Re: The Right of Nations to Self Determination

[Roderick Hay <rhay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I did not intend my comment to be a criticism of your original post, but
simply a warning of the difficulty (impossibility) of defining anything
so slippery as the idea of "nation". I know of few instances where it had
any progressive content. Most often it is used by demagogues to elicit
support for disreputable causes.
        If that was an insult, I'm sure I can take it.


On Fri, 4 Aug 1995, Chris Burford wrote:

>
> From: Roderick Hay <rhay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Thu, 3 Aug 1995 21:39:52 -0400 (EDT)
> Subject: Re: War poised to expand
>
> 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.
>
> For the people of the former Yugoslavia perhaps too, we can at least
> try to understand what went wrong
>
> Please do not mistake this as personal, Roderick, because I do not know
> you at all, but in order to ensure that this theoretical bomb explodes,
> allow me to insult you by saying the comment above might be marxian,
> but, in the twentieth century, it is no way dialectical or materialist.
>
>
>
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>


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