AUT: IN 20 "national liberation "&imperialist epoch

[neil <74742.1651@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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DATE:   8/14/99 11:33 PM

RE:      IN 20 "national liberation "&imperialist epoch

Dear Abu Nasr,

Marx and Engels  socialist movement  was of the 19th cent
and they never made a principle of backing bourgeois  national liberation
(NL)
struggles of their time . They backed certain ones as they  felt
these would speedily sweep out backward (economically)
feudal realtions and the rise of capitalist  realtions, and most
important grow the size/strength  and polit./econ. strength of the
industrial
 urban  waged workers and unite workers  organizing across borders...
E.g. They gave on and off support to the NL struggles in Ireland and
also Poland but were opposed to those in the Balkans , Serbs,
Bulgars, etc. which they correctly saw as cats paws of Russian
czarist ruling class.

The early 20th cetury saw capitals economic hegemony on a world scale
where a NEW situation arose whence in the future capitals crisies
could only really be solved by major wars. Also then by 1914 and WW1,
capitalism  was potentially ripe for world wide socialist revolutions
to be organized. This had changed the qualitative nature of national
 struggles  .

One can see this most easlily by seeing how the Bolsheviks themselves
totally revamped their  programme in accordance with the changes .
They were quite advanced to see this necessity as Lenin threw off the
old  Bolshevik national  bourgeois democratic programme  with with
the Aprill Thesis platforms of Apr. 1917. Bolshevism was in the vanguard
to see that defense of national states  was antagonistic/contradictory
to the platform of Int'l socialist revolutions.

Bolsheviks saw Oct. victory as but the FIRST STEP IN supporting a series of

mass revolutions, that in fact  WW1 conditions did lead to mass uprisings /
revolts of  workers and farmers in Germany, Hungary,  Italy , Finland , etc

between 1917-23, but unfortunately they were defeated and the
 Russian bastion faced then  civil war , blocakde, and famine in
order to try to survive..

Bolsheviks and their supporters faced the question of NL as a heated
and vexed question , Lenin and Co. vs. the Theses of  Piatikov, Bukharin,
S. Zadeh and M. Roy in the new CI in 1919-21.

The Lenin -Luxembourg debates  on this too are now famous certainly..
The bolsheviks with the Lenin minority eventually  becoming a majority for
NL but only basing  this on 'tactics' of supporting "national revolutions"
in colonies, semi-colonies and peripheral states to build a 2nd frnot
to tie down the armies and navies of the Imperialist states strangling
rev. Russia) , So Russia backed bourg. NL in China (KMT-CCP alliance
in China , Ataturkism in Turkey, Stambuliski in bulgaria, etc.
But soon by 1922- 1923 Russia backed into a conservative and then national
capitalist  building course .

Yes, Russia surely had a rough time of it , esp after the war and famine
and mass
casualties of their vanguard forces . Soon, Isolated  Russia  was not
promoting
world socialism anymore but Russian modernization in national capitals
interests.

Yes, Abu, Lenin stuck to his course on  NL but histroy proved his thesis on

this wrong as concerns advancing the working class forces. "Liberated"
national bourgeois in the periphery get their 'nation' but only in
alliances with
this or that group of  big capitals , imperialist powers, and is under
capitals
hegemony.
Freedom and  'democracy' are for national capital , taking the realtive
amounts of global surplus value offered up , with   the workers /farmers
remain
repressed struggles semi-legal , or totally outlawed and in a continued
(from colonialist times thru NL regimes) reign of terror.

Look at the real social political condition brought by NL s class programme
 (as opposed to  socialism ) in all the countries becoming "independent' ,
liberated, since
then in Africa, Asia, .etc.  Even the most 'militant" NL regimes are in bed
with one
or other big imperialist  states & today  repress not  only their own
workers to waged
slavery but brutally terrorize their own national minorites as well-- all
in keeping
with the real need of  global capital accumulation process.

But Lenin himself at the CI and in other places never said his was to be
the last
word on NL. He sopported it  based on specific tactics of his time , a time
the
of  the USSRs isolation, decimation and fatigue.  In fact saw that there
must
be further discussion on this  as conditions warranted. These never really
got
off the ground as the Russian revolution turned in to a bastion of a new
state capitalist regime which was solidified in the mid  20s. History has
shown his views though correct on many other fronts of struggles -
incorrect on supporting  NL.

 Rosa Luxembourg, also  brilliant  (though wrong on her view of saturation
of
markets leading to capitals demise and overthrow- and her views
shortchanging
the party construction)) has been shown  correct on NL is most all cases.

Yes, She was tough on the bolsheviks to be sure  on the  national self-
determintion question.:

" The  Bolsheviks were to be taught , to their own great hurt and
that of the revolution , that under the  rule of capital , there is no
self-determination of peoples , that in a class society , each class of the
nation strives to "determine itself " in a different fashion ; and that for
the
bourgeois classes , the standpoint of national freedom is fully
subordinated to
class rule. The Finnish bourgeoise , like the Ukranian ,  was unanimous
in preferring the violent rule of Germany  to national freedom, if the
latter
should be bound up with Bolshevism"
(R. Luxemburg " The Nationalites Question in the russian Revolution)

Instead of looking at what the NLers say about NL . Look at all the NLed
societies today , their capitalist social -class relations, and the
conditions
of bondage of the workers and farmers to world capital .

The programme of 'alliances' with  "progressive' bourgeois is a holdover
from
social democracy and 19th century capitalism. It's time communists
chucked it into the deep six.

See Rev. Perspectives #14  analyzing NL in South Africa , Nigeria
and Zimbabwe.

http://www.ibrp.org

Neil
LAWV
communist-left.





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