Yet, all of the experience of such pipe dreams shows that they turn into nightmares. They result in the horrors of Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and Kim's North Korea, and Castro's Cuba. The development of the productive forces is held back, and consequently, ever greater impositions are placed on an inefficient peasant production. Ever greater repression and authoritarianism is required, as the people see their condition deteriorating, compared to the rest of the world.
In fact, as Trotsky set out in relation to Mexico, the real road to development, for such countries lies precisely in doing deals with the imperialist capitals to provide the capital, as well as the technical skills and training they require, which is the opposite of the moralising stance of the “anti-imperialists”.
“Considerable international capital is seeking areas of investment at the present time, even where only a modest (but sure) return is possible. Turning one’s back on foreign capital and speaking of collectivisation and industrialisation is mere intoxication with words...
Despite all these advantages (enjoyed by the USSR, AB) the industrial reconstruction of the country was begun with the granting of concessions. Lenin accorded great importance to these concessions for the economic development of the country and for the technical and administrative education of Soviet personnel. There has been no socialist revolution in Mexico. The international situation does not even allow for the cancellation of the public debt. The country we repeat is poor. Under such conditions it would be almost suicidal to close the doors to foreign capital. To construct state capitalism, capital is necessary.”
(On Mexico's Second Six Year Plan)
But, if we take all of the abstract rights listed above, its obvious that they have been far from rights, throughout history. There have been no “fundamental human rights”, for example. Slavery has been mentioned, which existed for thousands of years, as a natural form of existence, across the globe. A cursory look at the Bible, shows that, even the right to life was a conditional right, not extended to such slaves and servants in the way it was to their masters.
National rights, as with all rights, depend upon the ability of the nation to enforce them against the attempts by other nations to deny them, as the Palestinians have proved most glaringly. As Marx put it, all law is ultimately club law.
“The bourgeois economists have merely in view that production proceeds more smoothly with modern police than, e.g., under club-law. They forget, however, that club-law too is law, and that the law of the stronger, only in a different form, still survives even in their “constitutional State.””
(A Contribution To The Critique of Political Economy)
For Marx and Marxists, national rights implies the continuation of nations as collectives, whereas we seek to abolish such divisions, so as to allow the free development of individuals as human beings, rather than being characterised by, and limited by such concepts as “nation”, or “class”. Again, for Marx and Marxists, the nation state had a progressive role, strictly limited by history. Its time has long past.
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