[Marxism] Re: Kurds and Albanians have the right to self-determination

[Ozleft <Ozleft@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marxmail and national self-determination

By Bob Gould

Louis Proyect asserts that Lenin was wrong on some things, and that 
anyway his views often changed over time. Well, that’s pretty obvious, 
and I often point that out as well. However, of the totality of his 
thought and practice, Lenin never fundamentally changed his view of the 
national question, indeed he deepened it.

This is clear from his anguish about great Russian chauvinism during the 
period of his final struggle with Stalin. Lenin’s general analysis on 
the national question is one aspect of his thought that stands the test 
of time. It’s also now known that his approach to the national question 
gained some emotional force from his early acquaintance with the 
oppression of national minorities in the area where he grew up in 
Russia. Lenin’s response to the Easter Rising in Ireland was both 
scientifically accurate and viscerally moved, by contrast with Trotsky’s 
response, which was formal and inaccurate.

Phil Ferguson’s incoherent attempt to associate a concern with the 
national rights of small nations with the reformism of the Second 
International is confusionism of the worst sort and actually stands 
history on its head. The fundamental defect of the Second International 
was its capitulation to imperialism and failure to stick up for the 
rights of small nations.

Louis Proyect, obviously relying on the ignorance of many of his 
readers, drags in Trotsky’s argument with Shachtman in 1940 by the 
scruff of its neck, and casually distorts the whole issue in doing so. 
In Proyect’s usual lordly and omniscient way, he accuses me of not 
having read that debate. A certain academic pomposity is par for the 
course with Louis as most readers of Marxmail for any length of time 
will be aware.

In both instances in which the Bolsheviks or the Soviet state came most 
obviously into conflict with the deep-rooted principle of national 
rights to self-determination, the invasion of Georgia in the first years 
of the Russian Revolution and the conflict with Finland in 1940, it fell 
to Trotsky’s lot to carry the can for these interventions, and he did so 
eloquently, and in my view correctly. Trotsky’s essential argument in 
both instances, boiled down to them being a special case in which the 
overriding consideration of the defence of the worker’s state took 
precedence over the issue of national self-determination. In both 
instances he said that this did not cancel the right of small nations to 
self-determination. It is also worth noting that in the instance of 
Georgia, the Georgian Bolsheviks soon took up a struggle against the 
centralising great Russian chauvinism that Stalin rapidly became the 
centre of, and that they fairly quickly acquired Lenin’s vocal support 
in this, and a little later Trotsky’s support, which unfortunately was 
less vigorous than Lenin’s.

The general approach of Lenin and Trotsky on the national question, 
despite necessary exceptions for the profound interests of a real 
worker’s state, still remains useful. Although he is no current friend 
of mine, Norm Dixon’s long article on the national question in Links 
remains an extremely useful modern summary of the issues involved.

Marxists active in politics carry with them a complex baggage of their 
scientific knowledge and inquiry combined with their early experiences 
and influences, and even with the issues that propelled them into 
Marxist politics. I share with Lenin, and with a figure like James 
Connolly, the fact that a family preoccupation with the national 
question was one of the major things that propelled me into politics.

I’ve never been to Ireland but familial Fenianism, land leagueism and 
Irish republicanism were my first political influences as a child. 
Laborism and Marxism were the second and third impulses for me. A little 
bit of the familial knowledge of the national question, such as Lenin 
drew from his father’s defence as a school inspector, of the rights of a 
small nation in the prison house of nations that was the Russian Empire 
might improve the comprehension of Marxist pedants like Louis Proyect 
and his Luxembourgist mates on Marxmail.

It is certainly necessary to locate the national question in the modern 
world in the framework of imperialist geopolitics. In the final 
analysis, US imperialism is the main enemy of most of the human race. 
Immediate withdrawal from Iraq is the appropriate demand. Pedants of 
another sort such as Worker’s Liberty and the various splinters of the 
WCPI of Iraq and Iran, which tend to look to the imperialist military 
forces as some kind of guarantor of the future of democracy and human 
and worker’s rights in Iraq, are making a profound political mistake.

It’s even possible that bourgeouis imperialist realpolitik may force the 
withdrawal of imperialist troops from Iraq if the domestic political 
situation continues to worsen in the imperialist countries. This 
possibility is beginning to emerge in the United States, and even in 
Australia. In the context of the possible eventual political defeat of 
imperialism by enforced retreat from Iraq, the national question in 
Kurdistan will be posed starkly.

Louis Proyect makes petty demagogy about the reactionary nature of the 
Kurdish leadership. So what’s new about that, concerning many 
nationalist leaderships? What the Kurdish leadership have been passably 
good at, however, has been establishing a de facto small state and a 
reasonably effective army exploiting the past conflict between Saddam 
Hussein’s regime and US imperialism.

Abstract moralism directed at them about their de facto alliance with US 
imperialism, is unlikely to impress any Kurd anywhere (and there are 35 
million of them). “England’s difficulty is our opportunity”, the old 
slogan of the Irish, is a very deep-rooted sentiment in small, oppressed 
nations, and has never been overcome anywhere by moralising geopolitical 
rhetoric, either of the conservative imperial sort or the ostensibly 
leftist sort.

What are Louis and his mates suggesting? The secession of the Kurds from 
Iraq is now a fact. When imperialist troops are withdrawn, should we 
socialists in the relatively comfortable imperialist countries support 
the reconquest of Iraqi Kurdistan by what will probably be a 
conservative Shi’ite regime in a bloc with the regime in Iran, which at 
the same time will probably be trying to reconquer the Arab Sunni areas 
of Iraq?

The eclectic, ostensibly leftist, geopolitical obsession predominant on 
Marxmail breaks down almost completely concerning the national question, 
and tends to lead to weird flame wars, in which different participants 
beat each other over the head in cyberspace, about each individual’s 
estimate of the likely development of this or that revolutionary 
nationalist movement, over which in fact the cyberspace commentators 
have no influence at all.

It reaches its lowest point in moralistic declarations by people like 
Walter Lippmann and JB, who clearly belt out the proposition that 
socialist forces in this or that country that doesn’t follow their 
particular nostrum about subordination to particular nationalist 
leaderships, and who argue in their own countries with particular 
nationalist leaderships about the direction of the revolution, are in 
some way counter-revolutionary. That sort of thing is obviously out of 
the tradition of Stalinism.

Despite Louis’ projecting on to me his own habit of issuing 
pronouncements as if he is Trotsky in Coyacan, I am not nearly so 
ambitious. I have a real interest in the debates between the various 
socialist and nationalist forces in Latin America. I am interested in 
following their debates. When Celia Hart makes a careful criticism of 
Morales, I take considerable notice. I read carefully the reports of the 
young DSP member Fred Fuentes, (who I know slightly) from Latin America. 
I study them with interest. He speaks the language, including the 
political language, and his careful accounts of the political processes 
and conflicts at work in Venezuela and Bolivia, (even discounting them 
slightly for obvious enthusiastic editorial improvement back home in 
Australia), are of considerable interest. This kind of thing is real 
information, quite different to that of cyberspace pedants and pontiffs!

In imperialist countries, in relation to imperialism in the Third World, 
it has always seemed to me, during a lifetime of socialist activity, a 
sounder proposition to fight hard against the major imperialist military 
interventions and place them in the context of the underlying right of 
nations to self-determination.

Obviously a certain amount of geopolitical speculation is not 
unreasonable. We all do it a bit, but the striking thing about the 
recent debates on Marxmail is that the most sweeping and pontifical 
commentators, seem to be the ones who have the least interest in 
empirical accounts of events that may conflict with their own 
prejudices, and the same people also seem to be the ones who make the 
most sweeping rejection of core ideas such as Lenin’s careful 
elaboration of the national question.

ALL IMPERIALIST TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ, INCLUDING AUSTRALIAN TROOPS.

SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE ARAB IRAQIS.

SELF-DETERMINATION FOR KURDISTAN.

(Apologies to Louis if these demands sound too much like Trotsky from 
Coyoacan).


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism