory of relativity and...the works of Marx) it is only used in Europe and it is already well past its heyday.

In fact, when it comes to real international languages used as a main language by more than a hundred million people, there is only Spanish, and of course English. The latter is today the real international language. This is the inevitable consequence of the fact that the two nations which have successively dominated capitalism were Britain and then America. Anyone who doesn't know English today is handicapped either when travelling or surfing the net, or doing serious scientific studies, especially in leading fields like IT. This is obviously not the case with French (which was in the past the international language of the European courts and of diplomacy, but evidently this didn't involve that many people).

To return to a remark you made in your messages: this is why, even if it is actively promoted by the Federal Canadian State, bilingualism will never be a reality in Canada. We have an edifying example of this in the case of Belgium. In Antwerp or Ghent, the Flemish workers often have a boss who speaks French. This has led many of them to feel that in refusing to speak French, they are in some way resisting the boss and the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, while it has never existed in an integral way for either of the two communities, bilingualism is much more common among the Flemish than the French-speaking Walloons. For several decades, Wallonia, the birthplace of Belgium's large-scale industry, has been losing the race at the economic level in relation to Flanders. One of the themes of the Flemish nationalists today is that this region, with its high rate of unemployment and its outdated industries, is a burden on Flanders. They tell the Flemish workers that they have to work and pay taxes to subsidise the Walloon workers: this is one of the themes of the extreme right independence party, Vlaams Belang.

The fact that the Flemish workers today are now much more often able to speak Flemish with their boss obviously doesn't change their exploited condition. This said, the population of Flanders is more and more bilingual, but the second language which is now developing is not French, which would allow a better communication with the Francophone population of the country, but English. This is also the case with the Francophone population. And the fact that, in their speeches, the King and the head of government express themselves in French and Flemish in a very equitable way doesn't change this.    

We can take another example, that of Catalan.

Historically, Catalonia is the main industrial region of Spain and the most advanced on many levels: living standards, culture, and education for example. The working class of Catalonia has since the 19th century represented the most conscious and combative sector of the Spanish proletariat. In this region, the question of linguistic demands has been posed for a long time because the official language of all regions of Spain has been Castillian even though the current language, the language you speak with your family, your friends, in the street, is Catalan. This question has obviously been raised within the workers' movement. Among the anarcho-syndicalists who dominated it for a long time, this was often a thorny question since some of them, in the name of the "federalism" so beloved of the anarchists, were in favour of the pre-eminence of Catalan in the workers' press. Others argued, rightly enough, that while the boss of the enterprise may have been Catalan, many workers were not and spoke Castillian (a language also spoken by the Catalan workers). The use of Catalan was an excellent means for the boss to divide the workers.

During the Francoist period, where Catalan was not favoured in the media, or schools, and even less in the administration, using it seemed to a large part of the population of Catalonia a way of resisting the dictatorship. Far from weakening the use of Catalan, Franco's policies essentially had the opposite effect, to the point where immigrants from other regions were learning the language, as much as to be accepted by the natives[6] as to take part in this "resistance".

With the end of Francoism and the advent of "democracy" in Spain, the autonomist movement faded out. The regions, and especially the Catalan region, regained the prerogatives they had lost in the past. One of these prerogatives was to make Catalan the official language of the region, i.e. the administration could now only work in Catalan and this language was used exclusively in the schools, Castillian being taught only as a foreign language.

Parallel to this, in the universities of Catalonia, more and more courses were taught in Catalan, which obviously penalised students coming from other regions or from abroad (who may have learned Spanish because it is an international language but had not learned a regional language like Catalan). Result: while the Catalan universities had a good reputation, especially the University of Barcelona, and because of this attracted the best Spanish, European or South American students, the latter tended more and more to chose universities where they didn't run the risk of stubbing their foot on a language they didn't know. The process of opening up to Europe and the world, which Catalonia was so proud of, could only be undermined by Catalan being the hegemonic language, and in the ancestral rivalry between Barcelona and Madrid, the latter was threatening to gain a decisive advantage - not, as in the days of Franco, because of forced centralisation, but on the contrary because of the "democratic conquests" of Catalonia. This said, if the Catalan bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie have adopted a policy of shooting themselves in the foot, this is not a particular concern for internationalist revolutionaries. Nevertheless, the business of teaching only in Catalan does have much more serious consequences. The new generations of proletarians in Catalonia will have more difficulty communicating with their class brothers in the rest of the country and they will no longer have help from their parents in the international language of Spanish, even though they know it better than they know Catalan grammar. 

Going back to the linguistic insults which existed in the past in Quebec and which you mention in your messages (and which do resemble the situation in Flanders a while back), they are typical of the behaviour of all bourgeoisies and are yet another means to affirm their strength in front of the workers, to show who's in charge. At the same time, it's an excellent way of dividing the workers between those who speak the language of the bosses (who are told that they are "privileged") and those who don't or who speak it badly. Finally, it's a way of channelling the discontent of the workers towards a terrain that is not theirs and which can only sap their class unity. Even if not all the bourgeoisie are intelligent enough to do all the necessary Machiavellian calculations, the existence of situations where, as well as their classical exploitation, workers also have to put up with added indignities, provides an excellent safety valve when the social pressure starts to build up. Rather than giving way on the essential questions, the bourgeoisie is ready to give way on issues that don't cost it anything, such as the language question. Here they are helped by the political forces - especially those of the left and far left - who have included linguistic demands in their programme and who present the satisfaction of these demands as a victory, even if other demands have not been satisfied (above all if these demands are considered to be the principal ones, as you note in your message of 18th February). In reality, while this problem of linguistic disadvantages for the workers has tended to diminish in Quebec, it's not only because of the policies of the nationalist parties. It's also a consequence of the workers' struggles which have developed all around the world, including Canada, since the end of the 1960s.

In the face of such a situation, what approach should revolutionaries adopt? It can only be to tell workers the truth, to say what we've said here. They must encourage workers' struggles for the defence of their living conditions and in doing this they don't simply talk about the revolution which will abolish all forms of oppression. But their role is also to warn the workers against all the traps being laid for them, all the manoeuvres aimed at sapping class solidarity; they must not be afraid of criticising demands when they consider that they do not contribute to the unity of the class.[7] Otherwise they will not play their role as revolutionaries:

"1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole."[8]

While waiting for your comments on this letter, please accept our best communist greetings,

[1]. In fact at first this demand was not at the top of the list: economic demands and the issue of repression took precedence. But it was the political "experts" inside the movement, the people coming out of the "democratic" milieu (Kuron, Modzelewski, Michnik, Geremek...) who insisted on this being the put at the top.

[2]. "This mode of production pre-supposes parcelling of the soil and scattering of the other means of production. As it excludes the concentration of these means of production, so also it excludes co-operation, division of labour within each separate process of production, the control over, and the productive application of the forces of Nature by society, and the free development of the social productive powers. It is compatible only with a system of production, and a society, moving within narrow and more or less primitive bounds. To perpetuate it would be, as Pecqueur rightly says, ‘to decree universal mediocrity'. At a certain stage of development, it brings forth the material agencies for its own dissolution. From that moment new forces and new passions spring up in the bosom of society; but the old social organization fetters them and keeps them down. It must be annihilated; it is annihilated. Its annihilation, the transformation of the individualized and scattered means of production into socially concentrated ones, of the pigmy property of the many into the huge property of the few, the expropriation of the great mass of the people from the soil, from the means of subsistence, and from the means of labour, this fearful and painful expropriation of the mass of the people forms the prelude to the history of capital. It comprises a series of forcible methods, of which we have passed in review only those that have been epoch-making as methods of the primitive accumulation of capital" (Chapter 32, "Historical tendency of capitalist accumulation")

"Whilst the cotton industry introduced child-slavery in England, it gave in the United States a stimulus to the transformation of the earlier, more or less patriarchal slavery, into a system of commercial exploitation. In fact, the veiled slavery of the wage-workers in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery pure and simple in the new world.

Tantae molis erat, to establish the ‘eternal laws of Nature' of the capitalist mode of production, to complete the process of separation between labourers and conditions of labour, to transform, at one pole, the social means of production and subsistence into capital, at the opposite pole, the mass of the population into wage-labourers, into ‘free labouring poor', that artificial product of modern society. If money, According to Augier, ‘comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,'  capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt" (Chapter 31, "Genesis of industrial capital").

[3]. "Now, sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organizations disorganized and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their ancient form of civilization, and their hereditary means of subsistence, we must not forget that these idyllic village-communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies.... England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindustan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.

"Then, whatever bitterness the spectacle of the crumbling of an ancient world may have for our personal feelings, we have the right, in point of history, to exclaim with Goethe:

 ‘Should this torture then torment us
Since it brings us greater pleasure?
Were not through the rule of Timur
Souls devoured without measure?'"

[From Goethe's "An Suleika", Westöstlicher Diwan]

(Marx, "The British Rule in India", New York Daily Tribune, 25 June 1853)

[4]. This was in fact the dream of a certain number of rebellious elements after the May 68 events in France. Trying to escape capitalism and the alienation it engenders, they went off to found communes in the Ardeche, in villages deserted by their inhabitants, attempting to live by weaving and raising goats. For the most part this was a disaster: forced to produce at the lowest cost to sell their production, they lived in poverty, which often led to conflicts between the communards, to witch-hunts against "layabouts who live off the backs of others", and to the reappearance of petty chiefs concerned with doing things on the cheap. The most efficient of them were simply reintegrated into the commercial circuits of capitalism.

[5]. We should note that French was imposed by eliminating a number of local dialects, such as Breton, Picard, Occitan, Provencal, Catalan, and many others.

[6]. We should note that even in the Franco era, whenever you were lost in Barcelona, it was not well-regarded to ask the way in Castillian. Paradoxically, the person you asked for help understood the latter language much better if it was spoken with a strong French or English accent than with a Spanish one.

[7]. Revolutionaries must not hesitate to take up this fundamental idea of Marx: the oppression and the barbarism for which capitalism is responsible, and which has to be denounced, don't only have a negative side. They create the conditions for the future emancipation of the working class and even for the success of its present struggles. If they are obliged to learn English or to make progress in this language to find a job or simply to buy things, the Quebec workers will also draw advantage from it: it can help them communicate with their Anglophone class brothers in the same country and even in their great North American neighbour. It's not the job of revolutionaries to excuse the odious, xenophobic behaviour of the Anglophone bourgeoisie but to explain to the French workers that they have the possibility of turning these weapons of the bourgeoisie against them. The great revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, born in the area of Poland dominated by Russia, was forced to learn Russian. She never complained about it, on the contrary. It helped her to communicate with her comrades in Russia (for example Lenin with whom she had long discussions after the 1905 revolution, which allowed the two revolutionaries to get to know each other, to understand and appreciate each other). It was also an opportunity for her to know and appreciate Russian literature. In fact she translated certain works into German to make them accessible to German speakers. 

[8]. Communist Manifesto.