[Marxism] Re: The Kurdish question

[Ozleft <Ozleft@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Again on the Kurdish question and national self-determination

By Bob Gould

Louis Proyect responds to my posts on the Kurdish question with more
documents by other people and doesn't clearly indicate his own view.
We're expected, perhaps, to draw conclusions from the documents.

Fred Feldman outlines his view, that the Kurds shouldn't be reconquered,
and says it's his understanding that Louis agrees with that view,
although that's not at all clear to me from the thrust of the documents
that Louis posts.

Halliday comes to light with an argument that seems to amount to highly
speculative proposition that a combination of the resistance and a
category he regards as important, Islamicist Kurds, may reconquer the
whole of Iraq. Halliday can correct me if I've misinterpreted his view.

Nestor puts up one of his fairly complex pieces and he seems to agree
with me that calling on the Kurds to stay in a predominantly Arab Iraq
is requiring a kind of self-denying ordinance that no nationality in
history has ever adopted. Again, if I've misunderstood Nestor he can
correct me.

Finally, Fred and Louis both pour a certain amount of ridicule on
Stalin's 1913 pamphlet on the right of nations to self-determination,
saying it's a cookbook and it was superseded by the second congress of
the Comintern.

As a bookseller, I can tell Louis and Fred that cookbooks are very
useful, and are in fact the category of non-fiction books that sell
best. There's not too much wrong with cookbooks if the recipes are
reasonably accurate.

The thrust of the 1913 pamphlet is still valid, as against the
Luxembourgists and the Austrians, with whom it polemicised.

Obviously, some things change, and I found Norm Dixon's overview of the
literature and assembly of the arguments on both sides in Links
extremely useful in putting the whole debate in 1913 in context. I'm not
persuaded at all that anything that came later invalidates the general
thrust of the 1913 pamphlet.

Louis and Fred should enlighten me and others as to what aspects of the
1913 pamphlet they consider have been superseded by subsequent
developments, and how that has a bearing on the current argument about
the right of the Kurds to national self-determination.



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