Amidst total chaos and a filthy brand of political opportunism that cannot even be compared to that of the past century when, brandished by socialdemocracy and Stalinism, the axes rained down on the heads and shoulders of proletarians, the so-called “national issue” is resuscitated today by little political bands and by authentic charlatans. And not only in the variegated world of the media and the web, but also in the real world of national “communist” branches in all countries: carefully dusted down Stalinists, neo-situationists, red-browns, Trotskyists, “communitarianists”, etc. who, in the attempt to distance the proletarian uprising, enter the petit-bourgeois political arena, just as the crisis of capitalism is entering a septic phase and what our class really needs is something completely different. And doesn’t tragedy take the form of farce in history’s successive version?
The pro-America court jesters, for example, (“sovereignists”, populists, liberals and protectionists) and the partisans of the “Russian salad bowl” (in Baltic and Caucasian areas, in the Donbass and the Crimea, etc.) serve as distractions to disorientate a proletariat that is still struggling to emerge from the ruins of tremendous historical defeats and bloody betrayals. As if the imperialist bourgeoisies were not enough to take to pieces and recompose the puzzles of the peoples: the so-called nations had to be churned up as well, the fake states, the pseudo-ethnic displacements, where, as a consequence of wars, whether direct or by proxy, the flows of raw materials, arms, drugs, monetary and financial means intersect, along real highways for immense imperialist traffic.
And here we are once again, dealing with the residues and cankers of the so-called “national issues”, because the stages are growing vaster and vaster and the blood-streaked spotlights of the Mediterranean are lighting up again. So the question is: is the postulate of the self-determination of peoples still up-to-date in the present historical situation, in which, now that the phase of the bourgeois revolutions and the dual revolutions is over, there are the historical and social conditions for a “pure proletarian” revolution, not only in Europe but throughout the world? To us the answer is clear: NO. But we cannot stop here, at the monosyllable. Let us briefly look back at Lenin’s positions in 1914.
“First of all […] it is necessary to make a distinct separation between two periods of capitalism, periods that are radically different from the point of view of the national movements. On the one hand there is the period of the collapse of feudalism and absolutism, the period in which the democratic bourgeois states are taking shape, and when the national movements become mass movements for the first time, dragging with them all the classes of the population into political life, in one way or another, through the press, participation in representative institutions, etc. etc. On the other hand the period of the fully formed capitalist States awaits us, a period in which the constitutional régime has long been consolidated, in which the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has developed keenly, the period that might be defined the eve of capitalism’s collapse.
“Typical of the first period is the reawakening of national movements, which drag with them the peasants, too, - the most numerous social stratum and the one that is most difficult ‘to put in movement’ – in the struggle for political freedom in general and nationality rights in particular. Typical of the second period is the lack of mass bourgeois democratic movements: it is the period in which developed capitalism, bringing together and amalgamating nations already wholly drawn in by the circulation of goods, brings to the forefront the antagonism between internationalized capital and the international workers’ movement.
“Naturally, the two periods are not divided by a wall, but are connected by a number of rings in the transmission chain. Moreover, some countries stand out due to their swift national development, national composition, the way the population is located over the territory, etc. etc. A national Marxist programme for a given country cannot start to be elaborated without considering all these overall, historical factors and the actual political conditions.”
And he adds later on:
“In most western countries the issue has been settled for some time. It is therefore ridiculous to look for the solution to problems that are non-existent in western programmes.”[1]
Thus far Lenin. With regard to the “national issue”, the question therefore clearly arises: should the programme of the world revolutionary party still include the question of “the right of nations to self-determination” in pluri-national countries? Is it still possible to resume the tactics of “the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat allied with the poor peasants” (the “dual” or “authentically popular” revolution)? What are the historical-concrete details, as Lenin might put it, that would oblige us to keep this slogan in our own programme? What historical-concrete details would oblige us, worldwide, to resume, in an identical form, the “Bakù Theses” necessary at the time of the Communist International in its 1920 Congress? The International of the initial congresses needed at the time to deal with the themes arising from the “national issue”: the issue was then an open question in an immense part of the world and the “dual revolution” was still on the agenda. The age we are living in is, instead, one in which the national issue is historically no longer on the agenda. It is marked by a complex situation of historical paths but the direction of the momentum is already traced and the often contradictory events that may occur cannot change its course. It is not a question of the economic independence of nations, which is never possible in an age of imperialism, but the formal independence of nation States in the different areas of the world where the issue of the right to separation played a positive role when there were still pluri-national States. In its class war against capitalism, the international proletariat has always considered the claim to formal independence of a State of fundamental importance, not, of course, to inflate it, but as a precondition for overthrowing it, particularly in the presence of a “local” proletariat now roused by the forces of production.
Nonetheless, we cannot forget the importance that “non pure” contradictions still have in some areas of the world and in the “advanced” West itself: i.e. contradictions not limited to those between industrial capital and salaried proletariat (marginal national movements, remnants of peasant movements). The question is: can these contradictions, secondary in the real dynamics of contemporary history, in the power relations between the main classes, facilitate the advance of the proletarian revolutionary movement? Might they have at least some potential, like the epic of the coloured peoples in the second post-war period? Faced with “pure dynamics”, in which open conflict existed only and exclusively between the two enemy classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, there would be no alternative other than to leave aside the secondary dynamics. And who could leave aside the mass of peasants in Africa and Asia (in China and India themselves), even though increasingly unable to generate “agrarian movements”, and the ethnic-national conflicts that might well emerge under the pressure of inter-imperialist clashes? In addition, amongst the contradictions, how can the strength of the middle classes and working-class aristocracy of the imperialist age be ignored, capable as they are of forming a broad reactionary front precisely by exploiting ethnic, religious and national aspirations? And on some future day might not the powerful advance of the proletariat itself, during the course of a revolutionary civil war, have a gravitational effect, sufficient to move even the most backward in the opposite direction?
With the end of the old colonialism and the dawn of modern imperialism, all the great powers have made immense efforts to shake off the difficulties of managing occupied territories and forced annexations. They have transformed them into economic and political “agreements”: in reality sordid alliances and material and financial subjugation. As we know, the “right of peoples to self-determination” is flaunted on high in UN assemblies: “the equality of nations” is universally approved; the agreement to separate when this is in the interests of the bourgeoisie is a well-tried process: the ideological heritage spread by the imperialist bourgeoisie is now dominant in world political and economic society. The latest events in the Balkans go to show that the pressure towards disaggregation in ex-Yugoslavia (its balkanization, as in the 1800s) was a product of German and U.S. power politics, of the ultra-developed West. It is the great powers that set alight the gunpowder of territorial divisions (Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Kosova, etc.), by calling them “nations”. This does not mean that elsewhere the “right to separate” of minorities is not repressed by one bourgeoisie or the other, by the greater or lesser bourgeoisies (Northern Ireland, the Basque country, Chechenia, Kurdistan, Palestine, Tibet, to quote a few examples). And not only there. Missing from the list are small national groups, the remnants of old colonialisms, territorial entities entangled in the fabric of more than one nation, border areas where local wars are fuelled with no possibility of a real outcome. In central Africa there is a maze of peoples, States, groups etc.. But this does not stop the various fictitious, invented and re-mapped states from becoming imperialist battering rams, whose anti-proletarian violence is no slighter than those same super-power States. It is sufficient to take a look at the Middle East! Yet, amongst the national-communists there is always someone who holds sacred a “socialist fatherland” immersed in oil (Venezuela) or showered with sugar (Cuba).
“Residues”: i.e. marginal situations, whose solution would have little or no effect on the overall dynamics of (worldwide, continental) class war. And despite this, can some downsizing of the slogan of the self-determination of peoples with respect to the terms it was proposed in the past, cause the “national issue” to disappear just because of this? No. There are those in the “left” who have confidence in a possible, pseudo-proletarian, “anti-imperialist” war of the future, in support of the “socialist fatherlands”. The identity-stamp of the fatherland, it seems, is a comfort, supporting and baptizing both the right- and the left-wing petit-bourgeois, not forgetting the anarchists and followers of Proudhon (and, last but not least, the “patriots” and “strictly local partisans”). For communists any fatherland, real, fictitious, ethnic, including “neverland”, in capitalist society is a mark branded in fire on the skin of the proletariat: the path of the proletarian revolution passes through the removal of the proletariat’s brand mark as property of a nation, which is one and the same as capitalism, the company, the boss and the professional union man. The so-called “national issue” is a “problem” of the international class war: a problem to be solved and not brushed off. The reality of Capital will certainly be filled with contradictions but the task of the communist revolution is to abolish it dictatorially once and for all.
The proletariat should no long burden itself with nationalist residues under the illusion that they might become a launch-pad for the socialist revolution (Northern-Irish, Basque, Catalan, Slav, Palestinian, Kurdish, Chechen, Ukraine, etc.). These are authentic cankers. The revolutionary proletariat fights on a 360° horizon and there are no “oppressed bourgeoisies from previous historical phases” to lay claim to any “right to self-decision” or “separation” to accelerate the course of the proletarian revolution, because in terms of both quality and quantity the problem is now out of time and out of place. This does not prevent those petit-bourgeois initiatives from giving rise, perhaps, to timid and contingent struggles due to contradictions created locally, in the course of wartime occupations. The causes are elsewhere, however. Even the outbreak of the first world war did not have its origins in the Balkans, as, instead, was stated, with the whole parade of fictitious Balkan ethnic entities; and even less so was the second world war caused by the uncertain Italian, Polish, French Czech, Austrian borders, but instead by destructive forces that had been building up in the vaults of the imperialist powers.
The first driving force is to be found in the deadly struggle between capital and labour. To imagine the petit-bourgeoisie – “today” so-called oppressed - which Lenin wrote of, being able to become the trigger of proletarian revolutionary movement (the only thing that would interest us), is an illusion as ingenuous as it is dangerous: the ignition has become far too weak compared to the whole western European area up to 1871 and from 1905 onwards in eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. This phase is over now in all parts of the world. A revolutionary bourgeoisie fuelling an aggressive, revolutionary, democratic war of attack, like the one that existed under Bismarck before the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 does not and will no longer exist: the effort needed by Italy and Germany to become nations demonstrates the impossibility today, in the present context (economic, political and military) of supporting a new national epic and thus some possibility of the proletariat exploiting the political-social contradictions for transforming it into a permanent revolution, as stated in the communists’ 1848 programme. The impetus of the “coloured peoples”, opposed by imperialist and colonial bourgeoisie forces, disguised as a “cold war” between imperial giants (who had agreed in Yalta on their areas of influence), was harshly repressed and put down due to the concern that other young bourgeoisies might occupy the stage of history to stake a claim to their share of the world’s loot. The international proletariat can no longer burden itself with any national claims; in a pluri-national country it cannot support either, first and foremost, the oppressed nation (and its spokespeople, the bourgeoisie), the most interested party, or, obviously, the dominant nation, because in doing so it would preclude the defense of the conditions for the survival of its class brothers, the proletarians, supporting the privileges, racism and divisions created by the two “enemy” bourgeoisies . Instead, in the “oppressed nation” it finds the proletariat (and mass of those lacking any reserves) that will have to be uplifted to set up its own class dictatorship, together with the proletariat of the “dominant nation”, with the slogan “Proletarians of the world, unite!” and the tactics of revolutionary defeatism, against both bourgeoisies. It also finds oppressed ethnic groups: residues on the margins of the economy, aspiring to federalism and local and cultural independence, which are the effects of historical or new imperialist subdivisions that nail them to an eternal past and future. It finds wartime occupations, as in Palestine, at the cost of the Palestinian and Arab-Israeli proletariat and the wretched refuges of the Nakba: occupations that do not prevent the Palestinian bourgeoisie, small or great, from carving out an economic space for itself with the support of the dominant Israeli bourgeoisie. It finds snippets of the political map drawn up first by colonialism and then by imperialism over the whole of the Middle East, such as Kurdistan, chopped up into new and old divisions reflecting, in the same “oppressed nation”, Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian and Turkish Kurds who share out, politically and economically, what remains of a territory that was supposed to constitute a “Kurdish nation”, just as an “Arab nation” was to have been constituted by the entire territory reaching from Algeria to Turkey. And what has become of the Latin-American dream of a single nation reaching from Colombia to Chile? Oppressed and/or dominant, these populations are the result of subdivisions, or the sharing out of areas of influence not only of imperialism (in the first instance the USA), but of the native bourgeoisies: more carving up of territory that has already experienced the shift to a full-blown capitalist economy. On the same territory there lives a materially and spiritually oppressed proletariat that no longer awaits any national or ethnic liberation but social liberation from class exploitation: oppressed to such an extent that it can no longer even express from itself any awareness of its own simple interests for survival.
There remains our revolution, to be prepared, accompanied and brought to fulfillment: the prospect is not so distant, if even the Egyptian proletariat in the textile works and the countryside has made its voice heard… In the so-called “Arab springs”, the proletariat attempted to shake off the exploitation imposed not only by an imperialist bourgeoisie, but also by the national, industrial and agrarian bourgeoisies and their religious variants. Oppressed by war, forced emigration, prison camps, the hatred of the petit-bourgeoisie, the sub-proletariat and the religious powers, in material terms the proletariat is without a fatherland and without reserves, at the mercy of the counter-revolutionary tempests. Broadening its horizons, the proletariat in those areas is seeking its own class, “the brotherhood of the humiliated and the mistreated”, whose bond constitutes the actual precondition for world revolution, both in ultra-developed economies and in those that have not yet crossed the threshold of survival.
[1] Lenin, “On the Right of Nations to Self-determination” (1914), in Opere scelte (Selected Works), Vol. II, p. 232, 235.
International Communist Party