Fi is often asserted that the Marxist tradition has made little contribution to an understanding of the rise of national struggles in the modern age. But this is an assertion that does not stand up to any scrutiny. One Marxist in particular, Lenin, actually predicted that the desire for national independence would become an arena for explosive revolutionary activity in our century. From the time of Lenin until today the Marxist position on the national struggle has included an attempt to inter-link three concepts: the understanding of imperialism, the concept of self-determination, and socialist revolutionary strategy.
A distinctly Marxist thesis can be succinctly formulated in the epoch of capitalist imperialism: the fight for national independence takes on a new importance and socialist support for democratic self-determination for nations becomes a central element of socialist strategy winning large sections of the exploited to the cause of international socialism.
For some it may come as a surprise to discover that that it has been Marxists who have fought hardest and longest to defend the idea of national self determination.
After all, isn't this supposed to be a straightforward capitalist demand? Wasn't it American President Wilson who turned this idea into the highest principle of international law?
Lip service
The answer to that was explained by Lenin in 1916 in his pamphlet on impertalism; in the era of imperialism the great capitalist powers would only pay lip-service to the demand for self-determination.
On most occasions, he predicted, the capitalist democracies would dishonour their own sacred principle.
It didn't take long before Lenin's prediction proved itself sound in practice. In 1918, shortly after he had outlined his world programme in favour of self-determination for nations, Wilson's government flatly refused recognise Ireland's vote in favour of self-determination.
Only Lenin's Bolshevik government recognised Ireland's independence declaration in 1918.
Lenin is the central character who forged our thinking on the national question because his theory of imperialism allowed him to realise without recourse to repeated experience that the , advanced democratic states would always tend to betray their own democratic principles.
To achieve what he did he had to contest a powerful Marxist current going right back to Marx himself that tended to undervalue the revolutionary significance of the demand for national self-determination.
To quote from the Communist Manifesto, due to industrial expansion National differences and antagonisms between people are daily more and more vanishing"
Marx tended to overestimate the speed with which the world expansion of capitalfor ism would break down national barriers, and so shatter the illusions of independence entertained by nationalist movements. Marx did not expect or predict a future characterised by a proliferation in new nation states: rather he expected the growth of a world or cosmopolitan bourgeoisie, and its gravedigger the tional working class. 'The need for a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections every where. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country."
Marx lived before the period of capitalism that Lenin identified as imperialism fully took shape. Because of this he only Never enjoyed glimpses into why the ples. the that causality only in emancipation France and Germany. Lenin Whilst it is espoused national self determination for oppressed an unconditional nations, something close to it did emerge from his studies on Ireland in the late 1860s.
Out of his studies on Ireland he formulated two ideas that were be subsumed into the tion that "a nation that oppresses another nation itself cannot be free" and that the political liberation of an oppressed nation may act as an inducement required to spark a socialist revolution in the dominant nation. In 1867 "For a long time I used to think political the separation of Ireland from England impossible. think it inevitable, although after the separation there may come a federation." In November 1867 Marx interna- wrote to Engels long time I believed it would be possible to overthrow the Irish colonial regime by English working class ascendency ... deeper study has now convinced me of the opposite. has got rid of Ireland? already formed democratic capitalist states were increasingly encing socialist unlikely to support demo- advanced capitalist world.
cratic demands made on behalf of oppressed peoBecause Marx lived before the capitalist imperialist era he also failed to fully see state." revolutionary potential of these struggles for national self determination. Lenin's determination Marx and Engels also tended to assume olutionary strategy as politiprogressive cal principle. could work understanding was that the one direction: they thought social a new stage of developcould only ment, which he termed be brought to the rest of the world by working class revolt Lenin outlined five spreading outwards from Britain, primary features imperialism as 1. The concentration of true Marx never right of capital into monopolies and cartels. as opposed to trade. 4. Leninist concept of self determina- international monopolies.
PEOPLE from his analysis. and home tion." Marx wrote to Engels I now "For a "The English working class will never accomplish anything until it Karl Marx What we find here is an anticipation of Lenin by Marx: the idea that causality works in both directions, and that political struggles in the colonial and semi-colonial ceivable world can play a progressive part in influconsciousness in the In 1913, in his thesis on the national prejudices, anything hut political self-determination, the right to secede and form a separate Strategy to uphold this right had as much to do with revHis Marxism is the only school of had entered political theory that actually forewarns us of what to expect from the great of capitalist democracies 2. The merging of banking capital and industrial capital into finance capital. cies.
3. The new importance of capital export The division of the world between 5. The territorial division of the world between the big imperialist powers.
For Lenin the bottom line was that capitalism had entered an imperialist stage which brought with it an even greater level for the few. Imperialism at the level of the world economy was about extracting what Lenin called 'super-profits': It was Lenin's thesis that the super-profits extracted mainly by the monopolies, and especially the financial bourgeoisie, played a crucial role in saving advanced capitalism from potential social crisis. They shored up the entire world system, to such an extent that capitalists were even afforded the riches to pay off certain layers of privileged workers. Lenin drew two political conclusions The first was that imperialism had no interest in spreading its own democratic ideals across the world: "both in foreign policy, imperialism strives towards violations of democracy, towards reaction. In this sense imperialism is indisputably the negation of democracy in general, of all democracy, and not just of one of its own demands, national self-determinaThe second conclusion was that if imperialism was denied access to super-profits in the colonies and neo-colonies, the whole capitalist chain held the potential to be periodically thrown into crisis. During periods of crisis the fomenting of popular anti-imperialist rebellion based on the right of self-determination would effectively undermine the whole capitalist world Lenin therefore urged socialists not to shy away from fighting for the capitalist demand for national self-determination, but on the contrary to fight hardest on its behalf Writing in defence of the Irish 1916 rebellion Lenin declared:
"To imagine that social revolution is conwithout revolts of the small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all its without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppres sion by landowners, the church and the monarchy, against national oppression ...
to imagine all this is to repudiate social If we look around the world today many of the tendencies of international capitalism first unearthed by Lenin in 1918 can still be seen working themselves through.
All around the world we find the advanced capitalist democracies consciously opposing claims for democratic rights of national self-determination - Ireland, Euskadi, Palestine, East Timor, Kurdistan, Kosovo, and Bosnia to name but a few. So far from having nothing to contribute to our understanding of the national question, Marxism is the only school of political theory that actually forewarns us of what to expect from the great capitalist democraMarxists always expect imperialist solutions which favour big business instead of democratic ones that might help free people from oppression and exploitation.
Without such a theory we are easily led into an empiricism which is always left disappointed when the 'democrats' like Clinton and Blair fail to deliver on their fine-sounding democratic ideals.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK I•
question Lenin's declared that "our pro- gramme cannot be interpreted to mean