Marxism, Zionism and the National Question
The Truth Is Always Concrete (1/3)
Marxists deal with the world as it actually exists not as it might be in some idealistic schema of development. So, for example, Trotsky sets out, in The Programme of Peace that, should such a political and economic union be created, in Europe, by war, it would be no part of a Marxist programme to try to turn this clock backwards. The economic concentration and centralisation established would continue to be progressive. The task of a Marxist, under such conditions, would be to address the imperialist nature of the political union, by demanding, on the one hand, a political struggle, within that framework, for the maximum political rights and freedoms, including the right of nations to secede, if they choose, whilst, on the other hand, arguing that nations should not choose to secede, but that workers should voluntarily unite, within this framework, in order the better to march forward to Socialism.
“The right of national self-determination cannot be excluded from the proletarian peace program; but it cannot claim absolute importance. On the contrary, it is delimited for us by the converging, profoundly progressive tendencies of historical development. If this “right” must be – through revolutionary force – counterposed to the imperialist methods of centralization which enslave weak and backward peoples and crush the hearths of national culture, then on the other hand the proletariat cannot allow the “national principle” to get in the way of the irresistible and deeply progressive tendency of modern economic life towards a planned organization throughout our continent, and further, all over the globe. Imperialism is the capitalist-thievish expression of this tendency of modern economy to tear itself completely away from the idiocy of national narrowness, as it did previously with regard to local and provincial confinement. While fighting against the imperialist form of economic centralization, socialism does not at all take a stand against the particular tendency as such but, on the contrary, makes the tendency its own guiding principle...
...Let us for a moment grant that German militarism succeeds in actually carrying out the compulsory half-union of Europe, just as Prussian militarism once achieved the half-union of Germany, what would then be the central slogan of the European proletariat? Would it be the dissolution of the forced European coalition and the return of all peoples under the roof of isolated national states? Or the restoration of “autonomous” tariffs, “national” currencies, “national” social legislation, and so forth? Certainly not. The program of the European revolutionary movement would then be: The destruction of the compulsory antidemocratic form of the coalition, with the preservation and furtherance of its foundations, in the form of complete annihilation of tariff barriers, the unification of legislation, above all of labour laws, etc. In other words, the slogan of the United States of Europe – without monarchies and standing armies – would under the indicated circumstances become the unifying and guiding slogan of the European revolution.”
The same approach was taken by Marx and Engels in relation to the colonies, such as India. In other words, colonialism would not have been the method chosen by Socialism to bring about the social revolution, and capitalist development in India. But, at the time of colonialism, Socialism itself not only did not exist, but could not exist, because capitalism itself was not yet properly developed. Colonialism develops at a time when the dominant forms of capital are its antediluvian forms of merchant's capital, and financial capital, acting conjointly with the landed aristocracy. But, just as this mercantilism at home, and the development of large markets, creates the conditions for the development of industrial capital, so too does it carry out that function in India. The first railways in India, for example, were established at around the same time they were established in Britain. They are established for the same reasons, the movement of raw materials and food in one direction, and manufactured products in the other. But, the establishment of railways also means the development of wider industrial production, engineering works to produce rails and other equipment, to build and maintain engines and so on. However, brutal the nature of colonialism, historically, its role is progressive in bringing about this social revolution.
The task of Marxists, most certainly would not be to turn India back to its condition prior to colonialism. Lenin indeed, quotes Engels Letter to Kautsky on this matter,
“In my opinion the colonies proper, i.e. the countries occupied by a European population – Canada, the Cape, Australia – will all become independent; on the other hand, the countries inhabited by a native population, which are simply subjugated – India, Algeria, the Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish possessions – must be taken over for the time being by the proletariat and led as rapidly as possible towards independence. How this process will develop is difficult to say. India will perhaps, indeed very probably, make a revolution, and as a proletariat in process of self-emancipation cannot conduct any colonial wars, it would have to be allowed to run its course; it would not pass off without all sorts of destruction, of course, but that: sort of thing is inseparable from all revolutions.”
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