Marxism, Zionism and the National Question
Do Marxists Have To Support The Demand For Self-Determination? (1/4)
Those that argue for every nation to become independent, or for an unconditional right to self-determination, put forward the perspective of Luxemburg, or, as Lenin puts it,
“... is Social-Democracy in duty bound to demand national independence always and unreservedly, or only under certain circumstances; if the latter is the case then under what circumstances? To this question the P.S.P. has always replied in favour of unreserved recognition; we are not in the least surprised, therefore, at the fondness it displays towards the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries, who demand a federal state system and speak in favour of “complete and unreserved recognition of the right to national self-determination” (Revolutsionnaya Rossiya, No. 18, the article entitled “National Enslavement and Revolutionary Socialism”).”
(The National Question In Our Programme)
In other words, this is a manifestation of that moral socialism that characterised the Narodniks (predecessors of the S.R,'s) and which today characterises the adherents of the so called Third Camp.
“The bourgeois democrat (and the present-day socialist opportunist who follows in his footsteps) imagines that democracy eliminates the class struggle, and that is why he presents all his political demands in an abstract way, lumped together, “without reservations,” from the standpoint of the interests of the “whole people,” or even from that of an eternal and absolute moral principle. Always and everywhere the Social-Democrat ruthlessly exposes this bourgeois illusion, whether it finds expression in an abstract idealist philosophy or in an absolute demand for national independence.”
(ibid)
Recognition of the right, as an abstract principle does not at all mean support in every or any particular case.
“Does recognition of the right of nations to self-determination really imply support of any demand of every nation for self-determination? After all, the fact that we recognise the right of all citizens to form free associations does not at all commit us, Social-Democrats, to supporting the formation of any new association; nor does it prevent us from opposing and campaigning against the formation of a given association as an inexpedient and unwise step.”
(ibid)
For Marxists, it is the class struggle, and the unity of workers that is determinate, and everything else is subordinated to that, especially now that, in most part, the national question has been pushed into the background, and the nation state has itself become a fetter on the further development of capital and the productive forces.
“The programme merely demands that a genuinely socialist party shall not corrupt proletarian class-consciousness, or slur over the class struggle, or lure the working class with bourgeois-democratic phrases, or break the unity of the proletariat’s present-day political struggle. This reservation is the crux of the matter, for only with this reservation do we recognise self-determination.”
(ibid)
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