MARXISM
Nationalism
&
by TOM LEWIS
In the international education of the workers of the oppressor
countries, emphasis must necessarily be laid on their advocating
freedom for the oppressed countries to secede and their fighting for
it. Without this there can be no internationalism.
V. I. Lenin, “The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up”
I
MPERIALISM IS the stage of capitalism in which a few
economically advanced states dominate the rest of the
world. Imperialism coalesces as a system during the latter
half of the nineteenth century, but its cruel dynamic also
drives the process known as “globalization” today. This means
that we continue to live in a world in which a handful of
strong nations use their economic and military power to subjugate and exploit weaker nations. It also means that our
world is still one in which the strong nations regularly face off
against each other—threatening, preparing, or unleashing
wars whose basic aim is to secure a competitive advantage for
one nation over its rivals in imperialist plunder.
One of the consequences of imperialism is nationalism. As
capitalism spreads around the globe, it also gives rise to powerful movements of resistance. Initially, the revolt of workers and
peasants in countries oppressed by imperialism almost invariably takes the form of nationalism. That is why it is crucial for
socialists to understand how to approach nationalism and how
to assess the various struggles for national liberation today.
Socialists are internationalists. Whereas nationalists believe
that the world is divided primarily into different nationalities,
socialists consider social class to be the primary divide. For socialists, class struggle—not national identity—is the motor of
Tom Lewis is a member of the International Socialist Organization. He
teaches Spanish at the University of Iowa and belongs to the American Federation of Teachers Local 716. He is the author of “Chile: The State and
Revolution” (ISR 6, Winter 1999) and “The Politics of ‘Hauntology’ in
Derrida’s Specters of Marx (Rethinking Marxism 9: 3, 1996/97). His
other publications include La Transformación de la Teoría (1997).
history. And capitalism creates an inPART ONE OF
ternational working class that must
A TWO-PART
fight back against an international capitalist class.
ARTICLE
But imperialism also creates something else. In a world defined by the existence of richer and
poorer nations, not only do “nationalisms of the oppressed”
emerge as agents of struggle against global capitalism; “nationalisms of the oppressor” emerge as well and are used by bosses
and politicians in the strong nations to justify the imperialist
system. Moreover, a layer of workers in the dominant nations
actually comes to think that workers, too, stand to gain from
imperialism’s oppression of the weaker nations. These nationalisms of the oppressor represent formidable obstacles to building the international solidarity among workers that is needed in
order to succeed in the fight against global capitalism.
How, then, should socialists relate as internationalists to a
world that is nevertheless divided into oppressor and oppressed nations? Marxists have sometimes been criticized for
allegedly failing to comprehend the politics of the national
question. Yet the revolutionary Marxist tradition offers an invaluable framework within which to understand the complexity of a world that is simultaneously characterized by the existence of nations and the globalization of capital. The purpose
of this article, therefore, is to explain the central pillar of the
Marxist approach to national oppression: Lenin’s argument in
favor of the right of nations to self-determination.
Marx and Engels on national oppression
No nation can be free if it oppresses other nations.
Frederick Engels, “Eine polnische Problamation”
The nation that oppresses another nation forges its own chains.
Karl Marx, “Konfidentielle Mitteilung”
In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the great
struggles for national liberation represented attempts to over-
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 2000
1
The Revolutionary Proletariat
and the Right of Nations to
Self-Determination
throw feudalism and absolutist
dalmonarchy in the interest of removing economic and political
impediments to the full development of capitalism. Capitalism
was in the process of changing
Winning Russian workers to support for
sion of a national minority by a national
from being a mere sector of the
the right of self-determination was a key
majority was a policy of “dividing
economy into becoming the
part of building a genuinely revolutionary
nations” and that it caused a “systematic
dominant mode of social organiparty that could unite Russian workers
corruption of the people’s minds.”3 Great
zation. To consolidate this transiand peasants in a successful struggle
Russian nationalism—the nationalism of
tion and to secure the ongoing
against the Tsar.
the oppressor—served the interests of Rusconditions for reproducing capiThe expansion of the state under the
sia’s rulers by sowing “mutual distrust betalist society, a new form of state
tsars had added some 90 million
tween the Russian peasant, the Russian
“outlanders” to the 70 million Great Ruswas required—one based not on
petty bourgeois and the Russian artisan,
sians by the time of the 1905 Russian
on the one hand, and the Jewish, Finnish,
personal allegiance to a royal
Revolution. More than 20 different
Polish, Georgian and Ukrainian peasants,
family but rather on a shared lanlanguages were spoken within Russian
petty bourgeois, and artisans, on the
guage, a common territory, and
borders, including those of the more deother.”4
the perception of a group history
veloped regions in the west (Poland,
To Lenin and the Bolsheviks it was
and destiny.
Lithuania, the Baltic states, and Finland),
clear that “the working class needs unity,
The victory of capitalism
as well as those of the nomadic groups in
not division.”5 Thus Lenin insisted that “soover feudalism, first in Europe
the south and east.
cialist parties which did not show by all
and later throughout the contiThe level of national oppression “was
their activity, both now, during the revoluincomparably rougher than in any of the
nents, thus entailed strong links
tion, and after its victory, that they would
neighboring states” and “gave to the nawith national movements: “For
liberate the enslaved nations and build up
tional problem in tsarist Russia a gigantic
relations with them on the basis of a free
the complete victory of comexplosive force.”1
union—and free union is a false phrase
modity production, the bourIn February 1916, one year before the without the right to secede—these parties
geoisie must capture the home
nationalities did in fact burst upon the
would be betraying socialism.”6
market, and there must be politscene as historic actors with the February
ically united territories whose
Revolution, Lenin formulated the attitude
1 Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revopopulation speaks a single lanof the Russian Social-Democratic Labor
lution, New York: Anchor, 1932), Vol. 3, p.
guage,...[which establishes] a
Party (RSDLP) toward the national ques37.
tion in emphatic terms:
2 V. I. Lenin, “The Socialist Revolution and the
close connection between the
Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” Colmarket and each and every proIn Russia, where the oppressed nations
lected Works, Vol. 22 (Moscow: Progress
prietor, big or little, and between
account for no less than 57 percent of
Publishers, 1964), p. 154. Trotsky writes of
1
the
population,
or
over
100
million,
seller and buyer.” Nationalism
the February Revolution: “The chief service of
where they occupy mostly the border refurnished the bourgeoisie of a
the February Revolution—perhaps its only
gions, where some of them are more
service, but one amply sufficient—lay exactly
specific territory with the ideohighly cultured than the Great Russians,
in this, that it gave the oppressed classes and
logical elements it needed to imwhere the political system is especially
nations in Russia at last an opportunity to
pose an official language and to
barbarous and medieval, where the
speak out. This political awakening of the
bourgeois-democratic revolution has not
lay down borders on the basis of
peasantry could not have taken place otherbeen consummated—there, in Russia,
wise, however, than through their own native
a (usually invented) collective
recognition of the right of nations
languages—with all the consequences ensupast. Moreover, there arose a tenoppressed by tsarism to free secession
ing in regard to schools, courts, self-adminisdency within the national
from Russia is absolutely obligatory for
tration.” (The History of the Russian Revolumovements themselves toward
Social-Democrats, for the furtherance of
tion, Vol. 3, p.45).
the formation of nation-states,
3 Lenin, “National Equality,” Collected Works,
our democratic and socialist aims.2
Vol. 20 (Moscow: Progress Publishers,
precisely because nation-states
In this, Lenin was restating a commit1964), p. 237.
could best satisfy the political rement that the RSDLP had held since 1903
4 Lenin, “National Equality,” p. 237.
quirements of modern—i.e.,
to ending national oppression.
5 Lenin, “National Equality,” p. 237.
capitalist—society. For these reaThe RSDLP, also known as the Bolshe6 Lenin, “The Right of Nations to Self-Determiviks, understood that allowing the oppresnation,” p. 143.
sons, all of the leading Marxist
contributions to the debate on
the national question have accepted that “the nation state is typical and normal for the capi- ism. They understood further that capitalism brought into existence a class of producers—the proletariat, the modern
talist period.”2
Marx and Engels supported many of the national libera- working class—that for the first time in history was truly coltion struggles of their day because they viewed capitalism as a lective. This class thereby embodied the potential for demohistoric advance over feudalism. They were not blind to the cratic self-rule. In the eyes of Marx and Engels, every victory
misery and devastation that capitalism brought as well, but for capitalism over feudalism propelled humanity further tothey understood that capitalism could develop the productive ward the goal of freedom from material want and political
capacities of human society to levels unimaginable under feu- subjugation.
2
AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 2000
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
The major oppressor nations during the lifetimes of Marx
and Engels were Russia and Hapsburg Austria. Russia ruled by
force over Poland and had crushed the democratic revolution
in Hungary in 1849. Together, Russia and Austria interfered
in the internal affairs of Germany and Italy to block the unification of these nations. Marx and Engels “supported all national movements which were directed against the Tsars and
the Hapsburgs. At the same time,…they opposed national
movements which objectively played into the hands of the
Tsars or the Hapsburgs.”3 Marx and Engels went as far as to
call for revolutionary wars in order to win independence for
Poland, Hungary, Germany, and Italy. The aim was “to inflict
a final defeat on the last remnants of feudalism in Europe” and
to advance “the process of clearing the ground for the full development of bourgeois democracy and so for the struggle of
the working class against the system.”4
The historically progressive nature of capitalism in relation
to feudalism, however, did not mean that Marx and Engels
automatically supported every national movement. They opposed the national movements of the South Slavs—Serbs,
Croats, and Czechs—during the 1848 revolution, arguing
that these movements objectively “aided the main enemy:
Croatian troops, who hated the Magyars more than they did
the Hapsburg Empire, helped the Tsar’s troops as they
marched into Hungary; Czech troops helped to suppress revolutionary Vienna.”5 At the time of the Great Rebellion of
1857 in India, Marx and Engels welcomed the uprising as a
“national revolt,” despite their belief that British imperialism
was in the process of destroying feudalism in India.
Thus Marx and Engels did not allow economic criteria to
dictate whether they would lend support to specific national
movements. Rather, they gave or withheld support on the
basis of a political assessment of each movement in the international context.
The case of Ireland provided the main stimulus to Marx
and Engels’ later development of their ideas on national oppression. Initially, Marx and Engels considered that the expansion of capitalism, both in Europe and around the globe, was
lessening the significance of the nation-state and therefore of
the movements for national independence. “National differences, and antagonisms between peoples, are daily more and
more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie,
to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity
in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.”6 Thus they looked to socialist revolution as
the means by which national oppression would be ended: “In
proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is
put to an end, the exploitation of one nation by another will
also be put to an end. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one
nation to another will come to an end.”7
Considerable truth resides both in Marx and Engels’ notion
that national differences diminish as a result of the globalization
of capital and in their view that only with the advent of socialism can national oppression be eradicated once and for all. Yet
Marx and Engels eventually realized that they had underestimated the possibility of sometimes achieving bourgeois democratic freedoms in the less economically developed nations short
of socialist revolution. They also saw that they had overlooked
the concrete difficulties of breaking the hold that nationalism
e x - cises over workers in the more developed nations.
A renewal of the Irish national struggle in the 1860s led
erMarx and Engels to modify their views. In fact they began to
approach the national question less from the angle of the
struggle between capitalism and feudalism and more from the
angle of the struggle between the imperialist powers and the
colonized nations. Marx conveyed to Engels in early November 1867: “I used to think the separation of Ireland from England was impossible. Now I think it is inevitable, although
after separation there may come federation.”8 At the end of
the same month he explained, “What the Irish need is…selfgovernment and independence from England…. Agrarian revolution…. Protective tariffs against England.”9 And two years
later he wrote to Dr. Kugelmann:
The English working class...will never be able to do anything
decisive here in England before they separate their attitude towards Ireland definitively from that of the ruling classes, and
not only make common cause with the Irish, but even take
the initiative in dissolving the Union established in 1801. And
this must be done not out of sympathy with the Irish, but as a
demand on the interests of the English proletariat. If not the
English proletariat will forever remain bound to the leading
strings of the ruling classes, because they will be forced to
make a common front with them against Ireland.10
Here Marx achieves a key insight that will serve as the
bedrock of Lenin’s development of the socialist approach to national oppression. “The nationalism of the workers belonging
to an oppressor nation binds them to their rulers and only does
harm to themselves, while the nationalism of an oppressed nation can lead them to fight back against those rulers.”11
The 1903 Congress
Right of self-determination for all nations included within the
bounds of the state.
Article 9, Program of the Russian
Social Democratic Labor Party (1903)
The RSDLP—the party to which Lenin belonged—convened its Second Congress in the summer of 1903. Delegates
met in secret, first in Brussels and then in London, where they
had been forced to move because of pressure from the Belgian
police. The 1903 Congress is justly famous as a turning point in
the history of Marxism, for it was here that Bolshevism (the majority) was born out of a split with Menshevism (the minority).
But the 1903 Congress deserves its place in history for
other reasons as well. In particular, it became the forum at
which the most important debates on the national question
were held prior to the outbreak of the First World War and the
collapse of the Second International in 1914. Two debates unfolded at the congress, each with far-reaching implications.
The first concerned the Jewish Labor Bund (“bund” means
“league” in Yiddish) and party organization. The second concerned Polish self-determination.
The 1903 Congress took up as its first agenda item the
Bund’s demand that it be recognized as the sole representative
of the Jewish proletariat living in Russia. Jews were horribly
oppressed throughout the Russian Empire, living under harsh
legal restrictions and terrorized by pogroms. The Bund was
founded by Jewish socialists in 1897 and immediately began
organizing among Jewish workers in Lithuania, Poland, and
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 2000
3
fighter against this oppression.”14
Trotsky, himself a Jew, responded forcefully to Lieber’s argument:
If the Bund, lacking confidence in the Party, is…demanding
safeguards, that we can understand. But how can we put our
signatures to this demand? It would restrict our freedom, and
the freedom of our successors, to make decisions. And why?
So as to prevent suppression of the legitimate interests of the
Jewish proletariat by the Party, that is, in order to insure ourselves against committing an act of betrayal. To accept such
conditions would mean that we acknowledged our own moral
and political bankruptcy, it would mean committing moral
and political suicide. The congress will not do that.15
In his contribution to the debate, Lenin offered a concrete
assessment of the organizational implications of the Bund’s demand to be the sole representative of the Jewish proletariat.
He believed that to accept the Bund’s proposal would amount
to internalizing within the party the very divisions among
workers that class society relentlessly seeks to impose.
Federation is harmful because it sanctions segregation and
alienation, elevating them to the status of a principle, a law.
Complete alienation does indeed exist among us, and we
ought not to sanction it, or cover it with a fig leaf, but to combat it, and we ought resolutely to acknowledge and proclaim
the need firmly and unswervingly to advance towards the closest unity…. We recognize no obligatory partitions, and that is
why we reject federation in principle.16
V.I. Lenin
Russia (all areas falling within the Tsar’s empire). Bund members were genuine revolutionaries who adamantly rejected
Zionism, also founded in 1897,12 which they correctly regarded as a form of reactionary Jewish nationalism.
At the First Congress of the RSDLP in 1898, the Bund
entered the party on the basis of “autonomy.” Soon after the
1898 Congress, however, the RSDLP was declared illegal and
driven underground. Hence, relations among its various sections remained informal, and different sections of the party
often acted as independent organizations.
In 1903, the Bund sought clarification of its status in the
RSDLP. Lieber, speaking on behalf of the Central Committee
of the Bund, explained that the expression “autonomy” now
seemed too vague. He argued instead that the Bund’s relations
with the RSDLP should be based on the principle of “federation.” Under “autonomy,” the Bund enjoyed the right to form
“subsidiary organizations and special groups and publish their
own newspapers in their native tongue and so on.”13 They also
had the right to direct their own activities free from petty interference from the RSDLP Central Committee. Under “federation,” however, neither the RSDLP Central Committee
nor the RSDLP’s highest body—the elected Party Congress—
would be able to overrule decisions taken by the Bund in matters pertaining to the Jewish proletariat. Organizationally, the
Bund would function as an independent body.
“Federation” was designed to create special safeguards that
would protect the interests of Jewish workers, as an oppressed
group, from the RSDLP as a whole. Lieber justified the need
for an independent organization of the Jewish proletariat on
the grounds of a fundamental distrust: “The Jewish proletariat
is very much more strongly interested in the struggle against
the exceptional restrictions that are imposed on it than the rest
of the proletariat is, and for this reason it is also a more active
4
AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 2000
Lenin went on to specify that different groupings will always form within the party, “groupings of comrades who are
not wholly of one mind on questions of program, tactics or
organization.”17 But, he argued, there should be only one
party within which these differences arise: “Let all like-minded
Party members join in a single group, instead of groups being
formed in one section of the Party, separately from groups in
another section, and then having a union not of groups holding different views, or with different shades of opinion, but of
sections of the Party, each containing different groups.”18
Lenin’s final point addressed the question of the Bund’s
distrust of the party’s central leadership. The RSDLP was organized on the basis of “democratic centralism.” In other
words, it was a party which maximized opportunities for internal debate, but which acted as one after an issue had been
decided by majority vote. Lenin emphasized that “centralism
requires the absence of all partitions between the center and
even the most remote and out-of-the-way sections of the
Party[.] Our Party center will be given the absolute right to
communicate directly with every single Party member.”19
While every party branch or committee should enjoy “autonomy in the sense of freedom from petty interference by the
center,”20 Lenin insisted that the central leadership should aggressively challenge any manifestation of passivity or indifference within the party regarding national oppression:
Does the Bund really suppose that the Party would tolerate
the existence of a center that interfered in a “petty” way in the
affairs of any Party organization or group?…Is it not, in fact,
the duty of our entire Party to fight, for example, for full
equality of rights and even for the recognition of the right of
nations to self-determination? Consequently, if any section of
our Party were to fail in this duty, it would undoubtedly be liable to censure, by virtue of our principles: it would undoubt-
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
edly be liable to correction by the central institutions of the
Party. And if that duty was being neglected consciously and
deliberately, despite full opportunity to perform it, then this
neglect of duty would be treachery.21
After three days of discussion, the 1903 Congress voted to
reject the Bund’s demand to be the sole representative of the
Jewish proletariat and reaffirmed instead that the RSDLP
“should unite unconditionally workers of all nationalities in all
proletarian organizations without exception (political, trade
union, co-operative, educational, etc., etc.).”22 The Bund then
seceded from the party as it departed the congress. A large
number of Jewish workers nevertheless remained active in
RSDLP branches, and subsequent events in Russia showed
that there had been no grounds for the Bund’s distrust. The
Bund eventually reentered the party, though it never abandoned its nationalist attitude.
The second debate on the national question at the 1903
Congress revolved around what was to become Article 9 of the
party platform: “Right of self-determination for all nations included within the bounds of a state.”23 Article 9 was a sticking
point in the relation between revolutionary socialists in
Poland—who were members of the Social Democratic Party
of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania and known as the
Polish Social Democrats—and the RSDLP. The Polish
party, including Rosa Luxemburg, opposed recognition
of the right of self-determination for Poland.
The attitude of the Polish Social Democrats
stemmed in part from the fact that the reform Polish socialists, who belonged to the Polish Socialist Party
(PSP), considered that the struggle for Poland’s national
independence from Russia took precedence over every
other struggle, including the class struggle. According to
the PSP, the struggle of Polish workers for their own
emancipation needed to remain secondary because it
threatened to disrupt the unity of the Polish people.
Thus the Polish Social Democrats correctly maintained
that the PSP had betrayed the interests of the international working class, notably, the unity of Polish and
Russian workers.
But the Polish Social Democrats did not limit themselves to making this point—a point with which Lenin and
the majority of delegates at the 1903 Congress wholeheartedly
agreed. Rather, they went on to claim that the demand for
Polish independence was historically outdated, even reactionary, because capitalist development had integrated the
economies of Poland and Russia to the point of rendering the
idea of a Polish nation-state completely obsolete. The political
ideal of “a right of nations to self-determination” had thus become equally outmoded. In fact, all around the globe, it was
now pointless for the nationalities to aspire to a state if they
did not already have one. According to the Polish Social Democrats, all that remained of the national question in the imperialist epoch was the need to defend the “freedom of cultural
development of each nationality, through democratization of the
historically-given state institutions.”24
The Polish Social Democrats urged that Article 9 be
changed to read, “Institutions guaranteeing freedom of cultural development to all nations included within the state.”25
The 1903 Congress, however, voted overwhelmingly to keep
t h e ticle’s original wording, which clearly conceived of “self-detera r - mination” as a political—and not a cultural—right. As one
delegate voting with the majority explained, “Where the question of nationality is concerned we can adopt only negative
propositions—i.e., we are against any constraint being exercised upon a nationality. But, as Social-Democrats, it is of no
concern to us whether a particular nationality develops as
such. That is a matter for a spontaneous process.”26
The Bolsheviks and self-determination
The proletariat demands a democracy that rules out the forcible
retention of any one of the nations within the bounds of the state.
V. I. Lenin, “The National Programme of the RSDLP”
The debate over the national question and the right of nations to self-determination did not end with the 1903 Congress. Rather, it intensified over the course of the following
decade. Lenin undertook in a number of writings to clarify the
reasoning behind Article 9. He emphasized throughout that,
“however meager the Russian Social-Democratic literature on
the ‘right of nations to self-determination’ may be, it nevertheless shows clearly that this right has always been understood as
the right to secession.”27
The consistent core of Lenin’s arguments in defense of Ar-
Socialists, said Lenin, are duty-bound
to “conduct an implacable struggle
against” all those who at any time
“defend or sanction national oppression
in general or the denial of the right of
nations to self-determination.”
ticle 9 is that recognition of the right to self-determination for
oppressed nations remains “absolutely essential to the Social
Democrats of Russia…for the sake of the basic principles of
democracy in general.”28 In other words, “‘the right to self-determination’ implies a democratic system of a type in which
there is not only democracy in general, but specifically one in
which there could not be an undemocratic solution of the question of secession.”29 As we shall see, Lenin provides further
reasons to uphold this right, but his overarching concern is
with its role as a principle that commits socialists to the fullest
extension of democratic freedoms and to the swiftest liberation of lives from the yoke of national oppression.
Lenin sharply details what upholding the right to self-determination requires of socialists. Socialists must be “unconditionally hostile to the use of force in any form by the
dominant nation (or the nation which constitutes the majority of the population) in respect of a nation that wishes to
secede politically.”30 Socialists must demand that the question
of the secession of a given territory be settled only on the basis
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5
of a universal, direct, and equal vote of the population of that
territory by secret ballot. Moreover, socialists are duty-bound
to “conduct an implacable struggle against” all those who at
any time “defend or sanction national oppression in general or
the denial of the right of nations to self-determination.”31
As part of fighting for a consistently democratic state system, Lenin enjoins socialists to demand “unconditional equality for all nationalities” and to “struggle against absolutely all
privileges for one or several nationalities.”32 In particular, socialists must reject the establishment of an official state language and demand instead “the promulgation of a law,
operative throughout the state, protecting the rights of every
national minority in no matter what part of the state.”33 All
administrative divisions of the state—such as today’s electoral
and school districts—which fail to reflect the national composition of the population must be brought into line with democratic principles. Finally, “all areas of the state that are distinguished by...the national composition of the population must
enjoy wide self-government and autonomy, with institutions
organized on the basis of universal, equal and secret voting.”34
Assessing national movements
Although socialists must always uphold the right of
oppressed nations to self-determination, Lenin by no means
considers that socialists should automatically support every
movement toward secession and independence. Socialists
“should, on the contrary, give [an] independent appraisal, taking into consideration the conditions of capitalist development and the oppression of the proletarians of various nations
by the united bourgeoisie of all nationalities, as well as the
general tasks of democracy, first of all and most of all the interests of the proletarian class struggle for socialism.”35 Socialists
must be especially prepared
to give most emphatic warning to the proletariat and other
working people of all nationalities against direct deception by
the nationalistic slogans of “their own” bourgeoisie, who with
their saccharine or fiery speeches about “our native land” try to
divide the proletariat and divert its attention from their bourgeois intrigues while they enter into an economic and political
alliance with the bourgeoisie of other nations…. It follows,
therefore, that workers who place political unity with “their
own” bourgeoisie above complete unity with the proletariat of
all nations, are acting against their own interests, against the
interests of socialism and against the interests of democracy.36
Lenin considers that a clear distinction must be drawn between two periods of capitalism with respect to the national
question. The formation of bourgeois-democratic society and
its state characterizes a first period of waning feudalism and
absolutism. National movements during this period are mass
movements that draw all classes of the population into politics. In contrast, a second period of fully formed capitalist
states is characterized by long-established constitutional
regimes and a highly developed antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This period increasingly “brings
the antagonism between internationally united capital and the
international working-class movement into the forefront.”37
In this second period, socialists must ask and answer a series of key questions before lending support to specific national
movements. Is a particular group really oppressed? Has a consciousness of being a nation formed among those who are op6
AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 2000
pressed, such that a national movement is developing or already exists? Lenin emphasizes that “our programme refers only
to cases where such a movement is actually in existence.”38
The most important question socialists must answer is
whether support of a specific national movement would advance the interests of the working class. The leadership of national movements is invariably bourgeois at the start. And
what the bourgeoisie seeks through the national struggle is either privileges for “its own” already-constituted nation—that
is, equal rights alongside the dominant nations in the international market—or, if it represents the struggle of a national minority, exceptional advantages for its own group. Now, it is true
that “the bourgeois nationalism of any oppressed nation has a
general democratic content that is directed against oppression,
and it is this content that we unconditionally support.”39 It may
simultaneously occur, however, that the “saccharine or fiery
speeches” of a particular bourgeois leadership produce the effect of dividing workers rather than securing equal rights.
Any interest the working class may have in supporting a
bourgeois-led national movement resides in the fact that, to
one degree or another, a successful national struggle removes
the oppressor nation from the picture and thereby creates conditions that bring the class struggle to the fore. In other words,
workers and the national bourgeoisie no longer share a “common enemy”—the imperialist power—and it becomes easier
to see the bourgeoisie as the “class enemy.” Should the national movement end up dividing workers, however, then this
interest cannot be realized. Hence,
while recognizing equality and equal rights to a national state,
the [proletariat] values above all and places foremost the alliance of the proletarians of all nations, and assesses any national demand, any national separation, from the angle of the
workers’ class struggle…. Insofar as the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation fights its oppressor, we are always, in every case,
and more strongly than anyone else, in favor, for we are the
staunchest and the most consistent enemies of oppression. But
insofar as the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation stands for its
own bourgeois nationalism, we stand against…. That is why
the proletariat confines itself, so to speak, to the negative demand for recognition of the right to self-determination, without giving guarantees to any nation, and without undertaking
to give anything at the expense of another nation.40
On the eve of the First World War, Lenin encapsulated the
Bolshevik position on the right of nations to self-determination as follows: “The recognition of the right of secession for
all; the appraisal of each concrete question of secession from
the point of view of removing all inequality, all privileges, and
all exclusiveness.”41 In other words, socialists provide unconditional support for the right of oppressed nations to self-determination, but they condition their support for the actual independence of a given nation on the interests of the international
working class and the principles of democracy in general.
Against cultural-national autonomy
Combat all national oppression? Yes, of course! Fight for any kind
of national development, for “national culture” in general? Of
course not!
V. I. Lenin, “Critical Remarks on the National Question”
Lenin’s idea that the notion of self-determination expresses
a political right, as opposed to an economic or cultural right,
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
led him into heated debates. Again and again, beginning with
the 1903 Congress and continuing throughout the last year of
his life, Lenin found himself insisting that “the article of our
program on the self-determination of nations cannot be interpreted to mean anything but political self-determination, i.e.,
the right to secede and form a separate state.” 42 Lenin’s
definition continued to be opposed from two different directions. From one side, Otto Bauer and the Austro-Marxists advocated a cultural interpretation of the right to self-determination. On the other, Rosa Luxemburg and the Polish Marxists
argued that capitalist economic development had eliminated
the very possibility of self-determination.
Bauer, the leading theoretician of the Austro-Marxists,
proposed an elaborate program of “cultural-national autonomy” as the means for reconciling tensions between existing
nationalisms and proletarian internationalism. Bauer was concerned to preserve the unity of the workers’ movement within
the Austro-Hungarian empire, a multinational state under
Hapsburg rule which included what are today Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and much of former Yugoslavia. Rivalries between the dominant nationalities—the
Germans, the Magyars (Hungarians)—and the various Slavic
n a - tionalities threatened to tear the empire apart. The AustroMarxists misguidedly sought to preserve the unity of the
workers’ movement by preventing the disintegration of the
Hapsburg state.
In The Nationalities Question and Social Democracy (1907),
Bauer defined the nation as “the totality of men bound together through a common destiny into a community of character.”43 He viewed nationalist sentiments among workers as
inevitable because, he claimed, the individual human being in
the modern era is the product of the nation. According to
Bauer, individuals belonging to one nation actually experience
the world differently from individuals of another nation, because of the unique cultural environment that has determined
their thought and behavior. Rather than repudiating nationalism, Bauer argued that “socialists should embrace the idea of
the nation as an important social and historical factor in
human existence, and tell the different nationalities that only
under socialism would national culture reach its full development.”44
With the phrase “cultural-national autonomy” Bauer advocated an “extra-territorial” constitution of the nation. Autonomy would not be granted, say, to a Czech republic on the
Lenin on the street after the revolution
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 2000
7
basis that Czechs comprise the majority nationality residing in
a specific region of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Rather, autonomy would be granted to individual Czechs irrespective of
territory, no matter which area of the Hapsburg state they
might inhabit. This in turn would require that Czechs, Serbs,
Germans, Magyars, etc., insofar as they were scattered
throughout the empire, be administratively organized into
separate “nations,” which would then form components of the
Hapsburg state. Nationality for Bauer was not essentially connected with territory; it functioned as the essential component
of an individual’s identity.
Lenin harshly denounced Bauer’s plan for redressing national inequalities as a contradictory and dangerous attempt to
fight nationalism with nationalism. “‘Cultural-national autonomy,’” Lenin asserted, “implies precisely the most refined and,
therefore, the most harmful nationalism.”45
Lenin believed that, in practice, cultural-national autonomy could only intensify the isolation and impoverishment of
national minorities. He referred to the oppressive effects of
Jim Crow laws on American Blacks and to the hypocrisy of
“separate but equal” ideology in the U.S. as a way of illustrating the inadequacy of Bauer’s ideas. “At the present time we
see that the different nations are unequal in the rights they
possess and in their level of development. Under these circumstances, segregating the schools according to nationality would
actually and inevitably worsen the conditions of the more
backward nations.”46 Instead, “we must strive to create the
fundamental democratic conditions for the peaceful coexistence of the nations on the basis of equal rights.”47
Thus Lenin challenged “the whole Bauerite approach, by
making a sharp distinction between the fight against every element of discrimination against any group on the basis of their
language or culture, and exhaltation of particular national cultures.”48 He insisted that the slogan of “cultural-national autonomy” actually conceals the existence of two cultures within
every “national” culture.
The elements of democratic and socialist culture are present, if
only in rudimentary form, in every national culture, since in
every nation there are toiling and exploited masses, whose conditions of life inevitably give rise to the ideology of democracy
and socialism. But every nation also possesses a bourgeois culture (and most nations a reactionary and clerical culture as
well) in the form, not merely of “elements,” but of the dominant culture. Therefore, the general “national culture” is the
culture of the landlords, the clergy and the bourgeoisie.49
When the right of nations to self-determination shifts
from the political realm to the cultural realm, oppressed nations are abandoned to the influence of an “aggressive bourgeois nationalism, which drugs the minds of workers, stultifies
and disunites them in order that the bourgeoisie may lead
them around by the halter.”50 That is why Lenin stated repeatedly that socialists “take from each national culture only its democratic and socialist elements; we take them only and absolutely in opposition to the bourgeois culture and the bourgeois nationalism of each nation.”51
“Our banner,” Lenin proclaimed, “does not carry the slogan ‘national culture’ but international culture, which unites
all the nations in a higher, socialist unity, and the way to
which is being paved by the international amalgamation of
capital.”52
8
AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 2000
1 V.I. Lenin, “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Collected Works
Vol. 20, (Moscow: International Publishers, 1964), p. 397.
2 Lenin, “Right of Nations,” p. 396.
3 Tony Cliff, Rosa Luxemburg (London: Bookmarks, 1980), p. 55
4 Chris Harman, “The Return of the National Question,” International Socialism 56, Autumn 1992: p. 18.
5 Cliff, p.56.
6 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York and
London: Verso Press, 1998), p.58.
7 Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, p. 58.
8 Marx, “Letter of 2 November 1867,” Marx-Engels Collected Works , Vol. 42,
(Moscow: International Publishers, 1987), pp. 460–61.
9 Marx, “Letter of 30 November 1867,” Collected Works, Vol. 42, pp.
486–87.
10 Marx, “Letter of 29 November 1869,” Collected Works, Vol. 43 (Moscow:
International Publishers, 1987), pp. 390–91.
11 Harman, p. 19.
12 This is the date of the founding of Theodor Herzl’s new Zionist organization and is commonly accepted as the birthdate of modern political Zionism. There were, however, precursors. As Zachary Lockman points out:
“The first organized political manifestation of this new nationalism [Zionism] was the small and loose knit Hibbat Tziyon (“Love of Zion”) movement, which crystallized after the pogroms of 1881 and took the form of a
network of local associations established to promote Jewish immigration to
and settlement in Palestine, and the reconstitution there of Jewish national
life.” Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in
Palestine, 1906-1948 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1996), p. 24.
13 Grigorii Zinoviev, History of the Bolshevik Party (London: New Park Publications, 1973), p. 88.
14 1903. Second Ordinary Congress of the RSDLP. Complete Text of the Minutes.
Brian Pearce, trans. (London: New Park Publications, Ltd., 1978), p. 78.
15 1903, p. 98.
16 1903, p. 118.
17 1903, p. 118.
18 1903, p. 118.
19 1903, p. 118.
20 1903, p. 118.
21 1903, p. 119.
22 Lenin, “Theses on the National Question,” Collected Works, Vol. 19, p.
249.
23 1903, p. 6.
24 1903, p. 506.
25 1903, p. 506.
26 1903, p. 230.
27 Lenin, “Right of Nations,” p. 442.
28 Lenin, “Theses,” p. 243.
29 Lenin, “The National Programme of the RSDLP,” Collected Works, Vol. 19,
p. 543.
30 Lenin, “Theses,” p.244.
31 Lenin, “Theses,” p. 244.
32 Lenin, “Theses,” p. 245.
33 Lenin, “Theses,” p. 246.
34 Lenin, “Theses,” p.246.
35 Lenin, “Theses,” p. 244.
36 Lenin, “Theses,” p. 245.
37 Lenin, “Right of Nations,” p. 401.
38 Lenin, “Right of Nations,” p. 405.
39 Lenin, “Right of Nations,” p. 412.
40 Lenin, “Right of Nations,” pp. 411–12, p. 410.
41 Lenin, “Right of Nations,” p. 412.
42 Lenin, “Theses,” p. 243.
43 Otto Bauer, “The Nationalities Question and Social Democracy,” The Nationalism Reader, Omar Dahbour and Micheline R. Ishay, eds. (Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995), p. 183.
44 Harman, p. 20.
45 Lenin, “The National Programme of the RSDLP,” p. 541.
46 Lenin, “Cultural-National Autonomy,” Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 504.
47 Lenin, “The Nationality of Pupils in Russian Schools,” Collected Works,
Vol. 19, p. 532.
48 Harman, p. 31.
49 Lenin, “Critical Remarks on the National Question,” Collected Works, Vol.
20, p. 24.
50 Lenin, “Critical Remarks,” p. 25.
51 Lenin, “Critical Remarks,” p. 24.
52 Lenin, “Once More on the Segregation of the Schools According to Na-
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW