Re: [Marxism] Kosova and the right of nations to self-determination | Links

[Shane Mage <shmage@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mar 2, 2008, at 10:09 AM, Jim Farmelant wrote:

>
>
> For those people who assert the right of self-determination
> as a fundamental principle, what do they think of
> the right of Southern states to secede from the
> United States back in the 1860s? If they
> didn't have such a right, why not?

The "right of self-determination" is a *democratic* right.
"States" have no rights as such.  Would it be a violation of self- 
determination
if some 3AM the German tax police went into Lichtenstein and seized  
all the
banks? Prince Albert (sole proprietor of the "principality") would  
think so.
Rights belong to people.  An enslaved people are not represented in any
sense by their enslavers.  The southern states had no democratic right
to exist, let alone secede.

Constitutionally the case looked different, because separation from the
union, as an act not authorized to Congress, is by the tenth amendment
reserved "to the states respectively or to the people."  But  the South,
where the people (even those not enslaved) were largely disenfranchised,
was denied the "right" of secession by the people of the whole country
and most importantly by its own slaves.


Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does not consent to  
be called Zeus."

Herakleitos of Ephesos




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