Marxism, Zionism and the National Question
Multinational Capital and The Multinational State
The old privately owned capital, capital owned by the individual capitalist, their family, or a small group of individuals, was necessarily nationally based, and also, thereby, highly dependent upon the nation state of those capitalists. They relied upon that state to protect their interests in the world economy, including in those states where they established foreign operations. But, the development of socialised capital, of the joint stock company/corporation changes all that. Now, shareholders from anywhere in the world can buy a share of a company anywhere in the world. And, that change, from the second half of the 19th century, meant that the capitalist class, in particular its dominant section, was now a global class, in the full sense. The shareholder in Bombay, or Moscow could directly participate in the sharing of the surplus value produced by the worker in Manchester, as a result of the dividends received on the shares owned in Manchester based companies.
The development of the multinational corporation after WWII, means that the remaining ties to the nation state are severed, and now the interests of the shareholders in these companies, shareholders who now live across the globe, have to be protected also by transnational para state bodies, or else every capitalist state, brought into this imperialist hierarchy of states, must agree to abide by the rules of that imperialist order, or face the consequences. The era of the nation state, thereby, passes into history, and its defence becomes reactionary. It no longer even represents the ideal form within which capitalist development takes place, because now that role can only be undertaken by either the largest nation states, or else by federations of nation states that provide the required size of single market in which capital can efficiently operate.
Lenin, whilst arguing that socialists in oppressor nations have to emphasise the right of oppressed nations to separate, says, the duty of socialists in oppressed nations is to argue the need to integrate and unify. The bourgeoisie in the oppressed nations will always seek to divide the workers, whilst doing deals with the bourgeoisie of oppressor nations, and also acting as oppressors of other minorities themselves, and so the workers can never align with such forces.
“for the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations always converts the slogan of national liberation into a means for deceiving the workers; in internal politics it utilizes these slogans as a means for concluding reactionary agreements with the bourgeoisie of the ruling nation (for instance, the Poles in Austria and Russia, who entered into pacts with reaction in order to oppress the Jews and the Ukrainians); in the realm of foreign politics it strives to enter into pacts with one of the rival imperialist powers for the purpose of achieving its own predatory aims (the policies of the small states in the Balkans, etc.).”
Zionism is a classic example of that, in its alliance with Mussolini's fascists and Hitler's Nazis, against Britain, when it sought to establish a Zionist state, and then with the US after WWII. It invariably means an alliance with the most reactionary, nationalist elements, for example, the close relationship between Zionism and Trump, despite the prominent role in that Trumpist entourage of virulent anti-Semites. It highlights the extent to which anti-Semitism is not the same as anti-Zionism, and indeed, the extent to which Zionism and anti-Semitism are, in fact, twins separated at birth.
Self-determination is used by chauvinists to argue for defence of the fatherland. It was used that way by chauvinists in WWI. It is used that way by Zionists today to deny Palestinians the right to return to their lands, and to defend the confessional nature of the Israeli state. This is quite different to the use of the concept by socialists in oppressor nations on behalf of those in the oppressed nations, and where its purpose is to overcome suspicion, amongst the oppressed, so as to facilitate joint working-class struggle. Palestinians face the powerful Israeli state not as oppressors, but as the oppressed!
“In contrast to the petty-bourgeois democrats, Marx regarded all democratic demands without exception not as an absolute, but as a historical expression of the struggle of the masses of the people, led by the bourgeoisie, against feudalism. There is not a single democratic demand which could not serve, and has not served, under certain conditions, as an instrument of the bourgeoisie for deceiving the workers. To single out one of the demands of political democracy, namely, the self determination of nations, and to oppose it to all the rest, is fundamentally wrong in theory. In practice, the proletariat will be able to retain its independence only if it subordinates its struggle for all the democratic demands, not excluding the demand for a republic, to its revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.”
(ibid)
The overriding goal of the global working-class, today, is not a chasing after self-determination, and the creation of new class states, but is voluntary association of workers of different nations, and the creation of large multinational states, and federations, the better to develop the productive forces, and in which to regulate and plan the economy, thereby taking the dynamic implicit in large-scale socialised capital, as the transitional form of property, and enabling its logical development into becoming socialised means of production.
“Marxism deduces the defence of the fatherland in wars, for example, in the Great French Revolution or the wars of Garibaldi, in Europe, and the renunciation of defence of the fatherland in the imperialist war of 1914-18, from an analysis of the concrete historical peculiarities of each individual war and never from any 'general principle', or any one point of a programme.”
(Note, ibid)
“It was precisely from the standpoint of the interests of the revolutionary movement of the German workers that Marx in 1848 demanded that victorious democracy in Germany should proclaim and grant freedom to the nations that the Germans were oppressing. It was precisely from the standpoint of the revolutionary struggle of the English workers that Marx in 1869 demanded the separation of Ireland from England, and added: “...although after the separation there may come federation.” Only by putting forward this demand did Marx really educate the English workers in the spirit of internationalism.”
(ibid)
Again making clear that Lenin was not a proponent of separate national development, i.e. nationalism, he says that Marx argues that it is not only economic concentration that is progressive, but also political concentration, on condition that this political concentration is not imperialist, i.e. based on force “but on the basis of a free union of the proletarians of all countries. Only in this way was Marx able, also in the sphere of the solution of national problems, to oppose the revolutionary action of the masses to verbal and often hypocritical recognition of the equality and the self-determination of nations.”
(ibid)
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