Kosovo and the national question

[Richard Fidler <rfidler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

José Perez, in a recent post to the List, drew attention to
one important misconception about the national question that
is prominent on this List: that small nations can't pursue a
course independent of imperialism.

Here's another misconception, illustrated by our esteemed
moderator, among others (and I don't mean that ironically).
Lou has several times cited the backwardness of the Kosovar
Albanians as a reason why Marxists should not acknowledge
their right of self-determination. The "oppressed masses of
Kosovo", he says (ironically), "use their wives as domestic
help, beat Serbs or Montenegrins at random, burn down
monasteries, sell drugs, goosestep, or cut deals with
western spy agencies." Furthermore, "The KLA is the
authentic expression of the Kosovo nationalist aspirations.
It was not foisted upon the Albanian people, but grew up
organically in their midst."

That last statement, BTW, is certainly not consistent with
Jared Israel's information, which compellingly demonstrates
that the KLA is largely a creature of the imperialist
powers!

With due respect, I don't think this demonization of the
Kosovar Albanians, or any other peoples, advances the
discussion. Most oppressed peoples, by definition, are
"backward" vis-à-vis their oppressors. In fact, their
backwardness may be a cause of their oppression, or its
effect ? or both. Furthermore, the traditional Leninist
approach to the national question, which Lou wants us to put
on the bookshelf, argues in part that the right of
self-determination of oppressed nations, their right to
separation, is in the interests not only of the oppressed
but of the proletariat in the oppressor nation(s). I think
that is a valid proposition.

Much of the discussion on the national question on this
List, as elsewhere, suffers from its excessive abstraction.
We debate at length whether certain groups constitute a
nation, or whether their reaction to oppression constitutes
"nationalism" or something else. Perhaps we should pay more
attention to concretely analyzing how revolutionary Marxists
might, in particular situations, respond to real national
instances of national oppression, and why they might or
might not support national independence.

For example, while Trotsky in 1939 advocated a "united,
free, and independent workers' and peasants' Soviet Ukraine"
(as Lou notes), he did not necessarily predicate his support
for secession on the proletarian composition of the
secessionist movement. In fact, in a subsequent polemic
("Independence of the Ukraine and Sectarian Muddleheads",
Writings 1939-40), he noted that reactionary demagogy was
gaining the upper hand among the democratic petty
bourgeoisie and working class in the Western Ukraine
(Poland) and exile communities, but he nevertheless favoured
"an independent Ukraine" (without the qualifying adjectives,
please note) in the belief that "The slogan of an
independent Ukraine advanced in time by the proletarian
vanguard will lead to the unavoidable stratification of the
petty bourgeoisie and render it easier for its lower tiers
to ally themselves with the proletariat."

The "separation of the Ukraine", said Trotsky, "is a
liability as compared with a voluntary and equalitarian
socialist federation: but it will be an unquestionable asset
as compared with the bureaucratic strangulation of the
Ukrainian people. In order to draw together more closely and
honestly, it is sometimes necessary first to separate. Lenin
often used to cite the fact that the relations between the
Norwegian and Swedish workers improved and became closer
after the disruption of the compulsory unification of Sweden
and Norway."

(Notwithstanding, it might be added, Lenin's view, as he
expressed it in a debate with Rosa Luxemburg, that in
choosing to have their own king after separation the
Norwegian petty bourgeoisie "displayed exceedingly bad
philistine taste".)

 Lou suggests that the "classic" Leninist approaches no
longer apply because, "To begin with, formal independence is
the rule across the entire planet so classical fights for
independence are exceptions to the rule." As it happens,
Lenin did not initially work out his approach with the
colonial situation in mind: he was addressing the issue of
peoples oppressed within Imperial Russia, the "prisonhouse
of nations". Of course, after the October revolution, the
Bolsheviks went to considerable lengths to organize
alliances with nationally oppressed colonial peoples, as in
the Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East. And by the
way, that demarked them radically from the majority of the
socialists of the Second International. It is simply not
true, as Lou alleges, that "Marxists had always opposed
colonialism." On the contrary!

In Canada, where I live, we have witnessed the emergence
over the last four decades of a strong movement for national
independence among the French-speaking Québécois, who make
up about one quarter of the population of this country.
Canada is not a peripheral or weak state. It is a highly
developed imperialist state. When the Quebec independence
movement began, Quebec was still a relatively backward part
of Canada: its children were still being educated in schools
run by the Catholic church, women had only recently won the
right to vote, there was no socialist or left-wing party
worthy of the name (and there is still none, even today).
Hell, they weren't even burning down monasteries, they were
giving them state support!

These were not reasons to oppose sovereignty. In fact, many
of us on the left argue that the failure of the working
class in English Canada to support Quebec's national
aspirations has been a key factor in the political weakness
of both the Quebec and the English-Canadian labour
movements; the latter, lacking a strategic alliance with
Quebec labour and therefore lacking a pan-Canadian
perspective of power, has never been considered a serious
contender for government at the level of the Canadian state.

One final comment (and I realize that all of this is
extremely abbreviated; I wish I had the time to expand on
each point): in the article on "Kosovar and the Jewish
Question" that began the current discussion on this list,
John Rosenthal argues that Albanian Kosovars are not a
legitimate "national minority" on the ground that Kosovo is
ethnically heterogeneous and Kosovars are not denied
political and civil rights as citizens of Yugoslavia and the
Serbian Republic. Well, it would be hard to find an
oppressed national minority anywhere that exclusively
occupies a given territory, and most oppressed minorities
within states enjoy formally equal civil and political
rights. I think Rosenthal's reasoning does suffer from the
standpoint of philosophy and logic. It is very formal and
categorical, and thus undialectical. Which is not surprising
when you consider that he recently published a book entitled
The Myth of Dialectics! (For a critique, see the latest
issue of Historical Materialism, No. 4.)

Richard Fidler