Furthermore, I would argue that the position that Catalans are 'oppressed' is absurd, if 'oppressed' here is supposed to mean anything more than the Spanish government's crack-down on the right to self-determination. How are Catalans oppressed?
Catalan nationalism comes thoroughly from a bourgeois background, with the Catalan ruling elites articulating nationalism in order to fade class tensions. For example, in a meeting of top politicians and capitalists reported about on Dec 10, 2014, a Catalan minister openly declared: "How could the country have survived austerity involving over 6000 million euros if not by playing on a nationalist discourse?" I do not believe there is any reason to attack the right to Catalan self-determination, but I think that a supposedly revolutionary organization should openly tell the truth to the working class and fight nationalist illusions, by advocating mass indifference. "Neither Catalonia nor Spain!"
The separation of Catalonia could furthermore result in the de-unification in the ranks of the working class, something which was already started by Catalan nationalism. If anything, in the face of great nationalist fooling, the truth should be openly told instead of throwing more wood into the fire to fuel these nationalist feelings. The ICL(FI) hopes that the working class nationalist illusions, heated up by intellectual cliques such as the ICL(FI), will reveal to them how "wrong" they are in an elitist fashion, rather than directly state the truth. This is a fundamentally elitist position.
I've recently read about the support of the ICL(FI) for Catalan independence, which obviously can only have a real expression through nationalism. While it justified this position by arguing that "[an] independent Catalonia would demonstrate more clearly to the workers there that the Catalan bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalists are no fighters for liberation from exploitation and social oppression", is this not tantamount to advocating support for SYRIZA in order that the workers realize that they will never be truly liberated in such a way? Furthermore, how is the ICL(FI) so sure that the independence of Catalonia would lower national tensions? Perhaps the separation of Catalonia would intensify national tensions through, for example, involving the birth of Spanish revanchism. Not that people should not support Catalan nationalism from fear of what Spain may do, but rather to point out this flaw in the ICL(FI) strategy.
Oh, and no one is more extreme in their dogmatism than the dogmatic agnostics and compromisers, who as a matter of principle hate any principled political position. As always, the point of this crusade against "dogmatism" is to bury the dictatorship of the proletariat and social control of the means of production, to replace them with coalitionism and market "socialism". Thank you, I'll pass.
But apparently I am surrounded by people who have never been demoralised, how blessed I am to be in the company of such holy fools. As for the statement that most posters are not members or sympathisers of actual revolutionary socialist organisations, the point was not that they don't do "political activity" (i.e. wave silly little placards in protests of three people or shill for whatever bourgeois party you have decided is "progressive"), but that RevLeft is completely disconnected from the actual socialist movement. Globally, Marxists-Leninists, which practically don't exist on RevLeft, make up most of socialists. RevLeft "orthodox Marxists" (ha-ha), Third World Caesarists, market anarchists etc. exist only on the Internet, and there only on RevLeft. Not to mention the general atrocious theoretical and political level of people on RevLeft.
Honey, if you're going to base your accusations on one or two posts, the least you could do is actually read them, and understand them in context. But I thought you people were all experts on the ICL? How is it, then, that you are not familiar with the ICL jab "literary orthodoxy"? Which is how the SL described the position of Healy, Slaughter and others from the British SLL, whose position was quite orthodox on paper ("World Prospect for Socialism" is still an excellent text, and all the people going on about how peak oil or whatever the petite bourgeoisie is supposed to be scared of this week is going to bring about the revolution automatically should give it a read), but whose actual intentions were far from orthodox. And here, poor fool, I thought that I could use it ironically to describe my own doubts as to whether I care about the socialism or if I just want to see the world burn.
And I base this on you saying in one post: "you might notice that most posters here are not members of sympathisers of any revolutionary organisation" and another where you said your socialism is "primarily a literary phenomena", or something of the style. The combination of both of which seem to translate to: "Hey guys, I don't do anything in real life, but I can attack people in the Internet who aren't extreme dogmatists because they have no political practice (something which I can tell by them not having filled in their party in their RevLeft profile), which in my case is full-on adherence to some ridiculous Trotskyist tendency. I'm an accomplished revolutionary socialist now!."
Why do you believe that dogmatism is a good replacement for political praxis?
