Marxism, Zionism and the National Question
The Abstract Right of Nations To Self-Determination (2/4)
Lenin goes on, quoting Kautsky,
““The national state is the form most suited to present-day conditions, [i.e., capitalist, civilised, economically progressive conditions, as distinguished from medieval, pre-capitalist, etc.]; it is the form in which the state can best fulfil its tasks” (i. e., the tasks of securing the freest, widest and speediest development of capitalism). To this we must add Kautsky’s still more precise concluding remark that states of mixed national composition (known as multi national states, as distinct from national states) are “always those whose internal constitution has for some reason or other remained abnormal or underdeveloped” (backward). Needless to say, Kautsky speaks of abnormality exclusively in the sense of lack of conformity with what is best adapted to the requirements of a developing capitalism.”
Now, a reactionary nationalist could take this comment from Lenin, citing Kautsky, as giving grounds for each and every nation having its own nation state, but that would be wholly at odds with the intent of what Lenin is setting out, here, which is precisely the need to separate out the abstract right of each nation to such a state, and the historical, objective capacity of each nation to be able to implement it, as well as the desirability of Marxists, in any particular case, advocating it. What it misses is what Lenin elaborates later, which is the need to consider the matter concretely in terms of different time periods in the history of the development of capitalism. The nation state is the ideal form in that first period, when capitalism is developing out of its feudal shell.
Even more could a reactionary nationalist take Lenin's further comment that,
“...the self-determination of nations means the political separation of these nations from alien national bodies, and the formation of an independent national state.”
(ibid)
as a nationalistic demand for each nation to remain in splendid isolation from every other, as the Brexiters demand in relation to Britain and the EU, or as the Scottish nationalists demand in relation to Scotland becoming independent from Britain, and so on. Indeed, if that interpretation were correct, then we would expect to have seen Marx and Lenin, demanding that, from the beginning, Britain's development would have been best achieved by a separate Scottish nation state, a separate Welsh nation state, and even a separate Cornish nation state, alongside an English nation state!
To interpret Lenin and Kautsky's words in that way, is, of course, preposterous, and Lenin, at the end of this section makes that clear.
“The conditions under which the bourgeois-democratic demand for a “national state” should be supported from a Marxist, i. e., class-proletarian, point of view will be dealt with in detail below.”
(ibid)
I will come on to those conditions and Lenin's further elaboration later. For now, it is sufficient, here, to note that what Kautsky and Lenin are simply setting out, is what I have elaborated earlier, which is that this development of the nation state is a product of the development of capitalism, and the need of capitalism to have a minimum size of market, in which to develop. The truth is not only that some nations will never achieve that minimum size, and so never be in a position to develop capitalism, or, therefore, a nation state, but that hundreds of such nations, will, as a consequence become lost to history, as “Non-Historic Peoples”. Britain was originally divided into a number of tribes, and then kingdoms, for example under the Heptarchy, before an English state was created. In what is now France, there were 300 different nationalities, prior to the establishment of the French nation state. The fact of the creation of a nation state does not involve simply each and every nation forming its own state, but is also a history of certain nations imposing themselves on all the others, of imposing its language and culture on the others. The first means by which this occurs is indeed, economic, as capitalist production undercuts handicraft production. As Marx puts it, in The Communist Manifesto,
“The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. ..
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.”
When he and Engels speak, here, of the barbarian nations, and the breaking down of Chinese walls, what they were actually referring to was those small Central European nations that tried to resist this oncoming capitalist development. The same principles, of course, apply now, when production on a mammoth scale requires even larger single markets, such as that of the EU, and which demonstrates, on the same basis, that the nation state has become a fetter on the further development of capital and the productive forces, a fetter that must be burst asunder.
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