The hollow cry of ‘self-determination’ in a world of borders (2026)

From the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The air is thick with the rhetoric of ‘self-determination.’ From the hallowed halls of the United Nations to the televised addresses of national leaders, the principle that ‘all peoples have the right to freely determine their political status’ is touted as a moral absolute. Yet, for the global working class, this ‘right’ is nothing more than a cruel joke—a deceptive mask worn by the state to protect the interests of the ruling class.

The hypocrisy of the nation-state

The very states that harp on about self-determination are the ones that have historically opposed it whenever it threatened their own economic or military interests. For example, British imperial history is a masterclass in this hypocrisy; the idea of self-determination was seen as a direct threat to the control of colonies essential for economic benefits, military strategy, and international prestige.

Even today, the nation-state remains a ‘prison house of nationalities’. Leaders preach the moral superiority of national self-determination over sovereignty to justify their own territorial claims or to undermine rivals, yet they remain the routine managers of a capitalist system that thrives on exploitation.

The myth of national interest

Socialists maintain that there is no such thing as a ‘national interest’ that includes both the exploiter and the exploited. The nation-state is a territorial entity that identifies itself with a particular ‘people’ only to better manage them for the benefit of the capitalist class. When workers are told to wave national flags, they are being encouraged to block the path to any higher human synthesis and to ignore the fact that they have no fatherland to defend.

In this elemental chaos, the state uses nationalism and racism as tools to divide the working class, making more privileged groups feel that their interests lie with their masters rather than their fellow workers.

The real victim: working-class self-determination

While leaders argue over where to draw lines on a map, the true self-determination of the working class is systematically trampled. We define real socialism as a society where production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and organised for the benefit of all.

Under the current system:

• Freedom is an illusion: workers are forced to sell their labour power for a wage, which entails providing the unpaid labour that forms the basis of capitalist wealth.
• Democratic rights are suppressed: governments and unions often cultivate a myth of an all-powerful government while insisting that nothing can be done about the systemic inequalities of capitalism.
• Solidarity is sabotaged: by emphasising national boundaries, the state ensures that workers of different nations view each other as competitors rather than allies against a common enemy.

A world without borders

We affirm that capitalism is incapable of meaningful change in the interests of the majority. The struggle for national liberation is frequently a trap; when a new national bourgeoisie takes power, the working class finds itself exploited by a new set of masters and mistresses under a new flag.

Our goal is not the ‘self-determination’ of new states, but the abolition of the state itself. We advocate for a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless society – a frontierless world community where men and women cooperate freely to produce what is needed. Only by recognising that they are exploited by the same enemy class in all countries can workers reclaim their true identity and achieve real self-determination through a global democratic revolution.

Jake Ambrose (Australia)

The Passing Show: Declaration of Washington (1956)

The Passing Show Column from the March 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Declaration of Washington

The declaration issued jointly by President Eisenhower and Sir Anthony Eden after their recent talks in Washington must long stand as an object-lesson in the art of inserting the maximum amount of inaccuracy in the minimum amount of space. The declaration occasionally approaches the truth when it deals with the misdeeds of “the other side,” the Soviet bloc.; but when they dwell on their own records and aims, the president and the Premier rarely get even with hailing distance of the facts.


Theological Gambit

The Anglo-American leaders begin roundly:

“We are conscious that in this year of 1956, there still rages the age-old struggle between those who believe that man has his origin and his destiny in God and those who treat man as if he were designed merely to serve a state machine.”—(The Times, 2-2-56.)

Eden and Eisenhower thus blandly ignore both those of no religion who support the Anglo-American bloc, and all those fervent religionists—including the large Russian Orthodox Church, for example—who would die for the Stalinists. In fact the struggle between the two blocs has nothing whatever to do with religion or irreligion: each state has its tame churches to give it the divine sanction: the struggle is between the British ruling class and the American ruling class (who happen to have sufficient mutual interests to support an alliance) on the one hand, and the Russian ruling class (usually supported by their Chinese opposite numbers) on the other. But the desire for self-justification is strong: hence the habit of claiming the approval of the Almighty.

One for Ripley

But this is merely an opening canter. Warming to its theme, the second paragraph of the declaration runs (believe it or not):

“ Because of our belief that the state should exist for the benefit of the individual and not the individual for the benefit of the state, we uphold the basic right of peoples to governments of their own choice."

Or, as one might paraphrase it when one has regard to reality, “because of our belief in something we don't believe in, we uphold what we deny.” The claim of Eden and Eisenhower to believe that “the state should exist for the benefit of the individual and not the individual for the benefit of the state” surely borders on the farcical. Both the President and the Prime Minister were in the highest counsels of Great Britain and the U.S.A. during the last war, when the state in each of these countries so far denied the elementary rights of the individual that it conscripted millions of its citizens and sent them off to kill other individuals and be killed themselves. Not only do Eden and Eisenhower believe that the individual exists for the benefit of the state: they go further—they believe that when called upon he should cease to exist for the benefit of the state. But official pronouncements would not read so well if they confined themselves to the truth, nor would they make such good propaganda.

What can be said about the second part of this almost incredible paragraph, where the signatories allege that they uphold the basic right of peoples to governments of their own choice? When one thinks of the Prime Minister giving his consent to this clause, at a time when British troops are on an active footing in British Guiana, Cyprus, Kenya and Malaya expressly to prevent their people's having governments of their own choice, one can only feel grateful that the cares of high office have not deprived Sir Anthony of his sense of humour.

All my own work

Lack of space prevents the analysis of the Declaration in the detail it deserves. But one other paragraph must be quoted:

“During the past ten and more years 600 million men and women in nearly a score of lands have, with our support and assistance, attained nationhood. Many millions more are being helped surely and steadily towards self-government. Thus, the reality and effectiveness of what we have done is proof of our sincerity."

Since Britain has been in the Empire racket longer than America, the insincerity of this statement is more immediately obvious in regard to Eden than Eisenhower. Britain attempted to retain her Indian Empire (which contains the great majority of the 600 millions referred to) by every means at her disposal. A great army was maintained there; any expression of opinion in favour of independence invited ruthless official action; if the people demonstrated for independence they were forcibly scattered and the leaders (including for example Pandit Nehru) thrown into British jails. Riots and shootings and massacres marked the progress of the years. At length the British power waned, and the British State could no longer afford to maintain the repression in face of the almost unanimous opposition of the peoples of the Indian Empire. And so the Attlee Government withdrew from India, being no longer physically capable of remaining there. It is this eviction of the British by the Indians which Sir Anthony Eden now tries to describe as a British achievement. It is as if a boxer, after fighting a dozen rounds, is at length knocked out; and as he is carried from the ring opens one eye long enough to remark “I retire voluntarily from the contest and claim all the credit for my opponent’s victory.”

Who said aggression ?

No doubt if the British are thrown out of Cyprus this will also be counted as a great British contribution to the establishment of self-government, and the British ruling class will expect the Greek ruling class (which will take over from. them) to be duly grateful. But until this happens the task is to explain why Cyprus should not have self-government. In this connection a recent letter written to The Times (11-2-56) by Lord Vansittart is of considerable interest.

It appears that Britain has every right to be in Cyprus, because it “belongs to us.” Since Lord Vansittart coyly refrains from explaining how it came to “belong to us,” a word on the subject might not be out of place. Briefly, in 1877-8 Russia attacked Turkey, with the aim of seizing part of her Balkan territories; Great Britain, in the role of knight in shining armour, sprang to Turkey’s side to defend her against Russian aggression; the fleet was ordered to the Turkish coast, and alarm and counter-alarm succeeded each other. But when the smoke had cleared away, it was found that the noble British Government had taken advantage of the crisis to force Turkey to hand Cyprus over to British rule. The Cypriots, of course, had not been consulted.

It is this expert piece of sharp practice which Lord Vansittart now contends gives “us” the right to stay in Cyprus.

A little late to recant

But do not think that Lord Vansittart’s endorsement of this smooth-faced knavery means that he has no principles. He has. Or rather he used to have. He refers in his letter to “ the primary principles for which millions died in two vast wars”: and among them, it will be remembered, was the principle of self-determination. None was more vociferous than Lord Vansittart in his clamour for strict measures against German aggression before 1939, and for the merciless prosecution of total war against Germany between 1939 and 1945. But now, it appears, Lord Vansittart has had second thoughts. The principle for which millions died, to quote his own letter, no longer engages his support That “self-determination should be automatic ” Lord Vansittart now decries as a “delusion” The Germans under Hitler, of course, were in favour of self-determination in certain circumstances; it was only the application of the principle to countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland that they objected to, because there it was against the economic interest of the German ruling class. Lord Vansittart has now accepted the pre-1945 German view of the matter, which could be summarized as “self-determination unless it conflicts with one’s own interests.”

And so Lord Vansittart changes his mind. But all the British soldiers who died in the war of which Lord Vansittart was the prophet, and in which he beat the drums louder than anyone else, they stay dead. The principle they thought they were fighting for is now found by the noble lord to be a “delusion.” If only it was as easy to bring the millions of dead to life again as it is for a politician to change his principles!

Alwyn Edgar

Editorial: Hungary and self-determination (1957)

Editorial from the October 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

The member-states of the United Nations are pledged to uphold "the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples," but at the same time the U.N. Charter forbids intervention “in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State." So all that any government needs to do when flouting the first clause is to appeal to the second, by claiming that their action is a domestic matter, or that what they are doing is by invitation of the “legitimate” government. Thus, the British Government in Cyprus, the Indian Government in Kashmir, and the Russian Government in Hungary.

The charges against the Russian Government at U.N. Assembly in September 1957 were levelled to the accompaniment of much indignation and speechmaking, but the matter ended “with nothing more forceful that another appeal to the Soviet Union to withdraw her troops and relax the grip of her puppet regime.” (Manchester Guardian, 11th Sept., 1957). It was a foregone conclusion, for no government is at present willing to make war on Russia over Hungary, though the excuse will be stored away to be brought out again if occasion demands.

Louis Kossuth, 1848

It has all happened before, in 1848. Hungarian Liberals and Nationalists revolted to secure independence from Austria, and after initial successes, were crushed with the help of troops sent in by Russia. Then, as now, there was much talk about the so-called right of self-determination, and later on, when the Hungarian leader, Louis Kossuth, as a refugee, visited America, he was given a great welcome by, among others, the American lawyer who later became Republican President—Abraham Lincoln. In the early stages while fighting was still going on in Hungary, the following resolution was drafted by a small committee, with Lincoln as chairman, and passed at a meeting in Springfield, Illinois, on September 12,1849. (Reproduced from an article on Hungarian parallels between 1849 and 1957, in Saturday Review, New York, 16th Feb., 1957):

“That in their present glorious straggle for liberty, the Hungarians command our highest admiration and have our warmest sympathy: that they have our prayers for their speedy triumph and final success; that the government of the United States should acknowledge the independence of Hungary as a nation of free men at the very earliest moment consistent with our amicable relations with the government against which they are contending: that, in the opinion of this meeting, the immediate acknowledgment of the independence of Hungary by our government is due from American free men to their struggling brethren, to the general cause of republican liberty, and not violative of the just rights of any nation or people.”

The resolution, like the resolutions of U.N. assemblies today, was merely an expression of sympathy; the only positive action it asked for was the recognition of Hungary as an independent State, subject, however, to not offending Austria, “ the government against which" the Hungarians were rebelling.

A Lawyer’s Definition

In January 1852, when the fight was over and the Austrian Government was in control again, Kossuth toured America, and another meeting was held at Springfield, Illinois, addressed by Lincoln. The long resolution showed Lincoln’s thoroughness in his attempt to define in legally precise language what he called the right of national independence, the opening clause read: “That it is the right of any people, sufficiently numerous for national independence, to throw off, to revolutionize, their existing form of government, and to establish such other in its stead as they may choose.” This was the most forthright part of the resolution and, as we shall see, it was the part Lincoln was to throw overboard 10 years later.

In the other paragraphs of the resolution Lincoln declared that if such a movement for independence takes place, no other government has the right to intervene either to help or to hinder the struggle, and that the intervention of Russia in Hungary against Kossuth was, therefore, “ illegal and unwarrantable,” but as it had taken place, it would have been legitimate and meritorious for America or any other government to have resisted Russian intervention in Hungary. At this point the resolution cautiously lapsed into the non-committal:—

“ That whether we will, in fact, interfere in such a case, is purely a question of policy, to be decided when the exigencies arise.”

Circumstances alter cases

As often happens, the leader of the Opposition, when he gets into power, can hardly recognise the things he has been saying. In 1861 Abraham Lincoln became President and then refused to acknowledge the right of the Southern States to secede (notwithstanding clause one of his 1852 resolution on Hungary). He waged the bloodiest war of a 100 years to prevent secession. Lincoln did not pretend, as his admirers sometimes pretend, that the war was being fought to destroy slavery. He saw, however, that in the world as it really is admission of the right of any American State to go its own way would have reduced powerful united America to a disunited medley of small and weak States. This is true of the world today, and will remain true so long as capitalism is allowed to continue. Capitalist trade and the maintenance of private property demand central government with powerful military forces and defensible frontiers, and against this the so-called "natural right” and “international principle” of self-determination are merely fanciful; along with U.N. protests, they have no deterrent effect on the governments of the world. The nationalist movements organized to gain independence are not striving for any abstract principle, but for the power of a propertied class to operate capitalism within territory under their own control. High-flown talk about “principles of self-determination” may be an incidental aid in the struggle, but has no bearing on the conduct of affairs once independence has been won. There is, therefore, no real inconsistency in the action of one group achieving independence and then forcibly suppressing movement for independence on the part of another minority within the country. Britain, America, India. Pakistan, Ghana, Russia, and all the other national capitalist groups which pleach “self-determination” and flout it whenever important economic or strategic interests are involved, are all being true to the vital belief they have in common, belief in the necessities of capitalism.

Morocco's Goal in the Western Sahara (2022)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back Blog

The media headlines are prominently declaring Morocco has made sporting history by becoming the first African nation to reach the semi-finals of the World Cup.

There has, however, been very little news coverage over the conflict between Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) which is aspiring for independence for Western Sahara. Morocco had tried to annex the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara in 1975 and a bloody civil war ensued. An UN-brokered ceasefire has been in place since 1991 with a planned referendum left in limbo leaving the conflict unresolved.  Much of the population has been expelled by force, with many tens of thousands living in refugee camps in the desert. Morocco’s occupation is against international law, which accords the Saharawi people the right to self-determination. Over 100 UN resolutions have called for this right to self-determination. Furthermore, the International Court of Justice has stated that there are no ties of sovereignty between Morocco and Western Sahara,

Morocco has become one of the Arab League countries to agree to normalise relations with Israel. In return, the USA under Trump recognised Morocco's claim over the disputed Western Sahara territory.  Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. government would maintain that Morocco has sovereignty over Western Sahara and is one of only a few Western countries to recognise Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara.

Africa’s wealth is being appropriated by foreign interests whose operations are leaving a devastating trail of social, environmental and human rights abuses in their wake and mineral-rich Western Sahara is a key example.  

Despite the Sahrawi people’s claim to self-determination and for control of the resources and international criticism, foreign nations are signing trade deals with Morocco. Nations are being allowed to fish in the territorial waters of the Sahrawi Republic. Oil companies are receiving permits to drill on Sahrawi land.

More important, is the presence of phosphates which along with nitrogen, makes synthetic fertilizer for farming. This gives Morocco a powerful influence over world food production. There is no doubt that the occupation of Western Sahara is largely about the presence of natural resources—especially phosphates.

Another neglected aspect is the future renewable green energy potential of the region.

There is a planned £18bn project to provide 8% of Britain’s energy supplies through a 2,360-mile undersea cable linking a vast wind and solar farm in the Sahara with the UK, powering 7m homes by 2030. The solar and wind site will be in the Guelmim-Oued Noun region which is located in a part of the disputed area of Western Sahara claimed by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

Perhaps, the Moroccan national football team will go on to make even more World Cup history. But the media will persist in its ignorance and hypocrisy of relegating the struggle of the Sahrawi people to irrelevance. 

The Passing Show: Cat out of the bag (1956)

The Passing Show Column from the July 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cat out of the bag

Upton Sinclair once wrote that “even Von Papen had to tell the truth sometimes, if only to rest his mind." The saying applies to all politicians. The time comes when even the most diplomatic will blurt out the real motives of the British ruling class.

For example. Sir Anthony Eden. At Norwich recently he said:

The United Kingdom’s vital interest in Cyprus is not confined to its N.A.T.O. aspect. Our country's industrial life and that of Western Europe depends to-day, and must depend for many years to come, on oil supplies from the Middle East. If ever our oil resources were in peril, we should be compelled to defend them. The facilities we need in Cyprus are part of that defence. We cannot, therefore, accept any doubt about their availability.—(The Times 2.6.56).

The Prime Minister here admits that British capitalism's need to protea its profits—which it could not do without oil supplies—comes before the promise which Britain has made, as a member of the United Nations, to uphold the principle of self-government. Socialists have been saying for a long time that capitalism always put profit before principle, but it is not often that a politician as eminent as Sir Anthony confirms it so explicitly.

Hobson’s Choice

Do Socialists support self-determination? As the term is used now, they do not. Self-determination now means freedom for the workers to decide which group of Capitalists will exploit them. Socialists stand for a world in which there will be no exploitation, and in which, as a result, there will be no artificial division of the world into competing and warring states. No group will use war or terrorism as a means to gain independence, for not only will every country be independent, every individual will be independent too. There will be no foreigners under Socialism. The human beings of the world will freely participate in one voluntary society, because in that way will they best satisfy their needs.

Prophets of Doom

Whatever the condition of the country—whether there is war or peace, boom or slump—one factor, according to what we are told, remains constant and unchanged. It is this: if there are wage increases, disaster will overwhelm us all. Repeated warnings are poured out over the years by representatives of the ruling class: we must win the war, or we must reconstruct the country after the war, or we must defeat foreign competition. The use of “we,” incidentally begs the question; these problems are problems of the ruling class, although, of course, the Capitalists will (and do) solve their problems more easily by fooling the workers into giving their support to the drive for war-supplies, or the drive {or exports, or what-have-you.

Mr. MacMillan joins the chorus:

“At first our main competitors—Germany and Japan—were out of the race. Now they were coming along very fast. We must not relax; on the contrary, we must make even greater efforts. . . . Another round of wage increases such as there had been in the past two years would be disastrous. (The Times, 26.5.56.).

The jest of the situation is this. The workers ask for wage-increases, not in the main to increase their share of the goods they produce (and thus reduce the amount of surplus value which is filched from them), but merely in order to maintain their present standards of living in face of constantly rising prices. And what makes prices rise? One of the main causes is that the amount of currency in circulation is continually being increased. And who has the chief say in deciding whether the amount of currency shall be increased? Mr. MacMillan! So Mr. MacMillan is in the position of berating the workers for actions which he himself has forced them into.

Honesty takes a back seat

The soap-and-detergent war among the three or four giant concerns which dominate the market for these goods continues. Each firm has three or more runners in the race, and the attention of the consumer is continually being assaulted by advertisements on the printed page, on hoardings, on the television screen and elsewhere, each claiming that product “A” (or “B,” or “C”) washes clothes cleaner than any of the others. All these allegations cannot be true. In a race it is just possible that all the competitors will arrive at the winning post at the same time; but it is impossible for each of the entrants in one race to beat all the others. But what do Capitalist concerns care for truth?

The sales of one product are boosted by means of a particularly shrewd trick. With each packet of this soap-powder is given—free!—a new duster. Buyers naturally assume they are getting more for their money than they did before this device was introduced. But in fact they get less. For the duster is placed inside the packet, thereby reducing the amount of soap-powder inside it. And the manufacturer saves more on the soap-powder than he has to pay for the scrap of cloth which constitutes the “free" duster.

The right attitude to the job

Mr. James Crawford is a paid trade union official—he is President of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives. Recently he decided he would be serving his members' interests best by giving some advice to the boss on how to become popular with the workers. In a speech to the Annual Conference of the Advertising Association recently he declared:

  “In British advertisements, the top executive—if he is not depicted as a harassed old man on the point of breaking down with an executive neurosis or ulcer—is at any rate seen to be a pretty smooth and leisurely type. This sort of thing builds up a mythical picture of the ‘boss’ in the minds of average employees, and is only a few points better than the Communist cartoonist’s picture of a gross, top-hatted, cigar-smoking Satan, with his tail curling menacingly round his striped trousers. In American advertisements, the executive is much younger, much healthier, and has much more the appearance of a man who actually does some work. At times he is actually seen with his coat off, not sitting at a desk, but talking to the men on the job.” (World’s Press News, 18.5.56.).

Mr. Crawford said the advertising profession should “help create among people at work the right attitude to the job." Mr. Crawtord is chairman of the Productivity Council, which has the task of increasing output. The ruling class has a high opinion of the “responsibility” and "common sense" of the majority of trade union leaders in this country; its confidence is evidently not misplaced in Mr. Crawford.

Life is grim, and life is earnest

From the Sunday Express, 154-56:

“Lady Portsmouth’s daughters, Lady Phillipa, 18. and Lady Jane Wallop, 17, economise at their coming-out cocktail party next week by serving Spanish champagne—about five shillings a bottle cheaper than French non-vintage.”

But don’t send round the hat yet. This isn't a permanent measure. “For their dance next month, which will probably be attended by Princess Alexandra, the champagne will be best French vintage."

These upper-class parties are so much trouble that one wonders why anyone bothers to give them. In the Sunday Express of June 10th we find: 

"Lady Crosfield is again having difficulty in planning her annual pre-Wimbledon tennis party. . . . This year she finds that she has picked on the same day as the Garter ceremony at Windsor. ‘It is too late to alter my date, so I shall have no royalty here,' she says."

Life is full of tribulations, Lady Crosfield. But don’t worry—you’ll probably survive this one.

Alwyn Edgar.

Nationalism (1999)

Book Review from the May 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Imagining Nations, Geoffrey Cubitt ed., Manchester University Press.

Fatherland or Mother Earth? Essays on the National Question by Michael Lõwy, Pluto Press.

Two very different books on nationalism. The Cubitt volume is much more “academic”, looking at a number of different issues within the area of nationalism. The best thing that can be said about it is that most of the contributors are aware that nations are not in any way natural entities but are products of history. There are a couple of interesting papers, one on the origins of the Ordnance Survey and one on the way that banknotes are used to display patriotic messages, but most of the contents are too dry to repay the reader’s time.

Lõwy’s book, which examines the writings of Marx and others on nationalism, is more worthwhile, though it contains a number of contradictions. Lõwy is aware that Socialism means a classless, stateless society, but when it comes to the question of whether nations could have any role in Socialism, he wants to have it both ways. At one point he endorses the view that Socialism will be a world without frontiers, with no political delimitation of peoples. Yet a few pages later he seems to accept that Socialism would involve the abolition of national antagonisms but could retain nations with cultural differences. In fact, a true understanding of the implications of Socialism will reveal that the very idea of nations, a political concept, can have no part to play, though there will of course still be cultural differences among people (e.g. language).

While he pays lip service to opposing nationalism, Lõwy also advocates the “right of self-determination” of the Kurds and the Albanians of Kosovo, among others. This is largely based on the Leninist-inspired distinction between the nationalism of the oppressors (always bad) and the nationalism of the oppressed (allegedly worth supporting, even if critically). This even though he is aware that oppressed nations, once “free”, can easily become oppressors in turn. Oppression, however, has to be seen in class, not national terms. Both so-called oppressor and oppressed nations consist of oppressor and oppressed classes, and “national liberation” enables an oppressor class to consolidate and expand its power, rather than freeing all the people of a formerly oppressed nation.

It contains some interesting observations, but on the whole Lõwy’s book swallows too much leftist nonsense to be recommended.

Paul Bennett

One world or many states? (2020)

From the June 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have been asked for our view on the movement for West Papua to gain independence from Indonesia. Here is our reply.

The Socialist Party and wider World Socialist Movement in various locations throughout the world, consists of individuals who have come together for one purpose: to assist in the urgent task of establishing world-wide socialism. We define socialism as a society in which all the resources of the world are used in common to meet all the needs of all the people of the world, without any distinction whatsoever, including the distinction of so-called national identity. It follows, then, that we do not concern ourselves with either the destruction or the creation of national or territorial borders within capitalism. This is a policy that we have upheld from our formation in 1904. During that time, we have, of course, been admonished to recognise the seemingly vital need to defend this national group against that one; to support the imposition of this territorial border or the dissolution of that one; to denounce this act of nationalist aggression or to excuse that one. Our reply has always been that while capitalism exists, such disputes and conflagrations are unending and it is not the role of socialists to act as adjudicators over the rights and wrongs of conflicts that are endemic to capitalism. 

To talk of self-determination is to play with words. Past circumstances notwithstanding, the world is today so integrated that no country can be genuinely independent in how it acts. Usually, it can’t even independently decide how it behaves within its own ‘borders’, for fear of criticism or censure from international bodies, or, more usually, powerful outside interests.

World capitalism always has been, is now, and always will be a quagmire of different competing interests along national, religious and ethnic lines. But all such differences are artificially created by artificial scarcity. Only world socialism can finally put an end to this fight for resources – a sordid fight that, in order to acquire a semblance of decency, hoists coloured rags on poles and conscripts evolved human morals and ethics into ‘national’ armies and risibly ordained ‘national’ interests.

Socialists don’t deny the value of human culture, of course not. What we abhor and oppose is the culture of all the people of the world – which ‘belongs’ to and should be accessible to us all – being turned into nothing more than ruses to corral the working class of the world behind artificial borders, the real and sole purpose of which is to enlist us into fighting for and protecting world markets for ‘us’ and not ‘them’.

Historically, West Papua is little different from any of the countless other regions that have been colonised and invaded over centuries. Today, a population of less than a million in West Papua contains 6 ‘ethnic’ groups, practises 5 religions and speaks a variety of languages. Yet, the twin issues of personal poverty and the human rights of the individual are the main concerns in West Papua, just as they are in West Ham in London or West Bronx in New York. Why should the members of the human family who happen to be born in the particular part of the world named (by ‘foreigners ‘) West Papua limit their horizons, in this day and age, to West Papua? Why shouldn’t an inhabitant of West Papua not see themselves as a citizen of the world, free to live wherever they choose on the planet? Why shouldn’t anyone have the right to go and live in West Papua if they so desire?

Capitalism, of course, can never allow for such a world at peace with itself, of personal universal rights and personal self-determination – the only form of genuine self-determination and the only form that socialists care a hoot for. Only in capitalism is it necessary to construct borders around a designated area arbitrarily created by history, to keep certain people in and keep other people out. Socialism, the only universal solution to ‘borders’ will require no such artificial distinctions between the world’s people and will have no borders. And since this is the goal of socialists, why would we do something as illogical as interrupt or postpone our endeavours to create a borderless world in order to advocate new borders that we aim to abolish?

Nationalism is poison (1985)

From the February 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

  This article was originally published in the Socialist Standard of March 1973. The case it states is as apt today as it was then.

In the struggle to win the minds of the working class Socialists have to contend not, on the whole, with rational critiques of the Socialist position but with deeply held and unquestioned values. A few of these, for example, might be religion, "human nature", "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work" or the association of Socialism with Russia. One of the strongest of these sacred beliefs, and one of the biggest obstacles to the establishment of Socialism, is nationalism ― the loyalty felt by many members of the working class to "their country", the political unit in which they happen to reside.

Socialists hold that the only real divisions which exist in the world are horizontal ones, between different social and economic groups. In advanced capitalist countries this consists in a division between the capitalist class, which owns and controls the means of production, and the working class, which owns none of them and which has to sell its mental and physical labour-power to the capitalist class in order to live. Feelings of loyalty to a nation-State are purely subjective, having no basis in reality; the working class in Britain has more in common with the workers in other countries than it has with the British capitalist class.

There, is however, an alternative view of the world. This is the belief that the important divisions are not horizontal, between different classes, but vertical, between various nations. A "nation" consists, according to this view, of a hierarchy of men and women who, although having differing incomes, social status and power, all have a common interest in working in harmony for the benefit of the whole unit and, if necessary, in fighting against other nations to defend this interest. This completely mistaken outlook is the one held by most members of the working class and nearly all political parties (including the Labour Party). Most historians reject Marx's declaration that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle", preferring instead to see history as a succession of struggles of nations against foreign domination, of subjects against tyrannical kings and of nations and races against each other.

Broadly speaking, nationalist ideologies and movements represent the interests of the capitalist class. Nationalism as such did not exist in pre-capitalist society and its growth and development represents the parallel development of the capitalist class. Nationalism as we know it today first made its appearance during the French Revolution. In the early stages of the revolution cosmopolitan ideas were prevalent ― it was believed that the rest of Europe would be inspired by France's example and would likewise overthrow the old order. When this failed to happen strong feelings of nationalism developed; France was seen as a chosen nation, picked out to be the standard-bearer of revolution throughout Europe.

Politically, nationalism is ambiguous, in that it can take on a "rightwing" or a "leftwing" form. This depends upon the position of the capitalist class in the particular time and place. If political power is held by the aristocracy or nobility, and the middle-class is struggling to assert itself, then nationalism will have "leftwing" connotations. This was the case in Europe until 1848, when nationalism was a romantic, revolutionary force against the traditional ruling class. However, once the bourgeoisie has captured and consolidated its power, then nationalism becomes a conservative and rightwing force.

Although every nationalist movement believes it is unique, there exist basically these two forms of nationalism side by side. In the advanced parts of the world ― the United States, Britain, Western Europe ― nationalism is conservative, whilst in pre-industrial countries engaged in struggles against a foreign ruling class, nationalism is a "leftwing" force.

The World Socialist Movement opposes all nationalist movements recognising that the working class has no country. There are certain other groups ― the Communist Parties of the world, and the so-called revolutionary left ― which, though claiming to have a class outlook, have a wholly opportunist and ambiguous attitude to nationalism, which reflects not so much the interest of the working class as it does Russian or Chinese foreign policy. These groups fully accept the mythology of the existence of "the nation". For example, from an Anti-Internment League pamphlet:

 The people of each nation have the right to determine how they shall be governed. Foreign interference is a fundamental attack on that right. When one nation takes offensive action against another, by introducing troops or in any other way, we cannot sit on the fence . . . And so to Ireland: Ireland is a nation; Ireland is not Britain; and the Irish have a right to decide whether or not they wish to have any association with the rest of these isles.

This attitude is a complete denial of Marxism; it is almost incomprehensible that people who describe themselves as Socialists should write of the "right to re-establish Irish nationhood" (from the same pamphlet). The Irish republican movement is in essence no different from any other nationalist movement; it was brought into being because of the need of a fledgling capitalist class to break away from Britain and erect protective tariff barriers in order to build an industrial economy. Socialists give the IRA and Sinn Fein no support whatsoever.

It will be argued that Marx and Engels supported nationalist movements and that therefore Socialists should do so today. Such an assertion is based on a faulty understanding of the Materialist Conception of History. Marx and Engels were living in an era when the bourgeoisie was engaged in a struggle to assert itself against the old feudal regimes. The victory of this class was a historically progressive step at that time in that it brought about the re-organization of society on a capitalist basis, the essential pre-condition for the establishment of socialism; and it created an urban proletariat, the only class which can bring about socialism. This was why Marx supported the rising capitalist class in their bid to capture political power. However, once capitalism reaches the point where socialism is a practical proposition, there is no need for socialists to advocate the capitalist industrialization of every corner of the globe; they can concentrate fully on the task of establishing socialism. Hence we give no support to any nationalist group, and in place of the opportunism and hypocrisy of the myriad Bolshevik groupings in advocating "national self-determination", socialists echo the rallying cry of Marx and Engels, "Workers of All Countries, Unite!"

Brendan Mee

The emptiness of self-determination (1970)

From the October 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists do not support “Self-Determination for Ireland”. Insofar as this word has any meaning it runs counter to the socialist view that the nation is a capitalist political institution. The whole idea underlying nationalism — that all the people of a particular nation (however defined, and that’s another problem) have some common interest — challenges the socialist analysis which says that the workers have no country and that the “national interest” is a fraud and a trick designed to get them to co-operate on the political field with their rulers.

“Self-Determination” was the cry raised also by the Northern capitalists in their slogan “A Protestant Government for a Protestant People”. Why is the claim that all who live in Ireland form “one nation” with a common interest any more valid than the claim that all who adhere to the Protestant religion form “one people”? Both are equally wrong.

Irish nationalism was the ideology of one section of the Irish capitalist class, the small businessmen of the South, a section which after 1921 gained control over 26 of the 32 Irish counties, while their rivals, the big industrialists of the North East, kept the other six. Independence from Britain for the 26 counties merely meant a change of masters for the workers living there; the joining of the remaining six counties to form an All-Ireland Republic would be no different.

Unionism is obviously and openly an anti-working class political trend, but it is time that Irish Nationalism and Republicanism were recognised as such too. Unionism and Nationalism/Republicanism are the political theories of rival sections of the Irish capitalist class and as such should both be opposed by Socialists.

The task of Socialists in Ireland is to campaign, along with Socialists in other countries, for the establishment of a socialist society all over the world.

The Myth of National Self Determination (2017)

From the December 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recent events in Catalonia demand a restatement of a basic socialist principle.

The word ‘we’ is one of the most powerful words, all the more so because its use often passes invisibly. Every time we speak of a ‘we’ we are also creating a ‘them’, an other, we are identifying ourselves as a group and placing others outside it. ‘We’ could be the people that live in our neighbourhood, it could be those with whom we share a common language or accent, or it could be those that go to the same clubs, pubs or places of worship as us. In daily life we can easily think of ourselves as belonging to a variety of different overlapping communities. But which of these groups is the most important? With whom are you most loyal? To which people do you belong? 

Many people will see their national identity as being the most fundamental. After all we have to identify ourselves as a member of a particular nation state when we go abroad, when claiming benefits or applying for a job. What nation we belong to determines what rights and privileges we have, if we find ourselves in a nation other than our own we may find our rights restricted or denied. Our nationality can often form an important element in how we act with the world and how we are placed within it, it can often seem to be as natural and integral a part of us as our gender or hair colour.

A people with a shared culture, language and history, who live in the same place over time naturally develop a strong sense of belonging together. This sense of belonging together and of being tied to a certain geographical place is what constitutes nationhood. A nation is a group of people that has a history of doing things together in a certain geographical area. And just as an individual has a right to choose and to freely express their will so too do peoples who form nations have the right to self determination.

Or at least that is how the myth goes. However, does it really make sense to think of a nation as a homogeneous 'people' sharing the same interest and expressing its ‘will’ in the same way as an individual?

Behind the supposed unity of a national identity we will find a whole manner of divisions, class distinctions and unequal power relations. In nation-states based on capitalist property relations, which is all of them, there is a fundamental divide between owners of capital – the factories, land, raw materials, means of transportation – and sellers of labour-power. The vast wealth of the minority, the class of capital owners, comes from the labour of the majority, the sellers of labour-power – the working class. Market competition compels the capitalist to seek to extract the maximum from the worker. The need to preserve and improve their living conditions drives the worker to resist. This sets up irreconcilable class struggle at the centre of society. To think of a nation as a homogeneous block with all members sharing the same interest is to ignore the real conflicts that arise from the unequal economic power relations that exist within all nation-states.

Nations can be thought of as imagined communities. The majority of the population will never meet or know each other yet in their minds they imagine each other as being and belonging together. These imaginings will be both semi-mythical and semi-factual in nature. The historical stories told for the purpose of nation building are always ones that have been sanitized and moralized, glossing over all the splits, conflicts and discontinuities that occur within and between the populations that have lived in the same space over time. History taught in a truthful and unpolished way does not have the effect of national building – the history of any one particular area is as fractured as any other.

The nation-state is now the fundamental unit through which political affairs are conducted but despite its seeming antiquity it is a relatively modern invention. The origin of the modern nation-state is tied to the development of capitalism and the demise of monarchical regimes, feudal city-states and principalities. The nation-state came to the fore because it was the form of organisation that most suited the operations of the emerging capitalist class.

If our aim is to bring about a classless society of equals then our attention should be on the real antagonistic relation between the classes not the fake illusions put forward by nationalists. We have to find and create new forms of egalitarian organisation that can supersede the nation-state and capitalism, not help the local capitalist class in the creation of new and ever smaller states.

DJP

Nationalism, the Enemy of Socialism (1956)

From the August 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists have a simple solution for the problems of nationalism. It is that all people shall be enabled to live happily wherever they are or wherever they want to go. It is the only solution and it can only be applied when the world has become a Socialist world. It cannot be applied in a Capitalist world though all the non-Socialists, including the Labour and Communist parties, claim that they have a solution that can be applied now. They pay lip-service to various forms of the principle of "self-determination," the principle that nationalist groups should be free to decide for themselves. It sounds fine but it cannot solve the problem even though, if the group is powerful enough with or without military aid from outside, it may succeed in breaking away and setting up its own government or joining another country. It cannot solve the problem because the material on which Nationalism feeds—differences of colour, religion, language and tradition—exist everywhere in every country and because the economic conflicts which capitalism constantly produces at home and internationally will always inflame this material; as fast as one conflagration is put out others spring up. And the economic conflicts taking on the nationalist disguise, with its fever and hatreds, go on between independent nations just as much as when a national group is struggling against alien rule.

Capitalism is a competitive world in which national groups survive by armed force. No government, whatever its professed principles, will voluntarily see its armed strength undermined by granting the right of secession to all who demand it. The Northern States of U.S.A. fought a bloody civil war to prevent the Southern States from seceding in the eighteen sixties; and the nominal right of secession embodied in the Russian Constitution is not worth the paper it is written on unless circumstances arise in which the would-be secessionists do make their demand effective with force. British capitalism gave up India because it lacked the means to hold it, but now Nehru's government acts in accordance with exactly the same "what we have we hold " principle as he denounced during the struggles against the British Government. On May 4, Mr. Nehru announced in the Indian Parliament that "Indian forces attempting to put down the revolt of Naga tribesmen in the hill area of North-Eastern Assam have killed more than 100 rebels and wounded many more since mid-April." (Manchester Guardian, 5 May, 1956). The Manchester Guardian later, on (21 June), described the Naga demand for independence as "absurd," but then of course all such demands appear absurd to the government resisting them. And when Mr. Nehru informed rioting crowds in Bombay that whether they like it or not they are going to be governed from Delhi for the next five years his words might have come from the lips of Sir John Harding in Cyprus. He told them that Bombay "could not be allowed to decide its own future in its present disturbed mood” (Daily Mail, 4 June, 1956). The Scottish Forward (14 July) quotes him as saying that because of their recent behaviour the citizens of Bombay have "disqualified themselves from deciding their own future." This report adds the following description, distinctly reminiscent of the old campaign against British rule:—.

   “As Mr. Nehru was saying this to 200,000 Bombay citizens at a seashore meeting, parts of bis public address were obscured by the whine of tear-gas shells, the sporadic rattle of musketry, the tinkle of broken glass from nearby street lamps, and the slogans of an angry, stone-slinging citizenry."

Everywhere the countries that have won their "freedom" show conflict with their own opposition group, the Karens in Burma, the negroes in U.S.A. and South Africa, the Israelites and Arabs in the Middle East, the Somalis in Ethiopia, the Southern Sudanese in the Sudan, the Tamils in Ceylon; not to mention the Nationalist movements in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. And already the short-time and unemployment in the Midlands have inspired a newspaper to publish an article asking that further immigration of Jamaicans and Irishmen be stopped. (Sunday Graphic, 15 July, 1956).

As all these examples show, the word "self-determination" is a misnomer, for none of the nationalist movements accepts that individuals shall be free to choose. Cyprus, is a case in point. British capitalism holds it— for strategic reasons; Greek capitalism wants it—for strategic reasons; and the Turkish Government says that if the British leave they will take it—for strategic reasons. But the Greeks and Turks both add a plea based on "self-determination," the Greeks on the ground that the majority of inhabitants are Greek-speaking and the Turks on the ground that the minority are Turkish and are strongly opposed to bring ruled by Greece. And the best known of the Cypriot independence movements, E.O.K.A., makes no pretence of letting Greek-speaking Cypriots individually voice their preference for remaining as they are, or becoming independent or joining Greece. Many of their victims are Cypriot-Greeks and a leaflet issued by E.O.K.A. justifies these shootings with the same kind argument as is used by all governments and all nationalist movements:—

   "Some people seem to think that killing people within hospitals is unmanly and immoral. We point out that our holy struggle overrides all such thoughts. Those who are not with us are against us. Those who forget their patriotism will be punished."

(Manchester Guardian, 20th April, 1956).

Nationalism and the struggle "for the bloody rags called flags of civilised savages," is not a holy struggle but an exhibition of human ignorance utterly without justification for the workers in the modern world. In the primitive society of past ages patriotism or tribal solidarity was a necessity of survival. In a future, socialist world, freed from the exploitation of man by man, there will be no economic conflicts to masquerade under and take advantage of language, colour and other differences. In the present class-divided and frontier-divided Capitalist world nationalist frictions will continue to serve ruling class ends until they are overcome by the growth of Socialist understanding and Socialist international unity.

Edgar Hardcastle

Nation or class? (1990)

From the December 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. But, as is so often the case, this famous saying is usually taken out of context. Dr. Johnson was not opposed to patriotism. On the contrary, for him the problem was opportunist politicians who drape themselves in the flag of the nation. For socialists, however, patriotism is the problem. Being the zealous support for what one believes to be one’s own nation, patriotism is a snare and a delusion for the working class. Across the world, from Lithuania to Scotland, from Ireland to Israel, workers are embroiled in nationalist struggles which are none of their concern.

A nation has been defined as a collection of people with their own culture in a specific territory. A nationalist then is someone who emphasises the distinctiveness of a nation, and usually strives for it to become a nation-state. The trouble with this, as Rosa Luxemburg pointed out, is that it presupposes a community of interests with the nation:

In a class society, the nation' as a homogeneous socio-political entity does not exist. Rather, there exist within each nation, classes with antagonistic interests.

Moreover, since the nation is not necessarily the same thing as the state and its machinery of government, and since there are few (if any) genuine examples in the world of the nation and state exactly coinciding to form a nation-state, there has been plenty of scope and motivation for struggles for “national self-determination"

Nationalist myth-making

Accept the premise about the nation and you have an excuse for armed conflict. Nationalists, of course, will offer the defence that the nation is a set of cultural traditions worth preserving; it is said that there is a shared history, with a common language and institutions. The nation, in some versions, is the spirit of the people embodied in the church, monarch and empire. There interpretations of the past, however, are an exercise in myth-making. Many people would be surprised at how many of the "immemorial" national traditions go no further back then the nineteenth century. The "traditional’’ Scottish kilt, for example, was invented by an Englishman (see The Invention of Tradition. 1983, edited by E.J.Hobsbawm and T.Ranger).

Our rulers take great care and go to some expense to try and imbue us with a sense of “our" nation, even though the geographical limits of the nation have changed and will change as international capitalism re-aligns itself. Meanwhile, no matter what the colour of the rag at the top of the mast-head, poverty remains a working class issue. An affection for where we live is understandable, but nevertheless, when we do not possess the means of livelihood we will always be a tenant with an opposing interest to that of the landlord

The medieval aristocracy tried to inculcate a sense of obligation to the land in the lower orders, as part of the master and serf relationship. In some places this outlook still persists, and capitalists have used it to their own advantage. But nationalist movements arose with the development of capitalism and the state. In the 19th century, Karl Marx supported some nationalist movements on the grounds that they were historically progressive because they served the class interests of the rising bourgeoisie in its opposition to the traditional aristocracy. Marx had made demands, in 1848 and 1880, for Polish independence from Tsarist Russia. Rosa Luxemburg, at one time a member of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPL), described Marx's demands as ‘‘obsolete and mistaken". Obsolete because no longer relevant, mistaken because the demands were never relevant to the working class.

The name of the party, SDKPL, was deliberate since the "Kingdom of Poland" was the official name of Russian Poland; the party's name therefore proclaimed that it was a party operating only in that part of Poland; because states are organised on a territorial basis each Social Democratic party had the task of getting political power in the country where it operated. Luxemburg was aware that this was an organisational convenience, and that working class interests transcend national boundaries. For this reason, at the turn of the century, the SDKPL was the section in Russian Poland of the Russian Social Democratic Party. Luxemburg argued that the demand for an independent Poland was a demand for the establishment of another capitalist— and inevitably expansionist and oppressive—state. Experience of national liberation struggles in the twentieth century fully confirm the accuracy of this theory.

No meaningful democracy

Poland has been in and out of the Russian empire a number of times. The SDKPL at the turn of the century included Lithuania in its name and organisation, which was also then part of Russia. Lithuania had been part of Poland since 1361 and part of Russia since 1801. Along with the other Baltic republics of Estonia and Latvia. Lithuania was independent only from 1919 to 1940. Ironically, they were given independence by Gorbachevs hero, Lenin, though Gorbachev seems reluctant to emulate him in this respect. Lenin declared that socialists should support "the right of nations to self-determination", arguing that nationalist struggles were simultaneously struggles for democracy. (The SWP, being a true Leninist organisation, supported Lithuania in its recent battles with Gorbachev for much this reason).

The theory of national self-determination, however, failed to show how antagonistic classes have a common "national interest", and there is not a single example of a meaningful democracy being established anywhere in the world. Now that workers in eastern Europe have some limited political democracy they will find, as workers in the West have found, just how limited that democracy is (in effect, electing governments). How can capitalism, both East and West, be compatible with real democracy? When was there ever a vote as to who shall live in poverty? Who elected the rich? Where has there been a referendum on instituting homelessness? Who was consulted over the numbers to be unemployed? How often has there been a ballot on whether to declare war? Merely to pose these questions is to show the futility of nationalist struggles for democracy. The profit system has its own priorities and these are not susceptible to democratic control.

To-day nationalism rears its ugly head in eastern Europe and elsewhere. It is an ideology which conceals and distorts the exploitative social relationships of capitalism. As such, socialists are hostile to it and oppose it with the class interests of workers everywhere. It is as workers we are oppressed, not as a national grouping. It will be as workers we get our emancipation, not in national liberation. And as capitalism is the predominant world system, so the social revolution must be a world revolution.

Lew Higgins

Letters to the Editors: Democracy or nationalism? (1997)

Letters to the Editors from the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Democracy or nationalism?

Dear Editors,

In the May Socialist Standard you recommend to Kurdish workers that they struggle for democratic and trade-union rights, and not for a Kurdish state. Isn’t the right to speak and be educated in your own language a democratic right? Indeed isn’t a sovereign national assembly a democratic right? If socialists don’t oppose national oppression. I’m afraid "any hypothetical Kurdish-speaking socialists" will remain just that— hypothetical.

You support struggles for democratic rights but oppose all wars. This seems inconsistent. Suppose the workers in the Kurdish area of Iraq organise mass demonstrations for trade-union and democratic rights. Iraqi troops come out of the local garrisons to suppress them. However, the workers seize some weapons and fight back. At this point the struggle becomes civil war. The Kurdish workers defeat the local garrisons. Baghdad sends in reinforcements. The workers resist, and their peasant relatives join in. At this point the civil war becomes a national war. The Kurds are winning. Alarmed by this. Russia supplies more arms to the Iraqi state. The USA sees its chance and offers arms to the Kurdish workers, for its own reasons of course. The Kurdish workers accept the arms and use them to defend themselves. The struggle now has elements of inter-imperialist rivalry. All along the Kurdish workers have stuck to their guns and fought only for democratic and trade-union rights.

At which point do they lose the Socialist Party’s support, and why?

Ken MacLeod,

South Queensferry,

West Lothian

Reply:

1. There is only one thing wrong with your elaborate scenario. It is built on sand as we never said what you say we did. What we recommended to Kurdish workers is what we recommend to workers everywhere: that they should struggle for Socialism, adding that "socialists in countries where political democracy does not exist should campaign . . . independently for this as well as campaigning for socialism". So. it is not a question of Socialists supporting others campaigning for political democracy but of Socialists themselves campaigning for this on their own and in fact in opposition to other political groups. The basic reason for this opposition is that the other parties campaigning for political democracy will be supporting capitalism while Socialists want Socialism. If and to the extent that any workers’ movement for democracy in some country follows or allows itself to be dominated by such parties, that is the point at which we criticise it. Your scenario is based on assuming that it is just this that happens since what you describe sounds more like a nationalist movement for "a sovereign national assembly" than a workers' movement for political democracy as such.

2. Yes, you could say that being able to speak and be educated in your own language is a "democratic right". In any event. Socialists are fully in favour of this and it will be a feature of socialist society.

3. No. "a sovereign national assembly" is not a necessity to achieve language rights. There are plenty of examples of minority language speakers having full rights to speak and be educated in their language within the boundaries of larger, existing states. Welsh in Britain is a case in point. Only nationalists argue that what is needed is an independent state but their aim is to exploit language and other differences for their own political end of establishing a new state in which they hope to become the new ruling class. Workers have no interest in going down that road. It leads, as in your scenario, to workers killing each other in the name of “the nation" and “democracy”.

4. Socialists do oppose national oppression (discrimination against some group on the basis of the language they speak or whatever). Our argument is that the only way to end this for all groups is through the establishment of socialism because, as we put it in our declaration of principles "the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex".

5. Finally, Socialists from the part of the world we are talking about are not as hypothetical as you think. We know socialists from the area whose mother tongue is Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, Iranian, Armenian, Azerbaijani and will be pleased to supply on request to you, or anyone else interested, Socialist literature in Turkish and Arabic. What is hypothetical for the moment is not the existence of such Socialists but the existence of socialist parties operating in the various states of the region.

Editors.

Anarcho-Socialist?

Dear Editors,

It has been claimed in a publication Socialist Studies that your party is now anarcho-socialist in outlook. This claim is based, in part, on a resolution at a Socialist Party conference that "This conference affirms that Socialism will entail the immediate abolition and not the gradual decline of the state". The charge appears to have some substance. At least, it is difficult to reconcile the conference resolution with the reference in your Declaration of Principles regarding the taking over of the machinery of government, and its conversion from an instrument of oppression into an agent of emancipation. Immediate abolition of the state precludes its conversion to anything.

David Rolfe,

London SWI5

Reply: 

The resolution you mention, as its terms show, clearly intended to repudiate the view that the state (as the coercive machinery of government) would continue into socialism and then gradually decline. It reaffirmed the traditional Socialist view that socialism will be a stateless society, which follows from the fact that the state is an instrument of class rule while socialism will be a classless society and so have no place for such an instrument. The state will not "gradually decline” after socialism is established, but the end of the state and the beginning of socialism will be simultaneous.

The question of how socialism will come about is a different one and was not addressed by the resolution. As you correctly point out. the Socialist Party holds that the way to establish socialism is through political action, i.e. through a socialist-minded majority winning control of the state and using it to abolish capitalism "by the conversion into the common property of society of the means of production and distribution, and their democratic control by the whole people".

This done—and we don't envisage this taking very long, so that terms such as "transitional period" and "gradual decline" are quite out of place—the state is dismantled. Its coercive elements are simply disbanded. The useful administrative elements, such as those concerned with health, housing, transport, education, etc. are made more democratic and retained as part of the non-coercive administrative machinery of socialism.

Editors.

Rosa Luxemburg and the National Question (1978)

From the April 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is there some "right of nations to self-determination" which Socialists should support? This was a question debated by Social Democrats before the first world war, especially in Russia and Austria which were then both multi-national empires. Lenin, true to his opportunist view that any slogan was useful if it helped "mobilise the masses", answered yes. Among those who answered no was Rosa Luxemburg.

That this was so has long been known to us, but until the recent publication of a selection of her writings on The National Question (edited by Horace B. Davis, Monthly Review Press, 320pp., £9.25), we have not had the opportunity to judge the worth of the arguments she used. That her writings on this question—as opposed to those on economics and other matters—should have remained unavailable for so long is no accident. Left-wing publishers have just not been interested in publishing a criticism of what has become a dogma in left-wing circles: that Socialists are duty-bound to support struggles for "national liberation".

Rosa Luxemburg was born in 1871 in Zanosc (though she was brought up in Warsaw) which, on today's maps, is a town in eastern Poland near the Russian border. But in 1871 it was part of the Russian empire since Poland had not existed as an independent State since 1795. Over the period 1772 to 1795 in fact Poland had been partitioned amongst Russia, Austria and Prussia. About two-fifths of pre-1772 Poland went to Russia and about one-fifth each to Prussia and Austria.

When the Social Democratic movement grew in Germany and Austria towards the end of the 19th century it also spread to the Polish-speaking areas of these countries. At first Polish-speaking Social Democrats joined the German and Austrian parties, but in 1892 separate Polish parties were formed in both countries. Later that year these amalgamated to form, with representatives from Russian Poland, the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). The PPS made its principal demand the reconstitution of an independent Poland within the pre-1772 boundaries. The following year a number of young Polish exiles in Zurich, including Rosa Luxemburg, split off precisely on this point and set up the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP).

The choice of this odd-sounding title was deliberate, for the "Kingdom of Poland" was the official name of Russian Poland. The party's name therefore proclaimed that it was a party operating only in Russia. And in fact when the Russian Social Democratic Party got off the ground the SDKP (or more precisely, after the adhesion of a Lithuanian group in 1899, the SDKPL) was its section in Poland and Lithuania.

The issue of whether or not Polish independence should be supported came up at the 1896 London Congress of the Second International to which the PPS had submitted a resolution which declared "that the independence of Poland represents an imperative political demand both for the Polish proletariat and for the international labour movement as a whole". Rosa Luxemburg was resolutely opposed to this and wrote a series of articles in the international Social Democratic press arguing that workers should organise irrespective of nationality within the frontiers of the capitalist State in which they found themselves and should not seek to re-draw these frontiers, the struggle to achieve which would merely divert workers from the class struggle and Socialism. The PPS motion was not in fact voted on but was replaced by a vague general resolution which nevertheless still referred to "the complete right of all nations to self-determination".

In opposing an independent Poland Luxemburg was going against a demand supported by Marx throughout his political life. She was well aware of this and did not hesitate to describe Marx's views on the Polish Question as "obsolete and mistaken". Since this is a position the Socialist Party of Great Britain has also taken up it will be interesting to examine Luxemburg's arguments on this point.

In 1848, she pointed out, western European democrats, amongst whom Marx must be included, wanted an independent Poland established to act as a buffer between Tsarist Russia and West Europe so as to remove the threat of Tsarist intervention to halt the extension of political democracy there. This, she said, was a tenable position in 1848 but not in the 1890's and 1900's (nor even in 1880 when Marx made a further declaration in favour of Polish independence). For in the meantime, thanks to the introduction of capitalism and with it of an urban industrial proletariat, Russia was no longer the monolithic force for reaction it had been. As capitalism and the working class developed in Russia so did-and had-developed the possibility of overthrowing Tsarism and establishing a political democracy there too. Turning to Poland, she argued that the introduction of capitalism had tied Russian Poland so close to Russia (Polish industry served the Russian market) that the proposal to re-establish an independent Poland was anyway a "utopian fantasy".

Luxemburg went on to point out that the demand for an independent Poland was a demand for the establishment of another capitalist-and inevitably expansionist and oppressive-State. This, she said, was not the task of the workers; what concerned them at that time was winning various elementary democratic freedoms. She thus urged Polish-speaking workers in Russian Poland to struggle, together with the workers of all the other nationalities to be found within the borders of the Russian empire, to overthrow Tsarism and establish political democracy in Russia. (Polish-speaking workers in Germany and the Austrian empire should likewise be struggling with their fellow workers there to establish political democracy). Luxemburg regarded an end to discrimination on national or language grounds-with full provision for the use of minority languages in all aspects of social and political life-as an integral part of the political democracy she was urging to be established under capitalism as a means of facilitating the struggle for Socialism. In fact she went further and argued in some detail, in a series of articles published in 1908–9, that Poland should be given autonomy within any all-Russia democratic republic. Thus the SDKPL countered the PPS demand for the restoration of an independent Poland with a demand for home rule for Russian Poland within a democratic Russia.

We would not deny that in the absolutist political conditions of Tsarist Russia the working class was obliged to struggle for political freedoms such as the vote, freedom of the press and the freedom to form trade unions and parties, but this should-and could-have been done in conjunction with a clear-cut and uncompromising struggle for world socialism. Luxemburg of course knew what Socialism was and did carry out propaganda for it, but as a Social Democrat was committed to the mistaken theory that a socialist party should have a "minimum" programme of political and social reforms to be achieved within capitalism as well as the "maximum" programme of socialism.

Nevertheless it can be said in favour of Luxemburg's formulation-that the workers of Russian Poland should struggle with the other workers in Russia for an all-Russia democratic republic-that it made no concession to nationalism; it appealed to them as workers not as Poles. She knew that a campaign to establish an independent Poland would unleash nationalist passions which would divert the working class in Russian Poland not just from the struggle to establish Socialism but even from the struggle to win elementary democratic freedoms. She was proved right on this point: when Poland got independence in 1919 an authoritarian nationalist dictatorship under former PPS-leader Pilsudski soon came to power.

But events proved her wrong for believing Polish independence to have been a "utopian fantasy". If she had confined herself to saying that an independent Polish State would continue to be dominated by Russia or some other big power she would have been right, but she was suggesting that even formal political independence for Poland was impossible. The fact that Poland got such independence in 1919 makes her arguments on this point quaint reading today, but it still remains true that Poland has never really been independent of one or other imperialist power. Twenty years after being "restored" Poland was again partitioned between Germany and Russia and since the war has been a mere Russian satellite. Indeed parts of pre-1772 Poland are now back in Russia again. Luxemburg's mistake here should be a warning to Socialists not to be dogmatic on issues such as this: capitalism can be very flexible in its political institutions.

The issue of the "right of nations to self-determination" came up again in 1903 when the Russian Social Democrats officially incorporated this demand into their programme. Once again Luxemburg opposed this not only as politically wrong but as theoretically unsound. Her arguments on this last point are the same as ours:

"A "right of nations" which is valid for all countries and all times is nothing more than a metaphysical cliché of the type of "rights of man" and "rights of the citizen".

When we speak of the "right of nations to self-determination", we are using the concept of the "nation", as a homogeneous social and political entity… In a class society, "the nation" as a homogeneous socio-political entity does not exist. Rather, there exist within each nation, classes with antagonistic interests and "rights"."

Included in an appendix to Davis' selection of her writings on this question is a statement published in 1916 by some members of the SDKPL in an obscure Polish-language journal in exile. This shows a remarkable degree of understanding on this issue, especially the following:

"The so-called right of self-determination is also used with the proviso that it will become a reality for the first time under socialism and is thus an expression of our striving for socialism. This proposition is open to the following objections. We know that socialism will do away with all national oppression, because it removes the class interests that furnish the driving force of such oppression. We also have no reason to assume that the nation, in socialist society, will form a politico-economic unit. By all indications it will have the character of a cultural and linguistic unit; for the territorial division of the socialist cultural unit, insofar as this will survive at all, can only follow the needs of production, and this division would have to be determined, not by individual nations separately, from their own power (as the "right of self-determination" demands), but through the joint action of all interested citizens. The carrying over of the formula of "right of self-determination" into socialism arises from a complete misunderstanding of the nature of socialist society."

We could hardly express it better ourselves. Unfortunately most of those who expressed such views were later diverted by Bolshevism and the Russian revolution and soon disappeared from the scene of history.

Although Luxemburg knew what Socialism was and had an honourable record of opposing the First World War as well as both reformism within Social Democracy and the undemocratic practices of the Bolsheviks, she too made her mistakes. But on the question of nationalism, with her criticism of Marx's position as "obsolete and mistaken" she made an important contribution to socialist theory. The publication in English of her views on this issue will hopefully help towards debunking the slogan of "the right of nations to self-determination".

Adam Buick