Marxism, Zionism and the National Question
Three Time Periods (2/3)
To try to analyse the national question, today, in these conditions, on the basis of the historical conditions pertaining to the initial development of capitalist production, and nation states, out of feudalism, is not just non-Marxist, it is clearly absurd. The existence of different languages in the EU, for example, has not hindered its economic development.
“The requirements of economic exchange will themselves decide which language of the given country it is to the advantage of the majority to know in the interests of commercial relations. This decision will be all the firmer because it is adopted voluntarily by a population of various nationalities, and its adoption will be the more rapid and extensive the more consistent the democracy and, as a consequence of it, the more rapid the development of capitalism.”
The nationalism of the Great Russians was oppressive, because of their majority position, but the nationalism of the bourgeois liberals of the minority nations was also reactionary, Lenin says, because, in pushing their own national agenda, they divided the workers in the whole of Russia, attempting to tie them to the bourgeoisie of each particular nation.
“Such is the nature of all liberal-bourgeois nationalism—not only Great-Russian (it is the worst of them all because of its violent character and its kinship with the Purishkeviches), but Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian, Georgian and every other nationalism. Under the slogan of “national culture” the bourgeoisie of all nations, both in Austria and in Russia, are in fact pursuing the policy of splitting the workers, emasculating democracy and haggling with the feudalists over the sale of the people’s rights and the people’s liberty.”
(ibid)
Marxists are not in favour of promoting national culture, as are the reactionaries, nor multiculturalism, as the liberals do, which merely seeks to promote “separate but equal” continuation of these national cultures, preserving them in aspic, but seek to promote only the international, proletarian culture of the working-class.
“The slogan of working-class democracy is not “national culture” but the international culture of democracy and the world-wide working-class movement. Let the bourgeoisie deceive the people with various “positive” national programmes. The class-conscious worker will answer the bourgeoisie—there is only one solution to the national problem (insofar as it can, in general, be solved in the capitalist world, the world of profit, squabbling and exploitation), and that solution is consistent democracy.”
(ibid)
And, in this context can be seen how reactionary the nationalist ideology of Zionism is that sought to establish an exclusively Jewish state on the bones of an existing Palestinian population, and has continued to promote the racist idea of an exclusive, Jewish confessional state that systematically discriminates against non-Jews, and whose nationalist and colonialist ideology forces it to continually seek to expand its rule, for example, by the annexation of surrounding territories, occupation of the West bank and Gaza, and so on.
As Lenin put it,
“Whoever, directly or indirectly, puts forward the slogan of Jewish “national culture” is (whatever his good intentions may be) an enemy of the proletariat, a supporter of all that is outmoded and connected with caste among the Jewish people; he is an accomplice of the rabbis and the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, those Jewish Marxists who mingle with the Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and other workers in international Marxist organisations, and make their contribution (both in Russian and in Yiddish) towards creating the international culture of the working-class movement—those Jews, despite the separatism of the Bund, uphold the best traditions of Jewry by fighting the slogan of “national culture”.”
… “In advocating the slogan of national culture and building up on it an entire plan and practical programme of what they call “cultural-national autonomy”, the Bundists are in effect instruments of bourgeois nationalism among the workers.”
(ibid)
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