Re: The Right of Nations to Self Determination

[glevy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Excerpting:

  Roderick Hay
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>
> I don't understand this "right of nations to self-determination". What is
> a nation but a bourgeois reification. The workers have no nation.
>
> Chris B:
> ---------
>
> There is hardly a more important question to clarify if we want to
> promote unity between working people against capital, in an increasingly
> chaotic world. (snip)  [Roderick's] comment above might be marxian,
> but, in the twentieth century, it is no way dialectical or materialist.
>
  Jerry
  -----

  I agree *completely* with Chris B.'s comment above.  It is true that
  workers have class interests internationally which are different from
  the class interests of the bourgeoisie in each of our capitalist
  nations. It is also true that nationalism, historically, has been a
  means through which workers have been divided internationally and a
  force that has both resulted in false consciousness and untold
  suffering and death for workers. But, all nations and forms of
  nationalism are not the same. Similarly, the meaning of nations and
  nationalism change historically and vary globally.

  To simply say that "workers have no nation" and to deny the right of
  (some) nations to self-determination is, as Chris says, neither
  dialectical, in the sense that it fails to grasp the contradictory nature
  of the nation and nations, or materialist, in the sense that it
  fails to account for important aspects of material reality.  Any
  statement completely abstracted from material reality is false.

  To give a couple of examples.  The nationalism of the ANC in South
  Africa was not the same as the nationalism of the white working class
  during the apartheid period.  Similarly, the nationalism of the Irish
  is different from the nationalism of the British.  Nationalism can be a
  essentially reactionary force in certain areas and historical contexts
  and an essentially progressive force in other areas and contexts.
  Consequently, national self-determination can be a reactionary concept
  in some contexts (and should be opposed by class-conscious workers and
  Marxists) and a progressive concept in other contexts (and should be
  supported by class-conscious workers and Marxists).


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