Marxism, Zionism and the National Question
Constraints On The Creation of Nation States (1/5)
The first constraint on the right to self-determination, for any nation, is clear, from what has been stated. Not every nation is large enough to be able to create, within its own borders, a single market of sufficient size, for the development of capitalism, as a dominant mode of production. The minimum size of such markets continually increases, as the minimum size of production required for efficient use of capital increases. Without such development of capitalism, no domestic bourgeoisie arises capable of becoming the ruling-class. It languishes in a continuation of feudal, or pre-capitalist productive relations. Meanwhile, other larger nations around it, do develop capitalism, and the low prices of this capitalist production are “the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls” and so these smaller nations that do not rise to the task of creating nation states, either become absorbed into this larger nation state, or else they are annexed, or otherwise subordinated to it. The most obvious variant of this is the establishment of colonies, the difference being that colonies are generally established in countries that are large enough to sustain a nation state, but where social development itself had been at a very low level, prior to colonisation.
It is these very same, objective, material conditions that prevent the development of a domestic bourgeois ruling class, and nation state, that makes these small nations reactionary, for the reasons that Engels describes that, in order to achieve this historic task, which they have proved incapable of doing themselves, they look to other outside forces, to larger states, to bring about this liberation for them. As Engels describes, here, that is inevitably reactionary. Trotsky made the same point in relation to the Balkan Wars, in which he opposed the kind of intervention by Tsarism, as an external liberator of the Slavs, from the Ottomans that Engels described in his letter to Kautsky.
“Petersburg's diplomacy has no business in the Balkans, and the Balkan peoples can expect nothing to their advantage from the diplomatic chancelleries of Petersburg. The peoples of the Near East must organise a democratic federation on their territory, on principles of independence from both Russia and Austria-Hungary.
This standpoint unites us closely both with you and with the fraternal parties in the Balkans, whose fight against local dynastic and militarist reaction will be the more rewarding and successful the more vigorously and uncompromisingly we wage our struggle against any and every interference by the Great powers in Balkan affairs.”
(Trotsky Writings On The Balkan Wars, p 319-20)
Generally speaking, Marxists oppose the establishment of federal states as opposed to a unified state, but, it is precisely where small nations may not be able to rise to the task of creating such a unified nation state that the argument for federalism arises. The Balkan peoples had failed the historic task of creating individual nation states, which is what made the establishment of a Balkan federation, a progressive alternative, especially in an era of imperialism, when the nation state itself had become an inadequate framework for the further development of capitalism. This was the position adopted by the European Marxists of the time, but, as with today, they were confronted by the liberal interventionists for whom this more complicated, arduous task of building for such a solution was trumped by the simpler demand of simply allowing other large powers to undertake these tasks of history on their behalf.
“And tangled knots exist in plenty in the Balkans...A customs union, federation, democracy, a united parliament for the whole peninsula – what were all these pitiful words beside the unanswerable argument of the bayonet. They had fought the Turks in order to 'liberate' the Christians, they had massacred peaceful Turks and Albanians in order to correct the ethnographical statistics of population, now they began to slaughter each other in order to 'finish the job'.”
(ibid, p 329)
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