Re: Re: Nationalism (was Arguing against Imperialism and Militarism)

[DMS <dmschanoes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

LP introduces important details into the discussion
of the origins of nationalism.

In essence, the critical realization is that the revolutionary
struggle never emerges fully developed, manifesting itself
instead in successive forms.  But forms are not stages.

The forms of the struggle represent an emergence of social
revolution by "trying out" and discarding structures made
obsolete by the classes forces
behind the upsurge.

Ireland is a good example, as James Connolly was always
explicit in the class basis of a Irish Republic. "The cause
of Ireland is the cause of labor."

The trick is not to condemn or reject the emergence of the
national struggle but comprehend its transitory nature, and
speed the transition through a program that propels to
the front the struggle between capital and labor. The trick
is not to confine, and condemn, the struggle between
capital and labor to "national" formula.

And there is more than a "political" issue at stake.  There
really is no "national question" separate and apart from
the "land question."  If our assessment stops at "rights of
nations to self-determination," without addressing the
revolutionary reorganization of land at a level above parcels
of land to individual tillers, if we don't address program-
matically the collective ownership of land as a means of
production to be utilized for the benefit of all, and if
we don't clearly define that such a collective development
and utilization in the cannot be
accomplished "nationally," but only internationally, we are
dictating the defeat of the revolution, 10,20, 30 years down
the road.

dms