Marxism, Zionism and the National Question
Do Marxists Have To Support The Demand For Self-Determination? (2/4)
By elevating the national question above the class struggle, the Polish socialists arrived at a quite reactionary conclusion, as Lenin points out. The PSP, rather than seeing the need to join with the Russian workers, in engaging in class struggle against Tsarism, concluded instead that the way they could weaken Tsarism was by separating Poland from Russia. The job of overthrowing Tsarism they argued, was one only for the Russian workers. This is the same argument put today by Lexiters, who, rather than arguing for a united class struggle of all EU workers against capital, argue that the best way of weakening EU capitalism is by breaking Britain away. It is the same reactionary argument put by Scottish nationalists and other separatists.
“See to what monstrous conclusions this monstrous logic leads, even from the viewpoint of the programme demand for Poland’s restoration. Because the restoration of Poland is one of the possible (but, whilst the bourgeoisie rules, by no means absolutely certain) consequences of democratic evolution, therefore the Polish proletariat must not fight together with the Russian proletariat to overthrow tsarism, but “only” to weaken it by wresting Poland from it. Because Russian tsarism is concluding a closer and closer alliance with the bourgeoisie and the governments of Germany, Austria, etc., therefore the Polish proletariat must weaken its alliance with the proletariat of Russia, Germany, etc., together with whom it is now fighting against one and the same yoke. This is nothing more than sacrificing the most vital interests of the proletariat to the bourgeois-democratic conception of national independence. The disintegration of Russia which the P.S.P. desires, as distinct from our aim of overthrowing tsarism, is and will remain an empty phrase, as long as economic development continues to bring the different parts of a political whole more and more closely together, and as long as the bourgeoisie of all countries unite more and more closely against their common enemy, the proletariat, and in support of their common ally, the tsar.”
(The
National Question In Our Programme)
This is possibly the closest analogy you could get to the situation in respect of the EU, and, thereby, of a direct rebuke, by Lenin, to the position of the Lexiters. The logic of capital, of concentration and centralisation continues to drive forward, and to create the requirement for ever larger single markets, which also brings the different parts of a political whole more and more closely together, and, in the process, uniting capital more and more against the proletariat. Yet, the policy of Brexit, drives the workers apart, weakening their ability to resist capital, let alone to move forward towards socialism. It is a policy that seeks to weaken the EU, itself a reactionary aim, but, in reality, has only weakened Britain, and has weakened the working-class. Rather than seeking the unity of workers, in Britain and across the EU, against capital, it has posited a nationalistic unity of interest between British workers and British capital.
The PSP attempted to portray the position of Lenin and the RSDLP as being that they had to wait for the socialist revolution for their independence, and, in the meantime, had to endure national oppression. That was nonsense.
“The Russian Social-Democrats have never advised anything of the sort; on the contrary, they themselves fight, and call upon the whole Russian proletariat to fight, against all manifestations of national oppression in Russia; they include in their programme not only complete equality of status for all languages, nationalities, etc., but also recognition of every nation’s right to determine its own destiny. Recognising this right, we subordinate to the interests of the proletarian struggle our support of the demand for national independence, and only a chauvinist can interpret our position as an expression of a Russian's mistrust of a non-Russian, for in reality this position necessarily follows from the class-conscious proletarian’s distrust of the bourgeoisie.”
(ibid)
No comments:
Post a Comment