The National Question Once Again - Concerning the article by Semich

In 1925, criticising Semich for underestimating the importance of the right of secession, he notes that Semich quotes from Stalin’s theses the passage -The national question is a struggle of the bourgeois classes among themselves.


Democracy and Class Struggle opposes the Imperialist States of Britain and France and Spain - these Imperialist States arose by conquering the nations within those states and practiced in many cases colonial practices on those conquered nations  - before exporting those colonial practices  to overseas colonies  - it is time for the nations in these states to begin their process of National and Social Liberation.

Our Comrades in Wales statement on Catalonia captures the democratic content of these national struggles.

Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr says the Catalan struggle is basically a struggle for democracy against a corrupt bourgeois Spanish State which has taken a national form in Catalonia.

However the bourgeois nationalist Catalan leadership seeks to subordinate Catalonia to a corrupt Brussels and the European Union - this is  not national liberation but a readjustment among the national bourgeois in the Spanish State and Europe.

The Revolutionary Left in Catalonia should oppose both the corrupt Spanish State and the corrupt European Union and NATO and elevate the working class to political leadership of the national struggle for democracy in Catalonia - the working class should win the direction of national liberation.

Democracy and Class Struggles says we must oppose revisionism on the National Question which does not recognize these popular mass struggles as part of the democratic class struggle for socialism and develop the Marxist Leninist Maoist Position on Imperialist States and national struggles within those States.

Whether it was Marx ridiculing Paul Lafargue who said that socialism had abolished nationalities has he addressed the First International in French language which nine tenths of the audience did not understand - to Lenin in a bout of criticism and self criticism who castigated those that oppose pure socialism to the national struggle something he had been prone to do before the First World War .

Lenin had opened his eyes wide open to Imperialism and the National Question  in 1916 as a result of the Easter Rising and we thank James Connolly for his education of Lenin on this question.

Lenin denounced Imperialist Economism on the National Question

It was the doctrine that it was sufficient for a workers’ party to prefer proletarian demands, and that democratic demands were not their business. 

Imperialist Economism is something that pervades vast sections of the erstwhile Left Today even those that have the pretense to be revolutionary and is one of the contributing factors to the renewed strength of the political right.

Stalin was even critical of his pre First World War Marxism and The National Question article because its was a pre Imperialist analysis of the the National Question.

Stalin Wrote :

“Stalin’s pamphlet was written before the imperialist war, at the time when the national question had not yet assumed world-wide significance in the eyes of Marxists, and when the basic demands concerning the right to self-determination were considered to be, not a part of the proletarian revolution, but a part of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. It would be absurd to ig-nore the fact that since then a fundamental change has taken place in the international situation, that the war on the one hand and the October revolu-tion in Russia on the other has converted the national question from being a particle of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a particle of the proletar-ian-socialist revolution.”

Revolutionary Marxism Leninism did not stop developing its work on the National Question in the 1920's but was further developed by Ibrahim Kaypakkaya who was inspired by Mao Zedong Thought in Turkey in the 1970's with his path breaking  work on the Kurdish National Question which brought clarity to the communist movement on the Kurdish Question unlike the Post Nationalism of Abdullah Ocalan which has brought nothing but confusion.

Ibrahim Kaypakkaya is a solid base on which to develop a Marxist Leninist Maoist View of the National Question and Imperialism in the 21st Century in the spirit of Marx Engels Lenin Stalin and Mao Zedong.

Democracy and Class Struggle is a platform for the further development of Marxism Leninism Maoism on the National Question and Imperialism.

                                     A Europe of Nations

READ OUR ARTICLE ON FUTURE OF UK AND EUROPEAN UNION

https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/article-50-and-national-and-social_29.html



The National Question Once Again by  J V Stalin

Concerning the Article by Semich

June 30, 1925

Source : Works, Vol. 7, 1925
Publisher : Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954


One can only welcome the fact that now, after the discussion that took place in the Yugoslav Commission, Semich, in his article, wholly and entirely associates himself with the stand taken by the R.C.P.(B.) delegation in the Comintern.

It would be wrong, however, to think on these grounds that there were no disagreements between the R.C.P.(B.) delegation and Semich before or during the discussion in the Yugoslav Commission. Evidently, that is exactly what Semich is inclined to think about the disagreements on the national question, in trying to reduce them just to misunderstandings. Unfortunately, he is profoundly mistaken.

He asserts in his article that the dispute with him is based on a "series of misunderstandings" caused by "one, not fully translated," speech he delivered in the Yugoslav Commission. In other words, it follows that we must make a scapegoat of the person who, for some reason, did not translate Semich's speech in full.

In the interests of the truth I must declare that this assertion of Semich's is quite contrary to the facts It would have been better, of course, had Semich supported his assertion with passages from the speech he delivered in the Yugoslav Commission, the report of which is kept in the Comintern files. But for some reason he did not do this. Consequently, I am compelled to go through this not very pleasant, but very necessary, procedure for him.

This is all the more necessary since even now, after Semich has wholly associated himself with the stand taken by the R.C.P.(B.) delegation, there is still much that is unclear in his present position.

In my speech in the Yugoslav Commission (see Bolshevik,1 No. 7) I spoke of disagreements on three questions: 1) the question of the ways of solving the national question, 2) the question of the internal social content of the national movement in the present historical epoch, and 3) the question of the role of the international factor in the national question.

On the first question I said that Semich had "not fully understood the main essence of the Bolshevik presentation of the national question," that he separated the national question from the general question of the revolution, and that, consequently, he was inclined to reduce the national question to a constitutional issue.

Is all that true?

Read the following passage from Semich's speech in the Yugoslav Commission (March 30, 1925) and judge for yourselves:

"Can the national question be reduced to a constitutional issue?

First of all, let us make a theoretical supposition. Let us suppose that in state X there are three nations A, B, and C. These three nations express the wish to live in one state. What is the issue in this case? It is, of course, the regulation of the internal relationships within this state. Hence, it is a constitutional issue. In this theoretical case the national question amounts to a constitutional issue. . . . If, in this theoretical case, we reduce the national question to a constitutional issue, it must be said — as I have always emphasised — that the self-determination of nations, including secession, is a condition for the solution of the constitutional issue. And it is solely on this plane that I put the constitutional issue."

I think that this passage from Semich's speech needs no further comment. 

Clearly, whoever regards the national question as a component part of the general question of the proletarian revolution cannot reduce it to a constitutional issue. 

And vice versa, only one who separates the national question from the general question of the proletarian revolution can reduce it to a constitutional issue.

Semich's speech contains a statement to the effect that the right to national self-determination cannot be won without a revolutionary struggle. Semich says: "Of course, such rights can be won only by means of a revolutionary struggle. 

They cannot be won by parliamentary means; they can result only from mass revolutionary actions." But what do "revolutionary struggle" and "revolutionary actions" mean? Can "revolutionary struggle" and "revolutionary actions" be identified with the overthrow of the ruling class, with the seizure of power, with the victory of the revolution as a condition for the solution of the national question? Of course not.

To speak of the victory of the revolution as the fundamental condition for the solution of the national question is one thing; but it is quite another thing to put "revolutionary actions" and "revolutionary struggle" as the condition for the solution of the national question. It must be observed that the path of reforms, the constitutional path, by no means excludes "revolutionary actions" and "revolutionary struggle."

Decisive in determining whether a given party is revolutionary or reformist are not "revolutionary actions" in themselves, but the political aims and objects for the sake of which the party undertakes and employs these actions. 

As is known, in 1906, after the first Duma was dispersed, the Russian Mensheviks proposed the organisation of a "general strike" and even of an "armed uprising." But that did not in the least prevent them from remaining Men-sheviks, for why did they propose all this at that time?

Not, of course, to smash tsarism and to organise the complete victory of the revolution, but in order to "exert pressure" on the tsarist government with the object of winning reforms, with the object of widening the "constitution," with the object of securing the convocation of an "improved" Duma. "Revolutionary actions" for the purpose of reforming the old order, while power remains in the hands of the ruling class is one thing — that is the constitutional path. "Revolutionary actions" for the purpose of breaking up the old order, for overthrowing the ruling class, is another thing — that is the revolutionary path, the path of the complete victory of the revolution. There is a fundamental difference here.

That is why I think that Semich's reference to "revolutionary struggle" while reducing the national question to a constitutional issue does not refute, but, on the contrary, only confirms my statement that Semich had "not fully understood the main essence of the Bolshevik presentation of the national question," for he failed to understand that the national question must be regarded not in isolation from, but in inseparable connection with, the question of the victory of the revolution, as part of the general question of the revolution.

While insisting on this, I do not in the least mean to imply that I have said anything new about Semich's mistake on this question. Not at all. This mistake of Semich's was already mentioned by Comrade Manuil-sky at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern2 when he said:

"In his pamphlet The National Question in the Light of Marxism, and in a number of articles published in Radnik, the organ of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, Semich advocates a struggle for the revision of the Constitution as a practical slogan for the Communist Party, that is, he in fact reduces the whole question of self-determination of nations exclusively to a constitutional issue" (see Stenographic Report of the Fifth Congress, pp. 596-97).

Zinoviev, too, spoke about this same mistake in the Yugoslav Commission, when he said:

"In the prospect drawn by Semich it appears that only one little thing is lacking, namely, revolution," that the national question is a "revolutionary and not a constitutional" problem (see Pravda, No. 83).

These remarks by representatives of the R.C.P.(B.) in the Comintern concerning Semich's mistake could not have been accidental, groundless. There is no smoke without fire.

That is how matters stand with Semich's first and fundamental mistake.

His other mistakes arise directly from this fundamental mistake.

Concerning the second question, I said in my speech (see Bolshevik, No. 7) that Semich "refuses to regard the national question as being, in essence, a peasant question."

Is that true?

Read the following passage from Semich's speech in the Yugoslav Commission and judge for yourselves:

"What is the social significance of the national movement in Yugoslavia?" asks Semich, and he answers there: "Its social content is the competitive struggle between Serb capital on the one hand and Croat and Slovene capital on the other" (see Semich's speech in the Yugoslav Commission).

There can be no doubt, of course, that the competitive struggle between the Slovene and Croat bourgeoisie and the Serb bourgeoisie is bound to play a certain role here. But it is equally beyond doubt that a man who thinks that the social significance of the national movement lies in the competitive struggle between the bourgeoisies of the different nationalities cannot regard the national question as being, in essence, a peasant question.

What is the essence of the national question today, when this question has been transformed from a local, intra-state question into a world question, a question of the struggle waged by the colonies and dependent nationalities against imperialism? 

The essence of the national question today lies in the struggle that the masses of the people of the colonies and dependent nationalities are waging against financial exploitation, against the political enslavement and cultural effacement of those colonies and nationalities by the imperialist bourgeoisie of the ruling nationality.

What significance can the competitive struggle between the bourgeoisies of different nationalities have when the national question is presented in that way? Certainly not decisive significance, and, in certain cases, not even important significance. It is quite evident that the main point here is not that the bourgeoisie of one nationality is beating, or may beat, the bourgeoisie of another nationality in the competitive struggle, but that the imperialist group of the ruling nationality is exploiting and oppressing the bulk of the masses, above all the peasant masses, of the colonies and dependent nationalities and that, by oppressing and exploiting them, it is drawing them into the struggle against imperialism, converting them into allies of the proletarian revolution.

The national question cannot be regarded as being, in essence, a peasant question if the social significance of the national movement is reduced to the competitive struggle between the bourgeoisies of different nationalities. And vice versa, the competitive struggle between the bourgeoisies of different nationalities cannot be regarded as constituting the social significance of the national movement if the national question is regarded as being, in essence, a peasant question. These two formulas cannot possibly be taken as equivalent.

Semich refers to a passage in Stalin's pamphlet Marxism and the National Question, written at the end of 1912. There it says that "the national struggle under the conditions of rising capitalism is a struggle of the bourgeois classes among themselves." Evidently, by this Semich is trying to suggest that his formula defining the social significance of the national movement under the present historical conditions is correct.

But Stalin's pamphlet was written before the imperialist war, when the national question was not yet regarded by Marxists as a question of world significance, when the Marxists' fundamental demand for the right to self-determination was regarded not as part of the proletarian revolution, but as part of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. It would be ridiculous not to see that since then the international situation has radically changed, that the war, on the one hand, and the October Revolution in Russia, on the other, transformed the national question from a part of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a part of the proletarian-socialist revolution.

As far back as October 1916, in his article, "The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up," 3 Lenin said that the main point of the national question, the right to self-determination, had ceased to be a part of the general democratic movement, that it had already become a component part of the general proletarian, socialist revolution. I do not even mention subsequent works on the national question by Lenin and by other representatives of Russian communism. After all this, what significance can Semich's reference to the passage in Stalin's pamphlet, written in the period of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia, have at the present time, when, as a consequence of the new historical situation, we have entered a new epoch, the epoch of proletarian revolution? It can only signify that Semich quotes outside of space and time, without reference to the living historical situation, and thereby violates the most elementary requirements of dialectics, and ignores the fact that what is right for one historical situation may prove to be wrong in another historical situation.

In my speech in the Yugoslav Commission I said that two stages must be distinguished in the presentation of the national question by the Russian Bolsheviks: the pre-October stage, when the bourgeois-democratic revolution was the issue and the national question was regarded as a part of the general democratic movement; and the October stage, when the proletarian revolution was already the issue and the national question had become a component part of the proletarian revolution. It scarcely needs proof that this distinction is of decisive significance.

I am afraid that Semich still fails to understand the meaning and significance of this difference between the two stages in the presentation of the national question.

That is why I think Semich's attempt to regard the national movement as not being, in essence, a peasant question, but as a question of the competition between the bourgeoisies of different nationalities "is due to an un-der-estimation of the inherent strength of the national movement and a failure to understand the profoundly popular and profoundly revolutionary character of the national movement" (see Bolshevik, No. 7).

That is how the matter stands with Semich's second mistake.

It is characteristic that the same thing about this mistake of Semich's was said by Zinoviev in his speech in the Yugoslav Commission:

"Semich is wrong when he says that the peasant movement in Yugoslavia is headed by the bourgeoisie and is therefore not revolutionary" (see Pravda, No. 83).

Is this coincidence accidental? Of course, not!

Once again: there is no smoke without fire.

Finally, on the third question I stated that Semich makes an "attempt to treat the national question in Yugoslavia in isolation from the international situation and the probable prospects in Europe."

Is that true?

Yes, it is, for in his speech Semich did not even remotely hint at the fact that the international situation under present conditions, especially in relation to Yugoslavia, is a major factor in the solution of the national question. The fact that the Yugoslav state itself was formed as a result of the clash between the two major imperialist coalitions, that Yugoslavia cannot escape from the big play of forces that is now going on in the surrounding imperialist states — all this remained outside of Semich's field of vision.

Semich's statement that he can fully conceive of certain changes taking place in the international situation which may cause the question of self-determination to become an urgent and practical one, must now, in the present international situation, be regarded as inadequate. 

Now it is by no means a matter of admitting that the question of the right of nations to self-determination may become urgent, given certain changes in the international situation, in a possible and distant future; this could, if need be, now be admitted as a prospect even by bourgeois democrats.

That is not the point now. The point now is to avoid making the present frontiers of the Yugoslav state, which came into being as a result of war and violence, the starting point and legal basis for the solution of the national question. One thing or the other: either the question of national self-determination, i.e., the question of radically altering the frontiers of Yugoslavia, is an appendage to the national programme, dimly looming in the distant future, or it is the basis of the national programme.

At all events it is clear that the point about the right to self-determination cannot be at one and the same time both an appendage to and the basis of the national programme of the Yugoslav Communist Party. I am afraid that Semich still continues to regard the right to self-determination as an appendage concerning prospects added to the national programme.

That is why I think that Semich divorces the national question from the question of the general international situation and, as a consequence, for him the question of self-determination, i.e., the question of altering the frontiers of Yugoslavia, is, in essence, not an urgent question, but an academic one.

That is how the matter stands with Semich's third mistake.

It is characteristic that the same thing about this mistake of Semich's was said by Comrade Manuilsky in his report to the Fifth Congress of the Comintern:

"The fundamental premise of Semich's whole presentation of the national question is the idea that the proletariat must accept the bourgeois state within those frontiers which have been set up by a series of wars and acts of violence"* (see Stenographic Report of the Fifth Congress of the Comintern, p. 597).

Can this coincidence be regarded as accidental? Of course, not!

Once again: there is no smoke without fire.



The magazine Bolshevik, No. 11-12, June 30, 1925

Notes

1.Bolshevik, a fortnightly theoretical and political magazine, organ of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.); began publication in April 1924.

2.The Fifth Congress of the Comintern was held in Moscow, June 17-July 8, 1924. On June 30, D. Z. Manuilsky delivered a report on the national question.

3.See V. I. Lenin, works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 22, pp. 306-44.

Democracy and Class Struggle would update this article of Stalin by saying that the land question rather than just the peasant question is central to a proletarian view of the national struggle against Imperialism - the peasant struggle is associated with feudalism while the land struggle especially struggle around community ownership of land moves the national struggle in democratic direction and can also be post feudal  especially in Western Europe.

MLM and the National Question by Nickglais : The National Question in the Basque Country and Catalonia

The National Question in the Basque Country and Catalonia


Democracy and Class Struggle opposes the Imperialist States of Britain and France and Spain - these Imperialist States arose by conquering the nations within those states and practiced in many cases colonial practices on those conquered nations  - before exporting those colonial practices  to overseas colonies  - it is time for the nations in these states to begin their process of National and Social Liberation.

Our Comrades in Wales statement on Catalonia captures the democratic content of these national struggles.

Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr says the Catalan struggle is basically a struggle for democracy against a corrupt bourgeois Spanish State which has taken a national form in Catalonia.

However the bourgeois nationalist Catalan leadership seeks to subordinate Catalonia to a corrupt Brussels and the European Union - this is  not national liberation but a readjustment among the national bourgeois in the Spanish State and Europe.

The Revolutionary Left in Catalonia should oppose both the corrupt Spanish State and the corrupt European Union and NATO and elevate the working class to political leadership of the national struggle for democracy in Catalonia - the working class should win the direction of national liberation.

Democracy and Class Struggles says we must oppose revisionism on the National Question which does not recognize these popular mass struggles as part of the democratic class struggle for socialism and develop the Marxist Leninist Maoist Position on Imperialist States and national struggles within those States.

Whether it was Marx ridiculing Paul Lafargue who said that socialism had abolished nationalities has he addressed the First International in French language which nine tenths of the audience did not understand - to Lenin in a bout of criticism and self criticism who castigated those that oppose pure socialism to the national struggle something he had been prone to do before the First World War .

Lenin had opened his eyes wide open to Imperialism and the National Question  in 1916 as a result of the Easter Rising and we thank James Connolly for his education of Lenin on this question.

Lenin denounced Imperialist Economism on the National Question

It was the doctrine that it was sufficient for a workers’ party to prefer proletarian demands, and that democratic demands were not their business. 

Imperialist Economism is something that pervades vast sections of the erstwhile Left Today even those that have the pretense to be revolutionary and is one of the contributing factors to the renewed strength of the political right.

Stalin was even critical of his pre First World War Marxism and The National Question article because its was a pre Imperialist analysis of the the National Question.

Stalin Wrote :

“Stalin’s pamphlet was written before the imperialist war, at the time when the national question had not yet assumed world-wide significance in the eyes of Marxists, and when the basic demands concerning the right to self-determination were considered to be, not a part of the proletarian revolution, but a part of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. It would be absurd to ig-nore the fact that since then a fundamental change has taken place in the international situation, that the war on the one hand and the October revolu-tion in Russia on the other has converted the national question from being a particle of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a particle of the proletar-ian-socialist revolution.”

Revolutionary Marxism Leninism did not stop developing its work on the National Question in the 1920's but was further developed by Ibrahim Kaypakkaya who was inspired by Mao Zedong Thought in Turkey in the 1970's with his path breaking  work on the Kurdish National Question which brought clarity to the communist movement on the Kurdish Question unlike the Post Nationalism of Abdullah Ocalan which has brought nothing but confusion.

Ibrahim Kaypakkaya is a solid base on which to develop a Marxist Leninist Maoist View of the National Question and Imperialism in the 21st Century in the spirit of Marx Engels Lenin Stalin and Mao Zedong.

Democracy and Class Struggle is a platform for the further development of Marxism Leninism Maoism on the National Question and Imperialism.

                                     A Europe of Nations

READ OUR ARTICLE ON FUTURE OF UK AND EUROPEAN UNION

https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/article-50-and-national-and-social_29.html

The October Revolution and The National and Colonial Question

Democracy and Class Struggle publishes a chapter of the Marxism Leninism Maoism textbook of the CPI Maoist on the National and Colonial Question.

The recent wave of Imperialist Economism on the Left in Europe around Catalonia has been exposed by Maoist comrades in France and Italy and Spain and shows how critical the national question is when confronting modern revisionism and its trotskyist incarnation and the ideological if not yet organisational strength  of Marxism Leninism Maoism in Europe

The earliest national movements arose in Western Europe. These national movements were mainly led by the bourgeoisie in their fight against feudalism. The main aim of these national movements
was to unite into one nation and state a large territory, which was under the rule of numerous feudal lords. This was necessary for the bourgeoisie to get a single large market and to avoid the harassment and domination of the various feudal lords.

Thus the bourgeois revolution against feudalism and the national movement to establish a single nation-state often combined into one. Thus the national movement was not normally a struggle for independence from oppression by another nation. In the whole of Western Europe, the only place where a national movement for independence took place was when Ireland fought to free itself from Britain.

Marx and Engels lived in this period, when the later national liberation struggles were yet to break out in a major way. They thus did not devote much attention to developing Marxist theory on the national question. Marx however formulated the basic stand in relation to the Irish Question by calling on the English proletariat to support the national struggle of the Irish people and oppose its national oppression.

The next phase of nationality movements came in Eastern Europe, with the spread of capitalism, and the weakening of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. Nationality movements and organisations starting growing in the whole of East Europe, including Russia. 

It was necessary for the international proletarian movement and the RSDLP to have a proper understanding and stand on the question. It was during this period that Stalin, in 1913, made the first systematic Marxist presentation on the national question. Stalin himself was a Georgian, a member of an oppressed nationality in Russia, where a national movement was rapidly developing.

In Georgia it was therefore doubly necessary to present the correct Marxist understanding and take the correct political stand. This is what Stalin attempted to do in his pioneering work, Marxism and
The National Question.

In his work Stalin started by defining what is a nation. He defined a nation as “a historically evolved, stable community of people, based upon the common possession of four principal attributes, namely: a common language, a common territory, a common economic life, and a common psychological make-up manifesting itself in common specific features of national culture.” Stalin rejected the concept of nation based merely on religion or culture, like the Jews. 

He insisted that a community should have all the above characteristics to be called a nation. Stalin proposed that all such nations should have the right to self-determination. 

This right of self self determination however cannot be limited to autonomy, or to linking up in a federation, as some other parties of that time were proposing. 

The right of self-determination had to include the right of  secession, i.e. to separate and exist as an independent state. However Stalin pointed out that how to exercise the right depended on the concrete historical circumstances at a particular point of time. 

It was up to the revolutionaries to try and influence the nation’s decision regarding self determination.

The decision of the revolutionary party would be based on whether autonomy, or federation, or secession, or any other course would be in the best interests of the toiling masses, and particularly the proletariat.

Though Stalin’s presentation clarified many questions, it was still incomplete because it did not link the national question to imperialism and the question of colonies. 

This was only done after Lenin’s analysis of imperialism in 1916. On the basis of an analysis of imperialism, Lenin linked the question of self-determination of nations to the national-liberation struggles being waged in the colonial countries. 

Thus it came to cover the vast majority of the world’s peoples. It did not remain merely an internal state problem of a few countries, which had oppressed nationalities within their boundaries. 

The national question became a world problem, a question of the liberation of the oppressed peoples of all dependent countries and colonies from the burden of imperialism.

Thus when Lenin, in 1916, presented his Thesis on The Socialist Revolution and The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, he included all the countries of the world in his analysis. 

He divided the countries of the world into three main types:

First, the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe and the United States of America. These are oppressor nations who oppress other nations in the colonies and within their own country. 

The task of the proletariat of these ruling nations is to oppose national oppression and support the national struggle of the peoples oppressed by their imperialist ruling classes.

Secondly, Eastern Europe and particularly Russia. The task of the proletariat in these countries is to uphold the right of nations to self determination. In this connection the most difficult but most important task is to merge the class struggle of the workers in the oppressing nations with the class struggle of the workers in the oppressed nations.

Thirdly, the semi-colonial countries, like China, Persia, Turkey, and all the colonies, which then had a combined population amounting to a billion. With regard to these colonial countries, Lenin took the stand that socialists must not only demand the unconditional and immediate liberation of the colonies without compensation, but must also give determined support to the movement for national liberation in these countries and assist rebellion and revolutionary war against the imperialist powers that oppress them.

This was the first time within the international socialist movement that such a clear stand had been taken on the national and colonial questions. There was naturally thus some debate and confusions.

One such argument was that support to self-determination and national liberation went against proletarian internationalism. It argued that socialism aimed at the merger of all nations. 

Lenin agreed that the aim of socialism is to abolish the division of mankind into small states, to bring nations closer together, and to even merge them.

However he felt it would be impossible to achieve this by the forced merger of nations.

 The merging of nations could only be achieved only by passing through the transition period of complete liberation of all oppressed nations i.e. their freedom to secede. 

While presenting the party programme in 1917 Lenin said, “We want free unification, that is why we must recognise the right to secede. Without freedom to secede, unification cannot be called free.” 

This was the proletariat’s democratic approach to the national question, which stood opposed to the bourgeoisie’s policy of national oppression and annexation.

Against Left Economist Imperialism on National Question - Remembering Lenin

Lenin’s classic “What Is to Be Done” was written in opposition to economism.

Economism is a tendency in the workers movement that only focuses on economic struggle – struggle for wages, welfare and rights in the workplace – and that limits itself to union work.

As a resistance to this, Lenin puts forward at versatile political struggle with a much wider spectrum of resistance against the bourgeois state.

Lenin's in an October 1916 Article " A caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism" illustrates how the blinkered economist viewpoint had been extended to national struggles by Kievsky  -  one cannot read this 1916 article without being struck by how many of Kievsky'Lefts mistaken ideas on the national question are present on the so called "revolutionary" left particularly in UK and USA today.

We reminded the "British" Left of their mistakes on the National Question many years ago in our article the Cosmopolitan Left and the National Question.

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-cosmopolitan-left-and-national.html

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/la-izquierda-cosmopolita-y-la-cuestion.html


Our recent articles addressing Imperialist Economism in relation to Catalonia

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-national-question-once-again.html

https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/mlm-and-national-question-national.html


LENIN ON IMPERIALIST ECONOMISM BY DOUG LORIMER


During the first imperialist world war, a trend began to emerge among the Russian revolutionary Marxists that argued that since national oppression could not be abolished without an economic revolution against imperialism and capitalism, Marxists did not need to concern themselves with the problems of a political revolution to achieve democracy.

Instead, the "nascent trend of imperialist Economism" (as Lenin characterised it) argued that all that was needed to abolish national oppression was the anti-capitalist economic revolution, i.e., the socialist revolution.

The imperialist Economists ignored the fact, as Lenin explained in his October 1916 article "A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism", that in "all the colonies and the semi-colonies … there still exist oppressed and capitalistically underdeveloped nations" and, therefore, "Objectively, these nations still have general national tasks to accomplish, namely, democratic tasks, the tasks of overthrowing foreign oppression" in the political sphere.

Furthermore, the imperialist Economists displayed "just as complete a misinterpretation of the relationship between socialism and democracy" as the "late and unlamented Economism of 1894-1902". Explaining what he meant by this, Lenin wrote:

All "democracy" consists in the proclamation and realisation of "rights" which under capitalism are realisable only to a very small degree and only relatively. But without the proclamation of these rights, without a struggle to introduce them now, immediately, without training the masses in the spirit of this struggle, socialism is impossible.

Having failed to understand this, Kievsky bypasses the central question, that belongs to his special subject, namely, how will we Social-Democrats abolish national oppression? He shunts the question aside with phrases about the world being "drenched in blood", etc. (though this has no bearing on the matter under discussion). This leaves only one single argument: the socialist revolution will solve everything!

Or, the argument is sometimes advanced by people who share his views: self-determination is impossible under capitalism and superfluous under socialism.

From the theoretical standpoint that view is nonsensical, from the practical political standpoint it is chauvinistic.

It fails to appreciate the significance of democracy. For socialism is impossible without democracy because: (1) the proletariat cannot perform the socialist revolution unless it prepares for it by the struggle for democracy; (2) victorious socialism cannot consolidate its victory and bring humanity to the withering away of the state without implementing full democracy.

Source:

http://links.org.au/node/132


IMPERIALIST ECONOMISM BY DESMOND GREAVES


Connolly had no great difficulty in convincing his comrades in Ireland of the need to combine their proletarian demands with the all-important democratic demand of national liberation.

He found it less easy to convert English Socialists, who confused the growing fraternity of the peoples in the struggle against imperialism with the abolition of the state boundaries established by imperialism for the purpose of exploitation.

To this day there survive sincere Socialists of the old school who are confused enough to believe that the Irish should withdraw their demand for independence in the interests of internationalism.

There are some who fondly imagine that the international unity of the workers of Europe will be strengthened as a result of the Common Market.

It is as much as to say we will be united provided we are all put in the one prison.

The classical centre of this argument was Poland. Lenin called it “imperialist economism”. Economism, as you will remember, was the doctrine that it was sufficient for a workers’ party to prefer proletarian demands, and that democratic demands were not their business.

Lenin re-plied that this was to leave the stuff of politics to the bourgeoisie. In the same way, to refuse to challenge the frontiers established for and on be-half of landlords and capitalists, where they conflicted with the wishes of the people, was to leave vital questions affecting the lives of the millions to be decided by imperialism.

It is remarkable that such splendid characters as Rosa Luxemburg should have been associated with this recrudescence of Proudhonism.

The controversy continued over nearly twenty years, and it was against this background that Joseph Stalin drew up his celebrated theses on the National and Colonial Question, and Lenin conducted some of his most profound and thought challenging polemics, which continued until that stage of the First World War when theories could be tested in practice.

The theses of Stalin on Marxism and the National Question were concerned not so much to refute imperialist economism or the new Proudhonism, as to answer the Austro-Marxists who were trying to divorce nationality from territory of residence.

These had made the fantastic proposal that members of the various nationalities inhabiting the Austro-Hungarian Empire should register the nationality they belonged to, and have the right to elect a national council, irrespective of their place of residence, which could then conduct “the cultural affairs of the nation”. Stalin showed that the main concern of these opportunists was to frame a national policy which would not upset the political integrity of the Empire, and could so leave the essence of national oppression untouched.

In the course of his refutation of National Cultural autonomy, Stalin was obliged to attempt a definition of a nation, which he described as:

“…a historically evolved, stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture.”

Stalin emphasised that it was sufficient for a single one of these characteristics to be absent to disqualify a community from the title of nation. The national policy of Bolshevism was based on the right of self-determination of nations, which was meaningless without the right of territorial secession. At the same time the exercise or non-exercise of that right was a matter for the nation to decide in the light of circumstances, the paramount consideration being of course the question of class interests.

The work of Stalin on the national question was a powerful contribution to Marxist thought and stood the test of practice in the revolutionary period that followed to a remarkable degree.

Less than a year after the Easter Rising came the collapse of Czarism in Russia. The general principles of Bolshevik national policy were enshrined in the slogan for a peace “without annexations or indemnities “. Lenin explained carefully that this meant the undoing of old as well as new annexations; it meant England’s evacuating Ireland as well as Germany’s getting out of Belgium.

And it is interesting to note the difference be-tween Lenin’s approach and that of President Wilson’s, whose embellishment of the imperialist war was typified in his notorious fourteen points. At the peace conference it was agreed that no nation seeking in-dependence should be heard unless Britain, France and the USA unanimously agreed to listen. On this basis both Irish and Egyptian claims were vetoed.

A glance at Stalin’s strict conditions will show that it could be a subject for considerable debate as to whether this people or that possessed all the qualifications of nationality.

Was a people to be denied the coveted prize of independence because it could not convince an international jury that it was a nation in the full sense of the word?

Who was to decide? Lenin’s reply was that in case of difficulty the people themselves decided if they were a nation or not. He put it this way:

“The theoretical definition of annexation involves the conception of an ‘alien’ people. ie a people that has preserved its peculiarities and its will for independent existence.”

He adds that the slogan must be “taken as inseparably connected with the proletarian revolution. Only in connection with the revolution is it true and useful.”

This was in May 1917, and the Bolsheviks were pointing out that an imperialist peace could only be an exchange of annexations. Of course, one should note that this presumes other things equal. As Lenin frequently pointed out, every democratic principle is open to abuse.

I doubt whether English Socialists would accept the secession of Cornwall from a Socialist England after the United States had occupied it and secured a separatist majority while its troops were still there. Certainly the Irish will not accept an English-concocted nationality for Ulster. But the refusal to accept the abuse of a principle does not vitiate the principle. And on that principle the Bolsheviks acted and permitted secessions which involved future military risks.

Perhaps I should add one thing about the Stalin theses. It is a criticism which he made himself.

In 1925, criticising Semich for underestimating the importance of the right of secession, he notes that Semich quotes from Stalin’s theses the passage “The national question is a struggle of the bourgeois classes among themselves.” He comments:

“Stalin’s pamphlet was written before the imperialist war, at the time when the national question had not yet assumed world-wide significance in the eyes of Marxists, and when the basic demands concerning the right to self-determination were considered to be, not a part of the proletarian revolution, but a part of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. It would be absurd to ig-nore the fact that since then a fundamental change has taken place in the international situation, that the war on the one hand and the October revolu-tion in Russia on the other has converted the national question from being a particle of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a particle of the proletar-ian-socialist revolution.”

Would we be wrong in saying that in respect of this question, Connolly anticipated the Bolsheviks, noting the beginnings of the change in 1894 and showing his grasp of it the moment the imperialist war broke out?

And may we not think that the Easter Rising in Ireland, which Lenin used as a test of the validity of his theses on national self-determination written earlier in 1916, was an important contributory factor in rendering Bolshevik thought more precise, just as the Fenian Rising had stimulated Marx?

One of Lenin’s main points of emphasis was that imperialism had divided the world thanks to the corruption of a small section of the proletariat into two opposing camps, workers in the imperialist countries, a corruption which might of course ideologically affect the majority. We discern it in the two world trade union movements of to-day.

It is still true that a people which oppresses another forges its own chains.

This is the great significance of the national liberation struggle for the British working class.

Source:
http://www.connollyassociation.org.uk/desmond-greaves/the-national-question/

1916 and Lenin on Imperialist Economism Remembered and Revisited by Nickglais

Our Norwegian comrades at Tjen Folket - Serve the People recently wrote an excellent article called Politics over Economy which addressed the question of Economism and how that inhibits the struggle against Capitalism and Imperialism

Lenin’s classic “What Is to Be Done” was written in opposition to economism.

Economism is a tendency in the workers movement that only focuses on economic struggle – struggle for wages, welfare and rights in the workplace – and that limits itself to union work.

As a resistance to this, Lenin puts forward at versatile political struggle with a much wider spectrum of resistance against the bourgeois state.

This article reminded Democracy and Class Struggle of Lenin's Dispute with Kievsky on the National Question - in fact Norway figures large in that dispute - with Lenin firmly supporting Norwegian Independence from Sweden in his exposure of Imperialist Economism.

Lenin's October 1916 Article " A caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism" illustrates how the blinkered economist viewpoint had been extended to national struggles by Kievsky  -  one cannot read this 1916 article without being struck by how many of Kievsky's mistaken ideas on the national question are present on the so called "revolutionary" left particularly in UK and USA today.

We reminded the "British" Left of their mistakes on the National Question many years ago in our article the Cosmopolitan Left and the National Question.

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-cosmopolitan-left-and-national.html

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/norway-politics-over-economy-by-tjen.html


LENIN ON IMPERIALIST ECONOMISM BY DOUG LORIMER


During the first imperialist world war, a trend began to emerge among the Russian revolutionary Marxists that argued that since national oppression could not be abolished without an economic revolution against imperialism and capitalism, Marxists did not need to concern themselves with the problems of a political revolution to achieve democracy.

Instead, the "nascent trend of imperialist Economism" (as Lenin characterised it) argued that all that was needed to abolish national oppression was the anti-capitalist economic revolution, i.e., the socialist revolution.

The imperialist Economists ignored the fact, as Lenin explained in his October 1916 article "A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism", that in "all the colonies and the semi-colonies … there still exist oppressed and capitalistically underdeveloped nations" and, therefore, "Objectively, these nations still have general national tasks to accomplish, namely, democratic tasks, the tasks of overthrowing foreign oppression" in the political sphere.

Furthermore, the imperialist Economists displayed "just as complete a misinterpretation of the relationship between socialism and democracy" as the "late and unlamented Economism of 1894-1902". Explaining what he meant by this, Lenin wrote:

All "democracy" consists in the proclamation and realisation of "rights" which under capitalism are realisable only to a very small degree and only relatively. But without the proclamation of these rights, without a struggle to introduce them now, immediately, without training the masses in the spirit of this struggle, socialism is impossible.

Having failed to understand this, Kievsky bypasses the central question, that belongs to his special subject, namely, how will we Social-Democrats abolish national oppression? He shunts the question aside with phrases about the world being "drenched in blood", etc. (though this has no bearing on the matter under discussion). This leaves only one single argument: the socialist revolution will solve everything!

Or, the argument is sometimes advanced by people who share his views: self-determination is impossible under capitalism and superfluous under socialism.

From the theoretical standpoint that view is nonsensical, from the practical political standpoint it is chauvinistic.

It fails to appreciate the significance of democracy. For socialism is impossible without democracy because: (1) the proletariat cannot perform the socialist revolution unless it prepares for it by the struggle for democracy; (2) victorious socialism cannot consolidate its victory and bring humanity to the withering away of the state without implementing full democracy.

Source:

http://links.org.au/node/132


IMPERIALIST ECONOMISM BY DESMOND GREAVES


Connolly had no great difficulty in convincing his comrades in Ireland of the need to combine their proletarian demands with the all-important democratic demand of national liberation.

He found it less easy to convert English Socialists, who confused the growing fraternity of the peoples in the struggle against imperialism with the abolition of the state boundaries established by imperialism for the purpose of exploitation.

To this day there survive sincere Socialists of the old school who are confused enough to believe that the Irish should withdraw their demand for independence in the interests of internationalism.

There are some who fondly imagine that the international unity of the workers of Europe will be strengthened as a result of the Common Market.

It is as much as to say we will be united provided we are all put in the one prison.

The classical centre of this argument was Poland. Lenin called it “imperialist economism”. Economism, as you will remember, was the doctrine that it was sufficient for a workers’ party to prefer proletarian demands, and that democratic demands were not their business.

Lenin re-plied that this was to leave the stuff of politics to the bourgeoisie. In the same way, to refuse to challenge the frontiers established for and on be-half of landlords and capitalists, where they conflicted with the wishes of the people, was to leave vital questions affecting the lives of the millions to be decided by imperialism.

It is remarkable that such splendid characters as Rosa Luxemburg should have been associated with this recrudescence of Proudhonism.

The controversy continued over nearly twenty years, and it was against this background that Joseph Stalin drew up his celebrated theses on the National and Colonial Question, and Lenin conducted some of his most profound and thought challenging polemics, which continued until that stage of the First World War when theories could be tested in practice.

The theses of Stalin on Marxism and the National Question were concerned not so much to refute imperialist economism or the new Proudhonism, as to answer the Austro-Marxists who were trying to divorce nationality from territory of residence.

These had made the fantastic proposal that members of the various nationalities inhabiting the Austro-Hungarian Empire should register the nationality they belonged to, and have the right to elect a national council, irrespective of their place of residence, which could then conduct “the cultural affairs of the nation”. Stalin showed that the main concern of these opportunists was to frame a national policy which would not upset the political integrity of the Empire, and could so leave the essence of national oppression untouched.

In the course of his refutation of National Cultural autonomy, Stalin was obliged to attempt a definition of a nation, which he described as:

“…a historically evolved, stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture.”

Stalin emphasised that it was sufficient for a single one of these characteristics to be absent to disqualify a community from the title of nation. The national policy of Bolshevism was based on the right of self-determination of nations, which was meaningless without the right of territorial secession. At the same time the exercise or non-exercise of that right was a matter for the nation to decide in the light of circumstances, the paramount consideration being of course the question of class interests.

The work of Stalin on the national question was a powerful contribution to Marxist thought and stood the test of practice in the revolutionary period that followed to a remarkable degree.

Less than a year after the Easter Rising came the collapse of Czarism in Russia. The general principles of Bolshevik national policy were enshrined in the slogan for a peace “without annexations or indemnities “. Lenin explained carefully that this meant the undoing of old as well as new annexations; it meant England’s evacuating Ireland as well as Germany’s getting out of Belgium.

And it is interesting to note the difference be-tween Lenin’s approach and that of President Wilson’s, whose embellishment of the imperialist war was typified in his notorious fourteen points. At the peace conference it was agreed that no nation seeking in-dependence should be heard unless Britain, France and the USA unanimously agreed to listen. On this basis both Irish and Egyptian claims were vetoed.

A glance at Stalin’s strict conditions will show that it could be a subject for considerable debate as to whether this people or that possessed all the qualifications of nationality.

Was a people to be denied the coveted prize of independence because it could not convince an international jury that it was a nation in the full sense of the word?

Who was to decide? Lenin’s reply was that in case of difficulty the people themselves decided if they were a nation or not. He put it this way:

“The theoretical definition of annexation involves the conception of an ‘alien’ people. ie a people that has preserved its peculiarities and its will for independent existence.”

He adds that the slogan must be “taken as inseparably connected with the proletarian revolution. Only in connection with the revolution is it true and useful.”

This was in May 1917, and the Bolsheviks were pointing out that an imperialist peace could only be an exchange of annexations. Of course, one should note that this presumes other things equal. As Lenin frequently pointed out, every democratic principle is open to abuse.

I doubt whether English Socialists would accept the secession of Cornwall from a Socialist England after the United States had occupied it and secured a separatist majority while its troops were still there. Certainly the Irish will not accept an English-concocted nationality for Ulster. But the refusal to accept the abuse of a principle does not vitiate the principle. And on that principle the Bolsheviks acted and permitted secessions which involved future military risks.

Perhaps I should add one thing about the Stalin theses. It is a criticism which he made himself.

In 1925, criticising Semich for underestimating the importance of the right of secession, he notes that Semich quotes from Stalin’s theses the passage “The national question is a struggle of the bourgeois classes among themselves.” He comments:

“Stalin’s pamphlet was written before the imperialist war, at the time when the national question had not yet assumed world-wide significance in the eyes of Marxists, and when the basic demands concerning the right to self-determination were considered to be, not a part of the proletarian revolution, but a part of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. It would be absurd to ig-nore the fact that since then a fundamental change has taken place in the international situation, that the war on the one hand and the October revolu-tion in Russia on the other has converted the national question from being a particle of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a particle of the proletar-ian-socialist revolution.”

Would we be wrong in saying that in respect of this question, Connolly anticipated the Bolsheviks, noting the beginnings of the change in 1894 and showing his grasp of it the moment the imperialist war broke out?

And may we not think that the Easter Rising in Ireland, which Lenin used as a test of the validity of his theses on national self-determination written earlier in 1916, was an important contributory factor in rendering Bolshevik thought more precise, just as the Fenian Rising had stimulated Marx?

One of Lenin’s main points of emphasis was that imperialism had divided the world thanks to the corruption of a small section of the proletariat into two opposing camps, workers in the imperialist countries, a corruption which might of course ideologically affect the majority. We discern it in the two world trade union movements of to-day.

It is still true that a people which oppresses another forges its own chains.

This is the great significance of the national liberation struggle for the British working class.

Source:
http://www.connollyassociation.org.uk/desmond-greaves/the-national-question/