Monday, 17 January 2011 12:07

Galician Socialist Party (GSP). Declaration of principles

Written by  Fundación Galiza Sempre
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CATALOGUING DATA

  • PERIOD / EPOCH: Second half of the twentieth century
  • ORIGINAL TITLE: Partido Socialista Galego (PSG). Declaración de principios
  • CATEGORY: Foundational documents for political movements
  • DESCRIPTION:
    A document containing the principles of the Partido Socialista Galego (PSG), in which the party declares its nationalist and Marxist identity, in a decisive departure from its original principles.
  • ORIGINAL LANGUAGE: Galician
  • DATE: 1974
  • AUTHOR(S): Partido Socialista Galego (PSG)
  • REFERENCE PERSONS:

    Orxajes Pita, Mario; Rei, Salvador; García Bodaño, Salvador; Rodríguez Pardo, Xosé Luís; Saco, Cesáreo; Caamaño, Manuel; Piñeiro, Ramón; Fernández del Riego, Francisco; Viñas Cortegoso, Luis; Losada, Amado; Pombo, Domingo; Beiras Torrado, Xosé Manuel; Lugrís, Ramón

  • CONTEXT:

    The Galician Socialist Party (GSP; PSG, in galician languague) was a political party with socialist and nationalist ideology. Founded on August 23th, 1963, its secretary general from 1971 to 1977 was Xosé Manuel Beiras Torrado. GSP was presented to the general elections of June 15th, 1977, earning 27,197 votes (2.41%) in Galicia. In the 80’s there is a break in her womb: one part is integrated into the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) and another joins to Esquerda Galega (Galician Left), forming the coalition PSG-EG. Later the PSG-EG would eventually be integrated into the BNG.

ABSTRACT

The document summarizes in 11 points the ideological and political principles of the GSP, a political organisation that wrestles to covert Galicia into a socialist society, that is, to build a socialist society for all Galician people. We envisage a socialist society as a society without classes, totally democratic, where the real property of productive resources is the people’s creation and more of a heritage, and where political power expresses the majority’s conscious wish and guarantees freedom for everybody. In this paper highlights that Galician people have the right to political self-government, and later, to create the constituent power to formalise political institutions suitable for its self-government.

1. GSP FOR A SOCIALIST GALICIA

THE GALICIAN SOCIALIST PARTY is a political organisation that wrestles to covert Galicia into a socialist society, that is, to build a socialist society for all Galician people. We envisage a socialist society as a society without classes, totally democratic, where the real property of productive resources is the people’s creation and more of a heritage, and where political power expresses the majority’s conscious wish and guarantees freedom for everybody.

2. GALICIA: AN UNDERDEVELOPED AND COLONISED NATIONAL COMMUNITY

G.S.P. defines how it envisages Galicia with the following points:

2.1. Galicia is a nation, that is, a country with its own personality regarding territory, anthropology, socio-economic matters and culture; a community historically defined by a territory, an economic structure, a language and its own singular culture.

2.2. Galician society is an underdeveloped society, that is, it suffers from economic underdevelopment, which lacks autonomous development and that is dependent on growth processes that operate at the centre of a capitalist system, located outside its territory.

2.3. Galicia is a country subjected to colonialist connections in its cultural, economic and political plans. The primary tool for Galician colonialist enslavement, which has already lasted five centuries, is the Central Spanish Government. Colonialism and class exploitation are two inseparable phenomena in Galicia's social being.

Nationality defines the Galician community's personality. Underdevelopment defines its working population's class structure and other joint forms of exploitation. Colonialism defines the implantation of Galicia into the Spanish State, the problem of the Galician language and even more its people's social-cultural estrangement, which makes it an even greater weapon for easier exploitation. All these mechanisms determine Galicia's subservience to imperial capitalism and bring its problems closer to those of the third world.

3. SELF-GOVERNMENT, ANTI-CAPITALISM AND ANTI-COLONIALISM

As a consequence of the former, G.S.P. affirms:

3.1. Self-government: Galician people have the right to political self-government, and later, to create the constituent power to formalise political institutions suitable for its self-government.

3.2. Anti-capitalism: overcome the capitalist system, which exercises the exploitation and estrangement of Galician working people not only in salaried jobs but also through its dominance on the social strata of labourers, mariners, artisans and others that are not directly in line with its capitalist companies.

3.3. Anti-colonialism: the struggle to build up socialism in Galicia is an anti-colonialism fight, because Galician popular class exploitation uses colonialist mechanisms that are slyer than those operated within a State that has all the means to disguise it.

4. THE WAY TOWARDS SOCIALISM

4.1. MARXISM

G.S.P. considers Marxism as its primary source of theoretic inspiration, and even more so as an analysis and critical interpretation method for reality and guide for political action. In the same way as Marxism, G.S.P. also considers that it cannot become a dogmatic body whether in mechanically applying procedures, but it must be critically rethought without rest.

4.2. REVOLUTIONARY ROUTE

G.S.P. proposes a revolutionary action, that is, conducive to radically changing present Galician society's structure, changing the economic relationship nature governing production, and eradicating class exploitation, overturning antidemocratic political institutions and dissipating middle class ideology.

4.3. SHORTAGE OF REFORMISM

Consequently, G.S.P. rejects plans that centre their objectives in reforms that maintain safe production relationships where exploitation is carried out, reproducing a structure of basic classes, consolidating capitalist domination around it and later generating, the same social inequality that they are aiming to correct. G.S.P. considers its position even more appropriate as Galicia is an underdeveloped country in which underdevelopment is a product of capitalist development, and therefore we shall have underdevelopment whilst there is capitalism in our country.

4.4. DIFFERENT WAYS TOWARDS SOCIALISM

Anyway, G.S.P. is aware that the road towards socialism is a long road which has still not been completely covered by any humans. It is also conscious that the real possibilities are many and that proven experiences are now history. The economic structure of different people, civilisation and cultural methods, the situation at the centre and on the outskirts of world capitalism, as well as other factors, all condition the best strategy to build on socialism in each case. Because of this G.S.P. puts forward an autonomous socialist strategy for Galicia, which is quite different from that of other peninsular people where capitalism is more developed and where the combination of production methods, and civilisation and cultural methods are different.

4.5. SOCIALISM AND FREEDOM

G.S.P. proclaims the construction of a free socialism. It is conscious that freedom is conditioned by the nature of social relations and that in class-conscious societies the exclusive right to freedom from the minority is based on the slavery of the rest. In this way it thinks that establishing formal freedom does not in any way signify the achievement of real individual freedom in society. But at the same time, it thinks that the government's and State's totalitarian and despotic ways must be excluded from the socialist strategy, which convert the socialisation of productive resources into a mere formal appearance, regenerate new ways of class-conscious structure into society, take away economic management control from working people, and remove human creative freedom. That is why the fight for socialism is also a fight for freedom.

4.6. SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY

In terms of political life institutions, at every level the struggle for free socialism and the fight for democracy, is understood as the real power exercise for the people. There is no other real democracy than that of socialist democracy, because whilst there are hostile social classes, real power exercised by the people cannot be guaranteed. In the revolutionary path taken towards this objective, any step that steers towards oligarchic control of power shall divert this path and shall betray, in the end, the essential values of socialist idealism.

4.7. REACTIONARY VIOLENCE

Anyway, G.S.P. considers that the real and actual enemy of free socialism is reactionary violence, apparent in all historic society from the past until now and where exploiters and exploited exist. That reactionary violence is a fact that socialism cannot ignore, but has to face and resolve according to the circumstances of political struggle.

5. GALICIAN SOCIALISM AS A MOVEMENT FOR THE MASSES

To start the way towards Galician socialism, G.S.P. pretends to expand socialism to a maximum, as a way to the masses, embracing into the cause working Galician people of all social classes linked to the working class, which puts it in a revolutionary avant-garde. They are allies only because their interests specifically coincide with the most exploited classes, and because they are totally against the interests of the middle class oligarchies.

6. THE SYNDICALIST STRUGGLE

The worker's redeeming struggle creates a winning dynamism, as it sets out in the specific restoration plan of class interests that are by definition common to all their members. However, if we admit that working conditions and other specific forms of exploitation vary from one society to another, and that Galician underdevelopment brings up specific problems then, this logically shall make us reflect on a unionist action plan, which shall influence its strategy's organisational structure and preparation. On the other hand, the building project of socialism itself obliges the G.S.P. to also contemplate the unionist struggle from that perspective, without prejudice to the action unit for the struggle for demands. A different cause is the non-interference between the party and the syndicate, which G.S.P. purposefully requests.

7. LABOURERS AND FISHERMEN

It is a strange way in which the badly named autonomous workers are exploited, as they are mainly labourers or fishermen and at the same time make up the largest part of Galician working people. They suffer more than any other Galician community group from the brutal sacrifice of emigration.

They produce an upward economy that is absorbed by dominating capitalism through trade circuits, price systems, tax charges and other methods of suction that make up combined and reduplicated exploitation that reduces them to the lowest survival levels registered in Galician society. They see their land expropriated and their "rias" contaminated by capitalist industry. They put up with the highest levels of social insecurity, and the acutest forms of cultural imperialism. They are the largest section of outcasts in Galicia. They need a plan that is specifically tailored to their problems and reclaim the fundamental participation that corresponds to them, arm in arm with the rest of Galician working people, in the construction of a new society.

8. GALICIAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

The Galician language is Galician. Galician culture is that of the Galician working people, which is fundamentally made up from Galician speaking people.

In it artists, writers, thinkers, and scientists who were and are true to their country with their creative work, who did not culturally alienate themselves from it, inspire and were inspired. The language, popular and scholar-based culture and the rest of Galician expressions make up the collective heritage which must be defended and developed with absolute priority, as it is the Galician people's genuine form of collective expression and also their singular contribution to universal culture.

Afterwards it must fight against the ways and mechanisms of cultural alienation, as the bogs that they are, for free collective realisation of one of their deepest manifestations. The fight for the language to be restored by eliminating its type of class stigma, and as a consequence, at least making it immediately co-official with the Castilian Spanish language, make this an undeniable objective in the G.S.P.'s political strategy as a socialist movement.

9. WITH EXPLOITED PEOPLE IN THE WORLD

G.S.P. declares its solidarity with all exploited classes and all colonised people in the world, and proclaims its internationalist vocation, which is in no way a contradiction with its declaration of Galician nationalism. That Galicia does not have its own political superstructure means that the middle classes did not make themselves the owners of the pre-existent Galician feudal state and did not create a middle class Galician State to favour their class interests. But this does not mean that the Galician working classes do not want to achieve their own state, without prejudice to federative formulas that may be good for them to integrate in.

 Also the struggle for national freedom in a socialist building process creates a way for Galician workers to accomplish themselves politically, and more so, for their most immediate singular contribution to the cause of proletarian internationalism, as it is an anti-imperialist and anti-colonist fight.

10. SOLIDARITY WITH IBERIAN PEOPLE

In addition to that stated before, G.S.P. proclaims its solidarity with the rest of the Iberian Peninsula people, to some they are united through history and culture, and others through the common cause of being dominated, for many centuries until now, by a centralist unitary State, which during most of history was, despotic and anti-democratic, but even so did not achieve the quashing or destruction of our different collective personalities, but did despise and stop them from developing freely.

G.S.P. singularly proclaims its solidarity with the other parties and socialist movements of those peninsular people and with all working classes whose interest they wish to defend. With them G.S.P. proposes to immediately maintain the common fight for the fall of the current fascist regime.

11. FEDERALISM AND STATE

Without prejudice to that stated earlier on the Galician people and other peninsular people's self-government, G.S.P. nominates a federative formula for setting up a future State in the Iberian Peninsula. G.S.P. affirms that this formula, because of its nature, must be considered open to different regions that, without meeting national community characteristics, need to totally achieve their specific personality and must be given the appropriate political institutions for this and a solution to their specific problems. And thus, from this supportive objective of equality and fraternity, G.S.P. is going to focus and put forward the relationship with the peninsular working classes. And at the same time, in the same attitude that G.S.P. understands to be completely legitimate, regarding peninsular people, is its Galician nationalist demand to build socialism.

12. G.S.P. INTERNAL DEMOCRACY

G.S.P. submits itself to the same principles in its organisation as the democratic principles that it wishes to instil into society. It recognises the freedom to criticise inside the party as it is always enriching, without prejudice to the coherence of action and discipline in taking decisions emanating from its bodies.

Galicia, 1974

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