Marxism, Zionism and the National Question
Constraints On The Creation of Nation States (2/5)
The nation state, then, arises concurrent with the development of capitalism, and with the bourgeois-democratic revolution. But, from this, it can also be seen how little Zionism has in common with even this bourgeois-democratic argument for self-determination. In order for it to apply, then, Jews would already have had to be a nation occupying a given territory, in which capitalism had developed as the dominant mode of production, in which, therefore, there existed a single national market. The Jewish nation state, as with the British nation state, French nation state, and so on, would then have arisen as the natural consequence of that capitalist development, and bourgeois-democratic revolution. That was not the case. From the time of the diaspora, 2000 years ago, there was no Jewish nation, and Jews were spread across the globe in a large number of other nations and states. Kautsky described the position of Jews across Eastern Europe as being that of a caste.
So, the process described above by Marx, Engels and Lenin, of the formation of a nation state, out of this process of capitalist development, within such a given territory, could not apply to a Jewish nation state. The idea that first a Jewish state could be created, and then this process of capitalist development within it could take place is to put the cart before the horse. It is at odds with the process of historical development of every other nation state. The advocacy of such a process is consistent not with Marxism, or historical materialism, but of the kind of idealism, and subjectivism of schema-mongering typical of moralists, and petty-bourgeois socialists of the type of Sismondi, Proudhon, Duhring, or the Russian Narodniks. Moreover, such a Jewish state could only be created by itself supplanting the existing people residing in that territory, i.e. the Palestinians. Again that is completely at odds with the historical justification for the development of the nation state. Even the bourgeois-democratic right to self-determination does not posit it on the basis that one nation achieves it at the expense of some other nation. The Marxist, who seeks primarily the unity of workers of all nations, most certainly could not support a demand for self-determination on such a basis. As Lenin puts it,
“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.”
Even if we describe Jews as a nation, rather than as a religious denomination, and, even if we were to ascribe to every nation the right to self-determination, i.e. to establish their own nation state, this is in no way the same thing as saying that any such nation could translate this right into actuality, or that, if it could, we, as Marxists, would advocate it. The example, given by Engels, of the Herzegovinians, or the example of The Falkland Islanders are illustrations of that. The constraints on any nation turning the abstract right of self-determination into actuality have already been discussed, in terms of whether any particular nation is large enough to be able to create the size of single market required for capitalism to develop. But, there are other historical constraints, such as the degree of social development in the particular nation.
In North and South America, social development remained at a very low level prior to European settlement that brought with it commodity production and exchange, and capitalist production. The indigenous nations never rose to the level of development to construct nation states, and that task fell to the European colonists. By the start of the 19th century, the North American colonies had become independent nation states. By the end of the 19th century, Bolivarian national revolutions had turned all of those former colonies, in South America, into independent nation states. In India, and other parts of Asia, the Asiatic Mode of Production had been a dead-end of social development, and, again, it is European colonialism that brings about the required social revolution, introduces capitalist production, and, thereby, creates the conditions for the creation of nation states. By the 1960's, these former colonies had become independent nation states, as had colonies in Africa.
In Britain, the Acts of Union of 1801, passed in the parliaments of both Great Britain and Ireland, amounted to a formal annexation of Ireland by Britain, with Ireland then sending MP's to the Westminster parliament. In parts of Europe, for example Russia, the late development of capitalism, means that some nations are simply annexed, forming part of the Russian Empire. All of these nations might have an abstract right to self-determination, but whether any of them achieve it is a different matter.
“Whether the Ukraine, for example, is destined to form an independent state is a matter that will be determined by a thousand unpredictable factors.”
In the case, of annexed or colonised nations, they may rise to a position in which a nation state, becomes objectively possible, but, the question then arises as to whether, in each particular case, Marxists would argue for it. In the case of colonies, the answer to this question is invariably yes. The colony exists, already, essentially, as a nation state, but one that is under the political domination of some other state. Its liberation from the political, if not economic domination, of this oppressor state, does not constitute the creation of some new class state, but merely the ability of this existing class state to exercise its own independence. Herein lies the difference between the national as against the colonial question.
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