Proudhon's method, by seeking only to remove the “bad” side of any phenomenon, the side which is actually the revolutionary element within the contradiction, and agent of change, denies himself of the possibility of progressive change.
As Marx described, the capitalist nation state arises because more dominant provinces impose themselves, forcefully, as also with the US Civil War. Marxists would not have advocated colonialism, but, without it, there would not have been the same development of industrial capitalism, there would have been no social revolution in India and other countries still languishing under the Asiatic Mode of Production, and Oriental despotism.
As Trotsky notes in relation to WWI, had the Kaiser created a single European state, it would have been a progressive development, and not one Marxists would seek to reverse, by demanding self-determination for the previously existing nation states. That would have been reactionary. Rather they would seek to drive that process forward to its rational conclusion, with the removal of existing national frictions, and, in so doing seek to unite European workers to fight for the overthrow of capitalism itself.
“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 programme of the European revolutionary movement would then be: The destruction of the compulsory anti-democratic form of the coalition, with the preservation and furtherance of its foundations, in the form of compete 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.”
Indeed, that applies had Hitler achieved a similar victory across Europe, and it is the same approach that Lenin and the Bolsheviks applied to the Tsarist Empire, which comprised the biggest prison house of nations. As Lenin sets out in a long series of documents on the national question, the position of Marxists is never to advocate national self-determination, because we are in favour of the self-determination of workers not nations. We merely recognise the right of nations to freely secede, should they choose to do so. Even, then, as Lenin sets out, and as the Theses On The National and Colonial Questions describes, there are a whole series of conditions in which, even whilst recognising that abstract right, we would not support it being implemented.
For example, we only support movements conducted by truly revolutionary forces, in line with the principles of Permanent Revolution, so we would not support liberation movements of the national bourgeoisie, such as the Kuomintang in China, we would not support movements led by reactionary classes, such as the landlords and clergy, as in Tibet, or Iran in 1979, the clerical-fascists in Iraq after 2003, Libya and Syria in 2011, and so on.
Similarly, some such movements are wholly dependent upon, and serve the interests of other countries, and cannot be supported, as with the intervention of India in Bangladesh. In these cases, the task of Marxists is to support only the truly revolutionary forces that would first have to be fighting against these reactionary nationalist elements, as also, for example, in relation to Ireland, Korea, and Vietnam, or Algeria, and as now with Hamas and Hezbollah. Finally, if implementing such a right involved a war that would potentially draw in the workers of larger nations, leading not only to their division, but to large numbers of their deaths, then Marxists could not support that either. Pretty much all of the above objections apply in Ukraine, and in Israel/Palestine.
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