Marxism, Zionism and the National Question
The Multinational State and Cultural National Autonomy
The ideal state was the nation state, and yet, everywhere, there existed multinational states. Marxists recognised a right of self-determination, but argued against separation, and for voluntary association of nations. One of the fundamental features that made the nation state ideal for the development of capitalism, was the existence of a single national language, yet Marxists argued against a single official language in multinational states. Marxists supported the unified state, and yet argued for the greatest regional autonomy, and in cases, federation. All of this appeared contradictory to those who simply viewed the question abstractly.
“4. The Social-Democratic Party’s recognition of the right of all nationalities to self-determination most certainly does not mean that Social-Democrats reject an independent appraisal of the advisability of the state secession of any nation in each separate case. Social-Democracy should, on the contrary, give its 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.”
In other words, recognition of an abstract right to self-determination, or as Lenin later phrased it a right to free secession, does not at all mean that when viewed concretely, in any specific case, Marxists would advocate or support such secession. In terms of the Tsarist Empire, which was a multinational state, the Marxist position was to emphasise the right of the oppressed nations within it to secede if they chose, and yet was to argue against any such secession. In order to oppose the oppression, the Marxists advocated, not the nationalist solution of secession, but continued voluntary association, and a combined struggle of all the workers from all nations, for political rights and freedoms for all, alongside the class struggle.
Capitalism was already an accomplished fact within the Tsarist Empire. It had been so from around 1870, as Lenin had set out in his writings against the Narodniks, in the 1890's. So, it was no longer a case of supporting the creation of a nation state as the ideal form of facilitating the development of capitalism out of the shell of feudalism. It was a question of recognising the existing reality of capitalism within the context of a large multinational state. Breaking apart an existing multinational capitalist state would then be reactionary, particularly in conditions where the development of capital itself had meant that, by the end of the 19th century, capital had broken out of the nation state, which had become a fetter on its further development. The programme of Marxism had to be, not what had now become a utopian and reactionary demand for the nation state, but the voluntary association of workers, and a struggle for consistent democracy, as part of the class struggle.
“1. Insofar as national peace is in any way possible in a capitalist society based on exploitation, profit-making and strife, it is attainable only under a consistently and thoroughly democratic republican system of government which guarantees full equality of all nations and languages, which recognises no compulsory official language, which provides the people with schools where instruction is given in all the native languages, and the constitution of which contains a fundamental law that prohibits any privileges whatsoever to any one nation and any encroachment whatsoever upon the rights of a national minority. This particularly calls for wide regional autonomy and fully democratic local self-government, with the boundaries of the self-governing and autonomous regions determined by the local inhabitants themselves on the basis of their economic and social conditions, national make-up of the population, etc.”
(ibid)
But, these political rights and freedoms, and the associated regional autonomy was not the same as the cultural national autonomy proposed by the Bund, the Austro-Marxists, and bourgeois liberals. That amounted merely to a form of refined nationalism. Rather than outright demanding separation, it proposed it in a disguised form. It proposed that each nation within such a state should not just be able to continue to use its own language and so on, but that they should have control over education and so on. That would undermine the gradual coming together of all the workers within the state on the basis of their shared proletarian interests and culture, locking them into their existing cultures, which by definition were the culture of their respective ruling classes. Rather than creating the basis for voluntary association, they froze the existing national and cultural divisions between the workers, and created an inevitable dynamic towards further separation and division.
“3. The interests of the working class demand the amalgamation of the workers of all the nationalities in a given state in united proletarian organisations—political, trade union, co-operative, educational, etc. This amalgamation of the workers of different nationalities in single organisations will alone enable the proletariat to wage a victorious struggle against international capital and reaction, and combat the propaganda and aspirations of the landowners, clergy and bourgeois nationalists of all nations, who usually cover up their anti-proletarian aspirations with the slogan of “national culture”. The world working-class movement is creating and daily developing more and more an international proletarian culture.
4. As regards the right of the nations oppressed by the tsarist monarchy to self-determination, i.e., the right to secede and form independent states, the Social-Democratic Party must unquestionably champion this right.”
(ibid)
But, as set out previously, in championing this right, the Russian Marxists did so, in relation to the oppressed nationalities, solely in order to distinguish themselves from the oppressors, to be able to say to the oppressed nationalities, we want you to remain associated with us, but not out of any desire to oppress you. On the contrary, we want you to remain associated with us, so that we can wage a combined struggle against our joint oppressors, the bourgeoisie, and its state.
“The right of nations to self-determination (i.e., the constitutional guarantee of an absolutely free and democratic method of deciding the question of secession) must under no circumstances be confused with the expediency of a given nation’s secession. The Social-Democratic Party must decide the latter question exclusively on its merits in each particular case in conformity with the interests of social development as a whole and with the interests of the proletarian class struggle for socialism.
Social-Democrats must moreover bear in mind that the landowners, the clergy and the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations often cover up with nationalist slogans their efforts to divide the workers and dupe them by doing deals behind their backs with the landowners and bourgeoisie of the ruling nation to the detriment of the masses of the working people of all nations.”)
(ibid)
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