[Marxism] Re: Marx, Engels and the National Question

[l.willms@xxxxxxxxxxx (Lueko Willms)]

.    Am  24.09.04
schrieb  philip.ferguson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Philip Ferguson)
    auf  /ALIST/MARXMAIL
     in  468DDDC0BAEBD648821F71AF87A0284B01D85717@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  ueber  [Marxism] Marx, Engels and the National Question

PF> I think Ed is right and Lueko is mistaken.
PF>
PF> Marx and Engels originally believed that a revolution in Britain
PF> would solve the question of Ireland, sort of "in passing".  They
PF> subsequently came to believe that the struggle for Irish revolution
PF> would push forward a revolution in Britain and that until British
PF> workers came to support the Irish freedom struggle they would never
PF> make a revolution in Britain itself.
PF>
PF> I think this is quite a significant change.

   Yes, as I said, they expanded their knowledge of the anglo-irish  
relations. And Engels worked -- labor division -- on a thorough study  
and history of Ireland, which was only prevented to be concluded by  
those impertinent Paris workers making a revolution... Concrete  
knowledge, not general formulas, that was their approach to each and  
every question.

PF> It showed that Marx and Engels had begun to appreciate the role of
PF> what we would now call national liberation struggles not only in
PF> terms of their importance in freeing the oppressed nations but also
PF> in their importance in freeing the working class in the oppressor
PF> nations.

   It is this generalization of a purported change in the general  
outlook which I object to, and which has no basis at all in the facts.

   The "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" (New Rhenanian Gazzette) campaigned  
in 1848/49 for the restoration of Poland and the withdrawal of German  
(i.e. Austrian) troops from Italy not because they liked the Poles and  
Italians, but because they considered this vital for the national  
revolution of Germany itself. Restablishing a free and united Poland  
is a prerequisite for achieving freedom in Germany, that was their  
line -- and for the revolutionary war against Czarist Russia.

   The slogan that a nation which oppresses another nation forges its  
own chains dit not originate from Marx' and Engels' deepening  
understanding of the anglo-irish relations.

PF> The failure of *most* of the British left to champion Irish
PF> freedom in the 1970s was a major factor in allowing the British
PF> ruling class to escape a socio-political crisis in that decade.
PF> All the British ruling class had to contend with was an economic
PF> crisis and they managed to get on top of that by breaking the
PF> working class, in no small part because the politics of the
PF> British working class were woefully inadequate for any serious
PF> challenge to the system as a whole.


   While I agree with you that it is crucial for any working-class  
organisation in Britain to champion Irish freedom, I think that the  
failure to do so of large parts of the small revolutionary groups in  
Britain to do so was more a factor deciding their fate, but not yet  
the fate of British imperialism. I think they were still to small to  
have a real weight in the objective situation.


   Let me add one more comment which is actually directed towards Ed  
George:

   While Marx and Engels had (to my knowledge) not tried to elaborate  
a general theory of what a nation is (this was attempted by Stalin in  
1913), I object to Ed George's opinion that they were inconsistent in  
their attitude to and analysis of the national question. I do not see  
any contradiction in their words and actions.

   The contradiction is in the reality: the worker has no fatherland,  
the working class is an international class without national  
boundaries, but the capitalist society is divided up in nation states  
with a national capitalist class which uses this state as means of  
coercion against both the oppressed and exploited class within their  
boundaries as well as their competitors in other nation states  
(putting the problem of oppressed and oppressor nations aside). And  
the advance of the workers revolution has no chance but to take up  
each and every of these nation states, and depose the capitalists from  
the helm of that nation, one by one.

   Also history brings changes -- the relative importance and role of  
European nations and their rules was different in 1848 and 1914. While  
a war against Russia was a revolutionary slogan in 1848, it was  
kneeling before the imperialist robbery in 1914.

   Recognizing the unity of difference and identity, as Engels said,  
or splitting the unity and perceiving its contradictory elements, as I  
learned from Lenin, that is the essence of dialectical, i.e. realistic  
thinking.


Yours,
Lüko Willms                                     http://www.mlwerke.de
/--------- L.WILLMS@xxxxxxxxxxx -- Alle Rechte vorbehalten --

"Regierung aus dem Volke, durch das Volk und für das Volk"
   - Abraham Lincoln, Ansprache in Gettysburg, 19.11.1863
"... was in die revolutionäre Sprache von heute übersetzt heißt:
eine Regierung von Arbeitern, durch Arbeiter und für Arbeiter"
                                  - Fidel Castro, November 1994

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